by Faye Avalon
‘You’re welcome.’
He felt a loosening around his ribcage. The storm had passed. Although there was still the matter of handing her across to the new lawyer to broach.
‘But as comforting as it is to have the business covered now, it doesn’t really help me with Veronica. Since I don’t have any real capital at this point, if she sues I could lose my business. She’d force me into bankruptcy.’
‘Not if you counter-sue.’
‘What?’
He slid his hands over her waist even as the warning rang loud in his head. Back off now, he told himself. Don’t slide in too deep, and definitely not into territory that’s the responsibility of her new lawyer.
He should keep his mouth shut, coax her back to the bedroom, where the ground wasn’t quite so boggy and deep.
‘Can I do that? Counter-sue?’
Seeing the hopeful light in her eyes made him feel like an asshole. What was he supposed to say now?
Yeah, you can counter-sue...or rather your new legal counsel can. You see, I’m dumping you onto someone else, because I don’t have the balls to stand up to a man who is like a father to me. The man who gave me my first job, who saw something in me and made sure I got the opportunity to go to law school. The man who made it possible for me to care for and protect my siblings.
‘It’s a possibility,’ Logan said with a shrug. ‘But not always a recommended course of action. Anyway, it’s jumping the gun. Veronica hasn’t taken any action yet, and maybe she won’t.’
Although from what Haydon had said it seemed Veronica had the bit between her teeth and had scented blood. There didn’t seem any likelihood of her backing down any time soon.
‘If counter-suing is a possibility, I think I’d like to explore it,’ April said. ‘That way I can be ready if the shit hits the fan.’
He should have known she wouldn’t back down. That she’d be like a dog with a bone, wanting to chew off every bit of available meat.
‘Counter-suing doesn’t always work in favour of the client. It can open a whole new can of worms. If you counter-sued but lose, you’ll have the original compensation claim to cover, plus additional expenses.’
April slid her hands up his arms, linking her fingers around his neck. Since there was a contemplative look in her eyes, as if she was still considering the points he’d just made, he sensed it was an unconscious action. Even so, he liked the feel of her hands on his skin, her fingers flicking idly through the ends of his hair.
‘I thought you said there was wine?’
That brought her back from wherever she’d gone.
‘Yes. Sorry.’
He reached around her and picked up the wine bottle. ‘Why don’t you grab the glasses and I’ll open this?’
Absently, she nodded, and he sensed she had slipped into thinking mode again.
‘I can’t lose my business, Logan.’
He took a breath, knowing that sex was so far from her mind right then that any attempt on his part to instigate it would be insensitive at the very least.
‘You don’t want to be thinking along those lines.’
He moved to the small table at the end of the kitchen and opened the wine, then sat and poured it into the glasses she’d placed on the table.
‘It’s hard not to.’ She sat opposite him. ‘If this goes belly-up, I’m not sure what I’ll do.’
‘You can always go back to modelling,’ he said, pushing a glass across to her. ‘Looking the way you do, I’ll bet you’d be welcomed back to the fold with open arms.’
She picked up her wine, sipped, then frowned. ‘Modelling was never my choice. I don’t even think I was very good at it. My heart wasn’t in it.’
‘Then why did you do it?’
She took a longer sip, then stared down into the liquid. ‘It was my mother’s dream. Following in her footsteps, so to speak. She was a successful catwalk model and she wanted me to be successful, too. I hated it—every minute.’
He hadn’t expected such a revelation, but sat back and let her speak.
‘I don’t much like the limelight. Of course, my mother couldn’t understand that, and she thought I was just being obstinate. She told me there wasn’t much else open to me—that I should use my looks to get ahead because my brains wouldn’t take me very far.’
Logan sipped his own wine, swallowing the bile that gathered in his throat. ‘What the hell did she mean by that? As far as I can tell, you’ve got both in abundance.’
She smiled, but it was far too sad for his liking.
‘I was never very good at school. Any time I tried to do well...up my grades, get better marks on assignments...it seemed to backfire. As hard as I worked, I just couldn’t get ahead. So I stopped setting my sights too high and let Mum steer me into modelling.’
She tapped her fingers against the side of her glass.
‘I never told them, but I took a computer class in my spare time, and the tutor noticed that I was struggling with certain things. After a few tests I found out I had a form of dyslexia.’
Logan had experience with that—his sister Colleen had been diagnosed with the same disorder. She had struggled at school and, as much as Logan had tried to help with her reading and spelling, had grown more and more frustrated, while Logan had become angry and increasingly impotent that he couldn’t fix things for his young sister. It hadn’t been until diagnostic tests had revealed the problem, and he’d been able to get her the help she needed, that he’d seen how much it had affected her confidence as well as her school work.
‘That’s tough. Did you get help?’
She nodded. ‘I couldn’t believe how much better everything was just by changing the colour of the screen and the font styles and sizes. I sometimes use coloured acetates when I read even now, and it’s a revelation.’
‘So much so that you left modelling and set up your own company?’
