A few days ago she would’ve been right. When this all began she really was nothing more than an escape, a risk I took to get myself some kicks, because fucking Vanni’s wife, man, that was such a freakin’ turn on. The danger, that gets me hard, but now – now things are different. Things are so fucking different.
“I care about you, Piper.”
“I never said you didn’t. But you don’t love me. You loved Reba. And now she’s back, and she needs your help…”
“And I can’t go there again, I can’t do that. Besides, when this is over she has to disappear. She has to go someplace where your fucked up family won’t find her, I can’t go with her…”
“Why not? Why can’t you go with her?”
“My life’s here now, Piper.”
“And what life is that, huh? You live alone, you hang out here at this clubhouse, risk your fucking life doing shit for my husband, for what, huh? You’re not changing the world, you’re fighting stupid fights over property and territory and women, Jesus! It’s all so pointless, Logan. And you’d really put that above finding love again?”
“Finding love…? Come on, Piper, have you heard yourself? This isn’t some freakin’ romance novel, there are no heroes here. We’re all just getting by the best way we can, with the life we’ve been given…”
“You think this is the life you’ve been given?”
“You need to stop talking, Piper. You need to shut up, right now…” I can feel an anger starting to rise from the pit of my stomach, swirling around my gut just waiting to be set free, but I’m trying to control it. I’m fucking trying. “I went through hell, do you understand? I put myself, through hell, to forget what she did to me. I wanted to become a different man, the kind of man who doesn’t need the kind of shit that only, ultimately, tears you apart…”
“You’re a coward.”
Jesus fucking Christ, I swear, she is pushing me. “I said, don’t ever call me that.”
“You’re a coward, Logan.”
I stride over to her, take hold of her wrist and slam her back against the wall, that anger now threatening to explode out of me. “Don’t do this, Piper, don’t call me that…”
“Then face up to what scares you. Face up to it. You said you went through hell, saw the kind of shit that changes a man forever, you faced all of that. Yet, you can’t face up to the fact that you might just want to fall in love again. Because you’re scared you might get hurt? Jesus, Logan, if everyone felt like that we’d all be alone.”
I shake my head, she’s wrong. My grip on her wrist tightens, my eyes burning into hers, but she is wrong.
“You really need to stop talking, Piper.”
“You really want to be alone forever, huh?”
“You know shit about me, darlin’…”
“I know I’m looking at a coward.”
Is she deliberately trying to piss me off? I slam her back against the wall again, ripping the towel away from her before I yank her naked body toward me, kissing her so hard I don’t actually give a shit whether she can breathe or not. And her fingers are clawing at my back, her nails digging into my flesh, scratching my skin, but she’s responding to that kiss, she isn’t fighting me.
I lift her up and throw her down on the bed, push her legs wide apart, and I’m in her in a heartbeat, sinking into her warmth, and she’s pulling me in, gripping me tight, Jesus! This is messed-up, it’s fucking crazy, but we’re both taking this for whatever the hell it is.
She bucks her hips, arches her back so her perfect tits point straight to heaven, and I watch as my cock slams in and out of her in a breathtaking rhythm, until I’m exploding inside of her… shit! But this was never gonna take long.
I pull her up and she straddles me, and I reach down to touch her as my own climax ends, I need to feel her come, too. She drops her head and rests her forehead against my shoulder as I take her clit between my fingers, her almost inaudible moans vibrating against my skin as she comes quietly, her beautiful body shuddering in my arms. And then she stills, it’s over. We’re done. But she stays straddling me, and I keep my arms around her. I don’t want to let her go.
“You’re right, Piper.”
She pulls back slightly and looks at me, cocking her head to one side.
“This – this scares me. You scare me. What I feel for you…”
She slowly shakes her head, and that irritates me, that she thinks she knows everything I’m feeling. She doesn’t. She knows shit.
“Whatever we have, Logan, it’s nothing more than a barrier.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Piper. Really, honey, I don’t. But let me tell you one thing, OK? I want you. I fucking want you…”
“You want me because you can’t have me. I belong to someone else and that’s fine with you, even if you don’t realize it. I belong to someone else, which means you can keep me at a safe distance, you don’t have to fall in love with me, you don’t have to have those feelings. Me being with someone else is safe for you, Logan. It’s safe. You can’t get too close, you can keep that distance…”
I rest a hand against her neck, keeping her face forward, I need to look at her. I need her eyes to stay fixed on mine, I need to look at her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Piper. You think you know it all, but you don’t.”
“You won’t let yourself be happy, Logan.”
“I want to be happy, Piper. I really want to be happy, don’t think I don’t want that, I do. But I can’t be happy with Reba, are you listening to me? I can’t do that, I can’t go back there, because she killed us the second she walked out on our life.”
“And you don’t believe in second chances?”
I shake my head. “I can’t give her that, Piper. I can’t. Because when I told you I don’t feel the same way about her anymore I wasn’t lying. That was the truth. I still care about her, I want her to be safe and happy and… but she can’t be those things with me, not now. It’s too late. I moved on, I became that different man I needed to be and even though my head’s still fucked up, seeing her again… I’m a different man now. And that man doesn’t want her anymore. That man wants you.”
