Professional Liar Read online

  Once Holt took off, I pulled Kat into my lap and kissed her like I’d wanted since I saw her walk out of our bathroom earlier. Her dress gave her a delicate demeanor, but I knew nothing could break her. Watching her command the attention of a crowd so easily and thoroughly, brought to light a new feeling in my chest. It surged up from the middle and took over once it gained a hold. Pride. I’d been so proud of her, I wanted to puff my chest out and declare to the whole world she belonged to me.

  Of course, she’d have slapped me upside the head if I did such a thing in public, but at home, in bed, perhaps a different story.

  She pulled away and whispered against my lips.“What about Patton?”

  “The man has seen way worse than this. And likely will again before he retires, if I have my way.”

  I shimmied my hand up to her knee and around the outside muscular curve of her thigh. She tensed, uncomfortable in such close confines with Patton watching, so I didn’t push her, only spent the half hour ride home holding her tight and tracing tiny circles on to her skin. When we almost got there, I started tracing letters there. Writing out what I wanted to do as soon as I stripped her dress off her shoulders and ripped her panties away.

  She understood them all, her body sinking into mine further, relaxing as I aroused her with such a simple touch.

  When we finally returned home, I helped her out and directed her straight to the bedroom. To my surprise, she actually listened to me.

  She entered the house, gave the boys in the dining room a wave, and continued to the bedroom without stopping.

  I shut the door and immediately took apart my cufflinks and bowtie. She stood and watched, swishing back and forth so her dress fluttered around her legs. I tugged out of the jacket and dress shirt, reminded of stripping the very same clothes off only a couple months ago.

  “Now, Mrs. St. James, what’s your pleasure? Ladies choice.”

  Fourteen

  Katherine

  Tonight we’d crossed a line. Some invisible barrier neither of us had yet to breach. As if my declaration at the gathering confirmed years of what he already knew, but still needed to hear. I held out my arms. He stepped between them and wrapped his hands around my waist. A sigh escaped me as I sank into him, letting his own arms hold my weight and lift me up.

  “I want this dress off you,” he whispered in my ear.

  It wasn’t a request. He delivered the order like a lover, but I could hear the leader under the words, and it brought something sharp and feral out of me.

  Even if he’d asked gently, kindly, I couldn’t deny him anything. Not with that look in his eyes. The one he wore whenever he knew he’d won and wanted everyone else to realize it a second too late. I stepped out of his hold, unzipped the dress, and let it fall to the floor.

  I hadn’t worn a stitch of underwear under the yards of emerald fabric. The chill on my skin all night became worth it just for this moment. He licked his lips, and I quivered, my knees knocking together.

  I reached for his shirt. “Your turn.”

  He stripped as fast as me, despite having worn more clothing. “I know I said, lady’s choice, but I had something else in mind.”

  Curiosity thoroughly piqued, I shrugged and watched my ‘I don’t give a shit reaction’ make his already rigid cock jump against his belly.

  He seized my face in his hands. “You so fucking know what that does to me.”

  His kissed me hard, his teeth and hands and face and tongue all pressed to mine. It wasn’t graceful, but damn it felt good. He released me with a little jerk, then wrapped his arms around me again, and this time, lifted me off my feet into the air. I curved my legs around his body, my pussy already wet as it met the bare ridges of his lower abs. Damn, what did I do to deserve this for the rest of my life? Perpetual karma. Naked karma. Beautiful karma.

  It wasn’t gentle, the way he lowered us to the bed. It was more of a freefall with his elbow and bicep cradling our impact.

  The world slowed around us, a bubble serrated us from the rest of the world. In here, he’d be Pierce, the man I loved despite my best effort to sabotage it. And out there, where politics and family names mattered, we’d reign.

  He scanned my face and traced the outer edge of my jaw with this thumb. “What are you thinking?”

  I caught his digit with my lips and sucked it in for a moment. “I’m thinking I need you inside me, right now.”

