Under His Skin

by Nicola Marsh

  In a warped way she’d been grateful to him. Her momentary lapse in trusting him and having him crap all over her meant she’d never make the same mistake again. People were fickle, whether they were related to you or not. Lesson learned.

  So she’d hardened up when she’d landed in Melbourne five years ago. She didn’t emotionally invest and she never fully trusted. Expiration dating suited her just fine and resulted in less angst.

  This thing she had with Logan was casual. And she had to keep it that way, which was why inviting him here, into her home, could signal a change of heart she might not be ready for.

  Discouraging trust-building meant not letting anyone get too close. It was why she’d never brought any of the other guys she’d slept with to her place. But inviting Logan here had seemed like a good idea at the time. They hadn’t stayed in the grungy hotel long. Not because she had an aversion to dirt—okay, maybe she did—but he’d revealed so much of himself to her when talking about his family that she’d wanted to put him at ease.

  She’d seen how fraught he’d been after divulging the truth about his past and had wanted to distract him. Giving him a blowjob had been a start but she’d wanted to do more, which was why they’d ended up at her place. She’d hoped that by showing him her personal space it would return the favour of revealing a small part of herself and make him less angsty about disclosing so much of himself.

  However, him falling asleep while she showered hadn’t been part of the plan because having him here, touching her things, seeing more than she’d revealed to any other guy, made her too vulnerable and she seriously wanted to jump his bones to get this fling back on track. But when she’d seen him spread-eagled on her lemon bedspread, his expression more serene than she’d ever seen it, she’d let him sleep.

  It would give her time to compose a few songs. She’d been lagging lately, consumed by travelling all over Melbourne to her students, rather than them coming to her for lessons, because of the renovations. The moment her new recording studio was up and running she wanted to lay down enough tracks for an album. The sooner other local indie musicians heard her work, the more interest she could drum up and hopefully launch their careers too.

  She paused in the bedroom doorway and glanced at Logan one last time: the tough guy with a marshmallow core. He snored softly, his lips emitting small puffs of air as he slumbered, oblivious to how much she liked seeing him in her bed. He dwarfed the small space, which had barely enough room for her queen-sized bed, matching side-tables and a dresser. Yet he fit somehow, as though he’d spent many nights here instead of this being his first.

  The first of many.

  The moment the thought popped into her head she spun on her heel and padded into the lounge, where she’d set up one corner as a mini-music-room.

  Logan wouldn’t be around for long. He’d made that perfectly clear. So that stupid stab of pain in the vicinity of her heart at the thought of him leaving couldn’t be more unwelcome. She knew the score. It was why she’d started up with him in the first place. He was exactly like the rest of her short-term fixes for the loneliness that plagued her at times. But the more time they spent together the more he sucked her in with a hint of susceptibility beneath an iron facade. The bad boy with a soft centre. Irresistible.

  With a sigh she sat at her desk, picked up a pencil and took out a clean sheaf of paper. She already had the lyrics to this new song hovering at the edge of her consciousness.

  Pierce my heart...

  Make me ache...

  It’s just the start...

  Please don’t take...

  They made no sense in their current format but as the first strains of a haunting melody filled her head she started writing. Slowly at first, mixing quavers and semi-quavers, alternating tempo. C-C-D-E-B-B-C. As she jotted the notes, the words started to coalesce and she wrote the first few stanzas in total free-flow. She loved this part of the creative process, letting everything pour out of her, words and music, in a frenzied burst that she could refine later.

  She had no idea how long it took but it seemed like the blink of an eye when she’d completed the first song and moved onto the second. And the third. And the fourth. By the time her fingers cramped from clutching the pencil so tightly, she’d written four songs that leapt off the page. Her fingers itched to play and she swivelled on her seat towards the keyboard next to her desk.

  Not wanting to wake Logan, she plugged in her headphones and let her fingers take over, gliding across the keys, getting a feel for the new songs. As each song flowed into the next, effortless and real, Hope knew she’d stumbled onto something special, something almost magical. She’d never been this inspired, had never experienced the sheer joy of getting her songs right the first time.

  She usually scribbled down a few notes and words and took a break, before returning to her writing when the inspiration struck. She’d never written four songs in a row and certainly hadn’t played them like this: as if her fingers were one step ahead of her brain.

  She could attribute her new-found creativity to any number of things: the stars aligning, her musical talent finally coming to the fore, the balmy spring weather. But she knew the real reason behind this flawless creative streak—and he currently resided in the middle of her bed.

  Swiping her hand across eyes gritty from studying sheet music too long, she headed for the sofa and curled into a corner. A sudden chill overcame her at the realisation her creative happiness might depend on a guy who’d leave sooner rather than later, and she reached for the cashmere throw on the back of the sofa and drew it around her.

  This couldn’t be good.

  Flowers inspired her. Melbourne’s artistic laneways inspired her. Watching loved-up couples inspired her. Long walks through the Royal Botanic Gardens, strolling through the museum and listening to jazz on the banks of the Yarra River inspired her.

  A rugged, sexy construction king destined to break her heart shouldn’t.

