37
Logan
“I’m just saying, man. A little appreciation would be nice.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you too.”
“Come on, Logan.” Damien takes a lazy swig from the glass of whisky he’s placed on the desk beside his two feet, which he’s propped up on the glass surface. I glare at them, then at him.
“I really don’t want your filthy boots on my desk. The cleaning service was just here.”
He smirks at me, then slowly sits up. “What a couple of old bores we’re getting to be, aren’t we? Is this what middle age feels like?”
“You started it,” I grumble. “With your nonstop migraines and whining these past two years… the old you could have taken anything head-on. The new you nearly let all of Devil slip through your fingers due to your obsession over Seraphina.”
“Well, the new me is pushing forty,” he shrugs.
“Yeah, well, you’d think, with the way you were acting when you started to date Seraphina…”
He grins. “Dating’s a pretty ambitious word to describe the way I held her at Devil Tower against her will.”
“I was trying to make you come off a little less psychotic.”
“Yeah, right.” He kicks his boots back up, downing the rest of his glass. “You were trying to make yourself come off a little better. If I’m a psycho for locking my girl up in an apartment, what does that say about you, you cage-fucker?”
I throw him a murderous glance before standing up, cracking my knuckles and my neck. Then I head to the glass-encased wall of my large office, glancing out onto the business section of Astley. “Doesn’t matter. It’s in the past. Things are mostly good between Lia and me these days.”
“Mostly being the operative word.”
“Well, maybe she’s a little frustrated. And maybe I am too, for different reasons, because I didn’t realize how hard the wait until I could... well...”
I interrupt myself, because I really have no desire to get into specifics about my sex life with Damien.
I’ve already said more than I’d like, but I’ve never been more frustrated.
She keeps insisting that she’s fine, that she can handle me, but I’m terrified.
Terrified of hurting her, because I don’t know how to be anything but violent in bed.
“Well, I just wish you’d spent a little less time having mostly good times with Lia, and a little more time trying to follow the clues before we’d reached a complete dead-end. That’s all I’m saying. Because I neglected a fuckload of shit to help you, and it was all for nothing.”
I grit my teeth. “Don’t you think I wish I had done things differently, Damien?
But Lia needed me. When I started looking for Jane with you, she nearly died.
I need to focus on what I have, and Lia’s real.
She’s tangible. And then, there’s Piper.
She still won’t speak to me, and I need to figure it out.
I have so much on my plate here. I just can’t keep running after what I’ve already lost.”
“Maybe you haven’t lost her,” Damien says, more gently. “There’s a chance she’s still alive.”
I groan, resting my head in my hand. “I do regret not going with you to that social worker’s hotel room.
Maybe if we’d gotten there in time… but no.
She’d been dead for weeks. I just hope the Puicin Gang haven’t found Jane.
I just don’t know what to do anymore. The truth is, it’s not only because of Lia that I’ve stopped looking.
I guess...” My voice breaks. “I guess I’m wondering just how much more pain I can stand. ”
_
“Lia?”
“Oh, fuck.”
She turns around to face me, the redness on her cheeks telling me just how guilty she is.
“Is that my phone you’re holding behind your back? Were you snooping around on my phone?”
She takes a few steps back until she’s against the bedroom wall and I’m cornering her, my arms on either side of her.
“I, uhm… I was just… admiring the…”
I let go of the wall with one arm and beckon for her to put the object she’s hiding in my open palm. After hesitating a beat, she does, grumbling.
“I wasn’t really looking, Logan. I was just…”
“Looking,” I conclude, smirking, before slipping the phone in my pocket. “That’s very naughty, Lia.”
She huffs, crossing her arms. “Well, it’s not my fault! I don’t have anything to do in this shitty dump!”
“This shitty dump?” I chuckle. “You must be used to some pretty nice places, if you think Devil Tower is some shitty…”
“It’s just that you never let me go out!
I’m going crazy, shut up in this apartment all the time, while you and Damien and the others fuck around all day!
And besides, you’re always on your phone, and you hide the screen whenever you see me.
Who do you spend all your time talking to?
Why are you shutting me out? Why won’t you talk to me about Piper or… or Jane? Logan! I’m going crazy!”
My smirk fades as she continues her tirade, and she ends her outburst in a choked voice.
“Okay.” I wrap my arms around her. “Okay, Lia. It’s okay. I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head, tears spilling out of her eyes.
“You always say that, Logan, but nothing ever changes. You’re not keeping me locked up in a cage, but you might as well be, with the way you’re treating me like I’m your captive!
