His lips moved against my drenched hair as his finger stroked inside my convulsing channel, building the ache back to a simmer. “God, baby, you’re so tight and swollen. Are you sore from that last fuck?”
I shouldn’t love dirty talk like this, but my belly dipped and twisted at his words. He brought something out in me I didn’t know existed. A darkness that needed to release itself into the world. If only for tonight. This felt like freedom.
I nodded with a hiss as he pushed his cock against my backside, sliding it against the cleft of my cheeks.
“I’ll just have to get us off this way then.” His erection ground against me while his finger pushed deeper.
My voice rose up, broken and ragged over the beat of the shower. “N-no. I want you again.”
He paused for a moment. “You won’t be able to walk tomorrow.”
I spun around and the sight of his beautiful face, the stark lines and hollows sluiced with water, the dark glitter of his blues eyes brought that darkness in me swimming to the surface. “I don’t want to walk tomorrow. I want you now.”
To prove these words, I grasped hold of his cock and squeezed. He filled my hand, water-slick and hard as a rock.
I pumped my hand over him until he cursed and dropped his head into my neck, the hard bands of his arms gathering me up close. He groaned and thrust himself into my hand several times. I ran my thumb over the engorged tip of him, wondering what it would take for him to bury it inside me.
“Logan.” He lifted his head to look at me and the battle was in evidence all over his face. “Make me come again. Please.” I licked drops of water off my lips and went for the thing I knew would get to him. “Be the first guy to ever fuck me in the shower.”
His eyes went black. I watched my words sink in and ripple across his features. He picked me up in one move, guiding my legs around his hips. He entered me in one thrust, impaling me to the shower wall.
I cried out, the pleasure white-hot and blinding, dancing the fine line of pain.
He groaned and held himself still for a moment, adjusting us both to the feel of him inside me. I was swollen, and if possible he felt bigger inside me than the last time.
“I can’t . . . not move,” he gasped into the wet snarl of my hair.
“Then move,” I ordered, hands gliding down the slick surface of his back to seize his tight ass.
He unleashed himself. As though he had only been waiting my permission.
He wasn’t easy on me. His hips moved, slamming into me like he was racing toward a destination neither of us had ever visited. A hard thing to believe with his level of experience, but the arms holding me up trembled around me like it was all new and overwhelming for him, too.
My thighs clenched around him as my orgasm came fast and hard. Loud cries exploded from my lips, only proving his earlier statement. I was a screamer.
His fingers dug into my hips and he drove into me several more times and then pulled out of me suddenly, reaching his own orgasm. It was this, the sight of him coming in the shower that obliterated the euphoria of my climax.
I just had unprotected sex.
Chapter 15
I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW myself anymore. I would have kicked any one of my friends’ butts for doing what I just did. I’d even lectured Amber about safe sex when she started getting serious with her boyfriend, considering it my job as her older sister to do that.
And then I went and did this.
At least pregnancy wasn’t a concern. I was on the pill and had been ever since I was seventeen. My mother hadn’t asked if Harris and I were having sex. She would never have had so candid and uncomfortable a conversation as that with me.
She, however, had been that girl who got knocked up at twenty and then suffered the fallout—a broken heart and me—when the relationship didn’t work out. I’m sure she had guessed that my relationship with Harris was escalating. Or she had assumed it would. Without any discussion, she took me to her gynecologist and got me on the pill. I’d been on it ever since. But just because I wouldn’t get pregnant didn’t mean there weren’t other concerns.
Without a word, I quickly rinsed the soap off my body, avoiding Logan’s gaze. Not an easy thing to do in the cramped space of the shower. Especially with his beautiful body drawing my eyes.
“I’m clean,” he announced as I shut off the water and reached for my thick, fluffy robe. I knew exactly what he meant. He wasn’t talking about being shower-fresh. The words sent relief coursing through me, but I quickly shook it off. What did that even mean to him? I eyed him dubiously, suspecting our qualifications didn’t match up. Was I just supposed to trust him?
