by Zoe Blake
Logan placed a protective hand on her lower back as he guided her to the reception desk.
“We’ll take a suite for the night.”
“Yes, sir. Credit card and ID please.”
Logan fished the cards out of his wallet. Trying to keep Chloe from reading the names, he placed them face down on the counter.
After several minutes of tapping at keys, the front desk manager handed back his cards. “I have you booked in a suite on our third floor. Here are your two key cards. I hope you enjoy your stay, Mr.—”
Logan cut the woman off. “Thank you. We will.”
Ignoring Chloe’s questioning look, he motioned to the elevators.
When they arrived at the room, he leaned over her shoulder, slid the key card into the lock and opened the door. Shouldering her pink gym bag and his black duffel, Logan preceded her inside the room, doing a quick sweep of the parlor area, bedroom and bathroom.
“You don’t think a gang member is lurking behind the shower curtain do you?”
“Force of habit,” Logan said as he dropped the bags to the floor.
The hotel room fell silent. Logan stood across from Chloe, taking in the sight of her. It was the first time he had been able to breathe easily since he’d heard her scream from across the woods earlier that afternoon.
He took a step toward her a moment before she ran into his arms. Spearing his fingers into her dark tresses, Logan angled her head back. Staring down into her expressive, stormy gray eyes, he said, “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
Tears spiked her eyelashes. “I’ll try not to.”
His mouth took possession of hers. Forcing his tongue past her lips, he tasted deeply. His tongue swirled and teased her own. Lightly rubbing his teeth against her plump lower lip, he rasped against her mouth, “I’m going to fuck you till you forget everything from today but my touch.”
Chloe moaned as he palmed her breast through the thin fabric of her babydoll T-shirt. Rubbing his thumb over the erect nipple, Logan walked forward, thrusting her against the wall. Placing both hands high above her head, he ground his hips against her own. He groaned from the pressure as his hard cock was squeezed between their bodies. He took her mouth again.
Biting. Tasting.
Lowering his arms, he ran his hands over her ribcage, pushing up her T-shirt. The moment her breasts were exposed, he leaned down to suck one pink nipple into his mouth, nipping it with his teeth while he palmed the other. Inhaling deeply, he took in the warm vanilla scent of her skin. With a growl, he ripped the T-shirt over her head. Opening his mouth, Logan sucked on the delicate skin of her neck.
Biting. Tasting.
Her hands clutched at his hair, pulling hard. The kiss of pain just spurred him on.
Tearing at her jeans, he slipped the brass button through its hole and lowered the zipper. Driving his right hand between her legs, he palmed her pussy while his left hand pushed on the fabric, lowering the jeans to her ankles. Pushing one, then two fingers into her wet heat, he thrust them in and out while his thumb caressed her clit.
“Oh God! Oh God!” Her open mouth skated along his flesh, kissing the bloodred petals of his tattoo.
Logan reached under her knees and lifted her high, bracing her against the wall with the pressure from his hips. As she wrapped her legs around his middle, he reached between them under her right leg, and lowered the zipper of his jeans. His cock sprang free, hard and wanting. Grabbing onto her thighs, he shifted his hips till the head of his cock was at her tight entrance, teasing her.
“Who’s in charge?” he growled.
“You are… oh God! You are!”
Chloe screamed as he speared her with his cock. Pressing her against the hard surface of the wall, he pummeled into her welcoming cunt, feeling her tight muscles clench and grasp at his shaft. He licked at a small drop of sweat glistening between her breasts. He felt as if he were an animal crazed with lust. The need to possess and mark her was strong. Without thought, Logan bit down on her shoulder. Her cry of pain sent him into a frenzy. He licked at the faint red crescent marks.
“Do it again. Make it hurt,” she begged.
Logan opened his mouth over the top of her breast. Pulling her soft flesh between his lips, sucking, he bit down again.
Marking her again.
Throwing his head back with a roar, he thrust harder. Pounding into her small frame. Dominating her with brute strength.
