by Cari Quinn
“Jack?”
Logan’s hands were balled into fists so tight his arms were shaking.
“Are you all right?” Richard stood at the doorway to the lodge.
“Not really,” he managed to say between clenched teeth.
“Only a wife can put that much rage into a man. I’m assuming she’s not bloody?”
Logan’s eyes widened. “Of course not.”
“Then let’s go chop wood.”
His jaw unhinged enough for him to let out a breath. “Excuse me?”
“You need to do something with that anger and I don’t want you punching my face in. Or my other guest. She’s a sixty-year-old woman with an oxygen tank.”
Logan tipped his head back and couldn’t help but laugh.
“Chopping wood is good for you. Might hurt those sissy writer hands, but it’ll help.”
“I’ll risk a blister or two.” Anything to get the ball in his gut to dissolve.
Richard jerked his head toward the woods. “This way.”
Logan followed him out. The late afternoon sun wasn’t quite as powerful as earlier. He shook off the chill. A healthy sweat would warm him up soon enough.
The older man veered off onto a path Logan hadn’t been down before. An old red Ford pickup was parked at the base and a pile of logs lay on their sides with a small stack started in the bed of the truck. “I saw you storm into the rec area and figured I should check on you.”
“Sure you just didn’t want a slave?”
He gave a booming laugh. “Wish I was that mercenary.” He got to a large tree stump and picked up the ax sticking out of the base. “I can pay you with a beer.”
“Now that I could go for.”
Richard handed him the ax. “Then let’s see what you got.”
Logan curled his fingers around the handle, the worn wood smooth and warm from the dappled sun.
The older man placed a fat log in front of him. “Let the weight of the ax do the work for you. Just worry about your aim.”
The first swing, he took a chunk off the side of the log. It knocked him off center and made him feel clumsy. A few swings later, he hit the center most of the time, and fifteen minutes later he had a sheen of sweat dampening his shoulders.
Richard stepped back and sipped his beer.
He split wood until there was a pile surrounding him. Richard tried to keep up with him, but the monotonous swing of the ax centered him and he couldn’t seem to stop long enough to do anything but set up another log.
“All right, son. I have enough wood for three weeks now.”
Logan laughed and dragged in a breath. “That’s a helluva workout.”
“And you’re going to feel it tomorrow. How are those hands?”
He looked down at his reddened palms and the scattering of blisters where the handle rubbed. They were grungy from the sawdust and dirt sticking to the bark.
But the anger that had been riding him had eased.
And sometime in there, his chest had eased from boa constrictor tight to manageable. When he looked up, he caught a flash of gray in the dense brown of the woods.
Izzy stood at the top of the rise, her favorite sweater fluttering in the breeze, Fiona at her side. He looked at Richard. “Think I could take that beer now?”
Richard looked up the path. “Time to make up?”
“We’ll see.”
The man flipped open the ancient green Coleman cooler and pulled out a longneck. “You deserve a six pack for the wood you split.”
“You saved me from a migraine that was brewing. I’ll take that any day, sir.”
His lips twitched under the heavy white beard. “Get on up there and kiss and make up.”
Logan wiped his hand down the middle of his chest and broke the seal on the cap of the beer. He wasn’t sure how that was going to happen, but he wanted to believe it bad enough to nod his head. After taking a long drink, he raised the bottle to him. “Will do.” He finished off the rest and set it on the tailgate. “Pray for me, brother.”
Richard laughed. “You love her too much to need my prayers, but you got ‘em if you want ‘em.”
“Oh, I need them.” He gave him a crooked smile then started his hike back up to her.
The closer he got to her, the more determined he became. Inky dark hair stormed around her face, sticking to her lips no matter how many times she brushed it away.
When he got in front of her, she worried her lower lip at the corner with her teeth. Instead of giving her a moment to think, to argue, to not trust him, he kissed her.
Hard.
Relentlessly.
He palmed her lower back and dragged her into his hard thighs and rapidly hardening cock. She was so startled that she didn’t have any choice but to react and that’s what he needed. Her brain shut off, the guilt behind another emotion for once.
This.
Them.
Always them.
Would always be them.
He swept his tongue into her mouth and drew her out with all the skill he possessed. Knowing her better than he knew himself, he hit every pleasure zone he knew in her mouth, with the swipe of his thumb at the dip of her spine, the soft undulation of his hips to hers.
In this, he knew her best. Even with weeks of time lost, and judgment clashing with guilt, he knew how to show her where they belonged.
Together.
They would be nothing without each other.
He ripped his mouth away from hers. “That’s not obsession. That’s perfection. You were made for me, same as I was made for you. We just had to trip over a lot of other people to find each other, that’s all. And nothing you can say is ever going to make me think otherwise.”
Her huge topaz eyes shimmered.
“We may have made mistakes in getting here, and God knows I’m no prize. But I’m yours. And you’re mine. And if you ever bastardize the way I feel by mixing it up with Aimee Collen’s warped, psychotic version of love again—”
“You’ll what?” she whispered.
