by Sara Summers
“Of course. We’ll come back whenever you want.” He took my hand and turned a little, so he was facing me a little more. “I’m sorry if I overstepped earlier, I don’t really know how this soulmate thing works. I just have these feelings for you that I can’t explain that are stronger than anything I’ve ever experienced. It seems like I might be coming on a little too strong and if I am, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to ruin this for you.” He apologized, being vulnerable with me for the first time since we’d met.
I wrapped my free hand around the one he was holding and turned so we faced each other head-on.
“This soulmate thing works however we want it to. I like that you’re attracted to me and that you have strong feelings for me, but I’ve never been in a relationship before. I assume you have, since you were human?” I checked.
“Yeah.” He nodded, a bit of a guilty expression on his face.
“I’m not asking, and I don’t want to know about it. At least not right now. And you shouldn’t feel bad because it’s like you said, you didn’t know I existed. But you do know your feelings a little better than I know mine because you have something to compare them too, so don’t be offended if it takes me a little longer. You’re not coming on too strong. You’re just being yourself, right? Saying what comes naturally?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Logan nodded again, not guilty this time.
“Then you’re perfect, keep being yourself. I’m just slower than you at the relationship thing.” I pulled his hand up to my mouth and pressed a gentle kiss to his knuckle. He swallowed hard.
“That was way sexier than it should’ve been.” He shook his head and I watched his eyes drop to my mouth. “You have no idea how much I want to kiss you.” He said, his voice a little lower.
His comment threw me off for a second, it surprised me, but I think I got back on my feet pretty quickly.
“So show me.”
Logan’s grin was hot enough to make me want to kiss him, too.
Luckily I didn’t have to wait long. He was on his feet and had me pulled up against his chest in what felt like less than a heartbeat. His hands cupped my face and his lips met mine.
The kiss was an explosion of emotions. His fingers brushed against my cotie, sending his desire rushing through me. Feeling his emotions was exhilarating. I tangled one of my hands in his hair and, when I felt his wave of desire, I put my hand on the cotie on his neck so he could feel my emotions too.
Logan groaned when my feelings filled him. He turned me so my back was to the wall and moved his hands from my face to my waist, pressing me up against it and pushing his body against mine.
With his feelings out of my head, I was able to get back a little control. I pulled my hand away from his neck and placed it on his chest, letting the kiss go on a little longer though the heat was fading. It ended soft and sweet. While it wasn’t exactly a traditional sweet and chaste first kiss, I thought it was fantastic.
“What just happened?” Logan whispered, his breath against my ear. The feeling gave me goosebumps. He pulled his head away from my ear and lifted my hand from his left shoulder to his neck and then frowned when nothing happened.
“Wrong side.” I smiled, lifting my hand off of his right shoulder and touching the marking under his right ear.
“Wow.” He breathed, closing his eyes and leaning into my touch. “Who needs drugs when I have you?” he whispered, and I laughed. “Seriously, I could get addicted to this. You’re so calm and content. I don’t think I’ve felt like that a single day in my life. Does it work for you too?” he asked, lifting his hand to my cotie.
My smile grew when his emotions rushed through me, a tidal wave of feelings.
He was right; I was typically even-tempered and calm.
“Yeah.” I reached up to touch his hand as it rested against my neck, but he moved it out of my way. Somehow, I felt emptier without his feelings.
“Sorry, I’m kind of a hurricane.” He apologized. I lifted his hand back to my neck.
“I like it.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“No one wants a hurricane in their head.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not no one.”
Logan shook his head and pulled his hand away again, brushing it against my cheek. He glanced at the clock.
“It’s so weird thinking that you and I are literally two halves of one soul. That’s what shifters believe, right?” he checked.
“Right.” I agreed.
“Well, I think I’d like it if it was true.” He smiled but looked down at the time on his phone. “We need to get going soon if we’re going to make it to the flight I booked us on. You can bring whatever you want, but I’m sure my mom will fill our closet with designer clothes almost immediately. She’s always wanted a daughter.” He remarked.
It was the second time he said it, so I figured she must’ve said it more than a few times.
“That’s probably a good thing, because if anyone sees you with me while I’m wearing this they’re going to ask why a movie star got engaged to a homeless girl. Or a dumpster girl, I guess.” I grimaced, remembering what his mom had called the cage.
“They’re going to be too busy asking me where I found the world’s most beautiful woman to care about what you’re wearing.” He countered.
When I rolled my eyes, I think we both agreed that he won.
“Let’s go talk to my family for a few minutes and then hit the road.” I decided. If his mom was going to buy me new clothes anyway, there was no point in packing up my old crappy ones.
“That sounds like a plan.” Logan pulled his hand off my neck before linking his fingers with mine and letting me lead him downstairs.
Five
“Bye!” I called out, leaning out the window of the car. I waved at my family, whose expressions were a mixture of happy and sad. I didn’t pull my head back into the car until Logan grabbed my hand.
“Emma, you’re going to get hurt if you don’t sit down.” He warned, though I saw the amusement in his eyes. He thought it was funny that I was so awestruck by the car.
