Logan shifted when the dog noticed Dom and came over to greet him. Dom automatically put his hand on the animal’s head, but his eyes never left Logan and when those pale blue eyes caught sight of him, he saw a myriad of emotions run through them. Fear, shame, longing. The man didn’t say anything, just wiped his face on his arm. He was wearing the clothes he’d arrived in, not the sweats Dom remembered pushing down so he could get at Logan’s beautiful cock. He shook his head at the wayward thought, then moved into the kitchen. He pulled a mug down from the cabinet, then stopped when he saw the full coffee pot. It was too much – another intrusion he couldn’t deal with.
With his back to Logan, he fisted his hands on the granite countertop and said, “Get the fuck out of my house.”
***
The words should have had Logan moving, not because of the actual words themselves, but the tone with which they were spoken. Hate, rage. But Logan was too far gone in his own confusion to care right now. He’d been sitting here for hours since he left Dom sleeping soundly in his bed. There’d been several guest rooms he could have crashed in until it was time to leave to catch the first morning ferry, but sleep was the last thing on his mind. He’d tried to keep busy by straightening up the mess Dom had made in his room so the man wouldn’t cut his feet if he got up in the middle of the night, but that had taken very little time and he’d ended up spending the last several hours just sitting in the quiet kitchen, the occasional shifting of the dog at his feet the only noise to break the pervasive silence. At least in his own house he had the incessant ticking of his mother’s prized Grandfather clock to focus on, but here there was nothing. Even the rain had stopped at some point.
“Why me?” he finally asked, not turning to look at the angry man standing nearby. His own voice sounded shaky even to his own ears.
“I told you I want you to leave,” Dom began.
“Why me?!” Logan screamed, his eyes still staring straight ahead through the glass windows.
He sensed Dom turning to face him and he supposed the man was probably caught off guard by his outburst.
“Why did you pick me for that night in the hotel?”
Dom was silent for a long time before finally saying, “What difference does it make?”
What difference did it make? Logan nearly laughed. The difference was that that one night had changed his whole fucking life!
“The difference is,” Logan bit out, “that I stuck my dick in your ass last night.”
Dom didn’t respond. Instead, he strode over to a side table and snatched his wallet off it and pulled out a stack of money. He tossed it on the countertop in front of Logan. “That should cover last night.” He grabbed some more and dropped that on the pile too. “And that’s to cover what you forgot when you left that first night.”
Pain and rage mixed within Logan at the sight of the money. The stark reminder of what he was lanced through him and the fact that Dom was so easily able to remind him of that fact made something inside of him die.
“Go to hell Dom,” Logan said as he stood, ignoring the money. He grabbed his jacket from the stool. “Sylvie wants you to keep your promise,” he snapped as he turned and headed towards the front door.
***
Dom dropped the mug at Logan’s words and it shattered as it hit the floor. He’d been about to fill it with coffee after tossing Logan the cash and he was lucky he wasn’t holding the coffee pot instead when Logan spouted his last statement.
Logan was in the process of opening the front door when Dom reached him and slammed his hand on the wood to keep it from opening. Logan was only a couple inches shorter than him, but Dom’s bulk played in his favor as he grabbed Logan and spun him around.
“What the fuck did you just say to me?”
Logan stood mutely for a moment, then said, “She wants you to keep your promise.”
Tension went through Dom at the words and he wanted to step back, but he suspected if he did, Logan would leave and he couldn’t allow that.
“You talked to her?” he finally managed to whisper, the pain exploding inside of him in little starbursts.
Logan shook his head. “She sent me a letter. It arrived yesterday. After…” he said, his words drifting off. “After the funeral,” he finally managed to say.
“Jesus,” Dom said as he hung his head.
“What promise?” Logan asked quietly.
Overwhelmed, Dom did take several steps back this time. “She made me promise…” he began, but then had to choke back the emotion that suddenly clogged his throat. “She made me promise that after she was gone I would live. Not just exist, live.” Dom felt like his body was going to give out, so he leaned back against the bannister of the stairs. “What else did she say?” he asked, hating the begging tone that was so clear in his voice.
“She didn’t want you to be alone. She said you would push everyone around you away.”
Dom laughed. She had always known him best. Now it made sense how Logan had gotten past the security system, how he’d even found the house in the first place. His Sylvie had always given off the impression that she was docile and passive, but she was anything but. She was fierce when it came to protecting the ones she loved most.
“Why me?” Logan asked again, his desperation rolling off him in waves now. He seemed so young like this. Confused, helpless. Dom fought the need to comfort him.
“Why did we pick you for that night?” Dom clarified. Logan nodded. “When we knew she wouldn’t be getting better this time, I tried to give her everything she wanted.”
“And she told you she wanted to have another man join you,” Logan ventured.
“She said it was just to spice things up – she didn’t actually want to have sex with someone else.”
“She wanted you to watch.”
Dom nodded. “I never would have shared her with anyone. I loved her,” he said lamely. “I never understood why she wanted that, but how could I tell her no?”
“Why me?” Logan asked again.
