Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Logan’s skin was like crushed velvet, and I was instantly drunk on the way he enveloped me. His strength was raw, his size all-consuming compared to mine. Every part of me felt dainty, more fragile.
He deepened the kiss, one hand sliding around my waist and pulling me flush against him, the other still cradling the back of my neck. The blouse slipped lower, baring both my shoulders, slipping to my elbows.
My hands found his waist, and the feel of his abs tensing against my thumbs was like lighter fluid over smouldering coals. I ignited, every connection point between us becoming a live wire.
His tongue brushed my lower lip, and I opened for him, our mouths slowing to explore new territory. He was gentle, tentative. Toying with me until my fingertips dug into his back.
I didn’t remember moving, but the wall materialized behind me, and Logan pressed me against it. His hand slid from my hair and cupped my bra, his fingers teasing the edges of the fabric.
The tremor in his exhale and the slight shiver in his fingers forced my blood south. When he hitched me up, lifting me off the floor so we were the same height, I wrapped my legs around his waist and—
The phone trilled, and I gasped, nearly knocking my head into Logan’s. Both of us froze, panting. Another ring.
I dropped my legs, and Logan let me slide back to the floor, but didn’t release me. My hands were still looped around his neck, and his head curled over, resting against the wall.
Who was calling our hotel room at nine o’clock at night?
Logan pushed off the wall and stalked to the nightstand, picking up the handset. “Hello?” His voice was rough, his pants still hanging halfway off his hips. I pulled the blouse back up, crossing my arms so it would stay put.
“Mmhmm. No, I know.” Logan’s entire body tensed, the muscles in his back pulling together. I was dying to know who was on the other end of the line. “It was good. Yep. I think he was happy with it.” Another long pause. “I’ll pass it along. Okay. Goodnight, Mom.”
The heat that, up until that second, had been coursing through me, fizzled like Logan had doused me with a bucket of ice-cold water.
He hung up the phone, drew a deep breath, then turned to face me. His eyes were dark, almost haunted in the light of the lamp.
“Sorry,” Logan murmured, his voice rough.
“Mmm.” I couldn’t put together an actual sentence.
Logan scrubbed a hand over his jaw, and his furrowed brow told me whatever moment we just had was over. My shoulders sagged a little.
“She wanted me to give a message to Norman,” he continued.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stood there, letting the elephant take up all the space in the room. Multiple elephants, really.
Two seconds ago, I’d been kissing Logan Kemp.
Shar’s ex. While my friends knew I was spending time with him—they’d more than encouraged it—what would they say to this?
Would they be as supportive if they knew it wasn’t exactly an accident?
That I’d thought about this more times than I could count?
That I looked forward to calling him after dinner?
That not talking with him over the last week had felt like a piece of myself had gone missing?
But the interruption also reminded me why I’d been so eager to be close to him. Because there was a large, Norman-shaped wedge between us. I needed to yank it out.
“Have you talked to your mom about Norman?” I asked.
He shook his head. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
My lips pursed. “I think there’s one pretty big thing to—”
“How will that help anything?” He dropped to the bed, resting his arms on his knees. “Things are fine. My parents seem as happy as ever—”
“But they’re obviously not happy.” What was Logan even saying? If things were fine, his mom wouldn’t be shacking up with an art icon.
Logan blew out a breath. “I don’t know. I’m not going to make a big deal out of it.”
My heart started to race. “You’re not the one who made a big deal out of anything. That was your mom, Logan. She’s the one who decided to have an affair. Don’t you think your dad deserves to know? Don’t you deserve to hear the truth from her?”
He lowered his head, dragging his fingers through his hair. “And then what? My parents get divorced? They hate each other? No, if they’re fine like this then—”
“They’re not fine,” I snapped, my chest so tight, I thought it might crack at the seams. How was he being so obtuse? There were things you let go in a relationship and things you didn’t. I needed to make that more obvious.
“Is this how you would’ve dealt with things with Shar? If she’d never seen that picture in the paper, would you have just pretended it never happened? Since things were fine? Easier not to rock the boat?”
Logan met my eyes, his jaw tight. “No.”
“You sure about that?” I honestly wondered. The way he was treating this, so flippant. It set off alarm bells in my head.
He sniffed. “No, I wouldn’t have. Things weren’t fine between us. I already told you that.”
“But Shar was the one who brought it up.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters! If you want a relationship with someone, you have to be willing to talk about the things that are hard.”
Logan let out a sardonic laugh. “If you want a relationship with someone, you tow the line. You do what they want, and when you find out that it wasn’t good enough, you give them something else to hopefully make it okay again, and when that’s not good enough, you get over it and move on. End of story.”
I pursed my lips, my heart sinking like a rock. Was he mad, or was that his honest-to-goodness version of the truth? Was his relationship with his parents his model for life? “Is that what you think a relationship is?”
A muscle popped in his jaw. “At least when I disappoint my parents, they don’t walk out with my best friend.”
Something inside of me shattered like I’d accidentally stepped on a Christmas ornament. I’d seen enough in the few interactions between Logan and his parents to have a feel for their dynamic.
My parents didn’t own a bunch of houses in the city or have impressive political connections, but they’d never once made me feel like I wasn’t good enough or that I had to accomplish something to earn their love and approval.
I took a step closer, leaving the safety of the wall. “Logan—”
“I’m fine, Crys. I was just making a point.”
I shook my head, taking another step. “You don’t need to be fine, though. That’s my point. It’s okay to be pissed about how everything went down in the spring. And it’s okay to feel hurt and angry about—”
“I’m not pissed! I was the problem in that relationship, I get it. I was selfish, and I honestly don’t know why Shar stayed so long in the first place. It’s not like I was offering her anything to be excited about.”
