3. Logan
CHAPTER THREE
logan
Emma released a whimpering sigh, a surrender of her need to know what had happened to me. Gratitude beat in my heart. We would deal with what I’d done later.
For now, her emerald eyes shone bright with tears, and fuck, every drop felt like a weight in my chest. I hated how close we always came to losing each other. My arms weren’t enough to keep the threat away. Her body against mine wasn’t enough to erase the ache of what might happen tomorrow.
She smelled of blueberries and sage, and I had to be closer, had to fill every inch of her, allow our bodies to melt into each other. I needed to forget what had happened out there, and I needed her to forget what had happened here too.
“Don’t cry, love.”
She sniffed. “Can’t help it. It’s been one of the hardest days of my life, and I didn’t know if you were okay after you siphoned all that energy out of me. It took everything I had to keep from hurting everyone I’d been linked with.”
Instead of explaining what I’d done, what I needed her power for, I crushed her to me. Her nipples brushed against my chest, against the raw place where the blisters had been before I’d healed them by shifting twice. Acheron’s wounds closed slowly, even for a shifter. Dark work always did.
“Nothing, and I mean nothing, is ever going to separate us,” I rasped, then gritted my teeth to keep the determined howl of my wolf inside.
“Fuck, Logan. Don’t make promises neither of us can keep,” Emma whispered, her voice thick with emotion.
“It’s the only promise I intend to keep until my last breath.” I spoke with alpha authority, and it surprised me. Too many factors in our complicated life that were beyond my control.
Still, I knew there wasn’t a force in this entire fucking universe I would allow to take Emma from me. I’d give my scarred soul to keep hers whole. Without hesitation. Whether it went piece by piece or in one final, sacrificial act, it didn’t matter. I’d already died once for her.
And I would do it again.
I’ll die for you as many times as I am allowed, Emma.
My lips pressed hard against hers, devouring her with all my hunger.
She responded with the same fervent need until her tears came again, and her kisses slowed. Her lips left mine, trailing along my jaw, down my neck, and across my shoulder, leaving a trail of fire and water over my skin.
“Never leave me,” she demanded.
“Never,” I growled in confirmation. “Never willingly.”
Her hands slipped up my chest, up my neck, until her thumb brushed against my cheek like she was memorizing every angle, every flaw.
“Never willingly,” she repeated. “Show me, Logan. Show me that you’ll always be here. That we’re here. We’re us. Today. Now. And this is the only real thing that matters.”
“This. Is. Real,” I said. I dropped a kiss on the furrow between her eyebrows before pressing my forehead to hers. “We’ll bend the whole shifter universe to our will.”
How well I understood the depth of desperation in her heart. The agony rippled from mine to hers and back again. Whatever had happened to her must have been as brutal as my using her wholesome power to destroy. God, we’d almost lost it all a hundred times over.
The air radiated between us, warming the space. Maybe our bodies hadn’t fully caught up to the reality of our safety. Emma’s breath was hot and unsteady. With my fingertips, I traced the line where her ribs met, slow enough to make her shiver and ground herself in this moment.
We are real. This is real.
She trembled beneath me. “I could live here forever.”
“Mmm,” I agreed. “You’re the only way I’ve been able to hang on to any part of reality. You make a good anchor, Emma Carter.”
Delicately, Emma began kissing every inch of skin across my chest, lingering on the new skin. Desire seeped through my flesh and into my soul. My body responded instantly, hard and eager. I thrust my hips against her. Nuzzling her face into my neck, she pushed her hips up against me.
“Emma,” I warned. “It’s been too long to tease me and expect me to last.”
She laughed, throwing her head back against the pillow and exposing the arch of her gorgeous neck. Shit fire. She was everything I didn’t know I needed, everything I craved.
“Then we’ll try, try again until we get it right,” she said.
Laughter welled up in my chest, and I crushed her close, pleased we had no clothes between us.
Kissing her cheek led me to caress her neck down to her breasts.
Carefully, I took her nipple between my thumb and forefinger, and her breath caught.
Each freckle, birthmark, and scar received renewed attention.
Never once did I view any part of Emma’s body as mundane, but in this moment, I realized how much I had taken for granted.
How, if the worst had happened, perhaps I’d have forgotten the rainbow tattoo on her hip, the one that glowed whenever she summoned shifter magic, or the trail of freckles down her back that resembled a map of constellations.