  His eyes shuttered, and I felt that tiny flutter in the pulse of my clit. “I’ll give you everything you need and more, Baby Girl. But I want one thing from you first.”

  He leaned in and captured my lips softly, once, twice, a third time, drawing me tighter into him by the waist a millimeter at a time with each kiss. My body started to ache, demanding the attention he promised and slowly dealt out.

  “Please…” I broke away and murmured against him.

  “Patience. Roll over.” His breath fanned my mouth in heat and damp that instantly made me think of those beautiful lips put to good use down lower. Then his words sank in, along with the command.

  “Wh—“ He gently angled my hip toward him and cracked a hand across the softest fleshiest part of my ass, interrupting me.

  The strike snapped through me. A rubberband crack filled the room, and I blinked up at him in surprised arousal. Before I could ask him to do it again, he repeated the motion, eyes wide watching my every twitch.

  It hurt, but it was so much more. The bloom of pain gave way to a bone deep wave of pleasure I couldn’t label. Even as my flesh stung my pussy clenched tight, needing to be filled.

  I still didn’t want to beg him, but I might just ask a few times in loud repetition. “Please, fuck me.”

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. A spike of fear shot through me. I’m shaking in his arms, my body out of control with longing. “No?”

  “I’m not going to fuck you tonight. I’m going to slide inside your body, without a condom, and I’m going to make love to you.”

  The addition of the word threw another layer over us. Blanketing us in a current of tension I could almost pluck.

  He arched his hand over my ass. The graze stung as it passed over the sensitive hot spots. My thoughts flew out of focus when he trailed around the back of my thigh. Then he lifted it up over his own hip, so my calf rested against his ass.

  I swallowed and waited, my heart beating louder in time with the arousal pulsing through me. He reached between us, and when the head of his cock slid along my seam, I shuddered. So very close to coming already. He could finish me like that. Nothing more than gentle, steady pressure with the blunt end of him.

  “Is this what you want?” he asked, his voice deeper, grated on the edge of his own control.

  I nodded frantically and tried to move my hips to maneuver him where I wanted. Where I needed. But he held me still, taking his time.

  Only when I let out a whimper did he give in and slowly start to press inside me.

  “If you force it, I’ll pull out and start over.”

  I slid one arm under his neck, and the other hand I anchored behind his bicep, my fair skin an interesting contradiction to his black ink. He continued his achingly slow and steady assault, and I dug my nails into his skin. “If this is making love, I think I want to go back to mindless fucking. Right now, I’ll take you slamming me against a wall over this torture.”

  That earned me a nip on the nose with his teeth. “You say the sweetest things.” But he obliged and slid a little faster until he’d fully entered me. We could stare into each other’s eyes in this position, our legs and arms entwined.

  And then the blanket was back, layered in emotion and sexual tension. “Kat,” he said.

  I shook my head, seeing where this was headed.

  I was scared.

  I was terrified.

  I wanted it more than anything.

  “Kat,” he repeated.

  I waited, my body pulsing around him, my heart beating frantically in my chest. My fingers
even felt like they had a heartbeat of their own.

  “Pierce,” I answered.

  He cupped my cheek and looked deep into my eyes. “I love you.”

  The words fluttered between us. So big and so tiny and so…perfect.

  I should end this now, run away, and get out before I hurt him. Before I hurt him so much, he can’t get back. But I couldn’t. Him saying the words made it so much more real than simply knowing how he felt.

  I knew I was supposed to say it back. The words stuck tight in my throat, and no matter what my heart said, it felt like a lie.

  I loved him. As much as Bianca. More than anything else. But I couldn’t say it. Pulling the truth out into the open invited corruption and abuse and a way for him to break me. The only way I could still be broken.

  “You don’t have to say it,” he said, after a long drawn out moment.

  And I saw in his eyes it was true. I didn’t have to say the words. It wasn’t something he needed to hear, because he already knew.

  I reached out and drug his face to mine. Kissing him with every word I couldn’t say and every word he deserved to hear.