“Fine, fine.” I sat down and buckled myself in. I’d been three or four when the Cage walls went up, so even though I knew I’d been in a car plenty of times before, I couldn’t remember it.
The two-hour drive went by quickly, with only one stop for gas and a tube of some kind of makeup to cover Logan’s cotie.
When we parked at the airport to return the Logan’s rental car, he put on a hat and sunglasses to disguise himself along with asking me to help him put the makeup over the marking on his neck.
I felt uncomfortable hiding my soulmate’s cotie, but it was what he wanted so I did it anyway. When we walked into the airport, no one could’ve known he was anything other than human.
While I’d never seen the inside of an airport before, it wasn’t all that exciting. Tons of humans waiting in a line wasn’t nearly as strange as my brothers and I had always imagined humans to be.
We waited in line for a while before we made it up to the guys looking at IDs. I pulled my Shifter ID card out of my pocket and walked with Logan up to the man in uniform, handing him my card. When he saw it, his eyes widened and he looked up at me.
“You’re a shifter?” he asked. His face looked a little pale.
“Yep.” I smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
The man looked around, and it almost seemed like he was looking for help.
“Shifters are free now.” Logan reminded the man, stepping a little in front of me and putting his hand on the small of my back. “Here, we’re legal Americans. Can we go?” he checked, handing the man his driver’s license and taking my ID card.
It took the guy a few long seconds, but he finally checked Logan’s driver’s license.
“You can go.” He nodded, though I could feel him staring at me as my soulmate guided me to the security line.
“It’s going to be a while before shifters are a normal part of society
. Until then, you’re going to get a lot of stares. You just have to ignore them.” Logan said softly, his mouth near my ear.
“Okay.” I shrugged. If I was pretending to be human the way he and his mom expected me to, that guy was the only one who would actually be staring at me. “What do I do here?” I checked. As we moved through the airport, he’d been telling me how it worked.
“You’ll take off your shoes and jewelry and put them in the plastic bin with your phone and the rest of your stuff.” He explained, placing his black duffel bag on the conveyor belt and putting his shoes in the black plastic bin. He pulled the hat off his head but left the sunglasses on, trying to keep up the disguise.
I didn’t have any jewelry or a phone, so I stuck my shoes in my own bin and put it on the moving conveyor belt next to Logan’s.
“Now just do what the people say.” He gave me a small smile before stepping into what he had called a full-body scanner. I’d never seen a contraption like that before, and it was more than a little fascinating.
Logan stepped out of the scanner a few seconds later and got the okay to grab his stuff. It was my turn, so I stepped inside and tried to act like I’d done it a dozen times before like everyone else in the airport had.
My acting must’ve been okay, because no one stared at me like I was a lunatic.
Or a shifter, which some of them probably thought was worse than a lunatic.
I slipped on my shoes and took Logan’s hand, letting him lead me through the airport. He was leading, but I was trying to figure out how the airport was set up as he did. The place was pretty much a big maze, but with the help of a few signs I always knew which way to go before Logan pulled me in that direction.
“How long do we have to wait now?” I asked him as we sat down next to one of many counters with people in uniforms standing behind them.
“Only a few minutes.” Logan draped his arm over my shoulder and leaned closer to talk to me over the noise of the airport. “So what do you think about airports?” he said, just loudly enough that I could hear him.
“Eh.” I shrugged. “Not too exciting. The scanning machine was cool, but the forest is cooler.”
He smiled and nodded.
“I thought you might say something like that. What’s your favorite part about the forest?” he asked. I thought it was sweet that he was asking about the shifter side of me even though he had just become a shifter with no desire to shift.
“The noise.” I turned to face him in my chair, lifting my legs into a crisscross position. Logan’s arm slipped off my shoulder and joined my hand on the armrest.
“What? I thought you were peaceful.” He teased, reminding me of the hot make out session earlier.
“I am.” I lifted my hand to his neck and touched the cotie that I knew was there despite the makeup that covered it. Logan held my hand against his neck, smiling. “The forest is cool because it’s loud but still calm. Everything is constantly moving around you but nothing is in a hurry. It’s nice.”
He never took his eyes off me while I was speaking, not even for a second, and the more I said the more his smile grew. The look in his eyes was another one that I couldn’t recognize, a look I’d never seen before.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” I wrinkled my nose.
“Because you’re adorable.” He grinned and slipped his fingers between mine.
“I’m pretty sure movie stars like girls who are hot and sexy, not adorable.” I said, lifting both our hands so I could rest my chin on them.
“Well you’re hot and sexy too, but there’s no denying that you’re adorable.”
I made a face at him, and he grinned again.
“Especially when you do that.”
“Oh my gosh, Logan Lush?” a teenage girl gasped a few feet in front of our chairs, and we both turned quickly. “It’s you! You’re here! I would recognize your smile anywhere.” She squealed, hurrying closer. “I freaking love you. Take a picture with me!”
