Forbidden Embers (25 page)

Logan’s words echoed between them as Cecily put her hand in his huge one and let him pull her to her feet. She started to make some joke about trusting him farther than she could throw him, but the smile on his face had suddenly frozen. She wasn’t sure what was responsible for his lightning-swift change of mood, but figured it was probably her. Maybe he’d expected her to make him come, as well, and since she hadn’t . . .

Not that she wouldn’t have liked to. He was the one who had jumped to his feet as soon as the tremors had stopped rocketing through her. If he’d given her a little recovery time, she would have been happy to return the favor.

She glanced down at his cock, which was still long and hard despite everything they’d spent the past two hours doing. Her mouth watered, and for a moment she wondered what he’d do if she dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth. She wanted to taste him, to explore him, to learn him as he had learned her.

She started to reach for him, but he had already opened his backpack and pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. He tossed her the shirt before pulling on the sweats. She felt the rejection like a slap.

She felt stupid, and she really, really hated feeling like that. But she’d brought it on herself—she’d entered into this fling with Logan without figuring out what the rules were. It was no wonder she’d somehow put her foot in it. Why were relationships, even casual relationships, so difficult to figure out? If sex didn’t bring with it such incredible, unbelievable pleasure, she would understand the appeal of celibacy. No messy emotions, no awkward silences, no strange signals to figure out.

Logan went over to a cooler he’d set between two trees, pulled out a bottle of water, and held it out to her. “I’d take you out to dinner, but as you seem to be without your clothes, we’d probably get some funny looks.”

“Oh yeah.” Instead of putting on the shirt, she held it out to him. “I should probably get going, let you get something to eat and get settled for the night.”

He shot her a strange look. “I am settled for the night. I thought we both were.”

“I’m not sure—” She stopped, unable to put her confusion into words and too afraid of assuming and making another blunder.

“What’s wrong, Cecily?” He came back over to her. “You don’t want to stay?”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you . . .”

“We just had earth-shattering, world-altering sex. Believe me, if ever there was a time for you to inconvenience me, this would be it.” He took the shirt from her hands and gently tugged it over her head. “Not that you are. I’m just saying you could, if you wanted to.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” He winked at her, and she swore she was dazzled by the light in his whiskey-colored eyes. God, she needed to get a grip. He was a rogue, just passing through. And she had a duty to her clan that had nothing to do with him.

“What do you want to eat? I’ve got sandwich stuff and sandwich stuff.”

“Sandwiches it is, then.” She followed him back to the cooler, twisting the cap off a bottle of water as she went. “So, it was, umm, earth-shattering for you, too?”

“Well, I’m a big guy. The earth shatters around me pretty easily.”

She froze, started to stutter out an excuse to flee, when she saw him looking at her with a wide grin on his face. “You know, one of these days, your teasing is going to get you clawed.”

He gestured to the scar on his face before reaching for the bread. “How do you know it hasn’t already?”

“Well, if you got that from teasing some poor woman, then you totally deserved it.” She reached into the cooler and pulled out an apple. Then asked, “
Is
that how you got it?”

“What do you think?”

“I have no idea.”

“A guy’s got to have some mystery, doesn’t he?”

“Somehow I don’t think a lack of mystery is your problem. I’ve been around you for how many hours, and I still know almost nothing about you.”

“Yeah, well, you kept my mouth busy for most of the hours, so I don’t think that really counts.”

He handed her a sandwich and she took it, feeling strangely shy considering all the things she’d let this man do to her not even an hour before. She’d had no trouble talking to him before they’d made love, but now, suddenly, every time he opened his mouth, she flashed back to all the ways and places he’d kissed her, licked her, touched her. It made her hot to think about it, but it also made her feel incredibly vulnerable.

Is this how everyone feels when they had sex for the first time?
she wondered.
Like they’ve opened up a door inside themselves that can never be shut again?
She didn’t regret being with him—how could she, when Logan had been so sweet and tender and exciting? But at the same time, there was a part of her that wished he hadn’t been her private rebellion. A part of her that wished even a little bit of her time with him could be real.

But she was just being stupid. How many women dreamed of having a lover like him, one who cared more about her pleasure than he did his own? She was no expert, by any means, but she had trouble imagining any of her father’s
factionnaires
treating her with even half the kindness and consideration and adoration Logan had. He’d made her first time absolutely perfect.

Then again, maybe that was the problem. She knew this couldn’t last, knew she couldn’t have him for more than this one night. When she left here, it was to go back to the compound and ask another man to marry her. A man that she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, could never make her body respond as Logan had.

Logan interrupted her self-examination by grabbing her hand and dragging her across the clearing to the big, flat rock that was her favorite place on the mountain. It overlooked the entire valley down below, let her see miles and miles in the distance. She always came here to think because it was one of the few places that helped her put her problems in perspective. Not even a warring clan seemed so bad when you were looking out at something so huge and incomparable.

He sat down in the center of the rock and then pulled her onto his lap. And she sat, wrapped in his arms, eating the sandwich he’d made her, and tried to figure out how the hell she was going to get through her wedding night with Gage.

“So, what is it you want to know about me?” Logan asked after they’d both finished their dinner. “I was just joking about that whole mystery thing.”

Everything
. The thought popped into her head, and she barely kept herself from blurting it out. She didn’t need to sound like a sex-crazed groupie, after all. Although now that she thought about it, she had to wonder if there was a Logan Kelly fan club somewhere, filled with women he’d ruined for any other lover. She almost asked him, but then figured a question like that right out of the gate might end their conversation before it ever got started.

“How
did
you get that scar?” She reached up and brushed soft fingertips across it. He didn’t flinch, but the look in his eyes told her better than any words could that he really didn’t like her touching it.

