by CP Smith
The hotel had upgraded the rooms a few years back and the standard size tub had been switched out for a whirlpool, or it never would have held us both. I barely noticed his own naked state when he stepped inside the tub and rearranged me, so I was sitting on his lap.
Logan didn’t speak as we soaked in the water, didn’t make a move sexually. He held me with both arms for a while, resting his chin on my shoulder, then grabbed a bar of soap and began to wash my arms, my back. The kindness and comfort caused my breath to hitch before more tears poured silently again. With each shudder of breath, the tighter his arm around my waist became until I was leaning my head back against his shoulder. We stayed like that until the water turned cool and my skin began to wrinkle, then just as silently as he’d entered the bathroom, Logan stood and helped me from the tub.
When I tried to grab a towel to cover myself, Logan pulled it from my hand and dried me off gently, wrapping me in it before drying himself off. We used the toothbrushes provided by the motel, but I was too tired to worry about my hair. When I slumped against the wall to watch Logan finish his teeth, he dropped his toothbrush and picked me up, carrying me to the bed.
When I realized I’d left my clothes in the bathroom, I started to climb off the bed for my hoodie to sleep in, but Logan produced a cotton tee from a backpack he’d had in his truck and pulled it over my head.
We hadn’t spoken a single word to each other since entering the hotel room. I was too shocked when we arrived, and too angry and grief stricken to care. My throat was dry from crying, so I swallowed and wet my lips before I tried. “Find whoever did this, Logan. Find them and put them away before I do, because I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop myself from killing them.”
It wasn’t an idle threat. I never dreamed I was capable of taking someone’s life, but in that moment, I could have without guilt. Duke was a kind man who’d looked out for everyone. He deserved for justice to be served.
Logan understood that, understood exactly what I was feeling. Instead of rolling his eyes or scoffing at what most would call an empty threat, he nodded and kissed me on the forehead with a muttered, “I know. I’ll find them and make them pay,” before he threw back the sheets, dropped the towel around his hips, and pulled me down onto the bed and into his arms.
Nothing else needed to be said, so I closed my eyes against the nightmare and prayed for sleep I doubted would come. But Logan helped me push the demons back, like he’d been doing since the moment I’d met him. He ran his hand gently through my hair, caressing the strands with a lover’s touch until my muscles unlocked. In his arms I felt safe. As if the world couldn’t touch me. And blissful darkness finally took me under as I lay securely in his arms.
_______________
White light exploded through the gun’s scope, blinding Logan for an instant. Sweat clung to his body, mixed with sand and dirt, stinging his eyes as he tried to reestablish his unit through his scope.
“Two bogeys. Goddammit!” Logan roared. “Where? Show your faces, you sonsofbitches.”
Logan reached for his radio as he scanned for survivors, for more enemies to bleed from the darkness. But the chaos on the ground, the destruction covering the bodies of his unit, obscured what he knew in his heart.
They were dead. All dead. Logan drifted between the state of wake and dream. Pushing hard against the memories. Sweat coated his body as he tried to throw off the weight on his chest. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t fill his lungs. The smoke and fire left behind by the suicide bombers coated his lungs as he searched for survivors in the destruction. Dead. They were all dead.
“Logan.”
A soft hand brushed against his cheek. Logan moved his head to keep contact with it, fighting the darkness to breach the light. Soft murmurs, whispered against his ear, finally pulled him free of the nightmare until he opened his eyes to the early morning light. Eyes the color of jade watched him with concern while she stroked his face and cooed like a mother to a crying child. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”
Logan rolled the second his brain caught up with his surroundings and pinned Skylar beneath him, tightening his hold on her and reality. She didn’t hesitate to wrap her arms and legs around him and hold him back. The feel of her soft skin against his ignited a primal need to bury himself deep inside her. To feel her life pulsing around him so he’d know they were still alive.
“I need you,” he rasped in a rough voice against her ear. Logan had planned to wait to have her again, to allow her body to heal after taking her innocence, but the nightmare was lingering. He needed her to beat back the demons. “Need to feel your heat wrapped around me. But I don’t want to hurt you if you’re not ready.”
Skylar dropped her legs and opened for him like a flower, burying her face in his neck with a sigh. “I’m here. Whenever you need me, I’m here. You won’t hurt me.”
Logan tightened his arms around her and thanked God, not for the first time since meeting her, for the miracle that was Skylar James.
Lowering his body to hers, he took her mouth in a punishing kiss. He needed hard and fast, life affirming, sweaty sex that would blank his mind and hers of their ghosts. But he knew he needed to go slowly with her, no matter what she said.
Pulling back so he could look down at Skylar as he slid inside her, he noted her eyes had turned a deeper shade of green and the line of her mouth was fuller after taking her mouth. She looked like a vixen ready to eat him alive.
When she raised her hips—with glassy-eyed lust masking her face—and whispered, “Take me, Logan. Use me up,” he complied without hesitation.
Raising her leg to open her core wider, Logan slid inside her slowly, burying himself inch by inch between her tight walls until she was full of him. He moaned deeply when she contracted around him and arched her back in pleasure. His shirt had ridden up on her stomach, so he grabbed the hem and yanked it over her head, baring her breasts to him. Rose-colored nipples begged for his attention. He gladly succumbed to their bidding and laved each with equal attention.
