5
Ava
“Your check engine light is on,” Logan points out, the first thing either of us has said in the last several minutes, while my truck trundles on down the dark dirt service road through the woods.
“Yeah it does that.” I shrug.
“Oh. Ok.”
He keeps staring at all the rest of the idiot lights on my dashboard in glaring orange: oil, seatbelts, empty tank, to name a few.
“Look, if you want to judge me—”
“I’m not, uh, just concerned,” Logan says, and finally tears his stare away from it. “But it’s none of my business.”
The brewery disappears just over that ridge of trees, and that’s how I know we’re in the right spot. I pull off the dirt road, and when my tires roll into the same spot I keep finding in the dark, I cut the engine.
My phone buzzes and lights up with a text from DON’T CALL HIM, reading: I heard you called the office. What do you need?
A frown spreads across my face as I realize he means the report I made about the animal I clipped with the truck last week.
I chew my tongue a moment, knowing Jackson would insist on looking at the bite on my hand in person if I told him what had happened.
I flip my phone over, deciding I’m going to keep up my streak of not replying to Ranger Dick.
At least, not while I’ve got other dick options.
I glance up at Logan, who looks like he’s pretending not to be watching me, his eyes flicking away when I catch him.
What a weirdo.
He’s not nearly as intimidating now that he’s all but rolled over for me. Maybe Logan just looks all stern and scary because of his sharp features, the looming. He has those angular cheekbones and jawline that create wells for deep shadows, like a Halloween decoration.
I lean over and open the glove compartment. It honestly never gets old—the faces guys make when I hold out the variety pack of condoms and say, “Pick one.”
Logan’s permanently furrowed brow twitches. He rifles through a couple in the box before pulling one out, slowly turning it over in his hands. “You . . . come out here often?”
“Yeah, when the weather’s good. There’s a really nice view of the mountains over the woods from here.” I shrug. “Everyone in town says these woods are haunted as fuck, so I’ve noticed no one really comes around here.”
He nods, chewing the inside of his cheek. “I imagine there’s a few things that might give people reason to think that.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s, uh, dark and empty. You ever see anything out here?”
“No, but I haven’t been sightseeing, exactly.” I giggle. “Oh, but I have heard something. If you come out here during the full moon, you might hear this really distant noise, like a wounded animal. It’s so spooky.”
He nods, not looking entirely convinced. Maybe he thinks I’m insane for coming out here; I don’t care. I don’t normally care to let people see my cabin, it’s a little too clear a visual metaphor for the rest of my life.
I pop my door open and wave for Logan to follow me, hopping out and leading around to the back side of my truck. I drop the tailgate down, climb into the bed, and unroll the cushion that lives here.
Logan steps out, and my god, he is tall. As in just out of the range of a hot tall guy and creeping into the range of weird tall guy. He’s still attractive, but it’s clear he’s in the habit of trying to blend into the background when he physically sticks out. No wonder he’s a little shy.
I rub my arm, feeling a little jittery myself. It’s been a minute since anyone made me feel fucking butterflies with just the look of them.
It’s fine, I’m not going to see him again. I’m allowed to just rebound. I’m still working through what went wrong with Jackson. This doesn’t need to be a whole thing. I don’t really want to get attached to a guy who needed to be harangued into being nice to me.
Until then, the way Logan’s gloomy eyebrows knit together as he approaches makes me grin and bite my lip. I’m shamelessly entranced by the way his jeans fit his long, slender legs, and I just hold back from spreading mine.
“Get up here, pretty boy.”
“Are we on a time limit or something?”
“Why, do you think you’re going to need lube? I can grab some.”
“No, I just . . . it doesn’t have to be so cut and dry.”
“Believe me, I am not dry right now,” I tell him. “I know what makes me happy. And, y’know, let me know if you have any particular requests.”
“Sure, sure,” he says. “Here’s one, kiss me again.”
I grin, sit up on the tailgate, and grab a handful of his shirt. Logan leans in most of the way and brushes my hair back from my face. His knuckles graze my cheek, lingering for a few seconds too long. Like he’s staring, I think for a moment, but that can’t be it.
I wiggle my eyebrows at that, not that he can see it in this dark. He lets out the tiniest laugh on a breath, before he closes the gap.
He draws out the kiss, cupping my face in his hands, savoring it. I arch my body into his as his hand spans my back and wait for him to unhook my bra. When he doesn’t, I figure maybe he’s one of those guys who can’t multitask and quickly remove and discard it.