“Say it,” he ground out through clenched teeth as he felt his balls tighten. His stomach contracted with need. “Say it.”
“Fuck me,” she breathed against his neck.
With a guttural shout, he released deep inside her.
Marking her with his seed.
The cries of her release mixed with his heavy breathing. Clasping his arms about her, he turned. Keeping his cock buried inside her cunt, he collapsed on the bed, rolling with her in his arms. Pinning her beneath him, he brushed back her hair. Taking in her swollen lips and flushed cheeks, he felt a surge of primal possession.
She was his and he’d be damned if he let anyone harm her again.
An hour later, Logan was dressed in a fresh shirt and pair of jeans. He had tucked Chloe into bed. Giving her a kiss on the forehead, he said, “I will be a few hours. Do not leave this room. You can order room service but no junk food.”
Chloe pouted. “What’s the fun in ordering hotel room service if you can’t order junk food?”
“I mean it young lady. Something healthy.”
She gave him a cheeky grin. “Is a cheeseburger healthy?”
Flicking the tip of her nose, he said, “Order it and you will find out my answer when I get back.”
His grasping the buckle of his belt as he responded told Chloe all she needed to know about what his answer would be.
Opening the door, Logan tossed over his shoulder, “And no scary movies. I expect to see a rom-com on the hotel invoice.”
Chloe snuggled further into the blankets with a smile. He waited till he saw her lift the remote and start to search under romantic comedies before closing the door.
Chapter 11
Chloe counted to ten before throwing the covers off. Walking over to the door, she looked out the peephole. The hotel hallway was empty. Grabbing her jeans off the floor, she stepped into them as she reached for her T-shirt. She didn’t know how long Logan would be, but she needed to be far away before he got back.
Tears filled her eyes at the thought of leaving him. She knew it was purely about leaving him and not the thought of being on her own. She had already lived through escaping one dangerous situation with the possibility of a pissed off gang on her heels. Granted, this time was worse and the stakes way higher, but still. The tears were for Logan.
The fact that she had found herself in this position before was why she was leaving.
You might not be able to escape your past, but you could make damn sure you didn’t repeat it.
She had already been to this rodeo. Fallen for the dangerous guy, the bad boy. Loving the excitement. Relishing in how her life wasn’t just some ordinary nine-to-five drudge. The problem was it would end badly. She couldn’t imagine a scenario where it wouldn’t. She thought back to all those country songs. Fuck the white picket fence. It wasn’t in the cards for her.
Chloe swiped at tears as she pulled on her sneakers. Damn him. Damn him for making her care. Damn him for making her actually feel something again. Damn him for chasing away the numbness. Damn him for making her feel protected and actually cared for. It was all a lie anyway. She’d seen a glimpse of his ID when he’d put it back in his wallet. He’d tried to keep it from her, but she’d seen it. The first name did not begin with an “L”. It looked more like “Jo.” John? Joseph? Goddammit. Not only had she never even gotten his last name from him, now it looked like she didn’t even know his first!
How?
How the fuck had she gotten herself into this kind of mess again? First Chad and now Logan.
Chloe�
��s erratic thoughts paused. Even in her hurt and anger, she knew she was being unfair. Logan was nothing like Chad. Chad had been a thug, a corrupt cop…a bully. Sure, Logan could be brutal and even downright mean at times, but she’d learned it had actually been to protect her. His methods, while unorthodox, were apparently just what she needed. Finally, because of him, she could let go of the guilt she’d felt about that night in Louisiana. Instead of constantly beating herself up, trying to turn herself into something she wasn’t, she could now learn to accept all her twisty, messed up sides, the dark and light ones. Because of him.
She wasn’t perfect, and the crazy thing was, she honestly believed that was what Logan liked about her. Maybe even loved. Her beautiful fucked up imperfections.
Hell, the man had actually covered up a murder for her. And at this moment was meeting with his client to arrange it so she was never bothered by anyone again.
