I pull his shirt off and press my palms against his chest. His skin is warm from the fire. I trace the muscles across his shoulders, down his arms, over the ridges of his stomach. My fingers find the scar on his side, and I press my lips to it the way I did the first time.
He groans. “Tell me what you want, baby.”
“You. Right here.”
He reaches for the condom in his jeans pocket, and I take it from him and roll it on. He settles between my legs and pushes into me. I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him close.
Deep, satisfying strokes follow. The fire pops and sends a shower of sparks up the chimney. The wind pushes against the windows. The ocean crashes against the rocks outside. And Logan is inside me, looking into my eyes, and the world is warm, dark, and safe.
He slides his hand under my lower back and lifts my hips, and the angle changes. I gasp. He keeps the pace slow, refusing to speed up even when I pull at his shoulders and rock my hips against him.
He's savoring this. Every stroke is intentional, designed to ruin me.
“Logan, please.”
“Please, what?”
“More. I need more.”
He gives me more. Deeper, harder, his grip tightening on my hip. I wrap my legs around his waist. The rhythm builds. My breath comes faster.
I come first, gripping his shoulders, my back arching off the sofa. Logan follows seconds later, his whole body tensing and then releasing against me.
We lie tangled together on the sofa, the blanket half on the floor, the fire burning low.
“I could stay here forever,” I say.
He pulls me tighter against him. “Me too.”
Outside, the ocean sounds different at night. Deeper, slower, like the water itself is breathing. The house creaks and settles around us.
I fall asleep in his arms and for tonight, I’m not afraid of what happens next.
18
Logan
Jasmine is still asleep when I open my eyes. The bedroom is cold and pale with early morning light. She's on her side, facing me, her hair fanned across the white pillow. One hand is tucked under her cheek.
I lie still and look at her. Her eyelashes are long against her cheeks. There's a small crease between her eyebrows that she gets when she's dreaming. I've learned this about her over the past few weeks. She talks in her sleep too, fragments of sentences that don't make sense.
I ease out of bed without disturbing her, pull on sweats and a thermal, and pad downstairs barefoot. The fire burned out overnight, and the living room smells like cold ash.
Through the windows, the ocean is flat and silver under a low sky. Fog sits heavy on the water, so thick I can't see the horizon. It hugs the coastline and spills across the rocks and creeps up the lawn toward the porch.
I make coffee in the kitchen. The machine gurgles and fills the room with the smell of dark roast. I pour a cup, black, and take it to the porch.
The cold is immediate. It seeps through my sweats and wraps around my bare feet on the wooden boards. I sit in the Adirondack chair facing the water and hold the hot mug with both hands. The fog is so close I could reach out and touch it.
This is why I bought this house. Coffee on the porch, fog on the water, silence thick enough to swallow in. This house is the only place I've ever been fully myself.
I drink my coffee and watch the fog. After twenty minutes, it starts to thin. The water appears in pieces — a patch of silver here, a dark line of rock there.
The back door opens behind me. Jasmine steps onto the porch in my sweatshirt, which hangs past her thighs, and a pair of wool socks she must have found in my drawer.
Her hair is wild from sleep. “Morning,” she says.
“Morning.”
