by Mia Carter
“You’re here!”
Everything else in my brain has fled. All I have left are those two words and my shock and my deep regret that I ever thought that leaving him was an answer to anything. Without another word, I fling myself into his waiting arms.
He catches me.
Warm arms embrace me, and I sob, my emotions cresting like a wave. It’s too much. I can’t stop the tide. Logan smells like rain and pine and whatever it is that’s uniquely him. He smells right, feels so good in my arms, the way he holds me. His big hands wrap around me, cradling me close as I all but burrow into his sweatshirt, completely overwhelmed. One of his hands comes up, cupping the back of my head, fingers threading through my probably-definitely-greasy hair.
Oh God, what am I doing?
I pull back from him, ducking my head and hastily wiping my eyes on the sleeve of my pajama shirt.
It’s only then, when I’m looking down—it’s just too intense, looking in his eyes, and I’m too much, again, emotions spilling all over the place—that I see there’s a substantial pile of boxes beside him.
“Can I come in?” he asks, quietly.
“I…sure,” I say, although I’m still trying to read what’s on the side of the boxes. “What are you—”
He steps back and picks up the box on the top of the pile. It’s a bit wet, and as soon as he hoists it up into his arms, I can read what’s on the one beneath it.
And when I understand, fully understand, my gaze snaps back to his.
“You brought me a computer?”
Logan huffs a laugh. “I said I would, right?”
“Oh,” I say, and I step back, allowing him entry—shit, my place is a mess.
“It’s not usually this messy in here,” I say, hastily picking a pile of sketchbooks, junk mail, and who knows what else from the coffee table as he walks past me and over to my workspace. “I just got back—”
“Chloe, it’s fine,” Logan says. He sets the box down next to my old, fried machine and straightens up to his full height. “Really. It looks like a human being lives here.”
“It looks like a depressed raccoon lives here,” I mutter back and set the pile of whatever the hell is in my hands back down on a different corner of the coffee table. “Logan, you seriously didn’t have to do this.”
“I made you a promise,” he says. “I had to keep it.”
God, he looks so good. It feels unreal, like a cruel dream, to see him in my space like this. I realize just how I left him, and shame overtakes me again. Then, I realize that I am still bra-less and in my pajamas, and I cross my arms over my chest and turn away.
“I’m sorry about how I—”
“Let me just get all of this in first, okay?” His words are gentle, but I can tell there’s emotion behind them. Words he wants to say, questions he wants to ask. But this is my grand gesture. This is his version of “In Your Eyes,” outside my window.
I nod. “Okay.”
He smiles at me. And on his way back to the door, he comes close again, and without even thinking, my body yearns toward his. His eyes… I could get lost in them, Peter Gabriel soundtrack or no.
The brush of his mouth on my cheek makes my toes curl. I have to sit down on my couch just to recover.
Logan brings the rest of the boxes in and shuts the door behind him. We work in tandem, clearing off the surface of my desk, moving my tablet and other sketchbooks, returning some forgotten mugs to the kitchen where I hand-wash them, just to give myself something to do other than make another blubbering mess of things. The anticipation is too much, but…
He’s here.
I left, but he still fulfilled his promise.
As he begins to set the new machine up, I head over to my fireplace and crouch down in front of it. This had been one of the things that had drawn me to this place, the real brick fireplace. My hands shake a little as I arrange the kindling and set the fire, but soon enough, warmth begins to fill the living room. With my back to the flames, I can watch Logan work.
And I can’t believe it never occurred to me before now how sexy it can be to have an insanely handsome man do something he’s clearly competent at. Logan has unearthed a pair of glasses from the pocket of his sweatshirt, switching him from “Hot Nerdy CEO” to “Hot Nerdy Professor” and I honestly don’t know which one is worse for my poor suffering libido.
Both? Both is good.
Since when is putting together a computer foreplay?
Stop that, I think to myself. You still don’t know the truth.
