Infinite Possibilities (The Secret Life of Amy Bensen #2)(12)

Turning, I find Liam’s back to me, one hand on a seat, Tellar sauntering down the hallway, towel drying what little hair he hasn’t buzzed away. I study him, expecting a pinch of recognition but finding none. And still I do not look away, and not because his wet t-shirt and jeans hug a long and leanly muscled body, or the fact that he has a handsomely carved face. No. What has my attention, what keeps me from looking away, is the jagged scar down his jawline that tells me he has lived through hell.

His gaze lifts abruptly and meets mine and I should feel like a dripping wet trapped rat. I should look away, hiding as I always hide. But I have changed these past few weeks. I am on a mission to take my life back and waiting tables in a greasy diner wasn’t about hiding. It was about preparing and planning. I am done with looking away and I hold his stare. And what I see in his is not anger, or intimidation, or malice. I see concern.

Liam must see it as well, because he turns to face me, water clinging to the loose strands of hair draped on his forehead that he sweeps away. “You okay?” he asks, moving toward me, his hands coming down on my shoulders. The engines roar to life but I do not move, captured by his stare, a mix of burning fire and freezing ice. Worry. Sincerity. Possessiveness. Like I am his to protect and no one will touch me. Not unless he decides to let them. And when I walked onto this plane, I made sure it’s his choice to make. He is in Total control.





Chapter Four



I stand with my back to the curtain, while Liam’s back is to the front of the plane, his big body caging me…protecting me? It’s what I want to believe. It’s what some part of me needs to believe. We stare at each other, rain humming a song against the steel plane, wrapping us in a current of energy that pulses around us like a large charge. It’s power. His power. My lack of it. This is the what everything in my life has come down to. The control everyone else has that I don’t. The control Liam possesses as easily as he does his next breath. And staring into his piercing, aqua eyes, I think that no matter how I try to stop it from happening, I am possessed. He possesses me.

With that thought, a shiver races through me, one part chill from my wet clothes and hair, one part the impact of this man standing before me. What looks and feels like real concern seeps into Liam’s expression and he breaks the mesmerizing spell of questions that never seem to have answers as he begins rubbing my arms. “I’ll get you a blanket.” He starts to turn away and I grab his arm, silently willing him to wait. “I need to know where we’re going, Liam.” My lips tighten. “I need to know where you’re taking me.”

His head dips intimately lower, his hand caressing my head, cheek near mine.“You were right the first time, Amy. Where we’re going.”

I fight through the warmth his soft, velvety promise creates in me. “By your choice.”

“I want it to be yours.”

“Until I don’t choose what you want me to.”

A turbulent look flickers over his handsome face. “If you mean, will I let you choose to hitchhike across the country and end up dead? Then you’re right. No more and never again. I’ve made that decision for you.”

“Mr. Stone,” says the flight attendant, urgency in her tone.

Liam’s lips thin, reluctance etched in his face as he glances over his shoulder, and I hear her say, “Weather reports show another system moving through. If we leave now we have a path to bypass it.”

“Right,” Liam agrees. “We’ll sit down and buckle up.” He turns back to me. “We need to--”

“Where, Liam?” I bite out, fighting a rising sense of claustrophobia that has me ready to bolt for the door that is already shut. “Where are we going?”

His hands come back down on my shoulders, light but somehow heavy at the same time. “Where I can protect you.”

“Which is where?”

“My home.”

Adrenaline surges through me. Not Denver. His home is not in Denver, where, somewhere in the haze of a flashback and fear, I’d assumed we were going. “New York,” I choke out.

“Yes,” he confirms tightly. “New York.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No. I can’t go back there. I left for a reason.”

“No one will ever know you’re there.”

No one will ever know. His words make my stomach knot. I could disappear tomorrow and no one would miss me.

“Mr. Stone,” the attendant calls from behind him. “I must insist you sit.”

I need off this plane. I try to step around Liam, and talk to the attendant, though I have no clue what to say or if it will matter. Liam seems to anticipate the move, shackling my waist with one arm, and molding me to his hard, wet body.

“Let go,” I order tightly, willing away the heat stirring low in my belly at his nearness.

“We’re going to sit down now, Amy.”

“I don’t want to sit down.”

He yanks open the curtain, and using his larger size to bully me, walks us into the cabin behind us, then all but physically lifts me and sets me down in a chair. I have only a moment to assess the cabin area as identical to the one we just left when his hands go down on the arms of my seat, his arms caging me, and the engines churn roughly to life.

We glare at each other and I both loathe and revel in the way his heated, angry stare burns through me like a brand. It’s unsettling to be this drawn to him beyond reason when I’m this at his mercy. “There was a reason I left New York,” I grind out through my teeth. “Were you part of that reason, Liam?”