21. Logan
Dante is out,and Maddoc is busy down in the office, so when I hear footsteps pounding up the stairs, I know it can only be the girl.
Riley.
Her door slams down the hall from mine, and I go still, carefully containing the disquiet that having her in our house, distracting us and weakening us, always awakens inside me. Her presence has a way of cracking open the parts of me I usually keep locked up and forcing things to spill out in dangerous ways, which just goes to prove that she’s a danger.
I’ve been warning my brothers about that from the beginning, but they don’t see it.
No. Worse. They’re each compromised by her. Not that either of them has said as much, but I see it. They’re drawn to her.
Which means it’s up to me to be vigilant. To balance my loyalty to the two of them with my need to protect them and safeguard what we’ve built here. She can’t be allowed to threaten that.
So I pull up the home security feed on my computer and patch in to the cameras hidden in Riley’s room.
It only takes a moment to flip through them and find her, and when I do, my brows furrow. She’s not huddled on her bed or sitting at the desk or staring out the window the way I’ve seen her do before. Not eating a snack like she was last time I checked on her.
Instead, she’s leaning against the door with her eyes closed and her head thrown back, the soft waves of her purple and blue hair tumbling down around her shoulders. She’s got one hand pressed white-knuckled against the door and the other between her legs, her face screwed up in a look that might be mistaken for pain.
It’s not pain, though. I’m familiar enough with that emotion to recognize it in the faces of others, and this is definitely… something else.
What the fuck is she doing?
Air escapes between my teeth in a hiss, all my nerve endings flaring to life without my permission as I watch Riley roll her hips against her hand. The desperate rhythm builds in intensity, and as my gaze moves downward, I can track the frantic motion of her hand beneath the fabric of her pants. I flip the control to turn the sound on before I’m even conscious of moving.
Low, breathy moans flood out from my speakers.
My nostrils flare, and I lean closer to the screen.
The sound of ragged breathing fills my ears, sending an unwelcome heat racing up my spine. Riley is panting hard now, her hand moving faster and faster as she bites down on her bottom lip.
Her skin looks flushed. Warm. Salty.
I lick my lips. I hate the sight, yet I can’t look away. I hate the disorder she’s brought into the sanctuary of our home. I hate the splintering of my own control every time I give in and pull up the feeds, searching for her.
Stalking her.
Watching her.
Telling myself it’s for our protection and refusing to listen to the voice in my head that calls me a liar.
My brothers know about the cameras I’ve got set up around the house, including the ones in her room. But they don’t know how often I check the feeds, or how thoughts of her invade my mind even when I’m not checking the security footage. They don’t know about my obsession.
I’ve learned her patterns, her habits, searching out all the secrets that people reveal when they don’t realize they’re being observed.
But I’ve never seen this.
Up until now, when I’ve watched her through the feeds, there’s always been a barrier between us. A distance that mutes all the unwanted, unruly feelings she drags out from those dark, hidden places inside me that are better off locked away. She’s safely hidden behind the screen, real but not real.
Until now.
Until this.
Now it feels like I’m in the same room with her, no distance between us at all. I grit my teeth, the pixels on my screen expanding until they’re all I can see, her image heating my blood and sending it throbbing into places it doesn’t belong.
My dick is hard. The muffled sounds of Riley’s rising pleasure surrounds me, and the sight of her touching herself this way strips the safe barrier of the camera away until the insulating distance between us is gone. Until she invades my mind, my space, my control, in ways that are totally unacceptable.
I rub my cock through my jeans, willing my erection to go away. I’ve never wasted my time with sex. I’ve rarely been attracted to anyone, no matter their physical attributes, and I’ve always been able to control and dismiss the distraction when it’s come up.
But Riley is different.
It’s one more reason I know she’s a danger.
When the pressure of my palm doesn’t help—the opposite, as my cock grows painfully hard and throbs urgently behind the confines of my pants—I force myself to stop. Pulling my hand away, I fist it at my side and hold myself still as I narrow my eyes and watch her rush toward her climax.
It won’t affect me.
Shewon’t affect me.
I won’t allow it.
For a moment, I want to curse Maddoc. Riley is fully clothed, but thanks to his strip search of her when she first arrived, my mind has no trouble at all conjuring exactly what her lithe body looks like naked.
“Shit,” she murmurs, her voice low and muffled. “Oh, shit.”
Her fingers move faster and faster, soft, urgent noises spilling from her lips. She’s about to come, and my own lips pull back in a furious snarl as I rip my zipper down and drag my cock out, the tip already slick and the shaft hard and swollen.
The touch of my own hand is electrifying, and I lurch forward, leaning one hand on the desk my computer sits on while I grip my cock with the other, dragging my palm up the throbbing shaft as stars explode behind my eyes.
This isn’t right. I don’t fucking do things like this. I barely jerk off at all, and never with the kind of burning, primitive drive that rages through me as I watch Riley gasp and arch her back, her body moving with an unconscious sensuality that pushes me past the breaking point.
I grit my teeth and fuck into my fist hard and fast, my eyes locked onto the screen. She’s close. Cresting. Teetering on the edge of climax and then biting her lip to muffle her soft cry as she comes.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” The word rips out of my throat in a continuous stream as white-hot bliss spills down my spine and gathers behind my balls, then, with one last stroke, erupts from my cock.
I drive through my fist again and again, milking every drop as my entire body shudders.
All the tension drains from Riley’s body as she sags against the door, dark lashes resting on her cheeks and her lithe body looking just as boneless as mine feels. For a single, endless moment, there really is no distance between the two of us, and everything else fades into meaninglessness as I watch her through the screen.
Then she sighs and pushes away from the door, her shoulders tightening up again and a frown settling back over her face, and reality comes rushing back at me like a brutal explosion of shrapnel.
My hand is sticky, my pants and desk both spattered with my cum.
What the fuck did I just do?