  He arched into me the second our lips met, and I latched my teeth into his bottom lip.

  Our lovemaking switched from soft to fucking in a flash of a second. He rolled over and used his knees to press up into me. Fast and furious and so good. I could only hold on to him as he drove into me.

  Mindless was a middle ground between where you belong and where you should be. I’d found myself there in his arms between his bed and our history. Between our past and pain. Between the present and the future we might build together. Like a thunderclap, I caved to his demands. Not just the ones he made with his body, but the ones he etched into my heart.

  It took seconds for my orgasm to surge through me. Another second for his to follow. We smacked together, my stubbornness against the steel of his pride. He held himself inside me as he shuddered hard, his legs quaked, fingers dug into my skin, enough to make me want more. And we both exhaled heavily on the other side of the storm.

  When he slipped out of me, I wondered if I’d get pregnant from this. The idea felt too big in my head, so I let it go and settled in the curve of his arm. My heartbeat slowly returning to normal, my skin dotted with sweat.

  “I mean it. I love you, Kat,” he said it again.

  Spoken soft and gently after sex, the words weighted less, and I smiled at the thought of this man, this incredible man, loving someone like me. A tear slipped from the corner of my eye, but I dashed it away. Hoping he didn’t see.

  A monster.

  A shrew.

  Neither of us bothered to get up and flip off the light. And when he let out a loud snore, I whispered over the sound of my pounding heart, “I love you too.”

  Fifteen

  Katherine

  I pulled out of Pierce’s fierce grip the following morning with guilt imbedded in every one of my pores. He’d told me he loved me. And he didn’t demand I say it back.

  Nothing.

  He didn’t ask for anything, just said it, and made me feel like the most cherished woman in the world, and also the slimiest, because I couldn’t tell him back. I'd vowed to myself on our wedding day, I would not turn into my mother.

  I wouldn’t fold myself into whatever he wanted me to be.

  I wouldn’t fall in love and bow down to his every whim.

  I wouldn’t lose myself in a man who’d never be able to see the real me.

  Pierce lay curled toward my empty spot on the bed, and I went to get coffee and reason my way through this mess. I tied my robe as I approached the dining room.

  Fox sat at the table, mug in hand, with his phone in the other. “You guys have fun last night?”

  I didn’t answer him right away, walking straight to the coffee pot and pouring my own. I didn’t join him but hopped up to sit on the edge of the countertop with my cup. “If you mean the party, it was awful. But I’m sure there will be plenty of smiling pictures of us on page six.”

  He held up his phone to one of the paparazzi shots of Pierce and I entering the party. I glanced away. Between the way the families treated him last night, and the way I treated him, I couldn’t look at his smiling face. Warm and bright and hopeful for the future. But did I talk to him about it, or just let him remain hopelessly in love with me, feeling things I’d never be able to reciprocate?

  “Oh, a package came for you.” Fox pointed to the table by the door.

  No one had ordered anything that I could recall. I jumped down, cup still in hand, and went to the door. The Kleenex-sized box read Nordstrom, but it had no return address. Sitting my cup down, I grabbed a set of keys and sliced the tape on the of the box. Inside, a layer of bubble wrap. I pulled it out, and on the bottom, found three bullets. My heart took up an uneven rhythm, and my hand shook as I reached in and plucked them out, all at once.

  The brass had been engraved. My full name, Katherine, etched into the metal of the first one. The next said Bianca, and finally, Pierson. Something about his name being listed there broke a wall inside me. I dropped the bullets, and they clattered to the table and rolled to the floor as I crouched over in attempt to catch my now short breath.

  Fox knelt next to me in seconds. “What is it, Kat, what happened?” He put his hand on the floor, right over one of the bullets, and picked it up. The one he grabbed dedicated to Pierce. His face went cold, and he stood, grabbed the box, and the other two shells near my knees. “Who sent this?”

