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I huffed. “What do you think? Passed out. It’s four in the morning, and she’s drunk as a beaver.”
“Beaver.” He frowned as he thought about it. “Your dad used to say that about your mom.”
He remembered. I’d told him that one afternoon while we sat and had ice cream on the way back from the horses. My dad said beaver, because my mom used to move shit around in the house whenever she got drunk. I told Logan how my father tried to help my mom get sober, but then he got lung cancer and within six months he was gone. I’d been ten years old, and he died around the same time Kat and Matt lost their parents. I think that’s why we all connected so well. We needed one another. “Yeah.”
“Why’d you run, Mouse?”
“I have horses to ride tomorrow … today and—”
“Stop biting the inside of your cheeks and tell me the truth. Why’d you run?”
Fuck. I so wasn’t ready for this conversation. He didn’t deserve to know that his voice lit me up like a firecracker, that staring up at him on stage undid me, and I couldn’t control the want inside me.
Then Logan did something I hadn’t been prepared for. He snagged my hand, jerked me up against him, and caressed my hair. “I like the bed look. And the pink boxers …” He trapped my hand behind my back. “Liking those too.”
Anger, where are you? This guy hurt me. He shredded every single part of my dignity and stomped on it. But Logan’s words were erotic. Sensual. Just like when he was up on stage. It reminded me of how he was before. He wove through me, made my body sing. Logan was in my kitchen drinking my orange juice at four in the morning, and for a second I wanted him here.
“Sculpt. Let me go.” That was all I could come up with; chicken.
“You left a bar alone looking beautiful and drunk. Don’t do it again.”
“Sculpt—”
He interrupted, his voice hard and unrelenting “No, Emily. Matt should know better. You don’t take drinks from guys, never leave a drink unattended, go to the bathroom in pairs, and never fuckin’ go home alone drunk. Jesus.”
Was he serious? He pops back into my life after two years, stirs up the past, blows up everything I thought about him, and then makes demands of me?
“I see the Legos building. Stop thinking, and promise me you’ll be more careful.”
Okay, it was a little stupid. Drunk and cabbing it home alone was not smart, and despite wanting to tell him off, I nodded. Because fighting him on this was just making it harder on myself when all I could think about was him kissing me.
Shit, I seriously needed a loony bin.
“I wanted you to hear us play, baby.”
“I don’t want to hear you play.” There was no chance I was going to torture myself listening to him sing. “You have to leave.”
“Eme.” His free hand came up and traced the curve of my neck. I swallowed. He watched. “Give us a chance.”
“Log … Sculpt, please … don’t.” I pushed his hand off my neck then stepped back so I could take one breath without having to breathe in his delicious scent. He wasn’t going to leave, and I needed him to—fast.
Silence.
I could hear the slow drip of the tap in the kitchen sink. Drip. Drip. Drip. It was driving me mad, and I was quickly becoming unravelled as he just stood there not saying anything.
Damn it. I strode over to the kitchen sink and pushed the tap all the way down.
Silence.
My hands gripped the edge of the counter as I kept my back to him, and if my fingernails could penetrate marble they’d be indented into the stone.
He moved behind me, his hands running down my naked arms until they were resting on top of mine. His hard chest leaned into me so I was pressed into the counter, no escape. No place to run.
“Mouse,” he whispered in my ear, his breath like a warm breeze caressing my skin. “Don’t let him win.” His fingers forced mine apart so our hands could interlock. It was intimate, way too intimate.
“You wrecked me.” I barely recognized my ragged whisper as my voice. “I was scared of you. I … I still am.”
“I know. Jesus, I know.” His thighs were hard against mine; his groin pressed into my ass. “I will always do everything I can to protect you from others hurting you. I don’t want you to be scared of me. I would do anything for you. You know that, right?”
A small part of me wanted to believe him, but mostly I didn’t. “I was weak, and I hate myself for it.”
He swore beneath his breath then pushed off the counter, and I instantly felt the coldness seep into my veins. “You’re the strongest woman I know. But baby, you need to forgive yourself. Your body knew what your heart and mind didn’t.”
“What? That it was okay to be fucked by you? To forgive myself for enjoying it?”
“Yes.”
“I gave in to you. I begged. I knelt on the floor and called you Master.”
His eyes closed briefly and he took a deep breath. The outer corners of his lips pulled down and the darkness in his eyes, it was gone. Instead, I saw vulnerability. “Yes,” he said quietly then ran his hand through his hair. “You submitted to me, in order to survive. If you hadn’t, you would’ve died or, worse, been sold. That is strength, Emily. I … I did everything I could to protect you. But bad shit happens. Sometimes, it can’t be stopped. I couldn’t stop it, baby.” He shifted his weight and the floorboards creaked. “Jesus, I’ve missed you.”
I swallowed, feeling the tears well up in my eyes. How could four little words make me want to run into his arms? No. I was stronger now. “Well, I can’t say the same.”
He sighed, and I saw the tightening of his face as if he winced at my words. “Eme, I’m leaving tomorrow.”
