by JJ Jones
A strong hand slid across the small of my back. It startled me for a second, before I realized it must be Logan. He slid in behind me.
“Hi,” he whispered as he stepped in behind me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Shower feel good?” he asked.
“Wonderful,” I said in reply.
“I’m glad. I’m sure I could use a shower after the last few days. I probably looked pretty bad,” Logan said.
“I’m sure we both did,” I said laughing.
“So I know we’re in the shower, but I was just thinking before I joined you,” he said turning me around so we were facing each other.
“Okay,” I said standing on the tips of my toes to kiss him gently.
“I think we may have another option other than leaving the country,” Logan said.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“So, I think I might know someone that knows more about the Lone Wolf than I do. And they might know some information about how to take care of him for good. I don’t know about it, but it might be worth looking into. I mean if we could take care of the Lone Wolf, than we wouldn’t have to worry about leaving the country. We could stay here and not live in fear,” he looked down at me waiting for my response.
“I trust you, Logan,” I replied. “I want to do whatever you think is right. If you want to go see this person, that’s what I want to do. I just want to be with you wherever you go from now on. I don’t ever want to leave you.”
Logan smiled.
“Logan, I mean it,” I said feeling warm either from the heat of the shower or the moment I wasn’t sure. I continued, “Logan before I met you nothing in my life really made sense. I was going through my day to day, but it was pointless. It didn’t really mean anything. Now that I am with you my life has meaning and purpose. I know it seems fast, but it’s true. You have changed my life for the better. ” I felt embarrassed having exposed my emotions so much, so I just moved into him and kissed him hard on the mouth.
Logan pulled me in closer to him, helping my body relax. The heat from the water and coupled with his body heat was overwhelming. I pulled my lips away from him and looked him in the eyes.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?” he ask obviously confused.
“For everything,” I said feeling the emotion rising in my voice. “You didn’t even know me, and yet, you came to me and protected me like my father asked. You’ve taken care of me despite everything that’s happened. It’s been a roller coaster, yes, but you’ve been nothing but amazing.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond. I just nestled my head into his neck where it fit perfectly. He wrapped his arms around my waist and caressed my wet hair and rubbed my spine gently. We stood there letting the water run between us until I noticed my hands and feet were like prunes signaling it was time to get out.
I stepped out of the shower and Logan held out a robe for me. Of course there would be robes for us here in a suite like this, I thought to myself. It was almost comical, like a movie or something out of a JJ Jones novel, but it was real life – my real life.
“Would you like to watch a movie or something?” Logan offered.
“Yeah that sounds nice,” I perked up at the thought of snuggling on the bed and watching a movie like a normal couple. It was something we hadn’t really done – normal couple things. We hadn’t even been on what I would classify as a real date yet. Not that I blamed Logan for that – circumstances wouldn’t have allowed us to go on a date, but as a girl, I longed for things like that. So watching a movie together would we nice.
I spent a few minutes in the bathroom working with my hair and choosing something comfortable to wear while Logan scanned through some of the movies. He was calling them out to me from the bedroom for my opinion.
I noted that our opinions of movies were quite different overall, but we both agreed on comedies, so that was our middle ground. We finally found a movie that we both agreed to watch just as I finished getting ready for bed and joined him in the bedroom.
We snuggled up together on the bed and he activated the movie. Feeling Logan’s arms wrapped around me and everything we had talked about during the day, filled me with an overwhelming love for him.
I turned my face toward his and kissed him lightly on the mouth. His attention turned away from the movie and toward me. We started kissing and the movie was easily forgotten. His hands drifted around my body and soon my loose-fitting clothing had fallen to the floor.
I don’t remember what Logan had been wearing, but he must have taken it off soon after as well. I wanted to express to him everything that he meant to me, everything that I was feeling inside for him, I wanted him to feel. After all the emotion that had been shared through out the evening, it was easy to let that passion control our bodies as we made love to each other.
After we were finished, Logan reached over and pulled me tighter into his embrace. “Don’t ever leave me, Tanisha.” He said breathing heavily into the night.
“I don’t plan to,” I whispered back.
Chapter9
Morning came far too soon for us. I was perfectly content to lay in Logan’s arms forever, but we knew that we needed get moving in order to visit Logan’s contact and find a way to stop the Lone Wolf.
I rolled over and kissed Logan lightly on the nose to wake him.
“Morning,” I said pulling away to see his eyes flutter open.
“Is it morning already?” he asked groggily.
