UnMasked

by Yara Gharios

  Before I move an inch, Logan frowns and asks. “Why would I bite my lip?”

  All at once, a fog of cold engulfs me and flames erupt in my face. Oh no. Please don’t let him find out.

  “I can hear you perfectly, Dylan,” he tells me. “What don’t you want me to find out?”

  “Nothing,” I blatantly lie.

  Logan frowns curiously, and pulls back at little bit to stare at my face. Putting distance between us, even as little as this, is enough for me to gather my wits again and stare at him defiantly. His eyebrows twitch when I do so.

  “I can feel you closing up again,” he states, amazed. “It’s unbelievable, I can sense it now. Can you hear me?”

  I try to, I really do, but all I hear in my mind is emptiness. I wonder why he can sense my thoughts but not the other way around.

  “No, I don’t,” I tell him sadly.

  He shakes his head as if to remove the thought for the time being. “We can work on that later,” he brushes the matter off. “Right now, I want to know what you’re hiding.”

  I grit my teeth and force myself to stare at him levelly. “I’m not hiding anything.”

  The corner of his mouth pulls up in a half grin. “Is that so?” he says.

  “Yes, it is s–”

  For the second time, he cuts me off with a kiss. Unlike the first, this one is slow and soft. He tastes like mint and saltwater, which I must have been too distracted to notice the first time. At the same time, his hand brushes against the bare skin of my stomach, barely touching, giving me goose bumps everywhere. The heat spreads through me at a different speed than before, burning me with agonizing slowness. His tongue flicks out to meet mine and retreats as his lips close and open against mine. I unconsciously mirror the action in anticipation of each time we meet again. The surprising jolt of pleasure comes when his teeth close gently around my bottom lip and pull away softly, repeating the entire process. He’s torturing me, and he knows it.

  At some point, I’m not even sure how much time passes, he doesn’t come back after pulling away, but he leaves his lips open against my own. “What aren’t you telling me?” he murmurs.

  My breathing is heavy, and my body is out of control, but my thoughts are even more confusing. Stars have danced in my mind the whole time he was torturing me, and I have no idea where I am anymore or how I got here. However, when he asks that question, the memory springs to mind without permission, and I know he got the message by his sharp intake of breath a second later.

  Before I know it, Logan has pushed himself off of me and thrown his head back in laughter. When he does, reality crashes down on me.

  Here’s the wake-up call I was waiting for.

  Mortified, I cover my face with both hands and groan. “I can’t believe you did this to me,” I protest weakly, too embarrassed to give it any stronger feeling.

  “I can’t believe you looked up video tutorials on kissing,” he laughs, which ends in a sigh. “I would have expected porn, maybe, but not this. For all that bravado, you really are innocent, aren’t you?”

  This isn’t helping my self-consciousness. “Thanks for not making me feel like an idiot,” I grumble.

  I feel him lie down on his side, and I’m guessing he’s propped up on his elbow so he could look down at me. Then he grabs my hands and gently pulls them off my face. I peek at him between my fingers and see him fighting back his amusement.

  “I’m sorry, but you have to admit this is funny.”

  I glare at him. “Ask me again in a thousand years, maybe by then it will be.”

  He chuckles. “You know, if you wanted some practice, all you had to do was ask,” he teases. “You know you can ask me anything.”

  Taken aback, I take my hands fully away from my face. “Really? Anything?” I repeat skeptically.

  He nods. “Of course.”

  Now is as good a time as any to throw this question in the conversation. “So when you said exes, what’s the number implied there?”

  He groans. “Really? You’re still fixated on that?”

  “I’m not fixated,” I object with indignation.

  I’m not some obsessed girlfriend, here!

  “Wouldn’t you want to know if I had any exes? Wouldn’t you feel you have a right to?”

  The idea of me having exes does not sit well with Logan, judging by the annoyed frown on his face.

  “No, you’re right,” he admits, taking me by surprise. “Okay, fine. Officially, I only ever had two girlfriends, but I’ve dated a lot more than that, often more than once.”

