Chapter 14
Lachlan
Logan was scared. And fuck, watching her walk away from me with her arms wrapped around herself like she was holding in everything about to break made something rip straight through my chest. I wanted to chase after her.
Climb into my truck, speed down that dark road, pull up beside her, and beg her to look at me.
To see me. To let me hold her and promise I’d never let anything hurt her again.
I wanted to pour it all out—the truth of how she’d infected every damn inch of my mind like a drug I couldn’t kick.
How she’d taken the breath from my lungs and replaced it with a hunger I didn’t know how to satisfy unless it was her.
She was everywhere in me.
Her laugh haunted my dreams. Her voice lived in the hollow of my throat. I was so completely, utterly obsessed with her, I was borderline feral. I was falling for her. Not in some sweet, boy-next-door kind of way. No. It was all-consuming. Dangerous. Addictive.
I loved everything—the fierce way she worked, the way her smile lit up a room like it had no right to, the way she cracked jokes when things got tense.
I hated watching her leave. But I couldn’t go after her. Because the bastard slumped against the bar wall, still trying to catch his breath, had touched her.
He’d touched my girl.
And I was going to fucking kill him.
As her taillights disappeared into the distance, the world seemed to dull. Her absence blanketed the night like a storm. Even the stars dimmed. My chest ached so badly, I could barely breathe, but I forced the grief down. Compartmentalized it.
There was a job to do. I hadn’t killed in a while. But men like him—they’d earned the pain.
What was it about these basic fucking white guys that made them think hurting a woman made them powerful? That it proved anything other than the fact they were already small and weak inside? It made me sick. But I’d enjoy every second of tearing him apart.
Because Logan . . . she’d never wear that look again.
Never flinch. Never shrink.
Not while I was breathing.
I grabbed him by the hair.
“What are you—” he stammered, but I didn’t let him finish. I slammed his head into the wall. The sickening crack of skull on brick satisfied something primal in me. He slumped, and I caught him, slinging him over my shoulder like a sack of garbage.
I tossed him into the back of the truck, looked around—no one. The cops had cleared out earlier, but I seemed to always be looking over my shoulder since Logan had come into my life. Then I slid into the driver’s seat and dialed Suzie, the bar owner, as the engine roared to life.
“Hey,” I said, my voice calm, “that pumpkin pie was amazing. Just wanted to let you know before I left.”
“Thanks so much,” she replied like we were just old friends talking. “I’ll make extra next time. See you around, Lachlan.”
Pumpkin pie was the code word. She knew to check the cameras and delete anything involving me and my little friend in the back of my truck.
That dive bar had seen things most people wouldn’t survive over the years since she’d known me.
Her boyfriend had been one of my first kills when all of this had started, and since then she was always willing to help me when I needed it for the cause.
Like now.
I peeled out of the lot, tires kicking up gravel. I drove fast. I needed to get back to her.
I parked near the house, hauled him out, and hog-tied him with the leftover ropes that I kept in the bed. I let his body hit the ground like the worthless piece of shit that he was. Then I heaved him back over my shoulder and started toward the shed, where I kept all my woodworking tools.
I rounded the side of the house and froze. A soft sound stopped me in my tracks. Sniffling.
I moved closer and looked through the kitchen window, and I could see Logan through the large back sliding glass door. She was curled up on the back porch, arms around herself, face red and blotchy in the light.
She was crying. My girl was crying.
And the ache in my chest turned into a full-blown fracture.
Fuck the bastard on my back. He could wait.
I didn’t want her to see what I had planned for him, so I couldn’t just walk past her.
I didn’t want her anywhere near that part of me.
So I jogged back to the front of the house, opened the coat closet by the door, and dumped him inside.
The ropes would hold him. He wouldn’t be going anywhere.
Then I ran through the house to get to her.
Logan was still on the porch, Tony curled around her. She looked so small sitting there in the dark, and all I wanted to do was wrap her up in my arms and never let go.
“Logan,” I said gently.
She looked up, eyes red. “Hi—” she said quickly, wiping her face. “I thought you were still at the bar.”
“No. I had to take care of something.”
I stepped closer. “Then I came back to check on you.” I held out my hand. “Come on, sweetheart. You’re freezing.”
She didn’t speak, just slid her hand into mine. Her fingers were trembling. I led her inside to my bedroom, eased her onto the edge of the bed, and then moved to the bathroom and turned on the bathroom light. The pipes groaned as I turned the faucet to hot.
“What are you doing?” she asked, voice cracking.
“Starting a hot shower for you,” I said simply. “You’ve had a hell of a day. Thought it might help.”
I glanced over my shoulder, and she stood in the doorway for a moment, watching me. I stood, readying to leave when I thought she was going to close herself off again, but as I moved to pass her, she stepped forward and caught my hand.
Her grip was soft. But the way she held on told me everything.
She needed me. She wanted me to stay.
And god, I wanted to be the only man she ever reached for.
I gripped for the hem of her shirt and I waited for her permission.
She nodded and raised her arms for me.
I helped her undress gently. Not because I thought she was breakable, but because she mattered.
Because this moment mattered. I wasn’t going to rush it or fuck it up.
