by Lily Harlem
Logan looked at me through narrowed eyes, his face red and hot. “From where I stood it looked like he was trying to kiss you, trying to kiss you against your will.”
“That’s exactly what happened but let him go, he’s got the message now.”
“Yeah, let go, Phoenix, it’s not fucking funny anymore.” Brick grunted as he writhed again under Logan’s weight. He yelped as his shoulder stayed fixed and Logan dropped even more weight on it.
“There’s something you gotta do first,” Logan said through gritted teeth.
“What, for fuck’s sake, what?” Brick whimpered as Logan pushed a hand on his head and squashed his face farther into the beach.
“Apologize to Brooke.”
“What?” Brick opened his eyes then blinked rapidly as sand avalanched toward his face.
“Apologize to Brooke for thinking she’d be interested in a sorry dumbass like you.”
Brick clenched his teeth. “Sorry,” he said. “Now get the hell off me, Phoenix.”
“No, I’m not done with you yet.”
Brick squirmed in anger and kicked his feet. Sand flew upward and sprayed over Logan’s back.
“Apologize to me now.”
“What the hell for?”
Logan dropped his head down to Brick’s ear. “For kissing my woman.”
“What?”
“You heard. Brooke’s with me, get used to it.” He shoved at Brick’s arm, creating a little more tension and getting another yelp out of Brick. “Now apologize to me for trying to take what’s mine before I whoop your sorry ass into next year and you have to miss the rest of this season and all of next.”
“Sorry, I’m fucking sorry, okay.”
“Say it nicely.”
Brick dragged in a breath. “Sorry,” he said, quieter. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t realize you’d hooked up.”
Logan sprang to his feet, releasing Brick as quickly as he’d pinned him down.
Brick groaned and rolled to his back, grasping his tormented left shoulder. He squinted at Logan through the low sun. “What did you have to fucking do that for, you know my shoulder’s been giving me grief.”
Logan shrugged. “I forgot.” He put his arm around my waist and helped me to my feet. “But don’t forget, Brooke’s with me so keep your hands, your mouth, your eyes and every other part of your anatomy under control when you’re in her company.”
“Yeah, okay.” Brick pushed to his feet with a grimace and started brushing sand from his clothes. “Shit man, these are new.”
“And she doesn’t like cursing either,” Logan said. “So keep your mouth clean.”
Brick swiped his hands together then ran his fingers through his tight nest of sand-filled curls.
“Got it?” Logan said.
“Yeah, got it,” Brick muttered and looked me in the eyes. “She’s yours and she don’t like cursing.”
I studied his green eyes and pulled in an apprehensive breath. I thought I might see hate, or anger, or even revenge in their depths. But to my relief I didn’t, they were resigned, surrendered. I sought out his aura. It was a startling shade of bottle green, a few flecks of hazelnut brown, but nothing major. I hoped that would be the last of the matter. Logan and I were together, that’s what he’d said, and I wouldn’t be taking any money for having spent the week in his bed, no way, so whatever the heck Brick had insinuated, it was all wrong.
* * * * *
Brick had a swelling on his left cheekbone and I gave him a bag of ice to press against it as I cooked the steaks. Logan had reopened part of the gash on his forehead and I angled a bandage over it to hold the skin together. He didn’t want me to, but the small tear wouldn’t stop dripping blood into his eye so in the end, to eat his steak without the irritation of bleeding, he had no choice but to let me have a go at patching it up.
By the time we’d finished the meal, Logan and Brick were chatting as if nothing had happened. As though they hadn’t just pummeled each other on the beach, had a good go at breaking limbs, dislocating joints and drawing blood. They laughed about a pounding Yusof took midweek, scoffed at the ineptitude of refs and trash-talked every other team in the league.
Brick was very complimentary of the food and kept his eye-line at a respectable level. When everyone had finished he went so far as collecting up the plates and loading the dishwasher.
“You okay?” Logan asked when we were alone in the moonlight.
