He was sprawled out on the other end of the sofa, our legs tangling in the middle.
Logan was looking more than a little satisfied, I thought rather smugly, as he ate a huge mouthful of fried rice.
“Food good?” I said, a teasing smile on my lips.
Amusement sparked in his gaze. “Someone worked me hard. I’m starving.”
“I don’t recall being the demanding one.”
He raised an eyebrow. “‘Faster, Logan, faster.’”
I blushed and kicked at him, causing him to laugh, unrepentant.
“You’re a swine.” I huffed, my cheeks still on fire.
“I’m not complaining, babe,” he said, still chuckling.
I eyed him, unable to deny the warmth spreading across my chest. I’d never seen him like this, so relaxed and content. Is it me? I really wanted to believe I had the power to affect his moods as much as he did mine.
His smile disappeared. “What are you thinking about so hard?”
I covered my real thoughts with a lie. “How I gave in way too easily.”
Laughter danced in his gaze again. “It was pretty fast. Your heart really wasn’t in the fight.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know I avoid drama, and battling you was just drama I couldn’t be bothered with. It was easier to give in and try it out than it was to fight you off.”
“You make me sound so appealing.”
It was my turn to grin. “You’re all right.”
“Just all right?” He lowered his plate to give me the full blast of his sensual focus. “Do I have to remind you already about the three orgasms?”
“You’re counting my orgasms? Really, Logan.” I snorted.
“Pretend all you want. We both know I blew your fucking mind.”
I giggled. “You have quite the ego, sweetheart. It wouldn’t be good for me to stroke it too often.”
He flicked me a wary look. “I hope we’re just talking about my ego and not other parts of me.”
I frowned, teasing him. “I didn’t know there were any other parts worth stroking.”
“One huge fucking part that was inside you not too long ago.”
He made my cheeks flare hot again, but I was getting used to his frankness. “Oh, that part,” I murmured, my voice a little husky with the memory. “Hmm, I do rather enjoying stroking that part.”
Logan’s eyes warmed with delight at my flirting, and I couldn’t stem my own pleased smile.
Oh, this was not good – that overwhelming feeling of contentment I felt whenever I made him happy.
I felt a momentary stir of panic.
As if he sensed it, Logan wrapped a hand around my ankle and squeezed. “This is going to be great, Grace. It’s going to be better than great.”
I nodded slowly, letting his touch soothe the tension that had crept so quickly over me.
We were silent a moment as his thumb brushed over my skin. When he finally felt like I’d come back from my fear, he let go to continue eating.
“So Maia is at Shannon’s?” he said.
I thought about the two little matchmakers. “Yes. You did a wonderful job inviting all the women in your life to play matchmaker.”
He grunted. “Believe me, it didn’t take much. Apparently, they’ve had their eye on you for me since Shannon told them that was what she wanted.” He cut me a dry look.
I laughed. “I bet it just sticks in your craw that you’re giving her exactly what she wants.”
Logan shook his head. “Honestly, not really. I couldn’t be happier that Shannon likes you so much. She’s my only real family now. I want you two to get on well.”
At the mention of his family, I felt a burn in my blood. “Your parents still haven’t come around to the idea of Maia?”
“It’s worse than that.” His eyes flew over to the wall with the photographs on them. “My parents take their good old time coming around about things. It took them ages to come around to the fact that Shannon wasn’t making a mistake by getting engaged to Cole. It took them ages to come around to even forgiving her for my prison time when it wasn’t even her damn fault. And it has taken them all this time to come around to the fact that it isn’t my fault or Maia’s that she wasn’t a part of my life until now.” Anger tightened his expression. “They want to meet her.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to tell them to fuck off.” His plate clattered onto the coffee table, appetite clearly destroyed by the topic. “They’ve never been the best parents, and they’ve pissed me off a million times with their treatment of Shannon… and they’ve done it again. To my kid. A kid who has been through a fucking war… a kid whose feelings you can’t play with because her feelings have already been crushed to hell by her own mother. They knew this. I told them this and still they held out on her as grandparents. Now because they’re ready they think they can just waltz into her life?”
I sat up, putting my own plate down so I could scoot closer to him. I rested my hand on his thigh, drawing his gaze. Our eyes locked, and like always, my whole body zinged pleasantly in reaction to our connection. “I understand you’re pissed off at them, and honestly, I am too. I don’t want them in Maia’s life. But that’s not my decision, and it may be yours… However, you have a very smart girl on your hands, and she’s already lost out on so much. Perhaps you should give her the choice. Be honest with her about them, about their attitude and about the possibility that they could hurt her… and then let her decide for herself.”
He stared at me a moment before leaning in to brush his mouth over mine. My lips tingled as they parted under the sweet kiss. When he pulled back, he cupped my face and brushed his thumb against my lower lip. “I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
My breathing stuttered at the confession, and I felt that happiness swamp me again.
Just as quickly the panic set in.
Logan was filling my head and my heart and my body with him.
What happened if he walked away again?
Suddenly I was jerked toward him, my hands fluttering against his chest to catch myself. I stared, wide-eyed, into his face, which was now but inches from mine. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, his voice gruff. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to make you trust me so I never have to see that fear in your eyes ever again.”