I turned to Logan, a little bit panicked. No stranger had ever been so excited to see me that they screamed my name through an airport, and even though it wasn’t happening to me, it was happening to the man I was with.
Logan pulled his hat off and stuck it on my head before standing up and handing me his sunglasses, taking my hand and pulling me to my feet.
They announced that a flight was boarding the first group of people, and I was relieved when the flight number they called matched the one on our tickets.
Other humans in the airport turned their attention to us, and I could practically feel their eyes burning holes into my skin. My face reddened as I waited for him to respond.
“No pictures today, sorry.”
Logan gave her and the rest of the crowd that was beginning to form an apologetic smile as he led me toward the small line of people boarding first. There were only three people in front of us so it was only a few seconds before Logan handed her his phone and she scanned the tickets.
We made it into the little walkway that led to the plane before anyone else asked for a picture or autograph or anything.
Logan and I sat down in the bigger seats at the front of the plane and I turned to look at the smaller, more crowded seats a little ways behind us. I lifted Logan’s sunglasses away from my eyes for a second to see better before turning my head back like I’d never looked at all.
“This is where the rich people sit?” I checked, whispering so no one else realized that I was a first-timer.
“Yep.” He lifted the armrest that separated our seats and scooted closer to me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder again. I leaned forward for a second and pulled my long, straight hair out from under his arm. Logan adjusted the hat a little higher on my head so I could see better; It was too big and it kept falling into my eyes.
As the rest of the people started boarding the plane, I noticed that a lot of them were staring at us.
“Why do they all know you? Middle-aged single human men don’t watch romance, do they?” I whispered.
“I was one of two love interests in a movie series based on a famous book trilogy. Even people who didn’t watch it know what it is.” He whispered back, focusing on me despite the people staring at us.
“Did your character get the girl?” I wondered. Logan grinned.
“Of course.”
He and I sat back and waited while the staring people continued to board, and my face felt hotter the longer the crowd kept coming.
“I think some of them are taking pictures of you.” I said softly.
“They’re taking pictures of us. I’ve been notoriously single for the past two years.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Even before you knew I existed?”
“Yep.” He nodded once. “By the time the plane lands there will be rumors all over the internet about us. That’s why we’re doing the elopement celebration tomorrow night, so no one has a chance to look too deeply into it.”
I knew that my being a shifter was exactly the reason they didn’t want anyone to look into me too much.
“Do you think they’ll realize who I am? Where I came from?”
“No.” he dropped his voice so quiet that I could barely hear. “People don’t think of shifters as gorgeous women dating celebrities.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head.
“That’s why the Cage is called the Dump, right?”
Logan grimaced.
“I’ve never called it that. I’m sorry, I’ve tried to stop my mom too but she’s pretty set in her ways.”
“It’s fine.” I yawned and leaned my head against his shoulder as the flow of people came to a stop. “She just doesn’t see it like I do. How long is the flight?”
“Seven and a half hours.” He leaned his head against mine. “New York is three hours ahead, so we’ll get there around 5 AM tomorrow. It sounds like we’ll be busy almost as soon as we land.” He warned.
“I like busy days.” I smiled, tilting my head just
a little so I could look up at him. His eyes were so green it was crazy. “You have really pretty eyes.” I remarked, when I remembered that I’d never told him.
“So do you.” He lifted his head and touched my face.
“My eyes are brown. There’s nothing special about brown.” I said. My eyes were a boring color. While I knew the rest of me wasn’t unattractive, I’d never loved my eyes.
“Of course there is. Your eyes are the same color as a cup of hot chocolate and a fudge brownie. They’re comforting and warm and beautiful.” He said simply.
“Did you get that from one of your romance movies?” I rolled my eyes but bit back a smile.
“Nope. Made that one up myself.” Logan grinned, settling into the seat.
The plane began to move, and I grabbed his arm.
“This entire machine flies?” I was suddenly feeling very nauseas. I’d seen a few planes overhead before, but somehow I’d never actually thought about being inside one of the massive metal death traps.
“Hey, you’ll be fine.” He promised, pulling me a little closer.
“I can’t watch. Just tell me when it’s over.” I buried my face against his chest.
“Alright.” He brushed his fingers softly through my hair and touched the marking under my ear, his touch barely a whisper. When his calm happiness rushed through me, I bit back a sigh.
“You’re not always a hurricane.” I murmured. Though even his calm emotions felt stronger and more powerful than any of my own feelings, he wasn’t going to sweep me away with any strong gusts of happiness.
It was interesting, I thought, that my soulmate felt everything so sharply and deeply while I took things in stride. Whether that had to do with my nature or my being a wolf I didn’t know, and I knew It didn’t matter.
“Guess not.” He said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
The plane started gaining speed, and I dug my fingers into the skin on his arms. He only held me tighter.
Six
I woke up when the plane landed, having slept for almost the whole trip after I’d accepted that I probably wasn’t going to die inside the airplane. There were marks on my face from sleeping on Logan’s chest and an impression around my eyes from the too-big sunglasses he’d told me I shouldn’t take off.