And I need to.
He’s still tinkering inside the computer tower when I clear my throat, my fear of ruining the moment overcome by my agitated uncertainty. It has to be now.
“I saw a photo of a baby on your phone.”
I speak the words quietly. But it’s clearly loud enough for him to hear, because he stills and glances up at me, reaching up to adjust his glasses a little on the bridge of his nose.
“I shouldn’t have looked. I know it was a violation of your privacy,” I say, shifting on the rug, tucking my feet underneath me. “I thought it was a message about work, and I could tell you when you were in the shower…”
“But you thought…” He frowns slightly, not caught, but confused. “What did you think?”
“I thought it was yours,” I whisper. I’m so embarrassed to admit it. What the hell had I been thinking? I could’ve just avoided all of this by staying and speaking to him. Asking him for myself. But I’d wanted to run and hardly needed the excuse.
I don’t want to run now.
At this, he straightens up further. “It’s not.”
“I realized that there probably was a reasonable explanation for it somewhere over British Columbia, yes,” I say, swallowing my pride. “But it wasn’t even about that. I was so afraid, the things I felt for you, I—”
“Tell me,” he says. Behind the glass and the neat, dark-rimmed frames, he looks at me like a curious professor, encouraging a student to participate.
I shake my head.
“Chloe,” Logan says, rising from the desk and taking a few careful steps toward me. “Tell me. I need to hear you say it.”
Tears are rolling down my cheeks now. I shake my head again, but just as I resolve to keep my emotions in check, they go and pop out all over the place like a game of whack-a-mole that I can’t keep up with. Logan is walking closer, and his eyes are on me, and he’s in my apartment, he’s here, I can’t run away from him or myself or the truth of this—
“It’s not your child. That wasn’t your wife, or your girlfriend, or—”
“It’s not my child. She isn’t my wife,” Logan says, with an intensity in his eyes, a passion that strikes me deeper than my skin. My whole body responds in a way I can’t control. “I’m not married. But you could’ve asked me that yourself. So why did you run?”
“I wanted to leave you,” I say. “Before you left me. Because this wasn’t something that I could explain. So I left. Because I couldn’t…”
My voice breaks off, a shameful, overemotional sob. I half expect him to flee, even now. But he doesn’t.
Logan is close enough now to crouch down in front of me. He does. I want to turn away from him, from the handsomeness of his face, the breadth and strength of his body, everything that still, even now, makes me ache. But he tucks a finger under my chin, a soft, tender pressure, and I cannot look away.
“I was afraid, too,” he says gently. “When I woke and you were in my arms, I saw you in the morning light, and I thought something special brought you to me. My mistake, or your bravery.”
“I wasn’t brave,” I say, but Logan smiles and shakes his head.
“You were. You are.”
The warmth in his eyes spreads to me. I can feel it, deep in my bones, like a familiar embrace in an heirloom quilt. I don’t understand this feeling, but for once I’m not questioning it. If there’s anyone in the world who has a chance at making me feel like I’m actually wanted, like I’m wo
rth something, worth flying across the world to find, it’s this man.
“I don’t feel brave,” I whisper. “But I want to.”
Logan’s expressive, kissable mouth tilts into a soft smile. “Is there anything else you want?”
I laugh and shake my head. “Plenty of things.”
“Such as?”
Oh no, he can’t do this. It isn’t fair. I’m not hydrated enough for this.
“I mean, I have a few ideas,” I say. “Just a sort of casual list I’ve been working on. Very informal.”
He arches an eyebrow at me, still smiling. When it’s clear he won’t push me, I gather my courage.
“I want to take you out to pizza,” I say. The vulnerability shakes me, but I don’t falter.
He looks surprised, but is still smiling.
“I want to pretend like we’re normal people,” I explain, “who met in a normal way, and started hanging out and decided we liked each other and—”
“You want to go on a date?” he asks, earnestly, “with me?”
