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Chapter twenty-eight

Liam

S he’s quiet. Too quiet.

Which is fucked, because five minutes ago she was shaking like she’d been hit with a live wire—and I was the one holding the switch.

But instead of curling into me or flashing that sharp little smirk— She stiffens.

Not her body. Her energy.

Like someone threw a bucket of ice water over the moment.

I catch the glow of her phone screen out the corner of my eye. A name. A message. Her whole face goes white.

“Kat?”

She doesn’t answer right away. Just grips the phone like it might shatter in her hand.

Then, finally— “He knows.”

Those two words land like a puck to the teeth. Sharp. Fast. Impossible to take back.

Her brother.

Fuck.

Now we’re not just toeing the line. We’re skating full-speed into a goddamn warzone.

By the time we pull up to her place, we’re both pretending nothing’s changed. Pretending the fuse isn’t already lit and burning fast.

She’s all soft edges and silence as I help her out of the car. But I can still taste her on my tongue. Still feel her legs shaking. Still see the look on her face when her brother’s name popped up.

I want to ask what the hell she’s going to do. What we’re going to do.

But I don’t.

Because this isn’t the time—and even if it was, I don’t think I could handle the answer.

The house is small. Cozy. Smells like her—vanilla and something else sweet.

She disappears down the hall, and I stand there like an idiot in a borrowed suit, wondering if I just stepped into something I can’t walk out of.

When she comes back, she’s in a T-shirt and shorts. No makeup. No armor. And fuck me—she looks better than she did all dressed up. “Dam, you look good!” She smirks with that look, begging for me to devour her.

“I know my brother must’ve left something in the spare room,” she says, nodding toward the hall. “They’ll probably fit.”

I nod and head toward the bathroom, not giving a fuck if they’re Griffins or the damn mail man. All I can think about is dipping into Katarina’s hot, wet sweetness.

I strip out of the suit like it’s choking me, tossing it over the edge of the sink. I find the drawer she mentioned—pull on a pair of gray sweatpants. and shuck the boxers, letting my cock hang free, still half-hard from the memory of her body. No shirt. No pretense.

When I walk back into the room, she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, legs tucked up under her, watching me with those stormy gray eyes.

Eyes that hold a soft ache. Like she’s asking me to stay—without having to ask.

I flick off the main light, leaving just the lamp on the nightstand, gold-warm and low.

She pats the bed beside her.

“No,” I say, stepping in. “You don’t need to do that. I’ll go if you want.”

She smiles—small, soft. Brave.

“I want you to stay.”

I move closer. The air tightens. My heartbeat’s heavy in my throat as I crawl onto the bed. The mattress dips. She shifts toward me—slow, drawn by gravity and something more.

Her thigh brushes mine.

The room breathes.

She reaches for the lamp and switches it off.

Darkness swallows us whole.

Our hands find each other— Fingers lacing. Holding tight.

And it’s not about sex. Not right then. It’s about the silence. The weight. The storm we both know is coming.

She exhales a laugh—soft, shaky. “Still think you’ve got it under control?”

And just like that—everything clicks. The smirk. The mouth. That line.

That’s what she said to me. At the party. Mask on. Smirk cocky. Voice laced with trouble.

My chest seizes.

It’s her.

I reach for her, my mouth crashing into hers like I’ve been starving. Consuming. Greedy.

A confession made with crashing lips and swirling tongues.

I don’t want this to end.

Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

But what we have? It’s already soaked in gasoline—and now her brother’s got the match.

And yet when she climbs over me again— straddling my thighs, and that smirk returns, hips rolling, cock hard as steel, begging to dip into her core as she writhes against me— I forget everything.

Her mouth charts a path down my body, hands working my pants past my hips. My dick springs free, desperate for the heat of her tongue. When her lips finally wrap around me, the sound that tears from my throat is pure animal.

She works me like she’s been dreaming of this—like she’s hungry enough to swallow me whole.

Hot. Wet. Focused.

She takes me deep—past her lips, past the back of her tongue—until her nose brushes my abs and my cock twitches against her throat.

She pops off the head with a wet gasp, a string of spit connecting us. Then she dives back down, strangling my cock with her suction until it submits to her.

Blood-hot and velvet-soft. Every swirl of her tongue makes me dizzy. She moans that fucking guttural moan that curls my toes. Low. Hungry. Steeped in craving.

That tongue. That sound. That move.

just like the masked girl.

My stomach drops.

It’s her.

That night. That masked girl with the filthy mouth and the fuck-me eyes. The one I couldn’t forget no matter how hard I tried. The one who branded herself into me like fire.

My grip tightens in her hair. My abs lock up.

She’s got no idea she just handed me the match and the gasoline.

And now she’s here—on her knees, spit-slicked, mouth full of me, looking up with those same eyes, that same ruined whimper.

I have to choke it back. Bite the inside of my cheek till I taste blood.

