He’d experienced intense attraction before, especially in his early twenties. But this was more than that. Although what Emma inspired in him was no less primal than what he’d felt before for other women, it was also layered with a need to protect and care for the woman he wanted to strip naked and bury himself in.
Which wasn’t ever going to happen. Not only could he never betray Andrew like that, but Emma was like an angel. She was good. Logan was as far from angelic as someone could get. He’d done things no one should have to. In war. On the job. He’d seen things, unspeakable things that had taken him to dark places. That darkness was in him. It didn’t just go away because he was no longer in those situations. Bringing someone else intimately into his life wasn’t an option.
It lived in him. It breathed in him. It saturated his being.
Lifting her head, she grabbed a piece of bacon. “I know he’s going to want an answer the second he gets home.” Emma stuffed the slice in her mouth and chewed it as she stared at her plate.
Out of sheer self-preservation, Logan should’ve suggested what he had originally envisioned happening. That he would keep Drew for the rest of summer break so Emma could head back to Seattle and have the luxury of uninterrupted work.
But instead of laying that plan out, he heard himself say, “I really would love for you guys to stay. It’s no trouble. Really.”
Emma’s aqua-blue stare was boring into him. He knew she was trying to detect whether or not he was telling the truth.
So he half-teasingly threw out, “My cousin Adam has a lie detector test and is licensed. Do you want me to take a polygraph?”
Her blue eyes twinkled with amusement as she let out a belly laugh that squeezed his hardened heart. It hit him square in the chest like a ray of light in a pitch-black space.
She sounded so happy. So light. So carefree. He could listen to her laugh for the rest of his life and never get tired of it.
The thought scared the shit out of him.
“You? Take a lie detector test? How many girls would love that opportunity? That might just be too good to pass up,” she teased as she rubbed her hands together like she was plotting his demise. “Would I get to ask you anything I want?”
“You can always ask me anything you want.” Logan’s answer had come out much more serious than he’d meant it to. His voice had also sounded a hell of a lot more gravelly than he’d wanted it to.
The energy between them had already felt electric, but now, it was crackling with tension as their stares remained locked. Emma’s smile faded as she nervously licked her lips. He knew he should look away. Do something, anything to bring back the light, joking atmosphere his words had shattered. But he just couldn’t bring himself to.
“Okay,” she said a little breathlessly. “How did I get to bed last night?”
“I carried you.”
Emma’s eyes widened, and her flushed cheeks darkened to a deeper shade of pink. Dipping her head, she broke off another piece of muffin. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to.” He didn’t mention the other things he’d wanted to do.
“Oh,” she breathed and grabbed for her food as if she were drowning and it was a life preserver.
As she lifted a bite of muffin to her mouth, her hand shook. He shouldn’t have gotten so much satisfaction over the fact that she was at least somewhat affected by whatever was going on between them—if not just as much as he was.
Nothing could ever happen. But, if he was being honest with himself and “living” with his feelings, he had to admit that it was nice not being in this alone.
“Can I ask you something?” He didn’t want to pressure her, but the thought of her and Drew leaving felt…not good.
“Yep.” She grabbed another slice of bacon and put it in her mouth, chewing as she looked at him with her wide baby blues.
He wanted to tell her how fucking adorable she looked, but it wasn’t his place. So he asked the question he still wasn’t a hundred percent sure he actually wanted the answer to. “Do you want to stay here? For you. Not for Drew. Or me. Do you want to?”
From what Drew had mentioned over the last few days, it wasn’t hard to puzzle out that Emma did everything for the kid. And it sounded like for her neighbors, his school, and his sports teams. Logan wanted to make sure that, if she did stay, it was because she wanted to. Otherwise, even though the last thing he wanted was to see her and her pink suitcases walk out that door, he would put his original plan to keep Drew for a few weeks on the table.
His jaw flinched while he waited for her response. Her chest was rising and falling as she bit the inside of her mouth. After a few seconds, she sat up straighter and rolled her shoulders back.
“Yes. I do.” Emma nodded just once, as if to emphasize her statement.
His mouth spread into a wide smile as a funny feeling settled in his chest. “Good. Then it’s settled.”
Logan stood, walked over to the sink and rinsed his plate off. If he didn’t get the hell out of there now, he would do something stupid—like grab her, push her up against the wall, and kiss her senseless. He couldn’t remember having ever felt this happy—ever. And he did not trust himself.
“Wait.” There was a definite panic in Emma’s voice, and then the chair scraped against the kitchen floor. “I didn’t say that I was staying.”
When he turned around, she was on her feet and some of the color had drained from her face. He could see what needed to be done, so he did it.
“You need uninterrupted time to work. Drew loves being at Mountain Ridge, which means he’ll be out of your hair. I want to get to know my godson better. Drew wants to stay. You want to stay. I want you to stay. You’re staying.”
His little speech could’ve gone one of two ways. Best-case scenario: she was exhausted from always making every decision, and having someone else take the reins would be a welcome change. Worst-case scenario: she’d be offended and think he was an asshole for telling her what to do.
