by Kallysten
“You’re overdressed,” she said, deadpan.
Logan swallowed back a laugh. “Yeah? You gonna do something about it?”
Her lips twitched with the beginning of a smile. “Did I say I care that you’re overdressed?”
Sliding her legs to one side, she kneeled, then leaned forward. The entire movement looked like a dance. She crawled toward him on all fours, and Logan’s heart jumped in his chest. Even when she had flashed her fangs at him, even when she had growled while they fought, when her mouth had rested an inch from his neck, she hadn’t looked quite as predatory as she did now. Logan gulped. His cock twitched in the confines of his jeans, and while she kept her eyes on his face, her lips curled into a grin.
She undid the buttons of his jeans and sneaked her hand inside his boxers. He jumped at her touch, and she froze, her fingers fleeting against his cock.
“Too cold?” she asked, starting to pull back.
Logan shook his head jerkily and raised his hips to follow her retreating hand. “No, not cold, just… cooler? But I don’t mind.”
He didn’t mind at all, actually, and hissed when her hand returned, curling around his hardened cock then gently drawing it out though the hole in his boxers.
“Missed me, did you?” She grinned, pumping her hand up and down his cock, her thumb swiping the precome in that move that always made him gasp.
“Told you… told you I did,” he replied, his voice breaking halfway through.
Finally remembering he had hands, too, he wrapped his arms around her and battled with the clasp of her bra. It didn’t help at all when she leaned in closer and started mouthing his shoulder, his chest, his throat, pressing her lips everywhere she could reach and tattooing lines of desire on his skin with the tip of her tongue. With his hands and entire body trembling, he almost gave up on taking that last scrap of fabric off her, but he wanted to see her, all of her, every inch of her skin, and reassure himself again that, yes, she truly had come back to him.
When the clasp finally came undone, Logan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He almost sobbed when Olivia sat up, taking her mouth and hand off him so she could slip the bra off her arms. Losing her touch was unbearable, and he had to reach out again. His fingers followed the curve of her breasts before continuing down her body and to the apex of her legs. He missed the heat of her flesh, but it was still her, her skin just as silky, just as responsive as she sighed softly in response to his caress. When he touched between her legs, fingertips slipping over her clit and sliding lower to her opening, he had to pinch his lips tightly or risk whimpering. She was practically dripping already, and he had barely even touched her yet. Logan froze and took a deep breath, staring at her; did she want him that much?
“What’s wrong?” she asked, and for the first time he could hear hesitation in her voice.
“Nothing. I…” He swallowed hard. “God, you’re so wet.”
Her features softened again, and whatever trace of worry she’d had now faded away. “What did you expect with your little striptease?” she whispered, arching her hips to press harder into his hand.
“I don’t know. I guess I was trying to see if you still liked the view.”
Her eyelids fell to half-mast, and she ran a trailing gaze over his body. “I do.”
“If you still wanted me,” he pressed on, his voice as unsteady as his fingers, which caressed her folds with the gentlest touch.
She shivered against him, gold flames flickering in her eyes, and said huskily, “God, I do.”
Taking a deep but shaky breath, he held her gaze. He had to know if she felt the same way about him. “If you still—”
Before he could finish, her mouth descended on his, her tongue slipping inside to caress his own. At the same time, she climbed onto his lap, one hand on his shoulder to steady herself, the other still wrapped around his cock and guiding it to the entrance of her body. She was so wet that he slipped in, all the way in, right as she lowered herself onto him.
Their mouths broke apart when Logan gasped. His eyes wide in pleasure, he looked at her, at this woman, his lover, his love. He had thought he had lost her, but here she was. His chest tightened, and he breathed out her name. “Liv… I…”
She ran the fingers of one hand through his hair and smiled at him. “You what, lover?”
But he had no words yet to tell her how thankful, how happy he was that she had come back. He kissed her again, nice and slow, and hoped that she knew.
He clutched her hips tightly when she started moving, immediately finding a rhythm and angle that caused both of them to moan. She rose slowly and pushed down fast, with a wicked twist of her hips on that last inch that always made Logan’s eyes cross and his cock jerk inside her. They’d done this so many times. He had watched her dance on top of him so often, and this was just like all those other nights. And at the same time, the feel of her flesh warming at his contact and the new strength hiding in each of her movements made everything different.
Suddenly, it struck him that this was them now: different and yet the same. Maybe. If she still loved him, it would be. She hadn’t said she did yet. He didn’t want to think about how he would feel if she didn’t say it.
She would say it, wouldn’t she? She did love him, right? Wasn’t that why she had come back? But then, why hadn’t she said it?
