Slow Hands

by Faye Avalon

  The man was passionate, sensual, considerate, with a nice chunk of demanding mixed in. In the context of sex, she kind of liked that. Despite her vow to hold tight to the reins of her life going forward, after enjoying sex with Logan she wondered if she could make a tiny exception to that rule when it came to sexy bedroom fun.

  Her answer came when Logan returned to the bedroom, a gleam in his eye and holding something behind his back.

  Despite having just had him inside her, she wanted him again.

  He moved to stand beside the bed. ‘How much do these sell for?’ he asked, and held out a glittering green vibrator. ‘I think I’d like to buy one.’

  April’s inner muscles trembled, her core aching with anticipation. ‘I haven’t priced them yet. New stock.’

  ‘I’ll be your first customer.’

  He plonked the vibrator on the bedside table and lay down beside her, hiking himself onto his elbow and looking down at her. He started a slow, easy stroke around one nipple.

  ‘I’m wondering if I should actually sell them,’ April said, trying not to be distracted by the slow, easy stroking. ‘Considering one of them was damaged and leaked lime-green glitter all over me.’

  He glanced up at her hair. ‘I think green glitter can be quite a turn-on. Certainly was for me.’

  ‘Oh, it was the glitter, was it?’

  ‘Not entirely.’ He leaned down, kissed her. ‘You’re serious about not selling them?’

  April drew in a breath, still trying not to get distracted by the hypnotic slide of his finger around her rapidly hardening nipple.

  ‘I don’t want anything else rearing up and biting me on the backside. Not when this Veronica thing is hanging over me, and certainly not while I’m trading without insurance.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  Her stomach jumped. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not trading without insurance.’

  Despite the exquisite torture he was inflicting on her breast, she levered herself up on her elbows.

  Logan dropped onto his back. ‘I arranged cover for you. Through a friend.’

  Dual emotions swept through her. Relief that one of the most pressing of her concerns had been dealt with. Annoyance that he hadn’t even told her he was doing it.

  ‘You’ve arranged public liability cover for my business, even though there’s a potential claim against me?’

  ‘Yeah. All you need to do is sign the form.’ He reached up and tapped her nose. ‘You don’t look ecstatic.’

  April sat right up, taking a moment to process what that meant. Then relief layered over the annoyance, and she drew in a breath as she turned to look over her shoulder at him, a jumble of emotions battling for dominance. ‘I want to thank you.’

  Logan wrapped his fingers around her arm and drew her down beside him. ‘You can thank me by reaching over and grabbing my new purchase.’

  April was still processing her feelings about his setting up insurance without telling her. She was grateful, of course, but being left out of the loop didn’t sit well with her. Did he think he could make decisions on her behalf and she’d simply accept it? Maybe it was time they got a few things clear.

  ‘You haven’t said what you think my chances are if Veronica goes ahead with her threat to sue me. Nor have you told me what your fee is for our consultation. I’d like to have your invoice so I can settle it.’

  He cupped his palm around her breast. ‘My fee? That’s about the same price as your new glitter vibrators. So let’s call it even.’

  No way. That would put her well and truly beholden to him.

  ‘We’re keeping business and sex separate, remember? And I’d really like to know where I stand regarding the former.’

  His thumb, busy stroking her nipple, ceased its exploration. ‘You want to talk business? Right now?’

  ‘Why not? You started this conversation.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re pissed off at me.’

  She was, even though she knew it was probably irrational, but she really needed him to understand that he wasn’t in charge of her or her business.

  ‘You should have told me about the insurance cover.’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘How hard would it have been to shoot me an email or a text telling me what you were arranging?’

  ‘I didn’t realise it would be a problem. You need insurance to keep trading and I’ve sorted it.’

  ‘Exactly. You’ve sorted it. It’s my business, Logan. You should give me the courtesy of keeping me informed when you act on my behalf.’

  ‘It’s just insurance cover. What the hell’s the problem?’

  Since he didn’t look in the least as if he believed it was a problem, but just continued to lie there looking mussed and sexy, and so damn masculine that she wanted to jump him again and to hell with principles and power struggles and keeping control of everything, April swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood.

  She felt uneasy, out of sync, disorientated. As if she’d taken her eye off something fundamental and in doing so had slipped back into the murky shadows of the past.

  She found her discarded tee and, despite the tear Logan had caused when he’d yanked it off, pulled it over her head. ‘It’s not unreasonable to insist I be kept informed of what affects my business before it becomes a fait accompli.’

  Logan hiked himself up against the headboard, folded his arms and crossed his ankles. ‘It’s not unreasonable to act in someone’s best interests when the opportunity arises, either.’

  ‘It is when it’s not your place to make decisions that directly affect the day-to-day running of my business.’

  ‘I don’t have a freaking clue what we’re arguing about.’

  April tossed him his jeans. ‘We’re not arguing. I’m simply stating that I’m the one who runs my business—not you, and not anyone else.’