Pulling out of her heat, Logan watched as each inch of him pushed back in. Her tiny body took him with little resistance this time, filling her to the point of pain he knew would burn into pleasure once she adjusted around him. He increased his tempo slowly the louder her cries of passion became, easing her inexperienced body into taking more. When she pulled his mouth down to hers and matched his tempo, driving her hips up to meet his with equal intensity, he knew she was ready.
Ripping his mouth from hers, Logan withdrew from her heat and flipped Skylar to her stomach, pulling her knees up until her ass was in the air. He bit each shapely cheek, squeezing both as he lined up with her core and drove in. Skylar cried out at the sudden intrusion, then reached for the headboard and looked back at him with hooded eyes full of need. The single look on her angelic face almost sent his seed spilling from his body.
Fueled by her acceptance, Logan’s hand landed smartly on her ass and he watched her gasp with excitement. His all-American girl, his fucking saving grace from the demons controlling him, liked it just as rough as he did. She owned his soul in that instant, and she had no clue.
Watching her eyes hood lower in reaction to his rough handling spurred Logan’s desire. Reaching down, he grabbed her ponytail and tugged until she rose to her knees so he could reach her lips. He wanted her cries of release in his mouth, wanted to taste her passion as she milked his cock dry.
“It’s building,” she panted on a whimper. “I need. Logan, I need.”
“Not ‘til I say so,” he growled in warning, reaching for her clit with a skilled finger.
When he rolled the nerves, she cried into his mouth, and her hips ground into his hand.
“I can’t hold out.”
“Not ‘til I say.”
“Please. I can’t.”
He could feel her tightening around him, but he needed to hear her acknowledge who she belonged to; whose cock was deep inside her. Would only ever be inside her if he had h
is way. He’d laid his claim to her the morning before, now he needed her to lay claim to him.
“Who do you belong to?” he demanded. “Say it.”
“What?”
“Say who you belong to,” he gritted between clenched teeth, because even for an innocent, she had a God-given talent for pushing him to the very edge with just the roll of her hips.
“Logan . . . You. I belong to you.”
He slammed home and held her in place until she mewled. “Who do I belong to?”
Eyes so pure a green you could swim in them stared back at him in wonder before softening as she raised a hand to his cheek. “Me. You belong to me, Logan.”
Pure arrogance and pride knotted in his chest, so he slammed his mouth over hers and rolled her clit until she exploded so completely around him, it tore a grunt from his throat when he followed her over into white hot oblivion.
_______________
“So what happens next?” Logan ran his hand down my back and across my ass while my head rested on his chest.
“We’ll head back to the lake and see if they found anything else, then return to Ennis and look for evidence there. I talked to Duke at midnight the night before last. I got the impression he was headed home from there, but he could have headed back to his office. I’ll search both for clues, check CCTV and security footage at local gas stations between Ennis and the lake, see if Duke filled up his truck and if he was alone at the time. But if he encountered a stranger on the road, it might be hard to find them if they moved on.
“But you don’t think it was a stranger, do you?”
A long pause. “No. A drifter would have taken his rig. They would have sold his boat cheap for the money, driven his truck out of state until it became hot, then dumped it for another stolen vehicle. If our hunch is right—that it was staged to look like he drowned—it means whoever killed him lives in the area.”
I leaned my ear against his chest and listened to his heartbeat. It was slow and steady, the beat as strong as the man lying beneath me. “You’ll figure it out.”
He squeezed my ass then ran his hand up to the nape of my neck and pulled my head back to kiss me gently. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, baby, but I’m not a trained investigator. It’s one of the reasons I balked at the position when they first approached me. I’m a soldier. I kill without hesitation, not delve into the minds of criminals for motive. That’s what Loverboy and Coop did.”
I pushed up and braced my head in the palm of my hand, looking down on him. “I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit. You’re the one, not Spear, who saw what was right in front of us. You said yourself you’d been suspicious almost from the beginning about his disappearance, even before Spear finally started treating you like a cop.”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hands. “Maybe. Nothing about this makes sense. If Duke drove all the way to Yellowstone before meeting his killer, then why’d they empty his truck and boat?”
I thought about that. “They must have ridden with him and they were afraid they left behind hair or fingerprints?”
“That would be my first guess, too. So where are the truck’s contents? The trash bins in that area were searched and they found nothing.”
“He threw it in a trash bin somewhere else.”
“Okay, say that’s true, then why did he bring the truck back after he threw the trash away?”
“So it looked like Duke was fishing on his own and drowned.”
“Then tell me, beautiful Skye, how the hell did the killer get home if they rode together?”
“He. . . he . . .” I puzzled over that for a moment and came to the only conclusion you could. “He had another vehicle, which doesn’t explain why he emptied out Duke’s truck and took all of his tackle.”
“Now you’re following. Beauty and brains,” he whispered, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. I could have stayed like that for hours, in the cocoon we’d built against the outside world, but my phone buzzed from inside the bathroom, and I looked at the clock. It was just after seven so I knew it couldn’t be one of my brothers. Saturdays were meant for sleeping.
