Chapter 10: Walked In
The broken door swung inward before either of them could move.
Chloe’s face, framed by cheerful beach-house curls, appeared in the gap. Her expression shifted from concerned inquiry to stunned, wide-eyed comprehension in the span of a heartbeat. Her gaze traveled from Liam’s bare back, muscles taut and gleaming with sweat, down to where his body was irrevocably joined to Dizzy’s.
He was still buried inside her, to the hilt. The intimate connection was hidden from Chloe’s direct view by their positioning and the sink, but it was unmistakable. The raw, humid smell of sex filled the small room. Dizzy’s jeans were a tangled trap around her ankles. Liam’s were pushed down over his hips.
Time crystallized.
Dizzy’s mind fragmented. One part screamed in pure, unadulterated horror. Another, smaller, darker part, still throbbing from the force of her climax, felt Liam’s cock give a helpless, involuntary twitch deep inside her at the interruption. Her own body clenched in a shocked, reflexive pulse around him.
“Oh,” Chloe breathed, the sound barely audible.
“Oh, fuck,” Dizzy whimpered, the words escaping on a shuddering exhale. She tried to shrink, to disappear into the cracked porcelain of the sink.
A low, rumbling growl vibrated through Liam’s chest, pressed against Dizzy’s back. He didn’t disengage. If anything, he seemed to push deeper, a subconscious, possessive response. His head turned slightly, his profile sharp with a feral defiance Dizzy had never seen.
“Get out,” he said. The command was flat, absolute, dripping with a territorial edge that made the air prickle.
Chloe blinked, her social-media-manager brain visibly short-circuiting. “I… the door was broken, I heard a crash, I thought someone fell…” Her words trailed off as her eyes locked with Dizzy’s in the mirror. She saw the tear tracks through the flushed skin, the swollen lips, the utterly wrecked and vulnerable expression. Her concern instantly overrode her shock.
“Dizzy?” she asked, her voice firming. “Are you okay?”
The question was a lifeline and a condemnation. It forced the situation into a context Chloe could understand: yes or no, safe or not safe. It completely ignored the messy, roaring complexity of what was actually happening—the consensual violence of it, the shameful pleasure, the way Dizzy’s cunt was still softly fluttering around Liam’s softening length.
“I’m—” Dizzy began, her voice cracking.
“She’s fine,” Liam interrupted, his tone leaving no room for argument. He finally moved, but slowly, deliberately. He pulled out of her. The wet, explicit sound in the silent room was devastating. Dizzy felt the sudden, empty chill, followed immediately by the warm trickle of his release escaping down her inner thigh. The evidence was now on full display.
He kept his body as a shield between Dizzy and Chloe as he awkwardly tugged his jeans up, fastening them with fumbling hands. His neck was flushed red, but his jaw was set.
Chloe’s eyes widened further, taking in the visible proof on Dizzy’s skin. Her mouth opened, then closed. A different understanding dawned—one less about immediate danger and more about a line being crossed that she had fundamentally misjudged.
“Liam, for Christ’s sake, what did you—“
“Chloe, please,” Dizzy whispered, finding her voice. It was raw, stripped bare. “Just… go.”
The plea did what Liam’s growled order could not. Chloe’s face softened with a hurt confusion, but she nodded once, sharply. She took a step back, her hand pulling the broken door shut as best she could. It didn’t latch, hanging ajar by an inch, a sliver of light from the hallway cutting across the floor.
The silence that followed was heavier than before, loaded with the echo of Chloe’s retreating footsteps.
Liam exhaled, a long, shaky breath that seemed to deflate him. The predatory rigidity bled from his shoulders. He reached for the damp cloth, still lying in the tub, and ran it under the cold tap. Without a word, he turned back to Dizzy.
She flinched.
He stopped, the cloth dripping in his hand. The pain that flickered in his eyes was immediate and deep. He looked like he’d been struck.
“Let me,” he said quietly, his voice returned to something closer to the Liam she thought she knew—hesitant, unsure.
“I can do it,” she mumbled, trying to bend to pull up her jeans. Her legs were unsteady.
“Dizzy.” His hand, gentle now, touched her wrist. “Please.”
She closed her eyes, too exhausted to fight the bizarre intimacy of it. She nodded, bracing herself again on the sink. He knelt on the hard linoleum. The touch of the cold cloth on her tender flesh made her gasp. He was careful, methodical, wiping away the mixed evidence of their encounter from her thighs. His touch was a stark, tender contrast to the claiming fury of minutes before. When he was done, he helped her step out of the jeans, then guided her feet back through and pulled them up for her, fastening the button with a clumsy focus.
He stood up, facing her. The inches between them felt like a canyon.
“I’m…” he started, then swallowed. “I shouldn’t have… the door. I lost control. I saw you trying to clean up and I just… snapped.”
“Why?” The question left her lips before she could filter it.
He looked directly at her, his brown eyes earnest, swimming with a turmoil that mirrored her own. “Because you’re the most beautiful, frustrating, amazing person I’ve ever been near, and you were treating what happened like it was something dirty. Like I was something dirty. And it… it felt like the only thing. The only way to make you see.”
“See what?” Her heart was hammering again, but for a completely different reason.
“That it wasn’t a mistake.” He reached out, his thumb brushing away a fresh tear she hadn’t felt escaping. “That I’m not sorry. Not for any of it. Except scaring you. And… that.” He gestured vaguely at the broken door.
From the living room, the distant murmur of the television clicked off. Ben’s deeper voice asked a question. Chloe’s answer was a tense, muffled stream they couldn’t decipher.
The real world was regrouping. Questions were being formulated. A narrative was being constructed without their input.
Dizzy looked at Liam—really looked. She saw the shy software engineer and the man who’d kicked in a door to get to her. They were the same person. The realization was terrifying. It was also, inexplicably, the first solid thing she’d felt all day.
“Chloe’s going to have approximately ten thousand questions,” Dizzy said, her old sarcasm a thin, welcome shield.
A ghost of a smile touched Liam’s lips. “Ben’s probably duct-taping the lock right now.”
They stood there, in the wrecked bathroom, caught between the hurricane of what they’d done and the uneasy calm of what came next. The momentum had stalled, but the direction was set. There was no going back to before the couch, before the mirror. There was only the open door and the conversation waiting for them on the other side.