  I shook my head, holding my arms around my belly like they could contain the anger and fear and rage roiling inside me.

  He went back to the table, snapped up his phone, and made a call. There was no courtesy, only commands to the other end of the line.

  I had to get up, put myself together. No doubt every one of Pierce’s men would be here in a matter of minutes. I didn’t mind Fox or Gerry seeing me like this, but not the rest of them, not the entire crew.

  Pierce came out a few seconds later, and I’d barely started to get to my feet when he clasped me under the elbows to pull me upright. “Are you okay? What is it?”

  Words cascaded through my brain, bumping into each other. An explanation, an apology, and all the things I wanted to say to him, but knew I couldn’t. So I didn’t. I shook my head, pulled out of his arms, and went back to our bedroom. Closing the door behind me, I prayed he wouldn’t follow. I wouldn’t have the strength to keep it all in if he pushed me, and the man would do it.

  He was born to push me, just like I’d been born to do the same for him. How many times had we peeled each other apart for amusement, to cause pain, to hurt? And now, I couldn’t fathom seeing that anguish in his eyes.

  I remembered it well. A mix of cold indifference and burning rage. Every time he looked at me like that, I knew I couldn’t see him again for a while. I’d hurt him, and he retreated behind the wall and would stay there until I could find a way to bring it down again.

  My phone buzzed on the bedside table. “Bianca,” I whispered. Running to pick it up. Her face smiled up on the screen and I hit send. “Are you okay?”

  “Annoyed but fine, Kat. Why are there two more guards at my door?”

  How the hell did I tell her I couldn’t ensure her safety? That our entire world might be ripped away at any moment. “There’s been a new threat.”

  “To me?”

  “To you, me, and Pierce.”

  “Pierce?”

  How much did she need to know? “Yes, the families think he’s the key to controlling me.”

  She snorted but didn’t say anything.

  “What was that?”

  “Anyone with eyes can see he’s the key to anything involving you.”

  I stiffened and glared down at the phone. “What does that mean? I don’t get it.”

  “You’re in love with him, Big Sister. I’ve seen the way you look at him and the way he touches you. And after your display at the party, the five families saw it too.”


  Shit. Shit Shit shit shit shit.

  I kept myself from throwing the phone, narrowly. Instead, I grabbed the bedding and ripped it to the floor. I stood up for Pierce, because they were tearing him down, and I couldn’t endure listening to it. Now, after Bianca said that, it hit me. It had been a power play alright. They’d fished to see how much I really cared for him.

  The bastards were testing to see if the Irish Mafia Prince had caught himself a shrew.

  I threw my phone on the bed and tossed the pillows next. It wasn’t as satisfying as hearing glass shatter on a hard surface.

  “Kat?”

  I dragged the phone across the bare sheets and put it back to my ear. “I’m here.”

  “I didn’t hear anything break from that side. Did you mute me?”

  I huffed into the receiver. “No, I threw the pillows.”

  She laughed, and I caught the crunch of food and the sound of her chewing. “He really has changed you, hasn’t he? We used to hide the breakables when you were in a bad mood. Now you’ve taken to throwing pillows. Why couldn’t you have started that years ago?”

  “Shut up,” I grumbled.

  She knew I didn’t mean it. My anger started to fizzle, but in its place sat a realization. I couldn’t continue this with Pierce if I meant him to stay safe. As far as the five families were concerned, they needed to think he was nothing more than a convenience. A pretty package to get what I wanted from the lawyers and nothing else.

  “I’m not feeding these monkeys,” Bianca said, breaking up the silence.

  “The monkeys will feed themselves. Why don’t you ask their names since they are instructed to take a bullet for you? Might be nice to show them some respect.”

  More chewing and silence, then, “Talk to you later, Sis. We can figure this out after work.”

  She hung up, and I racked my brain. Did she tell me she started working somewhere? I couldn’t remember her telling me anything, but I’d also been preoccupied with the wedding and everything that happened since I moved into Pierce’s home.