She instantly found herself sitting on the sofa beside him when he shoved her off his lap. Her heart sank.
“Don’t be naïve, Toni. We haven’t known each other long enough to put a name on what this is. Why can’t we just be friends for now?”
She turned her face from him, struggling to keep her tears in check so he wouldn’t know how deeply his words affected her. She was naïve and stupid about love, but he didn’t have to be such a dick about it.
“Let’s get this interview over with,” he said.
She wasn’t in the mood to interview him now. What had begun as a playful interaction had turned sour. Why had she insisted on getting him to admit he loved her? It made him defensive and cranky. It made her feel rejected and unworthy. If he loved her, he’d tell her when he was ready. And if he never did . . . Her chest tightened, and one of the tears she’d been trying to hold back slid down her cheek. She couldn’t bear the thought.
“Toni?”
She wiped her face on her upper arm, hoping he hadn’t noticed she was so upset. Being with him might make her stronger, but thinking of losing him turned her into an invertebrate. She had to find a way to harden her heart. She didn’t want to be one of those desperate creatures who needed a member of the opposite sex in order to feel worthwhile. She wanted the kind of love her parents had shared. Where each person was whole and strong on their own and yet being together made their natural awesomeness shine. That was what she wanted.
“Dare warned me this would happen,” Logan said with a sigh.
“Dare warned you what would happen?” she snapped.
“You’d confuse our sexual relationship with a serious, romantic one.”
“If you just kept our interactions sexual, I wouldn’t be confused,” she shouted, her hurt rapidly changing to anger. “But you don’t. You act like you want to be around me constantly. You get jealous of other guys. You’re attentive and say some truly loving things to me. I know you care about me.”
“As a friend.”
Toni’s jaw hardened. How was it possible to find such an affectionate word so odious?
“I don’t think I’m the one who’s confused at all,” she said. “I think you’re the one who’s mixed up.”
“Me?” He lifted his hands defensively. “Babe, you have no idea how many women I’ve banged in my life.”
“Just because you’ve banged dozens—”
“Hundreds.”
“Hundreds?” Her stomach lurched.
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I lost count.”
She scowled at him. “Just because you’ve banged hundreds of women—really, hundreds?” She shook her head, trying to comprehend his claim. He had to be exaggerating. “That doesn’t mean you know the first thing about love.”
“Next you’re going to claim you know more about love than I do.” He snorted derisively.
“I haven’t ever been in love,” she admitted. Until I met you. “But I’ve seen it. I saw it between my parents every day for the first fifteen years of my life. I know what it looks like.”
“Lucky you.”
He glanced down at his lap, and for the first time Toni realized that Logan had never told her about his family. She’d talked about hers—Logan had encouraged it and even seemed to crave her mundane stories. But the only thing she knew about his family situation was that his parents had divorced.
“Didn’t you recognize the love between your parents?” she asked. “Before they split up, I mean.”
“The love between my parents?” He chuckle was cynical and cold. “There was no love between my parents. They hated each other. The best decision they ever made was to get a divorce. I don’t know why they even got married in the first place.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? It’s not your fault they couldn’t get along. The blame for that lies on my bratty older brother.” His lips twisted slightly, and she figured he was joking. About which part, she wasn’t sure.
“What’s your brother like?”
“I hate him, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”
Toni couldn’t imagine hating a sibling. Her sister meant everything to her, and she missed Birdie terribly.
“Why do you hate him?”
Logan lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Why do you care? Is all of this going to end up in your book? Poor Logan has never been in love, you’ll write, and then you’ll offer up some sob story about a broken home and an irreconcilable feud between brothers.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” She didn’t know whether she should be hurt or angry that he thought she would betray him.
“Go ahead and include it. I might get some sympathy pussy out of the ordeal.”
Toni scowled. “You can be a real jerk when your feelings are hurt.”
“But I don’t have feelings. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
She shook her head at him. “I don’t believe it for a second.”
“All those loving things you claim I said? I only say things like that to get in your pants.”
Toni’s face went numb with shock. That couldn’t be true, could it?
“I say things like that to every girl I meet.”
“Hundreds of them,” she said dully.
“Exactly.”
She stared at him, noting the tension in his shoulders, the crease in his normally smooth forehead, and the way his eyes refused to meet hers.
“You’re lying.” She hoped.
“Why do you say that?”
“You can’t even look at me, Logan.” She touched his hand, surprised when instead of drawing away, he turned his hand over to clutch hers in an iron grip. “At least look at me while you break my heart.”
“I don’t want to break your heart, Toni.” He lifted her hand and pressed it into the center of his chest. His heart thudded against the back of her hand. “Not when seeing you upset breaks mine.”
And she wasn’t supposed to take those words as him having deep feelings for her? Maybe he simply wasn’t ready to admit how he felt. Or maybe she was thinking wishfully.
