17
Lia
“My daughters,” I repeat in confusion. “I’ve lost them. Jane and Piper.”
He pushes away the strands of hair that cling to my tear-streaked face. “What’s my name, baby?” he asks urgently. “Tell me what my name is.”
“Uhm… Logan.”
I let out a stifled gasp when he suddenly squeezes me to him, then presses his lips to mine.
“You remember Jane.”
“Of course I do. She’s my daughter…”
“You didn’t remember before.” He pulls me up, laying me down on the bed and going back to kissing me. “You didn’t remember them both at the same time. But now you do.”
“Oh.” I blink my eyes. “I didn’t?”
“No. It was always one or the other. Like they lived on opposite sides of your brain.” He kisses me again. “But you remember now. You’re going to keep remembering, and soon, you’ll be fixed for good. I know you will.”
I hang onto his words, allowing myself to believe them, to feel hope for the first time.
“And the minute you’re fixed,” continues Logan, watching me carefully, “we’re going to find Piper, and everything will be okay. You didn’t lose Piper, baby. You only misplaced her. Okay? We’re going to get her back…”
“And Jane,” I add. “I want to find Jane too.”
He hesitates for just a beat before smiling. “And Jane,” he agrees.
I let out a long sigh, my anxiety and pain melting with each of his words. I don’t know how he does it. How with just a few words, he can make everything feel like it’s okay.
Even when deep down, I know it’s not.
He holds me in silence for a long time, a very long time, so long that I start to grow drowsy again.
But then he suddenly says, “Lie down.”
I glance up at him and grow nervous at the sight of his hungry expression.
“Why?”
“You know what they say about orgasms, don’t you?”
“No…”
“Nothing like a good one to heal your mind. Close your eyes and relax, baby.”
I let him pull me down on the mattress, sucking in deep breaths as he uncuffs my ankles and opens my thighs. I should be used to it by now, but knowing his tongue is here, just inches away from me… Nothing feels more real than that. More scarily real.
“Relax, baby.”
I gasp when I feel his tongue lick a wet stripe up my pussy. His arms reach under my thighs, wrapping around me and landing on my stomach, where his hands grab onto mine. My legs rest on either side of his neck, and I’m aware of the sudden desire to… strangle him with them.
It’s a weird, flitting sensation, like a blip in my subconscious, that melts with the next lick.
“Fuck!”
I can feel him chuckle against my folds at the way I’m bucking against him, and then he swirls his tongue over my pussy, lapping up my arousal, before driving his tongue into me.
“Logan… Logan… fuck!”
His tongue drives into me hard, and it makes me frantic.
Absolutely frantic. Every one of my nerve endings feels fried, and I start thrashing around, forgetting the awkward way my legs are laced around his neck, the strange urge I had moments ago to strangle him, my memory.
Everything is forgotten as his tongue wrings out every sensation from me.
An overwhelming orgasm courses through me, and I let out a scream, before sagging back on the mattress.
But he doesn’t pause. He just keeps going, his tongue finding all the places that make me see white.
“Logan, stop… stop!” Another orgasm rips through me, and I start to ache from overstimulation.
“You know what to say if you really mean it.” He speaks the words against me. “I just love hearing you say stop, Lia. I think I love it just as much as when I see you cry. Beg me to stop, Lia.”
He’s not really torturing me; not spanking me, or twisting my nipples, or doing any of the things that usually make me go crazy. But his tongue assaults my pussy nonstop, pulling one orgasm after another out of me.
“Logan, please… stop…”
“That’s right, baby. Fuck, I’m so hard.”
After a while, all I can do is lie helplessly on the mattress, waiting for him to get tired of eating me out. But when at long last he pulls away, it’s only to replace his mouth with his cock.
“Logan, I can’t… I can’t take it…”
“Is it red, Lia?” he murmurs, stroking the side of my face.
“It’s… no, it’s not.”
“Good girl. You can take it. You will, because I need you to. I need to own your cunt, baby. It’s mine.”
I let out a whimper as I feel him push into me. It still hurts, even though I’ve gotten used to it. Especially because I’ve grown dry from the overstimulation. But I know he wants it to hurt.
I guess I kind of do too.
“Who am I, Lia? What’s my name?”
“L-l-logan…”
He thrusts into me hard, finding a fast pace that leaves me breathless. With one hand, he cups my breast while he barrels into me. The other grabs one of my legs, holding it against his chest.
I feel his cock swell inside me, and warmth spreads inside me. Then, like last time, he pulls away and watches his cum trickle out of me.
“Logan…”
I try to sit up, but he keeps me pinned down, my legs splayed, so that I have no choice but to show him every part of me. And he studies me like I’m some fucking art exhibit.
“Logan, let go of me.”
“Shh, ghost girl. Behave.”
“Logan!” I struggle to get out of the obscene position he’s got me in, but he ignores me, and exasperation rises in me. “You’re such an asshole, Logan!”
At that, he whips his head up, and I bite my lower lip.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”
But he’s smiling. “So you do remember.”
I blink. “I do?”
“Yeah.” He sits beside me, pulling me into his lap, not caring about my cum-smeared thighs. “You remember how to be a little brat.”
“Oh.” I sink my head against his chest, blushing.
“And you remember how to blush too.” He puts two fingers under my chin and brings my head up. “Let me see you blush.”
“Logan, stop.”
I grin in embarrassment, but he keeps my face propped up, watching my skin change colors, from pink to deep red as his eyes lock with mine.
“Seventy-two.”
