“You’re killing me,” she uttered on a hissed breath. “I’m dying here!”
“You’re not. You think you are, but trust me on this.”
He moved and Zoe felt the thick length of him against her thigh. It wasn’t just length, but girth. He was big in every possible way, and she hadn’t had sex with anything that wasn’t battery operated in a really long time. “Fine, but can we hurry a little?”
He pressed a kiss against her stomach and she could feel him grin. He moved lower and kissed her again. And the buzzkill thought for the day was that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a bikini wax. Hell.
Before she could utter a token of protest, he’d descended on her completely. Sliding one finger inside her, he teased her with it, as his tongue circled her clit gently. Bush or no bush, he clearly knew his way around. She gripped the couch cushion, needing something to hold on to as he feasted on her. The scrape of his beard on her skin, the soft and silky glide of his tongue over her heated flesh was more than she could handle.
She shuddered as he pressed his finger inside her, curling it forward and stroking a spot that literally made the world go white. Light danced behind her eyes and her lips parted on a soundless cry as her whole body tensed. As she hovered there, on the edge of an orgasm that might actually be the death of her, he stopped abruptly.
Gasping, literally panting for breath, every muscle quivering on the edge of a release that he’d denied her, Zoe couldn’t even think. “Why did you stop? For the love of God!”
He’d stopped because he was losing control, not just of his need to consume her, but also of the bear that was growling inside him., demanding release. It wasn’t an experience he’d ever had before. He shifted when he felt like it, when he was restless or antsy. But he’d felt the claws ready to burst through his skin, his teeth sharpening and lengthening. This was something new, something dangerous.
How the hell was he supposed to explain it to her? I stopped because I’m on the verge of transforming into a three-hundred-pound black bear that might look familiar to you. That could not happen. If he told her the truth, he’d have blue balls for the rest of his supernatural life. Forcing himself to breathe through it, to tamp down that side of himself, the last thing in the world he wanted to do was hurt or scare her. This sobering thought did more to curb his inner beast than anything he’d actually done. So he held on to them, chanting them in his head the way some men recited baseball stats. Don’t scare the pretty woman. Keep your claws to yourself.
“Because I’m not ready to let you come yet, Zoe. You’ve had me tied in knots since last night.” It was a partial truth he could live with. He whispered the words against her skin, nipping gently at her inner thighs and then soothing with soft, feather light kisses. “The longer you wait for it, the better it will be.”
Her expression was one of not just disbelief, but outrage. If it was possible to be righteously indignant and completely naked at the same time, Zoe was there. “Logan, do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve had sex? Seriously? Any idea?”
He chuckled, his breath fanning over her skin in a way that made her see stars. “No. I don’t… Months?” he guessed. While the idea of Zoe having sex with anyone else bothered him more than a little, he couldn’t imagine that men weren’t knocking down her door.
“Double digit months and not in the damn teens, either! At this point I can almost measure it in years! Trust me… I’ve waited!”
There was no appropriate response to that. If he expressed disbelief or shock, she’d accuse him of calling her a liar. If he was totally accepting of it, she’d accuse him of not thinking she was attractive enough to get a man. Neither one of those was an accurate interpretation, but Zoe, he was learning, was a perverse and contrary creature. He was starting to think it was part of her charm.
Since talking would only get him in trouble, he decided to go with action instead. Logan levered himself up until he was on top of her, his weight resting on his forearms and the softness of her body pressed fully against him. She locked her legs around his waist, but it was her hand that had his full attention. Her fingers locked around his cock, squeezing and stroking but constantly guiding him forward until he was nudging between the hot, slick walls of her sex.
Logan couldn’t stop the growl that escaped him. She felt so good, so perfect, and so achingly tight around him. Pressing deeper, savoring every moan and cry from her, he didn’t stop until he was balls deep inside her.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Let’s not bring religion into this,” she said breathlessly. “Anything that feels this good will surely send us to hell.”
His laugh turned into a groan as she moved beneath him, arching her hips and circling them slowly, torturously against him. “You’re an evil woman, Zoe.”
“Then you’d better subdue me.”
It was the wrong thing to say to him. Or hell, maybe it was the right thing. But it sparked something inside him. It brought out the animal. Grabbing her wrists, he put her hands over her head, holding them in one of his own. It left his other hand free to roam, to cup the soft weight of her breasts, to tease taut nipples until she was crying out.
He withdrew, leaving only the tip of his cock inside her. She whimpered as he paused there, waiting. When her whimper became a cry of protest, he surged in again—deep, hard. The pleasure of it was so intense that light danced behind his eyes and he could feel his balls tightening. He wouldn’t last long, but he’d be damned if she didn’t go first.
“You feel so good,” he whispered against her ear, nipping at her earlobe, kissing her neck. He bit down not as gently as he should have. It would leave a mark. “So wet for me, Zoe…so hot and tight. Tell me what you want, baby.”
“More,” she whispered. “I want more.”
He gave it to her. With short, shallow thrusts he drove her higher, taking her back to that edge. Her thighs trembled around him. The quivering of her belly told him just how close she was. Dipping his head, he closed his mouth over one hardened nipple, scraping it lightly with his teeth and then flicking it with his tongue.
