by Anne Conley
Zane clarified for him. “Logan doesn’t double-dip his dick anywhere. That’s what I’ve figured. He’s tapped that, and he’s done.”
“Wow. What a troglodyte,” Lettie responded, and Logan only sipped his drink.
The table was still silent when he’d drained it, unconsciously.
Annette gasped. “Y’all have slept together?” Her Texas twang sprang to life like it tended to do when she was mad.
“I wouldn’t call it that.” At her shocked expression, he motioned for another drink, trying to put his thoughts into words.
These guys had stood by him for years, working together as a team. They deserved an explanation. Not that he wanted their girls to know, but recently, it was like a package thing. He let out a sigh of resignation, even as he rubbed his hands over his face. He did not want to do this shit with them.
He looked around the table. “You guys all like games, right?”
Annette and Vivian nodded. Lettie crossed her arms, doubtful look in place. The guys around the table grinned at him, waiting for him to spill, like they’d been pestering him to do for over a year. They knew something was up with Katie but not exactly what. Since they were all dating her friends, it seemed he’d have to give them a little something now.
But it was so much more than any of them were thinking. For one thing, his private life was private. His friends didn’t know for sure he was a Dom—except maybe Elliot, who wasn’t here tonight—but they weren’t stupid and probably expected as much.
The other thing was, what had happened with Katie was so much more than his norm that he didn’t know how to put it into words.
“You guys remember the game Hot Lava?”
Vivian quirked an eyebrow. “Carly puts hand towels all over the floor and jumps from one to the other without touching the ground, claiming my carpeting is hot lava. If she touches it, she dies.”
He nodded. “Yup.” He stood and picked up his glass. “Katie’s my Hot Lava.”
That was all he was going to give them. All he could give them. As he strode out of the bar, confident in his ability to turn his back on all this and focus on something else, anything else, he felt a ton of eyes on his back.
One set in particular had him almost turning back around, but he left Katie in Mo’s to pick up Bonner and take him home. It killed him that she did that because he had no idea how safe she was, or how well these randoms she picked up and took home treated her.
It wasn’t his place though. He had no right to care. He’d had his way with her. It had been life-changing, but it was over. Logan wasn’t going to get involved with Katie personally. That was his rule.
For sure, she was his Hot Lava. If he touched her the way he wanted to, it would break him—possibly her too—in the process. He already knew his heart wanted to get lost to her, and he’d sworn a long time ago his heart would not get lost again.
Still … friends could have a nice ring to it.
Chapter Four
Logan sat outside his front door, overlooking the courtyard of his apartment complex, poisoning himself with a cigarette. It was a punishment, a symptom of his passive aggressiveness turned inward. As the crisp, clean mountain air mingled with the harsh smoke he inhaled, he thought of Katie.
Soothing himself by absently stroking the giant tomcat named Hella Kitty, he tried not to think about Katie. He reminded Logan of that old cat food commercial, the one he hadn’t seen since he was a kid, when he’d been relatively normal. The cat on TV seemed old and cranky, just like Hella Kitty. Hella Kitty, however, had a chunk missing from his left ear, and his fur showed signs of fighting, even though it was smoother than it had been. He’d rescued Hella Kitty from the shelter when Lettie and Zane needed people to take in the animals while they cleaned the building after a fire. But the old cat had given Logan company, comforting him more than he’d realized, so he’d kept him.
Without warning, Hella Kitty hissed at him and bit the back of his hand before jumping off his lap and running into the night.
Logan sighed. That’s what the cat did. He allowed affection, then rejected it to do his own thing. They were a lot alike in that regard.
Logan’s gaze fell on the door next to him. He brought the cigarette back up to his mouth.
Logan didn’t think about Katie this much, but they’d had that meeting yesterday where she’d insisted they be friends. And knowing she’d gone home with Bonner was doing a number on him. He’d been sitting at his kitchen table when he heard them come in, the paper-thin walls of the apartment complex letting him know she was in fine spirits, giggling at Bonner’s low murmurs, then silence. The silence was what killed Logan, so he’d gone outside.