I closed my eyes at his sweet promise and leaned my forehead against his jaw. “I’ll try too. It’s just going to take time.”
“I’ve got all the time in the world, Grace. All the time in the world for you.”
The sun felt wonderful on my skin. The waves were crashing to shore. I had no worries, no responsibilities, just never-ending white sands.
Life was perfectly, gloriously cliché in its utter heavenliness.
“Grace.”
I squeezed my eyes shut tighter against the sound of the masculine voice in my ear.
“Grace.” The voice became more insistent. “Grace, wake up.”
Suddenly my sun lounger was flipped on its side and I awoke with a jolt. Breathing hard, I blinked against the darkness of my bedroom, and as my eyes adjusted to the light, my heart only started to hammer harder against my chest. Logan was sitting on my bed.
“What?” I whispered in worry, leaning over to switch my bedside light on. Logan was sitting on my bed wearing nothing but a pair of faded old jeans. I forced my gaze to his face. “What’s wrong? Has something happened?”
His violet eyes were hot on me, his silent presence potent.
My breath caught.
My lower stomach clenched against the burst of tingles between my legs.
“Logan?”
He placed a hand slowly on either side of my hips and leaned forward until his face was so close to mine our lips were almost touching. A fierce hunger flashed across his face, and I gasped, feeling arousal shoot through my body.
He wanted me.
Suddenly he grasped me by the nape of the neck and hauled me against him. His mouth capture
d mine. I instantly melted into him and wrapped my arms around him, my fingers pressing into the muscle beneath his hot skin.
His kiss was hard, demanding, almost punishing, and I reveled in it. Logan groaned, the reverberations causing my nipples to tighten in reaction, and I shuddered. My reaction ignited something inside of him, and he shoved me roughly onto my back before hauling the covers off me. I stared up at him in aroused astonishment as he tugged on my pajama shorts. He slid them deftly down my legs along with my underwear and then he was braced over me, nudging my thighs apart as he stared down into my eyes. Logan’s hands encircled my wrists and he pinned my arms above my head as he pressed his jeans-covered erection between my legs. “Grace,” he whispered hoarsely, the word filled with need.
“Logan,” I pleaded.
His right hand left my wrist to draw down his zipper. He shoved his jeans low enough to release his erection and then returned his hand to my wrist to pin me to the bed.
Suddenly I wasn’t underneath him. I was across the room, watching him glide his body into a woman. Was it me? Was I having an out-of-body experience?
The headboard rattled against the wall as Logan fucked me toward climax.
“Logan, oh God!” a woman I recognized cried out, and I tensed.
It wasn’t me he was with.
I felt sick. Terrified.
No!
“No!” I cried out, my head jerking up from my pillow.
My eyes adjusted to the dark.
It was a nightmare.
Just a nightmare.
“Grace.” The mattress shifted beneath me, and light suddenly poured into the room. A second later Logan was braced over me, his concerned gaze on my face.
I immediately burst into tears.
“Jesus,” he muttered as he pulled me up into a sitting position so he could wrap his arms around me. “What’s this?” he asked, tucking my head under his chin.
I shook my head, trying to control the tears. I didn’t want to tell him. The whole nightmare screamed of my insecurities, and I still wasn’t sure enough of our relationship to know that it wouldn’t send him running for the door.
“Hey,” he said, his voice low and soothing but also firm. “I talked to you about my nightmare. I trusted you. Trust me, Grace. Please. I can’t stand to see you cry.” His arms tightened around me, and he whispered hoarsely, “I don’t want to lose you.”
I turned my face from where it was pressed against his chest so I could speak. “It will freak you out.”
“You didn’t run from me, and what I had to say wasn’t easy.”
When he put it like that, there was actually really no comparison between what bothered us in our dreams. Mine was a distasteful, hurtful family drama. His had been death and guilt.
I suddenly felt very small and foolish. “Now you’re really going to think I’m an idiot.”
“Just tell me.”
I sucked in a huge breath, my stomach fluttering with butterflies. “I had this dream about you before anything happened between us. Before we were even friends.”
“Okay.”
My cheeks flushed. “It was a sex dream.”
“Really?” He sounded extremely pleased with himself.
“If you must know, it disturbed the hell out of me at the time.” I sniffed haughtily.
He grunted. “I’m sure it did. I’m surprised you could look me in the eye afterward.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
I felt him shake with laughter. “Okay… so tonight’s dream?”
I tensed again, and he felt it, his arms tightening around me. “It was the same dream to begin with… but just as you’re about to…”
“About to?”
“Come inside me,” I muttered, still not quite sexually forthright enough to say the words without a little bit of modest embarrassment. “Suddenly I was across the room, watching on. I thought at first I was having some sort of out-of-body experience, but then the woman cried out and… I saw who it was.”
Logan was tense now. “Who was it?”
I shook my head, feeling sick all over again with the memory. “My mother.”
“Jesus Christ,” Logan bit out immediately.
I pulled away from him so I could look him in the eyes. “I know you wouldn’t betray me like that. That’s not why I’m crying.”