“I’ll show you again and again how wrong you are.” He lifted her hand and placed it against his chest and covered it with his. “This can’t be wrong. It’s the only thing we’ve got now.”
She tried to pull her hand away and he held fast.
“Iz, please.”
He looked down at her panicked face, and let her go. She didn’t step back. Instead, she pressed her cheek to his chest, but she tucked her hand away into her huge pockets.
He took her hand out of her pocket and brought her wrist up to his mouth. She tried to pull away, but he brushed his lips up her fragile skin that was healing every day. He ran his lips down the wavy pattern of skin that had knit itself together after the ravaged flesh had peeled away.
Like a sunburn that had taken so much more of her away.
But in the end she was left with a new skin. And he was simply thankful that she hadn’t required skin grafts and oxygen tents. All the things he’d researched on his phone through the long, lonely nights in the hospital. Every small miracle that had let him breathe around the worry.
She was changed, but she was still beautiful. And the scars were who she was. A little worse for the wear, but healing every day. He’d take every scar, every bruise and broken bone if he could.
But since he couldn’t, he let her know with his mouth and his steady gaze that he wasn’t disgusted in any way. “I love you, Izzy. And this new skin.” He brushed his beard over the parts of her that were without any scars, his lips over the more delicate skin and breathed in her dark jasmine scent. “Let me show you how much I love you.”
She brushed her fingertips along his cheek, her thumb drifted along his lower lip. Her eyes feasted on his mouth. The hunger was as powerful as the first time he’d touched her and somehow even more intense.
“It feels like I haven’t touched you in a dozen lifetimes, not just a handful of weeks.”
She took a step back from him and his belly clenched again. It wa
s too soon. He’d rushed it. He opened his mouth to tell her it was fine, but she touched his lips with the very tip of her forefinger then knotted her fingers with his and pulled him up the path to the cabin.
When they got to the outside stairs that led to the second level deck, he lost his breath as her midnight hair floated around her shoulders in the storm-scented wind. A familiar curve of her lips peeked from the wildness she carried from outdoors into the oasis the house was supposed to be.
That he hoped it could be now.
Twenty-Five
Bella led him inside. He smelled like the woods and another layer of sweat from the brutal swing of the ax she’d watched from the path.
After the panicked chase for him all over the property earlier, and then the way they left things, she hadn’t believed that it would end like this. That he could humble her with the rage stretching under his skin like a living thing.
That she’d dare to dismiss what they had.
And he was right.
The minute she’d said it, she’d known it. Even now her belly clutched with the thick syrupy strings of guilt that were melting under the warmth that was Logan. She could stare into his fathomless green eyes and know that there was nothing wrong with the love that had formed between them.
Even as her mind rebelled and her heart raced, she knew she was fighting a losing battle. She drew him into the bathroom. Words were jumbled inside her. It still wasn’t easy to find them in the miasma of grief that churned inside of her.
In her heart, she knew that someone as loving and generous as Nichole would never wish for her to turn off this gift she’d found. It made it easier to push the shirt up and over his head. To smooth her damaged hands over his perfect skin.
She tried to ignore the shiny pink new skin. She was a master at avoiding looking at it every day. Instead she focused on the texture of his skin, the cocoa powder freckles that scattered over him from shoulder to neck, then only dotted here and there over his wide chest.
The pectoral muscles that had firmed and chiseled down to abs and the lines at his hip bones that led to where he was so hard for her. Where pleasure had been a constant companion to the love they had.
All of the things she’d ignored and blocked out.
The things that made up Logan’s passionate nature, all the things that had drawn her to him. The shell that guarded a heart so big.
She hadn’t allowed herself the luxury of thinking about all the healing things about him that she’d locked outside of her walls. And now, all of it was right there in front of her.
To take and wrap around herself if only she’d let him.
Strong arms that were made to shelter her body, to mold around her, to give when she needed and take when she demanded it.
When he pushed her sweater off and it dropped with his shirt, she lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. There was a fragility inside the strength of his jaw and his slash of lips. It lived in his gentle green eyes that looked at her like she was the single most important thing on the planet.
And when he unbuttoned the too big men’s shirt that she’d stolen from him, she closed her eyes as he took a look at her. She breathed out a shuddering sigh when he bent to her breast and lightly drew on one tight tip through the filmy tank she wore.
He slowly drew the gauzy cotton up, careful of her ribs and lingering sutures that hadn’t quite dissolved. He traced the tip of his finger along her collarbone, between her breasts and around each full curve before he followed the concave line of her belly to the jeans that were finally starting to fit again.
He flicked open the button and they gaped over her slim hips to pool around her ankles. A pair of cotton panties hid her from his gaze. He shucked his own shorts and kicked them away.
He knelt in front of her and brushed his lips over the tops of her thighs, breathed over the low-rise panties that hugged her hips. The tip of his tongue flicked over her mound and she sucked in a breath.
She’d meant to seduce him. To draw him into the shower and touch him because she wasn’t sure she was ready to be touched. But this moment had become about them both so very quickly.