  “Who’s the second girl? Or, I guess she was the first,” I add when I remember Reena is not that much of an old news.

  “She was a street musician from Boston who came to Maine to stay with her father for a year,” he tells me. “Her name was Patricia, and she was two years older than me.”

  I turn on my side so I can face him, and ask him to tell me what happened. The only reason why the mate pull is not affecting me right now and making me jealous is because I know it’s in the past, and that they ended things for a reason. At least I’m guessing that’s the reason.

  “We met while she was performing once, when I was fifteen,” he starts his tale. “She smiled at me while she was singing, and I ended up giving her every penny I had on me. I came back every day for a couple of weeks just to hear her voice. She noticed me coming regularly, so one day, she started talking to me. She was the one who asked me out first, I guess because she knew I wouldn’t dare do it myself. I was a shy kid at the time, and it didn’t help that she was older.”

  Smiling, I try to reconcile the Logan I see before me with the one he’s describing. It’s not that far–fetched, to be honest. It’s not in his nature to be the center of attention, or at least to enjoy it. I know he is the center of his pack since he became alpha.

  “We dated for almost a year, but I never thought about telling her what I am,” he goes on. “Pat… she was my first in a lot of ways, but I didn’t love her enough to see a future for us. That’s why I was fine when she ended things because she wanted to go to college.”

  “Where did she study?” I wonder.

  “I don’t know,” he admits. “Some place near where she grew up.”

  I pause before asking my next question. “What about… Reena?”

  He gives me an understanding look. “I don’t think we should talk about her just yet.”

  “Why not?” I ask, more than a little relieved.

  I hate this girl with every fiber of my being. Although I would like to solve the mystery of what Logan could have possibly seen in her, I still get mad every time I even think of her name.

  Though I’m pretty sure Logan didn’t hear a word of that, he deduces my thoughts simply from my expression. “Some other time,” he assures me, “when you’re not feeling so murderous.”

  To comfort me, he lays his hand on the back of my head and kisses me. He intends for it to be brief, but I need something to reassure me that he’s mine from now on. I deepen the kiss when he tries to pull away. He follows my lead without hesitation and kisses me back. Pushing him down, I throw my leg over his waist until I’m straddling him. His arm then wraps around my waist to keep me steadied over him. I’m the one laying on top of him this time, and I try to show him instead of tell him that I love him.

  As our need for one another grows, we kiss each other with more and more passion, hungry to be closer. I tangle my fingers in his hair and tug at the ends, a little trick I learned from my research and which seemed effective when I tried it an hour ago. Then I run my hand down his chest, over his abs, until I reach the waistband of his shorts and slip a finger over the edge.

  All of a sudden, he grabs my wrist and stops me, pulling away from the kiss at the same moment. Surprised, I gasp and freeze.

  “Not yet,” he says, his voice rough.

  For some reason, I feel like I’ve done something wrong. An unwanted feeling of guilt spreads through me, and I slowly sit upright.
I know he said he wants this before, but why would he turn me down now?

  Maybe he’s just not in the mood, I reason.

  “Hey,” Logan protests, again somehow hearing my thoughts. “Don’t assume things, okay? If you were sitting a little bit lower right now, you’d see how wrong you are.”

  “Oh my God,” I gasp and lift myself away from him. “Sorry! I’m really sorry!”

  “Why are you even apologizing?” he asks with confusion. “Never mind. My point is, I don’t know whether this is because you don’t have any experience or because of something else, but it is plainly obvious that you have no impulse control.”

  I blink at him, not knowing where he’s getting what. “Excuse me?”

  “You say you want to take things slow, but then you do something like this that makes me think you want to skip the phases that come before,” he elaborates.

  I make a face. “There are phases now? Who decides how many, the dating police?”

  He gives me a flat look. “Metaphorical phases. And that was a lame joke.”

