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“Sir?” Javier gestures for us to enter the vehicle, but Logan clearly has a bone to pick with me.
“I’ve got it from here, thank you.” He dismisses Javier with a half-hearted wave while I gawk at the man before me.
“Something wrong?” he rumbles, all up in my space as if he belongs there.
I wrinkle my nose at the cologne he’s wearing. “Actually, I’ve got a running list of complaints, and the way you smell is at the tippy-top of it.”
He frowns. “What’s wrong with the way I smell?”
“That cologne you’re wearing is gaudy and offensive.”
I don’t tell him that I hate the way it masks his natural essence–the one that smells like walking through the woods, laced with fresh pine and the earthy undertones. The same one branded on all my best memories.
“Noted,” he drones with sarcasm.
“Let’s see here.” I count each one on my fingers. “Enforcing a dress code, requiring me to live wherever you choose, encroaching on my personal time outside of work, having horrid taste in office decor… Shall I go on?”
As if he can’t help himself, he reaches for the chunky bracelets on my wrist, rubbing one of them between his fingers. “Most women would be thankful to have an entire wardrobe hand-picked for them, never mind a two-thousand-square-foot apartment with miles of ocean for their view.”
“Well, I’m not most women.” I swat his hand. “It’s a miracle my sex life managed to escape your control.”
His pupils widen, thinning the blue of his irises. “I’m not ashamed to admit that I was tempted.”
The raw sexuality drenching those words has me swallowing hard. “Then maybe I should thank you for sparing me the chore of blowing you under your desk each morning.”
The tension between us crackles until it’s on the verge of snapping, and that throaty chuckle does nothing but amplify the charge.
“While having these lips around my cock is a tempting thought, I wouldn’t start my morning with you on your knees.” He watches his thumb brush across my lower lip, and the humming noise he makes is both delicate and spine-tinglingly sexy. “Ladies first, as they say.”
A vivid image of us in his office with my legs draped over those big shoulders assaults me. There’s no doubt in my mind he would take his time fucking my aching core with that wicked tongue. I bet he wouldn’t stop until I was spent, screaming his name for the entire office to hear, too.
“Let’s go!” my sister shouts from the back window, shattering the fantasy he conjured, and thank god for that because what in the actual fuck am I thinking?
“Coming,” I call to her, but it’s then that he lifts the hatch at the back of the car and produces a sleek black gift bag.
I narrow my gaze, instantly suspicious when he pushes a button to lower it. “I’m not falling for any pranks.”
He shakes his head with a soft chuckle. “Just open it.”
The brat in me wants to counter, ‘How about no,’ before setting the whole thing on fire. But sue me, I’m curious.
I remove the tissue paper concealing the shoe box inside, and once I open the lid, I find a pair of glittery high-top sneakers nestled inside.
A small smile tips my lips as the hand-pressed Swarovski crystals sparkle in the taillights. “Logan, they’re beautiful.”
“I want you to wear them tonight.” As if remembering Carrie’s warning, he amends, “If you want to, that is.”
I stare at the thoughtful gift, confused and entangled in a constant struggle between these two versions of him. Kind and blunt. Hot and cold. Smiling one moment and scowling the next.
He says the boy I used to know is gone, but I’d argue he’s trapped behind his father’s expectations and Logan’s own insecurities.
There was a time when he protected me from the world, but how can he possibly protect me now when Silas has such a tight leash on him?
“I appreciate the gesture, but I-I can’t accept this.”
His handsome face assumes a frown when I place the shoebox back in the bag and hand it back to him.
As the past has proven, he’ll always choose his father’s approval over me. Which means, right now, I can’t trust him. Giving him even the smallest piece of myself would be a grave mistake, and all the gifts in the world won’t change that.