Stepping out of the shower, I slipped inside my robe. It’s like he could read the thoughts tracking through my mind.
“Georgia.” At the firm sound of my name, I looked up as he stepped out onto the shower rug. Water sluiced down his hard body and my heart stirred at the sight. He really was beautiful. Right or not, I felt possessive of him, my mind struggling to disconnect from him after what we’d just shared.
“I got checked recently. At a clinic,” he said. “I can show you my results.”
I looked away for a moment before looking back at him. Those eyes of his compelled me, drew my gaze again and again.
He continued, “I’ve never done what we just did before, but—”
At my snort, he stopped and narrowed his gaze on me.
I yanked my belt tight around my waist with angry movements. I knew what he was. How dare he try to persuade me into thinking I was somehow an exception? And how stupid was I to want to believe him?
“You expect me to believe I’m the only girl you’ve ever been with without wearing a condom?”
“You think I’m lying to you. Is that where we are?” He planted his hands on his hips, indifferent to his nakedness. He stepped forward until only an inch separated us. His body heat radiated toward me . . . and something else. Something that was entirely him and his magnetism. His ability to reach me and touch me without touching.
I held my ground, refusing to back down like almost every other time with him. “You,” he said. “Me bare-skinned inside you. That was the first time I’ve done that with any girl.”
That declaration made my stomach dip with pleasure. I gulped at the intense way he looked at me. I wanted to believe that. It fit with what I knew of him. Logan was responsible. He’d been living as an adult for years now, taking care of himself, his father, Rachel.
I shook my head stubbornly. “It doesn’t matter. I’m on the pill, but it still doesn’t matter. It was reckless. We should have talked about it first.”
He angled his head. “I seem to remember that you begged me for it.”
I closed my eyes in a pained blink. Opening my eyes again, I nodded. “I’m not saying the fault is all yours. It’s my fault, too. Maybe even more than yours. I did push you into it. You didn’t want to—”
“Oh, I wanted to,” he corrected, his eyes gleaming hotly.
I shook my head again, trying not to let him muddy my thinking. This had gone far enough. “Let’s just agree we’re both to blame then. Things got out of hand. We had . . . an itch. Scratched it, and now we’re good.” Done. Finished. I didn’t say it, but he understood my meaning.
His jaw tensed. “So I was an itch? That’s all?”
I threw up both hands. “C’mon, Logan. You have an itch every night of the week. This isn’t anything more than that.”
His eyes went cold. “That’s right.” He nodded. “I’m Reece’s man-whore brother.”
I flinched. “I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t you? Just so you know, I haven’t been with a girl since I was checked over a month ago. I haven’t even kissed a girl since you outside the kink club.”
I blinked, stunned. He couldn’t mean that.
He read my disbe
lief, and shook his head, clearly disgusted. He dragged a hand through his wet hair and muttered more to himself than me, “What am I even doing?”
A sharp pang hit me in the chest at the regret behind those words.
He leveled a dead-eyed stare on me. “Think what you want. You will anyway.”
He marched out of the bathroom then. I followed, feeling queasy. I didn’t want this to end like this.
I didn’t want it to end . . .
I wanted to face-punch myself at my utter contrariness. I just needed to let this go. Let him go.
He stopped to hastily jerk on his clothes.
“Logan.”
At the sound of his name, he looked back at me, waiting for me to say something. Anything. Words to fix this.
“Good-bye.” It’s all I could find to say. The only thing safe.
With a short, dry laugh, he said, “Right. Good-bye, Georgia.”
He vanished down the steps. I listened to the thud of his steps on the stairs and the door opening and shutting. Then there was nothing. Silence.
THE DAYS PASSED IN a monotonous blur sliced with regret whenever I thought about Logan and our night together—which pretty much happened with every other breath I took.