So why was she running?
Because she had already been to this rodeo, that was why.
It was a fun, dramatic, heart-pounding thrill ride, but eventually you got bucked off and found yourself facedown in the dirt.
No, Logan wasn’t like Chad. He was far more dangerous.
She’d never thought of Chad as anything more than a boyfriend. She’d always known eventually she would wise up and ditch his ass. Probably when the fun stopped, and it definitely had stopped that night. She couldn’t imagine the same scenario with Logan. Strange, but she didn’t even think of him in boyfriend terms. That term was too lighthearted, too commonplace, too vanilla. He was something deeper, more intense, more raw, than simply a boyfriend.
A man who protected and disciplined. A man who cared for her, and not in that superficial way, but in every way, from whether she was safe to whether she ate her vegetables and dressed warmly. A man who was doing everything possible to shield her from the harsh realities of the world as well as the consequences of her own mistakes, past and present. A man who had filled her life with passion as well as real affection.
Problem was he had done too good of a job. She now recognized she’d been hiding from herself, from life, up at that cabin. It was time to get back to the living, to actually create a real life for herself. It didn’t have to be a boring nine-to-five drudge, but it also wasn’t going to be following around some mercenary on dangerous jobs. She figured that was what Logan had to be. A hired killer. The kind of person you turned to when you didn’t want to get the law involved. He got paid to, how did he put it? Clean up messes.
Well, she was a mess. He’d cleaned her up. His job was over.
Besides, it wasn’t like he was really serious about wanting her to stay by his side. He had bad boy loner written all over him. As soon as the excitement of this job was over, he would probably split anyway. Back to some femme fatale named Nikita or Sasha.
Chloe could hear Logan’s amused voice in her head, teasingly reminding her once again that this wasn’t a Hollywood movie, and real men didn’t date women named Nikita. Well, he would probably say that, after he finished punishing her for cursing so much…even in her thoughts.
Her stomach twisted. Was she doing the right thing? Should she stay and at least talk to him about how she was feeling?
No. It would only make their parting more difficult, more awkward. It would probably even ruin her memories of him. She risked him telling her that the whole attraction thing was a sham, a game to get her cooperation.
Deep down, she felt that was wrong. It had been real. Well, maybe it had been or maybe it hadn’t.
She had made mistakes before. Her past was riddled with them. What was one more?
Chloe grabbed her bag and headed for the door. Thinking better of it, she turned back. Throwing her bag on the bed, she rummaged through the desk till she found a hotel pad and pen. After a few failed attempts to get the pen to work, she finally scratched out a quick, completely insufficient, note. Chloe then dug through her gym bag till she found the one thing which she hoped would help him understand. She left it on top of the note.
How odd. The most intense experience of her life and it ended with an “I’m sorry” note scratched out on a hotel notepad.
It seemed a mistake to do it this way, but then that was what she was good at, mistakes.
Chloe picked up her bag and left.
Chapter 12
Logan pulled into the small parking lot of the Golden Nugget on the north side of Chicago. Meeting at a diner at ten o’clock at night was a little cloak and dagger for his taste, but that was how this particular client liked it. Pulling open the glass door, he surveyed the dining room. At this hour, the booths were filled with loud teenagers, cops grabbing a bite before their graveyard shift and a few blue-collars, which, of course, meant his client stuck out like a sore thumb. Logan slid into the third booth on the right. Across from him were two men, both with cheap haircuts and cheaper suits.
“Jesus Christ, Bob, why don’t you just duct tape your badge to your forehead? It would be less subtle,” Logan laughed as he signaled the server for a cup a coffee.
“Keep your voice down. We don’t want the world to know what we are doing here,” groused Bob’s partner.
“Relax, Tom. You could fire off your weapon in here, and the only thing any of these people would give two shits about is if the scene was going to delay their pancakes.”
The server snickered at his remark as she poured his coffee.