She shattered. Her soft, kiss-swollen lips parted on a harsh cry and her whole body trembled beneath him as her pussy clamped tightly around his cock. He could feel the spasms of her orgasm around him, milking him.
Logan closed his eyes, let his body give in to the need. Thrusting again, deep inside her, he went completely still as the pleasure washed through him. Every jerk, every spasm as he spilled himself inside her was perfection.
In the aftermath, resting his weight on his arms so he didn’t crush her, but still lying on top of her, Logan was in no move to hurry. As he nuzzled her neck and inhaled the scent of her that was now even sweeter, he felt his body stirring. Even for a shifter, that was a record. There was something about Zoe Hawkins that made her special, and while he didn’t know what that was, he intended to find out.
What he did know for a fact was that there would be hell to pay. He’d broken his brother’s rule. And for the next week, he intended to break it again at every possible opportunity. Whatever the fallout, she was more than worth it.
5
“It’s too big,” Zoe said with a frown. “There’s no way it’ll fit.”
“It’ll fit,” Logan said, reassuringly. “I have done this before.”
Her expression was clearly skeptical as she gazed down at his hands from her perch on the counter. “Not with me, you haven’t.”
He grinned suddenly. “You know, anyone else hearing this conversation would not think we were talking about baking a pan of brownies.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “You’re a perv, and I still say that’s too much batter. It’ll overflow in the oven and make a mess. Or worse.”
Logan dipped a spoon in the bowl and ate a heaping bite of the batter. “We don’t have to bake them.”
“Oh my God! Stop that. You’re going to die from salmonella poisoning!”
He chuckled. �
�That’s not likely. I’ve eaten worse things.”
Climbing onto the counter, wearing one of his shirts and a pair of boxer shorts that she’d swiped from a brand new pack in the drawer since he clearly only ever went commando, Zoe frowned at that. “Like what?”
Logan cocked his head to the side but didn’t answer immediately. “Usually stuff on a dare,” he said.
Lie. She knew it instantly. Why he’d lie about something like that she didn’t know, but her radar had gone off and it was rarely ever wrong. You’re here for a week, having a hot and unbelievably steamy affair with a guy who looks like he belongs on the cover of one of your books. Shut up and enjoy it. Ride it, and him, out for as long as you can, Zoe.
The little voice in her head wasn’t wrong. The thing with Logan was temporary, a fling. They didn’t owe one another anything. Still, it bothered her, not the subject of the lie, but that he’d lied at all. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that if a man lied about the little stuff, he sure as hell wouldn’t have any qualms lying about the big ones—like wives, kids, jobs, not being able to come to the dinner party and meet her friends because of a work emergency. Okay, so that one had only happened one time, she reminded herself. But still. Lies were evil. They spread and crept and always came back to bite you in the ass even when you thought they were done. They were the herpes of relationships. Bad analogy. Don’t think about The Herp with a guy who has just had every single non-gross appendage inside you.
Realizing that her own internal monologue was likely to drive her crazy, Zoe decided to take a breather and let her brain catch up with the rest of her. If it possibly could. “I should probably head back,” she said.
He looked utterly crestfallen, like a little boy who was told he couldn’t play with a new toy. “I thought you’d stay tonight…and that I’d make you breakfast in the morning since you’re going to be too weak to crawl out of my bed.”
Her brain might have been calling him a liar and questioning everything he said, but at those words, her body told it to shut the hell up. Heat rushed through her, her nipples pebbled beneath the borrowed t-shirt, and all she wanted to do was wrap her legs around him and feel him hot and hard inside her again. She was already sore. Her inner thighs felt like she’d done three spin classes back to back without the padded seat. None of that seemed to matter. She wanted him. Instantly, intensely, undeniably—the need was like a living thing inside her that just took over.
“Convince me,” she said.
“Not until we have some sustenance… I’m not as young as I look,” he said and placed the overflowing brownie pan in the oven.
Clenching her thighs together to ease the ache that had materialized there with nothing more than a promise from him, Zoe glared at him. “You’re a tease, Logan.”
He moved closer to her, his big hands on her thighs, kneading muscles there that had been overworked mostly by him. “Not me. I make good on all my promises, Zoe, especially when it comes to satisfying you.”
God, his hands were magic. His fingers dug into aching muscles with just enough force to make it hurt and feel good all at the same time. She bit her a lip as she groaned. “I don’t think satisfying is an appropriate term for what you do.”
He kissed her neck, then licked, making her shiver. “Mind blowing? Earth shattering? Epic?”
“Egotistical,” she shot back. It lost some of its heat since she was shivering on the countertop of his kitchen island in borrowed underwear. Her own were lost somewhere in the mess of his office. Please, she thought in a split second of sanity, don’t let his brothers be the ones to find them.
His hands moved from her thighs up to her hips, his thumbs dipping below the waistband of the borrowed boxers. “Am I entitled to be?” He kissed the side of her neck, his teeth nipping just a little bit. Then he whispered, “Maybe just a little bit?”
