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He kisses me back with careful intensity, holding me in place as if he’s deliberately mapping my lips with the same precision and focus he brings to everything. But I need more, I need to be overwhelmed, and when I part my lips and his tongue touches mine, everything goes from zero to sixty between one breath and the next.
For a split second, Logan freezes. Then he makes a tortured sound and rolls halfway on top of me with the speed of a striking snake, taking my mouth with a ferocity that has our teeth clashing, our lips moving together so hard I expect my skin to split.
It’s everything I need right now. His mouth fucking owns me and his hands are everywhere, rough and possessive, driving back the darkness and fog I’ve been caught in.
I kiss him even harder, wrapping my arms around him and impatiently tugging at his shirt, trying to find skin. Pulling him even closer. Making an obscenely needy sound of my own when I feel the unmistakable outline of his hard length, grinding against my hip.
Then he pushes me away.
I blink, gasping for air and staring at him in shock. What just happened?
“Logan?”
He put two feet of empty mattress between us, and his jaw is so tight it looks like it might crack. He’s still here though, and his usual cold blankness is backlit by a raging fire.
He’s holding himself back, but I have no idea why.
I touch my kiss-swollen lips. “You want this too.”
“I can’t,” he bites out, looking away. “You know that.”
“What? No, I don’t. Why not?”
His gaze lurches back to me and drills a furious hole right through me. “You were making me lose control. I can’t do that. I told you about my mother. You know what I am. What’s inside me.”
A monster. That’s what she was, and it’s what he thinks he is too.
I shake my head. “You’re not like her.” I won’t pretend I don’t see shades of something monstrous inside him too, because I do. I’m just not afraid of it.
“Riley,” he practically growls, his pale eyes flaring like the heart of a flame. “You’ve seen—”
I press my fingers over his lips to shut him up, and his eyes widen with shock.
“Yeah, I have seen it. I’ve also listened to what you said about her, and I doubt she ever worried about being what she was. Did she ever try to fight it?”
I can see the answer in his eyes. She didn’t fight it. She fed it. Right up until the end.
I take my fingers away from his mouth and scoot closer, keeping my eyes wide open and locked onto his as I lean in and press a chaste kiss against his mouth again.
He jerks his head back, and my heart races as I open it right up for him, laying myself bare.
“I’m not afraid of the darkness inside you,” I whisper. “There’s something in me that craves it. That needs a little pain sometimes.”
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t reach for me. But I feel something shift in the air between us, and I’m not above begging right now.
“Today fucked me up.” The confession is ragged, my throat tightening as all the shit that exploded out of me back at Frank’s place tries to rise up and choke me all over again. “I need this. I need you to make me feel something. Anything.Please.”
I can see the battle in his eyes, and a needy little whimper escapes me when it ends.
I move toward him again but he stops me, reaching up to wrap his hand around my throat to hold me in place. He doesn’t tighten his grip, but it still sends a delicious thrill of danger through me.
There’s no way Logan misses it. He’s staring right into my eyes, and I’m wide open and vulnerable to him right now. He can read everything I’m feeling and destroy me with it if he’s really the monster he claims to be.
But I know he won’t.
His grip suddenly tightens, just enough to remind me of what he can do, and the tension flows out of me like water as I give in to him. Like I just told him, I don’t just need this right now, I crave it.
“Pick a word.”
