Someday (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  “Harder,” she gasped, winding her legs around his slim hips. The muscles of his thighs and ass flexed and rolled against her calves.

  Looming over her, he answered with a groan and a more powerful thrust.

  It wasn’t enough. “Harder,” she said again, a demand this time, and she dug her nails into his swelling biceps.

  He went harder—and faster. Each of his thrusts came with a rough grunt, almost a bark, at the moment of deepest, hardest impact.

  Oh, he felt so good, he filled her so full, but it wasn’t enough. What would be enough? “Harder!” Now she was grunting, too, crying out with the rising pleasure and pain that was so good but not enough.

  His hair swinging around his clenched, reddening face, the ends brushing her cheeks, Logan dropped to his elbows and went harder, deeper, faster. The bed moved under them, skittering loudly over the tigerwood floor.

  But she couldn’t come, she wouldn’t come; this frenetic sensual assault couldn’t breach the stone that filled her. Nothing could, nothing would, she was dying inside, that was what it was, she was turning to stone. Maybe she already had.

  “Harder!”

  Logan froze. His body was slick with sweat and his arms shook. His chest heaved with every desperate breath. “Honor …”

  “Shut up! Shut up! I need it harder!”

  He studied her eyes and didn’t move.

  “Please!”

  When he knelt back and pulled out, Honor cried out in dismay—but then he grabbed her arms and flipped her over. Forcefully, no longer gentle or careful, he clutched her hips and dragged them up, put her on her knees, then shoved himself into her from behind. He went at her at once, the same deep, sharp, speedy pace she’d driven him to—and this was it. This was what she needed. He was deeper, he found all her pleasure and took it to a point beyond it, the point of punishment that she needed.

  It hurt, oh it hurt, but it was right. It was good. He knelt like a statue and moved her instead, slamming her backward, against his body, over and over, his fingers digging deeply into her hips. Her head flew wildly, as if on a loose ball bearing. His bestial grunts blunted her cries of tortured pleasure.

  Her orgasm finally flared to life, stretched out, and surged up. As it attacked her, crashing so hard her head exploded into painful fire, Honor shrieked until her throat was ragged.

  Logan stayed on her, kept up the violent pace until she was limp and nearly insensible, until she could only whimper with each bash of his body.

  Then he stopped and lay over her, easing her flat onto the mattress. He pulled out and stretched along her side, resting a hand at the small of her back.

  He said nothing. His only utterance was the strafing rasp of his overtaxed breath.

  After a moment, as the shock of it all subsided, Honor’s sore throat swelled and her heart clenched. The tears finally came. All the tears that had been trapped in her rigid chest burst free. Her terror for what had happened in her office, her grief for Debbie’s death, her regret for Jed’s loss, her guilt for helping Judith Jones go free, her loneliness and helplessness, her wildly confusing feelings for Logan, her hatred of the way she turned to him in need, the anxiety she tamped down every day as she tried to get her practice on its feet—it all surged forth at once, and Honor pressed her face into her comforter and sobbed.

  She felt the warm, damp weight of Logan’s body on hers, the soft scratch of his beard and the velvet of his mouth at her shoulder. “Hey now,” he crooned quietly. “I got you. I got you.”

  He was what she needed. So she turned to him, tucked her face against his chest, and let him hold her while she wept.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter Thirteen

  The cool stillness of Honor’s bed told Logan he’d woken alone in it. Lying on his back, one arm crooked over his head on the pillow, his chest without the soft burden of her head, he opened his eyes. Full dark, still. Her drapes were open, showing the city beyond her window and the deep blue night sky above it. He’d only been asleep for a couple hours at most, then.

  Fuck, he was sore—just about as bad as if he’d gone eight seconds on the back of a bull. His legs ached from his knees up, a hot throb that crossed his back. His quads felt bruised. His neck and shoulders were tight as dried leather. He’d had his share of athletic sex in his life, and straight-up rough sex, too, but what he and Honor had done—what she’d insisted he do—that was something different. He’d been trying to hold back and answer her need both at the same time, to give her everything she wanted without hurting her, at least not more than she’d wanted. The straining effort of it had his muscles in knots.