I jogged in the morning, hoping to make myself so tired I couldn’t feel anything. I buried myself in Dr. Chase’s research. Grabbed lunch with Emerson, where she grilled me about Logan and looked skeptical at my repeated assurances that it was just a onetime thing.
“So there’s nothing going on between you two?” She twirled her straw in her soda.
I shook my head and stared out at the sun-splashed sidewalk in front of the café where we ate. “Nope . . . just a moment’s weakness.”
“Well, he is insanely hot. I can’t blame you.”
I turned my attention back on her. “It’s not worth telling Pepper and Reece. It will make things awkward. You know that, right?”
She nodded. “Okay.” Her blue eyes sharpened. “As long as it really was a onetime thing.”
I stabbed a fry into ketchup. “Why do you sound so doubtful?”
“Uh, ’cause he’s Logan Mulvaney. Girls line up for this guy. He’s a kink club regular. You know that.”
I nibbled on my fry. “Yeah.” Except he hadn’t been with a girl in more than a month. Well. Except for me.
I believed him. He’d been telling the truth. Just like I knew he got himself tested and was clean. I’d lived my entire life with a mother who taught me to be suspicious of men, to look hard at a person for the truth. To rarely trust. My father had made promises and broken every one of them. That made a person—my mother and me both—a bit of a cynic. I wasn’t easy to dupe. And I knew Logan hadn’t been lying. We’d already had sex at that point . . . multiple times. There was no reason for him to lie to me.
“Just watch out for yourself.” Em twisted a short, spiky strand of her hair around her finger. “I saw what splitting up with Harris did to you. This guy . . . Logan could wreck you in a way Harris never could.”
Her words rang with a truth I couldn’t deny. I clung to them, letting them fortify me over the next week, memorizing Logan’s work schedule and avoiding him to the best of my ability. I never came and went through Mulvaney’s during peak hours so that I didn’t have to come face-to-face with Logan.
Friday arrived and I knew from Pepper that Logan was graduating.
I told myself this should make me feel better. Less guilty for sleeping with him. At least he wasn’t in high school anymore. Not that he had ever seemed like a guy in high school. In some ways, he felt more mature, more experienced than I was. He was real. He owned his emotions in a way that I didn’t. I worked through the weekend, trying not to think about Logan graduating. Hard to do. According to his schedule, he wasn’t working all weekend and I imagined him partying it up with teenagers who were out of high school and suddenly curfew-free.
I was grateful when Monday rolled around and I was able to resume working. Connor, Gillian, and I had a meeting on Tuesday with Dr. Chase, and I spent the rest of the week in the library. Dr. Chase revised our assignments and I actually had to spend Wednesday and Thursday working with sourpuss Gillian.
I was ready for some happy time that night, so when Pepper texted me and Emerson about a girls’ night, I was in.
We went to see the new Bond movie. It was just like old times. The three of us laughing and talking over popcorn and getting shushed by people sitting near us. It was the kind of behavior my mother would frown at, but considering I’d been doing a lot of things lately Mom would frown at, this, comparatively, seemed like a small offense.
After the movie we grabbed a late dinner at Gino’s, splitting an enormous Greek pizza that we devoured with utter abandon. We talked until the staff started cleaning up, signaling us that we needed to leave.
It was a good night. My best friends were happy. It was in their every move and gesture. In the way they smiled. And I knew why. They had found peace in their lives. In Reece and Shaw. Their futures were bright. It was hard not to let the envy creep in. I tried to remember if it had ever been like that for me with Harris. Maybe in the beginning, but we had been so young then. Just sixteen. The light that shined in Pepper’s and Emerson’s eyes . . . I doubt that light had ever been in my eyes.
I was glad we’d gone out and spent time together even if it meant I was returning to Mulvaney’s after ten P.M. during peak hours and I happened to see Logan’s Bronco in the parking lot, so I knew he was working. The risk had been worth it. And I couldn’t hide forever. Not to mention it wasn’t very adult of me.
