Vortex (Cutter Cay) (23 page)

It was all about Daniela’s pleasure, but each urgent movement of her body, each moan, made his control slip until he was the one with none left. He kissed her deeply as they peaked at the same time, and came together. He loved that she was noisy and vocal.

“You okay?” he asked, smoothing her damp hair off her glowing face a few minutes later, when he was capable of moving.

Her skin was deliciously flushed, her eyes slumberous and glittering. “Better than,” she murmured languidly, lifting her arms to wrap around his neck. “But usually one works their way up to that from a kiss.”

His eyes devoured her face. He’d never seen her this relaxed, this beautiful. “I kissed you,” he said with mock indignation.

He felt her laugh gurgle up through her chest, a sensation that filled him too. “Yes,” she told him with mock severity. “And very thoroughly too. However, there are some important parts that were completely ignored.”

He grinned at her serious expression. “I wasn’t done.”

“Well, no. I hope not. While you’re catching your breath—” She lifted his hand and placed it on her breast.

He made up for the omission by rolling them onto their sides, bending his head to lavish her sensitive breasts with all the care and attention she craved. Sensations raced through her nerve endings like hot lava as he curled his tongue around her areola and sucked the nipple deep into the heated cavern of his mouth. Daniela dug her nails into his broad shoulders as his breath fanned the moisture his mouth left in its wake.

With every brush of his lips, with every gentle caress, she felt beautiful, desirable, and safe. “Don’t stop—” she begged, barely able to catch her breath as the heat and need climbed with every brush of his fingers, every hot wet lick of his clever tongue. The shadowy cabin was filled with pleading moans. His. Hers.

She couldn’t take it anymore. With the flat of her hand on his chest, Daniela shoved him onto his back—it wasn’t difficult, he was apparently putty in her hands. Sliding her knee over his hips, her own back arched, fingers curled into the hair on his chest, as she impaled herself. The sensation of him filling her made her shudder with the unbearable sweetness of it.

His large hands clamped on her hips, his thumbs tracing the path to where their bodies were joined as they moved together in a dance as old as time, and as new as tomorrow.

The orgasm, hard, quick, and unbearably sharp, made her shatter into a million pieces. She shocked herself by bursting into tears. She pressed a fist against her mouth.

“God. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not.” Salty tears leaked down her cheeks and pooled in the sweaty hollow of her throat.

“Did I hurt you?”

“Of course not.”

He wrapped his arms around her and drew her down onto his chest. His hands slipped up her body. “It was beautiful. Memorable. You’re beautiful.”

His face was very close to hers, and she saw all the shades of blue making up the extraordinary color of his eyes. Azure and navy, robin’s egg and sky, all there in a kaleidoscope of color that shimmered beyond her foolish tears. A sob ripped out of her throat, and he rubbed between her shoulder blades wordlessly, his touch speaking for him.

Though he’d shaved earlier, his dark beard had grown enough to shadow his cheeks and chin. The stubble was soft under her hand.

The arm behind her back tightened and he drew her to him as he bent his head and his mouth closed over hers in a kiss so sweet, so gentle, her throat closed and tears welled once more. For several minutes or hours he did nothing more than smooth long strokes down her back, and drop tender kisses on her face.

She was almost asleep, still joined to him, when he brushed away the hair stuck to her cheek. “Sleep on your back or belly?”

She breathed out a sleepy breath. “Tummy.”

Gently, he scooped her up and turned her, and she immediately burrowed her face in the pillow and breathed a contented sigh low in her throat, one eye open.

He smiled as he reached out to pull the sheet over them. His hand stilled, then he bunched the sheet out of his way and his eyes flared with another kind of heat.

Oh God. How had she forgotten for even a second? She reached back to draw the sheet up over her ass, her heart pounding now for another reason. Through one eye she saw him reach out to touch … His fingers curled into a fist inches from her skin.

“What the hell—” His voice was raw and laced with fury as he demanded. “Is this a …
brand
?”

He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress, not touching her. “No more lies and half-truths, Daniela. I need to hear everything.”