  It might have been what she’d wanted—it sure as hell had seemed to be, and maybe she’d needed it, too—but it had not been what he’d wanted. She’d come, and hard, though he wasn’t at all sure she’d actually enjoyed it, but he hadn’t finished, or even gotten especially close. A couple of times, he’d thought he wouldn’t be able to get it done at all.

  He’d stayed up to the task—never in his life had he not been up to the task, and if it ever happened, he’d hang up his spurs—but damn, the whole scene had him in knots. His brain as much as his body.

  After, she’d cried herself to sleep on his chest. He’d lain there and held her, wakeful long after she’d quieted, staring up at her ceiling, his head full of questions without answers. What did all that mean? Why had she needed it so rough? Why did he need so bad to be here?

  Was she done with him now? Should he go?

  He should go. The smart, safe thing would be to go. Whatever she’d needed, he’d given it to her. She probably wanted him to go—wasn’t that why he was alone now? She’d already left him.

  He should want to go. Why the hell didn’t he want to go?

  Why the hell did he keep showing up where she didn’t want him? Keeping tabs on a woman who didn’t want him was not his MO. He liked women who wanted him but couldn’t keep him. Illicit, unsustainable trysts. That was his sweet spot—all the fiery desire, none of the claws dragging him down.

  But Honor could have him. And she’d wanted him, too, once. He’d fucked up somewhere, though, and she wouldn’t let him take it back. He’d missed his chance, she’d said; he was too late. Logan didn’t know what to do with that, but he couldn’t let it go. She had him all upside down.

  At the hospital, she’d called him a stalker, but that was bullshit. Being worried and making sure she was okay was not stalking. He wasn’t obsessed with her, wasn’t lurking in the shadows. He was coming right to her, trying to be there when she needed him.

  Which she did. She needed him. Maybe he hadn’t ridden in like a hero in a fairy tale, maybe she’d yelled at him and hit him and shoved him away, but he was here because he’d been worried enough to ask fucking Ryder Wells to hit up his friend in the Boise PD and keep an eye open for trouble at Honor’s addresses.

  He was here right now because he’d gotten a call that there’d been a shooting at her office. A fucking fatal shooting. He was here because he’d gone to her, and he’d stayed and made sure she was okay. She’d tried to get rid of him, but he’d stayed—and then she’d needed him, and now he was here.

  That was not stalking. That was protecting.

  And damn if it didn’t turn on all his lights when Honor Babinot laid her pretty blonde head on his chest and needed him. When she did that, all the weird, unpleasant insecurities he felt around her were throttled by a feeling much bigger and more potent, and so much better. He couldn’t define it, but he’d never felt anything like it. If it was the way Gabe made Heath feel, then Logan finally understood his baby brother’s compulsion to nest. Because when Honor needed him like that, Logan would take on anyone and anything to give her what she needed.

  Which was, it would appear, simply his presence. She didn’t need him to take on anyone or anything, not do anything, fight anyone, fix anything, change anything. She merely needed him to be there.

  He didn’t understand it. But he wanted to be there for he
r. He wanted to stay with her.

  Fuck, he hoped she wasn’t fixing to make him leave.

  Until this summer, Logan hadn’t been hurt by a woman since his teens. When Honor had she’d sent him away from her office, she’d dealt him a blow he hadn’t felt in decades. She’d dealt him another, harder, when she’d pushed him away in the ER exam room. She might take him down to his knees if she made him leave now.

  He didn’t like that one bit, that she had such power over him, but he couldn’t seem to get control of what he needed: her need. She was faltering, and he needed to be there to catch her.

  Whether she wanted him or not, she needed him.