He cupped my face in his hands, his eyes dark with worry. “Why are you crying?”
“Because I finally feel like there is a chance I could be really happy… and I thought I had let go of them long ago, but these past few months…” The tears spilled down my cheeks. “She has cancer, Logan. She hasn’t asked for me. My father hasn’t. And it was his pattern, you know… Whenever she hurt me, I’d do something rebellious. I’d decide I was dropping out of high school and he’d suddenly fly home from a business trip to tell me how proud he’d be if I graduated top of the class. And it worked. He manipulated me. Made me believe that he actually cared. And then she’d hurt me again and I decided I wasn’t going to a top university. Community college would do me. Dad would come home, give me presents, sweet-talk me, and suddenly I was going to Oxford. Then she hurt me again and I changed my mind and accepted University of Edinburgh. Dad didn’t mind too much since it was still a good school, but he came back to try to change my mind.
“When she slept with my boyfriend, Dad tried to manipulate me then too. But I was too hurt and disgusted by them this time. It didn’t work. I left. And he gave up.” I stared up at Logan, pleading with him. “How could he do that? He just gave up. He never came for me. He has never sought me out. And now my mother has cancer and they just… they don’t want me there.”
“Do you want to be there?”
“I want them to want me to be there,” I admitted, ashamed they still had that hold over me. “I thought I was over it, Logan. I’m so mad at them and mad at myself. I’m not a child anymore. I shouldn’t feel like this.”
“It doesn’t matter what age you are. Parents have more power over us than anyone.” He drew me closer. “They don’t deserve you, Grace.” He pressed a soft, comforting kiss to my lips. “Perhaps you should talk to someone again?”
I stared up at this beautiful, caring man and gave him a small, watery smile. “I’m talking to you.” I mirrored his words to me from not that long ago.
“And you always can.” The words were heavy and deep with promise.
CHAPTER 22
S
ix pairs of pretty eyes stared at me, together conveying a mixture of curiosity, teasing, delight, and expectation. Chloe, Shannon, Joss, Jo, Hannah, Ellie, and Olivia sat in a semicircle in my sitting room.
It was two days after my decision to give Logan a chance, and I’d called them all for a reason. Probably not the reason they were hoping for.
I wasn’t much of a gossip.
“Thank you all for coming, guys. I’ve asked you here —”
“To thank us for pushing you to give in to Logan? You’re welcome.” Shannon grinned.
I smiled serenely. “Oh, no. You’re here despite that.”
Joss snorted. “Gotcha.”
“This is actually about Maia’s sixteenth birthday. Logan feels it would be better if I organize it —”
“And of course you said yes because you looovve him,” Chloe interrupted.
The girls tittered at her immaturity.
I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, I was wondering if you ladies would like to help me organize a sweet sixteen birthday party.”
“Of course!” Shannon nodded enthusiastically, and the other girls smiled and added their own agreements.
“Okay, so I think we’re all on board with helping you organize the best sweet sixteen any girl has ever had, but first please give us some details about you and Logan,” Olivia said.
Shannon made a face. “Not too much detail. He’s still my brother, and I can guess what put that look of pleased satisfaction on his face. I don’t need the details.”
Looking around at thei
r inquiring faces, I gave a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. I have agreed to give a relationship with Logan a chance so he can earn back my trust. It’s been two days so far, and we’re still working on it.”
“And the sex?” Chloe persisted. “Is it as good as the first time? He looks like he would make it good every time.”
Shannon made a gagging noise.
“He’s not good at it.” I shook my head, watching their faces fall. “He’s fantastic at it, and that’s all you need to know on the matter.”
“Frankly, that was too much for some of us,” Shannon muttered.
Chloe raised an eyebrow, apparently unimpressed. “And not enough for others.”
“Best you’ve ever had, huh?” Joss said, a knowing, almost sympathetic glint in her eye. “You’re so fucked.”
“Literally,” Ellie agreed.
The girls laughed while I tried to quell the rising panic inside of me.
“Let’s change the subject before I have to tell my brother we’re the reason Grace is backing out of a relationship with him.” Shannon pushed my cup of tea closer to me. “Take a calming sip, and let’s get on with planning Maia a birthday party.”
I did as Shannon suggested and focused. “It’s the summer holidays now and I don’t know who Maia’s real friends are after the whole drama she had with the history teacher, so it will be difficult to invite school friends to the party. Honestly, though, I was thinking Maia might be happier this year with just a family affair. I know sixteen is a big birthday, but it has been a difficult year and I think low-key would work best.”
“Agreed,” Shannon said. “When it’s her eighteenth, she can invite whoever she wants.”
“Exactly.” I flipped open the notebook in front of me. “So, if you’re all up for it, I thought Maia would like it if you all were there with your kids. She’s never had a big family party before, and I think she’d love it.”
“We’re definitely up for that,” Jo said, her eyes bright with kindness. “We’ll be there.”
“Hyper kids and all,” Olivia added.
Hannah grunted. “Just remember you asked for it.”
“You know Braden would probably let us host it on the bottom level of Fire,” Ellie said.
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