by Anna Durand
Tonight, I luxuriated in the freedom of it.
He slipped his fingers inside the waistband of my panties and tugged them down so very slowly, bending his knees to lower his body in sync with the speed of his fingers. They grazed my skin and elicited tiny shocks of pleasure that made my skin tighten and my sex grow slicker and hotter. He drew my panties down over my hips, then let them go. They fluttered down to my ankles.
I stepped out of them.
Logan sat back on his heels, his face level with my mound. "Mo gaol, you're beautiful. Even better than I'd imagined." He glided his hands up my thighs, over my hips, and splayed them over my belly. "Every inch of you is perfect."
If anyone else had said that, I would've dismissed it as part of the seduction. With Logan, the tone of his voice told me he meant it.
He swept me up in his arms and carried me to the bed, managing to hold on to me while he flipped the covers back. When he laid me down on the mattress, with my head on the pillow, he kissed me sweetly. I held his face in my hands, skimming my thumbs over his lips, gazing into his eyes and wondering how I'd wound up here, with this man. I'd thought I hated him. Tonight, I couldn't for the life of me remember why.
Without looking away from me, he levered his body over mine, poised on all fours. He nuzzled my throat. I arched my neck and grasped his arms. He kissed, licked, and nibbled his way down my throat and past my collarbone, where he paused to marvel at my breasts like he'd never seen a woman's tits before. Carefully, he placed his hand over one breast, curling his fingers around it.
"I was right," he murmured. "They do fit in my hands like apples."
"When did you think that?"
"The first time I saw you, and every time since."
He shifted his hand to expose my nipple and the areola, then sealed his mouth around them. The moist heat of his mouth penetrated my skin, seeming to dive straight down to my core. He lapped at my stiff peak, suckled it gently, and grazed his teeth over it, repeating the actions over and over and over until I was gasping and clenching the pillow.
Then he switched to the other breast.
I was writhing and moaning by the time he lowered his body onto mine and slithered down, down, down until his face hovered over my mound. He swirled his fingers through the hairs there, obsessed with his task, and didn't stop until I spread my legs, desperate for more, for everything. Still, he toyed with me, parting my folds with two fingers and blowing a stream of air over my swollen flesh, then gliding his fingers down and up, nudging my taut nub.
"Please, Logan," I moaned.
He closed his mouth over my clit and sucked.
My hips bucked up off the bed.
With both hands, he grasped my ass before it hit the mattress again, elevating my hips to give him better access. He swirled his tongue around my nub, scraped his teeth across it, teased it with the tip of his tongue, and lapped at it tenderly. Finally, he began to swipe his tongue back and forth, up and down, varying the speed and the space between each stroke until my body went rigid and the breath caught in my throat.
He stopped lapping at my flesh but kept his mouth over my clitoris.
For what seemed like forever, I hung suspended in that moment before climax, desperate for it to happen but wishing this maddening bliss would go on and on. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't think about anything except Logan and his incredible mouth.
With one swipe of his tongue, he sent me hurtling over the edge.
I cried out as I plunged my hands into his hair, clinging to him through every spasm of my climax, while he lashed his tongue over my flesh to draw every ounce of pleasure from my body. When the orgasm finally faded, I lay limp and panting.
He rose onto his hands and knees again as he reached for something on the table.
My hormone-drenched brain couldn't process what he was doing. I heard the rip of foil, but even that clue failed to register. Only when he pushed inside me did I rouse from my haze of bliss, amazed by how gently he entered me and how completely he filled me. Once he'd gone in as far as he could, he hesitated, his gaze searching mine.
"What is it?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I don't know. This is so... Are you sure you want to be with me?"
"Yes, I'm sure." I gripped his biceps. "I want you, Logan. Only you."
How could he doubt that? Maybe he was as stunned by the way our relationship had changed as I was. Tonight, we'd behaved like a normal couple on a date.
And it had been wonderful.
"I want only you, Serena." He kissed my forehead. "Only you."
He pulled his hips back and thrust into me, the pressure unyielding and delicious. I grasped his arms tighter, loving the firmness of him inside me, loving the way he withdrew almost all the way only to plow into me again, lost to the storm of sensations he evoked with every movement. He kept his gaze on mine the whole time, and I couldn't look away. While he pumped faster and harder, I was entranced by the need that tightened his features and darkened his eyes, even as the pleasure mounted inside me. After the way he'd made me come earlier, I didn't know if I'd survive another climax. He might blow me apart from the inside out, and I wouldn't give a damn.
To die with Logan inside me... That would be the ultimate bliss.
Maybe that thought was a bit morbid, but in this moment, it seemed right.
He bent his arms until his full weight rested on his elbows.
I locked my legs around his hips and latched my arms around him.
"Serena, mo gaol," he said as he dropped his head onto the pillow beside mine. His thrusts grew wilder, penetrating deeper, until our bodies bounced on the mattress and we clung to each other like we might spin away into the depths of outer space without our bodies bound to each other. "Mo leannan, I—"
He came with a strangled shout.
To feel his release pulsing inside me, it set off my own climax. I clutched him with my whole body, from my arms and legs to the muscles deep inside me, and buried my face against his neck as I cried out again, louder than before, while my nails dug into his flesh.
