Exposed (14 page)

I shift, and I’m on top of him. The tip of his cock presses against my opening, and his eyes are hot and wild, yet tainted by some stain of conflict.

“What, Logan?” I ask, and settle onto his stomach, rather than pushing him into me. “What’s wrong? I see it in your eyes.”

He shifts me off him, and we lie on our sides, facing each other. “Not yet, Isabel.”

I blink. “Not yet?” My throat is tight. “Why not?”

“I want to, so bad. I know you do, too. But I don’t think we should, yet.”

“Why not?” I feel desperate.

And angry. Unreasonably angry, feral with unsated need. I feel rejected, denied. Spurned. Confused. My chest tightens and my eyes sting, hot.

His thumb wipes at my eyes. “Don’t cry, Isabel. Please.” His voice is low, quiet, careful. “It’s all so hard to explain.”

“You can put your mouth on me, and let me suck you, and you can put your finger in—in my . . .” It’s hard to say out loud, but I force myself to speak my mind, bluntly and without filter. “You can put your finger in my asshole. You can come on my breasts. You can lick my pussy. But you can’t have sex with me?” I feel proud of myself for saying those words, for speaking so daringly.

It’s not my way. Or rather, it wasn’t Madame X’s way, but perhaps it is how Isabel talks.

He closes his eyes, squeezes them tight, breathes out a harsh sigh. “Isabel—”

“I don’t understand, Logan. I’m trying, but I don’t.”

“Everything up until now, it’s been amazing.
You
are amazing. You’re a dream. You’re so much—so much
more
, in every way, than anyone I’ve ever known. You overwhelm me.” He touches my cheekbone with his thumb. “I feel like I’m drowning, sometimes, like you’re an ocean and I’m just trying to stay afloat. And . . . the thing is . . . I
want
to drown in you. I like the way it feels. To lose myself in you. I feel like—god, it’s hard to put in words. Like there’s
nothing else, no one else, like the world doesn’t exist. I feel like in this moment I could just be with you and make love to you and touch you and make you feel good, and there would be nothing but us forever. I could sink into you, and we’d disappear into each other. It’d just be us.”

“Me too, Logan. I
am
drowning. I’ve drowned. I can’t breathe without you. I’ve tried. I don’t know anything else. I just want this. I want you. I want
us
. Please, Logan.” My voice shakes on the last two words.

His eyes waver, flick from my eyes to my mouth, back to my eyes. “There’s more than just us, Isabel. I can’t ignore that. I want to, but I can’t. There’s so much that’s gone before this moment, and we both know it. There’s just . . .
so
much.” He breathes, long deep breaths, as if girding himself to speak unpleasant truth. “I want you, Isabel.”

“You
have
me, Logan.”

“Let me say this, okay? First, you have to understand that I’m not rejecting you. I
want
you. I want this. I want
us
. And this is honestly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Saying no, it’s harder than anything I’ve ever had to do, and I mean that. I see that it hurts you, and I hate it more than anything.”

I draw a breath. “You told me you’d rather have an unpleasant truth than a good-sounding lie. Well, so would I, Logan.” I sit up, bringing the sheet over my chest and facing him. “So give me the truth.”

He sits up, too. Drapes the sheet over his lap. His brows furrow. His hair is tangled, and his mouth flattens in a hard line. “If Caleb showed up right now, what would you say to him?”

I sag, my breath leaving me. I burn, and I want to weep. “I don’t know. He’s not here.”

He lets silence hang for a moment. “You’ve walked away from me for him twice now, Isabel. I don’t hold it against you. I understand your position as well as anyone can, I think. But . . . until I’m sure you
won’t walk away from me for him a third time, or a fourth, I just . . . I can’t commit all the way. I want you. But I don’t want to share you.”

“You’re not sharing me, Logan. And—” I break off, summon strength from anger. “But you can do all those other things with me, touch me in a way no one ever has, do things with me that I’ve never done before. But you can’t have sex with me?”

