by Karr, Kim
My fingers had gone stiff from gripping the steering wheel by the time I exited the highway. Crying wasn’t going to bring Logan back. I had to worry about myself—no, not myself, that little girl. In my head I replayed what I knew about Michael. The way he was around me—mostly kind and considerate, at times manipulative. Then I thought, everyone has flaws. Could I be with him? For Clementine? Was his proposal even real? I knew it was. What kind of woman traded herself to a man to have his child in her life?
Never in a million years would I have thought me. Yet, I found myself seriously considering Michael’s offer.
And if that didn’t make me want to cry even more, because I knew he was going to take her from me if I didn’t say yes and I couldn’t let that happen. What if there was more to Michael than I knew? What if he did have a dark side? I wasn’t going to let Clementine grow up like I had. I didn’t care what I had to do to stay beside her. What I had to sacrifice. Was that what my mother had thought, too, I wondered?
When I finally pulled up in front of my house, the thought of not living there anymore widened the crack in my chest even further. It was that old familiar ache that came every time I had gotten attached to our new home when I was a child, only to be told it was time to move again.
By the time I unlocked my door, all I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and sleep the day away. My world felt like it had tipped on its axis and would never be right. Feeling off balance, I tossed my bags to the floor and then hurried up the stairs to get out of my jeans and slip on a pair of sweats.
My closet doors were closed and I opened them to throw my dirty clothes inside. When I did, I froze. Logan’s things were still hanging in the place I’d cleared for him weeks ago. I’d never checked the closet on Saturday.
In a frenzy, I ran into the bathroom. His toiletries were all still there. Toothbrush, razor, and the bar of soap he preferred to my lavender body wash.
I glanced around the room and nothing had changed since I’d left. He hadn’t been back. Everything must have been as it was on Saturday. Worry flickered in my chest.
Things come in threes.
Had something happened to him and I misread the situation?
Oh, God.
I rushed over to the dresser, and that’s when I heard the front door open and close. Blood swooshed between my ears and my pulse raced at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. I knew the sound his sneakers made on the steps.
Creak. Creak.
The louder those footsteps grew, the harder my heart beat.
I began to lose my stability. The dresser I was clutching became the only reason I was still standing. My legs had gone limp, my knees weak, my feet numb.
The more audible the creaking, the closer he drew, the more intense the aching pang in my chest grew, and then suddenly the air in the room felt thicker.
“Elle,” he said with that familiar rumble in his voice.
Like always, my body responded to his tone, but I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t. The high and the low that came with his arrival was hard to bear. It meant he was okay, but it also meant he had left me. I took a breath so deep it lifted my shoulders. “Why did you come back?” I asked.
“Elle,” he repeated, but this time he sounded pained.
It didn’t matter. My heart was in pieces, splintered and shredded. I just couldn’t look at him. “You should have taken everything when you left, or at least come back for the rest of your things when you knew I wasn’t home.”
The floor creaked from behind me and I knew he’d stepped inside my room.
I couldn’t stand it. Didn’t know what to do. I opened the drawer I had cleared out for him expecting it to be empty, but it wasn’t. Everything was still inside it, and so was the small silver box his grandfather had given him. The one he never would have left behind. It meant the future to him, not in the monetary conversion it could provide, but in the hope he saw in it. The hope that life could possibly be normal for him someday. All the air was sucked from my lungs. Something wasn’t right.
“Elle,” he said my name again and it was like a plea. “Please look at me.”
Ever so slowly I turned around, and I quickly glanced away. He was standing in the doorway, unmoving. For no good reason, the world seemed to right itself, no longer tipping and throwing me off balance.
Light and shadow painted him as he always had been. I didn’t have to see him to know what I was looking at. Broad shoulders, chiseled jaw, and the strong lines of his face were the first things that came into view. His face, with the scar just below his eye, was both a warrior’s face and beautifully exquisite, at the same time. And his eyes, those ever-changing sometimes brown, sometimes green eyes, were eyes I wanted to get lost in. If he smiled at me they would crinkle ever so slightly, and everything hard and rough about him would instantly soften.
I made sure to keep my eyes anywhere but on him. “Why did you come back? I told you the last time that I wasn’t going to do this back-and-forth anymore. I want you to leave.”
“I never left.” His words were a whisper.
“Don’t lie. You did. You couldn’t handle the truth and you left.”
“That’s not true. I told you, your inability to carry a child doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
My chest constricted and pain stabbed my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t certain my heart was even beating, as many pieces as it was in.
“Look at me.”
At his command, I had to raise my eyes. My head snapped up to completely take him in. And when I did, for a moment, just one, the room went black. I wanted to die. I knew I had been so wrong, and that I should fall to the ground and beg forgiveness. Pinching my eyes closed, I tried to stop them from stinging, but that was useless. I had to see him. I opened my eyes and stared at him through blurry, wavy vision. Before me was a bone-weary man. Logan had a black eye, his head had been shaved, and he was wearing the same clothes he had been wearing on Saturday.