We lay there for a moment, wrapped around each other, without speaking or moving. I couldn't budge a muscle, couldn't think, spent in body and mind. His big body on top of me should've felt heavy and crushing, but instead, the weight and heat of him felt like the sweetest bliss I'd ever experienced. In a few seconds, maybe another minute, he'd move off me, for sure. I didn't want him to. I loved this intimacy, this moment, this night with the last man on earth I thought I'd ever want to cuddle with or sleep with all night, and certainly not to date or dance with or any of the other things couples did together.
But I did want it. All of it.
With Logan MacTaggart.
Chapter Nineteen
Logan
I rolled off Serena to lie next to her on my side, suddenly cold from the loss of her body heat. I scratched my chest, but the strange feeling there wouldn't go away. What was happening to me? I'd never had an epiphany in my life. Other people talked about them, some even claimed to have experienced such a thing, but I always dismissed it as their imaginations. What was an epiphany, anyway? A moment of clarity? A sudden realization? No one should need a proverbial light bulb to pop on and show them the way. It was ridiculous.
Yet here I was, gazing at Serena like I'd never seen her before, overwhelmed by the strangest sensation that something pivotal had happened tonight. Everything had changed.
No, it was nonsense.
I'd made love to Serena. I had taken her to dinner and danced with her. That didn't mean my life was irrevocably altered by one evening with a beautiful woman. But when I looked at her and witnessed the softness in her eyes and her expression, the lovely way her lips curled up at the corners, my chest ached.
Maybe I was having a mild heart attack.
You're so full of shit, MacTaggart. It's not a heart attack.
Serena lay naked beside me, relaxed and sated, but a few
goose bumps had cropped up on her arms. I tugged the covers over her, up to her neck.
The lass laughed, a gentle, affectionate sound that made my chest ache again.
"You've covered me up like a mummy, Logan," she said, pushing the covers off her shoulders and wriggling her arms free of them.
"I didn't want you to be cold."
"Thank you." She reached out to lay a hand on my cheek. "You're so sweet."
"What happened to disgusting and loathsome?"
"Changed my mind." She smiled again in that endearing way, still holding her palm to my cheek. "But now I see the real you. Isla's right. Underneath that steely mask, you are sweet and kind."
My mouth might've fallen open in that moment. I stopped blinking, for certain. No one had called me sweet or kind in years, not since I'd been a naive lad at school. Well, my sisters occasionally called me those things. No one else did.
Until tonight.
"Don't look so shocked," Serena said. "You let your guard down and let me see the real you. I feel like I'm finally getting to know you."
"Twice you've said you finally see the real me, but I haven't changed. You've seen who I really am since the day we met." I peeled her hand away from my face, but couldn't quite give it up yet, so I held her hand between both of mine. "I'm a bastard, Serena. That's who I am. Even if I want to be the kind of man you need, it's not possible."
She trailed the fingertips of her other hand over my cheek. "You can't fool me anymore. The man who just made love to me feels more than lust, and the man who took me on a romantic date wants more than a quickie in the copy room."
"We had sex a minute ago. You're suffering from a hormone-induced fantasy that I'm a normal human being." I set her hand on her belly, on the blanket that covered her. "I stopped being normal or human a long time ago. You can't do and see the things I have and keep your humanity intact. You have to cordon off those parts of yourself, or you'll go mad."
"That's crap, Logan. You are human, through and through." She sat up, and the covers slid down to her waist. "I get that you've been through awful stuff I can't even imagine. But stop trying to make me hate you. It won't work anymore, I'm wise to your game."
"It's no game." I sat up too, but even the sight of her naked breasts couldn't arouse me. "You need to walk away from me, for your own good."
She lifted her chin, giving me the haughty look that usually made me want to bend her over a piece of furniture. "You don't tell me what to do. I decide that."
"But you keep making the wrong decision."
The woman studied me with narrowed eyes for a moment that seemed to last forever. My skin began to itch, and my throat went thick.
"Oh, I get it," she said at last. "You're panicking, Logan style, because we shared an incredibly intimate experience. It was more than sex. We talked and danced and flirted and then we made love. Now you're scared."
I started to speak, meaning to deny everything she'd said, but I was paralyzed. Was she right? Was I panicking? I'd faced down terrorists and double agents, but a woman who wanted more than sex scared the hell out of me? No, it couldn't be that. It couldn't be.
"You know I'm right," she said, laying both her hands on one of mine. "It's okay to be scared. I am too. I haven't wanted more than sex with any man since my husband. Flings were all I thought I needed. One-nighters, maybe the occasional week-long thing. Nothing more. But with you, with the man I thought I hated, I suddenly want everything."
"Not sure I can give you that."
"I believe you can if you want to, but I'm not proposing marriage. Let's get to know each other, really get to know each other, and see what happens."
Serena Carpenter was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, and the most exciting lover I'd ever had, but she was more than that. She had a keen mind, a soul-deep compassion, and a strength of spirit that made her even more enticing. I shouldn't have been surprised. She had lost her husband and raised a child on her own.