  “I know, not my finest hour,” I interject, wincing in shame.

  Logan goes on as if neither of us said anything. “You had it right before, taking things slow. You can’t just jump into sex after two days. Not if you want to have a healthy relationship. You have to ease into it.”

  The reality of the situation dawns on me. “How weird is it that I’m the virgin in this relationship yet you’re the one trying to convince me to wait?”

  He springs up like a wounded animal and gets very close to my face, very fast. I flinch involuntarily. “If you so much as think the phrase ‘the roles are reversed’ or however it goes, I will prove you wrong right here and now.”

  Although I have no idea what phrase he’s talking about, his threat actually has the opposite effect, which is to make me beam.

  “Is that a promise?”

  He shakes his head. “Nope, I’m not going there,” he decides. “I’m calling the shots on this, and I’m telling you we’re going to wait.”

  My eyes widen. Well. This is unheard of. “Isn’t it usually the girl’s choice?”

  He grins. “Not this time.”

  I cross my arms in defiance. “And why’s that?”

  “Because I’m the adult here,” he replies.

  “Hey, not cool to play that card!” I object. “Besides, I’m almost eighteen, you know!”

  “I know,” he assures me. “But not for another two weeks. When that day comes, we can talk. Until then, I really don’t feel like committing a felony.”

  When he says that, a similar situation springs to mind. “What is it with you SMP guys and waiting for the girl’s eighteenth birthday? Seriously. You want to make a big romantic gesture out of our first night by waiting, and that’s just corny. All you need is good timing, and maybe a nice bed. And I’m sorry, but who proposes to someone in the middle of a forest? Do you have any idea how many bugs there are out in the woods? Not to mention all the dirt, probable animal droppings –”

  “I love it when you talk dirty to me. Seriously, big turn on.”

  Ignoring the fluttering in my stomach, I do my best to give him a flat look. “I’m getting the feeling Sadie and I will be the ones wearing the pants in our respective relationships.”

  His jaw sets in a ticked off line. “Say that one more time and I’ll throw you off the cliff.”

  I scoff. “You wouldn’t.”

  He raises his eyebrow in defiance. “You want to test that theory?”

  “Come on, like you’d let me plummet to death.”

  “You wouldn’t plummet to death, you’d just end up in the water.”

  My face falls. He’s really serious. “Okay,” I concede. “Sorry, you’re the man.”

  He smirks victoriously. “And don’t you forget it. Now let’s get back and take a shower before the house gets overrun. We only have two showers here, and the one on the beach itself is not so pleasant.”

  Logan lets me straddle his back as he climbs down the same path we came up. I really don’t feel like doing this again backwards. We have to sneak into the house so that the others don’t notice us coming back and decide to race us for the shower.

  Once in the house, I take a moment to briefly see what a pack beach house looks like. It has three levels and is shaped like stairs. The outside is modern looking, with white walls, glass sliding doors and windows, and a balcony on the second level. The first level is where the kitchen, the living room and the dining room are, all of which are as modern as the outside, especially with the black and white combination of the colors.

  Logan tells me the second level is where almost everybody sleeps. I count four bedroom doors, in which I’m guessing there probably are bunk beds, as I’m going up the stairs to follow him to the third level. Up there, there are three doors: one leading to another small bedroom like the other ones, another to the only bathroom in the house, which is also rather small and decorated in the same style, and the last closed door leading to what I’m guessing is the master bedroom.

  “When we get the chance to come back here, I’m going to have to teach you how to swim,” he says just after handing me a couple of towels.

  Surprised, I ask him how he knows that I can’t swim.

  “This amazing thing called the power of deduction,” he replies with a smirk.

  The image of Logan and I in the ocean, with him trying to teach me how not to drown, implants itself in my mind and causes a permanent smile to be drawn on my face during my ten minutes shower. When I’m done, I step out of bathroom in the bigger towel. I jump when I find him standing at the door waiting.

  “Jeez, creeper much?” I snap.

