Hot Lava

by Anne Conley

A heavy sigh that bordered on a groan sounded from behind her along with the sound of Logan sinking into something that creaked under his weight. “The breakdown is, I’m an ass.”

  Katie turned to warm her back and looked at him. He was seated on a chair in the corner, his elbows on his knees, looking at her with that same intense stare he’d had in the yard—the one that went straight through her.

  “The breakdown is, you said you didn’t want a 24/7 relationship. We were boyfriend and girlfriend when you weren’t the Dom in the bedroom. It can’t make you so angry when I don’t do what you dictate the rest of the time. I had a good reason to believe Walter didn’t set those fires, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I was being a hard-headed pig.”

  She stared at him. They were at an impasse. He’d agreed he was a jerk and apologized, but she needed more. She needed to know when things like that happened, they wouldn’t get to this point.

  She took a deep breath. “I promise I won’t shut you out the next time you’re a pig-head.”

  He smiled warily. “Is that it? Are we good now?”

  “No, I don’t think so, but I don’t know what’s next.” Honesty was best if she wanted to fix this.

  “I agree. But I may have an idea if you’re game.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “Are you up for a little role-reversal?”

  She remembered his letter. “Will this be intentional? Something you want?”

  “I was a jackass, Katherine. I deserve to be punished for it.”

  Holy shit.

  She bit her lip in thought as the possibilities raced around in her head. While it was sexually appealing to imagine Logan cuffed to the bed she saw in the corner, she didn’t really think that would fix anything. Besides, he’d had women here. Sure, they were his past, but still.

  “Yes, you do, but I’m not a Domme. I can’t do that.” She exhaled a long breath as if she could expel the anger and hurt she felt. It sort of worked, so she did it again. Katie looked at Logan, willing him to really hear her. “I want to talk. That’s what people do, really. They talk about stuff, not punish each other. So, if I’m in charge right now, that’s what we’re going to do.”

  He nodded, eyes downcast as if dreading the conversation. Well, fuck him. If he couldn’t talk, they couldn’t be together. Doms were supposed to be all about open lines of communication, and he’d asked her some pretty personal things over the course of their relationship.

  He looked so dejected at the idea of talking about his past, so she threw him a bone.

  “We can cuddle afterward, if you want, but I don’t think scening is a good idea tonight.” His eyes snapped to hers, and relief filled them.

  “I will cuddle the hell out of you.”

  Well then.

  “Okay, so tell me about your childhood. What did you mean about your mother being absent? Did she leave?”

  “You sure you don’t want to punish me? There’s a box of torture implements in the closet,” he said, hope filling his voice.

  She shook her head. “Number one, I don’t know how to use any of that stuff. Number two, you plan scenes in advance; don’t spring that shit on me. I’m not a Domme. Just talk, Logan.”

  He sighed in resignation and leaned back in the chair. “It meant I could see through her when she was home. She didn’t do anything to hide her contempt for me and did whatever she could to get away from her responsibilities. She’d be gone for months at a time searching for her next big fix. She said it was to find money, but I was never fooled. More often than not, she’d bring home other men. And my dad would just get high as soon as she came home. I don’t think he liked either of us and was always looking for his next get-rich-quick scheme. Every time one of them didn’t work, he’d take it out on me. So I finally just left them to their own devices and got myself out of their twisted equation.”

  Something had to have happened to spur a kid to leave the only home they’d ever known and decide living on the streets was better. Katie and Walter had had some dark times, but they’d been together. Even when their parents were home, their inability to actually parent had been hard, but the siblings had never considered running away.

  Katie couldn’t relate, but the misery emanating off Logan in waves almost made her want to cry.

  “How old were you when you left?”

  “I was twelve, but I almost looked eighteen. Puberty had hit me full force, and I looked practically grown.” He scoffed at some memory. “Going through the pains of puberty and not understanding fully what was happening to my body was bad enough without someone to talk to about it. But they were trying to capitalize on it, bringing friends around so they could whore me out. As soon as I realized I was a part of my parents’ plans for income, I left.”

  Katie was pretty sure Logan had never told another living soul any of this, and she wasn’t sure what to do with the knowledge. Trying to put the conversation on a lighter note, she asked, “Will you tell me about your time with Elliot?”

  Logan breathed deeply. Katie wanted to know about Logan, and if he was willing to tell her this stuff, he was willing to do the other stuff he said. She was definitely starting to understand his need for control since his life had begun so out of control.

  “Elliot was an innocent when we met. He’d just run away from a fucking mansion and a life I couldn’t understand. He whined and complained about his father who was insisting he go to the best schools. It was nuts, but something about the kid made me want to help him. Without me, Elliot wouldn’t have made it. He would have gotten into drugs or ended up in jail or something. He was just stubborn enough not to go back, but he looked so damn young, and I looked so old, we made a good team. I have no idea how we bonded, but we did.”

  She could imagine it. Elliot was a golden-haired god, the paramedic who’d moved into town a couple of years ago. Logan, with his dark looks and foreboding presence, was the polar opposite.

  “So did he let you control the relationship? Is that a thing?”