A series of clicks had his head turning, and Bonner walked out of his apartment. That had Logan perking up. He was leaving her alone? Was she sleeping already?
Logan knew Katie lived with her brother, Walter, who was in high school and hung out with Elliot’s nephew. He seemed like a nice enough kid, but was he old enough to be home alone all night?
Logan scoffed at himself as he took another pull of his cigarette. Not his fucking business. Logan had been homeless at that age. Just because he’d never known the kind of people Katie’s parents were didn’t mean he understood any of it. Who would take off and leave their twenty-something-year-old daughter to be the guardian of their teenaged son while they traveled the globe and lived in exotic locales? Not to mention giving her enough money to start her own business in a town that couldn’t fucking support a shop like that.
He was only thinking of her so much because she was at Mo’s tonight, mooning over him, which was exactly why he didn’t do this shit. Attachments.
And now, apparently, they were friends. He had zero friends he’d played with, that he knew what they looked like when they came, how they tasted.
Motherfucker.
He groaned and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes as he took one last drag of his smoke. If he were going to break his rules for anyone, it would be Katie. He’d known it the night they were together. She’d been so soft and pliable in his arms, and so … everything when he was caring for her after their scene. He’d watched her for hours after taking her to the hotel room.
He’d wanted to stay the night but knew it would fuck with him, so he simply tucked her into bed and resisted the urge to crawl in next to her.
She was too young for him, too settled for him, and too fucking perfect. Yeah, that was it. She didn’t have much wrong with her, and he was a fuck up of epic proportions.
Katie came from a rich family with established connections in this town and could have been a spoiled brat. Instead, she was a hard worker, had managed to avoid wasting all her parents’ money, and kept herself busy. She liked control, just needed releases. Logan, on the other hand, was relatively new to town, only having lived here about fifteen years or so, probably since Katie was in junior high.
Logan sighed out a puff of cigarette smoke, remembering all the roaming around the U.S. during his youth, a runaway from an abusive father and nonexistent mother. He craved control in all things because he’d had so little of it in his formative years. He’d never had the kind of money she had. His tiny apartment was the Taj Mahal compared to the lice-ridden cots he’d slept on as a teen.
And he was almost forty. She might be thirty. Ten years’ difference?
Then there was Jessica—his one and only ex-girlfriend. The one who’d taught him everything he knew and illustrated perfectly the need for his damn rule. The woman he’d thrown his everything into because he didn’t know any better.
And he’d be damned if he was going to think about that shit right now. Before he could even consciously get the women out of his brain, one of them yelled so loudly it got his heart racing.
“Goddammit, Cole! Get your ass back in here and let me out!” Katie’s scre
ams were hoarse, and Logan wondered how long she’d been calling out for Bonner. He stood and paced to the door, banging on it. “Help me! Please!” she shouted.
That was all it took. Logan looked behind him to make sure Bonner wasn’t just waiting for her to yell loudly enough, but his car was gone. Disregarding the noise he was making, or any repercussions to the property damage, Logan kicked the door in and stalked into the apartment.
“Katie?”
“In here!” she cried, her sobs echoing through the tiny apartment that mirrored his own. He ran into the bedroom and saw her heeled foot sticking through the hollow-core closet door where she’d tried to kick it open.
“I got you. Hang on.” These hollow-core doors were a menace to tender skin as he worked the wood around her ankle. He kept his voice soothing, but he was pissed. Pissed at Bonner for locking her in a fucking closet and leaving, pissed at himself for caring, and wondering what the fuck was going on.
Pulling her leg back through the hole with a grunted sob, she was silent as Logan opened the door.