Rolling until I had the top sheet wrapped around my body, I ran to the bathroom as my cell stopped ringing. It started up again just as I pulled it from my jeans pocket. Jamie was calling.
“Hello?”
“Did you find Duke?”
I hesitated, unsure of what to say. “He’s still missing.”
“But they’re still looking for him, right?”
She sounded hopeful, like there was still a chance of Duke being found safe and sound. Hearing that caused a knot to form in my throat. I didn’t know how to tell her what we’d concluded in the middle of the night. Duke had been one of the only father figures Jamie had as well. “Yellowstone police ensured us they would keep looking.”
Silence.
“Jamie?”
“You think he’s dead, don’t you?”
“Nobody knows anything for certain until we find him.”
More silence.
“Jamie?”
“He was like a father to me,” she whispered in a rough voice. That knot in my throat turned into a tourniquet, cutting off my voice.
“I know, Jamie. He was like a father to everyone under the age of thirty. Logan will figure this out, and he’ll bring him home, one way or another.”
Dead silence.
“Jamie?”
“Figure out what? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Jamie . . . I—” It was an open investigation and the only reason I knew anything was because of Logan. If I told her the whole town would know within an hour.
“You’re saying it wasn’t an accident? That if he’s dead . . . Oh, my God.”
“We don’t know anything yet.” I tried for a calm voice, but she wasn’t listening.
“Who would kill him?” she wailed. “Duke never hurt anyone.”
Hearing her pain weakened my resolve to be strong and kick-started my own silent tears. I tried to get words out to comfort her, but it was useless, so I slid down the wall and listened to her grief until the phone was pulled from my hand.
“Jamie?” Logan sounded calm, soothing. “I need you to take a deep breath.” He waited a beat, looking down at me, so I took a deep breath like he’d ordered. “That’s it. Deeper.” I pulled more air into my lungs and my eyes stopped burning with tears. He listened for a moment longer, never taking his eyes off of me, then nodded and mumbled softly, “Good girl.” It was meant for both of us.
“I promise, Jamie. I’ll do everything in my power to find out what happened to him.” A promise to both of us I knew in my core he would honor. “Is the bar covered or do I need to head back with Skylar before I get started?”
“Tell her to call David and Rachel and have them open for me. I’m not leaving.” I stood as I spoke and dropped the sheet then grabbed my clothes from the floor to dress, so we could leave as soon as he was done with Jamie. When I turned, Logan’s gaze scanned my body with heat. I raised a brow at him while he listened to Jamie, and started to leave the bathroom. He snagged me around the waist before I made it through the door and pulled me back into his chest so he could nip my shoulder gently. Just the brief touch sent a shiver straight to my core. My cheeks heated at the memory of what his mouth and hands had done to me the hour before. I was sore in all the right places, and a few that reminded me I should have taken more time in between, but I couldn’t have turned him away. His eyes were haunted when he’d rolled onto me. I would have done anything to erase that look from his face.
When I looked back at him, he mouthed the word bath. My forehead wrinkled and I shook my head. I’d cleaned up after we’d finished earlier, I could shower fully when we got home.
Logan let go of my waist and stepped to the tub, then mumbled his goodbye to Jamie, restating his promise to her that he would find out what happened to Duke. I was pulling on my bra when I heard the bath start. Whipping around at
the sound, I came face-to-face with Logan. “I don’t need a bath. We need to get going.”
“You’re soaking in the tub. I wasn’t gentle with you, so you need the heat to help with the soreness.”
I blinked, then flushed further. “How do you even know that?”
“Loverboy. He read any book he could get his hands on. Technical. Romance. You name it. He was shit with the ladies, but he knew more about your gender than most women knew about themselves.”
“Well, I’m fine.”
“I’m not arguing about this.” And to prove he wasn’t arguing, Logan pulled the lacy bra from my body and picked me up like a sack of potatoes and threw me over his shoulder. Resistance was futile so I didn’t fight him. He deposited me into the filling tub, then grabbed a towel for my head to rest on while I soaked. When I sank into the warm water with a sigh of defeat, I moaned audibly the moment my sore muscles relaxed. Loverboy wasn’t wrong about the bath. The heat helped instantly.
“Twenty minutes,” he ordered, pointing at me. “Then we’ll head out.”
I smirked at his order then saluted him. “Sir, yes, sir.”
His answering grin made me smile. At least his eyes weren’t haunted anymore.
Sixteen
Truce
“HOW LONG DO you think it will take them to process the hair?”
Logan glanced at me as we headed back to Ennis. After searching all morning, the only evidence we’d found was a long, dark brown or black hair caught in the seat belt mechanism of Duke’s truck. Spear and his officers had searched all night for Duke but found no evidence that would point us in the right direction. Divers were being called in so they could search the bottom of the lake, but that could take days. Since there was nothing left for Logan and me to do in Yellowstone, we decided to return to Ennis and wait for news. It was frustrating having no leads other than a single strand of hair. Tom Petty was right. Waiting was the hardest part.
