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“It feels like I haven’t touched you in a dozen lifetimes, not just a handful of weeks.”
She took a step back from him and his belly clenched again. It wa
s too soon. He’d rushed it. He opened his mouth to tell her it was fine, but she touched his lips with the very tip of her forefinger then knotted her fingers with his and pulled him up the path to the cabin.
When they got to the outside stairs that led to the second level deck, he lost his breath as her midnight hair floated around her shoulders in the storm-scented wind. A familiar curve of her lips peeked from the wildness she carried from outdoors into the oasis the house was supposed to be.
That he hoped it could be now.
Twenty-Five
Bella led him inside. He smelled like the woods and another layer of sweat from the brutal swing of the ax she’d watched from the path.
After the panicked chase for him all over the property earlier, and then the way they left things, she hadn’t believed that it would end like this. That he could humble her with the rage stretching under his skin like a living thing.
That she’d dare to dismiss what they had.
And he was right.
The minute she’d said it, she’d known it. Even now her belly clutched with the thick syrupy strings of guilt that were melting under the warmth that was Logan. She could stare into his fathomless green eyes and know that there was nothing wrong with the love that had formed between them.
Even as her mind rebelled and her heart raced, she knew she was fighting a losing battle. She drew him into the bathroom. Words were jumbled inside her. It still wasn’t easy to find them in the miasma of grief that churned inside of her.
In her heart, she knew that someone as loving and generous as Nichole would never wish for her to turn off this gift she’d found. It made it easier to push the shirt up and over his head. To smooth her damaged hands over his perfect skin.
She tried to ignore the shiny pink new skin. She was a master at avoiding looking at it every day. Instead she focused on the texture of his skin, the cocoa powder freckles that scattered over him from shoulder to neck, then only dotted here and there over his wide chest.
The pectoral muscles that had firmed and chiseled down to abs and the lines at his hip bones that led to where he was so hard for her. Where pleasure had been a constant companion to the love they had.
All of the things she’d ignored and blocked out.
The things that made up Logan’s passionate nature, all the things that had drawn her to him. The shell that guarded a heart so big.
She hadn’t allowed herself the luxury of thinking about all the healing things about him that she’d locked outside of her walls. And now, all of it was right there in front of her.
To take and wrap around herself if only she’d let him.
Strong arms that were made to shelter her body, to mold around her, to give when she needed and take when she demanded it.
When he pushed her sweater off and it dropped with his shirt, she lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. There was a fragility inside the strength of his jaw and his slash of lips. It lived in his gentle green eyes that looked at her like she was the single most important thing on the planet.
And when he unbuttoned the too big men’s shirt that she’d stolen from him, she closed her eyes as he took a look at her. She breathed out a shuddering sigh when he bent to her breast and lightly drew on one tight tip through the filmy tank she wore.
He slowly drew the gauzy cotton up, careful of her ribs and lingering sutures that hadn’t quite dissolved. He traced the tip of his finger along her collarbone, between her breasts and around each full curve before he followed the concave line of her belly to the jeans that were finally starting to fit again.
He flicked open the button and they gaped over her slim hips to pool around her ankles. A pair of cotton panties hid her from his gaze. He shucked his own shorts and kicked them away.
He knelt in front of her and brushed his lips over the tops of her thighs, breathed over the low-rise panties that hugged her hips. The tip of his tongue flicked over her mound and she sucked in a breath.
She’d meant to seduce him. To draw him into the shower and touch him because she wasn’t sure she was ready to be touched. But this moment had become about them both so very quickly.
A sharing that had been lacking.
When he rolled the cotton over her hips, she drew in a harsh breath. He looked up at her, his eyebrows down in concern.
She cupped his bearded face and gave him her first smile in what felt like months. His eyes flashed. God, so very intense. His chest rising and falling as if he’d just run a six-minute-mile.
She’d experienced that before. The way his body took over and endorphins ruled his body, flowed into his muscles, lit his features. It was a fraction of what she saw on the stage. The lure and lust that he couldn’t explain to her, but she longed to draw into her bloodstream.
