Blizzard (BearPaw Resort #2) Read online

  As he plunged in me again and again, he reached down and pushed my legs even wider. Suddenly, he was gone. His cock that had filled me perfectly left me empty. I started to sit up to follow, but he pushed me back down.

  His tongue licked up my core, and I shuddered. Lips closed around my clit, and he began sucking gently, making my hips rock to his rhythm. His fingertips played along my opening, caressing the fine skin, playing in the slippery silk, and occasionally dipping into my body.

  I called out his name, and he bit the inside of my thigh playfully and rose back up. His dick was still painfully hard, the head swollen. I watched with heavy eyes when he wrapped his hand around the base and stroked up. A bead of pearly white appeared on the tip, and I licked my lips.

  I didn’t get the chance to taste him, though. He plunged back inside me like a stallion and pumped his hips until we strained against each other.

  “You’re mine,” he growled, his mouth falling right against my ear.

  I grabbed his face and pulled him down for an ardent kiss.

  I knew the instant he was ready to explode because he shoved deep again, so deep a strangled sound left his mouth and floated into mine.

  Liam lifted just enough so our eyes could collide. “I’m staying,” he insisted, a renewed fire lit his stare. It was almost a challenge.

  Liam would never have to challenge me, though. I would give him anything he wanted.

  “Always,” I whispered, lifting up far enough so I could press a kiss to the corner of his lips.

  Liam’s arms wound around me, clutching me against his sweat-slick chest. I hugged him back as the release flowed over him, making him quake and moan until we were lying in a heap, gasping for breath. Every few seconds, his stomach muscles would contract and he would thrust lightly into my core.

  His lips latched onto the top of my shoulder and sucked gently. I dragged my fingertips up the length of his spine. He was heavy and hot, but I didn’t care. I lay there completely spread eagle beneath him, but I had never felt so secure.

  “Baby,” he murmured, releasing my shoulder and pushing up enough to look down. His lips were pouty and full, his eyes relaxed and their usual shade of gray. Whatever it was he’d been so desperately seeking before, he’d gotten, and I felt the deepest gratification knowing it was with me he’d found it.

  I swept the hair away from his face and cupped his jaw. “I love you.”

  The pupils of his eyes dilated. I watched them expand with my whisper. His chest swelled, pressing against mine once more. “There’s love. And then there’s the way I feel about you,” he murmured, nuzzling the underside of my jaw.

  My heart tumbled. When it recovered, it felt heavy in the center of my chest. It beat slowly, thudding along as his words found a place to settle inside me.

  After another moment, Liam pushed up. His body towered over mine, blocking out the rest of the world as if he were the only one who existed.

  I could live in that world. Hell, I would volunteer.

  “I’m sorry.”

  That snapped me out of the post-sex stupor I’d been so happy to wallow in. “Sorry?”

  His eyes closed briefly, as if he were guilty.

  “Hey,” I crooned, reaching for him. “What’s the matter?”

  “After that?” he mused, shaking his head. “The entire world could blow up around us and I would burn a happy, blissful man.”

  I smiled at the image he painted. Then I asked, “So?”

  He moved inside me. “I didn’t wear a rubber, Bells.”

  My mouth formed a little O.

  The guilt from his features cleared, and his dark brow arched. “You didn’t notice?”

  “I noticed that it felt… so good. Like I was so close to you.” I rubbed my hand up his chest.

  His arm muscle flexed when his body lowered so he could kiss me softly. He didn’t linger, though. Instead, he pushed up, his body leaving mine. I made a sound of protest, but he sat down on the couch and kicked off the shorts and boxers still around his ankles.

  I sat up, and he reached for me, tugging me right into his lap. The evidence that he definitely did not wear a condom was between my legs, a sensation I was most definitely not accustomed to.

  Liam wrapped the red plaid blanket around my shoulders and met my eyes intently. “I took advantage of you.”

  I laughed. He didn’t join in.

  Oh. He was serious.

  “Liam.”

  He shook his head like he wasn’t going to let me explain it away. “I was half out of my mind, just talking about what it was like after that fall… thinking about my father. Having you here in my arms.”

  “You were thinking about your father?”

  He made a sound. “Not during.”

  I pressed my lips together, trying not to laugh at the look on his face. “I meant before, when we were talking.” I kept my voice patient. Liam was so much alpha. So much in control. But there was this other part of him… almost like a little boy who sometimes needed a little bit of reassurance. I didn’t think I quite realized that until this morning.

  “Yeah,” he replied, rubbing his palms up and down my blanket-covered arms. “I’m a possessive bastard.” He concluded.

  “Possessive, definitely.” I agreed. Then I touched him softly. “But I don’t mind.”

  His eyes flashed to mine.

  I smiled. “That means I can be a possessive bitch with you.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “I don’t want anyone but you, sweetheart.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I’m not gonna change.” He warned. His hands flexed against my arms.

  I covered one of his hands with mine, calming the agitated gesture. “I don’t want you to change, Liam. I love every part of you. Even the possessive part.”

  “What about the part who made love to you without a condom?”

  “You act like you have some nefarious plan to either infect me or impregnate me.” I teased.