He just looks at me. There is sadness in his blue eyes. “Yes, Isabel. I can make you come with my fingers and my mouth. I can touch you, and kiss you . . . I can do all those things. And if you walk away from me, I’ll survive it. I’ll have those memories, for good or ill; I’ll never forget this time with you, whatever happens next.” He pauses to think. “If you were just some girl I was passing time with, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you . . . you
mean
something to me, Isabel. If it were just about sexual attraction, I’d be inside you right now. I want that so bad I can fucking taste it. I can feel us, Isabel. But I just—I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if we have sex, it won’t just be having sex. When we do that, it will mean . . .
everything
. For both of us. And when we do that, I know I won’t be able to quit you, and I won’t be able to let you walk away, and I won’t survive it if you walk away from me.”

“I won’t walk away.”

His eyes blaze. “You can’t say that. You and Caleb have unfinished business. You know it, I know it, and he knows it. And you can’t promise me that if you come face-to-face with him again, you’ll choose me instead of him.”

“Logan—” I say, but I stop because I’m choking. “Damn it, Logan.”

“Say I’m wrong, Isabel.” He touches my chin and I have to look at him. His indigo gaze is the most tortured thing I’ve ever seen. I believe him when he says this is the hardest thing he’s ever done. I see the pain in his eyes. “Sex
means
something, honey. It does. People pretend like it doesn’t. People pretend like they can just fuck a
thousand different people and none of it ever means anything, that it’s just doing what feels good. But if you find that one person who resonates with the music of your soul, when you find that one person whose very presence takes up all the spaces in your heart and makes your soul sing, makes your body feel more alive and beautiful and loved than you’ve ever felt, you realize that sex
does
mean something. I’m guilty of cheapening it just like everybody else. But I know better. If sex were meaningless, if it were just hormones and fluids and pheromones and a few minutes of pleasure, it wouldn’t hurt when we get cheated on. But it does hurt, because it does mean something. When Leanne cheated on me, it broke something inside me. I tried with Billie, but the longer things went, the more I realized that I was shut off, and that I’d never invested in her, or in any idea of an
us
between her and me. It was casual sex, just with one person over a long period of time. But it was still empty and meaningless and didn’t fill anything inside me, didn’t resonate. I thought Leanne and I resonated, and she proved me wrong.”

“
We
resonate, Logan.” My voice cracks at the end.

“I know we do. So powerfully that it makes a joke out of what I thought I felt with Leanne. But I know the power of that now. I know how badly it can wreck me when it—
if
it goes wrong.”

“So you don’t trust me.”

“Isabel, it’s not that simple. This isn’t a normal situation.”

“I don’t even know what to say.” I’m hurt. I’m angry. And I’m also all too aware how right he is. And that makes me all the more angry. “I need a minute.”

I slide out of the bed, achingly aware that I’m naked, and he’s naked, and I feel the ghosts of his touch on my skin. I can’t help glancing at him as I find the shirt he left for me. He’s still hard, thick, rigid, painfully erect, the outline of his shaft visible against the sheet. Instead of reaching for him like so much of me wants to do,
I tug the shirt on. I almost moan at the slide of the downy fabric over my skin, at the smell of Logan on the cotton.

“I’m not leaving,” I tell him. “I’m going in your backyard. I just . . . I need time.”

“Whatever you need.”

“I need
you
, Logan,” I say, before I have a chance to think better of it.

He leans his head back against the headboard. “Jesus, Isabel.” A smile. “You look good in my shirt.”

“What?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s just a line from a country song.”

His eyes rake over me. My nipples are hard, poking at the fabric. The hem comes to midthigh, and when I reach up to brush my hair back out of my eyes and pull it into a ponytail, the edge rides up and bares my core.

“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life, Isabel.”

I’m caught by his gaze. Reeled in. Drawn closer. I find myself on the bed with him again, somehow, and the shirt is gone, abandoned. Pulling the sheet away. Reaching for him. “Let me help you, Logan. I want to make you feel good.”

He resists, grabbing my wrist to stop me. “It’ll subside eventually, Isabel.”

I’m dizzy with need. “Logan . . . you’ve made me feel so good. Let me touch you.”

“I’m weak, Isabel. I want you, and I’m trying to do what’s right for both of us.”

“Then we shouldn’t have started this. Because now I’ve felt you, and I want more.” I rub him with my thumb, and his grip on my wrist tightens.

He sighs harshly. “Fuck, Isabel. Fuck! I want you so goddamn bad.”

“I want you just as badly, Logan. More. I can’t breathe because of it.” I lean closer to him, touch his jaw with my lips.