But the color returned to her face—her cheeks were growing pinker by the second. Her voice held a tiny, almost indiscernible quiver in it as she said, “I am?”
Since she wasn’t throwing the breakfast he’d made her at his head, he figured they were in best-case scenario territory.
“You are,” he confirmed.
“I am.” She nodded as her tongue slipped between her lips, moistening the seam.
Holding in a groan of male appreciation, Logan pushed off the counter and stalked out of the kitchen.
“You’re leaving?”
Emma’s voice barely registered in his lust-addled brain. There was so much blood pounding in it that her words had sounded muffled.
He grabbed his keys off the table beside the front door, and without sparing her another glance, reached for the front door. “I’m getting out of your hair too. Levi asked me to help him lay down a cement path he’s pouring today. I’ll pick up Drew when I’m done. We should be home around six.”
With that, he was out the door. She yelled for him to have a nice day, and he felt a little like an ass for his abrupt departure. But it was for the best. If he hadn’t, he would have done something they’d have both regretted. Something he couldn’t take back. Something that couldn’t happen.
Chapter 9
‡
What’s going on?
For the last three hours, Emma had had the house to herself. That was exactly what she’d needed. Peace and quiet. No interruptions. No disturbances. No responsibilities pulling her in a thousand directions. The circumstances couldn’t have been more ideal, and she’d written a grand total of one page.
One. Freakin’. Page.
It was so unlike her. Normally, she was nothing if not disciplined. But as much as she tried to buckle down and get some work done, her mind just couldn’t focus. Normally, she could block everything out. Normally, she had the focus of a professional athlete. Normally, she hadn’t just almost had an orgasm from a man simply taking charge
of her schedule.
Biting her lip, she turned her head and gazed out the window. There was a river that ran down the back of the property and pine trees for as far as the eye could see. Several squirrels skittered up and down the trunks of the trees. Birds flew around. It was breathtaking. Under any other conditions, the view would’ve calmed her. Inspired her. Helped her zone out and work.
It wasn’t doing those things. Because of one harmless interaction in the kitchen, her mind was anywhere but where it was supposed to be.
No matter how hard she tried not to think about how hot and bothered Logan had made her, she couldn’t stop the words he’d spoken when he’d told her that she was staying from playing on repeat. Part of her was mortified that she’d responded so viscerally to his statement. She had always prided herself on being an independent woman. She didn’t need a man to rescue her. Her life track record was proof of that.
Once she’d lost Andrew, she hadn’t run into the arms of some man to take care of her. How could she have? She’d still been madly in love with her husband. He was gone, but that hadn’t meant she was over him.
It had taken years for her to fully put that chapter of her life behind her. To come to peace with the fact that, although she would always love Andrew, he wasn’t coming home. He was gone.
She hadn’t looked for comfort or support from anyone during that time. She’d taken care of Drew. Made a life for herself and her son. And done it all without the help of a man.
So why had she been about to explode from the most gratifying orgasm of her life just because Logan had taken charge and told her what she’d already known—that she was staying? Honestly, it had just felt so flippin’ amazing to not have to be the one to make the decisions for once. Well, it was that and the dominating look he’d given her. It had registered as too hot to handle for her body.
Not that she should’ve been thinking about any of that. This time was precious. It was like gold. She couldn’t squander it because she had a totally inappropriate and unreciprocated lust crush on Logan Dorsey.
Shaking her head, she focused on the screen in front of her and placed her fingers on the keyboard. Blowing out a puff of air, she sat up straighter, determined to get this work train back on its track.
Rereading the scene she was working on, she realized that it wasn’t coming together and decided that it would probably be best to move on to something else. So she opened her outline and scanned what still needed to be written—a lot. She rubbed her temples as she breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. Then, leaning back in her chair, she did her best to hold off the flood of being totally overwhelmed.
Just write. Type one word. And then another, she told herself. It was the same thing she had said immediately following Andrew’s death, when being overwhelmed hadn’t even scratched the surface of what she’d been feeling.
As she sat back up, her eyes fell on the one scene she’d been dreading writing the most. It was the first love scene between Tina and Kade. The first time they would be consummating a relationship that had been sweltering for four long years. She’d tried, and failed, to write it about twenty times now. It had to have a jump-off-the-page, panty-melting heat she just hadn’t been able to capture. She hadn’t been able to “find her way” into the scene.
Until now.
After this morning, she knew exactly what had been missing.
She scrolled down her manuscript until she found chapter fifteen and started typing…
I watched the small clock in the corner of the computer screen. It read four fifty-nine. Kade said he needed to see me and would be by at five. The man was a lot of things—but late wasn’t one of them.
My heart raced and my palms tingled from knowing that, at any second, he would be walking through that door. He hadn’t said what he’d needed to see me about, just that it “couldn’t wait.” The gravelly sound in his voice had been a more powerful aphrodisiac than oysters, chocolate, and wine combined.
“K.I.P,” I whispered under my breath—the mantra I’d been reciting since Kade’s first day at the firm, which had coincided with my first day as a partner. Keep. It. Professional. I was his boss. Nothing could happen between us.
