Page 39 of Winter’s Fire

“Distant.”

Another kiss.

“Unapproachable.”

A third.

“Do you still think I’m like that?”

He hated himself for putting the quiver of trepidation into her voice. The next kiss, he planted squarely on her luscious mouth. “He’s not the only fucking idiot. I was wrong.”

She kissed him back with a fervour to match the tumult pounding within him, as if she had something to prove. She was wrong. It was on him to prove he could be the Dom she needed, and protect her on the mission.

Her gentle smile chased away the whisper of a chill that had settled around his heart. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me. I see the woman you really are now.”

Her breath hitched. The way she was looking at him… She made him want to be a better man, for the woman she’d always been, and the one she was on the way to becoming.

To be the kind of man she deserved, even though he could never be her man.

“Please… don’t look at me like that.”

Keeping his touch light and using the excuse of brushing her hair out of her eyes, Logan let his fingers linger on her cheek, in case she felt a sudden need to turn away from him. “Like what?”

“As if I’m something special. I’m not.”

How wrong she was. That was something her Dom could show her, exactly how special she was. “Really? You think everyone would do what you’re doing, put themselves through the last few days, knowing they’ll have to do that and more for someone they’ve never met?”

“You and all the guys, you do this all the time.”

“That’s just the point. People like me do it so people like you don’t have to. Let me give you this.”

With a sense of reverence, Logan cradled her soft, lush breast in his palm and closed his lips around the sweet berry of her nipple. As he continued to make love to her, all thoughts of the mission faded into the background, replaced by the bitter shade of all the reasons why Lucy couldn’t be his forever.

Chapter 11

Lucy wriggled uneasily, in a vain attempt to pull the ridiculously short skirt just a little further down her thighs.

It wasn’t that she was ashamed of her legs—far from it. She considered them one of her best features, but this skirt was… not a skirt. She had belts that covered more than this scrap masquerading as clothing.

The effect was compounded by what it had been teamed with, something more crop than top. If Logan thought this was revealing less to any casual onlookers, he needed some serious re-education in the universally accepted definition of the word.

As far as Lucy was concerned, she might as well be naked, but given the amount of exposed flesh around her, she wasn't about to comment to that effect. Such a comment might give Logan ideas of a kind she wouldn’t be quite so eager to take on board. Being with him in his apartment was one thing, but here at the club her sense of modesty had come roaring back to keep her in line.

“Stop fidgeting, or I’ll have you tied to that spanking bench before you know it.”

The low, growled warning from her human seat snapped her attention back to him. The wood pressing into her hip explained the threat. The man was aroused, and her squirming around on his lap was surely making things even more uncomfortable for him.

“I feel ridiculous!” What had seemed perfectly acceptable earlier in the day was now launching her sense of self-consciousness into orbit. “I’m a grown woman—can’t I sit down properly? Please?”

A large male hand slapped her thigh, a sharp, stinging message about how she was supposed to behave. “Have you learned nothing yet?”

Pain flashed white-hot through her nervous system when the same hand disappeared under her loose-fitting excuse for a top, and finger and thumb pinched and rolled her nipple. That same pain triggered a distinctly wet reaction that gave the lie to any claim she might have to indignation.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t like that.”

She wasn’t about to. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to like a punishment—otherwise, it’s not a punishment, Sir.”