And he obliges. Oh hell, but he obliges. He slaps my ass and the sharp sting of pain while he continues to devour my mouth makes all my pleasure centers light up. I focus on the sting, the way it ripples outwards like a pebble in a pond to the rest of my body and then lingers as heat on my skin.
And then, because he always knows what I need before I can even think to ask, he spanks me again, even more sharply. I cry out and bury my head in the crook of his neck, my hands fisting above my head and my hips thrusting blindly towards his.
It’s so thrilling to have this much contact with his body, so much more than he’s ever allowed before. If all I have to do is keep my arms above my head, I’ll show him I can obey the rules. This is heaven. Better than heaven. Where will he take us next? Will we finally— Will he explore me with more than his fingers?
Gods, I want it with every fiber of my being. I don’t want to be a virgin anymore. But only if I’m with him. I want him to make me a woman. His woman.
I want us bound together in every way. I want to feel him inside me. I want to surround him with my womanly softness and let him bury himself deep. He’s been my safe place and I’ll show him I can be his. And eventually he’ll learn he doesn’t have to hide any single part of himself, not anything—
I open my eyes and breathe in the manly scent of him, my cheek pressed against his firm chest. I’m so close that for once, my near-sightedness isn’t a hindrance and I admire the expanse of his skin, the hair that dusts his pecs, the constellation of freckles on his shoulder…
Wait.
WHAT?
I jerk away from him and scramble so I can sit up. Then my hands shoot out and I grab his arm and pull him closer—well, I move myself closer to him—I probably couldn’t move him if there were three of me.
Closer examination proves what can’t possibly be true. But it is.
I know this constellation of freckles. I know it well. One summer, me and this shoulder and the man attached to it became very, very familiar.
“What the fuck?” I ask just as he yanks his arm out of my grasp, eyes flashing angrily. “You promised not to touch me.”
He’s already pulling his shirt back on but I know what I’ve seen. And there’s no going back.
“Logan?” I ask, my voice breaking on the two syllables. “Logan, where have you been all these years?”
Twenty-One
Logan
“Logan,” she cries the name I haven’t heard spoken aloud in so long, and certainly not from her lips. It’s been years.
And then, before I can seize control of the situation again, she reaches forward and yanks the mask off my face. Her touch sears me as the mask falls away. Not because it hurts. I lost feeling in most of that side of my face a long time ago. But it still stings when she gasps and her hand goes up to her mouth in shock.
“Logan, what happened?” Her eyes fill with tears.
This is the part where most people run. I know just how hideous my face looks. The skin from my forehead to my chin on the left side is a mottled spiderweb of angry, red, vein-like scars. My left eye barely survived. My ear didn’t.
Flesh-eating bacteria will do that to a man.
I broke all the mirrors in my apartment when the ‘accident’ first happened. Ha. Accident.
The flood of memories brings all the barely-buried rage back to the surface and I snatch Daphne’s wrist out of the air when she reaches forward like she wants to touch my face, to touch the freakshow science experiment I’ve become.
“Don’t,” I snap, not letting go of her wrist. Her tears spill down her cheeks.
“What happened? You just disappeared. I looked for you but you weren’t online. Your emails bounced back undelivered. I went to your apartment but you were gone. I couldn't find you anywhere. I thought— Dad said you—”
“Tell me,” I sneer. “Where did the great Dr. Laurel say I’d gone? What lie did he tell you?”
Confusion colors her face. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“He did this to me!” I roar.
She immediately starts shaking her head, looking horrified again for the second time in as many minutes. “No, Logan, you can’t believe that! Dad would never— What even happened? Is it a burn of some kind? Or—”
“Bacterial infection. The rare flesh-eating kind.”
Her mouth drops open.
“A strain so rare the doctors said they had no earthly idea how I could have contracted it. Except that Belladonna labs had a research sample in-house at the time.”
“Well then it must have been an accidental cross-contamination. One of the lab techs didn’t follow proper safety procedures or—”
“Stop being willingly obtuse,” I shout, letting go of her and spinning away, giving her my back. “Your father and Adam wanted me out of the company. They’d stolen my research and had already colluded to profit off of it. They just needed me out of the way.”
Is she still going to keep defending them even with the evidence right in front of her? Of course she will. I’m a fool if I think the past few days have made any difference at all.
“Logan. Nothing you’re saying makes any sense to me. What are you even talking about? What research?”
“I was the one who discovered the anti-aging capabilities of the molecule we were developing. Adam said we should explore the commercial possibilities in cosmetics as a money-making opportunity. All he saw was dollar signs. I said no, that we couldn’t get distracted from our core mission of focusing on curing Battleman’s and other rare diseases.”
I stare at the wall, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice as I continue. “I thought your father agreed with me. He did, to my face.”
I turn and look at Daphne. She’s so perfect, her naked body shaped with the same care the gods must have taken when they shaped the first woman. It hurts to look at her and remember what her own father did to me. “But behind my back...” I shake my head as my teeth clench.