That doesn’t move things along very much, so I get to work undoing his jeans button and zipper with what some have called startling efficiency.
The barest of laughs escapes him as he breaks our kiss, and I take that as my opportunity to scoot back further onto the truck bed, wriggling out of my shorts and underwear together. I’m so wet, I can smell it faintly against the crisp October evening.
Logan climbs up and over to me, and the dim light from the cab of my truck isn’t enough to admire him as he pulls his shirt off over his head and rakes a hand through his long, silky hair. He pauses to take in a deep, slow inhale, and something about the sound of it makes goosebumps run up my skin.
My hands trail down his chest, his abdomen, my fingers mapping the ridges of muscle and bone, when I come across something that’s neither.
His breath catches, and I pull my hand back, seeing a large, half-healed scrape on his side, some of it purple with bruising, partly covered by a too-small bandage.
“What happened there?” I can’t help but ask. “Are you, like, ok?”
He waves a hand like it’s nothing to worry about. “I cannot stress enough how bad the night of the wedding was. I think I got clipped by a car, jaywalking or something.”
“Oh my god, dude,” I breathe, swallowing. I hold back on volunteering my hit-and-run that night, instead saying, “Sounds like I missed a wild night.”
Jesus Christ this guy is a mess. He could not be waving more red flags if he tried. Unfortunately for me, I’m into that.
“You and me both,” Logan murmurs, and leans down to kiss me. He lets me push him onto his back to straddle his hips.
My hand finds his cock again, closing around it hot and hard within his briefs. With a few teasing strokes over the head, he rewards me with a throaty, indulgent sound.
I’ve got the condom, just about ready to tear it open when my other hand slides down the length of him, encountering something that makes me pause again. I try to trace around the shape of it, almost like a round swell at the base of his cock.
That’s weird.
He notices me faltering, and I swallow. “Hey, um . . . you like, check yourself regularly for like, cancer stuff and whatever, right?”
“What?”
His hand grazes past mine in the dark, finding the same strange swell on his cock. I feel his whole-body tense underneath me.
“Oh. That’s, uh, hm—” Logan stammers, and oh my god I made him feel bad about his dick.
He’s quiet and still for too many heartbeats, and I feel fucking awful for bringing it up. The moment is quickly losing any sense of the erotic tension between us.
My heart hammering in my throat, I backpedal hard. “I mean, like, I’m not trying to body shame or anything, I just . . . I’ve never seen that particular, um, shape before. Is that normal?”
“ . . . for some people.”
“Oh. Ok,” I say, and wince at how not chill I sound. Out of rote habit, I run my fingers up and down the length of his cock, finding the unusual shape is still there. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. “I think it’s kinda cute?”
I cringe and immediately hate everything I just said and did.
“It doesn’t, um.” He takes in a deep breath and even in the dark, I can feel him looking away, his eyes looking for the way out of this moment. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
I don’t know what he means by that, but I don’t pay much attention. Maybe he heard me wrong. We’re both so wrapped up in our own heads, it doesn’t feel like we’re in the same conversation.
“You know, you learn something new every day,” I say maybe a little too quickly, and the awkwardness of the moment hangs heavily on the air. “If it’s fine, then it’s fine.”
“Is it a problem . . . ?”
“No! No, I said it’s fine, don’t worry about it. Really,” I insist, forcing a little more of a casual tone, and in some effort to escape this moment, I just go ahead and tear the foil packet open, rolling the condom on, down to the weird part of his dick.
Fuck, I feel like I’m only making things worse. Maybe this was a mistake.
The moment draws out long, the distant sound of crickets filling the void between us. I swallow and wonder if I should just offer to drive him home, and then we can spend the next few years avoiding making eye contact in public.
Before I can voice it though, Logan catches my hand in one of his, pulls my attention away from his dick. He drags a hand up my leg to hold my hip, and his thumb brushes soothingly along the bounds between my thigh and my torso, the sensitive crease between them.
I lean down and his heart is hammering in his chest under my palm. Here I am, bruising his ego, and he’s trying to calm my nerves? Jeez.
My breathing slows a little, his long fingers spreading out over my side. Not groping my ass or squeezing my tits, just his hands on my body. His long fingers press and flex reverently against my skin in a way that makes me feel strangely precious.