  The moment the thought that he had the power to break her heart popped into her mind, Hope stifled a groan and hung her head. Resting her forehead on her knees, she tried a meditation technique she’d learned at yoga to wipe her mind and blank it of all thoughts of Logan.

  It didn’t work.

  The thought had lodged front and centre in her impressionable brain and she couldn’t dislodge it no matter how many low-level chants she internalised.

  She’d never depended on anyone for her happiness. Her parents were typical upper-class refined English gentry. Children were raised by a well-paid, well-educated nanny and only seen at mealtimes, where they’d mind their manners and respond when spoken to. She’d never known any different until she’d hit her teens and had started escaping to the local village to hang out at the pubs with Harry. Back then, books had made her happy. Music made her happier. People, not so much. Then she’d met Willem and had never known joy like it. Which had made it all the harder when he’d hurt her.

  She’d been a loner ever since and it had served her well.

  Until now.

  What was it about Logan Holmes that had her in a tizz?

  She should go to him. Should wipe away this uncharacteristic dwelling on emotions with a rousing bout of sex.

  Instead, she tugged the cashmere throw tighter around her, slid down the sofa and rested her head on a cushion. She needed some time to mull over this latest realisation because if she woke him now on the pretext of having sex he’d probably take one look at her face and know there was something going on.

  She’d wake him in the morning and by then she would’ve eradicated the odd ache in her chest, ready to get physical with the guy who’d rocked her world without even trying.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LOGAN HAD NO idea how long he’d been asleep but his eyelids felt gritty and his mouth dry when he woke. Worse, when he glanced to his side, Hope wasn’t tucked next to him and
he lay on top of her fancy coverlet, not under it.

  ‘What the fuck?’ He pushed into a sitting position and swung his legs over the side of the bed, swiping a hand over his face to wake up. He blinked several times in the semi-darkness, trying to remember how he had ended up in Hope’s bedroom—not having sex.

  He remembered strolling the laneways, blabbing about his dad, a mind-numbing blowjob then coming back here and...crashing. She’d taken a shower. He’d rested his eyes. And she hadn’t woken him.

  Way to go pleasing a woman, dickhead.

  He padded to the bedroom door and opened it. Moonlight cast a glow over the lounge, along with the reflected city lights scattered outside her window. Her apartment, situated on the tenth storey of an upscale building in Parkville, looked like something out of a magazine, all sharp angles and shiny chrome and designer furnishings. He’d felt uncomfortable the moment he’d set foot inside. Not because he couldn’t afford a place like this—he could buy this entire apartment building if so inclined—but for the fact it looked exactly like something he didn’t want: a real home.

  Hope had put her personal touches everywhere, from the red tulips in elongated vases strategically placed throughout the room to the geometric black-and-white shaggy rug beneath the glass-topped dining table for four. Music magazines were stacked neatly on the coffee table, jostling for space alongside biographies of long-dead musicians and the occasional thriller, with an open notebook covered in scrawl taking pride of place on top of the lot. Plump cushions of various size and colour lay scattered across the furniture, managing to appear artistic rather than messy.

  It brought a lump to this throat, looking around this room, because his mum had had the same talent for taking a hotchpotch of things and making them appear elegant. He remembered trawling the local secondhand shops with her, being dragged from one to another, acting as a packhorse for her purchases. He hadn’t minded, despite his token protests, because decorating their house had made his mum happy and that had happened less frequently as he’d grown up. Later, she’d let slip that she’d been doing it for his father, thinking that if she made their home pretty maybe he’d return more often. When Logan had heard that he’d wanted to take a knife to all her cushions and slash them to pieces. Stephen hadn’t deserved a home, let alone a good woman to keep it nice for him.

  Rubbing his chest at the inevitable burn that thoughts of his dad elicited, Logan moved into the lounge in search of Hope. A small lamp caught his eye to the left and he walked over to a desk covered in paper. By the looks of it, she’d been working while he’d been sleeping. He didn’t mean to pry but his glance landed on the top page, a song called ‘Yearning’. He skim-read the lyrics and was damned if that lump in his throat didn’t swell. He had no idea who the guy was in the song but he hoped to God it wasn’t him.

  He could never be any woman’s ‘everything’.

  Swivelling away from the desk, he spied Hope curled up on the sofa. Her eyes were closed, her breathing even and, with a pink rug draped over her, she looked like a sleeping fairy. Feeling like a voyeur, he drew closer, watching her. She wasn’t classically beautiful—her nose was too large and her eyes too far apart—but that mouth... Discounting the wicked things she could do with it, she had a smile that transformed her face to pretty in an instant. Her lips were parted slightly and he’d never wanted to kiss a woman so badly.

  But she’d let him sleep so the least he could do was return the favour.

  For now, he had something important to do, something to get him out of this funk once and for all. Blurting out truths about his past to a woman, falling asleep rather than fucking... He really needed to get his head back in the game.

  He padded back into the bedroom, closed the door and slipped his phone out of his jacket pocket, where it hung on the back of a chair.