So we’d had a fling. People do that. It happens. But it never happens to you. Squaring my shoulders, I stepped inside the noisy bar and sucked in a breath.
I was going to see him again. That was a given. He was Reece’s brother. Determined to get over it, I pushed through the crowd lining up to place their orders at the counter. Still no glimpse of Logan, and there was an ache in my chest that felt a little like disappointment over that fact. I gave myself a swift mental kick, realizing that as much as I didn’t want to see him . . . I did.
I made it into the kitchen. I was in the clear. Sighing, I rolled my shoulders, forcing myself to relax.
That’s when I saw him.
He rounded the counter and stopped hard. A few feet separated us. He held a tub of clean glasses, and his biceps strained in a way that made me remember his strength . . . the ease in which he held me up in the shower. I was pretty average in size, no little thing like Emerson, but he had made me feel dainty.
“Hey,” I blurted, my voice a little too high.
“Hey,” he returned, his reply slower, his deep baritone sliding over me. Everything in me responded, my skin tingling and reacting with a sharp shiver.
“Congratulations. I heard you graduated.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
I wet my lips, wanting to ask him more. Everything. I wanted to know everything about him and his plans for the summer and beyond. I gave myself a mental slap. Get a grip, Georgia. This wasn’t ending with happily ever after.
“Did you do anything special?”
Why was I still talking?
He snorted, his sexy lips twisting into a self-effacing grin. “Yeah. Reece and Pepper took me to dinner and then I went home and peeled my old man off the floor where he had passed out.”
He uttered it so matter-of-factly, his blue gaze flat. This was his life. He wasn’t looking for pity. In fact, I knew he would hate that, but I still couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and touching his arm.
His forearm contracted under my fingers. “Don’t,” he warned softly, glasses clinking as he adjusted his grip on the tub. “Don’t touch me and expect me not to touch you.”
I dropped my hand to my side, my heart beating wildly in my chest. Of course, those contrary feelings that always hit me
around him resurfaced. Run, stay, run, stay.
It was so tempting to let him touch me. To lead him upstairs for another go-round, but that would just make things messier than they already were.
“I just thought we could be friends, Logan.”
“Do you fuck your friends?”
I flinched.
“I didn’t think so.” He stepped around me, his eyes still that distant blue. “I have enough friends.” The words stung, ringing in my ears. “With you, I want more. I want you under me. On top of me. In the shower again.”
My mouth dried. Without another word, he walked away.
I looked up to find Cook watching me with an almost bored expression as he shook a fryer of pickles. Like he was accustomed to girl-boy drama unfolding in his kitchen.
I forced a wobbly smile as though nothing was wrong and turned to unlock my door. Once inside the loft, I kicked off my shoes and dropped facedown on the bed with a groan, thinking about Emerson’s words. Logan could wreck me. She was right.
Only it might be too late.
Chapter 16
THE SOUNDS OF THE bar below greeted me like a rumbling growl when I opened my door to find Annie, dressed in a striped miniskirt and a tight tank top that glittered like the Vegas strip. I hadn’t seen Logan since Thursday when we came face-to-face in the kitchen. I had vowed not to spend another Saturday night in, beating myself up and analyzing what we were or weren’t a hundred different ways. Even if Annie was the only person available, I was going out.
She tossed her hair over her shoulders and stepped past me, marching up the stairs. At the top, she propped her hands on her hips and inspected the inside of the loft, examining my living quarters. “Well, isn’t this convenient? If I don’t hook up with anyone, I can just pass out up here.” Her gaze slid to mine, assessing. “Unless you plan on hooking up tonight.”
I lifted one shoulder like that was a very real possibility.
She laughed. “Little Georgia Peach. Who knew you had such a naughty side.”
An image of Logan and me in the shower flashed through my mind, tormenting me. I did have a naughty side. Except I couldn’t imagine myself being naughty with just any random guy. “You should come with me next weekend.”
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