34. Riley
I don’t thinkabout it before I kiss Logan. I’m not thinking at all—or feeling anything anymore, thank god.
At least, not until our lips touch.
Logan’s lips are firm and warm and totally unresponsive at first, but I don’t care. I need this. I need him.
I tangle my hand in the back of his hair and breathe him in, kissing him harder. Using the taste of him to beat back the pain inside me, little by little. And finally, his body uncoils like a striking snake, and he moves too.
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.”
“What?”
“A safe word,” he clarifies, his gaze boring into me.
“Red,” I blurt, relief flooding through me.
He stares hard for another minute, then gives a sharp nod of satisfaction. “Use it if you need to. And don’t move.”
I start to nod but then think better of it when his eyes flare with the darkness I just asked for.
With Logan, words matter. Don’t move means don’t move.
He gets off the bed and strips the blankets off completely, and I shiver with the sudden chill, goosebumps rising on my skin and my nipples pebbling under the intensity of his gaze.
He repositions me the way he wants me, then pulls out a knife—the same one he scarred me with—and makes quick work of slicing up the bed sheet into long, thin strips.
His actions are nothing like the controlled rage I saw when he shredded all my clothes and cut the ones I was wearing off me after I’d first come to the Reaper house, and yet somehow the quick, efficient actions feel even more dangerous in their deliberation.
I fight the need to squirm, my breath quickening and slick heat gathering between my legs.
Logan’s nostrils flare like he can smell it, then he tucks the knife away and crawls onto the bed, using the shredded sheet to tie me up well enough that it’s no longer a question of obeying him or not. I can’t move.
He rakes his gaze down my body, then follows with his fingers, lightly skimming them over my waist where he removed the stitches before pressing them against the scar on my chest. Then he pinches my nipples, hard enough to make me jerk against my bonds as I cry out with the sudden, sharp twin bursts of pain.
Logan smiles, and my pussy throbs with a deep, yearning ache.
He drags all four fingers through the wet folds, then slaps my clit.
“Fuck,” I gasp, my back arching off the bed as pleasure and pain ripple through me in a twisted spiral that only leaves me wanting more.
He gives it to me, working me up with a clinical precision and a focused intensity that leaves me almost sobbing. Pushing my body to its limits in a way I’ve never experienced before. Every piece of me is fully exposed to him, completely at his mercy, and it’s like he’s figured out exactly how to turn each and every inch of my body into an erogenous zone.
And for every stroke, rub, tease, and slap he gives me, he adds in a twist of darkness, a sliver of pain, hurting me the perfect amount to keep me teetering right on the razor’s edge between bliss and danger, between pleasure and pain.
But he doesn’t kiss me again. He stays fully clothed and keeps his distance.
He’s doing this for me, to me, but not with me.
At least, that’s what I think until I notice the rigid line of his cock, trapped in his jeans.
“Logan,” I whimper, my whole body aching with need. I want him inside me. I want him to fuck me. I need it. I’m almost delirious with it.
But he doesn’t give it to me.
Instead, he forces me to come.
“Oh shit, fuck, god, yes,” I pant, shuddering in the aftermath.
His fingers drip with my arousal as he finally rips open his jeans, his eyes still burning into me like pale fire, and frees his cock. He drops down on top of me, bracing himself with one arm so a few inches remain between us, and shoves the thick head against my swollen clit.
Once. Twice. And then I’m coming again, my body straining against the tight restraints as it rips through me.
Logan never breaks eye contact as he starts jerking himself off with short, violent strokes and then spatters his release across my stomach, marking me up all over again.
His cum pools in my navel and runs down my sides, and I want to taste him again so badly I could scream. I’m sure he feels the same. His lips hover just inches above mine, his knuckles brushing against my damp skin as his cock softens between us. But then he blinks and jerks away, rising up to his knees between my spread legs.
For a moment, I think he’s going to bolt, but then his eyes flare with that pale fire again and he carefully catches the cum that’s started to drip down onto the mattress, rubbing it into my skin. Spreading it out until I’m completely covered and working it in like he’s trying to merge it with my flesh.
Finally, once he’s satisfied, he unties me and rubs feeling back into my wrists and ankles where they were bound before repositioning me on the bed.
“Don’t move,” he says softly, echoing his command from earlier as he steps away from the bed.
“I can’t,” I whisper, letting my eyes drift closed. And it’s the truth. I’m limp and worn out and completely sated, my body aching and well-used and utterly done. I may not be numb or empty anymore, but I’m still exhausted… and it’s a far better feeling than the blankness and despair I felt before.
But still not as good as the kernel of warmth that spreads out from my center when Logan returns after a minute with a fresh sheet to fix the bedding around me as I sink down into darkness again. But a different kind of darkness this time, one that feels like coming home.
It’s my last thought before sleep takes me hard, holding me under for the rest of the night.