  He didn’t care about the early hour. It would be the best time to call his father as he remembered Stephen always liked to sleep late so leaving a message rather than talking to the old man suited him just fine.

  He didn’t have Stephen’s number in his contacts list but he’d saved every one of his father’s messages over the years: forty-five in total. Initially, Logan did it as a reminder of the pain Stephen had caused, a self-flagellation tool in case he ever weakened and let his father back into his life. But more recently, after he’d heard the news of his dad’s cancer battle, those messages had become a symbol of something more.

  A reminder of his foolishness if his dad pegged out and he maintained his distance until it was too late.

  Calling his dad to arrange a meeting could only be a good thing. Purge the past. Confront the lies. And maybe, just maybe, move on without the guilt of his hate eating away at him.

  He scrolled through his recent call history and saw the familiar number. His thumb hovered over it for what seemed like an eternity before he tapped it.

  His chest tightened and his breathing grew choppy as he held the phone up to his ear, clenching it so tightly his fingers spasmed. After two rings, the voice mail kicked in and Logan exhaled in relief.

  ‘This is Stephen. I can’t take your call right now because I’m busy making people laugh. So, if you want to make me chuckle, leave a message.’

  Something twanged in Logan’s chest. His father hadn’t changed his message in years. He’d heard the same cheery recording many times as a kid, when his mum had encouraged him to call Stephen so they could maintain a strong bond.

  What a fucking joke.

  If Stephen had wanted to maintain a bond with his son he would’ve come home more often rather than staying away for fifty-one weeks of the year. Asshole.

  Logan dragged in a breath and blew it out before speaking. ‘Hey, Dad, it’s me. Been thinking about a lot of stuff lately and maybe we should meet up to discuss it. I’m busy this week but one day next week should suit. I’ll text you the details.’

  Logan hit the ‘call end’ button before his father heard the tremor in his voice. He hated himself for allowing long-suppressed emotions of the past to bubble up now and threaten to consume him. He needed to get a grip. Confronting his dad might be long overdue but it was a start.

  The bedroom door creaked open and he quickly shoved the phone into his pocket. The last thing he needed was Hope asking who he was ringing and why.

  Not that she’d given any indication of being the clingy type but since he’d revealed too much of himself to her he’d been on edge.

  ‘You’re awake,’ she said, swiping a hand across her sleep-filled eyes. ‘Okay, so that was an obviously stupid thing to say.’

  She looked so goddamned cute standing in the doorway, wrapped in that fuzzy pink rug, wearing a long black T-shirt that hung halfway down her thighs, one barefoot balanced on top of the other. Her hair frizzed around the crown like a halo and a deep sleep-wrinkle slashed her cheek where she’d been pressed against the armrest, but even sleep-tousled she was the most captivating woman he’d ever seen.

  His chest twanged and there was only one thing he could do to get rid of the uncharacteristic sappiness.

  ‘I’m glad we’re both awake so we get to finish what we started earlier.’ He crossed the short space between them and swung her up into his arms.

  ‘Hey, I’m heavy, put me down—’

  ‘You’re a lightweight and when I put you down I’m going down,’ he said, laying her on the bed gently, rucking up her T-shirt and settling between her legs.

  ‘Oh...’ That one muttered syllable gave way to a drawn-out moan as he swiped her pussy with his tongue, the first taste going straight to his head. Sweet. Addictive. Yeah, this was exactly what he needed to obliterate feeling and focus on doing.

  He slid one hand under her ass and lifted her to his mouth, using the other to spread her slick folds wide. Her pussy glistened, inviting him to explore. So he did, thrusting his tongue into her over and over, alternating with grazing her clit w
ith his teeth until he had her writhing.

  ‘So good,’ she muttered, her hand resting on his head and when he raised her a little higher her fingers convulsed, tugging at his hair. He didn’t mind a little pain mingled with pleasure but he must’ve made some kind of sound because she lifted her head to look at him.

  With her eyes wide and her lips parted, she looked wanton, ready for anything.

  ‘You like me fucking your pussy with my tongue?’

  He deliberately baited her with his crudeness to see what she’d do. She didn’t disappoint.

  ‘Lie on your back and put your hands behind your head,’ she commanded, surging into a sitting position and scooting back on the bed.

  ‘Why?’

  He threw the question out there, not caring for her rationale, because he liked this take-charge woman and the way she owned her sexuality.

  ‘Because I’m going to sit on your face.’

  No murmur, no whisper, just a blatant statement that had him obeying her command in record time.

  ‘You’re so fucking hot when you’re bossy,’ he said with a smug grin. ‘You know that, right?’

  ‘I know you’re about to stop talking.’

  She spread her legs either side of his head, giving him another up close and personal look at that pretty pussy as she lowered herself until she had her clit positioned just right over his mouth.

  He inhaled her muskiness as the tip of his tongue grazed her clit in a feather-light tickle designed to tease. He did it again, and again, until he heard her whimper.

  ‘Logan...please...’

  Only then did he increase the pressure, lapping at her with quick little licks, faster and faster until she was practically grinding her pussy into his face.