31. Logan
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
logan
Six-Mile Manor
The storm and the anchor.
Her words reverberated in my head as I buried my dick inside her, and she wrapped her legs around my waist, drawing me in. Our mate bed. Our forever. We were everything.
Lightning flashed outside our bedroom window, and thunder rolled through the earth and shook the manor. Or maybe it was our magics coming together, mixing, uniting, stronger than ever before.
She flared bright enough to throw our shadows on the ceiling, and the rainbow tattoo on her hip glowed like an ember. My Emma. I gripped her thighs and rocked my pelvis back and forth slowly, teasing her to the edge. I reached between us and stroked her clit.
“Logan,” she whimpered. “Don’t stop.” She dragged her fingernails down my back and tipped her head back, exposing her neck.
I was no longer terrified of being too little alpha for her. Linking in the relic room proved I could hold her at full power and not lose her and not be lost.
But that was tomorrow’s comfort.
Tonight, I had a woman shaking and gasping beneath me with firelight in her wrecked rainbow hair.
Adjusting her on the bed, I withdrew long enough to bring my legs over hers, straddling her.
More. All of you. More. Gripping myself, I guided my dick back between her folds, into her depths. Then I caught her wrists and pressed them into the mattress on either side of her head.
“Logan.” Yes, yes, yes. Please.
Emma Carter surrendering was no small feat. She’d spent weeks forcing me behind a wall, and here she was, under my hands with nothing between us.
“Look at me,” I commanded her.
Her eyes fluttered open. Those emerald eyes…
Thrusting deliberately, I took my time about pleasing her. The first round had been hers, fast and needful, and this one was going to be mine, and mine meant slow. Mine meant thorough. Mine meant I was going to relearn every inch I’d starved for through days of a bond gone dark.
I kissed her as though I had all the time in the world even though nobody in Louisiana had less time than the two of us. Her mouth. The line of her jaw. The pulse in her throat hammered under my lips, alive, alive, alive.
I love you forever.
Forever and always. I was a man who’d died once and gotten dragged back from death by her, and I hadn’t once since been able to touch her without saying a small prayer of thanks for it.
Lower…
The scar-free stretch of her collarbone.
The soft weight of her breasts. I set my teeth to her nipples, and her breath caught.
She clawed at my shoulders. The rainbow tattoo on her hip glowed brighter now.
I dragged my tongue over the colors, and she arched off the quilt.
Her mewling sound went straight down my spine.
Logan. She pushed my name across the open bond, half pleading and half warning.
Patience, love. I grinned against her hip. You told me to quit admiring the fire. I’m admiring you instead. Different job.
I will end you—
You keep threatening that. I moved lower, hooked her knees over my shoulders, and brought my mouth to her center. Do it, then.
She writhed and gripped the sheets. “Logan!”
Every wave I sent through her broke over me too, her pleasure feeding mine feeding hers. I followed the rush toward climax until she came again, shaking, my name a broken prayer on her lips.
When I kissed my way back up her body, she was laughing and crying. She dragged my mouth to hers and tasted herself on my lips. She moaned into my mouth, and she sucked on my tongue. Fucking shameless. Fucking mine.
“Now,” she gasped. “Logan. Now. I need—”
“I know what you need.” It was written all through the bond in fiery letters.
I settled back over her, braced on my forearms, and took in her disheveled radiance. My mate, the culmination, the most dangerous living being in Louisiana, and underneath all of it, a stubborn woman who’d dropped the multimorph armor at the door because she wanted, for one night, to only be loved.
“Emma.” I slid into her easily, and we both stopped breathing for a beat at the sheer rightness of it. “You’re mine. Always. Even after.”
Even after, she sent back.
Then I moved, and her hips met mine, and there wasn’t room for anything else. We found the rhythm, the primal pulse coming up through the manor and the mattress and our bones.
She gripped my upper arms, wrapped her legs around me once more, and rocked into every thrust. I lowered my forehead to hers. Her heartbeat in my chest and mine in hers, and both of us had become one. One animal, one alpha, and one multimorph in one fated, mated, ridiculous, doomed, unkillable us.
“Mine,” I growled.
“Yours.” She said it out loud and pushed it down the bond at the same time, doubled, and it lit me up. “Say the rest.”
“I am your alpha. You are mine, and I am going to cross any dome in any world that tries to keep me away from you. Do you hear me, Emma? Any wall. There is no line I won’t come through.”
A smile cracked her face, and she beamed at me. Her hips snapped up to meet mine. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.”
I took her up and up, and her magic gathered in her chest, the way lightning gathered before it forked. This time, I didn’t brace for it. I welcomed it. Let go.
She let the storm come. All of it.
The primal surged up through her and out. I caught it and reflected it back to her, and she shattered under me with a cry that rattled the manor.
Emma was my rainbow storm. She pushed her sensations through the bond and dragged me over the edge right behind her.
I buried myself deep. With a roar, I released. “Emma!”
For one suspended, blinding moment, there was no war, no Veil, no Void, no premonition, and no monster wearing a dead man’s grief. There was only the current running through both of us. And her…
Then the world returned, and I collapsed onto my elbows so I wouldn’t crush her. She pulled me down onto her anyway, and we lay there tangled, steaming, and shattered. For a long while, neither of us said anything.
Finally, she stirred, tucked her rainbow head under my jaw, and traced the scar over my heart with one finger the way she did when she was double-checking the repair.
“Still beating,” I said.
“Still beating,” she agreed. Then, softer, she added, “Thank you. For tonight. For not asking me to be the multimorph in this room.”
“You’re never the multimorph in this room.
” I pressed my mouth to the crown of her head.
“In this room, you’re just the woman who blew up my carefully structured shifter life.
Everybody else gets the multimorph. I get you.
” My arm tightened around her. “That’s the deal. That’s always been the deal.”
She laughed, and she settled against me. For now, we’d banked the dread of the impending fight with Acheron.
I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t sure I really tried. I lay there with my mate breathing slowly beside me. If I lost her, I already knew exactly what I’d become. But that was for tomorrow, and tomorrow could wait its turn.
Tonight, I had Emma. One more day of being ordinary before the end of the world came to collect. Soon, she’d walk out under a white flag to the edge of the Void. That was hers to do, and I couldn’t do it for her.
Race ya home, love, she sent, rousing from a dream.
“You’re already home,” I told her, smoothing her hair.
Then I guess I win, she sent. She smiled against my skin and dropped back to sleep.
I stayed awake and guarded the bedroom, and I made a vow she was too asleep to hear. You’ll live even if I have to walk through an off-limits dome to save your life.