My breath hitched because out of all the times I’d envisioned this moment, it was me kissing every inch of her and working my way down her body, but in this, I just wanted to wash away the day and wrap her up in warmth to replace the cold and fear she’d had on her face at the bar. Everything else could wait.
After I slid the last piece of clothing from her body, I helped her into the shower.
She looked over at me then with that silent plea written on her face.
The one we both had been doing a damn good job of denying.
I quickly shucked off my clothes, got in behind her, grabbed the shampoo, gently washed her hair.
She trembled under my touch, but I restrained myself.
This wasn’t about pleasure. It was about being there for her when she was emotionally vulnerable.
And the fact that I was that person for her, only made me not want to fuck it up more.
She leaned back into me. Trusted me.
Every time she trembled, I adjusted. Pulled back. Slowed down. This was about making her feel safe.
Mine to protect. Mine to cherish.
After I rinsed her hair and worked conditioner through it, I moved on to her body, cleaning her with reverence. Like touching her meant something—because it did. It meant everything. I swallowed hard and kept going, anchoring myself in the moment. In her.
When I finished, she turned. Reached for the soap and pressed it against my chest.
“Logan,” I rasped. “You don’t have to take care of me.”
“I want to.”
Her voice was soft but sure. And when she ran her hands over me, I nearly broke while she explored.
We didn’t speak again as I opened the curtain. She stepped out and wrapped in a towel, but just before she left the bathroom, she paused.
Her eyes dropped to the floor.
“Is that . . . my panties?”
I looked down.
Shit.
“I thought I lost these!”
They must’ve fallen out of my jeans pocket while I’d undressed. The ones I’d kept like a talisman, like some goddamn lovesick fool. Because, well . . . I was.
I cleared my throat.
She bent to pick them up, and when she looked at me again, she was smiling. Really smiling.
“Is that what you fantasize about when you watch me in the shower, Lachlan?”
Her voice was low and teasing and dangerous.
And my whole body tensed at the sound of my name on her lips like that.
Raspy. Breathless. Laced with heat I’d been starving for.
God help me—that was when I realized, she knew I’d been watching her in the shower like a fucking creep that day and anytime she had continued to leave the door open, which had been every time she had showered, she’d wanted me to see.
I swallowed as she grabbed the panties and walked out of the bathroom.
Turning off the water, I grabbed my towel from off of the rack, dried quickly.
and then wrapped it around my waist. When I stepped into the bedroom, Logan was standing at the end of the bed only wearing those rosy lace panties.
I swallowed and took a step in her direction.
I didn’t want to spook her, taking in her full breasts and the curve of her hips.
She was beautiful. I took another step, and the gravitational pull between us was too much because we lunged for each other at the same time.
Her lips met mine, and I devoured her mouth with a groan.
“We shouldn’t—” Kiss.
“We should—” Our tongues slid over each other’s.
“Maybe just this once—” I slid my hand down her body and gripped her ass while moving her to the bed.
“Hmmm, sure,” I agreed unconvincingly as I kissed her neck and started moving down her frame.
I planned on doing this way more than once.
My towel fell to the floor as I stood to admire her sprawled out on my bed, wearing only those goddamn panties with her hand snaking down her body. My knees nearly gave out at the sight.
She was my every fantasy.
She eyed my hard cock. “Okay.” She panted. “Maybe we keep it as just sex, no strings attached. I’m clean and on birth control.” She bit her lip as she started stroking her pussy to the sight of me standing naked between her legs.
“Whatever you say, and I’m clean too,” I whispered, my cock thick and throbbing for her, but tonight wasn’t about me.
I just wanted to take care of her. I planned to take all the time in the world with her because little did Logan know, in no lifetime were there no strings between us.
She had become the very thread that held me together at the seams without even knowing it. She was mine, and I’d show her that.
I moved to the bed. I wanted my lips to caress every inch of her skin.
I started at her ankle, the one that she had hurt, then moved up the inside of her leg, leaving slow, leisurely kisses as I went.
I kissed either hip and she bucked against me.
She removed her fingers from her panties, and I grabbed her wrist, popping them in my mouth and sucking them clean.
She moaned at the sight, her eyes blown with lust.
She watched me, speechless, as I kissed and licked at each of her breasts and then slowly moved down her body.
I kissed her pussy through the thin lace panties and she moaned.
I started licking and tonguing her through the fabric that had haunted my dreams all these weeks, and she bucked against my face.
I banded my arms around her hips to hold her still as I lapped at her pretty little cunt until she was panting for me.
“Lachlan, please, I—” I continued my ministrations to her clit through her soaked panties until her legs were trembling.
I looped my fingers under the waistband and pulled them off her legs and tossed them to the side.
I quickly took my place again and speared her with my tongue while she cried out.
I moved to her clit and hummed with pleasure.
She jerked and started trying to use her heels to crawl away from me, but I followed her and grabbed her to keep her in place until she covered my face in her release.
I drank up every last drop of her until she was completely spent.
I got to my feet and grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom and cleaned her up before crawling into bed with her.
Logan seemed to be half asleep already, so I just pulled her to where she could rest her head on my chest. She moved her hand down my body to touch me, but I grabbed it and brought it back to my chest.
“Tomorrow, bonnie. Tonight, I just wanted to take care of you,” I murmured against her forehead, and I fell into a peaceful sleep for the first time in a long time.