“Oh, shit.” A rock formed in Logan’s stomach at the sight in front of him. She was cuffed to the closet rod, blindfolded, and naked. He remembered everything about their meeting two years ago, and her hard limit was confined spaces. She was severely claustrophobic from something that had happened when she was a kid. “Hang on, sweetheart. I got you.”
“Logan?” she whispered, and the tears streaming down her face punched him in the gut.
He shushed her, needing to concentrate on letting her free. First, he checked for injuries—running his hands over her clammy skin—then yanked the rod out of the wall, not giving a shit if Bonner ever got his deposit back. Tearing off the blindfold, Logan scooped her into his arms and took her to his apartment. First and foremost, he was worried about shock, then he would concern himself with what the ever-loving fuck Katie had been thinking.
After he got his panic under control.
Well, this is embarrassing. Katie watched Logan move around his apartment making hot cocoa, giving her his usual silent treatment. He’d rescued her, wrapped her in a blanket, taken off the handcuffs, and started puttering around his kitchen like she was just sitting at his table for a visit.
But he’d seen her in a most vulnerable position.
It was crazy. She’d been trying to get his attention for years, and now she had it. She hadn’t even really been meaning for him to notice tonight of all nights. Granted, Katie knew Cole lived next door to Logan, and maybe some part of her had intended for Logan to get jealous. But she’d given up on him treating her like anything other than a gum wrapper on the bottom of his shoe a long time ago.
That’s what she told herself anyway.
She couldn’t even look at him, so she looked everywhere else instead. His apartment was almost identical to Cole’s. Cole’s was messy and had workout equipment everywhere, along with beer bottles and a pizza box, and Logan’s was neat as a pin, nary a beer bottle in sight.
A giant orange cat sat on top of his fridge. She wouldn’t have noticed it, except it had meowed and squeezed between Logan’s legs when they had come in, nearly tripping him. As her gaze swept across the room, the cat’s tail twitched as it watched her from its perch on the refrigerator. With one crooked ear, its body spilled over the edge. When the furball caught her looking at it, it hissed and jumped down before slowly sauntering into another room. At least it made her smile.
The cabinets in Logan’s kitchen were lined with canisters and coffee cups. She watched, enthralled, as he mixed contents from the canisters and poured them into a saucepan on the stove. Nobody had made her cocoa like this—ever.
Logan’s movements were precise, and she could only watch his broad back as he stirred the pot on the stove. Katie looked over his shoulder to the window next to him and saw the blackness of night.
I’m in Logan’s apartment. At night.
A ripple of excitement went through her at the thought, and she started her normal Logan’s near quaking. For the life of her, she had no idea why she reacted to him this way. She was grown, beyond teenage obsessions. Maybe it was the memory of the way only he made her feel, even though she’d sought out some semblance of that feeling from others since their time together. Maybe it was the complete lack of reaction from him, unless it was something negative. Or maybe it was simply the way he was: alpha, dominant, in control at all times, male.
After an eternity, he spun around with the saucepan and poured two steaming mugs of hot cocoa before stalking over to her and setting one down with a loud, jarring noise.
Yes, Logan stalked. Everywhere he went, his movements reminded her of a large cat stalking its prey. He was graceful in his movements, but he paid attention to everything, and Katie was under no illusions he missed anything. His eyes constantly roved his surroundings, back and forth, ever perceptive, always observing.
As he was doing right now.
Seated in the kitchen chair across from her, he blew lightly over the top of his mug. His eyes looked her up and down, then around her before settling back on her. She felt naked under his gaze and tugged the blanket tighter.
“Was that consensual?”
Katie didn’t know how to answer him. His intensity told her he was seconds away from blowing his top: the ticking of his jaw, the glare in his eyes, and the anger of his words, despite the sexy tone of his voice.
“Not entirely,” she hedged.
He slammed his hand on the table, making her jump.
“Dammit, Katie, what does that mean? What did you agree to?” he yelled.
