Because of His Future (For His Pleasure, Book 26)

Because
of His Future (For His Pleasure, Book 26)

By Kelly Favor

© 2015 All Rights Reserved

Grace exited the law offices alone.

Liam was still inside, being harassed and
picked apart by his two siblings.
 
But who was Grace to get in the middle of a fight over a family
fortune?
 

She hadn’t even known Liam that long.
 
Certainly not long enough to think she
had a chance at overcoming family loyalties.

So that left her back at square one.

Alone.
 
By myself.
 
Again.

She felt like she’d just been sideswiped
by an eighteen-wheeler.
 
To have
gone into that meeting like a lamb to the slaughter—she was a fool.
 

A
damn fool.

And what did that make Liam?
 
He’d walked in there with no plan in
mind, and he’d allowed Vera and Exley to chew him up and spit him out.

They’d dropped a nuclear bomb on Liam and
the explosion had taken out Grace, as it had been intended to do.
 
Liam’s siblings were efficient assassins.
 

She had to give credit where credit was
due.

They’d wanted to take her out of the
picture and they’d succeeded quite easily.
 
Telling Liam how his mother had died while driving over to the lawyers
to sign the new will that had been written specifically because of his
relationship with Grace?

Grace had no doubt that Liam’s brother
and sister were telling the truth, but they’d used it to their advantage.
 
They’d been willing to emotionally
destroy their own brother’s psyche in order to make him do what they wanted him
to do: namely, break up with his new girlfriend.

It
worked like a charm
, she
thought, her shoulders slumping.

She stood outside the law office
building, and she checked her phone.
 
There was nothing from Liam.
 
She waited for a few minutes, just in case he was going to come outside
and find her.

But unsurprisingly, he never did come
outside.

She couldn’t blame him.
 

Maybe
you should have stayed and fought harder for him.
 
Stood up to Exley and Vera.

But Grace just couldn’t do it.
 
She was overmatched, and with Liam being
so weak and broken down from the things they’d told him about his mother’s
final hours—Grace knew that she hadn’t stood a chance after those
revelations.

Could she really expect Liam to possibly
give up his fortune and his leadership of the family dynasty just to have a
relationship with her?
 
It didn’t
make sense, even to her.
 

They hadn’t known each other long enough
to justify such a sacrifice.
 

The right thing to do was to end the
relationship.
 
As Scott had told her
from the beginning, the world would never let them be together.
 

Never.

So even if Liam was willing to sacrifice so
much to continue seeing Grace, she knew that in the end, he would simply resent
her for it.
 
And she’d probably
resent him, too.

There was no winning this fight.

Surprisingly, her eyes remained mostly
dry as she walked away from the building.
 
Liam had never come outside and she didn’t really want him to.
 
All it would have entailed was her
explaining to him that he should do as his brother and sister demanded.

Go
lead your family—go back to law school, run the family business, and
marry some beautiful charming rich girl from a prestigious family.
 
That’s what they want and so that’s what
you’ll do.

Grace caught a cab and took it to work.

She was about an hour late, and truth be
told, she didn’t really care at this point if Easton was angry with her.
 
She was too numb to be afraid of her
boss, or anyone else for that matter.

When she got into the suite, Easton’s
door was firmly shut but she heard his voice murmuring as if on the phone, and so
she sat down at her desk and got right to work.
 
Work was the best thing she could think
of to refocus on the here and now.
 
Continuing to create the meeting minutes that Easton had requested,
Grace did her best to tune out the thoughts and memories that plagued her mind.

It was perhaps three hours later that she
was shocked to see a shadow fall across the entrance to the suite, and her eyes
widened as Liam threw the door open.
 

The door slammed into the wall and some
plaster fell from where the handle had broken through the outer later of the
drywall.

“Liam!” she cried, as he walked inside,
his face red, eyes bloodshot.

His clothes were wrinkled and rumpled and
his hair was unkempt.
 
“Why did you
leave me alone with those leeches?” he said.

She could smell the alcohol on him from
where he stood, a few feet from her desk.
 
“Liam, you need to calm down,” she told him.

He stood there, a little unsteadily, and
then pointed at her.
 
“I’m not going
to calm down, Grace.
 
I needed you,
and you took off on me.”

“I’m at work,” she said, lowering her
voice and turning to see that the door to Easton’s office was still
closed.
 

“So what?” Liam asked.
 
“Is this stupid job and your asshole
boss more important than the two of us?”

“You need to leave,” she said, rising
from her seat and crossing to take hold of his arm.
 
“You’re upset, but you’re also drunk.”

“Yeah, I’m drunk.
 
I killed my mother—“

“Shhh!” she hushed him, trying to escort
him outside.
 
“Don’t talk like
that.
 
You’re acting insane.”

He pushed into her and leaned in, kissing
her messily on the mouth.
 
Grace
pulled away.
 
“I don’t want to have
this conversation here,” she said.
 
“Not
now.
 
We’ll talk later.”

“You breaking up with me?” he asked, his
wounded eyes searching hers.
 
“Is
that it?”

She shook her head.
 
“I can’t have this conversation.
 
I can’t do this right now.”