“Unfortunately, yes,” I said rolling out of bed.
He groaned and pulled the blankets up over his head jokingly as if he was going back to bed. Bears must love their sleep.
“Come on, we’ve got a big day ahead of us,” I threw a pillow where I could see his head was.
“Yeah, yeah I know,” he said from under the covers.
I walked into the bathroom to freshen-up as much as I could. I dreaded the thought of putting on my dirty clothes that I had worn here after taking a shower, but they were the only clothes I had.
There was a short small knock at the door. “Logan, someone is at the door,” I hissed to him from the bathroom. Anyone knocking on the door was sure to startle me after recent events.
“Okay, I’m sure it’s fine, but I’ll answer it. You stay in the bathroom.” He answered me.
I watched as he threw on a pair of shorts and walked out casually to answer the door. My heart started to race as he opened the door. He talked briefly with whomever was on the other side. I couldn’t hear whatever they were saying, but then he took something from them and closed the door.
“Hey look,” he held up a package, “they’ve sent us some new clothes. We won’t look so bad wearing these.”
I walked out from the bathroom to inspect what had been sent for us. It was a package of new clothes for each of us. The clothing was top of the line, very nice things. I was really impressed. I wouldn’t be out of place in the hotel anymore. I picked up the clothing and immediately checked the sizes, too – they were exactly my size. How would someone know my sizes? Whoever was helping Logan out was really accurate, and didn’t scrimp on the details either.
These people, whoever they were, seem to have connections with everyone or at least had a lot of money in order to afford clothing like what I was holding and the hotel we were staying at. Logan didn’t seem to like offering a lot of details about all this, but I had to admit that my curiosity was peaked. Clearly, Logan and my father were involved in something much bigger then I initially thought.
“Okay, darling, time to get ready, and get out of here. We’ve got a full day ahead of us,” Logan gave me a quick hug and grabbed his clothes as well to get changed.
Still a little stunned, I grabbed my things and headed back to the bathroom to get changed and ready for the day.
Not too much later, we checked out of the hotel. I started to head outside to the car, but Logan stopped me and walked me back to the elevator.
“Um,
aren’t we leaving?” I asked.
“Yes, we heading South to see Goldflake,” Logan explained.
“Goldflake? Is he a shifter like you?” I asked.
“Goldflake is a she and yes.” Logan said.
“And she knows how to stop of the Lone Wolf?” I asked.
“If anyone will know then she will,” Logan replied.
We stepped into the elevator as the doors open.
“So why are we getting in the elevator rather than getting in the car?” I asked.
“We don’t have time to drive all the way from here to there at this point. It would take too long to make that kind of drive. So we are going to fly. There is a helipad on the roof of the hotel. We are going to meet our ride up there,” Logan didn’t really wait for me to acknowledge him or for me to respond. Instead he simply put his key in the slot on the elevator panel and the elevator began moving upward. Higher then I even thought the elevator could go.
“Can you fly a helicopter to where we are going?” I asked.
“I could. I do know how to fly, but I have a friend that is a much better choice for this particular flight. He is going to help us out,” Logan replied.
“Oh,” I replied. “And who is Goldflake exactly?”
“Uh,” Logan replied, “We’re old friends.” He didn’t elaborate and didn’t seem to want to elaborate, so I didn’t push the question further. Plus, we had arrived at the top floor and stepped out of the elevator. The wind was blowing which was making it hard to hear each other.
I looked around and didn’t see anyone else on top of the building. I wondered where this pilot friend was that Logan was talking about, especially if time was so important for us.
“Is this pilot late?” I yelled out to Logan over the wind.
“I think I see him coming, right now,” Logan pointed out into the distance.
I gazed out in the direction he was pointing and saw a small bird that eventually became bigger and bigger until it landed on our building and was as big as a man – in fact it was a man or half-man and half-bird. He quickly shifted his wings away and then he was only human. Seeing something like this would have freaked me out a few weeks ago but now it seemed like the norm. I should have expected that Logan would have our pilot be a shifter, but I was still caught off guard.
As I looked closely at him, I recognized him as the pilot that had flown Logan’s plane to Mexico only a week ago. It dawned on me again, that having a shifter fly that plane as well made sense, so that no one had to die. Logan and the pilot had made it out of that crash alive. There is no way Logan would let anyone die like that.
“Snowflake!” He said with a smile on his face. I watched as the two of them exchanged greetings.
Logan turned to me, “This is Tanisha,” I stepped forward to meet our pilot.