She bit her lip and lowered her eyes, bringing her mug to her mouth just to do something with her hands.
Logan spoke again, his voice lower, using the scary tone he’d used earlier. “A conversation needs to happen before every scene. Every. Damn. Scene. Tell me you had a conversation with that jackass before he locked you in his closet and drove away.” Logan’s voice cracked, and Katie looked back up to see him staring at her with a really funny look in his eyes. “Asking as a friend, of course.” He practically spat the word at her, and she flinched.
A look of yearning crossed his eyes for a second, and then he was angry again, his eyes shuttering, eyebrows smashing down, his mouth turning at the corners in a stiff curve. It was scary when he got like that.
“Sure, we had a conversation at Mo’s. I told him I liked stuff a little wild, and he asked about the handcuffs and said he had something he’d always wanted to try.” She shrugged, trying to be flippant, but if she were being honest, she had been terrified. Ever since she was a kid and accidentally locked herself in the closet under the stairs, she hadn’t been able to stomach small spaces. And the fact she’d spent the night in there before anyone had found her made things worse. Yeah, her parents weren’t in the running for mom and dad of the year.
Logan silently watched her drink her cocoa, the rich chocolatiness coating her throat with decadence.
Katie couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Never had been able to, actually. But sometimes she thought she saw a heat in his eyes, and she entertained herself with the fantasy he was remembering the night so long ago, that it had been as amazing for him as it was for her.
Right now, her gaze raked over him as he clenched his fists, releasing them, then tightening again. She was captivated. He was so beautiful, even in his retrained anger, or whatever this was.
“Are you trying to get into the lifestyle?” His voice was low, almost a whisper, but his eyes on her were so intense, her belly flopped.
In an attempt to dismiss the painful memories of the past, she rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah. I don’t have any time to go back to that club in Albuquerque, and there are tons of guys here. I just can’t find one to …” satisfy me like you. Katie didn’t finish the sentence, not wanting him to see the disdain in her eyes.
&nb
sp; “Do you realize the danger in the game you’re playing?”
Anger reared up inside her. This was typical. He was trying to make it her fault Cole had locked her in a closet and left.
“It’s not a game, Logan. It’s my life.” The life she’d been able to build for herself despite her parents, despite the damn town. It was all hers, regardless of the fact Logan—the one person she couldn’t have—was a daily part of her existence.
His temple ticked as he clenched his jaw. His mouth, that mouth that constantly distracted her from sleep in the privacy of her own bedroom at night, flattened with displeasure. Well, fuck him. She may be an idiot, but he would not judge her for it.
“It may make you angry, but you’ve made your position about me clear.” Katie would throw this hot chocolate in his face, but it was too damn good. In an effort to calm herself, she took another sip, her fist clenched around the mug. “For your information, I try to have a conversation. I try to get my needs met, but men are complete dicks and just want to get off. I don’t understand how this lifestyle works, and I’m doing the best I can without someone to lead me.” She bit her lip at the thunder in his expression. She’d said too much.
“What about websites? Online stuff? The way we met?” She ignored the way her body tingled when he spoke of that night. He was angry. His eyes shot fiery sparks at her, the brown depths swirling with flecks of caramel, amber, and green. A woman could get lost in those eyes.
She knew those eyes so well.
“I don’t have entire weekends to devote to this. I can’t leave my brother alone and go out of town for sex.”
He didn’t get it, of course. He wouldn’t, would he? A single man, with no obligations and a job that gave him tons of time off. Whatever.
He took a deep breath before continuing, presumably to calm his nerves if his hand clenching the tabletop was any indication. “According to you, we are friends,” he said. “I have to see you with my friends. And if you continue getting into these situations with jackasses who don’t respect the triad of safe, sane, and consensual, then you get hurt, and things get personal for me.” He stared at her ring, the one she’d bought months ago to get his attention, the ring he’d ignored until tonight. “I will ask you again … Was that consensual?”