With that sudden fear gripping his insides, Logan reversed their positions again until he was lying on top of her, supporting his weight on one elbow. He looked down at her and tried to see the love he had seen for so long in her eyes, but all he could see were flames, the fire of desire that consumed her and urged him onward.
“Harder,” she demanded, her voice only echoing what her legs, locked around his waist, and her hands, tight on his shoulders, were already saying.
He pressed deeper inside her, resting all his weight onto her until she was gasping with each thrust.
“I love you,” he breathed against her lips. “Liv, I love you so much. Do you—”
Rather than answering, she cupped the back of his head in her hand and drew his mouth to hers. Even more afraid now that she had avoided answering twice, he bucked harder against her, grinding against her clit and pushing her relentlessly toward her orgasm.
This time, she was the one who ended the kiss, arching against him and throwing her head back as she moaned aloud. The sound of her pleasure and the feel of her body contracting around his cock set him off, and he buried himself one last time inside her, pressed his face to her neck, and tried not to think about what it meant that she hadn’t told him.
After only seconds, by sheer force of habit, he pushed himself off her, rolling to lie by her side so she would be able to breathe. Only when his own breathing started slowing down did he remember: she didn’t need to breathe anymore. But even so, she was breathing, her chest heaving as fast as his own. He rested his hand above her heart. There was no thumping beneath his fingers even though his hand moved up and down along with her ragged breaths. Her heart was silent, but it was still there. Did it still belong to him?
“I love you.”
He held his breath and waited for her to reply in kind. Seconds passed. The lack of air burned his lungs, and he had to exhale. Had he been wrong?
“Even with what I am?” Olivia asked at last. Her fingers raked through his hair almost absently. “What I’ve done? Can you still—”
He didn’t let her finish and repeated the words, his voice fiercer now. “I love you.”
Again, he waited for her answer. Didn’t all lovers expect this very thing: the same words given back to them when they professed their love? Was he expecting too much?
“Do you know what my first lesson was when I woke up?” she murmured, rolling onto her side to face him. “Vamps don’t love. Can’t love. Ann kept repeating that to me, telling me how fun it would be when I killed you, because you’d still be the same and I wouldn’t. I think it’s like… a rite of passage or something. Vampires who
expect their Childer to kill humans make them kill someone they love. She said her Sire did the same to her.”
There was something in Olivia’s voice that chilled Logan to the bone and made him shiver. Something dark and dangerous, an intonation he had never heard from her when she had been human. But then, he had never heard her talk about humans dying at a vampire’s fangs in such a casual way. Another chill ran through him, raising goosebumps all over his body, and he tried not to be scared of where she was going with that train of thoughts.
“The first thing my Sire taught me,” she said with a shake of her head. “And I knew after just minutes that she was wrong. And so everything else she tried to teach me after that, it just didn’t stick. I kept telling myself, she’s wrong about not being able to love so she can be wrong about this other stuff, too. About feeding and biting and having to obey her.”
Logan’s apprehension faded away as she spoke, and with each word he was more and more certain that she was doing more than telling him how she had pulled away from her Sire. She was telling herself, too, reminding herself that, yes, she could say the words and she could mean them, too. There was no reason for her not to.
He didn’t have to wait very long.
“I love you,” she murmured, eyes clear and shining with truth that rang like a silver bell through her words. “Every bit as much as I did when I still had a pulse.”
Leaning in close, he kissed her again, and if earlier their kisses had been like a blaze, burning his mind to cinders and trailing tongues of fire down his spine, this was different. Gentle. Sweet. The kind of kisses they had shared when they had been too tired to touch each other, too exhausted to even talk, but still, always needing each other.
When they pulled apart again, lying side by side, heads tilted toward each other so that their temples just brushed together, Logan closed his eyes. He was beginning to feel a little cold, and the floor wasn’t all that comfortable, but he didn’t care. Not when Olivia was right next to him. Five nights without her, not one of them a good night of sleep.
“What now?” she asked after a little while, just as he was starting to drift toward dreams.
“I was thinking sleep,” he mumbled.
“That’s good seeing how the sun is up and I can’t go anywhere,” she said dryly.
Logan opened his eyes and, frowning, turned his head to look at her.
“But what about when night falls?” she asked, her eyes still on the ceiling.
He rolled onto his side and rested his temple against his fist. “Do you want to go anywhere?”
She turned toward him, mirroring his position. “Not particularly.”
“Then I suppose you don’t have to leave,” he said slowly, waiting to see how she would react, but she remained poker faced. He pushed on to see if he could make cracks appear in her too-complacent façade. “What you do have to do, on the other hand, is help me fix this place. You wrecked it.”