Giving him an appreciative look, she asked, “Can I get you anything?”
“Just the coffee, thanks,” responded Logan, giving the buxom blonde only the barest of glances.
He had a girl now. A sweet little broken doll. He was going to get them both away from all this dark shit and make a real life with her. Logan smiled at the thought.
“So you have the drive?” asked Bob anxiously.
Logan’s only response was a nod.
“Well, let’s see it.”
Tom was already opening up his laptop to check out the veracity of the flash drive.
“There are a few things we need to renegotiate first,” said Logan as he leaned back in his seat, raising an arm over the back.
“The F.B.I doesn’t renegotiate. Your fee is your fee. It was already hell getting that through all the red tape. I’m not going back to ask for more, Logan,” warned Bob.
“First, cut the bullshit. You’re not F.B.I., you’re C.I.A.”
Bob and Tom exchanged glances.
“And just how do you suppose that?”
Logan took a leisurely sip of his coffee, enjoying making them wait. “It’s your guns. You can change your outfit and even flash a costume badge, but people will rarely carry a different weapon from their own. The F.B.I.’s current standard issue is a Glock 22 or 23. You both are carrying Beretta 92s, the preferred firearm of C.I.A. agents. You think I would take a job and not make damn fucking sure I knew who I was working with?”
Bob rubbed his jaw and gave Logan a resigned look. “You’re good. Okay, on the level. We can’t work domestic shit. You know that. We’re helping clean up the mess from that A.T.F. gunwalking scandal. Off the record of course. Orders come straight from the Oval. He wants it handled. Stretching the rules since it involves Mexico.”
Logan nodded his head. Operation Fast and Furious. The A.T.F. looked the other way while gun dealers sold to illegal buyers in Mexico. The hope was they could trace the guns back to the Mexican cartels and eventually cut off their firepower supply. It had failed. Spectacularly. The A.T.F. lost track of more than half of the guns sold. In fact, that was how the cartels had actually gotten their hands on the military-issued-only FN Five-seveNs. The guns lost had been used in crimes on both sides of the border. It was a fucking mess and a PR nightmare that hadn’t gone away even years later. Every time the scandal fizzled, someone died from a gun traced back to Fast and Furious and the whole shitstorm got kicked up again.
“So how does the flash drive play in?”
“When we heard about the missing flash dr
ive, we figured if we could get our hands on it first, we could use it to leverage the Columbians. We return the flash drive in exchange for their help in tracking some of the guns through their end clients, the Mexican cartels. At this point, we just want those particular guns destroyed. We don’t care about anything else. We think they’ll play ball. They want this flash drive bullshit over as much as we want the Fast and Furious guns, and they have leverage over the cartels we don’t have…they control the cocaine supply. It’s a win-win.”
“And, of course, you’re old friends with the Columbians,” taunted Logan, referring to the theory the C.I.A. had been heavily involved in the early cocaine trade in Los Angeles in the 80s.
“That has never been proven,” objected Tom. Bob put a restraining hand on his arm.
“It makes for a nice lead-in. The Mexicans might be onto what you are trying to do. They sent a crew after the drive,” offered Logan.
“What happened?”
“What do you think happened?” shot back Logan. “You’ll find them tied up at Chloe’s cabin. Here are the coordinates.” Logan handed him a small piece of paper. “This also has the coordinates to a shallow grave deep in the woods.”
“Do I want to know?” asked Bob.
Logan shrugged. “Let’s just say you can also tell the Columbians you took care of their little HR problem for them.”
Bob nodded his approval. “Actually, that could help with our negotiations with them. So, what did you want to renegotiate?”
“I want Chloe’s name scrubbed from this whole mess.” Logan reached back and pulled out a worn file, folded in half, from the back pocket of his jeans. He tossed the red folder on the table. “In there you will find every instance where her name intersects with Chad’s and the Columbians. Take care of it, and make sure the Columbians understand she is no longer a part of this.”