That fact might not have been a pleasant one, but if I wanted to keep my job, not to mention not opening myself up to a lawsuit, it was something I needed to remember. The firm had a no-fraternization policy that was nonnegotiable due to an ugly lawsuit that’d been brought against them from a paralegal. It had ended with one partner leaving—which coincidentally opened the position for me—and the firm settling a sexual harassment lawsuit for just under a cool mil.
No matter how sexy Kade’s voice was, I tried not to let my imagination get the better of me, which it had a tendency to do when it came to Kade Morris. He probably just needed to stop by and bounce around some ideas regarding the case he was working on. As one of the firm’s most respected litigators, Kade always had the most difficult cases, so his stopping by wasn’t out of the ordinary.
Still, my heart leapt in my chest when the doorknob turned. My eyes shot down to give the impression that my full attention was on the discovery laid out on my desk. It was a lame attempt to get myself together before I had to lock eyes with the one man in this world who could reduce me to a puddle with one gaze.
But when the door lock clicked into place, I couldn’t help but look up. In the hundreds of times Kade had stopped by my office, he’d never locked the door before today.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my brow furrowing.
Kade didn’t say a word. Just took two purposeful strides on his powerful legs towards my desk. He was acting so strange. His jaw was set, and his baby-blue eyes were filled with resolve. I was so entranced by the determined look on his face that I almost didn’t notice the paper he’d set on my desk.
“What’s this?” I asked as I picked the paper up.
He finally spoke. “My resignation.”
The words felt like a knife in my heart. A large lump formed in my throat, and tears pricked at my eyes.
He was leaving?
“You’re resigning?” I asked in disbelief, even as I read the words that confirmed my worst fear.
“Yes. Effective immediately.”
The knife in my heart twisted. The walls felt like they were closing in on me. I couldn’t breathe. And worst of all, I couldn’t disguise any of it.
“Why?” I managed to ask.
The explanation might’ve been in the document I was holding, but with the moisture in my eyes and my mind reeling from his bombshell, there was no way I could’ve read and made sense of anything.
“Because this is the only way,” he answered as if he weren’t talking code. As if I would understand what that meant.
I didn’t. And if he was really going, if our days weren’t going to be spent down the hall from each other’s offices, I wanted to know why.
“The only way?” I finally looked up, and when I did, the look in his eyes caused my tears to dry right up and a different area of my body to grow damp.
“The only way you won’t be my boss.”
The knife turned again. “You don’t think I’m a good bo—”
Kade’s full lips turned up into a grin of the very-bad-boy variety as he cut me off, ignoring my rebuttal. “The only way I can finally do all the things I’ve been wanting to do to you. With you. The only way either of us will be able to gain an ounce of sanity and stop going crazy because we can’t touch each other.”
My entire body went up in flames at his words. Was this really happening? Was my wildest fantasy really coming to life? I was half tempted to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming, but I was too scared I would wake myself up if I did that.
Kade began slowly moving around the desk to where I was seated. His body was predatory and graceful, like a lion stalking his prey. Instinctively, I swiveled in my chair, following his movement.
When he stopped in front of me, the air between us crackled with antic
ipation. I still couldn’t breathe, but this time, it was because I was eagerly waiting to see what he would say, what he would do next.
He cupped my chin and tilted it up so that I had no choice but to look into his eyes. He brushed the roughened pad of his thumb over my lips, and I gasped in surprise. Not so much at the fact that he’d done it, just how good it had felt when he had.
He swiped his thumb back across the path it had traveled, and it journeyed straight between my legs.
“The only way I don’t have to do anything that comes out of this pretty little mouth unless I want to. The only way I could tell this pretty little mouth to do all the things I’ve wanted it to.”
My heart was beating so fast, so hard, that I was sure he could hear it or see it pounding beneath my shirt. Every single fiber in my being was screaming for him to hold me, to kiss me, to take me.
When he didn’t do any of those things, my impatience grew and I wanted to know what he would tell my mouth to do.
“What do you want my mouth to do?”
A growl so feral it sent a shock through my entire body, roared from his chest.
“Open it,” he rasped as he released my chin from his grasp.
My lips automatically parted, and my jaw lowered. I watched as he slowly began unzipping his slacks. Moisture flooded both my mouth and my panties as he released his steel-hard column of flesh from its confines.
I’d had so many fantasies of what his member would look like, and none of them came close to the real thing.
One large hand ran up and down his shaft as the other tightened around my neck, causing my sex to pulse with need.
As he slowly pulled my head towards his engorged tip, tremors of lust radiated through me at the realization that, before I would ever kiss the man who had starred in all of my fantasies on the lips, I would take his cock in my mouth…
The words were flowing like water from a dam that had burst when a loud knock sounded. Emma jumped so high out of her seat that she almost fell out of it. To right herself, she held on to the corner of the desk and tried to return to the present to figure out what she’d heard. The mystery was solved when the doorbell rang three times in rapid succession.
Magic Kiss (Hope Falls Book 11) Page 9