She snorted. “As I recall, you did half the damage. If not more than half.”
Logan stroked her shoulder with his fingertips. A bruise was blooming there, dark purple against her tanned skin: a bruise he had caused, and he hated that he had, even if at the time he hadn’t known he had another choice. “Only because you forced me to with your silly plan,” he muttered and leaned forward to kiss the place he had been caressing.
He expected her to argue that it hadn’t been silly, but instead, she looked around again as though assessing the damage. “It might take a while to fix it all,” she said, and he knew that light, casual tone. She only ever used it when she wanted something but was afraid of the answer he would give. It rarely took him very long to figure out what was on her mind, but this time it was even easier than usual.
“I guess it might take a bit of time, yeah. You got a problem with staying here a while?”
Her sigh was very soft, but the relief in it was all too obvious. “No problem at all, no,” she said, and although she seemed to fight back a grin, it bloomed on her face like a flower opening its bud toward the sun.
“Time is not an issue anymore, I guess,” Logan said, tongue in cheek.
“No, it’s not,” she chuckled. Her expression softened, and she pressed her face against his arm. “But then,” she whispered, “time never was an issue. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. If you still want me, I’ll do just that.”
Weaving his fingers in her hair, he pulled her face up and kissed her lightly.
“Happy anniversary,” she said right against his lips.
“I hate to break it to you, but it’s not our anniversary anymore.”
She shrugged. “I’m just a bit early for next year, that’s all. You don’t mind, do you?”
Logan laughed.
The End
About the Author:
Kallysten’s most exciting accomplishment to date was to cross a few thousand miles and an ocean to pursue (and catch!) the love of her life. She has been writing for over fifteen years, and always enjoyed sharing her stories and listening to the readers' reactions. After playing with science fiction, short stories and poetry, she is now trying her hand, heart and words at paranormal romance novels.
To see her other stories, including free short stories and sample chapters, visit Kallysten’s most exciting accomplishment to date was to cross a few thousand miles and an ocean to pursue (and catch!) the love of her life. She has been writing for almost fifteen years, and always enjoyed sharing her stories and listening to the readers' reactions. After playing with science fiction, short stories, poetry and fanfiction, she is now trying her hand, heart and words at paranormal romance novels.
To see her other ebooks, visit: http://original.kallysten.net
Other stories in the Special Enforcers series:
CheckMate
Lilia is a vampire; Vincent hunts vampires. They’ve each sworn to kill the other, and have battled many times without either of them winning. But when a spell gone wrong links them through bonds of shared blood and sex, the game stops abruptly and with no clear winner.
Trying to stay alive, they learn to guard each other's back against old and new enemies alike. The game takes a new turn as the memories of what they shared under the spell become too hard to ignore and they succumb to lust - or could it be more than that?
Carte Blanche
When a lobbyist opposed to vampires’ rights is found drained of her blood, Special Enforcer Grace Alkins investigates the woman’s connection to a local BDSM club and its vampire customers. It has been a long time since Grace played on this particular scene, but old habits return easily when she puts on the attire of Mistress Red.
On her first undercover visit at the club, however, she finds herself tricked into playing a scene with Ray, a submissive whose Master left town abruptly. The Dominant in her enjoys the opportunity – while the Special Enforcer is shocked to realize Ray is a vampire, and possibly a suspect for the murder she investigates.
Will Grace manage to keep a cool head and find the killer when every new meeting with Ray cranks up the heat a little more?
Rules & Rewards
Grace needs to leave town for a few days, but she doesn't go away without giving Ray, her submissive, clear rules to follow during her absence.
These rules prove very difficult for the vampire. Will he manage to follow them--and earn his reward--or will he disappoint his Mistress?
Baby Steps
As a Special Enforcer, Alexandra should know better than to get close to a vampire like Joseph, even if he saved her from certain death. The S.E. records name him as a likely killer, and his interest in her can't possibly mean anything good. And so when her friends introduce her to a potential human boyfriend, she ignores her feelings for Joseph and demands that he leaves her alone.
Fed up with her games, Joseph takes her to her word and leaves Cleveland, intending to put as much distance as possible between them and forget her along with his feelings for her.
Two years later,
though, when Joseph has to return to Cleveland, he still cares about Alexandra, much more than he would like. And Alexandra, single again and now a new mom to baby girl Marian, never managed to completely put Joseph out of her life and mind.
Step by step, Alexandra will offer Joseph her friendship before entrusting him with her life and her child's. But will Joseph ever trust her again with his heart?