Wrecked Book 2

by Hanna, Rachel

  With a sigh, I turned around and went back down the stairs.

  I answered the door without checking the peep hole and was more than a little surprised at who I found at the other end.

  “Logan,” I said, wide eyed. “What are you doing here?”

  His hair was hanging free around his face tonight, and his shirt was tight against his chest. His stormy blue eyes found mine and he said, “I needed to talk to you.”

  Folding my arms across my chest, I told him, “I don’t really think there’s anything to talk about, do you?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, clearly nervous. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says sounding truly contrite.

  But I didn’t really buy it and I wasn’t not in the mood to start another fight with him. So with a loud sigh, I said, “It’s late Logan. I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow and I’d like to get some sleep tonight.”

  “It’s only ten,” he countered, and I could hear that pleading in his voice again.

  I should just tell him that this—whatever it was—was over and we were done, and that the last thing I needed was more drama in my life. Then slam the door in his face and be done with him forever. I’d have my date with Derek the next day and everything would be fine.

  Except that Derek was the farthest thing from my mind. All I could see was the stormy weather in Logan’s eyes. It used to be that I could find the calm of the storm swirling in their depths, but it seemed like tonight there was no peace.

  So against my better judgment, I opened the door wider and gestured him inside. “Alright,” I said carefully. “We can talk. Just talk.”

  He nodded silently.

  I walked towards the living room with Logan following me, but when I saw the television on, I remembered that my roommates were currently occupying the room. I debated talking with him in the kitchen, but I didn’t want Kass to walk in on us.

  Seeing us together on the same night that I told her I had a date with her brother didn’t really sound like a good thing to me, so I made an executive decision.

  “Come on,” I told him, motioning over my shoulder for him to follow me. “We’ll talk in my room.”

  He didn’t say anything, and maybe it was just me, but I could feel the tension rev up a notch and wondered if this wasn’t a really bad idea.

  When we got to my room, the tension got thicker. It was the first time I’d had a boy in this room before. If I wanted to study, it was downstairs or at the library. If I was hanging out with friends, we did so elsewhere. Even my female friends didn’t spend a lot of time in my room, other than Kass occasionally.

  It felt weird to have Logan here now, a little embarrassing maybe, like seeing my private room gave him the chance to judge me too easily.

  I watched him as he looked around at the posters on the walls and the baubles and knickknacks that filled the shelves. If he thought anything bad about them or somehow judged me for how the room looked, he didn’t say anything.

  “What did you need to talk about?” I asked him finally.

  He took a deep breath before beginning. “Every time I think we’re making progress, we run into some kind of setback. You get angry or I get angry or we get interrupted and we lose the moment. But… I want you to know that I want this to work between us.”

  I frowned. How could I explain to him that things couldn’t work between us? That we were just bad news for one another. “I know you do,” I finally said. “But I just don’t think they can…”

  Sighing, he dropped down onto the edge of my bed, shaking his head. “I know why you say that, why you think that this is just a bad idea. I know exactly how I come off to people, but I want you to know that isn’t me. I’m not just some bad boy jerk… I don’t want to be that guy.”

  I bit my lip, resisting the urge to go to him. I knew that he thought I was staying away from him because he was trouble and bad news and he’d been suspended and I’d seen him fighting and any number of other things—but there was something else that had me questioning whether or not this was a good idea and it was the thing that really was the deciding factor.

  “Why don’t you want to touch me?” I asked quietly.

  He looked up at me in surprise. “What? Why would you think…?”

  I shook my head. “You seem like you want to kiss me, you even said you wanted to sleep with me… but you just… you just don’t seem to want to put your hands on me at all. Do you just… not want my body?”

  I never thought that that would be the reason that I would hit a rocky patch with a guy.

  His surprise morphed slightly, and I could tell that this was something that was complicated for him. Maybe even dangerous territory. “I do want to touch you,” he said, voice low and serious. “Very much.” His eyes did a once over of my body before heading back to my face. They flashed with desire. “But… but I come from a family that wasn’t so good with their hands. My father…” He sucked in a sharp breath, closing his eyes briefly as he composed himself. “Well, he was dangerous. Violent. You never knew when it was coming, but you always knew it was coming. Something would set him off and he’d put his hands on me—or my mom—and that was it. He’d hit until his knuckles bled.”

  My hand went to my heart, clutching tightly at my shirt. “Oh my god,” I murmured, moving to sit beside him.

  “I don’t talk about it. I’ve spent my life trying to convince myself that I’m not him, that I won’t make the same mistakes he did, but…” He shook his head. His bright eyes looked up at me, searching me out. He studied my face, fascinated with the way I looked right back at him.

