by Tessa Adams
“Am I hurting you?” he asked, pushing up to his elbows so that he was no longer crushing her with the weight of his heavily muscled, six-and-a-half-foot frame.
“No,” she said, feeling oddly bereft. She could breathe better now, but she missed the comfort of having him surrounding her on all sides.
The thought should have alarmed her—after all, she couldn’t afford to get attached to Logan—and maybe it would later. Right now, she felt amazing. Like she could hike the entire Black Hills or fly around the world without stopping, or just lie here and bask in the afterglow with her wonderful, sensitive, incredibly talented lover.
The latter, she decided with a secret grin. She was definitely going to do the latter.
And maybe, if she was lucky, they would never have to get up.
Despite her protests and the way she clutched at his hips to keep him close, Logan slowly rolled off her. Afraid that it was over, that he would want her to leave now that they’d finally made love, she turned her head so he wouldn’t see the stupid, irrational tears she couldn’t seem to stop.
But she should have known better. He pulled her against him, throwing one of his legs over hers as he put two fingers under her chin and forced her to look at him.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded with a swift, indrawn breath at the sight of the tears on her face. “Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, unable to speak around the sudden lump in her throat.
“Then what’s wrong? Tell me. I can’t make it better if I don’t know what I did.”
“Nothing.” She finally forced the word out past her too-tight throat. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then why are you crying?” He touched a tender fingertip to her eye, brushed away a tear.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s just too much. You know? Too much pleasure, too much emotion, too much . . . I don’t know how to say it.”
He nodded, settling back on the ground and pulling her body tightly against his. “I guess it’s pretty overwhelming, losing your virginity after nearly fifty years.”
“I think it’s more that it was pretty overwhelming losing my virginity to you.” She paused, embarrassed but wanting him to know how much his care meant to her. “You were really good to me. Thank you.”
“It was no hardship, believe me.” Twisting so that he was flat on his back and she was sprawled above him, he brought her mouth down to his. “You were pretty amazing yourself.”
She all but preened at the compliment. Laying her head on his chest, she listened to the steady beat of his heart. And told herself that for now—just for the next few minutes—the future could wait.
He didn’t want to get up. The realization hit Logan right about the time his brain truly started functioning again. Which, he was the first to admit, was quite a while after he’d finally managed to roll Cecily on top of him.
She felt good there, like she belonged, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this relaxed. Even in New Mexico, the closest place he’d ever had to a home, he was always on edge. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop. How was it that lying here, with Cecily’s head pillowed on his chest and her fingers drawing small, feather-light circles around his navel, he was able to breathe? Just breathe.
By all rights, she was his enemy. If she knew who he really was, she wouldn’t get within a hundred yards of him, unless it was to plunge a dagger into his chest.
And yet it felt right to lie here like this, his arms wrapped around her, his legs tangled with hers, and a new erection rising insistently between them. God, she’d just about killed him, and already he was dying to get inside her again.
“Hey, what are you so pensive about?” she asked sleepily, her entire body wrapped around his, like she couldn’t stand the idea of letting him go. Normally, that was his cue to head for the hills, but he was already in the hills, and neither he nor his dragon were in any mood to go anywhere else.
He told himself it was because he needed her to make his plan work, but even as he made the excuse, he knew better. He wasn’t moving because cuddling with Cecily, just cuddling with her, felt better to him than sex had with any other woman.
It was a scary thought, one that he didn’t want to so much as acknowledge, let alone deal with, so he pushed it to the back of his mind. For now, he would just enjoy the afterglow, and for once let tomorrow take care of itself. Or not. There were worse things than dying after a bout of truly fantastic sex. He was just glad he hadn’t hurt her.
Cecily shivered as a light breeze blew past them, and he wiggled her around until they were both inside the sleeping bag and she was wrapped more securely in his arms.
She gave a little mew of complaint, then said, “I’m not a rag doll, you know.”
“I know,” he agreed, giving in to the urge to deliver a lingering kiss to her lips. “You’ve got too many curves for that.” He ran a hand over her lush ass to demonstrate the point. As he did, he tried to ignore how much he liked the fact that there wasn’t a part of her that he wasn’t touching.
“Yeah, well, no matter how much I exercise, I can’t seem to get rid of them.”
He jerked her back a little so he could look her fully in the face. “Why would you want to do that?” he asked, scandalized. “You look gorgeous the way you are.”
“Yeah, that’s me. A regular fashion plate.” There was an underlying bitterness to her words that was hard to ignore, but when he started to ask her what she meant, she shook her head. He frowned, not liking how easy it was for her to shut him out. He didn’t push it, though. How could he, when he had more secrets than the CIA?
In the end, he didn’t say anything and neither did she. Minutes passed, and still he felt no desire to put any distance between them. Instead, he just lay beneath her, stroking every part of her he could reach: her hair, her shoulder, the small of her back, her inner thigh. After a lifetime of harshness, he couldn’t get enough of her softness, and every part of her body seemed to hold some new mystery he wanted to explore.