  His jaw muscles flexed. “If I had anything wrong with me at all, I never would have put my dick inside you, even wrapped.” He jabbed his finger in the direction of my, um, lady parts.

  I grabbed his wrist and stroked the inside of it. “I know that,” I told him gently. My, he was a prickly bear this morning. I paused, still rubbing the sensitive skin below his palm. “Do you ever… still want pills?”

  His brow furrowed. “What?”

  “The darkness you mentioned before. It’s not just what happened with your career that caused it. It’s the addiction. It never fully went away.” I saw remnants of it in his eyes.

  He rubbed a hand over his face and blew out a breath. “Me being an addict will never fully go away, sweetheart,” he replied, gentle. “Do you understand that?”

  I nodded. “I know. I can handle it.” I started to say more, then stopped.

  “Don’t do that.” He took my hand. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

  “I’m kinda relieved to know. To know where that dark in you comes from. I’ve felt it before, so to finally understand…”

  “I’m usually better at keeping it at bay.” His shoulders left the back of the couch, and both arms slipped around my waist. “It’s been hard lately… with you and all the shit going on.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  He shook his head once. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Give me a free pass to take advantage of you and act like an asshole.”

  I grabbed his face. “You didn’t take advantage of me, Liam. I loved it. I just said I’d never felt closer to you.”

  “Yeah, well, there was nothing between us.” His voice was rueful. “Once I realized what the hell I was doing, I couldn’t convince myself to pull out.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you,” I whispered. It was why he’d told me he was staying right before he came. Liam came inside me. I shivered.

  He tightened his arms around me, rubbing a palm up and down my back.


  “You came inside me,” I whispered against his neck. My voice was sort of awed.

  He must have thought I was upset, because he pulled back. My stare found his, bouncing between his beautiful eyes. “You’re inside me still.”

  “Yes, sweetheart, I am.”

  Ah, the knowledge of that was overwhelming. An instant aphrodisiac. Perhaps I hadn’t only been kidding when I told Liam I would be possessive, too. The idea of him inside me, with nothing between us… It was just as delicious as it had felt.

  Knowing he’d left something of himself behind… That was even better. Without thinking about it, I put my hand over my middle. I knew I wasn’t pregnant. The odds of that after only once without protection were pretty slim.

  Still. That slimmest chance caused a feeling inside me. It wasn’t panic. Or even dread. It was something else.

  A soft sound left Liam, and I glanced up. His stare was focused on where I touched my belly. “I like the way that looks, Bells,” he intoned, still staring. “A whole fucking lot.”

  “You do?”

  He made a rude sound. “Are you kidding? Just the idea of you walking around with my baby growing inside you is enough to make me want to go at you again.”

  I smiled. A wistful feeling moved through me, and I sighed, letting my hand drop from my middle. “Now wouldn’t be a good time for that, you know, since I’m a target of the mob and all.”

  A look so deadly passed over his features. I shivered again. After a moment of me not saying anything, he expelled a breath. “I won’t do it again until you’re on the pill. Rubbers from here on out.”

  I didn’t like the idea, especially since I just had a taste of what he was like without anything at all. But I knew it was necessary. Yes, the idea of having Liam’s baby was wonderful, but the reality was less than. At least right now, when people were trying to murder me and Liam had an injury… plus his father. Something he just admitted was weighing heavily on him.

  “I’ll call and make an appointment for birth control as soon as I can, okay? Then we can ditch the condoms.”

  He grabbed my face, pressing our foreheads together. “Only if that’s what you really want.”

  “Oh, I want.” I assured him. Then, feeling sort of shy, I confessed. “No one’s ever been inside me like that before.”

  A rumble filled the space around us. “You have no idea how happy that makes me.”

  I smiled.

  “I’ve never been bare in any woman before, either.”

  I sat up. “Really?”

  “I’m not a dog, sweetheart,” he replied dryly.

  I launched forward, hugging his neck. I felt his chuckle vibrate his chest. “That makes me happy.”

  He chuckled quietly against my ear, slowly dragging his fingers through the length of my hair. I lay against him for a while, reveling in being here with him. Refusing to go back into witness protection was a big decision. One the Feds literally called irrational and unsafe.

  They were right. At least about it being unsafe.

  I was a sitting duck now. Crone, Spidey, and any other people within Crone’s organization knew exactly where I was. They were coming back. It wasn’t a matter of if. It was just a matter of when.

  Feeling Liam’s heart beat against mine, guilt over my decision flooded over me. It wasn’t the fact I was putting my own life on the line, but his. At this point, though, it wouldn’t matter if I left. Liam would be a target regardless, just because I loved him.

  And you know what?

  Maybe I was irrational, too. It wasn’t something I liked to admit to myself… but yeah, maybe they were right about that as well. Maybe I loved Liam so fiercely, so fanatically that it made being rational impossible. Especially when it came to leaving. I couldn’t leave. Not now. Not ever again.

  I was afraid, though. So incredibly afraid.

  Not of dying.

  Of losing this. Of the way I felt right in this moment.

  Liam needed me. More than I knew. He was so strong, so utterly stubborn in protecting me, shielding me… making absolutely sure I knew just how much he loved me. There was another side to him, though, one I had only caught glimpses of until this morning.