Yet still, when I met his gaze, the heat in his eyes was so intense I thought it would burn right through me.
He took a tentative step my way.
My knees buckled and I had to grab the dresser. “Logan, what happened?” I tried to ask him, but my throat tightened so much my words would only come out as fragments of a whisper.
His voice was gruff as he spoke. “I’m so sorry. I would have been here if I could have. I never would have left you doubting me. You have to believe me.”
The tone in his voice told me nothing he was saying was a lie.
I clenched my hand to my heart and let my painful sobs convey what I couldn’t at this very moment. I didn’t know what happened to him, but I knew he was telling me the truth. Something had happened that had kept him away from me. And here I thought he’d left me. The reality of how wrong I was shattered my already broken heart.
As if reassured I wasn’t going to turn him away, he rushed to me and fell to the ground. He was on his knees and his arms were wrapped tightly around me. “Elle, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks before I could stop them and I, too, crumpled to the floor. “I thought you couldn’t handle what I’d told you and you left me.”
His hands went to my face. “No, no, no. I would never, ever leave you. I love you more than I love anything in this world.”
“Oh, God, Logan, I love you too,” I whispered, and then buried my face in his neck. I let my sobs rise from my belly, and I cried for everything that was happening in my life, and in his. I wanted this man so desperately and I knew he felt the same about me, yet I’d let my own insecurities drive me to doubt that.
“Don’t cry, baby, I’m here. I’m here,” he whispered in a soothing tone.
We stayed like that, in each other’s arms, for a long, long time. When I felt strong enough to pull away, I did. My fingertips traced the discoloration under his eye. My palms caressed his head. Somehow I managed to speak around the painful feeling in my thro
at. “What happened to you?”
His lips sought my forehead, slid down my temple, eased over to my ear. “Later, can we talk about it later?”
I threw my head back in answer so he could kiss down my neck.
Soft, velvety-smooth lips grazed my skin and left wetness in their wake. As they grazed back up, butterflies swarmed my belly and it felt like they might escape.
When his mouth found mine, he sighed, and his arms went around me as tightly as they could. “I should take a shower.”
“I’ll come with you,” I offered. I just couldn’t bear to be without him.
He shook his head. “I’ll only be five minutes.”
I started to protest, but his finger brushed my lips in the most soft and sensual way so that I knew it wasn’t rejection. But what was it? We’d never been shy about getting naked in front of each other. And for that matter we’d never really cared where we fucked. On the floor, on a table, on the couch, or against the shower wall, unless we were making love; then Logan preferred to be in the bed.
All sense in my mind was gone. Completely demolished by the events that had taken place, and his refusal to allow me to join him made my stomach twist. It was evident something was going on in his head and that didn’t soothe me in the least.
Logan kissed me deeply before he got to his feet. I touched my lips with my fingertips and felt them tingling where his lips had just been. Once standing, he walked over to the open blinds and closed them. Before he left the room to shower in the hall bathroom, he grabbed some clothes out of his drawer.
While he was gone, I settled on the bed and leaned my head against the pillows. The last few days had been a roller coaster of emotions. In the dark of the room, I reflected on my actions and chastised my behavior.
Why hadn’t I looked for him?
What had happened to him?
Where had he been?
Did his disappearance have something to do with the Blue Hill Gang?
It must have, and the thought sickened me.
The bed dipped, and I was surprised I hadn’t heard the creaking of the floor. Logan crawled up to the top of the bed and lifted the sheet. “Come here,” he beckoned.
My skin tingled and I didn’t hesitate to join him under the safety of the soft fabric. “Logan, are you okay?” I asked, still wondering and still worried.
Without hesitation he scooped me in his arms and kissed my head. “I am now. I just need to feel you for a little while, just like this.”
He kissed me again.
And again.
And one more time before he pressed my head to him.
I stayed like that for a long while, and then I couldn’t stand it any longer and lifted slightly to look at him. It was dark and all I could see were shadows of his face. His hair was gone and even without it he was breathtaking, or maybe without it he was even more breathtaking. I couldn’t tell, nor did it matter. All that mattered was that he was here with me. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
His head began to shake. “Shhh . . . no more talking about it right now, please.” The tremble in his voice told me just how wrecked he was. Not one to cry, his emotional outlet came in different forms, and right now I knew that form was me.
I straddled him and ran my palms over his now short hair, and then I found his face and his mouth with my lips and kissed him all over. I found myself whispering to him in the dark. “I need you so much, Logan.”
He was silent but his hands roamed my body, pulling my shirt off, and then tugging my jeans down.
Naked on top of him, I couldn’t stop kissing him. I needed to feel him against my lips to believe this was real.
His hands found my slick flesh, already wet for him, and his fingers teased the folds of my clit. Soft. Gentle.
Slowly, I lifted his T-shirt over his head.
His fingers continued to tease me and I reveled in how good it felt.
Through the material of his sweatpants I could feel his cock swell, and I slid down his body so I could kiss him there too.