I looked down at our hands, both of hers covering one of mine, and carefully threaded my fingers with hers. "Why would you trust I'll keep being this way? I changed rather suddenly."
"You haven't changed at all. I've seen glimpses of the good man underneath the obnoxious exterior before tonight." She hooked a finger under my chin and urged me to look up at her. "Even that day in the copy room, I saw it. When the lid slammed down on my hand, you were very concerned."
"It was my fault."
"That was an accident, but you took the time to make sure I wasn't hurt. That's not a bastard thing to do."
"But—"
"No, Logan. You are a good man. Accept it." She feathered her lips over mine. "Just don't get obnoxious again when I ask about your time in the military and MI6."
The time had come to tell her what she wanted to know. I'd said I would tell her after dinner, dancing, and sex. This was after. I didn't want to do it, but I always kept my word.
"To tell you about that," I said, "I need to explain about my sisters first. No one in the MacTaggart family is what most people would call normal, but my sisters have reasons for their odd way of life."
"Normal is overrated. I happen to like strange people." She tapped my chin with one finger. "Which explains why I'm in bed with you."
"I suppose it does." I glanced down at our hands and our intertwined fingers. "Elspeth is the baby of the family, eight years younger than Kirsty and eleven years younger than me. Isla is the oldest, and I'm two years younger than her. What I'm trying to say is that we've always felt differently about Elspeth since she's so much younger."
"The rest of you look after her, the way Lachlan and his brothers looked after Jamie."
"Aye, she's the youngest in her family too. But it is a bit different with my family." I inhaled a long breath, letting it out gradually, but even that couldn't lessen the tightness in my throat when I allowed the memories to flood in. "When Elspeth was nine, she contracted bacterial meningitis. We didn't realize how sick she was at first, because she tried to hide it so we wouldn't be upset. That's how Elspeth is. She thinks of everyone else first, even when it puts her own health at risk. Finally, we realized how ill she was and took her to the hospital. For a while, we weren't sure if she would make it."
Serena clasped my hand to her chest.
"I remember one day," I said, "when I was sitting beside her hospital bed. She couldn't breathe on her own, so there was a tube going down her throat. She looked so pale. I wanted to pick her up and hold her, but I couldn't. Instead, I prayed. Had no fucking idea if anyone was listening or if praying would do any good, but it was all I could do. She didn't wake up right then, of course."
"But she pulled through."
"Aye. The next day, they removed the breathing tube. We were all there when she opened her eyes." Had my voice cracked slightly a second ago? I didn't get choked up about anything, not anymore. But I hadn't thought about Elspeth's illness in a very long time. I hadn't let myself think about it. I rubbed my eyes with one hand, but let Serena keep hold of the other. "After that, my sisters gradually became more and more interested in Wicca. I think it's their way of dealing with all the parts of life they can't control, because casting silly spells and wearing talismans makes them feel they have some measure of control over the unknowable."
"Did Elspeth fully recover? She seems pretty healthy these days."
"The only after effect was partial deafness in one ear. It was a miracle she didn't have anything worse."
"Maybe your prayers worked."
I met Serena's gaze, and my throat constricted again when I saw the compassion in her eyes. "Maybe it did work, maybe it didn't. But I made a promise in those prayers, and I always keep my word."
"What did you promise?"
"That if Elspeth lived, I would join the army and help my country fight the evil forces in the world. It sounds moronic now, fighting evil, but that's what I promised in my prayers." I lay back on the bed, suddenly exhausted. "S
o that's what I did. When I was twenty, I joined the army and became a military intelligence officer. Served three tours in Iraq."
Serena crawled to the headboard and leaned against it, gazing down at me. "Is that how you got into the SIS? They recruited you from the army?"
"You are a clever woman. Yes, that's how it happened."
"My husband served in Iraq too, for the US Army." She rubbed her arms, her gaze going distant. "It changed him, the things he saw and the stuff he went through. I'm sure it changes everyone who serves in combat."
She was giving me an excuse for my behavior with her and giving herself a reason to forgive me. I understood that, but I wasn't sure she ought to do it.
I tried to pull the blanket over her, but she shrugged it off. "I'm not cold, but thank you for caring. You really are sweet."
A sour taste invaded my mouth every time she called me sweet. I grunted something resembling words that wasn't actually words.
Her mouth crimped like she was trying not to smile. The expression carved out dimples and made me want to drag her into my arms just to hold her.
"You think I'm scarred by combat," I said. "Maybe that's part of it, but the worst things I've done didn't happen on a battlefield."
"I get that." She'd stopped rubbing her arms but kept her hands on them. "And I understand you might not want to talk about this stuff, but I hope sometime you'll tell me a little about those things."
She deserved to know, so she could make an informed choice about whatever we were doing together. Even my family didn't know what I was considering telling Serena.
I pushed up into a sitting position, leaning against the headboard. "You need to understand that most of what I did in the army and in the SIS is still covered by the Official Secrets Act. And for the things I can tell you, I can't share all the details."
She reclined against the headboard, gazing at me with that same empathy she'd shown earlier. "I was married to a military man, Logan. I know sometimes a soldier can't talk about what he's seen and done."