“Yes, fine,” I said, looking into his shadowed face.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that earlier.” He reached for my hand across the table. “Really I am.”
I shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. But he’s just a kid. He lets his hormones rule his head but he’s decent underneath as long as I keep him in check.”
“You have a very novel way of doing that.”
“It’s the language he speaks.” Logan shrugged.
I raised my brows. I was glad it wasn’t my language. It looked painful.
“He won’t bother you again, though, none of them will.”
“Who do you mean?”
“The other players, when you meet them. Brick’s got a big mouth, bigger than his brain, and he’ll whine for days that I slapped his sorry butt just for talking to you.”
“But you know it was more than talking, don’t you?”
“Of course, I know what I saw and believe me, Brick got off lightly ’cause I just happen to be fond of the little twerp. I’ve been like a big brother to him since he joined the team.” His face darkened. “But anyone else wouldn’t have walked away. Anyone else who tried to touch you against your will would need an ambulance at the very least.”
He clenched his fist over my hand and I reached to uncurl his fingers. “Does that mean none of your teammates will ever speak to me?”
Logan smiled and relaxed his fingers. “No, not at all, they’ll know Brick was up to no good, they’ll figure there’s more to the story than what he says.”
“Good, ’cause I wouldn’t want to feel like a total outcast.” I tapped at a mosquito that had been hassling my calf for ten minutes. “Missed again,” I said with a sigh. “I think I’ll head to bed. I’m tired.”
“Not too tired, I hope.” Logan tilted my chin with his finger and rubbed his thumb into the crease below my bottom lip.
“No,” I smiled. “Not too tired.”
* * * * *
I didn’t have to wait long for Logan to come to me. When he did he flicked the lock on my bedroom door and stepped out of his shorts as he walked across the room. He grinned and sat his long naked body on the bed with his back braced against the padded headboard.
“Hey,” I said, happily abandoning my anatomy book and turning to face him on the soft pillow.
“Hey, yourself.” His blue eyes twinkled down at me through the dim, buttery light spreading from my bedside table.
“You gonna snuggle down?” I asked, eyeing the thick erection only inches from my face.
“Mmm, there’s a thought,” he said, wrapping a hand around my entire upper arm. “But how about you come up here?” He licked his lips and tugged me. “Come up and sit on me.”
I crawled onto hands and knees, shucking off the sheet to expose my own nakedness.
“You got a condom this time?”
His gaze drifted down my body, lingering on my swaying breasts and hardening nipples. “Yeah,” he husked, reaching one from the bedside table.
Taking the red wrapped condom from his hand, I angled the corner into my teeth and tore at the wrapper. Blowing out the tiny piece of foil that remained in my mouth, I slowly licked the rubbery, artificial taste of strawberry from my top lip.
His mouth slackened. “That was so sexy,” he said, shaking his head.
“Mmm.” I straddled his legs just below his knees. “Then I think you’ll like this even more.” I took hold of his shaft and treated him to a long, slow stroke right up to the velvet head and back down to the bas
e. His stomach tensed and his cock twitched in my hand. I took out the condom and placed it over his flushed head. Pinched the end of the latex and rolled it over the crest of his cock until it rounded into the deep ridge. I smiled up at him, then tipped forward, tensed my mouth and used my taut lips to roll it the rest of the way down his engorged shaft.
“Ahh, sweetie, I think you’ve just invented the best way ever to put one of these damn things on.” He scooped my hair onto the top of my head, his fingers gentle and tickling.
I kept on gliding downward, my fingers helping unfurl the condom as his thick head slid over my tongue, over my palate and finally hit the back of my throat. I dragged in ribbons of air as my nose settled in his coarse pubic hair. I adored the feeling of him in my mouth, I felt so full, so in control, and as he invaded my senses with his smell, his taste and his texture it was like a wild ride to heaven.
“Come here,” he said, wrapping his hands around my shoulders and physically lifting me. I had no choice but to let him slip from my mouth as he tugged my body up. “I’m supposed to be working on stamina and you’re going to undo all that hard work.”