My lips left wet marks on the fabric all along his hardness, and then I pulled down his sweatpants and kissed the bare skin of his cock. My hands and my mouth worked in tandem down its length to his balls, and back up. When I took him in my mouth, he made a mewing sound like he was home, and everything came crashing down all around me. The enormity of our time apart felt like a weight I couldn’t bear. I needed to see him. To hear him tell me how he felt with his eyes and his mouth.
Abruptly, I stopped what I was doing and crawled up the bed to turn the light on. When I did, I knew immediately why he hadn’t wanted me to shower with him and why he’d closed the blinds.
“Oh my God, Logan,” I gasped.
He reached for the light. “Turn it off, Elle.”
I shook my head. “No, tell me what happened. Where did you get all of these bruises?”
Logan reached for me and rolled us over so he was hovering over me. “I didn’t want to do this now,” he sighed. “I was pulled over and detained by some cops who I’m pretty certain are on Patrick Flannigan’s payroll.”
I gasped. “Why?”
“For Agent Blanchet and her task force, although she claims she knew nothing of my extended stay and poor treatment while there.”
The squeak that left my throat was completely incomprehensible. “Treatment. Oh, my God. Logan. Are you sure you’re okay? Should we take you to the emergency room?”
He smoothed my hair. “I’m fine. I really am. And I told you, I’ll tell you everything, just please, not now. I just can’t think about it right now. I just want to be with you.”
I believed him and I understood. I wanted to be with him too. I wanted to touch him. To feel him. Every beautiful inch of him. “Turn the light off,” I told him.
There was no hesitation in his compliance.
“Logan,” I whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Talk to me.”
“Please, Elle, not right now.”
“No, not about what happened to you. Tell me how you feel about me?”
He fell back onto the mattress with a sigh that sounded so erotic it made my own body tremble. “That’s easy,” he said. “Ever since I met you, you’re all I can think about. It’s like you’re the air that I need to breathe. The reason my heart beats. Being with you makes me feel like everything in this fucked-up world we live in is right side up instead of upside down.”
“Oh, Logan, I feel the same way. I was so lost without you this past weekend.”
He sucked in a breath that I knew was one of guilt.
I didn’t want him to feel that way. I wanted to make him feel good. To relieve the suffering. I went farther. “What do you feel when you kiss me?”
“Like you’re the universe giving me what I need.”
I loved that. I pushed my boundaries even farther. “How do you feel when I touch your cock or wrap my lips around it?”
He groaned a noise that reverberated through my soul.
And after hearing it, I was done talking. He could show me how he felt. I sat up and shifted my body so that the smell of him intoxicated me. When I was right where I needed to be, I pushed my hands under his ass to lift him closer to my mouth and then I took him all the way in.
“Oh, fuck, Elle, that feels so good. Take me as far as you can. All the way.”
I did as he told me and took his cock down my throat as far as I could. Over and over. Tip to base, my mouth sucked him, my fingers stroked him, my lips and teeth and tongue moved together.
Soft words and louder groans told me how much he liked it and I kept going. I wasn’t going to stop until all his pain was overtaken by pleasure.
When I sensed he was close, I asked him, “Do you want to come in my mouth or inside me?”
His hips thrust upward. “I want to come inside you,” he whispered, as if worried his words would trigger an adverse reaction.
They didn’t. This kind of dirty talk was how Logan connected with me, and it ha
d become one way in which I connected with him too. Sure, we communicated outside of bed, but in this way I knew what he felt for me was exactly what I felt for him. Today we both needed this.
I sat up and pulled him up with me. “That’s good, because I need you to be inside me,” I whispered into the dark.
He had me on my back and was sliding his cock in me within moments of my words. “You’re so wet for me.”
I ran my nails down his back. “Only you.”
In and out.
His cock moved.
Slowly at first.
And that deep shock of connection only we shared was the first thing I felt followed by a sizzling awareness that there would never be another for me in my lifetime. Logan was it. He was the man perfectly made to fit me.
“You’re so tight. You feel so good,” he growled.
Feeling his body all over mine was what I needed. I let go of everything except making sure my hips met his over and over. His pace picked up steadily, yet still, it wasn’t too fast or too slow.
Flesh on flesh.
Frantic.
Grasping.
My moans couldn’t be contained. It felt way too good.
“You like that?” he asked.
“Yes. Don’t stop,” I pleaded and then, out of nowhere, trembling spasms of pleasure started to sweep over me. My fingers clutched his shoulders as the tremors kept coming.
Over and over, like electric shock waves that felt way to good for any one person to be able to enjoy.
Logan groaned at the slight gouge of my nails in his flesh.
I couldn’t help myself.
The sound only tipped me farther over the edge. My orgasm continued and my entire body started to shake.
He drove himself deeper, moved faster, and my pussy responded by clenching around his cock.
“Oh, God, Logan. Don’t stop.”
The sweet pleasure rippled through me again as he pounded harder, faster.