  A darkness lurked in Liam. A sleeping beast. And though he wouldn’t admit it and I never would voice it, I think that beast scared even him sometimes.

  Liam was incredibly blessed in his life, yet he’d still suffered loss. Perhaps being so blessed made that loss even harder to endure because he knew what it was like to have so much and watch it be ripped away.

  I might need protecting. But I wasn’t the only one.

  Liam did, too.

  Not just from the men coming for me, whatever was happening with his father, and the state of his knee. There was something else he needed shielded from… something bigger than all those things combined.

  Himself.

  Liam

  I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

  Of all the things going on right now, of all the heaps of shit I had to deal with and worry about, it all suddenly took a backseat.

  I’d been inside Bellamy bare. The kind of raw, intense sex we’d just had on this couch made every single manly instinct inside me roar with pride.

  Oh God, the way she felt. Silky-smooth heat that clenched around my hard dick in literally just the right places. I couldn’t get deep enough. I fucking tried, though. The way she moaned and moved against me was sinful, as if she too just couldn’t get enough.

  I was an ass for staying inside her even after I realized what I was doing. I didn’t feel bad for it, though. It was a fucked-up thing to know you were acting like a jerk, but not feel any kind of remorse.

  Maybe I would if she did.

  Fucking A, the way she pressed her small hand against her flat belly. I knew there wasn’t a baby inside her, but the rush of pride and pure fucking want at the thought?

  Yes.

  Hell yes.

  I could practically feel my boys scrambling around in my sack with the urge to get up in her and do their job.

  A baby. Having kids was literally something I never thought of until I saw her hand on her belly. Until she looked at me with soft, focused eyes that brimmed with awe. Until I slid inside her without anything between us. How primal the urge was to do it again, to plant a life inside her and watch it grow.

  “Liam?”

  “What, sweetheart?” I murmured, letting the silk of her hair cascade through my fingers.

  “What changed?”

  The stubble on my jaw caught in her hair when I titled my head down toward her. “What?”

  Bellamy sat up, and though she was still in my lap, she was no longer pressed against me. A moment of sorrow whipped through me. Hair slipped over her shoulders, and the blanket fell around her back. Her cheeks were pink, her lips still swollen from kissing. Her perky breasts were on full display, the pink nipples at attention.

  “God. You are so fucking beautiful,” I told her, rubbing my thumb over her lower lip.

  She smiled, the light-colored lashes around her eyes sweeping downward. Tenderness surged inside me, piercing my heart and once again making it difficult to breathe. If this shit kept up, I was going to need an inhaler to live in this house with her.

  Loving her body but knowing it was chilly, I tugged the blanket back up around her, pulling the ends closer together beneath her chin. Her eyes lifted to mine, and I smiled.

  “Ask me.”

  I watched it dawn on her that she had been about to ask me a question. No wonder she and I were so slow at learning about the details of each other. We could barely have a conversation without becoming distracted.

  Bellamy is the ultimate distraction. Something about that thought pierced me, and I didn’t like it. Maybe your eight years apart were meant to be. So you could become a pro boarder.

  I gave that thought a violent shove. I didn’t know where the fuck it went, but I hoped it never came back. That felt a whole hell of a lot like me having to ch
oose. Choose between her and my career.

  Not today, Satan, I thought darkly. Not today.

  “You said before no one ever brought up you returning to snowboarding. But it’s obvious that idea was there.”

  “My coach called me. A few weeks before you came home actually,” I answered. “The Olympics are next year, and my sponsors called… They want me to come back.”

  “They didn’t replace you after your accident?” she questioned.

  I smirked. “I’m irreplaceable.”

  Her finger jolted out between the blanket edges and poked me in the stomach. “Modest, too.”

  “Just stating the facts, sweetheart.”

  She rolled her eyes, but then the finger that was previously poking me was joined by the other three, and the poke turned into a caress over my chest. “I can’t say I disagree. No one was ever able to replace you in my heart.”

  I caught her hand and narrowed my eyes. “Nor will they.”

  “Never,” she whispered.

  Well, that was a satisfying response.

  Entwining our fingers, I relaxed into the couch. “I hadn’t wanted to retire. Hell, I planned to stay pro for as long as possible,” My jaw tightened a bit, and I glanced across the room toward the fire. “When I did finally go out. I wanted to do it on my own terms. My own choice.” An angry sound ripped from me. “Not because of some twist of bad luck, something I couldn’t even control.”

  “You were going to go back.”

  “I was definitely entertaining the idea. I’d been boarding between lessons. Alex and I would go to the back part of the mountain, one that wasn’t part of the resort. I was working on some stuff… seeing if my knee could take it.”

  Her blue eyes implored me for more information. “And could it?”

  “Yeah.” I admitted. “With some conditioning and dedication, I could have gone back.”

  “Could have?” She puzzled. Then her eyes widened, looking down at my knee and the brace strapped around it. Her gasp filled the entire house. “I ruined it for you.”

  “No,” I insisted immediately. I’d known the second her eyes drifted to my knee she’d blame herself.