“Yes,” I say. “I really do want that.”
He takes my hand in his larger one, kisses the back of it, then turns it over, pressing a kiss to my wrist, right over my fluttering pulse.
“I want to do that,” he murmurs. “I want to take you on a date so hard.”
I laugh out loud at this. He smiles and gently pulls my hand closer. Another kiss follows, and another.
“I want that,” I sigh. “Logan.”
“What else do you want?” he asks. “Tell me. I want to give it to you.”
There’s a fluttering in my belly, some kind of mingled disbelief and joy and unbelievable hope, that grows and fills me. I reach for him with my free hand, find his arm, and hold it.
“I want you to kiss me again.”
At this, he kisses me on my arm.
“Like this?”
I laugh, shakily and oh so happily. I feel like my veins are filled with champagne, the good stuff, the kind that fizzes and tastes like fireworks feel. “Sure.”
“But other kinds of kisses?” he asks. “You want those, too? Because I want more of those with you.”
“Yeah.” I lick my lips, pierced by his gaze, expectant, eager, so achingly turned on by the nearness and by his gentle touch I don’t even have the words to explain it. “I want you.”
“I’m right here,” he starts to say, but the teasing is just unbearable, and I suddenly feel like I don’t have any more time to waste.
“Kiss me,” I say.
His quick glance down at my mouth is the only warning I get before he claims the kiss that’s been waiting there ever since I opened the door.
On a soft eager moan—his or mine or something that exists between us in this moment alone—he leans into me. One arm extended, hand flat on the floor, the other around my body as he lowers me down before the crackling flames. His free hand rucks up my pajama top, and I urge him on. Inside, I feel like one of the logs on the fire, like I’m combustible, licked by flames and eager to burn at his touch. His palm finds my skin, and I gasp at the simplest of caresses.
Suddenly, a lightness fills me, and it’s like I can finally take a breath for the first time in hours. The bands constricting me are gone. The fear retreats, beaten back into oblivion. I don’t have to be afraid, not now, not of this.
I don’t have to be afraid of what I feel, because I know he feels it, too.
And there, on the rug, in the middle of my cluttered apartment, in front of a blaze that pales in comparison to the desire I feel for him, Logan Weiss finally, finally is mine.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Logan
The first moment of contact: bliss.
There’s a feeling of rightness, of reconnection, that surges through me, alongside my growing arousal. I can’t pretend to understand it, but I don’t really want to. When her body melts against mine and she yields, all tension leaving her trembling body at last, my primal hindbrain practically growls in pleasure.
Mine, all mine.
I vow to myself that I’ll make her tremble for other reasons before the night is through. After all of this, we have all the time in the world. I don’t care that her apartment is a little messy, or that her computer isn’t all put together, or that she’s wearing mismatched pajamas.
“Please don’t leave me,” I say, sealing my words with wet, eager kisses all along her jawline and down her neck. “Will you stay with me, Chloe? Will you let me have you?”
“Yes,” is her near-instantaneous response. Her hands tug at my hair, knocking my glasses askew with the clumsy force of her need. “Yes, please, please, I want that, I want that.”
I grin and pull my glasses off, fumbling them up onto the coffee table and so very glad I don’t need them to see the flush that rises on her skin. The urge inside of me, everything I’d repressed and tried to control the whole time she’d been in my world, is now fully formed and desperate. I want to mark her, to claim her, to show her that there will never be a reason for her to run away or doubt how I feel. She moans against me as my teeth scrape across her skin.
I can’t believe I almost lost this, I think. My hands search her body, almost of their own accord. I feel so lucky.
There’s so much we need to talk about, but conversation can wait. I need her now. And the way she’s moving beneath me, the way she widens her legs so I can crouch between them, makes me feel like we’re on the same resonant frequency.
These clothes have got to go.
