Chapter 27 #7
Logan grinned like a man who had just caught the biggest wave of his life. “Let’s break it down, shall we?” He held up a finger, playfully professorial. “First of all, when I woke up, you could not stop looking at me, like you were staring at me, like I was a painting in a museum.”
Adrian gasped in mock offense. “I did not!” He totally did.
Logan pointed at him, his smirk widening. “See? That right there? Lousy liar.”
Adrian groaned, shoving Logan lightly, though his lips twitched in amusement. “I had just saved your life, excuse me if I needed a moment to process the ridiculousness of it all!”
“Ridiculousness?!” Logan’s eyes widened in fake scandal. “How dare you!”
Adrian snorted, shaking his head. “Me? You—”
Logan ignored him, fully committed now. “Second,” he continued, holding up another finger, “you lingered.”
“I lingered?” Adrian repeated, deadpan.
“Yeah, you lingered.” Logan nodded like he was presenting a case to a jury. “Your hands were on my chest for an extra few seconds after you realized I was alive.”
Adrian scoffed. “You could not possibly know that!”
Logan smirked. “Sure, but you looked like you were contemplating something.”
Adrian opened his mouth, then closed it, glaring. His ears were turning pink now, and Logan lived for it.
“Uh-huh,” Logan said, leaning in, smirking. “And what exactly were you contemplating, then?”
Adrian huffed dramatically. “Whether or not I should throw you back into the ocean.”
Logan laughed, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “Yeah, yeah. Sure you were. But third—” he grinned, tapping Adrian’s nose, making Adrian scrunch his face—”you kept looking at my mouth.”
Adrian groaned loudly, his face heating up, because he remembered. He had looked at Logan’s lips too long, remembering the feeling of them as he had given Logan his breath on the edge of the water, the way Logan’s lips had been soft even in the middle of a raging storm.
“I was making sure you weren’t foaming at the mouth from lack of oxygen!” he tried to cover, but his voice was an octave too high to be convincing.
“I was already breathing and sitting down on the beach!” Logan countered, grinning like he had won. “You,” he wagged a finger, “are really, really bad at lying, Ad.”
Adrian gave up, flopping back dramatically against Logan’s chest. “God, I should’ve just let the sea keep you.”
“Fourth,” Logan continued smugly, “you ran to find me my board. That was really chivalrous of you, by the way.”
“You were not breathing! You had just drowned! I was being considerate!”
“Fifth, you gave me that bracelet, and while I still didn’t fully grasp its significance to you, come on, no one gives a gift to a virtual stranger without some intention behind it,” Logan remarked, his voice light, imbued with a laughter he was keeping at bay.
Adrian contemplated a clever retort, but his mind drew a blank.
He felt his cheeks flushing, warmth creeping all the way to his ears as he was caught off guard.
With a swift motion, Logan captured his lips in a fleeting kiss, a moment that both pierced through him and whisked him away to his next thought.
“Sixth would be the way you were all over me for like the entire evening,” Logan went on, waving a hand. “But that is beyond the point.”
Adrian gasped, hitting Logan’s chest. “You’re impossible!”
Logan just chuckled, clearly reveling in Adrian’s fake outrage. It felt like them again, bantering, laughing, falling into the easy rhythm they had always had.
“I should have left you and your board there!” Adrian muttered, but his voice was all fondness, all warmth. “So smug.”
Logan snickered. “You say that, but admit it—” he wiggled his brows, “—you were already into me.”
Adrian groaned into Logan’s shoulder. “You are unbearable.”
“And yet, you love me,” Logan sing-songed, happiness basically pouring out of him as he pressed a wet, teasing kiss to Adrian’s temple.
Adrian sighed heavily, so dramatically, as if this were the greatest burden of his life, though his arms were already winding around Logan’s neck, pulling him impossibly closer.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered softly. A breath lingered between the words as he gazed at Logan, with shine in his eyes, the spark of life, of happiness, of something like bliss.
He took in the bright, magnificent smile Logan wore and felt his very soul and every one of his cells melt.
It was impossible not to smile back. To be loved by him felt unreal, almost beyond what he deserved.
“I do. More than anything. And I was gone for you from the first moment I saw you.” He admitted it like Logan hadn’t already known that.
Logan’s teasing grin faded, his gaze softening into something devastating, something endless.
“Yeah?” he murmured.
Adrian nodded, running his fingers absently over Logan’s arm. “Yeah.”