  He doesn’t reply, and that’s because he’s too busy staring at my body. A few minutes ago, he saw me in much less, yet his eyes are still fixated on me in a way that makes me nervous. I hurry into the room that he said I could use and close the door. The room goes against the styling of the rest of the house with a more traditional vibe. It is very simply furnished, with just a dark wooden bed, closet and dresser with mirror, all of which go well with the neutral cream color of the walls. Now I’m sure it’s his room.

  As I get dressed in my usual pajamas, Logan takes his turn in the shower. At first, I hear him humming, but then I turn on the hair dryer and it drowns out the sound. When I turn it off, however, I find out that Sadie wasn’t exaggerating when she said that Logan can’t sing. Out of all the songs he could have attempted to sing, ‘We Are the Champions’ is probably the worst choice. The high notes are too high for him, but he can’t even hit the low ones. His voice is also cracking at every other syllable.

  Sensing a perfect opportunity to put my out-of-use pranking skills to the test, I beam and grab my phone. I’m a little rusty, but I’ve got an idea in mind. I stand in the same spot he was in when I came out, and then I open the camera app on video option, leaning casually against the wall with my feet crossed. About two minutes later, the water stops running, and his breaking windows practice goes back to being a humming. There is a long moment of that, during which I’m guessing he’s putting his clothes on.

  Seconds later, the door opens. Logan jolts when he sees me standing there, smirking. Then he notices my phone. I know what he’s about to do before he moves. I press the lock key and allow him to snatch it out of my hand.

  He fumbles with it for a moment before he says, “What’s the damn password?”

  “I don’t know. Try champion, my friend.”

  “You little –”

  Logan gives up trying to unlock my phone and decides it’s better to torture the truth out of me. He grabs me by the waist, too fast for me to anticipate his move and get away. He throws me on the bed in his bedroom, and proceeds to tickle the living daylights out of me. I’ve never laughed this hysterically, and it doesn’t take me long to get the feeling that I’m about to explode and go red in the face.

  He takes mercy on my when my laughs become silent. “You ready to
give up now?”

  I take a deep heaving breath. After that, I try to moderate my breathing around my continuous laughter, even though he’s stopped tickling me and now has me pinned under him.

  “Never,” I gasp once I am able to speak.

  He grabs my wrists and pins them on each side of my head. I struggle against him in vain, because he’s so much stronger than me. My attempts seem to amuse him, though.

  “I knew you liked to wrestle,” he teases.

  Instead of tickling me again, like I expected he would, he uses the only weapon he knows he has against me and kisses me. I know it’s only a ploy for him to have the upper hand, but I still can’t help growing weak and melting against him. He kisses me with just enough intensity to make me crave more, but then he breaks the kiss and pulls away when I attempt to lift my head.

  “Give up now, and I will consider letting you sleep next to me,” he says suggestively.

  Sleep next to him! I rejoice.

  “Okay,” I immediately agree.

  When he knows he’s won, Logan drops next to me, his leg still entangled with mine, his barefoot toes tickling the side of my shin. When I’m brought back to reality, I close my eyes and sigh, slightly disappointed in myself.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face or I will keep the video,” I threaten, certain that this is exactly what he’s doing.

  His chuckle only confirms it. He doesn’t answer me, but he does lift his hand to brush his fingers over my face in a repetitive movement; from the center of my forehead, to the bridge of my nose, down to my lips, and back up again. It feels nice, calming and exciting at the same time.

  I’m just about to say something, but the sound of the front door closing cuts me off. A couple of voices, one male and one female, start a mumbled conversation, I’m guessing because there’s kissing involved somehow. I would have brushed them off and focused back on Logan, if not for the fact that I recognized my twin as the male voice. Curious, I remove Logan’s hand from my face, regretting it almost immediately because it takes away the nice feeling, and scoot off the bed.

  “What’s wrong?” Logan asks.

  I shush him. “That’s Danny,” I whisper. “I want to know who he’s with.”