Overture (North Security, #1)

“Whatever it is you’re thinking. It makes me feel like I’m kicking a damn puppy. Don’t give me those eyes; you’re going to explain yourself. Where did you get this money?”

“It’s my violin money.” There have been some performances in the space between school—a few concerts over the summer and a trip to Italy last winter break. They pay pretty well. It would have been within Liam’s rights to keep the money. After all, he’s the one who pays for my school and my clothes. He paid for the violin I used to play.

But he’s always kept the money in a bank account under my name only.

“You were going to spend your violin money on drugs,” he says, his voice flat.

“I wasn’t going to buy drugs,” I say, affronted. Bad enough that he knows I lied to him, that I kept a secret. The thought of disappointing him makes my stomach turn inside out. He doesn’t need to think I’m trying to get high on top of that.

“Then what the hell is the money for?”

I press my lips together. Cody and Laney are two of my best friends in the world. I promised them I wouldn’t share this secret, but that was before Liam looked at me like I’d disappointed him. “It was for a good cause,” I say. “We were going to speak truth to power.”

“We?” he asks, his eyebrow rising.

Shit. I’m sure he can guess who my partners in crime are, even if I did manage to keep Laney out of trouble. “Look, the truth is… I can’t tell you everything. It’s about loyalty and doing the right thing, even when it’s hard.”

“Christ,” he says.

I take a deep breath, tears stinging my eyes. “And if you want me to move out, I’ll understand that. I’m almost eighteen, almost graduated high school, and then the tour—”

He makes a slashing motion with his hand. “Move out? You’re clearly upset and caught in the middle of something, so I’m going to pretend like that’s not a goddamn insult. Did you think that when I took custody of you, it was just for when things were easy? That I would only want you around if you made the goddamn dean’s list?”

The way he says it means the answer is no, but I lived too long without any approval to really believe otherwise. My whole life has been about pleasing other people—about making my fingers move fast enough so that someone would clap at the end of the song.

“We’re going home,” he says, almost growling the words. “Where you will go to your room and think about what you’ve done. Because you are officially grounded.”





CHAPTER SIXTEEN





When violinist Fritz Kreisler served in WWII, his aural sensitivity helped him determine the location of large artillery by listening to the changing pitch of incoming shells across the battlefield.


SAMANTHA

Liam gets called away for work on the drive home, which is a relief. It gives me time to rebuild my defenses. Grounded? I’ve never been grounded in my life. He has no right to do that. And I still don’t trust him to do the right thing where Coach Price is concerned.

He might decide to do nothing and to block me from helping. That’s what he said about the guy at the club, after all. That he would look the other way for local criminals, as long as they left him alone.

That hasn’t changed, but we’ve run out of options. The tapes that we were going to use to blackmail Coach Price disappeared along with the club owner. Liam has the money that I was going to use to buy them, anyway. My violin money—gone.

There’s nothing left to do but trust Liam, and the knowledge rises like acid in my throat. I’ll have to tell him that Coach Price was doing bad things. That Cody needed us to do this. Maybe he’ll consider it his civic responsibility to help. Like me.

That night I wander through the halls of the darkened house. Our bedrooms have never been close together, one of the many ways that he’s kept distance between us. Ironically I sleep in what’s formally the family wing of the house, in the master bedroom. Liam uses a room beside his office to sleep. I have to pass the music room along the way, the shadows heavy, the silence dark. My violin rests in its case, but I feel its uneasy heartbeat as I pass.

A sound comes into the hallway, and I pause on the hard wood.

It was almost an animal sound, grumbling and dangerous. I take another step. Another. There’s only quiet now, but the hair on the back of my neck rises.

Then I hear it again—a growl of warning.

Blood races through my veins. I may not fully trust Liam, but he’s the only place I feel safe. His door is cracked open, revealing only a blanket of darkness. I push inside to safety, glancing over my shoulder, my pulse a hard staccato in my throat. Closing the door, I lean against it, panting.

Only to realize the sound is coming from inside the room.

A form writhes on the bed, large, menacing. A wild sound of rage. Of pain?

“Liam?” I whisper.

My eyes adjust so slowly, revealing a feral animal, revealing a man in sleep. White sheets are tangled around his waist. His shoulders are thick with muscle. He grasps the sheets, the pillows, fighting something. My heart clenches at the realization.

Liam North is having a nightmare.

I put my hand on his shoulder. Tension ripples beneath my palm. He’s facing down, fighting some invisible enemy, sweat a faint gleam across a landscape of strength.

He goes still.

“It’s just a dream,” I say, soothing. Only it doesn’t feel like a dream. There are terrible demons in the room, as living and breathing as I stand here. Maybe more.

A crash of motion, and then I’m pulled, twisted, pinned onto the bed. I land hard on the expanse of cool sheets. Breath leaves me in a rush. A large body cages me from above, an arm pressed across my neck. It’s not hard enough to keep me from breathing, but I definitely can’t move.

“Liam,” I say, gasping. “Liam!”

He trembles above me, around me. He’s become my whole world—and it’s a dark place to live. His breath saws through the air like a serrated blade.

“How dare you,” he says, his voice guttural.

He’s asleep, he’s still asleep, and I don’t know how to wake him up. Only then his hand moves from my neck to my jaw.

His thumb brushes over my cheek. “Samantha,” he mutters.

“I’m sorry,” I say, more for whatever horrors haunted him in the nightmare than for waking him. Someone should be here every night, to pull him back to the land of the living.

“I could have hurt you.” He sounds hoarse but coming awake. “Do you have a goddamn death wish, Samantha? I could have killed you.”

I’m trembling underneath him, still trying to make sense of how I ended up on his bed, how I ended up between his thighs, the heavy weight of something on my stomach. “You wouldn’t hurt me,” I say, the words coming breathless and unsure.

The smell of him—earth and musk and salt. It’s all I can think about, the way he surrounds me. The way he moves over me. This is how it would feel if we made love. Even his arm across my neck… it’s meant to be a violent act, but it feels sensual. My nerves pick apart every sensation: the heat of him, the rasp of hair across his forearm, the throb of his pulse.

This is every erotic dream I’ve ever had, everything I see when I close my eyes, my hands between my legs. It would be perfect—if he wasn’t still trembling from aftershocks. What kind of terrible thing would make Liam so scared he would lash out like an animal? He’s the most controlled person I’ve ever met.

He dips his head, his lips against the curve of my ear. “I would,” he murmurs, but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. “You aren’t safe with me.”

The words resound inside me. I’m not sure they’re true, but I’m sure he believes them. Don’t they match what I thought when I came here? That I can’t trust him. That I would be a fool to trust him… and yet, seeing him in the throes of his nightmare has changed everything. He’s two hundred pounds of solid muscle straining above me, but he’s the vulnerable one right now.

I run my hand over his back as if I can soothe him.

As if I can tame him.


LIAM

My mind reels from the sudden break of night.