Throat aching, chest impossibly tight, the harsh tone of his voice much more painful now that he’d been so tender with her, Daniela rolled over and sat up, bunching the sheet to cover herself. It wasn’t enough.

“I have to get dressed first.” She slipped off the bed on the opposite side of Logan, and picked up her scattered clothing from the floor. She didn’t try to hide her nakedness, he’d seen everything, after all. It was the memories she wanted to armor herself against.

Her hands were clumsy as she yanked on the linen pants, not bothering with underwear. “I don’t even know where to start—”

“The senator.” His voice was very calm. The kind of calm that had tightly leashed rage behind it. “The son of a bitch branded you on the ass with his fucking initials?! Jesus, Dani—”

Personally. With relish.
She pulled the T-shirt, inside out, over her head, tugging it down. “It took two of his aides to hold m—” She swallowed bile. “To hold me down. I prayed I’d pass out. I didn’t. Do you know what burning human flesh smells like? Not unlike a nice barbecue pork rib. Sweet … sweet and acrid and a hundred times more nauseating. I
tasted
that smell, and did for weeks afterward.”

And just talking about it brought back a rush of Technicolor memories and smells that stuck in her throat. Her skin prickled with cold sweat as she drew in a deep, shuddering breath and walked to the door leading to the balcony.

“Do you want a drink? All I have is water or beer.”

“Beer.”

He got up and went to the mini fridge. She heard him pop the cap, and seconds later, the pop and fizz as he poured the beer into a glass. She watched his reflection as he padded, strong and naked, back to the bed carrying a glass and the bottle. He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “Finish it.”

“If only—” Staring blindly at her own reflection in the night-dark glass of the doors, she let the air out of her lungs slowly. “As the branding iron burned through the nerves it—it eventually stopped hurting.”

Logan’s jaw was ridged and locked as he too was reflected in the dark glass, the beers in his hands forgotten. “Why would anyone do such a thing?” he demanded rhetorically.

He had no idea. He was too good. She breathed deeply through her nose, hands clenched, heart tripping. She turned to face him. She couldn’t make eye contact. “Have you heard of autoerotic asphyxiation?”

“Choking one’s partner to heighten sexual pleasure.”

“I’d never heard of it. Never imagined it.” Her face felt hot, and she placed her icy hands on it to cool the heat. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Shame. And all-encompassing anger. “He came in one night while I was in the bath, and held my head under the water.” She dropped her hands and clasped them tightly at her waist. She needed a moment more to push the words through her constricted throat. “It was only a few seconds, but it was a few seconds when I panicked, and freaked out. He said it was a joke and laughed it off—” She recoiled from the icy fury in Logan’s midnight-blue eyes.

“Don’t,” he murmured hoarsely, his eyes glittering now with something dark and nameless. “I’d cut off my own arm before I’d ever hurt you. And this was not your fault. Any of it. Autoerotic drowning—
Jesus.
Was this before or after you discovered he was moving drugs through the gallery?”

“A month before. The next time he held me under I threatened to press charges.”

“You should have.”

“I know.” It was her biggest shame that she hadn’t. She’d wanted to believe him when he apologized with utmost sincerity. She’d thought she loved him. He loved her to distraction. He’d teased her for overreacting, and eventually she was convinced she had.

“I walked in on him in the bathroom a week later. He wasn’t alone. He and his publicist and a hooker were in the tub together. His bodyguards were holding them under the water as they had sex. Sick, I tried to run, but he’d told his people—They held me and forced me to watch. After that I left for good.”

The glass in Logan’s hand shattered. The yeasty smell of spilled beer permeated the room. He didn’t seem to notice that his hand was bleeding as he carefully placed the bottle and broken shards of glass on the bedside table.

Daniela, grateful for something to do, went into the bathroom and came out with a hand towel. Sitting beside him on the bed, she gently cupped her hand under his to inspect the inch-long gash. After wrapping the towel around it, she lifted his hand to her cheek.

“Finish it, for God’s sake. No,” he said when she started to get up. “Stay right here.”