Never letting me go out, keeping me in the dark, acting like I’m some fragile doll… ”
“You are a fragile doll,” I murmur, licking the tears from her cheeks. “My very fragile doll. But if it makes you feel better…”
She looks up, a hopeful light in her eyes. “Yes?”
“... I’ll keep you in the cage.” I’m a real piece of shit for grinning when her hopeful look is replaced by pure anger. “I wouldn’t want my fragile little doll to be confused.”
She actually stomps her foot. “I’m not confused, Logan! I know very well you’re an asshole! I’ve never been less confused about anything in my life!”
I chuckle, squeezing her to me. “I don’t doubt it.
But I was referring to another type of confusion.
You seem to think you’re not a captive. But you very much are.
” I don’t even bother to lie anymore, because I can tell she sees through my bullshit.
Placing a thumb under her chin, I tilt her head up, my mouth watering when I see her green eyes glittering with more tears.
Then my eyes go lower, coming to a stop on her very freckled, very brace-less neck.
“Baby! They took it off?”
“Mhm hmm.” She takes a step back, regarding me angrily. “But I changed my mind. I don’t want you to make me come, after all.”
“Oh yeah?” I stroke down her sides, toying with the hemline of the long shirt she’s wearing over just a pair of panties, before going lower. “Sure about that?”
“Yes,” she snaps. “Sure.”
But she bites her lower lip when I run my fingers over her thighs, teasing her by keeping my hands just short of her pussy.
“Tell me you don’t want me,” I breathe in her ear. “Go on and tell me, brat.”
“I don’t… want you,” she lets out in a choked voice.
I flip up her skirt and start playing with the cotton fabric, stroking over it until it’s grown wet from her arousal.
“I don’t need you,” she moans, as I slip two fingers underneath the cotton. “I can… come on my own.”
“Is that right?” I keep my fingers just inches from her wetness, and she arches toward me. “Have you been masturbating, naughty girl?”
“Every single fucking day. And I do it a whole lot better than you ever could.”
I grin. “You’re very cute when you lie, baby.” I rip off her panties and push her to me, my hands gripping her ass, my thumb and index finger hovering threateningly over the spot I used to keep permanently bruised. “I know for a fact you haven’t been touching yourself at all.”
“What? How the hell do you—”
I graze the skin I used to pinch, and she yelps. “Okay, okay, sorry! Sorry! I didn’t! I never did!”
She looks adorable, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. The memory of the pain must really be vivid. I tap the flesh threateningly, smirking when she cries out again.
“What kind of a captor do you think I’d be if I didn’t have a state-of-the-art camera surveillance system, hmm?
” I have the inexplicable urge to tease her with the information I’d been trying so hard to keep from her up till now.
“There isn’t a second that goes by in the day that I don’t have my eyes on you, baby. ”
Her lips part in shock, and my smile turns to laughter.
“Just how much have you seen?” she squeaks out, apparently so embarrassed she forgets all about the fingers I’m currently stroking over the spot. She looks around hurriedly, as if searching for the cameras. “Are there… uhm… any in the bathroom?”
I chortle. “A few, yeah.”
“A… few? Are you fucking kidding me, Logan?” Anger takes the place of humiliation, and she whacks at my chest.
At once, I grab her wrists with my hands. “Careful there, Lia. And you’d better get used to me filming you. At every angle, and at all times. If I’m not watching you, a camera is. So you’d better fucking behave, baby. Okay?”
She grumbles something that sounds a lot like, “Sicko.”
“Yeah, maybe I am.” I sit down on the bed.
“But I don’t care. I’m a selfish bastard like that, Lia.
I don’t give a fuck about what you think, or what you want, or how much you’re just aching to be free.
Now, I know I promised you I wouldn’t lock you in the cage.
And I won’t, but I can’t have you disappearing on me again.
No more ghost games for you, ghost girl. ”
I pull her to me so that she’s standing in front of me, pinned between my two legs.
“Logan,” she hisses, “you promised a lot more than that! You promised me my freedom!”
“Hmm. Maybe I did.” I kiss her thighs. “I guess I changed my mind.”
A silence follows my words, but I know without even having to look up that she’s not surprised. Just sad.
“Logan,” she whispers. “Logan, please... I don’t want to leave you. But I can’t be trapped like this all the time. Like I’m a prisoner. I want to be free. Can’t I be free, Logan?”
“No.”
Her lower lip trembles. “But that’s not fair, Logan. That’s not fair at all.”