“Do what?” he said, grabbing her around
the waist and leaning in so that his forehead pressed against hers.
 
“Don’t you see how much I need you right
now, baby?”

“I’m at work,” she whispered.

“Just tell me you love me,” he said, and
then he was kissing her again.

She struggled, trying to get free,
turning her face away.
 
“No,” she
said.
 
“Stop it.”

And that’s when Easton’s office door flew
open.
 
“She said to leave her
alone,” Easton said, his voice loud and fearsome in the small office.

Liam turned to face the bigger man.
 
“Oh, tough guy’s here,” he laughed,
mockingly.
 
“Mister Fuck-A-Slut
turns into Mister Morals and thinks his friends forgot how he used to treat
women.”

“I don’t give a shit what you forget or
what you remember,” Easton told him.
 
“But I don’t want you in my office, drunk, creating problems.
 
And she clearly doesn’t want you here
right now either.
 
Maybe you should
try something new and listen to someone else for a change.”

“Just mind your own business,” Liam told
him.
 
“Go back in your little office
and jerk off on your fucking keyboard.”

Easton came out further into the
office.
 
“Leave.
 
I mean it.
 
Before I call security.”

“Oh, big man is afraid to get his hands
dirty?” Liam said, puffing out his chest, waving his arms.

“Liam—please don’t—“ Grace
said, once more taking hold of his arm, but despite his drunken state, he was
rock solid and immoveable.

A large, frightening grin spread across
Easton’s face.
 
“You have no idea,”
he said, “how badly I want to handle you myself.
 
But you’re also drunk, and you’ve just
experienced a terrible loss—“

Liam pointed at him, his expression
contorting.
 
“Don’t!
 
Don’t you dare talk about what happened.”

Easton shook his head.
 
“I’m giving you one last chance and then
I’m going to hurt you, Liam.
 
And
I’d really rather not do that, despite how much you clearly want to be hurt.”

Liam laughed.
 
“I might be a little tipsy, but the day
you hurt me is the day I fucking jump off a cliff.
 
You can hit those dumb punching bags in
the gym, just like you used to always poach the easiest, ugliest, skankiest
chicks.
 
We all laughed about it,
and obviously even you got tired of it—“

Suddenly, Easton was moving quickly
towards Liam as Grace shrieked and tried to get between them.

But she was no match for them or their
anger and penchants for violence.

Both men seemed only too eager to settle
their problem with fists.

Liam swung first, and Easton swatted him
away like a fly.
 
Then he slapped
Liam hard, with an open hand.
 
“That’s one,” Easton growled.

Liam stumbled, a red palm print on his
cheek.
 
His lips pulled back from
his teeth like a rabid dog.
 
“You
fucking loser.
 
You’ve always been a
loser,” he said.

“Get out,” Easton said.
 

“Don’t hurt him,” Grace cried.
 
 

Liam ran at Easton again, and this time,
he mounted a two-fisted attack, throwing hard, potentially bone-crushing
punches.
 
Easton avoided the first punch
by stepping back, and the second one caught him in the stomach, making him
grunt in pain.

Grace screamed again.

But now Easton had taken hold of Liam by
the back of his neck in some sort of wrestling hold, and was kneeing Liam in
the stomach.
 
He kneed him twice,
hard, doubling him over.
 
And then
Easton reared back and gave Liam one hard punch on the jaw, sending him
crashing to the floor.

Grace dropped to her knees to see how
badly hurt he was.

Liam’s eyes fluttered and then he stared
up at Easton.
 
“Not bad for an empty
suit,” he slurred.
 
“But you’re
still a fucking hypocrite, East.”

“Get him up and get him out of here
before I call the police and have him arrested and thrown in jail,” Easton told
her.
 

Then her boss turned, breathing heavily,
and went back in his office, slamming the door shut.

Grace helped Liam to his feet.
 
“Are you okay?” she said.
 
“Should I call an ambulance?”

Liam just chuckled, touching his jaw and
wincing.
 
“I’m fine.
 
Nothing I haven’t gotten in a decent
sparring session.
 
He can hit pretty
hard, though.
 
I’ll give him that.”

“You shouldn’t have antagonized him.
 
What’s wrong with you?”

Liam looked into her eyes.
 
“I’m lost without you.”

Grace sighed and shook her head.
 
“Come,” she told him softly, taking him
by the arm and helping him walk slowly out of the office.

***

Liam’s car was waiting for them out
front, and Liam was able to hobble to it and get inside.
 
She followed after him.

He sprawled out in the backseat, and the
driver looked back at them.
 
“Is
everything okay, Mister Houston?”

“Better than okay.
 
I just got knocked out.
 
Feeling good!”
 
He gave a thumb’s up and then fell back
against the seat in an exaggerated slump.

Grace brushed her bangs out of her face
and rolled her eyes.
 
“Liam,” she
said.
 
“Where do you want to go
now?”

“Back to the hotel!” he called out.
 
His jaw looked discolored near the
corner of his mouth, and puffy.
 

Her heart ached looking at him, seeing
him like this.
 
“You need to stop
drinking,” she said.
 
“You can’t
cope with your losses by just getting smashed.”