Yes. Dammit. He was. In addition to the fact that he had the most perfect cock she’d ever seen, he also knew how to use it. And those traits rarely went hand in hand. Then there was his mouth. The things he could do with his tongue were illegal, immoral, and irresistible.
“Stop fishing for compliments,” she said sourly. “Your ego is inflated enough already.”
“It’s not…not really,” he said softly. “I like joking with you. I like watching you get that spark in your eye when you’re just on the verge of getting really mad and then making you laugh.”
She liked it too. Too much. “You know this is just a fling, right? I can’t stay here. You can’t go to the city with me. Saying things like that, thinking about each other that way is only going to cause problems.”
He stepped closer, pulling her to the edge of the counter until she had no choice but to lock her legs around him or go crashing to the floor. “You see a problem and I see a challenge. Things can work if you want them to.”
“It’s complicated.”
He frowned then. “Is there someone back home that you—”
“No. Lord no. I haven’t been on a date in so long I don’t even know how to act on one!”
Shaking his head, he huffed out a breath. “I don’t understand that. How can you not have men lined up at your door?”
“I’m fat.”
He blinked in surprise, then laughed. “You’re a bigger girl than some, not as big as others. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Women ought to be different—ought to come in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and colors. But while I’d like to be a nice enough guy to say I’m sorry that other men don’t see what’s right under their noses… I’m not. I kinda like having you all to myself.”
And he did it. He said just the thing she needed to hear. Somehow, that only made her more nervous. Every lying sack of shit she’d ever dated in her life had done just that. She’d been buttered up behind closed doors, flattered and complimented, and then if they ran into people he knew out in public she’d be introduced as a friend or a co-worker. “What’s wrong with you?”
Logan cocked his head to one side. “I don’t follow.”
“You’re good looking, ridiculously so, you have a body to die for, a penis that’s porn worthy, and you have this good ol’ southern boy charm that has to make panties just melt. And you say all the right things and do all the right things, and men like you just don’t exist. It can’t be real. So what’s wrong with you? What ugly secrets are you hiding behind this too perfect exterior?”
He stepped back from her and let out a heavy sigh. That was all the confirmation she needed. There was something off about him, something that didn’t add up, and she needed to get out before it bit her in the ass.
Hopping down from the counter, she said, “I should go back to my cabin. Today was nice. Better than nice. But I don’t think it can happen again.”
Zoe cursed as she realized that her shoes and what she’d managed to gather up of her clothes were still in his bedroom. Turning, she headed in that direction to get her things. She’d return his t-shirt and boxers later. No she wouldn’t. That was a lie. She’d hold onto them and kick herself in the ass later while she snuggled in her lonely bed with them.
As she reached the bedroom door, Logan was there suddenly, planting his big hand on the door frame and blocking her way. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” she shot back. He wasn’t offering her anything, he sure as hell wasn’t giving her any information to work with. And her gut instinct was never wrong. Maybe he wasn’t a player, but he was still a liar and she had no room for that in her life, even it was for only a week.
“Don’t walk out on me like this,” he urged. “I have secrets, Zoe, but everyone does. I promise you, there’s nothing about my secrets that would ever be harmful to you. They’re just mine to keep.”
It was so tempting. As close as he was to her, she could feel the heat from his body seeping into hers. He was so big that standing next to him actually made her feel small and delicate when she was either eye to eye or towering over most of the men she knew.
“I
’ve been lied to. A lot. And I don’t want that, not even for something short term. If you can’t be honest—”
“I am honest,” he insisted. “I’m not married. No wife. No girlfriend. I’m not on drugs or a criminal. I don’t have six kids and four baby mamas out there. There is nothing that I’m keeping from you that should keep us from being together while you’re here.”
Except for the fact that you turn into a bear.
Logan knew that would be a deal breaker for her. Recalling the intense fear she’d suffered the night before, he didn’t question it for a second. Hell, he understood it. The first time he’d turned into a bear he hadn’t known what the hell was going on. Because they’d had different mothers and only his father was a shifter, his older brothers hadn’t known whether he’d be like them or not until it happened the first time. So, they’d kept it quiet, hiding their differences from him. And now he was hiding it from her.
She was leaving in a few days. Burdening her with the kind of secret he had put her at risk and put his family at risk. It’s not like she’s your mate.
His bear roared inside him, the sound deafening inside his head. The protest was loud and clear. Whatever Logan was thinking, the animal side of him had already made up its mind. Zoe was it for him.
He backed away from her suddenly. It wasn’t something he’d planned on. It sure as hell wasn’t something he’d been expecting. Reeling from it, scared shitless by the realization, he didn’t know what to do.
“That’s the quickest back pedal I’ve ever seen,” she said softly. “I should definitely go.”
Realizing that he’d made a huge mistake, Logan shook his head. “It’s not like that… If you think for a second that I don’t want you—”
“I think you’ve had me,” she said. “And now I think you’re reconsidering whether or not it’s worth putting up with me in order to get laid again!”
“That is not what this is!” he denied hotly. “If all I wanted was a piece of ass, I could have gotten that long before you showed up.”
Two Tickets To Bearadise (Bearadise Lodge Book 1) Page 4