“I called the police and charged him with assault. He was like this”—she held up twined fingers—“with the police commissioner, and the complaint was never filed. I told him I never wanted to see him again, and if he ever came near me, or the gallery, I’d go to the newspaper. If the police wouldn’t do anything, I figured the press would.”

He brushed hair out of her eyes with a tender finger, then traced the curve of her cheek, his eyes intent and only inches from hers. “You didn’t hire a hit man?” he muttered, probably not joking. The savagery in his voice was in direct counterpoint to the gentleness of his touch. Daniela’s throat and chest ached, and her eyelids burned. “I didn’t think about it.
Then.
He begged me to come back, told me how much he loved me.”

“I hope you kicked him in the balls.”

“I probably would have if our conversations had been face-to-face at that point. But I’d had my locks changed, and refused to see him.”

“What about your family and friends?”

“I was too embarrassed to tell my friends, and of course I never told my parents. Oh, my God…”

Wrapping her arms around her body, she got up and padded back to the doors to look out over the dark water. The silence grew thick as she swallowed, struggling to formulate an explanation of what had happened. How she’d
allowed
it to happen. Logan just sat there, still as a statue.

“I know it had nothing to do with me. But I have to admit, I wondered. If I’d done some of what he wanted…” Rubbing her bare arms didn’t get rid of the bone-deep chill. The events had been hideous enough, but to tell Logan what had happened was humiliating. She sounded like an idiot for staying as long as she had.

She’d had resources—and a powerful boyfriend who’d already blocked her attempts at getting a restraining order. The press loved Senator Victor Stamps, and he played them like a Stradivarius. “He called incessantly, sent his aide, then his campaign manager to reason with me. They made it sound as if what he was doing was normal, and I was a prude.”

“You’re not.”

“I refused to see him. The press speculated about our breakup. He was afraid that without me, he’d lose all those Latino votes come election time, and his calls became more threatening and wild. He inundated me with flowers and expensive jewelry. The press had fun with it, championing his romantic cause.”

Logan watched her, unjudging.

“I finally agreed to see him one last time. So he could ‘apologize properly,’ as long as my manager and a few employees were present at all times. He came to the gallery and cried, begged—. I told him emphatically no more and I meant it. That night, after the gallery closed, and I went upstairs, I—I found Pyewacket—my cat—floating in a bucket of water in the middle of my living room.”

She buried her face in her hands for a moment until she could stop shaking. More anger now than fear. That filthy bastard, she wanted to annihilate him, to wipe him off the face of the earth. She’d settle for the less dramatic and more practical route of putting him in prison for the rest of his natural life.

“I called the police.” She turned to face Logan, who still sat, hands dangling between his spread knees, his face a mask. His eyes were like burning coals in his set expression.

“There wasn’t a shred of proof that Victor was responsible. We hadn’t fought that afternoon. In fact, my manager Adam told them we’d made up and it was nothing more than a lover’s quarrel.”

“Let me guess. You signed this dick’s paycheck, but Adam worked for Stamps.”

“I found
that
out much later. This time the police questioned Victor, and his aide, and the security guy. For all the good that did, since they all had the same story.” Daniela scooped her hair up off her neck and held it on top of her head with one hand, then let it drop.

“I woke up the next morning to find Victor and three men standing over my bed.”
Don’t relive it,
she warned herself, nausea churning in her stomach, and chills racing up and down her spine.
Just tell the story.
She blew out a long low breath, trying to control the panic seeping back into her bones. “He was livid. They held me down, and—they—basically the men waterboarded me while he watched. And then he brought out the branding iron, and gave me this so I would know who I belonged to.”

She couldn’t look at him.

“I knew I couldn’t just run, unprepared. So I started planning. In the couple of weeks it took for me to pretend that everything was all right, that I was back to being the perfect ethnic arm candy, he made me watch him with other women every day. His bodyguards stayed in the bathroom, and made sure I didn’t leave. Every night was a different woman in the water with him.”

She’d only thrown up the first time he’d forced her to watch. After that her fear and fury kept her focused on how and when she’d make her move. It was the only thing that prevented her from falling apart.