  Sitting up, he caught a groan at the back of his throat as all his muscles complained about the move. The city lights provided enough calm bluish glow that he could scan the large room and see she wasn’t in the chaise lounge near the window, and the bathroom door was open, so she wasn’t there, either.

  He hardly thought she’d leave him alone in her apartment, especially not on this night, so soon after she’d been buffeted by a storm of horrible events.

  His back complained more loudly when he stood and bent to the wad of his jeans to pull his underwear out. Once he was nominally decent, Logan opened Honor’s bedroom door and peered out.

  The light out here was slightly better; there was a sconce on either side of her front door, and they were on, giving off a sedate glow. The sconces, and the city lights, were all that gave shape to the space. But that light was enough.

  She was curled up in the roomy chair by the living room window wall. The throw he’d covered her with, that night they’d slept together on her sofa, was around her shoulders. Her back was to him, and she didn’t show any sign of knowing he’d opened the door.

  All he could see was the back of her shoulder, the rise of one knee, the cant of her head, and the tousled silk of her hair, but Logan could feel the sorrow pulse out from her in waves.

  She needed him.

  So he went to her.

  Not until he crouched before her and set his hand on her knee did she pull out of the deep mist of her thoughts and let her eyes shift to his.

  Fuck, she was so beautiful. Was it sick of him to like her best this way, without makeup, her hair mussed, her eyes puffy from tears, her soft, sweet lips turned down? Yeah, it was sick. But he crouched before her, looking up into her gorgeous, unguarded, unpolished face, he wanted nothing more than to fold her into himself and keep here there.

  “Hey, counselor,” he said. “You okay?”

  She shook her head. “It’s my fault.”

  “What is?”

  “Everything. Debbie. She’s dead because of me. Her son is an orphan because of me.”

  Debbie—her secretary. These were Honor’s first words all night about the shooting. Logan had known better than to press her for details when she’d been so close to the edge, and she’d hardly said anything at all to him about anything, except to demand that he shut up and fuck her.

  All he knew was what Ryder’s friend had told him, and it wasn’t much. Logan hadn’t asked a lot of questions after finding out that Honor was at the St. Luke’s emergency room following a shooting at her office.

  “No, darlin’. She’s dead because a psycho shot her.”

  “A psycho I defended. Judith Jones was on the streets because I won her case.”

  “How many times during Heath’s trial did you tell us it wasn’t your job to prove guilt or innocence? Your job is to make sure the state proves guilt before someone is put in prison. Your job is to defend your clients from a faulty prosecution. Right? Your job is to make sure the system works as it should. Right?”

  She didn’t acknowledge his statement at all, neither to agree nor argue, but the look in her steady eyes said she needed him to make her see something she could live with.

  “If you won, you did your job. Whether that girl should have gone to prison or not, that was on the prosecutor to prove, and he didn’t do his job. Right? What that girl did yesterday is not your fault. You’re a victim here, Honor.”

  A noise caught in crossfire between a laugh, a sob, and a scoff burst from her chest. One hand peeked out from the wrap of the blanket and clawed her mussed hair sharply back from her face. She looked out the window.

  “Debbie’s the victim. And she wouldn’t’ve been there if I hadn’t left Bellamy White. She’d’ve been safe if she hadn’t trusted me and left with me.”

  Finally, Honor was approaching a subject that had perplexed him since he’d learned of it—why in all the circles of hell she wasn’t at Bellamy White, a powerful law firm widely regarded as the best in Idaho. He had to know. So, prepared for the question to explode right in his face, he pressed, as gently as he could.

  “What happened there? Can you tell me?”

  She turned back from the window and considered him. Logan remained still—his old rodeo knees were not happy with his decision to crouch, but he could deal—and waited, holding her gaze, trying to tell her without words she didn’t want that she was safe with him, that she could tell him.