  Logan tossed his jeans to the other side of the bed. ‘I’m not running your business. I’m just trying to help you out. You want to risk more trouble?’ He glanced at the vibrator, lying redundant on the bedside table. ‘Like you said, if the fact you’ve got green glitter in your hair and on the sheets is any indication, you could well have more complaints heading your way should you decide to sell them.’

  April stood in the middle of the bedroom, trying to get her breathing back under control. ‘That one was damaged in transit,’ she said, tugging her tee shirt down. ‘All the others look fine.’ She glared at him, annoyed when he raised his eyebrows, as if goading her to continue her diatribe. Needing breathing space, she shook her head, then hurried out of the bedroom. ‘I need a drink.’

  In the kitchen, she pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge. She was overreacting, she knew it. But she was so sick of being tossed around like a leaf in the wind by people who thought she wasn’t capable of sorting things out herself.

  All her life she had allowed people to think they knew what was best for her. She had gone along with what her parents had wanted, had taken the modelling assignments her agency had decided were right for her, and then finally Richard. She’d given him carte blanche over her life at a time when she’d needed to focus on her father, expecting that he would act in her best interests.

  It had only been after Richard had screwed her over, put the knife between her ribs and painfully twisted it, that she had taken a long, hard look at herself and vowed never to let anyone dominate her again. Never again to let anyone think they knew what was best for her, and in doing so imply that she didn’t have the savvy to run things herself.

  Logan sorting out her insurance without consulting her was like salt in her painful wound. For some reason it really mattered that Logan saw her as a strong and capable woman who didn’t need rescuing every five minutes.

  Okay, her current situation wasn’t exactly helping her cause, and the evidence certainl
y didn’t suggest she was competent and self-sufficient. So she didn’t want to tell Logan about Richard—about how she had naively trusted him until he’d almost run her business into the ground financially, how he had manipulated her, betrayed her. For some reason she knew admitting that would make her feel even more wretched and incompetent.

  Yet was there really any shame in what she had allowed to happen to her? Would Logan really judge her for being too busy caring for her sick father to keep her eye on what had been happening to her business? Would he blame her for allowing her ex-lover to embezzle funds from her business in order to finance his own new venture? For not recognising that he hadn’t bothered to renew her insurance policy, nor fulfilled a huge amount of online orders, and had ignored final demands from her suppliers?

  He’d taken her fledgling business to the brink of collapse.

  After her father’s death, and after she’d kicked Richard out on his backside, she’d returned to London, determined to rebuild her life and her business. No way would she allow anyone to take her for a fool again. She was running her own show now, keeping her finger very firmly on the pulse.

  And if that meant making demands that people thought were unreasonable, they’d just have to suck it up.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LOGAN WATCHED HER from the kitchen doorway. While he’d hoped to coax her back to bed, the way she stood musing over two empty wine glasses, her back to him, signalled that a conversation was the only thing on the cards.

  The woman was an enigma. One moment she was hot as hell, the next she was lambasting him about taking freaking liberties. What was he supposed to do? She hadn’t been able to sort out insurance herself—and he couldn’t help admiring the fact that she’d been so honest by admitting to the potential claim—so what was the harm in taking matters into his own hands and using his contacts to set up cover for her?

  No big deal. It was the very least he could do.

  He’d hoped it might make him feel better, too. Especially considering the conversation he’d had with Haydon last night.

  ‘Yes, we’re still in a relationship,’ Haydon had confirmed when Logan had asked him to clarify the situation. ‘And I’d consider it a favour if you’d represent Veronica in this matter, should she decide to go ahead with her claim.’

  There was no damn way Logan would do that. He couldn’t imagine acting against April, not when that worry he’d seen in her eyes pulled at him and made him want to be the one to lighten her load. ‘You need to convince Veronica that she doesn’t have a case,’ Logan said. ‘That if she goes ahead with this it could backfire on her big-time.’

  ‘She’s fiery,’ Haydon said as if that explained everything. ‘She’s unlikely to back down. But if you were her lawyer you could perhaps steer her right.’

  ‘I’m not prepared to do that. She has no real grounds to make a claim. There’s no solid evidence, nobody else has come forward with similar complaints, it’s basically hearsay.’

  As Haydon sighed, Logan felt the ripple of guilt slide down his spine. Haydon rarely asked anything of him, had never once made Logan feel that he owed him, but it didn’t stop Logan feeling that he did.

  He owed Haydon much more than any favour the man could ask of him would ever repay. Without being taken under his mentor’s wing as a teenager, given jobs with more and more responsibility, thereby developing his skills and aptitudes, Logan might never have gotten the opportunity to study law. Might never have been able to get his family back together and provide for them. Yet still he couldn’t quite bring himself to agree to Haydon’s request to represent Veronica.

  ‘How about a compromise?’ Logan said with considerable reluctance. ‘I agree to pass Ms Sinclair over to a litigator I know will be a good fit for her. In the meantime, you try and convince Veronica that she’s wasting her time.’

  There was a long silence, during which Logan closed his eyes and let that guilt slide further down his spine.

  Then, ‘I’m not happy about this, son. I’m not happy at all.’