‘I’m not sure I’d have done that if my father hadn’t become ill. He lived in Manchester, and flatly refused to go into care, so I went to live with him to make sure he was okay.’ She became thoughtful for several moments, then sighed. ‘Long story short: I decided to set up an online business, mostly so I could work from home and be there for my dad. I absolutely loved it. Loved setting it up, deciding what items to offer, the excitement of receiving my first orders, the thrill of getting lovely letters and online comments from customers. I wanted it to be a safe place for women to experiment and enjoy themselves—which is one of the reasons I really love offering the party-plan.’
Logan hadn’t realised he was smiling, but her infectious pleasure gave him a warm feeling in his chest. ‘You don’t mind being the centre of attention when you’re doing those parties?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you know, that’s something I’ve never thought of before? But, no, I don’t mind at all. In fact, it’s fun and incredibly life-affirming, watching women enjoy and experiment with their sexuality.’
Before they’d had this particular conversation Logan hadn’t fully realised just how much April stood to lose. It wasn’t just about her business, it was about her sense of achievement at having battled a learning difficulty and not only knocked it on the head but stomped it to the ground.
He admired her more than he could say. And a spark of something fired deep in his gut, radiating outwards to swamp the rest of him. No way was he going to stand by and let someone like Veronica Lebeck destroy what April had worked so damned hard to achieve.
‘Maybe it’s time to get proactive,’ Logan said. ‘We should start gathering evidence together, so that if Lebeck does decide to come at you we won’t be caught with our pants around our knees.’
Her eyes went wide, her shoulders rolled back. ‘We? Does that mean...?’
Logan shrugged, and reached for his glass to take a healthy swig. What the fuck was he doing? Damned
if he knew. All he did know was that he wasn’t about to hand her over to someone who wouldn’t fight tooth and nail to make sure she kept her business. Who would never understand just what it meant to her.
‘Makes sense for me to take on the case,’ he said, as if it didn’t matter that he was risking his relationship with Haydon by having to tell his mentor that he’d decided to represent April after all. ‘Like you said, you don’t want to have to go over everything again with someone else.’
‘I... I don’t know what to say. Are you sure you have the capacity? I mean, I know you have the New York case at the forefront right now...’
‘I can handle it.’
He considered telling her about Haydon, about how his representing her could be considered a conflict of interest, but he didn’t want to dull the light that came into her eyes or diminish the relief that left her on a long sigh.
He stood, topped up their wine, then picked up the two glasses by their stems and gripped them in one hand. He held out his other hand to her.
‘And now that’s settled, why don’t we go and handle each other?’
She took his hand, but remained seated. ‘Shouldn’t we make some ground rules about our working relationship first?’
‘I’m thinking we’ve done enough talking for now.’
And look where it had got him. Up to his ass in complications. At least in the bedroom he knew where he stood.
‘We should take a break.’
She laughed—a throaty sound that shot straight to his groin.
‘You’re a lawyer. You talk for a living.’
‘Which makes it even more imperative that right now you should be concerned for my physical well-being.’
She tilted her head, looking up at him as her fingers tightened around his. He wanted to yank her out of the chair, drag her into the bedroom and devour her soft curves and warm flesh. Considering that his cock was now pressing against the seam of his pants with relentless optimism, he congratulated himself on his stoic restraint.
‘First things first, Logan. We separate the personal from the professional—and because of that I want to be invoiced for your services. I don’t want any freebies. I also need you to keep me informed of what steps you take in respect of my business.’
At heart, Logan had no issue with what she’d said—especially the part about keeping sex separate from their professional relationship. But what did she expect him to do? Check in with her every time he took a piss?
‘You’re saying you want me to run everything past you first? Even when I need to act fast in your best interests? That’s not entirely how it works. But what I will do is keep you advised of what I intend to do if I think it could work against your interests in some way.’
She kept him waiting for a response, then took in a breath. ‘Fair enough.’
‘So we have a deal?’
She grinned and glanced down at the bulge in his pants. ‘From the look of things, maybe we should seal the deal with something less formal and altogether more pleasurable than a handshake.’
Halle-friggin-luiah.
‘I’m up for that—and that’s not just a figure of speech.’
He returned her grin as he tugged her from the chair and led her to the bedroom. Placing the glasses down, he tipped his head towards the side table.
‘Why don’t you reach over and grab my new purchase. Let’s take it for a spin.’
April did as he asked, affording him a tasty flash of plump, ripe ass as she leaned across. His cock jerked.
‘Batteries,’ she said waving the vibrator at him. ‘I’ll just go and grab some.’
Too bloody late. He was aching to grab something else entirely.
He took the toy from her and placed it on the bed. ‘On second thoughts, we’ll save that for later. Right now I want to be inside you, Ms Sinclair.’