“But she didn’t talk to you either. She was doing exactly what you’re doing now with your mom. She wanted to keep the peace, so she didn’t speak up, and that never works. Not if you want something real.”
“Why do you care?” Logan wet his lips, his body restless. “It’s not like you’re dating me.”
His words sliced through me. Well, my words actually. I’d said that to him at the beginning of all this, and technically, it was still true.
Logan stood and walked back to his suitcase. “Maybe I’m not meant for something real. Maybe fake is the best it gets.”
That felt personal. “Hm. Nice.”
“No, I’m serious. What’s so bad about fake? We get to hang out together, talk. I’m having fun, aren’t you?”
Something about his tone set my teeth on edge. “Pretty sure you could have fake whenever you wanted, Logan. That’s kind of what started this whole thing.”
“No, I don’t mean sex. Though if a fake relationship had more benefits—” He froze, turning to me with a shirt in his hands, and my heart stalled at the expression on his face. “Wait. What if it did?”
I tucked the loose edge of the blouse under my bra strap. “What if—what?”
“Our fake relationship. What if it had benefits?”
“That is a terrible idea,” I blurted. The words were mostly for myself because I was now imagining picking up where we left off before the phone call.
A cocky grin spread across his face. “I don’t know, is it?”
His chest and abs were messing with my logic.
“Think about it,” he continued. “We’re spending time together anyway. You even said that pretending to be my girlfriend meant you couldn’t have sex for a month, so what if you could have lots of sex for the month?”
I laughed out loud. “That’s your pitch? You tell me that it’s not about sex, but then suggest this?” Goosebumps rose on my skin. With my shirt undone and Logan no longer warming me, I was getting chilled.
Logan opened his mouth, then closed it again, the smile falling from his eyes. “It wouldn’t just be about that.”
“Oh, yeah? What would it be about, then?”
Logan searched my face, the wheels turning in his head. Finally, he said, “I need your help with something.”
I gave him a look. “Does the first word start with a ‘B’ and the second a ‘J?’”
He smirked. “No, but that’s not off the table.”
I feigned relief. “Well, thank goodness for that.”
Logan’s throat bobbed. “I was thinking more . . . something for you.”
Tingles shot down my legs. What was happening right now? If someone had burst in and told me Logan was reading from a rom-com script, I would’ve believed them. Two people, trapped in a fake relationship and a castle hotel room . . .
The script practically wrote itself.
“Wait, I’m not following. Pleasuring me is what you need help with?”
He huffed out a breath, eyes darting to me and then away again.
Was Logan Kemp nervous? “I’ve never had to work hard for sex.
That’s not bragging, it’s just true. It was always easy to get what I wanted.
” He shifted on his feet. “I took advantage of that. Got what I wanted. Didn’t think that much about whether I was actually . . . giving them anything in return.
“After Shar, I started thinking about it differently. About what I did. What I didn’t do.
What I never even thought about asking.” He looked up again, and that time, his eyes were liquid.
The fire I thought the phone call had extinguished?
It was back to a full blaze. Logan twisted the shirt in his hands. “You could teach me.”
The word “teach” should not have done to my nervous system what it did. No thoughts or words would compute. Was he serious? He seemed pretty damn serious. The idea of Logan touching me, experimenting with me, asking me what I wanted . . .
“Look,” he said. “We’re both adults. We both know this is temporary. There’s an endpoint. Gallery opens, our relationship ends, we go back to being friends. It doesn’t have to be more than that.”
There was that tone again. The shutter behind his eyes. Those warning sirens went off like fireworks on Canada Day.
While he was talking about this being purely educational, my subconscious knew that what I’d felt pressed against the wall was more than interesting information. ‘Friends’ was quickly becoming the second-best, and far inferior, option in my version of this scenario.
It didn’t matter that Logan had opened the door wide on his relationship dysfunction. That he just said our relationship had an endpoint, dashing any hopes I’d fostered that he might be questioning this like I was.
Just like I should have walked back to the bathroom after the zipper was undone, I should’ve run for the shower now. This was not going to end well. I was already getting attached, I could feel it, and sex? That was not going to make things any simpler.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Just to be clear. You’re suggesting that I . . . be your sex tutor.”
His neck flushed. “If it sounds fun to you. Yeah.”
If it sounded fun? Hell yes, it sounded fun. Carte blanche to do whatever I wanted for the next three weeks? Logan dedicating himself to my pleasure until we broke up? I couldn’t think of anything more fun, which made me desperate for something to ground me.
I couldn’t blame Shar, and I definitely couldn’t play my whole hand and admit I was worried about getting attached. So, I laid down the only other card I had. “I doubt your parents would approve.”
It was supposed to be funny, or at least not offensive, but Logan’s expression darkened. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what they approve of or don’t.”
Well. That was fair. But it didn’t alleviate my stress reaction. “You know every woman’s body is different. What I like might not be—”
“No, I know.” He rubbed a hand over his neck. “If you don’t want—”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just—” I exhaled in a rush. “What if I’m not very helpful?” I hoped he’d read between the lines. I’d only ever been with two people, and while it wasn’t terrible, it definitely wasn’t something to write Cosmopolitan about.
Logan didn’t hesitate. “I’ve told you things I’ve never told anyone, and I think you feel comfortable being honest with me.” He waited for me to nod. “Right. So, I don’t think that’s possible.”
My heart lurched. If he was trying to flatter me, it was working. I searched for any other rebuttal, but came up empty. Unless I wanted to hammer another wedge between us, there was only one thing left to do.
“Okay,” I squeaked.
Logan’s pupils dilated. He glanced at the bed, then at my half-removed blouse. “Shower?”