In the end, though, his stomach growled, and she giggled. “I guess that’s my cue to get up, huh?” She pushed up to a sitting position, one that had her straddling his hips with the perfect heat of her sex resting right against his cock.
It took all his willpower not to grab her hips and guide her sweet pussy down over him. He was dying to be inside her again, but figured she’d probably had enough for a while. Because she was a dragon she healed quickly, but she hadn’t shifted yet. Nor had she eaten, neither of which was an optimum situation for healing. She was probably sore, especially since he hadn’t taken it easy on her at the end, despite his best intentions.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, but she wasn’t listening. Her eyes had gone all foggy and her breath broke as she rubbed herself against him.
He did groan then, and slid a finger into the soft nest of curls at the apex of her thighs. Found her clit and circled it gently with his finger.
“Logan,” she gasped, her hips rocking against his hand to increase the contact. “I need—”
“Ssh, baby. I’ll take care of you.” He pinched the small bundle of nerves between his thumb and middle finger, watching her face to figure out just how much pressure she needed. When she sucked her lower lip between her teeth to stifle a moan, he knew he had her, and he began to tap her clit softly with his index finger.
It took only a minute to bring her to the edge. And then with a twist of his wrist and the press of his palm against her sex, he took her all the way over, his eyes fastened on her beautiful face as he did so.
“God, they should bottle you,” she said a couple of minutes later as she slid off him onto the ground.
“I could return the compliment.” He held a hand out to her. “Need some help getting up?”
She laughed. “Getting up, staying up. My legs feel like Jell-O.”
“Trust me. I won’t let you fall.”
Logan’s words echoed between them as Cecily put her hand in
his huge one and let him pull her to her feet. She started to make some joke about trusting him farther than she could throw him, but the smile on his face had suddenly frozen. She wasn’t sure what was responsible for his lightning-swift change of mood, but figured it was probably her. Maybe he’d expected her to make him come, as well, and since she hadn’t . . .
Not that she wouldn’t have liked to. He was the one who had jumped to his feet as soon as the tremors had stopped rocketing through her. If he’d given her a little recovery time, she would have been happy to return the favor.
She glanced down at his cock, which was still long and hard despite everything they’d spent the past two hours doing. Her mouth watered, and for a moment she wondered what he’d do if she dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth. She wanted to taste him, to explore him, to learn him as he had learned her.
She started to reach for him, but he had already opened his backpack and pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. He tossed her the shirt before pulling on the sweats. She felt the rejection like a slap.
She felt stupid, and she really, really hated feeling like that. But she’d brought it on herself—she’d entered into this fling with Logan without figuring out what the rules were. It was no wonder she’d somehow put her foot in it. Why were relationships, even casual relationships, so difficult to figure out? If sex didn’t bring with it such incredible, unbelievable pleasure, she would understand the appeal of celibacy. No messy emotions, no awkward silences, no strange signals to figure out.
Logan went over to a cooler he’d set between two trees, pulled out a bottle of water, and held it out to her. “I’d take you out to dinner, but as you seem to be without your clothes, we’d probably get some funny looks.”
“Oh yeah.” Instead of putting on the shirt, she held it out to him. “I should probably get going, let you get something to eat and get settled for the night.”
He shot her a strange look. “I am settled for the night. I thought we both were.”
“I’m not sure—” She stopped, unable to put her confusion into words and too afraid of assuming and making another blunder.
“What’s wrong, Cecily?” He came back over to her. “You don’t want to stay?”
“I don’t want to inconvenience you . . .”
“We just had earth-shattering, world-altering sex. Believe me, if ever there was a time for you to inconvenience me, this would be it.” He took the shirt from her hands and gently tugged it over her head. “Not that you are. I’m just saying you could, if you wanted to.”
“Oh. Okay, then.” He winked at her, and she swore she was dazzled by the light in his whiskey-colored eyes. God, she needed to get a grip. He was a rogue, just passing through. And she had a duty to her clan that had nothing to do with him.
“What do you want to eat? I’ve got sandwich stuff and sandwich stuff.”
“Sandwiches it is, then.” She followed him back to the cooler, twisting the cap off a bottle of water as she went. “So, it was, umm, earth-shattering for you, too?”
“Well, I’m a big guy. The earth shatters around me pretty easily.”
She froze, started to stutter out an excuse to flee, when she saw him looking at her with a wide grin on his face. “You know, one of these days, your teasing is going to get you clawed.”
He gestured to the scar on his face before reaching for the bread. “How do you know it hasn’t already?”
“Well, if you got that from teasing some poor woman, then you totally deserved it.” She reached into the cooler and pulled out an apple. Then asked, “Is that how you got it?”
“What do you think?”
“I have no idea.”
“A guy’s got to have some mystery, doesn’t he?”
“Somehow I don’t think a lack of mystery is your problem. I’ve been around you for how many hours, and I still know almost nothing about you.”
“Yeah, well, you kept my mouth busy for most of the hours, so I don’t think that really counts.”