April scrambled onto the bed, knelt, and stripped off her tee. ‘Works for me, Mr Lawyer.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
APRIL WOKE IN the early hours. Her first thought was that she wasn’t alone in the bed. Her second was that she hadn’t planned on letting Logan stay the night. It made things different, somehow. Gave what they’d shared greater importance. But it was hard to be regretful when she was snuggled up to his warm masculinity, having been thoroughly pleasured through the night.
She’d never met a man like Logan. He was a generous and considerate lover, and very attentive to her needs. She wriggled some more, needing to get closer. When had she turned into a snuggler? Certainly not with Richard—and, since she’d never spent the whole night with a man before Richard, this was a new experience.
It was hard to deny that she liked it. Liked the feel of Logan pressing against her, his chest rising and falling with each slumberous breath, as she drew in the heady scent of pleasured, satisfied and still very horny male.
Feeling bold, she wrapped her fingers lightly around his length. She hadn’t meant to squeeze so hard that she woke him, but she couldn’t help her grin when his eyes opened lazily and looked straight into hers.
‘You’re bloody insatiable.’
His gruff, throaty tone rippled right through her body and sent shockwaves from her nipples to her core.
‘Are you saying you can’t keep up with my pace?’
His hand covered hers. ‘You didn’t let me finish, I was about to say that I’m just the man to handle you.’
She tightened her fingers a fraction. ‘Looks like I’m the one doing the handling...’
‘Funny.’
It was extremely pleasant, lying next to Logan in the early hours, with only a measly slice of light coming through the slatted blinds. It was even better feeling his hands slide over her, making her shiver and moan.
When he pushed her onto her back she kept hold of his erection, rubbing him gently as his hands travelled down the front of her body. He cupped her breast, flicked his thumb over the hardening peak, then moved down slowly to explore the skin around her navel—hell, who knew that area was quite so sensitive?—before sliding his hand between her legs.
He set up an easy rhythm, and since she was already wet it wasn’t long before she was breathing heavily into the silence of the room. Logan matched her, probably because she was working him in the same easy way. Oh, but it was lovely to slide into the day like this.
Logan withdrew his hand, summoning a complaint from April. He gave a low, sexy laugh as he eased her fingers from around his cock, then turned to grab the glittering green vibrator. Late last night April had inserted its batteries, but it still sat unused on the bedside table. They hadn’t seemed able to keep their hands off each other long enough to actually try out the toy.
Now April’s stomach somersaulted as Logan turned back to her with a feral look on his face. Encouraging her legs wider, he touched the toy lightly to her knee, and the cool slide of the plastic against her sensitive flesh made her shiver a little. He drew the toy up along her inner thigh, across her abdomen, before taking it slowly down her other thigh.
Every one of her feminine muscles clenched, awareness moving up to her breasts as Logan circled the tip of the vibrator around her areolae, making her nipples tighten into sharp buds.
‘Aren’t you going to switch it on?’ April asked, her voice breathy. ‘After all the trouble I took to get those batteries inserted.’
He gave her that cocky half-smile that she found even more of a turn-on than the thought of the toy in full vibrate mode.
‘Someone’s impatient this morning.’
She couldn’t deny it—especially when he slid his finger towards the ‘on’ button. She grabbed a breath, held it as she waited, then gave a disgruntled huff when he moved his finger away from the switch.
There was no time to give a more verbal objection, because Logan had moved the toy down her body and touched the tip of it to the place where
her heat raged. While she was no stranger to self-pleasuring with a vibrator, she’d never enjoyed it with a man at the controls. And when that man was Logan, the enjoyment factor rocketed off the scale.
He took it slow, torturing her with tiny flicks and controlled dips along her sensitive folds. She touched his wrist, instinctively wanting to take control, but then eased her grip. She’d waited a long time to enjoy adventurous sex. She wasn’t going to back down now.
How many times had she asked Richard to try out some of her stock? How many times had he refused? So many that she’d started to think there was something wrong with her wanting to use them. More than once he’d alluded to that very thing. Said that maybe she was oversexed. That her job had turned her into some kind of nymphomaniac who couldn’t get enough.
The truth was, after being with Logan, she didn’t actually care. And she cared even less when Logan slipped the vibrator inside her. Just a couple of inches, but she loved the way he looked at her while he glided it slowly into her, before drawing back, only to do it all again.
April clamped her muscles around the plastic, trying to encourage Logan to increase the pressure. Instead he flicked the switch and a green glow filled the room. Another flick and it started to slowly vibrate.
Bloody hell.
April tried to steady her breathing, but it was just so damned erotic. Especially when he hovered the tip of it at her clit and slid it slowly around.
Knees bent, she pressed the soles of her feet into the mattress, lifting her hips to encourage him to slide it deeper. ‘Will you please...just...?’
In the sultry glow of green, while the vibrator continued to whir softly, Logan’s gaze held hers.
‘You need to...just use the bloody thing and...’
His low laugh rippled down her spine, building on the electrifying heat that shot through her entire body. His chest rose and fell and he looked as if he were engaged in hard manual labour instead of simply working a vibrator, as his erection pressed against her side, thick and hard.
‘You want me to satisfy you with this?’