She breaks the stare and climbs off of me, starts covering that crazy-sexy body of hers with jeans and a T-shirt.
“Piper…”
She keeps her back to me as she runs her fingers through her hair.
“Piper, I’m serious, I’m not spieling you shit here…”
She swings around to face me, and the look in her eyes, man, I haven’t seen that in her before. That look. I don’t have a clue how to read this one.
“You can’t have me, Logan. You do understand that, right? I’m married, to Vanni Colletti, a man who would take you down in a heartbeat if he knew what we’d done… You can’t have me…”
Her whole body sags as she says those last few words, her shoulders dropping as she leans back against the wall, turning her head away from me. And I know something’s happened here. Something’s changed, and I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, I have no fucking idea.
“We should never have started this, Logan.”
Her voice is quiet, and there’s a sadness to it, too, I’m not that much of a bastard that I can’t sense that.
“But we did, Piper. And we can’t take that back now.” I go over to her, gently guide her head around so she faces me. “We can’t take it back.”
“Then we need to forget it ever happened. Before it’s too late.”
“You can do that, can you? You can forget this never happened?”
She looks up at me, her eyes wide, and that sadness, man, it’s so evident now. “I don’t know.”
I cup her cheek and lower my mouth down until it almost touches hers. “I don’t want to, Piper. I don’t want to forget.”
“He’d kill us both, Logan.”
“I know. Baby, I know.”
“Whatever we want, we can’t have it. So we have to let it go.”
“And I’m not willing to do that.” I kiss her slowly, I actually want to taste her properly now. I want to taste her and feel her and know that what I’m feeling now, it’s real. “Everything you said was right,” I whisper, keeping my mouth close to hers as I speak. “I was scared, of letting myself feel this kinda shit again, I was fucking terrified. Before I became this man I am now I was a very different one, the kind of man who bought his girl flowers and pulled out her chair for her at dinner, I wasn’t the man you know now, Piper. And Reba, she killed him, that man who wrote love notes and left them stuck to the fridge. The hopeless romantic who watched chick flicks just because she wanted to. She killed him. And he’ll never come back, because he can’t go through what she put him through, not again. And the man I am now, I thought he couldn’t deal with that either, and yeah, I guess he shut himself off from even trying to be happy again, with someone else. But you changed that, Piper. Now, here, today, in this room you changed that. And you made me realize it’s OK to fall in love again, and if it all turns to shit… If it doesn’t work out I’ll deal with it, because I’m a very different man to the one who let a woman break me. That won’t happen again.”
“So go be happy with someone who loves you, Logan. If you don’t want Reba…”
“I want you.”
“We’re going round in fucking circles here…” She takes my hand and pulls it away from her cheek, and she walks away, over to the other side of the room, her arms crossed against her chest, she’s putting a barrier up now, between us. And then she turns to face me, and her eyes are still full of sadness, even though it’s obvious she’s trying to mask that sadness now with a harshness that isn’t really coming through. “I’m glad, that I’ve helped you realize you don’t need to be lonely anymore. I’m glad, because you deserve to be happy, everybody does…”
“And are you? Happy?”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“Are you happy, Piper?”
She looks at me, and that harshness in her eyes, it’s starting to make its presence known now. “You should go now, Logan.”
I shake my head as I stride over to her, and she doesn’t back away, she doesn’t even flinch when I slide a hand around the back of her neck and kiss her. She doesn’t do shit, she lets it happen.
“Who’s not facing up to what scares her now, huh?”
She doesn’t say anything, she can’t, say anything.
“You really think I’ve come all this way, gone through all that shit, just to walk away from you, Piper?”
“We can’t be together, Logan. We can’t…”
“You tell yourself that enough times and you’ll start to believe it, but I don’t think you want to believe it.”
She frowns slightly, but she is gonna get this, if it fucking kills me. She is gonna believe I’m serious, that I want her, I know that now, I fucking want her. And she is gonna get that, if it fucking kills me. Because, Jesus, it just might…
Fourteen
Piper
“Hey.”
I look up to see Reba standing in front of the table I’m sitting on outside the clubhouse. “Hey yourself.”
“Mind if I join you?”
I shrug and take a drag on my cigarette. “Knock yourself out.” She pulls herself up next to me and I offer her my beer. “Want a drink?”
She shakes her head. “No, thanks, I’m fine.”
A brief silence ensues as we both stare out ahead, two women with one fucked up connection.
“I’m sorry, Piper. For what happened. For what Marco did to you, but you have to believe me when I tell you, I had no idea. You know how they keep so much shit from us…”
I turn to face her, taking a long draft of beer as my eyes meet hers. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“No, I know, but…”
“What made you marry a man like that, Reba?”
“What made you marry a man like Vanni Colletti?”
Oh, she can throw them right back, she’s good. And I let the corner of my mouth edge up into a slight smile, my eyes remaining locked on hers.
“I had a good reason for becoming involved with Vanni. I needed protection. What’s your excuse?”