“Hi,” I said extending my hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“I’m Todd,” he said shaking my hand. “I’m not sure we formally met last time.” He winked remembering me from our short meeting before.
I laughed.
He turned his attention back to Logan. “Are we going where I think we are headed?”
Logan nodded.
“Alright, let’s go,” Todd motioned for us to get in the helicopter. We all clamored inside the helicopter. I sat in the back, Todd and Logan in the front.
We all had headsets so we could talk to each other while we flew. It didn’t take long to fire up the helicopter and get us in the air. As we were flying over the city, he turned to Logan and said, “You always need to be the hero don’t you, Snowflake?”
I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but it filled me with dread and made my heart beat just a little bit faster knowing that that he was probably going to be putting himself in more danger before this was all over.
*
We said our goodbyes to Todd atop a helipad in a small town in Mississippi Logan told me that where we were headed to see his friend at HQ was actually in Jackson, but Todd couldn’t take us directly there.
We walked from the helipad that Todd had dropped us off at to a nearby car dealership. I walked with Logan around the dealership. There weren’t a lot of nice cars in the dealership.
“What are we looking for?” I asked quietly.
“Something with four wheels that will get us into the city. We won’t need it after we get in to the city, so we aren’t looking for much. Something cheap, but something that runs,” Logan spoke low as he looked around the place.
A salesman approached us.
“Good afternoon,” the salesman said. “How can I help you?”
“Afternoon,” Logan replied. “We are in the market for an older car. Something for our teenage son. It’s his first car, so something he can beat up a little. You know what I mean?”
The salesman smiled. “Oh I know exactly the kind of car you are looking for. Come with me, around this corner, we have some great cars for teenagers. They run great, but they’re a little rough around the edges, if you know what I mean.” He laughed a little at the end of his sentence. I was a little offended that the man did not appear to notice I was too young to have a teenage son but I guess the recent lack of sleep might have made me look older then I was.
Both Logan and I laughed with him and followed him to a row of cars that were exactly what we were looking for. They looked like they were made in the eighties and probably only had six months to a year left of life in them. I wasn’t even sure they would make it that long. But we didn’t need six months, we only needed a day.
“Perfect,” Logan said. “They told me this was the place to come.”
“Oh they did,” the salesman smiled. “Well I’m glad they did.”
“Me, too,” Logan smiled. “I’ve always been an American man myself, so let’s take that Ford right there,” he pointed to a green Ford a model I had never even heard of.
“How much are you thinking of for that one?” Logan asked.
I turned my attention away from Logan and salesman while they dickered about the price. I was sure Logan was only bartering with the price to avoid suspicion since he could clearly afford any of the cars that were there. I walked over to the car and peaked in the windows. It was definitely old. I wasn’t even sure it had power windows or locks. It probably didn’t even have air conditioning. I smiled thinking back on my first car when I’d turned sixteen.
“I have to go inside to sign some paperwork, but I’ll be back in a second with the keys,” Logan whispered in my ear.
“Okay,” I called back to him as he walked away.
“Then we’ll take it home and surprise Junior,” he yelled back to me smiling.
I suppressed a laugh as he walked inside, but it did make me think about kids. Would Logan and I ever have kids? Logan had once told me that he never wanted to have kids or a family because that would mean passing on his condition. I wondered if his opinion had changed or if it would ever change. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea, but it was hard to think I would never be a mother. Sometimes you need to make sacrifices and compromises to make a relationship work but that might be one I can not go through with.
I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, before Logan was back with the keys and we were on our way to Jackson. We drove quickly to make good time to get to the HQ, but the car didn’t drive over sixty, so we couldn’t drive too fast.
“I guess that would be one good reason to get this car for a teenager,” Logan laughed. “You would know he’d never be driving over sixty.”
We both laughed.
After awhile we finally pulled up to a small computer shop. I was confused, thinking that we would be driving to some big building in the middle of downtown, but instead this was small quaint building that seemed run down and like it was on the verge of closing at any time. After being at the amazing hotel my expectations were a little higher then they probably should have been.
But regardless, Logan seemed to know where he was going, so I followed withou
t question. He walked inside without saying anything to me, so I tried to keep up with him.
The shop was filled with computers, but not the typical computers you see in the stores today. This store was filled with old computers from decades ago. There were monitors and keyboards that looked like they belonged to some of the first computers that were invented. I wondered if maybe this computer store was some kind of an antique computer store, because people couldn’t possibly still be using these kinds of computers today.