She just wished she knew if it was because the scar bothered him or because he considered it off-limits to her.

He didn’t answer for such a long time that she figured he wasn’t going to at all. Trying to decide what she wanted to ask instead, she was caught completely off guard when he said, “I did it to myself.”

Shock ricocheted through her. “What? Why?”

He shrugged. “Duty? Restitution? Both?”

“I don’t under—”

He pressed a soft kiss to her mouth. “You already got two questions. Now it’s my turn.”

“I didn’t realize there was a limit. I thought you said I could ask anything.”

“You can.” His hand snuck beneath her shirt, rubbed against her lower back. “But there are rules.”

“Oh, really? And would those rules happen to have anything to do with where your hand is at this exact moment?”

“Perhaps.”

“That means ‘definitely.’ Okay, lay them on me.”

“Well, to begin with, for every question you ask, you have to pay a toll.”

She arched a brow. “A toll?”

“Exactly.” His hand crept lower.

“But I don’t have any money,” she said, making her eyes deliberately wide. “I came here with nothing but a few purple scales and a tail.”

“I like your tail.” His fingers stroked against the cleft of her ass.

“I got that impression.” She grabbed his hand, put it back in her lap. “So, about that toll?”

“Oh, right. The toll.” His eyes were dark and heavy lidded, and just a glance at them made her so hot and trembly that she thought she might come right there in his lap. “For every question you ask, I get to do one thing to your body. My choice.”

“Really? Okay . . . what happens if
you
ask the question?”

“Same rules, of course. If I ask the question, I get to do one thing to your body. See how it works?”

“What I see is that the odds are completely stacked in your favor.”

“That’s the way I like them.”

“I just bet.”

Could he look any more wicked than he does at this moment?
she wondered. It was a full moon, and the light of it seemed to have unerringly found him. It was glinting off his gold hair, making his eyes shine and his skin glow. And his smile, that wild, self-deprecating little smirk of his, all but begged her to wipe it off his face—in the most satisfying way possible.

He must have sensed her thoughts, because the smile faded into a snarl, one that said he would like very much for her to do exactly what she’d been thinking about.

With a growl that sank deep inside her, he lifted her up and turned her to face him so that her legs straddled his and his cock was pressed tightly against her pussy. He was hard again—or maybe she should say
still
—and she decided her questions could wait. She loved talking to him, but if she had only one night with him, she knew exactly how she wanted to spend it.

Logan, however, seemed to have a different idea. Though his breath was hot against her cheek and his hips were rising and falling ever so slightly—just enough to rock their lower bodies together—he seemed in no hurry to take her again. Instead, he said in a voice so low that she had to strain to hear it, “It’s my turn for a question. What’s it like to be a princess?”

“Not everything it’s cracked up to be,” she answered immediately. “Until recently, my only job was to look pretty and smile at the right times. So now that I’m involved in the day-to-day running of the clan—or trying to be, anyway—things are different.”

“Harder?”

“God, yes.”

“So would you give it up if you could?” His lips were right next to her ear now, so that when he spoke, the soft exhalations of air danced over her sensitive earlobe and sent shivers up and down her spine.

She melted at the sensation, her body sagging against his as need, fresh and overwhelming, wound its way through her. “Would you?” he asked again.

“Would I what?” Her voice was shaky.

“Would you give it up?” There was an underlying seriousness to his tone—and the question itself—that snapped her out of her sensual fog.

“No. It may be difficult and terrible and like herding rabid wildebeests most days, but it’s my duty. My family is dead. I’m the last Fournier alive. I have to take care of my clan.”

He didn’t say anything to that, didn’t do anything, and she couldn’t help thinking that the game had turned awfully serious awfully fast. Part of that was her fault, but at least part of it was his. What was it she’d said that he hadn’t liked?

But when she started to ask him, he distracted her by lifting up the hem of her shirt far enough to bare her breasts. “What are you doing?” she squeaked.

“Fulfilling the rules of our agreement, of course. I asked three questions, so I get to kiss three parts of your body.”

“I thought you were joking about that.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

No, he didn’t. He looked more intense than she had ever seen him, and when he blinked, she swore she saw his dragon staring out at her. But before she could comment on it, his mouth was on her nipple, and he was rolling it gently between his teeth.

She gasped, and he raised his head to grin at her. “That’s one.”

“I might not make it through two more.” There was no way to hide the fact that she was wet and trembling, not when she was on his lap and he was so attuned to every sigh and gasp.

She had just begun to hope he was going to press his advantage when he pulled back and dropped a chaste kiss on first her right cheek, then her left.

“Your turn to ask a question.”

She blinked at him, still a little hazy from the feel of his mouth on her breast. She forced herself to get it together. “How old are you?”

“Three hundred and ninety-seven.”

She nodded, having expected as much. Though he didn’t seem to have the old-fashioned attitudes shared by much of the
Conseil
, there was something about him that said he’d been around for a good, long while.

“How many of those years have you been rogue?”

He stiffened against her, and she figured he was going to refuse to answer. But he surprised her when he said, “I left my clan when I was ninety-six.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“Because they wanted me to do something that went against what I believed in.”

The words hit her like arrows, reminded her forcefully of the battle she was presently waging with her clan, or at least parts of it. “Was it wrong?”

“Wrong?” he asked with a furrowed brow.

“What they were asking you to do. Was it wrong?”

“It wasn’t right. At least not in my opinion, and I couldn’t go along with it.”

“So you left.”

He nodded. “So I left.”

She liked his answer. Partly because she knew exactly what he meant, and partly because it was honest, forthright and moral. She hadn’t had contact with any of those virtues in quite a while, and though she’d known she’d missed them, she hadn’t realized how much until he’d given them to her again.