She breaks the stare and drops her gaze and I actually feel sorry for her now. “You didn’t love him, though. Did you? When you first met him?”
I stare straight ahead of me again, drawing deep on my cigarette before I answer her. “No. I didn’t. But I never did believe in love at first sight.” I turn my head to look at her, and she’s raised her gaze now, her eyes are back on mine.
“You love him now, though? Right?”
I narrow my eyes slightly and take another long draft of beer. “Why did you really come here, Reba? I mean, was it because you really wanted to escape that life with my fucked up family? Because, y’know, I can completely understand why you’d want to leave that prick of a husband behind. But you didn’t have to come here, did you? You didn’t have to come to the other side of the country to find help. I’m sure you had options much closer to home.” I take another swig of beer, keeping my eyes fixed on hers. “You come back for Logan, huh? All that time married to that pig of a man made you realize what you’d thrown away?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“No. It isn’t. I just thought you might want to talk, y’know? Seeing as we have so much in common.”
“Like what?”
I turn my head away from her, staring back out across the locked compound. The gates are shut, Vanni has men all around the yard, front and back, armed men. And I’m still unsure whether it’s enough to stop what I know my father is capable of; what a man like Marco Vierra is capable of. And that changes the mood, just like that.
“We’re both just trying to stay alive, Reba. That’s what.”
The silence between us hangs heavy in the air now, even though all around us there’s noise – loud chatter, laughter, the sound of bikes being revved up, there’s nothing quiet about life on this compound right now.
“I thought he might’ve forgiven me.”
My head shoots back around to look at her. Hers is still down, her hands clasped between her knees, and I feel a wave of guilt wash over me.
“But I don’t think he ever will.”
“Logan’s a good man, Reba. Deep down. Maybe if you talk to him…”
She shakes her head. “No. I blew it, Piper. He’s moved on, he’s not the same man anymore.”
“There’ll always be a part of that man somewhere inside of him.”
She finally raises her gaze, her eyes meeting mine. “You sound like you know him so well.”
“I hardly know him at all, Reba. But sometimes I can just tell. Sometimes I just ‘get’ a person.”
She chuckles quietly and drops her gaze again. “Yeah. OK.”
She’s a beautiful woman, is Reba Kane. All long dark curls, cheekbones that could cut glass, she’s stunning. And I can understand why Logan fell for her the way he did, she would’ve been just as hot when she was younger. But now there’s a weariness to her, almost as if she knows her life is about to change, in a way she’d never expected. But that’s inevitable now. She can’t change that.
“Even if Logan had wanted to give us another try, after all this time, I have to go, don’t I?” She looks up again, and that weariness just floods her beautiful face. “And I couldn’t expect him to drop everything and come with me. I’ve done enough to ruin his life as it is.”
“You didn’t ruin his life, Reba. You changed it, there’s a difference.”
“And I think he’s settled here. He seems settled, here.”
I can’t reassure her on that one because I really have no handle on what Logan Sandero is thinking or feeling no matter how much I think I might.
“Maybe a new start is what you need,” I say quietly, and she smiles, once more dropping her gaze.
“Yeah. Yeah, maybe you’re right.” She slides down from the table and heads back inside, stopping as
she reaches the clubhouse door, turning back around to face me. “I really am sorry, Piper. You didn’t deserve what they did to you. But Vanni, he’ll see that my bastard of a husband won’t hurt anyone like that ever again.”
He will, she’s right. Vanni means what he says, he does what he threatens. And then I think of me and Logan and what he’d threaten to do, to both of us, if he found out what we’d done. What we’re still doing now. What we both really want to do…
“Getting to know our new girl, huh?”
I look up to see Vanni approaching, aviator shades covering his dark eyes, that swagger he always carries on full display as he heads toward me.
“Something like that, yeah.”
He stops in front of me and lights up a cigarette, taking a drag and blowing smoke down at the ground before he raises his head, his eyes instantly locking on mine.
“When this is over, you’re gonna help Reba disappear, right? Help her start again, create a whole new life for her?”
He nods slowly, taking another drag on his cigarette. “We’re gonna help her do that, yeah.”
“So, why don’t I have to disappear, too? I mean, in a way I’m in more danger than she is, and when my father finds out that I’m still alive, because he will, find out I’m still alive – when that happens, you think he’s just gonna sit back and accept he’s been beaten? He’s gonna come for me again and again, Vanni…”
“I said we were gonna take your daddy’s men on, Piper, and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”
“Until each and every one of them is dead? Huh? Is that what we’re looking at here, ‘cause…”
“I said trust me, Piper. So just do that, darlin’, OK? And the reason why you’re not disappearing? You don’t have to. You’re my wife, and you ain’t going nowhere, baby.”
I watch him turn away and stride into the clubhouse, and all I can feel is my stomach turning, the nausea’s rising, I’m scared, for a hundred different reasons.
I’ve betrayed that man. The man who wants nothing more than to save me.
I’ve betrayed him.
My soldier.
My protector.
Protection (Death Knights MC Series Book 1) Page 15