My eyes came level with his and I rested my hands on the tight strips of muscle between his neck and shoulders, then shuffled up his legs to straddle his wide hips. His shaft pressed against my pubic hair and my body clenched in anticipation of having him inside me, soon, real soon.
“You feel so good sitting on me,” he said.
“You feel so good in me,” I murmured, pressing my lips to his. His tongue probed for mine as he dipped his fingers down between my legs.
I gasped into his mouth as he parted my folds and pushed in.
“God, you’re so wet, so wet and hot,” he whispered.
“I’ve been lying here…thinking.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“You doing stuff to me.” I’d also been thinking about Brick and what he’d implied about my being in the villa. The way he’d grabbed me and thought I would be up for a little extra business with him. But those worries left me now as Logan added another finger, hooked the tips forward and rubbed that little pad of flesh in a way that always dragged a groan from my stomach whether I wanted it to or not.
“You been thinking about me doing this to you?” he asked, ducking his head to kiss my collarbone.
“Yes, and other stuff.”
“Mmm, you’ll have to be more specific,” he said.
“And I was thinking about how you make me feel.” I wondered if maybe I should tell him the truth about my deal with Fergal.
“And how is that, Brooke. How do I make you feel?”
How was it he always seemed to ask me questions at the same time as he was distracting me? “You make me feel good.”
“Just good?”
I tipped my pelvis forward as the heel of his hand caught my clit. “More than good,” I confessed. “Amazing.” I pulled my head back and focused on his face. “I want to make you feel amazing too.”
His eyes shot blue flames of desire from their depths. “Just a smile from you makes me feel amazing.”
I slid my hand up his neck and cupped his cheeks with my palms. I lifted upward and his hand slid from my pussy. “So in theory this should blow your mind,” I whispered as I positioned myself over his cock.
“Promise me you’ll pick up the pieces.”
“I promise,” I said, dropping down just an inch. At that moment I would have promised him anything, from my favorite set of crystals to my soul.
I slowly sat the rest of the way until he was buried as deep inside me as he could go. The hot flesh of his cock burned right through me, sending a shiver up my spine and over my scalp. Every cell in my body was focused on him and how he made me feel so sexy and so hungry for more.
“Oh god,” Logan groaned as he settled his hands in the dips of my waist. “You’re so tight, so tight and wet, like you were made just for me.”
I couldn’t answer so instead I stared into his eyes. Having Logan inside me was the most beautiful sensation I’d ever experienced. I wanted to tell him but words escaped me. I began a steady rhythm, part moving upward and part rocking forward on him. He slid his hands to my butt and held me, supporting my rhythm, murmuring approvingly.
My breathing got shallow and my head became almost too heavy to hold up. But I wanted to look at Logan’s eyes when he came and I wanted him to look into my eyes as I came, so I mustered my strength and pressed my forehead to his.
He let go of my butt and cupped my swinging breasts. “Keep fucking me like that, Brooke, don’t stop, keep fucking me, I like you fucking me, fuck me more.”
My hips were alive, this is what they had been designed for. I picked up the pace as the tightness of a growing orgasm twisted my insides. My breaths were jagged, my skin damp with perspiration. I was feverish for more friction and pressure and I accelerated more, ignoring the creaking of the bedsprings and the rattling of the headboard.
He rolled my nipples, tugging them long and taut, tweaking and pulling. The edgy, nipping sensation tipped me over the precipice. Staring into his eyes, totally unblinking, I climbed the last few seconds to the point of no return. Every nerve in my pussy filled to the max until I reached a crescendo and came hard, fast and breathlessly, moaning deep in my belly, squeezing him tight and pulsing in a barrage of contractions, gripping his cock. My hands held on to his face like it was the edge of a cliff. “Logan. Oh god, Logan,” I whimpered on to his lips. My hips continued to jerk against him, repeatedly crushing my clit against his pubic bone. Another spasm zigzagged up my spine and ended in my teeth. I was fucking him so hard. His body was perfectly still and I was riding him like a rodeo champion. Taking my pleasure from his beautiful solid body in a way I never had before. It was liberating, overwhelmingly fulfilling and I was letting him witness every tiny fraction of my climax—there were no barriers, no walls—he was seeing me experience my most basic pleasure.