  “I don’t really know what it was, but the first time I saw you, I knew you were different,” he said. “And I knew that I didn’t have a chance. But then we kept ending up at the same places. First at Mason’s, then at the defense class. It felt like three times, completely coincidental, couldn’t be an accident, you know? It had to mean something. It had to mean I had a chance with you.”

  He gave a stark laugh.

  “But I messed it all up,” he said, his voice conveying his distress as he let his head fall into his hands. “The first thing you even saw of me was violence, and here I want you to believe that I’m not… that I’m not like that.”

  Sympathy swelled within me. I remembered that first time we met, and he was right. It was a rowdy moment where he’d been fighting with a friend of his (who was no longer his friend, as it turned out). They’d been arguing over his suspension, the rumors were rampant these days, and Logan had defended himself accordingly.

  But that wasn’t how it had come off to me. All I had seen was another stupid bad boy who liked to fight, drink, and sleep around. All I saw was the type of boy I was supposed to be avoiding.

  Except that now I knew I had been wrong. He’d fallen on top of me, but it had been to catch me, to make sure I’d been alright. And it had been the only time he’d put his hands on me.

  Offering him a small smile, I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. “I do believe you’re not like that,” I told him, keeping my voice small and soft.

  It took a moment before my words began to really sink in. When they did, he lifted his head from his hands and looked over at me. The expression on his face was filled with awe and wonder.

  “How can you?”

  “How can I not when everything you do tells me that the last thing you want to do is hurt me.” Moving my hand from his shoulder, I trailed it down his arm to his hand. Taking it in mine, I pulled it to me, placing it over my heart. “Mason told me why you got suspended,” I told him, holding his hand tightly and staring into his eyes. “I know what you did for that girl and I know, have always known, that you would never hurt me.”

  For a moment, we just gazed at each other. His expression was awash with emotion. Everything from relief to wonder to… desire. His eyes darted down to my lips and when he leaned forward, I didn’t stop him from pressing his mouth over mine.

  We were soft and careful, both not quite su
re where we stood with the other, but it felt right and we didn’t stop. Slowly, heat began to build between us. His hands, though shaky and still hesitant, found their way to my waist. His fingers found skin beneath the hem of my shirt and I sucked in a sharp breath.

  When his hands began to move upwards again, they took the shirt with them. His eyes met mine for a moment, and I nodded.

  He pulled my shirt off, over my head, and I let him. His stormy grey eyes raked over my body, taking in the curvy features that I hadn’t shown anyone in a long time. For a long moment he just stared at me, taking me in, but then his hands reached out. They were trembling as they reached my waist, skin hot against mine, and traveled around my ribcage to my back. I heard the snap of my bra clip and felt it loosen.

  This was farther than I had let anyone go before. Some part of me, a voice in the back of my mind, told me that this was a mistake, a bad idea, and that I needed to stop now before we did something that I could never take back.

  But it was a distant voice and with the rest of my body craving his touch, it was impossible to listen to.

  My heart beat hard and fast in my chest, almost hurting with how gentle he was being.

  Slowly, his hands moved up to my shoulders, slipping the straps of my bra down over my arms. I took in a shaky breath, waiting for some reaction, some indication that this was all okay, that I was okay.

  After a moment, he whispered in a low, husky voice, “You’re beautiful, Addy… Are you sure?”

  It only took me a moment to respond. Reaching out, I took his right hand in my left and placed it carefully on my chest. “Yes,” I murmured, shaky, but sure that this moment was right.

  That encouragement was enough. He nodded his head and lifted his own shirt off. His muscled chest was beautiful, as I’d suspected it would be, but it was also covered with tattoos. It was a work of art, a patchwork of ideas inked into skin.

  I had only one tattoo myself, something special that was meant to remind me of who I had been, what I had lost, and what I could never be again, but this… His body was a canvas, touched by a painter’s delicate hands. I knew for a fact that those smooth lines that drew the tribal lines of a tempest had been put on carefully, deliberately, and that they had hurt like hell. Each and every one of them.

  And there were a lot.

  Tentatively, I reached out to touch them, trailing my fingers along the lines. That’s when I realized it. They weren’t just tattoos, they were scars.

  Frowning, I looked up at him. I tried to ask him what these were and if all of the tattoos on his body were scars, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t say anything.

  Sensing that, he placed his large hand over mine and smiled. It was a half-hearted nervous smile. “One tattoo for every scar,” he murmured and then he leaned forward to place his lips against mine.

  The kiss was softer than the others had been, sweeter and a little sadder. It was like a question and a plea wrapped in one, asking if I could accept this answer to my unasked question. My hand traveled up his chest to his neck and wrapped up into his hair. I pulled him closer to me for a harder, deeper kiss.

  The answer was yes, yes I could.