  “After I won Judi’s case, after I stood on the courthouse steps, with all the news cameras on me, and did the spiel I’d prepared in the event I won, I went back to the office. I walked in on a partners’ meeting and demanded that they make me a partner—a full, named partner. I wanted my name on the wall. I told them I was their best lawyer, I brought in the most publicity, I had the best win ratio, I brought in high-value clients. I pointed out that male associates with similar or even inferior records and seniority to mine had been made junior partners. I said the only reason I wasn’t already a partner was because I’m a woman. They called my bluff, so I put in my notice. They called that bluff, too. But I wasn’t bluffing, so I was out that day.”

  Logan took a second to absorb all that. His chief reaction was admiration. It took some big brass balls to storm up to power and demand it give what was due, and then to hold fast when power stormed back.

  “That’s righteous, counselor. You did the right thing.”

  “Did I? I thought I was. I thought I was standing on principle. But now I see it was just arrogance. Everything that made me successful was at Bellamy White. Without them, I’m a strip-mall lawyer who has to ask her parents to help her pay the bills. And I got Debbie killed.”

  “None of that is true. You forget, I saw you work. Yeah, you had a lot of help, but all they did was give you information. You’re the one who saw how to turn it into Heath’s defense. You’re the one who knew what questions to ask witnesses and what witnesses you needed. You’re the one who knew how to argue against the prosecution’s case. You’re the one who gave the jury another way to see what they thought they knew. If you’re a strip-mall lawyer now, that’s just because you turned off the road you were on, and you’re taking the first steps in this new direction. And you did not get Debbie killed. She came with you because she saw where you’re headed and wanted to go with you. What that girl did to her was not your fault.”

  “She did it because I told her she couldn’t work with me. I was trying to let her down gently, so I told her I already had Debbie and didn’t need any more help. That’s why she killed her. She said that straight out—with Debbie dead, she could work for me. ‘I fixed it’ is what she said.”

  That one took some steam out of Logan’s argument, and he paused. There was a lot he didn’t know about the story that swirled around that shooting. But there was something true he could say nonetheless. “You are not responsible for somebody else’s crazy, darlin’.”

  “But Debbie’s dead,” she said on a whispering sob.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Without thinking about it, Logan closed his hands around her delicate ankles and pulled her feet off the chair, out from under the blanket. His knees’ complaint about his crouch had become strident, so he shifted and knelt before her instead, into the soft fleece of her sheepskin rug.

  He set his head on her lap and slid his hands under her thighs.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, but this time it wasn’t Debbie on his mind. His own failings had loomed large—the way he’d treated her in the past, the way he’d turned from her when she’d been open to him, the way he’d driven her to push him away, even the way he’d fucked her earlier in the night.

  She was naked under the blanket, and, resting on her bare thigh, he could smell their sex, the familiar yet always different blend of lubed latex and female pleasure. The scent made him hard, and this was the wrong time.

  Or was it the right time? What they’d done before, it still had him unsettled, maybe even more now. This talk had helped him understand her turmoil more completely, but understanding her feelings had him more confused about the way she’d needed him to fuck her. Was it punishment she’d been after? If so, that thought turned his gut to a pit of hot black tar. He did not want to be her punishment. He wanted to be her solace.

  That was what he needed. It was the root of the feeling that suffused him when she rested on him, it was why she was so overwhelmingly beautiful when she was plain and mussed—he needed to be where she felt safe.

  Damn. All his years giving Heath shit, and he was just like him. Getting off on being a fairy-tale knight.

  For this one woman, anyway.

  He turned his head and pressed his lips to her soft, warm thigh. He felt her quiet but sharp intake of breath, and he opened his mouth to taste her. When he moved higher, pressing another kiss, taking another taste, one of her hands dropped onto his head. He moved up a bit more, pushing his head under the blanket that still partially wrapped her.

  Just before he reached the fragrant center of her, she whispered, “Logan, wait.”

  He did wait. Lifting his head, he looked up at her. Her eyes were almost the exact blue of the ambient glow in the room. Like the night, they seemed full of shadow and light in equal measure.

  Her hand was tangled in his hair, resting now against his cheek.

  “Are you too sore? Did I hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “I just—”