  “Sort of. He didn’t know anything about the streets, only that he wanted to be away from home. I knew more about the streets than a guy my age should have. He looked up to me, let me dictate where we went, how we earned money, that sort of thing. I helped him not get desperate because desperation breeds bad things out there.”

  Katie wanted to touch Logan. He had separated himself from her by sitting in the chair, where there wasn’t a spot for her. Silently, she approached him, his head still leaning back where he couldn’t see her, and she lowered herself into his lap.

  He wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her to his chest and holding her legs close. She was imparting comfort to him in her own way by letting him hold her. His arms around her were soothing, and she liked that he was actually talking to her about things. Katie got the impression not many people knew these things about Logan, and she also knew that by allowing her in, he was making a different sort of declaration.

  Logan wanted more with her and was going to do what she needed to give her what she needed.

  That felt good.

  “Things weren’t that bad though. We traveled all over the country, and in our own way, we brought justice to the assholes of the world. Those were the ones we rolled. We had a thing we did. Elliot dressed like a twink, and we’d find a mark, usually some douchebag who beat up unsuspecting drug-addicts. They were pretty easy to spot with their holier-than-thou personalities, thinking they were ridding the world of another fag or something. It was a bait-and-switch type of deal, where Elliot was the bait, and as soon as he got somewhere alone with the guy, I’d come out of the shadows and we’d roll him. Or we’d go to a mall and find the mom who spent more time on her phone than paying attention to her kid and take her purse. Stuff like that.”

  Okay, those were two ends of a s
pectrum—one where they could have been killed, and one where they might have been arrested—but Katie kept her mouth shut. She’d never heard Logan talk this much in one spell, and she wasn’t going to stop him. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and rubbed his back, steeling his strength to get through this.

  “Okay, now tell me about her.” This was the part of the conversation she dreaded but needed to know. This bitch had shaped his view of relationships, in addition to his mother and Elliot, but more importantly, Logan thought she’d changed him, so Katie needed to know how.

  “I was young, stupid, and idealistic. I had gotten my GED and was going through the fire academy, so I was on top of the world. I was fucking around in Denver on a weekend off and found this club, but I couldn’t get in because I didn’t have a sponsor. This older woman saw me hanging around. We started talking, and she got me in. She showed me everything I thought I needed.” Logan was squeezing her rather hard, but she didn’t complain. “I learned about BDSM. I looked it up online, and she trained me, sort of, to suit her needs. We became a fixture there and started living together. Before I knew it, I was submersed in the lifestyle so much I didn’t know which end was up, but I loved every minute of it. Then I realized what I was reading online in some of the forums wasn’t what she was teaching me.”

  The dominance aspect of BDSM was a difficult thing to grasp, that was for sure. Katie knew that. For one thing, it was an illusion of dominance. Sure, the Dom actually dominated, but the sub had the ultimate control. It was confusing to a beginner, and Katie could totally see how a young Dom who was still learning his way around could be led astray. She barely had a grasp of it, and she’d been trying to get into it for years.

  Logan had gone silent, and Katie wasn’t sure what he was thinking about. Was he still thinking of her? Had she messed up by bringing all this back for him?

  “Then I had coffee with a friend at the club, and he told me everything I was doing wrong with Jessica. So I tried to change and realized she didn’t really want a Dom. She wanted someone who would pretend to be a Dom so she could get what she wanted, but that wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to live her version of the lifestyle, so I broke it off with her and made new rules for myself. I trained under a real Dom, learned all the things I had done wrong with Jessica, and here I am.”

  “Did you love her?” Katie didn’t really want to know, but a part of her couldn’t not know.

  Logan leaned his head back again. “I’m not sure, honestly. I thought I did. At first, she was amazing and taught me so much. I was blinded by her, for sure. But in the end, the clarity was all-consuming. I couldn’t see anything but her manipulations.” His head fell forward, and he sniffed her hair.

  Katie continued rubbing his back and felt the muscles relax. Logan always liked it when she touched him. He seemed to unfurl under her fingers, and she wondered if it was any touch or just hers specifically. She couldn’t imagine his parents hugging him, nor Elliot, so she didn’t imagine he’d been touched much in his lifetime.

  “We can cuddle now,” she whispered, even though that’s exactly what they were doing at this moment. Without a word, Logan picked her up and carried her across the room to the bed in the corner just beyond a half-wall set up to separate the living space from the sleeping space.

  Logan laid her down on the bed and towered over her, his gaze scraping her skin raw. It looked like he needed this as much as she did.

  “I’m taking your clothes off because they don’t look cuddle-appropriate. I’ll put you in some of my sweats if you want.” Logan made the offer with a look of hope, and she wasn’t sure if it was hope he could undress her, or dress her in his clothes, but she wanted to oblige him.

  “You can do what you want, Logan.”

  “But no sex.” He made the statement like a question, but it was more for clarification than anything else.

  She wanted to say yes but knew her hormones were doing the talking. She had started this conversation saying no sex, and she would stick with it. Although, right now, her skin burned, her nerves firing so hard she wanted to just rub all over Logan.