The tattoo had only tingled when we’d first met.
The stronger her magic had grown, the more the tattoo had gone from tingling to glowing.
Etching every part of her body into my brain consumed me until I could re-create it flawlessly in my mind, in my dreams.
By the end, I wanted to drown in her eyes. Fearless. “Emma.”
Her fingers grazed my side, along my ribs, her touch light as air.
I caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “Are you cold?” I whispered softly. “You’re trembling.”
“So are you,” she replied, smiling softly. “I think it’s the downside of adrenaline.”
“Oh, I think my body is trembling for an entirely different reason.” I winked.
“That too,” she murmured. “Maybe it’s all that.” Her eyes slid closed.
My lips grazed her tattoo, and I drew my tongue over the colors.
A soft melodic note, something between a sob, a laugh, and a moan, escaped her as she pushed her hip into my lips. A whimper followed.
Pleeease… echoed in my head, and I understood what she wanted.
I chuckled, reveling in the depth of her lust for my tongue.
Slowly, I pushed Emma backward until she gently lay flat on the bed beneath me.
I moved down her body, and she sighed with disappointment when I began by kissing her ankles, as far away from her center as I could be.
Soon, my tongue reached her knee before I glanced up at her to catch her watching me through tear-soaked eyes.
“What’s wrong?” It hurt me to see her cry. What the hell had happened while I’d been away? Had what I had done with her power somehow broken her heart?
“They’re happy tears, Logan. I’m grateful.”
I am, too. Grateful I hadn’t broken her, her heart, or earned her rejection by twisting those shadowed souls into weapons. I love you. I pushed the thought through our bond, and I professed my forever love before gently situating her heels over my shoulders and taking her into my mouth.
Emma’s pleasure-filled moan drew my own body tight with desire, her hips arching toward my face. Her taste, her scent… Everything about her was perfect. Always. My tongue drew slow, tentative circles around her clit, eliciting trembling legs and soft moans.
“God, Logan, fucking missed you…”
My name on her lips felt like… not worship, something more profound, more primal. With one hand reaching up to cup her breast, I slid my fingers into her.
Fuck. I wanted to be inside her, and each cry of my name made me harder and threatened to push me over the edge. Physically, my cock throbbed against the bed, aching for her. All the love I felt for this woman flooded me.
I must have slowed my lapping in my attempt to slow my own climax because Emma whispered, “Don’t stop, Logan.”
I smiled into her heat and laughed.
She giggled too before gripping a fistful of my hair as I continued to tease her. Her hips rocked against my tongue and fingers, and I picked up my speed.
“Never leave me,” Emma gasped between moans.
Never. My fingers plunged deeper still. My free hand moved from her breast to the lowest part of her stomach, pushing gently, amplifying everything until she was left shrieking my name.
Breathless though she was, we weren’t done yet. Nearly dying aside, Emma never ran out of stamina, and neither did I. Not now, not ever. If anything, we were both overflowing with a need so intense that nothing would stop us.
Just as I was about to give my dick the one thing it had been begging for, she stopped me by gripping me and sliding out of my grasp.
“Emma,” I growled.
She grinned, adjusting until she knelt before me on the bed. I reached for her, but she caught my wrists midair, her gaze flashing with determination. Her tears had dried, but her eyes glowed with ferocity.
“Let me love you,” she said, and she slowly took me in her mouth.
White-hot heat slammed into me. For a moment, I couldn’t move.
The air around us felt alive, as if the entire universe had conspired to keep us breathing, and this was our moment.
Hunger and devotion coursed through my soul.
When her hands came to rest on my hips, she pulled, and I thrust hard into her mouth.
Her tongue moved with a familiarity, a knowledge that made my breath catch in my chest. She knew exactly how to get me to give in.
“Emma…” My voice cracked, warning her that I was close. So fucking close. My legs shook. I wanted to be inside her, but she was stubborn and relentless with her tongue.
“Shh…” she murmured. The warmth of her breath caressed me, and my entire body shuddered. I wanted to hold off. I wanted to come inside her, but fuuuuck…
Every muscle in my body tightened with anticipation.
Her hand trailed down from my hips and gently tugged at my sac. I threaded my fingers through her hair, my chest rapidly rising and falling just as it had done when I was escaping danger. My toes flexed, digging into the sheets.