“No; seventy-four.”
“Hmm?”
“You counted seventy-four freckles back then. Remember?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier.
He wraps his arms around me and his lips find mine.
“I do remember. And so do you, Lia.” His tongue toys with my lower lip as his fingers rake up and down my body, cupping my tits and squeezing my ass.
“Baby. I can’t wait till we get home. We’ll have a beautiful life.
You, me, Piper, even that asshole Quill... ”
I smile, snuggling into him. It’s easy to forget what just happened when he talks in his confident tone. Easy to forget the way my mind keeps slipping. I allow myself to actually feel happy, just as happy as he seems to be.
Then my stomach growls, and I flush as he chuckles.
“Hungry, baby?”
“Uhm…”
He checks his watch. “Damn, it’s late. I forgot to feed you. I’m sorry, Lia.” He draws me into a sitting position, looking guilty. “What do you want to eat?”
“I… don’t know.” I click my tongue in impatience, trying to not be so passive. But it’s hard, after all these years of being kept in line. Still, I force out a suggestion. “Sushi, maybe?”
He flashes me a wicked grin. “Okay. Pizza it is.”
“Logan! Asshole!”
Then I hug him. I don’t know if we’re putting on an act or if we’re somehow finding our way back to something real.
I think I can tell Logan’s expression is strained, but I force myself to ignore it.
To focus on the moment, so my mind stops spiraling over everything I’ve lost. Everything I could still lose.
Still grinning, he orders food on his phone, then settles back on the bed, dragging me onto his knees.
“Since you chose the pizza, I get to choose the movie,” he says teasingly. Turning on the TV, he flips through the channels. “Ugh. Nothing.”
“Wait, hold on... go back to the last channel. What’s that?”
He pauses and makes a face. “This is what you want? Some stupid reality show?”
“We-e-ll... it looked colorful. Never mind.”
He kisses my cheek, then turns my face up to him so he can press his lips to mine. “I don’t mind. I’d watch the worst shit in the world if I could watch it with you. I’d even eat sushi while doing it, too.”
“But you ordered pizza,” I point out.
“Did I?” He smirks and shows me his cell phone screen. “What my girl wants, she gets.” He kisses me again. “Within reason.”
“I was right. You are an asshole.”
I snuggle contentedly in his arms, forgetting all about the reality show as I let my mind drift to hopeful visions of the future. Of sharing a little home with him, Piper and Jane. Of being a real family. And of being free, too. That last part is the only one I can’t quite visualize.
Just as I feel myself sinking into a happy, sleepy state, I suddenly realize how empty all those visions are. How superficial.
“Hm? What is it, Lia?” He tenses, his voice urgent, as I startle awake. “Did something happen? Are you okay?”
“I just... I just realized... I have no idea what your favorite movie is!”
“Oh.” He sags back against the headboard. “You sure have a way of scaring me, baby. I thought something was wrong.”
“Something is wrong. Something is very wrong!” I try to sit up but he keeps me flush against his chest. “I don’t know the first thing about my daughters.
It hurts, but it makes sense. You, though...
” I blink back tears. “I spent years with you. And yet, I don’t know anything about you.
I remember thinking it right before everything happened.
I realized I didn’t know your favorite book.
I don’t know what your favorite movie is, or your favorite TV show.
Or your favorite food. I don’t know anything. ”
“Hmm.” His fingers thread through my hair.
“Well, my favorite book is Horatio Hornblower. It’s a book series, actually.
And it’s my favorite TV show, too. My favorite movie...
well, I guess it’s The Searchers. I like pizza with a very thin crust. Now you know.
” He toys with my earlobe. “Does that make you feel like you know me any better?”
I hesitate. “I guess... no, I don’t think so. But I feel like I should know those things about you. Girlfriends and boyfriends usually do, don’t they?”
“Girlfriends and boyfriends,” he muses, and my face flames like it once did when I realized the ring he’d given me didn’t mean he was proposing. “I guess they do. But that’s not what we are.”
“No.” I swallow down a painful lump. “No, I know we’re not.”
He presses me closer to him. “We’re something much deeper, Lia. Aren’t we? Something more important. What we have is indefinable.”
I nod slowly, the knot in my stomach dissolving somewhat. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yes. Don’t you want to know those things about me? Even if... we’re undefinable?”
He smiles. “Oh, I do know them. There isn’t a thing I don’t know about you, ghost girl.” He kisses me again, then gently slides me off him when his phone vibrates. “That must be the sushi.”
He stands up, whipping his phone out from his back pocket. But when he looks at the screen, his smile disappears. I don’t mean to be curious, but I can’t help but glance at the screen before he quickly shoves the phone back into his pocket.
It’s a message, and I couldn’t read most of it, but I did see a name.
Mine.
“Everything okay?” I ask nervously.
“Uh huh. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Who’s that from?”
He smirks again, but this time, the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Jealous, baby? I told you, I’ve never been with another girl.”
“Yes, I believe you.”
“Good. I’m not a liar, Lia.”
“Okay. So…” I chew on my lip. “You looked upset about the message, that’s all. What was it about?”
“That? Oh, nothing. Some stupid company Damien is trying to acquire. You’ll never believe it, Lia, but I’m an old, boring businessman now.” His lips make a smacking sound as he brings them to my forehead.
“Now, I just have to take a call, okay? Sit tight, I’m sure the sushi will be here soon.”
I nod slowly. “Okay, Logan.”
He closes the door, and my hands twist in my lap as I wonder if I’m losing him.