I know what he said, and some distant part of me knows he’s right, but like this, kissing his skin, his erection in my hand, all I know is desire.

His grip on my wrist loosens, and I stroke him. Slow caresses of his length.

And then, faster than a serpent strike, I’m on my back and he’s levered above me, and his breath on my lips is warm. His body is hard and heavy. His erection is insistent, and my heart hammers like a drum.

I touch him, reaching between us to grip his thickness and feather soft quick strokes of my fingers around him, root to tip. Lift my hips. His remain hard, immovable.

His forehead touches mine. “No, Isabel. Not until you’re mine, and only mine.”

I go limp then, sucking in a breath and fighting tears. “I
am
yours, Logan. That’s all I want to be, is yours.”

“But you
aren’t
. Not yet. Not totally.”

I’m still touching him. And he’s thrusting into the circle of my fingers, his abs tensing and his buttocks flexing. I cup the hard round bubble of his buttock and revel in the feel of it, even as my soul aches and my heart cracks.

But I can’t stop touching him.

And he can’t stop either. His mouth descends and his lips touch my nipple, and I pull at his buttocks.

“Isabel—”

I bring his face to mine and touch my lips to his. “Ssshhh. Just this, Logan. Give me this, at least.”

His breathing is ragged, and the motion of his hips faltering. I help by thrusting my fist down to his root and then back up, and then we begin to move in sync, him thrusting into my hand as I stroke down. His forehead touches my shoulder, his lips my breastbone. He moans.

Time fades, ceases to exist, and I know I can’t push him for more than this. It would be taking something he isn’t ready to give. And there’s a doubt deep inside me, a tiny seed that wonders if he’s right. That I’m still weak and vulnerable and addicted to something toxic.

Some
one
toxic.

But I need this, at least. This pretense, this imitation. This game of pretend, where he’s above me and moving as I want him to move, and I can feel him, I can caress his spine and bury my fingers in his hair and grip the flexing mound of muscle that is his ass. I can feel him move, hear his breathing shift to become even more desperate and I can feel him thicken between the ring of my fingers.

“Isabel . . . shit . . .”

“Logan, let it go. Let me have it. Let me feel it. Let me feel
you
. I want as much of you as I can get. Even this much.”

He groans and goes still, tensed and taut as a piano wire. I take over, plunging my fist around him hard and slow, root to tip, and his hips flex. I watch between our bodies for the moment when he lets go.

He splashes hot seed onto my belly, groaning, and I watch it happen, watch him unleash and watch the semen leave his cock and watch it slash white across my dusky skin. I stroke him fast now and he comes and comes, and I watch him, not missing a single second. His forehead is pressing hard against my shoulder, and his arms are hard bars beside my face, and I twist to kiss one of his biceps. The other. And then I nuzzle his cheekbone with my lips, and he presses his mouth to mine,

and kisses me,

and kisses me,

and kisses me.

I am lost to this. I weep. His come is a tacky pool on my belly, and his cock is still hard in my hand. I wouldn’t give up this memory for anything, even if it was a pale imitation of what I really want.

“Isabel—”

I shake my head. “Mmm-mmm. No.” I kiss his lips. Taste his breath, and feel his emotions like a wave. “You’re right. I hate it, but you’re right. I
don’t
know what I would say. I want to say—I want to promise that I’d choose you. I
do
choose you. I want you. Only you. Only always you. But he messes me up and I know there is more between Caleb and me that I can’t back away from. I need answers from him. And I—I want so much more than this, but you’re right.”

He rolls off me, lies on his back, gasping, chest heaving, a forearm across his eyes, one knee bent, foot planted in the mattress. I stare at him, devouring his beauty. Tracing the contours of his muscles with my gaze, picking out individual designs from the jumble of his tattoos, the fall of his hair, the tension and conflict in his features.

“I wanted so much better for you than this,” he says, not looking at me. “You deserve . . . everything. Better than . . . this.”

“No, Logan. This was perfect.”

“I shouldn’t have let this get started.”

“If you tell me you regret this, Logan, I shall be very angry.” I don’t bother covering, don’t bother with the shirt, don’t bother sitting up or even wiping away the sticky pool of his come on my belly. I want it there. I like the feel of it there, the evidence of his desire for me visible as it dries on my skin.