Logan exhaled, his lips brushing against Adrian’s hair. “Good,” he whispered. “Because I’ve been yours since the moment I woke up and saw you looking at me like I was the most beautiful thing in the world.”
Adrian closed his eyes, resting his forehead against Logan’s chest, his heart full, heavy, overflowing.
Logan smirked, his voice dropping to a near whisper, low and teasing. “Truth?”
Adrian swallowed, nodding.
“On the beach, I suspected it. Nothing more.” Logan traced his fingers along Adrian’s shoulder absentmindedly, his touch gentle, a slow caress, his touch drifting over skin like an angel passing through a private heaven.
“After our first date, I kinda knew there was something there. And the fact that you gave me the bracelet just after I woke up? And later, when I realized what it meant to you…”
He hesitated for a moment, pressing a soft kiss to Adrian’s temple before continuing, his voice gentler now.
“From the first moment, I felt it, Ad. That’s why I held on to you so tight. And I figured, based on how you were looking at me that day—and how terrible you are at lying—that you said something else.”
Adrian blinked at him, his breath catching, his heart swelling with something too big to name. He had always known Logan was smart—too smart for his own good, too perceptive when it came to him. But knowing Logan had thought about it, held onto that moment, analyzed it in his overthinking way?
His voice was barely above a whisper. “You really spent time thinking about it, huh?”
It was meant to be a light, teasing comment, but his voice cracked slightly under the weight of emotions, betraying him.
Logan exhaled softly, his fingers tilting Adrian’s chin so their eyes met in the dim light. His gaze was warm, knowing, steady.
“Of course, I did.” His thumb brushed over Adrian’s jaw. “I was trying to figure out what the hell was happening to me. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about you? Why, after one night—hell, after one conversation—I felt like I’d already known you forever.”
Adrian swallowed hard, his throat tight.
Logan’s smirk softened, dissolving into something devotional, almost disbelieving, as his thumb brushed over Adrian’s ring. The silver glinted in the soft glow of the lamp, a fragile star between them.
“My future husband,” he murmured, almost to himself, like the words were too sacred to say out loud, too large to fit in a single breath.
Their mouths met suddenly, fervent and urgent—no prelude, no hesitation. An unquenchable desire that first ignited on that Hawaii shore and had been shimmering through the heartbreak and the destruction and the pain until it blustered again.
The kiss was a collision of memory and need, lips parted, breath shared.
Adrian’s hands explored with intent, not just hunger but ache.
He traced the solid line of his shoulder, the curve of his bicep, the strength still humming in him.
His fingertips glided down the slope of Logan’s chest, then his stomach, memorizing the heat of him.
He moved on Logan’s lap, hips rolling with slow precision, grinding gently where their bodies met, feeling the heat of Logan’s arousal rising against him.
He wasn’t imagining it—Logan’s cock thickening under the water, responding to his touch, to his presence.
And the feeling of Logan’s thick cock touching his own made his eyes roll back, made him feel powerful.
The friction drew a sound from Logan, something deep, half-gasp, half-groan. “What… what are you doing?”
Adrian smiled, barely. His voice came quietly, threaded with breath. “I want to touch you.”
Their lips met again, slower now, reverent. Adrian reached between them, fingers curling around Logan’s shaft, solid, growing harder by the second. That sound again, Logan’s moan, unfiltered, helpless, made Adrian’s own breath catch.
Inside him, something flickered. Arousal. Desire. But as it rose, it stuttered, like a flame in the wind. He felt his body trying, wanting, but not responding the way it used to. His cock twitched, swelled halfway… then faltered. The fullness never came.
He froze. His movement on top of Logan’s and his hand as it jacked Logan off just stopped, and for half a second, the room felt colder. The steam couldn’t hide it. His heart pounded more rapidly, not from longing, but from a wave of shame.
This again.
The doctors had warned him. He remembered their words: low testosterone, hormone disruption, erectile dysfunction, delayed response.
Clinical terms, cold syllables. He’d nodded through those appointments like a soldier taking orders, but none of it had prepared him for the hollow pause in his own body.
For the way desire could rise without being met by function.
Those words that sounded clean on paper but tasted like failure when they lived in your body.
He was supposed to understand this, accept it, not define himself by it.
But still, he wanted. Wanted to be a man. Not just a survivor. Not just a patient. A man who could take his partner apart with his hands, his mouth, his body. A man who could still give.