“Olive . . . ?”
“What?” I ask, flushing as I realize he definitely asked me a question I was too busy ogling him to process.
“How involved is your family in your life? Do you usually tell them about your boyfriends? Are we supposed to act like I’mthe anomaly?” He turns to face me, and even the little bit of dirt smeared on his face looks good.
I’m so screwed.
“No,” I tell him honestly.
“No what? No, they’re not involved, or no I’m not the anomaly?”
“No, I don’t talk to my family about boyfriends because I haven’t had any.” And now I feel like a little girl admitting she has no friends. Great.
“Ever?” Logan moves closer, clearly intrigued.
Alarm bells go off in my head, loud and obnoxiously effective as he tugs his shirt from my hands. “Ever. I’ve never brought a man home to meet my family. You’ll be the first.”
He slides the soft cotton over his head, and I try to act like I’m not disappointed to say goodbye to that view. “Not sure I’ve ever been anyone’s first before.”
With my hand to his chest, I push him back and hop off the bench. “In your dreams, Adler.”
What I don’t bother telling him is that may have been in my dreams a time or twenty over the years too.
Logan
Not sure I’ve ever been in bed with a woman I wanted this fucking badly before. Not one I couldn’t touch, that is. Olivia and I may argue every other time the two of us are placed in each other’s vicinity, but not here. Not in bed. The energy here is different. It crackles. Sizzles. As we both lie in my king bed, a literal canyon of space between us, we don’t talk. Don’t argue. Fucking hell, we don’t even move. Not an inch.It’s like we both know we’re balancing on the edge of a blade. A sharp one. One tenth of a millimeter the wrong way, and we’re both dead.
Guess that means I should stop focusing on how badly I want to pull her against me.
Feel her curves under my hands as I bury myself inside her.
Taste her. Tease her. Fucking destroy her.
But goddammit, it’s so much easier to focus on that thought than the rage that consumed me at the thought of her with another man back in the barn. The mere idea of her bringing another man home to her family. One more appropriate than me. More acceptable for a woman like her. One allowed to touch her. To stand next to her in public. One she’d want there. Be proud to be married to instead of hiding like a dirty fucking secret.
“Go to sleep, Logan,” she orders like a queen commanding her court without so much as looking at me. “I can feel the stress rolling off you in waves.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her it’s not stress she feels rolling off me, but I doubt she’d appreciate knowing that. “Tell me something else, Olive. Something no one knows.”
She rolls over to face me and tucks her hands under her cheek. Her soft hair frames her fresh face, a hint of pink still coloring her cheeks and a glorious amount of skin showing, thanks to her tiny pajamas. “Why?”
The single word is barely whispered. It’s not combative. It’s genuinely curious.
“We need to be able to pull this off, right?” I don’t bother to give her time to think the answer through. “If I loved you, I’d be obsessed with you, Olive. I’d want to know everything. Every little detail. I’d want to know how you take your coffee in the morning. What your favorite food is. What your favorite icecream is. Who your first kiss was, and how I can kick his ass for touching what was never his to touch.”
She rolls those pretty eyes again, the way I’m finding she likes to do.
“What did I say about rolling your eyes, Olivia?” Fuck. I’d love to have this woman laid out with her ass in the air and my handprint bright red against her pristine skin.
“I take my coffee with two sugars and plenty of cream. My father likes to tease me that I take a little coffee with my cream, not the other way around.” She pulls the sheet up under her shoulder and thinks for a moment. “Favorite food is fettucine alfredo with grilled chicken. But it has to be from Nonna’s in Kroydon Hills. My brother and sister were both athletes growing up, so we didn’t eat fatty foods like that very often, but when we did, that was always my favorite. Rocky road ice cream is a close second though.” A small smile tugs at her lips as I tuck those facts away. “Hendrix Sinclair was my first kiss. It was a dare on the beach, and neither of us wanted to do it. He’s like a brother to me?—”
“Bullshit, Olive,” I interrupt her. Women always think that way, especially women as gorgeous as my wife, but they’re almost always wrong. “He might be like a brother to you, but I guarantee he wanted it.”
She looks past me. “Your phone is vibrating, Adler.”
I let her pretend I’m not right and grab my phone instead of pushing again.
Rafe