“I met your sister and your friend Shane a while ago. Shane knew I had some experience in finding information on people that didn’t necessarily want to be found. He asked me to try and figure out who had hurt your sister.”
“So you dug into my past and found out what I did for extra money,” Logan said.
Dom nodded, shame tingling under his skin. “When Sylvie made her request, I chose you.”
“Why?”
Dom didn’t have an answer, or at least not one he wanted to share with Logan, so he remained silent. He almost flinched at the way Logan was studying him, like he was trying to pick the answers from his brain.
“She said you were obsessed with me.”
Dom couldn’t shutter the gasp that escaped him. He shook his head violently. Sylvie couldn’t have known that. But Logan didn’t take back his statement and Dom knew it was true. Somehow his wife had seen the way he lingered on Logan’s pictures – the ones he’d found during his research as well as the one’s he’d taken during his surveillance. Jesus, he’d betrayed her even before her death and she’d known.
“She said she set up that night for you, not for herself.”
“Oh, God,” Dom said as he bent over to try and suck in some air. His hand gripped the banister hard. It had never made sense to him that she wanted to experiment with another man, but if she’d known about that part of his life, it made complete sense that she would try to give that back to him after she was gone.
“She knew you loved her,” Logan said softly. “She had no doubts about you choosing her.”
It was too much, Dom thought as he dropped down to sit on the bottom step. This man was destroying him piece by piece, first by becoming the target of all of Dom’s lust, then by sweeping in here and showing him the truth about his relationship with Sylvie. It hurt to know that Sylvie had shared her suspicions with Logan, but not him. “I knew I was attracted to both men and women at an early age, but I kept it hidden from everyone. I was with
a couple of men in college, but when Sylvie and I met, I knew she was the only one for me. I didn’t know she knew about that part of me.” Dom ran his hand over his head. “She must have seen how I looked at your pictures – the ones I had collected during my research. I guess I wasn’t able to hide my attraction to you,” he said quietly.
He heard Logan inhale sharply and he saw the man tense up. “I’m not gay,” Logan suddenly said, his voice shaky. It was then that Dom finally realized what Logan was struggling with.
“You’ve never been with a man,” Dom said aloud. Logan flushed and then shook his head. “Jesus,” Dom said as he understood the shit that Logan must be going through. Part of him actually felt a flash of anger towards Sylvie for setting this up – he guessed she hadn’t really thought about things from Logan’s side when she arranged their night in the hotel.
“Logan,” he began.
“I have to go,” Logan muttered as he turned to fumble with the doorknob. He had managed to get the door open again before Dom was able to close the distance between them. Putting his hand out, he pushed it shut before Logan could escape, then used his bigger body to pin Logan in place, not touching him, but not leaving room for him to maneuver away either.
“Logan, this was our fault. Mine and Sylvie’s. You did nothing wrong – you just got caught up in something new and different. It doesn’t mean you’re gay or that you’re even bi,” he said gently. God, Dom wanted to reach out and touch the man, comfort him, but Logan was shaking hard now and Dom knew he needed to let him go. “Just let it go,” Dom urged. “Whatever she asked you to do, just let it go. You don’t owe us anything.”
Logan dropped his forehead against the door. “I can’t,” he said.
“Why not?”
A long pulse of silence. “Because I can’t fail her too.” He felt Logan step back against him as he forced the door open and Dom moved back to let him. Logan was halfway out when he stopped suddenly, his next words so quiet that Dom barely heard them. “Did I hurt you?”
Logan didn’t look at him when he asked the question and it took Dom a moment to realize that Logan was asking about the sex last night. “No,” he answered gently, truthfully.
A shudder escaped Logan and he nodded, then left. Dom stood there long after he heard the car disappear down the driveway.
Chapter 4
He’d fucked a man. And he’d loved it. Logan sank further into the deck chair and closed his eyes. It was way too cold and miserable to be sitting out on Gabe and Riley’s balcony on a cold, wet November day, but his only other option was to try to keep it together while he faced his makeshift family inside the apartment as they prepared Thanksgiving dinner. He knew none of them would give him much time out here to sulk though.
It had been only a couple of weeks since he’d been leaning over Dom, fucking him in earnest, that tight ass gripping him like a vise. Dom had told him to let it go, that he had just been caught up in a moment, but Logan knew it was bullshit. Maybe if it had happened that first night in the hotel room, that could have been his excuse and he could have blown the whole thing off. But no, he’d fucked the guy weeks later and the circumstances leading up to it had been nothing even close to what someone would consider a passionate encounter. Dom had been seeking comfort and Logan had used it to his own advantage. It didn’t matter if the other man seemed to have enjoyed it at the end – Logan may as well have gotten him drunk or slipped him a drug because the man had been in no shape to consent.