“How do you know any of what you suspect is true? Can’t it just be a horrible coincidence that the company was transitioning at the same time a terrible accident happened to you and—”
“Don’t be so naive.” I slam my palm against the wall and she flinches. I’m scaring her. How quickly I become the Beast again to her. But there was no hope of me being anything else now that she’s seen my face, was there? I was a fool to entertain any other idea, even for a moment. Especially considering I’m dealing with his daughter.
“He and Adam were in on it together. Adam made sure I had an open wound for the virus to enter through. On my face no less. He’s one grisly fuck. To want to infect someone’s face with a flesh-eating bacteria,” I laugh darkly, “that takes a truly twisted mind. Though to this day I don’t know if it was the brainchild of Adam or your dad.”
“Stop it,” Daphne cries. “My dad would never do that!”
“Then how do you explain the fact that when the city’s Disease Control investigators looked into it, they discovered the source of infection was my lab goggles? Your father and Adam spread the bacteria on the exact spot where Adam had split my cheek open in a fight the night before. Are you going to call that coincidence? Please continue to astound me with your naiveté.”
She glares at me but then I can tell my words sink in. “That still doesn’t mean—”
I scoff. “How about the fact that Adam had his father pay off said Disease Control investigator so that said lab report never saw the light of day? And I was shuffled off to a private hospital where no one knew where I was. The infection became so bad when I was in the ICU I coded twice. I died. Do you understand? They succeeded. They killed me.”
“Oh my—” She comes forward at this and tries to reach for me but I block her hands with my forearm and glare at her.
“Don’t. Touch. Me.”
More tears glaze her eyes. “Oh, Logan. I had no idea. I should have been there. I would have been there. It kills me that I wasn’t there when you needed me.”
He
r eyes move back up to the ruined half of my face but she doesn’t wince this time and she doesn’t look at me with pity, either. Her eyes are full of…of some sort of feeling. She’s looking at me with a familiarity beyond that of just submission or the excitement I’ve seen her exhibit in our sexual discovery during our time together.
She’s looking at me like…like she knows me. She’s looking at me just like she used to. But she can’t be. Not now when I’m a—
I shake away the thoughts and turn away from her again. I can’t bear to have her eyes on me anymore. It’s too much, too soon. Especially when she still thinks her father and her precious Adam are innocent. I know she does.
She wants to believe everyone in the world is good.
But at least now I finally know she is as innocent as I think I always secretly hoped she was, even if I lost all my own naiveté long ago and told myself no one is innocent. I think maybe I’ve stumbled across the one person in the city, maybe the whole fucking world, who still is.
The same innocence that allowed her to open to me like a blossoming flower is what keeps her from being able to believe her father and Adam are the monsters I know them to be.
It stings, no it fucking hurts like an ax to the chest that now that I’ve finally told her the truth, she doesn’t believe me. That her loyalty to them is so steadfast.
But she hasn’t turned away from me either. Not even when faced with…my face.
“Logan,” she starts but I shake my head in one decisive no.
The time for words is done.
“Come with me.” I reach out my hand. It’s true I’ve been a bastard. I’ve locked her away in a tower and chased her through the labyrinth. I’ve scared her and thrilled her and showed her parts of herself she never even knew existed. And now I’ve revealed myself to her. Her old friend, deformed inside and out.
But now I give her a choice. A proffered hand. To take or leave.
Will the girl of my dreams take it? Her perfect bronzed skin glows in the firelight. The princess who was always far too good for me even before I became the Beast lurking under the bed in the stories.
But Daphne, being Daphne, clasps my hand almost the moment I extend it.
I don’t give her a chance to second-guess herself. I wrap my fingers around hers, engulfing her small hand in my huge one, and head for the stairs.
I sweep up the stairs, only slowing when Daphne calls out, “wait, Be— I mean, Logan, I can’t go as fast as you. My legs aren’t as long.”
I slow down but my impatience is bristling. I won’t believe she truly means it until— I shake my head. I just need to reestablish a sense of order. For both our sakes.
I take her to the one place she’s never been.
My bedroom.
It’s pitch black inside and I release her hand, not flipping on the light but walking over to the lamp on the nightstand. I click it on and the room is cast in dim light.
“Why are the curtains drawn?” she asks, coming in and turning around slowly.
“No more questions,” I bristle. She’s looking at all my things as if hunting for clues. She won’t find many. My room is all but bare. There are some books on my nightstand. My laptop on the desk in the corner.
She opens her mouth like she’s going to ask another question anyway but I beat her to the punch. “On the bed.”
For a second, she just stands there before me, the perfect specimen of woman.
But more than that, she is my Daphne. The beautiful girl I watched blossom into a woman before my eyes back when I was a post doc student working for her father. I didn’t notice her much until she turned eighteen. There was a dance—a ball, I guess those pretentious fucks call it. But she was there and suddenly Dr. Laurel’s kid daughter was all grown up, glowing and gorgeous and all woman. She’s only grown more beautiful over the years, but even back then, she was heart stopping.
Afterwards, I’d come across her in the study carrels of the lab, head bent over, glasses slipping down her nose as she poured over the latest research reports, determined to help her father save her mom. She was always alone. Her father certainly had no time for her, other than for her help with his research.