“I know you don’t like me to refer to you as a friend,” he said.
She cringed automatically. Her dislike was that obvious, was it?
“Hear me out, Toni.”
She nodded, resisting the urge to shield her delicate heart with her hand. As if that would help.
“All the relationships in my life have been fucked up. All of them except those with my friends. My friends have always been more like family to me than my actually family ever was. So when I call you friend, I don’t want you to take it lightly.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say. She hadn’t realized he’d attached special meaning to the word. She’d assumed it was his way of forcing her to keep her distance, not his way of drawing her close.
“It’s not a marriage proposal either,” he added, giving her hand a squeeze.
She laughed hollowly, more from tension than any semblance of good humor. “I’m sorry for pressuring you.”
“You are?” He lifted his eyebrows at her, meeting her eyes now, making her heart thud and her belly quiver with just a stare.
“Uh, well, I’m sorry you didn’t react the way I’d hoped.” She bit her lip, searching his face for answers she didn’t find. “Are we still friends?”
“And lovers.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her, and the tension melted from her muscles. She took a steadying breath. He hadn’t dumped her. They were okay.
“So do you want to finish the interview,” he asked with an ornery grin, “or learn to appreciate anal sex?”
Her buttocks clenched automatically, causing her spine to lengthen and her to sit ramrod straight. Ram rod? He would not be ramming that rod up in there if she had any say in the matter.
He snorted at what must have been her most horrified expression.
“Interview it is,” he said, inclining his head in her direction.
Flustered, she touched her overly hot cheek with c
ool fingertips, tucked a poof of hair behind one ear, and then licked her lips. Okay, let’s see how he likes to be thrown off guard.
Knowing him, he’d probably relish every moment.
She pretended to read from her legal pad. “Rumor has it that anatomically correct robot prototypes have been crafted in the images of each member of Exodus End,” she said in her most professional voice. “Can you explain why there is so little going on in the pants of the Logan Schmidt model?”
He blinked and gaped at the wall.
“Uh, they ran out of android-making materials trying to generate a life-sized rendition of my love hammer,” he said.
Toni managed not to snort at his ridiculous euphemism, but just barely. “That’s not what I heard.”
“What did you hear? If you’ve forgotten the size of my pool noodle, I’d be happy to offer it up for your journalistic inspection.”
At this rate, she’d never keep her composure. But she was going to try.
She stared into his eyes and said, “I heard engineers feared that life as we know it would come to a standstill as all under-sexed women on the planet became addicted to your life-sized mechanical beaver cleaver—”
His bark of laughter startled her to silence. “Did you seriously just call it a beaver cleaver?”
“I’m sorry. Do you prefer yogurt cannon?” She tilted her head to peer at him over the top of the rim of her glasses. “Got it. Logan’s . . . yogurt . . . cannon,” she said as she wrote the words in the margin.
She waited until he stopped laughing before she continued.
“I also heard somewhere that you were the original lead singer for Exodus End; care to sing me a few lines?” She stared at him hopefully, her heart fluttering in her chest with romantic anticipation. She was dying to hear his singing voice.
“And who told you that? Was it Max? Because he seems to think understating his vocal talent earns him more compliments or something. I can’t sing. Never could. I have the harmonics of a drunken crow.”
“Prove it.”
He squawked out a few lines of their first-ever hit, “Rebel in You,” and he did indeed sound like a drunken crow. She was pretty sure he was singing horribly on purpose, but that didn’t stop her from cringing and covering her ears with both hands.
“So you see,” Logan said, “we needed Max whether I liked it or not.”
She blinked at him. “You didn’t want Max in the band?”
“I thought we were just fine with three members. I was fortunately outvoted by the other two, and we sought an additional band member.”
“Fortunately outvoted?”
“I was devastated at the time, but you’ve heard me sing. Do you think we would have been at all successful with me as a front man?”
She shrugged. There was no way to know for sure.
“There are those occasional instances in your life when you’re glad you’re proven wrong. I was wrong. We needed Max to make us a better band. But never tell him I said that.” He winked at her, and she smiled before glancing down at her notes. It was time for her to get a little silly just for fun.
“Are you ready for more questions?”
He recrossed his legs so his ankle rested on the opposite knee and leaned back against the cushions to get comfortable. “Shoot.”
“What’s your favorite color?”
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Seriously?”
She nodded, feigning extreme interest in his answer by holding her pen at the ready and staring at him as if on the edge of her seat.
“Pink,” he said.
She dropped her pen. “Pink?”
“It’s the color of your nipples.”
“Are you thinking about my boobs again?”
“I’m always thinking about your boobs.”
She slipped her hand under the sofa and pulled out what she expected to be her dropped pen, but what she pulled out was a lot longer, made of some flexible purple material, and slightly enlarged at one end.