Logan’s body shook as the word rape flashed through his mind and he had to put the bottle of beer in his hand down on the side table before he dropped it. He wished he’d ignored his sister’s pleas to join them and gone to work like he planned. The job he’d taken on a road crew was brutal work. But the physical punishment made his body seek out sleep rather than letting his brain torment him with thoughts of how he’d fucked everything up, destroyed whatever he touched. Working the long hours also meant he didn’t have to interact with the people he cared most about and, even better, he didn’t have to come up with lame excuses to try to avoid them. They were a sharp bunch and would have known something was wrong the more time they spent with him. But they readily accepted his excuse that he had to work in order to save up money for the bar. It was bullshit – he hadn’t touched the bar in weeks, hadn’t even stepped foot inside of it. That part of his life was gone, another failure on the ever growing list.
He heard a knock on the glass behind him and automatically forced away the perpetual scowl he knew was on his face, then turned to look behind him. His sister was waving at him to come inside. He smiled – she didn’t need to know it wasn’t what he was actually feeling– and then went inside, snagging his beer on the way. Slamming the rest down, he entered the apartment and went to the kitchen to grab another one. Riley was busy stirring something on the stove while her boyfriend Gabe was staring at the turkey, carving tools dangling from his hands.
“I’m telling you Gabe, just start anywhere,” Riley said as she glanced over at him. “It’ll taste great no matter how pretty the pieces look.”
“I want it to be perfect,” Gabe said.
“It already is.” Riley left the stove and wrapped her arms around Gabe. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she whispered and then they did what they always seemed to be doing – kissed. No one deserved to be happy more than Gabe, but seeing his best friend achieve so much despite all the blows life had handed him reminded Logan what a loser he was. And the fact that his self-pity was tied to the envy he felt for his friends made him a complete asshole. He slipped back out of the kitchen and ran right into his sister as she finished setting the table. Before he could even get a word out, she was hugging him, that now ever-present smile on her face brighter than he’d ever seen.
“I’m so glad you made it,” Savannah said as she pulled back and then smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt. Two months ago he would have welcomed her display of affection, but now he was too raw for it. It took everything in him not to pull away.
“Where’s Shane?” Logan asked in an attempt to change the topic and get them back on lighter ground.
“He just called. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“They?” he asked and then felt a chill run through him at the sight of an extra place setting at the table.
Savannah went back to putting the final touches on the table. “Shane and Dom.”
“You invited Dom?” Logan croaked as he felt his knees weaken.
“Yeah. Shane found out his brother is still out of the country, so he invited him to join us. Dom insisted that he had to work so Shane went over there to drag him away. Shane says he’s been killing himself at the office.”
Luckily, Savannah didn’t seem to notice his distress as her words sank in. He hadn’t been able to keep his promise to Sylvie to be there for Dom, so he hadn’t seen the man since he’d walked out of his house a few weeks ago. And now he was coming here? He’d have to sit across the table and play nice with the guy he’d basically raped? The beer he’d been drinking came back up into his throat and he made a quick dash for the bathroom. He heaved into the toilet until his rolling stomach eased. As he washed out his mouth, possible excuses as to why he needed to leave began filtering through his head and he finally settled on the almost truth that he wasn’t feeling well. But by the time he got back to the dining room, he knew he was too late because he heard that gravelly voice that made his whole body swim with shame…and desire.
***
Dom knew it was a mistake to come, but when Shane had shown up at his office an hour ago and insisted, it hadn’t been hard to resist. He’d like to think it was because he welcomed the idea of being included at such an intimate event with people he was coming to think of as friends, but the ugly truth was that there was only one person he was really hoping to see. It made no sense to him that his body could ache for Logan even as it continued to mourn Sylvie. The pain of being without her was a living thing and only a few things could make the searin
g agony of his loss go away for even a few minutes. To that end, he was fitter then he’d ever been because he exercised for hours a day. Work took up the remaining hours and sleep had become a rare luxury that only occurred when his body was too drained from the first two activities to keep him upright. But the memory of Logan inside of him, the feel of those lips caressing his, the tender touch of his roughened palms – those things were always there, whether he wanted them to be or not.
Seeing Logan that morning after he’d betrayed his wife had filled him with a level of rage he hadn’t known. He’d wanted to blame it all on Logan, but the look in the younger man’s eyes when Dom had callously dropped that money down in front him had shattered something inside of Dom. His intention had been to hurt, to punish, but when he’d actually seen the result, had heard the breaking of Logan’s voice, that had all changed. And the devastating way the young man had asked if he’d hurt Dom had erased whatever anger he’d had left.
“Logan, you’ve never actually met Dom, right?” he heard Shane ask from somewhere behind him. He tensed up and turned, then felt an almost physical blow at the sight of the man who’d invaded his dreams.
Logan stood in the doorway between the living room and hallway. A white dress shirt was tucked half-heartedly into dark slacks, the sleeves of the shirt rolled up to reveal muscular forearms with a slight smattering of dark hair on them. His hands were clenched at his sides in fists. But when Dom lifted his eyes to meet Logan’s, he was caught off guard by what he saw. Horror, guilt, dread. The man was pale – deathly pale and he looked like he’d lost at least ten pounds since Dom had seen him last. There were dark circles under his pale blue eyes and his thick, black hair was damp from what Dom assumed was Logan running his wet hands through it. His lips – those beautifully soft lips – were slightly parted as if he was trying to say something, but couldn’t get the words out.
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