  “No sex. Just cuddles.” Like a boyfriend and girlfriend.

  Right?

  As Logan slipped off her slutty skirt, top, and heels, she tried not to writhe, even as his eyebrows rose to his hairline and he let out a harsh breath at her exposed body. But when the goose bumps started erupting on her skin, he spun and started digging through his duffle bag.

  Logan covered her with a massive Pamona Gulch Fire Department t-shirt, and she stopped him. “That’s plenty. I don’t need sweatpants.”

  He nodded and shed his shirt before climbing into bed next to her and covering them both with the quilt, then took her into his arms.

  Logan was a big guy, his unshaven stubble rough on the back of her neck. As he curled his body around hers, tucking her into him, she felt more than cherished in the moment. Katie felt like she was home. It was perfect. His heat. His hardness. His breath in her ear. His hands wrapped around her body, clenching her tightly.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Logan was terrified he’d lost her. He was all over the cuddling business, but it didn’t seem like it was enough of a gesture for Katie. She was so intense, so fierce, so rambunctious at times, it seemed like ending the evening on a cuddle instead of fiery-hot lovemaking was a bit of a cop-out.

  “Did I fuck up? Are we going to be okay?”

  He heard the moisture of her lips parting as she smiled in the fading darkness. “You’re redeemable, Logan. Just promise me something.”

  He was desperate and raw right now. He would promise her the world if that would help. “Anything, kitten.”

  She turned in his arms and faced him. He didn’t let up on his touch though. She felt so good in his arms.

  “Next time we fight, talk to me about things. Like, back and forth. Not talking at me. Have a conversation about it.”

  “Of course.” He smiled at her in the darkness, relief mingling with all the other emotions inside him. “Just help me if I don’t realize I’m doing the jackass thing? Tomorrow, we’ll talk about ways I can make this up to Walter. He told me I could make it up to him by getting you back because you’ve been sad. But I want to do something just for him too. I’ve been such a dick.”

  “You know Brant did it, don’t you?”

  “I do now. How did you know?”

  “His mom basically told me she suspected him.” Katie shrugged her slight shoulders before snuggling deeper in Logan’s embrace. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow?” Her voice was thick and breathy. Logan clutched her firmly, feeling her inhales and exhales.

  God, this was everything he wanted. Right here. Why had he been so fucking blind?

  She felt amazing in his arms, and Logan realized he’d never really held a woman like this since Jessica, and she wasn’t at all like this. She didn’t enjoy cuddling, especially in bed. Once she was asleep, he couldn’t touch her.

  Unlike Katie. Katie slept in his arms as if she were back in the womb, and he cradled her, extracting nothing but pleasure and comfort from it.

  Logan sighed and closed his eyes, his thoughts turning to his buddies. This had all started because she insisted they become friends since everyone in their group was hooking up. Annette and Jude were expecting a baby any week now and were living together.

  Logan shuddered with surprise at the warm feelings he suddenly had about that. He hadn’t really cared one way or another before, but now, with Katie in his arms and the feelings of possessiveness toward her, he got it. And he wanted it with her.

  Zane and Lettie were getting married. That was another one that brought unexpected warmth to him. And Joey and Vivian and Carly, the tiny family that had formed in less than a year that made Joey smile more than Logan had ever seen.

  Logan finally got it.

&nb
sp; He wanted all of that with Katie. For the first time ever, he wanted what his buddies had, and he wanted it yesterday. He wanted a house with her because he wasn’t going to live in her parents’ mansion. Of course, that would probably have to wait until Walter graduated from high school, but he could be patient.

  He wanted her belly swollen with his child. Fuck, did he want that. He shifted slightly because his dick had swollen with the thought of planting his seed inside her and watching it grow. Logan imagined a tiny imp with red hair and blue eyes running rampant and causing destruction everywhere, and his heart swelled almost painfully inside his chest.

  For the first time in as long as he could remember, Logan went to sleep with a smile on his face.

  He woke to Katie trying her hand at orgasm denial, made extremely effective with the threat of the giant butt plug she had on the nightstand. Apparently, she’d been digging around in his box in the closet. The butt plug was his punishment if he came without permission, something he was pretty good at. He managed to watch her come three times without going totally blind before she let him have his.

  It made him vow to fuck up more often.

  Epilogue

  Christmas was usually not Logan’s favorite time of year, for obvious reasons. But this year was proving different. He couldn’t stop the cheer surrounding him from permeating his bones, making him giddier than he’d ever been.

  It was Christmas Eve, and he was on shift, but that didn’t hamper the cheer. The only thing that could would be some disastrous call, but he’d tackle that if it came. Right now, he was celebrating with his friends and family.

  They’d decided to invite their loved ones to the fire station for a meal, which Zane was cooking: Sharon’s prime rib roast with Yorkshire pudding and all the fixings. It smelled amazing.

  And his future was just as amazing.

  He’d proposed. She’d said yes. They’d had their private ceremony, and he wore her collar, a symbol of a commitment between the two to communicate and allow control—both ways. They’d also had a civil ceremony, a passive-aggressive attempt at pissing off Katie’s parents, who seemed completely unaffected.