She gave and gave and gave, taking care of herself and her father and slavishly devoting herself to research. But who took care of her? She asked nothing for herself. She’d spent her whole life in service of others. And as far as I can see, she’s still living the same way, slavishly taking care of her selfish father and his company with no thought to her own needs or wants.
Not anymore.
“Logan,” her eyes are full of that same intense emotion I saw in her eyes earlier, but more. There’s desire. The desire, at least, I’ve come to recognize. And then come her words, “Logan, I want to touch you. I want to touch you everywhere.”
But I’m already shaking my head. A man can only be pushed so far before he breaks. Can’t she understand that? I don’t say another word. But I will remind her that she is mine. That this changes nothing. That I won’t allow it to change anything.
So instead, I walk to my bedside table again, open the drawer, and remove a sleeping mask. I prepared the room, planning for this moment, even if I never imagined it playing out this way.
I walk slowly back over to her, my back straightening with every step. Yes. This is who I am now. In command.
I am the Master here. And she is the object of my desire, who I will pleasure beyond the heights of imagination. I will claim her completely and eventually, her loyalty will be to me alone.
I cover her mouth with a finger when she opens it again. Silence. And with my other hand, I slip the mask on over her head, and finally, finally, over those searching eyes of hers that see far too much.
A wave of calm sweeps over me as soon as her eyes are covered. She can no longer see the monster.
I am only the Master now.
Twenty-Two
Daphne
He takes my hand and leads me forward. The mask is annoyingly thick. I can’t see a thing. But I…I trust Logan.
Logan.
I still can’t believe it. How could it be Logan, after all these years? And the terrible story he told me. His face. What he believes Dad and Adam did— I have to set him straight. Dad could never— And Adam, he’s—
My leg bumps into something soft and Logan commands in the Beast’s voice, “On the bed.”
I immediately start to climb on the bed, already conditioned to obey that voice. But it’s Logan! Logan was always so soft-spoken and gentle. I don’t know how to reconcile the two in my head.
“On your back.” I obey. Just like every time I’ve given in while under this roof, it feels so shockingly good to give in and follow directions without fighting or weighing every pro and con a million times like I always have to do in the outside world.
I know that wherever the Be— Wherever Logan will take me will be amazing. Gods, it’s been Logan this whole time. Logan who touched my body. Logan who touched me down there. Who touched inside of me. Who watched me come undone and scream out in pleasure. Oh my gods. My face flushes so hot I think my skin might burn off.
But just as I go to cover my face with my hands, Logan snatches my wrists and lifts my hands over my head.
“That’s right, my kitten,” he murmurs, sounding like a confusing mix of Logan and the Beast, skimming his hand up my forearms to my wrists and quickly and efficiently shackling the soft, padded wrist cuffs on.
It’s cold in the room without a fire going and chill bumps rise all over my skin.
Logan makes a tut tut tut noise. “Don’t worry, I’ll warm you up soon, kitten.” His hand skims down my body, blazing a path of heat as it goes. Just like always, my body lights up at his touch.
“Just this once, I’ll give you a choice,” his warm breath comes at my ear. He’s on the bed with me, I felt the dip of the mattress as he climbed on and his warmth at my side.
He shifts my body to the side and slaps my ass, giving me the delicious sting
that I love. “Do you want me to take you to the space where you can zone out and lose yourself in the pain and pleasure? Do you want to float away and entrust yourself to my capable hands? I’ll take care of you. You know that I will, precious.”
He soothes the sting he just caused, rubbing in the warmth on my ass where he just smacked.
“Or,” he whispered, his voice taking on a deeper growl, “do you want to continue what we started downstairs. Do you want to explore what a man feels like? What I feel like, inside you.” A thrilled shiver runs down my spine, only rocking me deeper when he continues. “But mark me, once you feel me inside you, there’s no going back.”
His voice goes darker still. “Once I claim you, you’re mine. There will never be another man for you. I tried to deny it for years, but you’ve always been mine, Daphne.”
Everything he’s saying is overwhelming and I want it. I want it all so badly, I didn’t even know how badly until it was offered on a platter by this delicious, damaged man. There are still so many unanswered questions, so many things I need to know.
But there’s only one thing I need to know before I give him this answer.
“Tell me this—am I yours? If I- If I say yes,” my voice trembles, “If I say yes, will I be the only one for you, too?”
A low groan is all the response I get before his lips crash onto mine. And then I’m not cold anymore, because his body is covering me.
“Little fool,” he finally pulls back long enough to say, “I was always yours.”
He was always—? Wait, does he mean—?
But before I can question it any further, his commanding lips are on mine again. I still marvel at the amazingness that is kissing him. His soft, plump lips. The expert, exquisite play of his tongue against mine. But then he’s gone again, nipping at my lips with his teeth. But then his tongue is back at its devilish work, at the same time his hand tracks down my body to my breast.
It’s even more tortuous with the mask on because I have absolutely no idea where he’ll strike next. I’m helpless before him with my hands strung up above my head, spread out before him like a feast. And oh, how he feasts.
Billionaire’s Captive: A Beauty and the Rose Box Set Page 13