Don’t come. Don’t fucking come yet. I want to feel her fall apart under me before I lose it.

“Jesus, Kat,thats a good girl” I groan, voice strangled. “You’re her. You were mine that night.”

She doesn’t stop.

She speeds up.

Suction tighter. Pace faster. Tongue wicked. She deep throats me again, harder this time, groaning around my cock—cupping my balls as she twists her grip up my shaft like she wants to milk the memory from my bones.

“Fuck—” I growl, yanking her off, cock twitching in my fist. “You trying to make me lose my goddamn mind?”

She licks the head slow, savoring the taste. Her lips curl.

“Too late.”

But I’m not done.

“Look at you,” I mutter, watching her cheeks hollow, spit leaking down her chin, glistening and raw. “Look at that messy little mouth…you like this, don't you, baby girl?”

She moans, and that sound punches straight to my balls like a shot I never want to come down from.

“You like sucking me dry, huh?” I rasp, dragging my thumb slowly over her flushed cheek, feeling the tremble beneath my touch. “You like being filthy for me?”

She nods, eyes glassy and pupils blown wide, ravenous like she’s been starving for this kind of dirty. I yank her off with a sharp pop and tug her up to straddle me again, her fiery center pulsating on my chest.

“Goddamn. You’re dangerous.” My mouth finds her pussy like I’m starving, desperate to taste every inch of her.

She screams when I suck her clit, lapping her sweet creamy center. Body writhing beneath me like she’s unspooling from the inside out. Whimpering, trembling, completely lost in the sensation.

“Stay still,” I growl, tongue fucking her deep, swallowing every wet sound she makes. “You want me to make you come? Then ride my face like you mean it.”

And fuck, does she. Gripping the headboard with nails digging into wood, hips grinding hard against my mouth, her moans ragged and raw.

My cock leaks against my abs, aching to bury itself inside her again.

When she comes, it’s a shattered sob—broken raw and beautiful. A sound that punches the air from my lungs and drags me under.

I flip her again, face down, ass high, her thighs still trembling with leftover tremors. I lean in, cock brushing against her soaked entrance, slick and swollen.

“You know what this pussy needs, Kat?”

“Tell me,”she gasps, pushing back against me, begging for it like she’s been waiting for this moment her whole life.

“It needs to be owned.”

Then I bury myself in one hard thrust. Balls-deep. And I swear to God, stars explode behind my eyes.

Her scream ricochets off the walls—wild, desperate, filled with need and surrender.

“Liam—fuck—yes!”

I start slow. Deep. Grinding my hips so she feels every inch, every heartbeat, every goddamn claim I’m making on her.

“You feel that?” I rasp against her neck, teeth grazing skin. “That’s me. Every part of me. Claiming every inch of you.”

She whimpers, legs trembling beneath me, nails clawing the sheets like she’s trying to hold herself together.

I reach around, find her clit, rubbing tight circles until she cries out, shattering again.

“Give it to me, sweetheart. Come on this cock. Let go.”

Her scream is ripped raw, a ragged, ragged thing that rattles my soul.

I pound into her harder, losing control, hips snapping fast and furious. Sweat drips from my body, slick and hot, mixing with the slick between us.

“Say it,” I growl, my voice rough and ragged, full of need and desperation. “Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours! Liam—I’m fucking yours!”

I lose it. Coming so hard I swear the world snaps white around me.

We collapse. Tangled. Broken. Destroyed.

But later—when her breathing settles into that slow, open-mouthed rhythm, and sleep finally drags her under—I slip out of bed like I’m gutting myself quiet. No sudden moves. Just a man trying not to wake the one thing in the world he knows he shouldn’t want this bad.

I get dressed by feel. Tug the pants over sticky skin. Shirt inside out. Don’t care. Every motion is mechanical, controlled. Like taping a bruised rib before a game—tight, necessary, so it doesn’t break open.

And then I just stand there. Watching her.

Not in some poetic, pretty-boy bullshit kind of way. I stare at her like a guy waiting for the next hit, like if I blink, she’ll vanish.

Her hair’s a mess. Her thighs are marked with my hands. My come is drying on her inner leg.

It should’ve been just sex. It could’ve been.

But it wasn’t. Not now. Not after that look she gave me. Not after she said it felt real.

And the worst part? She meant it.

I drag a hand over my jaw, feel the burn of stubble and guilt.

I’m not walking away unscathed. I’m fucked.

Ravaged. Completely and utterly wrecked.

I mean, I haven’t even told her the truth.

I haven’t told her I was sure I recognized her.

That I’ve been chasing a ghost and she’s been under my nose the whole damn time.

I leave the room like I’m skating off the ice after a dirty hit—knowing it’s gonna cost me. Knowing I’ll never hear the end of it. And not giving a single fuck.

Because I’d do it again. Hell, I’d beg for it.

She wrecked me. And I liked it.