“What is this?” She drew it toward her face for closer inspection.
Logan chuckled. “It’s a magic wand. I’m pretty sure it’s been in someone’s ass, so you might not want to put it too close to your nose.”
With a shriek, she tossed it. It skittered across the gleaming white coffee table and landed on the carpet on the opposite side.
“We’ll add toys to your lessons at the hotel,” Logan said, not looking the least bit concerned that she’d touched that thing. “We should be there in a couple hours.”
That bit of knowledge made her squirm with desire and feel a bit queasy with nerves at the same time. She was pretty sure her lessons up to this point had been relatively tame, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to step it up to the next level. She wiped her hand on her skirt—as if that would sanitize her skin after touching a used ass wand.
“Was that yours?” she asked, eyeing the end of the “magic wand” just visible on the other side of the table.
“I plead the fifth.” He grinned. “But if I’d known it was hiding under there, I’d have given you a demonstration of the magic it works when I had you bent over the sofa arm last night.”
She crinkled her nose in disgust. “Eww. Even though you know where it’s been?”
“I would have cleaned it first.”
That didn’t make her feel any better.
“Promise me that any toys you use on my body are new. There are some things I’m not willing to compromise on and that is one of them.”
He was grinning entirely too wolfishly for her peace of mind.
“Logan!”
“I promise to use dozens of brand new toys on your body—singly and in combination.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I would never have touched you with someone else’s toy, Toni. I just love how cute you look when you get all freaked out.”
“Well, who wouldn’t freak out about something like that? It’s gross.”
“Would you still think it’s gross if I admitted that the ass tormented by that thing was mine?”
Had she been holding her pen, she would have dropped it. “You’re messing with me again.”
He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head. “I wouldn’t mess with you about something as important as explosive orgasms.”
Toni sat up straighter so she could take another look at the toy she’d tossed. “I could use toys on you too?”
“I’d prefer if we made it a requirement.”
She turned her head to catch his gaze, not sure if he was trying to throw her off guard again. He was so good at duping her that she was starting to suspect him of it at all times.
“It sounds like playing with toys should be an imperative part of my lessons,” she said.
“I agree.”
“Can we get back to my questions now?”
“Hey, you’re the one throwing magic wands around.”
“What’s your favorite food?”
He shook his head at her in disbelief. “Are these really the questions you want to ask?”
“The other band members answered them without belittling their importance.”
“Tacos.” He scratched his ear. “Fish tacos. Preferably clean shaven.”
Another innuendo?
“What would it take to convince you to shave your muff?” he asked.
She glanced down at her lap. “A huge diamond,” she teased.
“Done.”
She’d already been convinced to shave her muff; she didn’t need a diamond. “Are fish tacos really your favorite food?”
“Your fish taco is my favor—”
“Logan, is it really so hard for you to take my job seriously?”
“It is when you use words like hard.”
She glared at him, and he sighed.
“I don’t know what it is about you that keeps me in a constant state of arousal,” he said. “Maybe after I fuck you twenty or thirty times over the next couple of days, I’ll be able to re
member what my favorite food is.”
Twenty or thirty times? Was he insane?
He snapped his fingers unexpectedly. “Macaroni and cheese.”
She’d had a hard enough time figuring out the fish taco reference—what could he possibly mean by macaroni and cheese? She was still puzzling over it when he tilted his head at her.
“You don’t like macaroni and cheese?”
“I’m pretty sure the macaroni must be referring to your cock, but what’s the cheese?”
Logan laughed so hard, she thought they might need to commandeer an ambulance. She hated that she was so naïve about all these sexual things. She was going to have to start studying the online Urban Dictionary like it was her Bible just so she could keep up with this guy.
“Macaroni and cheese really is my favorite food. It has nothing to do with my cock and whatever your cheese is.”
“Oh.”
He could have continued to tease her, but he touched her arm instead. “What’s your favorite food?”
“Strawberry shortcake.” She didn’t even need to think about it.
“I should have known it would be something sweet.”
Was he flattering her? Or was he being serious?
“How old were you when you lost your virginity?” she asked.
“You’re putting that in your book?”
“Of course.”
“Fifteen.”
Her stomach dropped when she thought about him experiencing his first sexual encounter at the same age she’d been when her father died and she’d basically become a housewife to her mother and a mom to her sister.
“It wasn’t very good,” he added.
He patted her arm when she smiled him in relief.
“I’m lying,” he said. “It was the best thing that had ever happened to me at the time. For a teenage boy, every waking and sleeping moment is spent thinking about sex.” He rubbed his lips together and scowled at her. “Oh. That’s why this feels familiar.”
“Why what feels familiar?”
“Being with you. It’s like I’m a horny, lovesick teenager all over again. The only difference is now I know what to do with you.”
Rock Star Romance Ultimate: Volume 1 Page 28