He handed her a sandwich and she took it, feeling strangely shy considering all the things she’d let this man do to her not even an hour before. She’d had no trouble talking to him before they’d made love, but now, suddenly, every time he opened his mouth, she flashed back to all the ways and places he’d kissed her, licked her, touched her. It made her hot to think about it, but it also made her feel incredibly vulnerable.
Is this how everyone feels when they had sex for the first time? she wondered. Like they’ve opened up a door inside themselves that can never be shut again? She didn’t regret being with him—how could she, when Logan had been so sweet and tender and exciting? But at the same time, there was a part of her that wished he hadn’t been her private rebellion. A part of her that wished even a little bit of her time with him could be real.
But she was just being stupid. How many women dreamed of having a lover like him, one who cared more about her pleasure than he did his own? She was no expert, by any means, but she had trouble imagining any of her father’s factionnaires treating her with even half the kindness and consideration and adoration Logan had. He’d made her first time absolutely perfect.
Then again, maybe that was the problem. She knew this couldn’t last, knew she couldn’t have him for more than this one night. When she left here, it was to go back to the compound and ask another man to marry her. A man that she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, could never make her body respond as Logan had.
Logan interrupted her self-examination by grabbing her hand and dragging her across the clearing to the big, flat rock that was her favorite place on the mountain. It overlooked the entire valley down below, let her see miles and miles in the distance. She always came here to think because it was one of the few places that helped her put her problems in perspective. Not even a warring clan seemed so bad when you were looking out at something so huge and incomparable.
He sat down in the center of the rock and then pulled her onto his lap. And she sat, wrapped in his arms, eating the sandwich he’d made her, and tried to figure out how the hell she was going to get through her wedding night with Gage.
“So, what is it you want to know about me?” Logan asked after they’d both finished their dinner. “I was just joking about that whole mystery thing.”
Everything. The thought popped into her head, and she barely kept herself from blurting it out. She didn’t need to sound like a sex-crazed groupie, after all. Although now that she thought about it, she had to wonder if there was a Logan Kelly fan club somewhere, filled with women he’d ruined for any other lover. She almost asked him, but then figured a question like that right out of the gate might end their conversation before it ever got started.
“How did you get that scar?” She reached up and brushed soft fingertips across it. He didn’t flinch, but the look in his eyes told her better than any words could that he really didn’t like her touching it.
She just wished she knew if it was because the scar bothered him or because he considered it off-limits to her.
He didn’t answer for such a long time that she figured he wasn’t going to at all. Trying to decide what she wanted to ask instead, she was caught completely off guard when he said, “I did it to myself.”
Shock ricocheted through her. “What? Why?”
He shrugged. “Duty? Restitution? Both?”
“I don’t under—”
He pressed a soft kiss to her mouth. “You already got two questions. Now it’s my turn.”
“I didn’t realize there was a limit. I thought you said I could ask anything.”
“You can.” His hand snuck beneath her shirt, rubbed against her lower back. “But there are rules.”
“Oh, really? And would those rules happen to have anything to do with where your hand is at this exact moment?”
“Perhaps.”
“That means ‘definitely.’ Okay, lay them on me.”
“Well, to begin with, for every question you ask, you have to pay a t
oll.”
She arched a brow. “A toll?”
“Exactly.” His hand crept lower.
“But I don’t have any money,” she said, making her eyes deliberately wide. “I came here with nothing but a few purple scales and a tail.”
“I like your tail.” His fingers stroked against the cleft of her ass.
“I got that impression.” She grabbed his hand, put it back in her lap. “So, about that toll?”
“Oh, right. The toll.” His eyes were dark and heavy lidded, and just a glance at them made her so hot and trembly that she thought she might come right there in his lap. “For every question you ask, I get to do one thing to your body. My choice.”
“Really? Okay . . . what happens if you ask the question?”
“Same rules, of course. If I ask the question, I get to do one thing to your body. See how it works?”
“What I see is that the odds are completely stacked in your favor.”
“That’s the way I like them.”
“I just bet.”
Could he look any more wicked than he does at this moment? she wondered. It was a full moon, and the light of it seemed to have unerringly found him. It was glinting off his gold hair, making his eyes shine and his skin glow. And his smile, that wild, self-deprecating little smirk of his, all but begged her to wipe it off his face—in the most satisfying way possible.
He must have sensed her thoughts, because the smile faded into a snarl, one that said he would like very much for her to do exactly what she’d been thinking about.
With a growl that sank deep inside her, he lifted her up and turned her to face him so that her legs straddled his and his cock was pressed tightly against her pussy. He was hard again—or maybe she should say still—and she decided her questions could wait. She loved talking to him, but if she had only one night with him, she knew exactly how she wanted to spend it.
Logan, however, seemed to have a different idea. Though his breath was hot against her cheek and his hips were rising and falling ever so slightly—just enough to rock their lower bodies together—he seemed in no hurry to take her again. Instead, he said in a voice so low that she had to strain to hear it, “It’s my turn for a question. What’s it like to be a princess?”