“Take what you need from me, sweetie,” he said, releasing my breasts and trapping my face in his hands the same way I was holding his. “I’m all yours.”
I carried on thrusting as the last pulses of exquisite sensation tore from my body and finally slowed. My spine sagged, my heart was trying to burst from my chest.
His hips jerked and I felt his cock twitch inside me. So thick, so engorged.
“What did you mean?” I asked, my lips a hairsbreadth from his. “In the cafe, when you said don’t fight it?”
His eyes held my steady focus as he slid his hands to my butt again. “Exactly that, don’t fight it.”
“Don’t fight what?” I dropped my hands to his shoulders as his palms urged me to start rocking again.
“Ahh, fuck, that’s nice,” he said. “Especially after I’ve just watched you orgasm so spectacularly.”
“Logan, don’t fight what?” I pulled back to look at his face contorting with pleasure as I resumed my fast, wild hip rolls.
“Don’t fight falling in love.” He took complete control of my movements, lifting me up and ramming me down as if I were a light little thing. His cock turned to steel and he impaled me over and over. “I’m…not…” he panted. “I’m not going to fight something that feels so right.” His head tipped back on the headboard and the cords in his neck jutted. His eyes squeezed shut and his jaw tensed so tight I feared for his teeth.
Then he lifted his head and opened his eyes. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Brooke.”
With a shuddering final upward blast of his hips and a slamming down of my body he erupted high inside me. I got to see right to his beautiful core, to the very bottom of his soul.
And I saw that he was, indeed, in love with me.
Chapter Ten
The plane ride back the next morning was uneventful. Though the way Logan kept looking at me and leaning over and kissing my neck, it made me think he was right, we would have made our entry into the mile-high club if Brick hadn’t been there chattering about the coming match against the New
York Islanders.
Clifford dropped me back at Giselle’s apartment, which was en route to the ice arena. The team’s coaches had planned an afternoon of hard practice and Brick and Logan were expected there within the hour.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Logan said just before I stepped out of the limo. “I’ll get a ticket sent over and have you escorted to the players’ quarters after the game.”
“Do you think I could I have two? My roommate might come, it will be better than sitting alone.”
“Sure thing, sweetie.” He pressed a lingering kiss to my lips. “You can have as many as you want.”
Clifford helped me with my case and as I put my key in the door to Giselle’s flat, I licked Logan’s lingering taste off my bottom lip. I was in love, there were no two ways about it. Without him at my side I felt empty. We’d spent the whole week together, spent every second we could worshiping each other’s bodies. He was my destiny, the yang to my yin, the north to my south, the night to my day, and tomorrow evening stretched into the distance like a light-year.
It was the last thing I’d planned for myself, to fall in love. My plan had been to get my head down and work, study and make a career for myself. But with the complication of a man around, dates and sex, who knew how much I’d be able to concentrate. Logan had more than proved he was a delightful distraction to studying. I’d hardly gotten anything done I’d planned to.
But I wasn’t going to complain. The fluttery feeling in my chest, the clenching of my stomach and the tingling of my skin combined into the most delicious, delirious state to be in. I just regretted I hadn’t whispered those three words back to Logan last night. But I reckoned he knew how I felt, he must have been able to see the love brimming in my eyes, heard it in my moans of satisfaction and felt it in every single one of my caresses.
* * * * *
Giselle and I sat two rows up from the boards. We were close to the action and I was glad, I didn’t want to miss a thing. I’d slipped an earpiece into my right ear and tuned into the sports channel so I could hear the commentary. I wanted to try to understand the game as best I could. In gloved hands I clutched the stubs of our tickets, which had arrived with two dozen red roses within an hour of my arrival back in Orlando.