AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nudging the door open, he waited for her to cry out as she turned. She did pivot to face him fully, but she didn’t make a sound. Her eyes widened and once again he saw the warmth, love, and longing he’d known from her fourteen years ago. Liz still had his heart. Did he dare reveal that truth to her?
“Superman,” she whispered.
Hays’s heart slammed against his chest. He ached to cover the feet between them and hold her close for a very long time. Did she know how he’d longed for her? Most would claim it had only been a forbidden teenage romance. He’d fallen in love with her while assigned as partners in communications class, had seen a side of her no one else knew. He needed that Liz, and he knew she needed him because a hundred percent of the time she wasn’t alone with him, she was an ice queen.
No matter how he’d tried to ignore them, his feelings hadn’t dimmed with age. Had hers? She’d never married. The media philosophized no man was worthy of the regal and brilliant Elizabeth Oliver.
“Knock knock,” he said.
Amusement flashed across her face. Would she play along? She’d always laughed at his corny jokes that he’d never shared with anyone else. He’d prided himself on thinking he was the only one who made her laugh. “Who’s there?”
He grinned. “Icy.”
“Icy who?” She tilted her head, giving him the most enticing look.
“Icy you looking at me.”
She laughed, and he was sure she would admit she had been staring at him, that she wanted him, needed him, loved him.
But she shuttered quickly. She was obviously a master at hiding her emotions. Those rare glimpses were probably all he’d get. Folding her slim arms under her chest, she arched an eyebrow. Smile gone. Any openness to him disappeared. “What do you need?”
He smirked as if his hands weren’t yearning to touch her and his heart wasn’t shattering all over again. Simply being in her presence, remembering what he’d thought they could have, and then remembering what she’d done to him, what she’d turned into over the years, hurt. He blamed her mother, but she was probably every bit as depraved as Quaid and Hays feared.
“A bomb or a listening device?” he asked, folding his own arms across his chest.
Her blue eyes scanned his upper body, appreciation briefly flickering before she turned imperious again. “As if I would place a bomb or listening device in my sister’s closet.”
“Something worse, then.” He arched an eyebrow. “We both know the kind of monster you have become.”
Her eyes reflected hurt, but he couldn’t let her toy with him. He strode across the space and wrapped his hands around her arms to move her away and retrieve the object she was blocking with her upper body. She wouldn’t detonate it until she was clear.
The moment he touched her, he faltered. Whatever retort had been on her tongue didn’t come out either.
Their gazes caught and held and years of hurt fell away with that one, up-close glance and touch.
“Liz,” he murmured.
His hands slid up her arms, across the soft skin of her neck, and his palms framed her jawline before he even gave himself permission to make the move. Hays was always in control. Always. Except with her.
Liz let out a whimper that made his blood infuse with an exhilarating mixture of warmth and possibility. She wrapped her hands around his biceps and arched up to him.
“Superman,” she whispered.
The nickname only she had called him, on her perfect lips, undid him. Hays tilted her face up to his. The reconnection kiss of the century would be all theirs to savor. His Liz, finally where she was meant to be. In his arms.
Their breath intermingled, and anticipation filled him. No woman could affect him like Liz. They could worry about apologies and explanations later. If anyone dared say she was evil again, he would rip them apart.
“Stop,” she begged him, the word warm against his mouth but the opposite of what he had expected or wanted.
“Stop?” He eased back just enough to meet her gaze.
Her blue eyes were tortured. She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and yanked herself close. Heat filled him. He would capture her mouth and she would never want him to stop.
Instead of kissing him, she angled for his ear, whispering, “Please. I cannot. You don’t understand the danger.”
This was not a romantic interlude any longer. She was terrified, and something was horribly wrong. Her mother was gone. Was she still not free? He glanced around, cataloguing the clothing, shoes, nobody but them.
“Liz.” He cradled her beautiful face and begged her with his gaze to trust him. Danger? To her? To her siblings? There was no danger for him, only the threat of losing her again. Did she have a listening device on her, or was that what she had planted on the shelf?