A sharing that had been lacking.
When he rolled the cotton over her hips, she drew in a harsh breath. He looked up at her, his eyebrows down in concern.
She cupped his bearded face and gave him her first smile in what felt like months. His eyes flashed. God, so very intense. His chest rising and falling as if he’d just run a six-minute-mile.
She’d experienced that before. The way his body took over and endorphins ruled his body, flowed into his muscles, lit his features. It was a fraction of what she saw on the stage. The lure and lust that he couldn’t explain to her, but she longed to draw into her bloodstream.
He leaned forward and slipped his tongue under her hood to flick over her clit. A gentle rasp of beard framed the slick wetness of his tongue. The mix of textures made her shiver. She slid her fingers into the long strands of his hair that had grown out since… She shut her eyes against the thought.
It didn’t belong here.
Not in this one moment where they needed to reconnect.
Thick, silky hair flowed between her sensitive fingers, giving him a boyish look that he otherwise clipped and styled away. The beard softened his angular jawline, emphasized the freckles that dotted his face, made his eyes glow against the reddish-gold warmth of him.
A man full of charisma and playfulness lurking under the strain of what they’d lived through. He was both, and he was each of them at different times. Right now, he was laser focus with an arsenal of weapons that were tailor made to fight against all her walls.
He turned his head slightly and slipped inside of her. Her head fell back and her fingers tightened in his hair. His wicked tongue glided around her clit and massaged inside of her lips in a way that was familiar and strange all at the same time.
Like the first time and the last time had crossed wires and created something new out of their experience. His hands came around to each cheek and held her there as he sucked and licked and found the pathway to the first breakthrough of pleasure in so very long.
She didn’t even know how to let out a groan. The needs were scrambled under the loss until it smothered the pain and her thighs shook. The cry came out on a surprised rush. She couldn’t drag in enough air, couldn’t think, and couldn’t find her way up.
Until his fingers laced with hers and dragged her hands behind her. Her ribs pulled a little, but it wasn’t in pain. It was as if he was stretching her open and showing her how to fill back up again.
He was filling her up again.
Logan.
Her Logan.
Twenty-Six
Logan drank her down. He watched from his crouched position, held onto her and wouldn’t let her sway or fall. Each pulse of her around his tongue urged him for more. The blanket need to take her, show her, invade her was raging in his head.
He tamped that part of himself down. Because that’s not what she needed right then. He needed to stamp himself on her, but he knew it was because she’d been gone for so long.
She’d been there, with him for weeks. But so separate it was as if she was on another plane. Until now. She was here. Finally here with him in a way she hadn’t been before. Different, but the same. His, but changed. Found, but still a little lost.
And the lost part needed to be nurtured. So he ignored the hammering cock that was primed for a long, hard fuck. He pulled back and found the part of him that wanted the gentle and the quiet.
Through the last shiver, he lapped up her honeyed sweet taste then stood and let her sway against his chest. He led her over to the tub and turned on the water. With huge eyes, she reached for his aching cock.
He folded his hand over hers and they both stroked the length of him. The urgency slowly banked and he was able to sigh as her thumb brushed under the head of his cock. He enjoyed her tentative touch for once.
Izzy knew how to handle him, but this
Isabella was a little unsure. And when the water hit the midpoint, he turned the stream to a trickle. He helped her out of the last of her clothes and stepped into the tub with her.
With the softness of the water and her curious touch, they both learned each other’s bodies again. The new scars they both had, the shivers of pleasure that hid under the pain, and finally a comfort he hadn’t been prepared to find. All too often the passion between them flared hot and bright. They were always reaching for that pinnacle as if it were going to be snatched away. More like it fought its way into dominance from one or the other of them.
They enjoyed the after. Always. There was nothing more amazing than Izzy after they went a round or seven. All loose and cuddly with her soft skin and quiet voice in the night. But this was a slow glide that was more about comfort than anything else.
They needed this.
And he was determined to be everything she needed.
Suds foamed between them as she covered her knot of netted fluff with bath soap and washed him. Slow swirling strokes whisked away layers of sweat and dirt, harsh words and days of silence.
She was so intent on her job that when he lifted her chin to meet his gaze, she seemed mildly surprised. Then there was the secret smile he loved more than life. That way she softened just for him that he craved enough to take it on a video chat on their phones if need be.
The smile he hadn’t seen in so long.
He leaned forward and tasted that smile. Slid her down his thighs in the tub until she fit against his belly, her breasts sudsy from contact with his chest. His cock slid against her lips, but didn’t glide inside her. Instead he saw the flash of discomfort in the pleasure.
She may want him, but her body still wasn’t quite ready to perform the gymnastic event that making love in a tub or shower required. He stilled her rocking hips and washed her back instead.
He reached behind him for the handheld shower and let the warm water flow over her shoulders and neck, brought it around to her sensitive breasts. He followed the rinse with his tongue, sucking each nipple into his mouth for a thorough taste before easing her back.