Last time, it had been like Christmas morning. Watching her unwrap herself like a gift, all for me. It had been heightened, different. Back then, we’d been so caught up in the heady rush of it all, we hadn’t stopped to be honest with ourselves about what it could mean beyond that singular moment.
This is real. Messy and meaningful. Awkward and sweet and wonderful.
I tug at the waistband of her pajama bottoms just as she reaches for the zipper of my hoodie. We laugh as our hands collide, then negotiate around each other. We kiss again, and I have to push up off of my hand, shaking my wrist out to keep it from bending weird as she grips me on my shoulders and drags me down. The hand hits the edge of her coffee table, and our kiss-laugh-tumble turns into a muffled curse. I remain persistent, though. I need this grounding pleasure, I need her, too. My clothed hips settle between her legs, and I grind against her. There’s way too much fabric in the way. I go to her waistband again, but, realizing that I have to get out from between her legs so she can remove the bottoms, we scramble around, trying to make it all work.
And somehow get distracted on the way, holding each other close as we kneel before the fire. Lazy kisses, eager touches. Our passion ebbs and flows, first urgent and needy, then slow and soft. But, after a few minutes like this, I know we need to take this to a more comfortable location.
“Can I take you to bed?” I ask. I’m pretty sure that’s where we’re heading, but it’s nice to be totally upfront about it. It’s nice to know.
Chloe blushes, but she smiles, eyes downcast, and nods. “Yes. I’d like that.”
“And after?” I say, but the words fail me. Lit by firelight, her skin is soft and sweet, as sweet as she tastes, and her eyes, amber-gold and yearning. “After. Can I stay?”
She nods. Her “yes” is as soft as a whisper.
So I do.
Night falls. I’m on her bed, and our clothing is gone, and she’s crawled her way on top of me, straddling my thighs and working her hands on my cock as she watches me with something more than desire in her eyes. I can’t keep my mouth shut. I just want to tell her how good she is, how amazing, how beautiful, how wonderful. I want to say it all until she believes it, or at least, until she gifts me with the sweet, snug, perfection of her body.
Then, she does.
Chloe, rising up above me, holding me with one hand as she positions my cock at her entrance, might be my new favorite sight. The whole room is set in chiaroscuro, muted shadows and shapes, feelings, emotions I d
on’t yet have the ability to put into words. She sinks down on me and robs me of speech completely.
It’s so good.
It’s good because it’s real, feeling her walls flutter around me, my own climax chasing hers by moments. Chloe lies atop my chest, and I catch my breath, bearing her slight weight easily.
There’s a smile on my face.
A moment of perfection, quiet bliss. It’s so good. She’s so good. For me.
“I love you,” I say.
Chloe stills, and then looks up at me. I can’t see her features in the darkness, but I can feel her still-racing heart.
“I think I love you, too,” she answers.
…
“Did you ever have a dog?” Chloe asks me, her voice a little sleepy as she rests her head against my shoulder. I have no idea what time it is, and honestly, I don’t care. We’ve kissed our way to the bathroom, cleaned up, made our way back to Chloe’s bed, and now she’s curled against me like a vine.
“Mm?”
“Growing up,” she clarifies. “I want to know everything about you, is that weird? I want to ask you all of the questions normal people ask when they’re dating.”
I laugh softly. My right arm, tucked around her body, presses her close enough that I can just tilt my head and kiss the top of her messy hair.
“No,” I say. “But we did have a cat. A stray. Just showed up one day and wouldn’t leave. I took a shine to her after a while.”
She laughs softly. “I can’t imagine you as a cat person.”
“I wasn’t.” The stray was a feral black thing, with a yowl bigger than it was and a tail that had been bent to one side. “It had green eyes, and I felt sorry for it. I would put out a bit of food and it would come back. What about you?”
“Just goldfish,” she answers, and gives a sleepy yawn. “I think my mom swapped them out when they died. One had a spot on the fin, and then the next day it didn’t.”
I make a noise of acknowledgment and continue petting her side, just because I can.