  The rest of our clothing disappeared quickly. It was scattered across my bedroom floor and the only item we took the time to put on was a condom.

  Carefully, he lay me down on my bed, my back pressing into the mattress as he held himself up on his forearms, poised above me.

  I could feel the heat of his body, sense the tight strain of his muscles, and all but hear the pounding of his heart deep in his chest.

  Slowly, he eased himself closer to me. “Are you ready?” he murmured, voice warm and quiet in my ear.

  I nodded.

  He eased himself inside of me, and it hurt more than I expected. Although I knew the idea behind this and knew that girls often experienced pain the first time, I had never really thought about what it would feel like.

  I never would have guessed it would feel like being stretched to the point of ripping apart. When he was fully inside me, he stopped moving altogether. He just stayed above me, careful and silent, muscles taut. He placed gentle kisses all over my face and shoulders, murmuring sweet things that I wasn’t really listening to.

  For a full minute, all I wanted was to stop and never try this again, but then the pain eased and I felt something else. A tendril of pleasure. Uncertainly, I shifted my hips.

  Above me, Logan groaned, letting his head fall down between my neck and shoulders.

  So I tried it again.

  He sucked in a sharp breath and through gritted teeth said, “Addy, please, don’t. If you keep moving like that, I—” He took another deep breath. “I won’t be able to stay still.”

  As the feeling of pain all but disappeared, I decided that him staying still was the last thing I wanted, so I pushed my hips up towards him and said, “So don’t.”

  It took him maybe three full seconds of looking into my eyes, checking to be sure, before he took the hint and began to move. I found that the moving hurt a little, but the more he did it, the less it hurt and the more it felt good.

  Soon, it only felt good.

  Our bodies pressed together as he pushed into me time and again. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing, so I let it ride on instinct. My hands grabbed at his shoulders and hair, pulling him as close to me as I could, so that the heat from his body wrapped around me.

  We kissed sometimes on the lips, sometimes just wherever our lips found exposed skin.

  “Addy,” he murmured in my ear, his voice low and husky. “Please, Addy.”

  His movements became quicker, more erratic. His breathing was labored and when my hand found its way to his chest just above his heart, I could feel it beating like a jackrabbit.

  I didn’t know what he was pleading with me for, but knew that I wanted him to have it. So I pulled him close to me so that our bodies were pressed together and whispered into his ear, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  Moments later he pushed into me one more time and I heard a growl rumble through his chest. He collapsed next to me a moment later, slipping out of me. We were both sweaty and breathless, and I couldn’t stop smiling. He pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me and before I could even question it, or anything else, I fell asleep in his arms.

  I woke up hours later. It was early morning, the sun just barely going up. I found myself sore and a little achy, but feeling good. Happy even. The problems that had been plaguing and tormenting me lately seemed to have vanished—or at least been pushed aside for now.

  The world seemed manageable and as I rolled over onto my side, I realized why.

  Logan was asleep, looking peaceful and calm in a way that I’d never seen him before. He was laying on his chest, his back exposed to me. It too was covered with tattoos, each one a mark of a scar that had been given to him.

  I could only guess from his father.

  I reached out, trailing over the lines with a feather soft touch so as not to wake him. A small smile crossed my lips. The secrets he’d shared with me last night had made me look at him in a new light. He was damaged, sure, and he still had that wild streak through him that would likely never go away.

  But he wasn’t just a bad boy anymore. He was a man with a dark past that he was trying desperately to escape from.

  We had more in common than either of us could have guessed.

  Slipping carefully out of bed, managing not to wake him, I slipped on one of my oversized grey sleep shirts and headed downstairs to the kitchen. I was starving and toyed with the idea of making breakfast for both me and Logan. Maybe even bring it to him in bed…

  I was grinning like an idiot when I made it to the bottom of the stairs and turned towards the kitchen. Before I got there, however, there was a knock at the door.

  I frowned, glancing at my watch. It was just past six in the morning. Who would be stopping by this early?

  Changing direction, I moved to the front door instead, knowing for a fact
that the rest of the house was still asleep. I gripped the doorknob and opened the door, and then froze.

  My heart stopped for what felt like three full seconds, my breath caught somewhere in my chest.

  Standing on my porch was an attractive young woman, only eighteen years old, with long summer brown hair and dark green eyes. She was wearing a black dress that showed exactly how thin she was—too thin—and emphasized her pale skin. Her full lips were in a straight line, her expression frozen in one of seriousness and lingering pain.

  “It’s been a long time Adrianna,” she said in that soft voice that was too familiar to me.

  She can’t be here, it’s not possible.

  “Miranda.”

  THE END

  Copyright @ 2014 Rachel Hanna This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Rachel Hanna

  www.RachelHannaRomance.com