  Logan felt the punch in his chest. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, but you taught me that a man has to be true to himself and his beliefs. That he should never compromise when either was at stake. You always said that integrity is the cornerstone of greatness.’

  ‘Don’t you go spouting my words back at me,’ Haydon said, but there was humour and affection in his tone. ‘Didn’t I also teach you to respect your elders?’

  ‘Which is exactly what I’m doing. I’m respecting you enough to tell it like it is.’ Logan waited, hoping that they’d at least reached an amicable impasse. ‘Why don’t I call round at the end of the week? Bring a bottle of that single malt you like?’

  ‘Bribery. I like it.’ Haydon laughed. ‘I certainly did teach you well.’

  After he hung up, Logan had reluctantly gone ahead and sent April’s details over to the litigator he’d mentioned to Haydon, then followed up with a call to explain the details of the potential claim she faced.

  Now, as he stood watching April, Logan knew he had to man up and confess what he’d done. He had been trying to think of a way to tell her since he’d arrived, but then the whole insurance debacle had blown up. Briefly, he wondered why she was so hell-bent on micro-managing her affairs, but then maybe he couldn’t blame her. He’d be mighty pissed off if someone tried to highjack his decisions. But, in his defence, he’d been attempting to help her out of a situation she hadn’t been able to solve herself.

  If he told her now that he’d arranged for someone else to take on her case, and that he had already been fully briefed, the woman would blow a damn gasket and likely throw him out of her apartment piece by tiny piece.

  It wouldn’t matter that he’d been acting in her best interests. All she would see was the fact that he had bypassed her and taken control of the matter himself. She wouldn’t stop to consider that the guy he’d recommended was a really great litigator with a solid reputation. She’d focus on not having been granted the courtesy of being informed first.

  He shuddered at the thought of the potential haranguing she’d subject him to, and wished he’d put on more than just the jeans he currently wore. In his defence, when he’d still been hoping to tempt her back to bed he’d figured the less clothing involved the better.

  His gaze slid down to where her tee barely covered her soft round ass and his cock twitched in response. Sex between them had been inevitable from that very first encounter. Any fool would have sensed the sexual tension burning between them—mutual, highly charged, consenting. Yet because of the way she guarded herself around him he’d planned to take it easy. Take it slow.

  She obviously had a need to protect herself. A need that went beyond basic human instinct and slipped into a desire to erect barriers and walls. He wasn’t such a Neanderthal that he hadn’t noticed she wanted sex on an equal footing, too. When he’d arrived he’d barely been able to kiss her, touch her, before she’d had her hand in his pants. Not that he was complaining. A man would be a fool to object to her very adept handling of his erection. Yet, despite that unexpected and much appreciated welcome, he worried that there was more to her taking control like that than simply a desire to get her hands on his cock.

  It went deeper. Whatever it was had made her suspicious of his motives, of how things would be between them. Had some jerk hurt her in the past? Pushed a power base into the relationship that hadn’t worked in her favour? Had she been subjected to a selfish, controlling man who’d taken care of his own needs while ignoring hers?

  While he might have made decisions on her behalf, at least he was doing it with her interests at heart, to protect her. That surely didn’t put him in the same realm as someone who tried to manipulate her for his own selfish ends. Did it?

  Shit. He didn’t like the idea of that. It made his gut clench and his hands ball into fists at his sides.

  Despite her closing her eyes
, to prove her trust when he was inside her, he had a feeling it had been an act—a deliberate attempt to take his attention from what he had seen in her gaze. Suspicion. Doubt. And, yes, maybe a smidgen of fear.

  The tightness in his gut shot into his chest. If some guy had hurt her he’d make it his mission to seek the bastard out and get him to pick on someone his own size.

  April chose that moment to turn and look over her shoulder at him, blinking a couple of times as if she was surprised by what she saw.

  Considering the way he felt, thinking about some jerk hurting her, and the fury that shot through him like a frigging freight train, he wondered if his feelings were evident on his face. Had she glimpsed his dark mood and thought it was aimed at her and her outburst regarding the whole insurance thing?

  With that in mind, he walked up behind her and slid his arms around her waist. ‘You’re taking a while with those drinks.’

  It pleased him when she turned in his arms, although she only placed her hands on his forearms, as if she was still tentative following their altercation.

  ‘It’ll have to be wine. I don’t keep strong spirits.’

  ‘Fine with me.’ He dropped a light kiss to her mouth. ‘Sorry I upset you.’

  He could feel her shiver, feel her relax a little against him.

  ‘I’m not upset—not exactly. It just...pushed some buttons. I still feel like an idiot about not renewing the insurance and getting myself into this whole mess.’

  What were those buttons? he wondered. Suddenly he had a desperate need to know.

  ‘There’s no need for you to feel that way. It could happen to anyone. If it wasn’t for my PA dealing with such matters I’d undoubtedly forget to renew my car insurance, let alone anything relating to the practice.’

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, sucked in a breath, then sighed. ‘Well, I have insurance cover now—and thank you for that. Really.’