Linger (21 page)

Scarlett growled when he eased his fingers out of her, propping herself up again to watch him as he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth.

Her stare was so fiercely possessive that Logan felt his pulse stutter before picking up again to beat double time.

“Condom.” Fisting both hands in his hair, she tugged until he did as she asked and slid up her body. She parted her lips beneath his, her tongue sweeping out to taste, to claim his mouth. “Now.”

He moaned into the kiss, sinking his teeth into her lower lip before pulling away. “I need a minute.”

She nipped at his ear, hard enough for a spark of pain to ignite before shoving him away with both hands. “Hurry.”

Though it nearly killed him to take his hands off of her, Logan hurried to the closet—he stored the one piece of luggage that he owned in the spare room. The small bag he'd taken to Vegas with him lay on its floor, empty now save for the one thing he always brought with him. Even though a Domme usually supplied them, he always brought a backup.

Condoms.

Pulling the small box from the bag, he turned to find Scarlett watching him with a smirk on her lips.

“Were you just ogling my ass, Mistress?” Grinning, he sauntered back over to her, enjoying the way she could make him feel ten feet tall. Standing beside the bed, he tore into the box, extracted a condom, and ripped open the small foil packet.

“No, I was ogling
my
ass.” Pulling the ring of latex from his fingers, Scarlett pinched the tip, then slowly rolled the condom down his length, causing Logan's eyes to roll back in his head. “This ass belongs to me.”

The woman had wicked fingers. And when she trailed those fingers lightly through the crease of his behind, then smacked him hard enough to sting on the hip, he felt his cock stiffen to the point of pain.

He wanted to climb onto the bed, to cover her body with his own, to possess her.

He needed her to tell him that she wanted that, too, and so he stood by the bed and waited.

Their gazes met, held, and Logan felt everything inside of him stir, aching with need. And then her beautiful lips curled into a smile, and catching his fingers in her own, she tugged him toward the bed.

“Take me, Logan. However you want to.”

However you want to.
Downstairs, while she'd been teasing him, torturing him, deliberately stirring all of those forbidden feelings inside of him, he had wanted nothing more than to let his passion explode, to come together with Scarlett hard and fast, a mating explosive in its intensity.

But now he found himself climbing onto the bed, kneeling between her parted thighs. He bent to lay a kiss to her belly, then clasped her hips and pressed the head of his cock to her pussy.

“Oh.” Scarlett sighed when he slowly eased forward, rocking back and forth, a little further each time, until he was immersed inside of her, the heavy weight of his balls pressed against the tight curve of her ass.

Beneath him, she shifted restlessly, arching her pelvis up to meet his.

Settling his elbows on either side of her, Logan brushed his lips over hers.

“I just want a moment. Just one moment like this.” A moment to savor the way she felt around him, her muscles working to accommodate his cock, her slick heat embracing his erection.

Both the softness of her body and the steel of her will voluntarily yielded to him for this one perfect moment in time.

Catching his face in her hands, Scarlett pulled him down until they were nose to nose. “Mine.”

And then her nails were digging into his shoulders, his back, and the bite of pain made it hard for him to breathe. Logan pulled back, pushed forward again, wallowing in the pure pleasure of being inside her delicious heat.

“Yes!” Scarlett was no passive bed partner beneath him, her body arching and bowing and demanding that he service her, demanding
more
. “This. More.”

Bracing his weight on his hands, Logan moved inside of
her again and again. He wanted to stay this way forever, to be lost in her.

“You're so beautiful.” Though by that point he couldn't have stopped his hips from moving, he slid one hand in her hair, brushing it away from her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes half closed, her lips slightly parted.

No matter what happened between them, the mental picture of her, like this, would be burned into his memory forever.

“Isn't that my line?” Scarlett smiled at him, and the utter trust in her eyes—trust in him now that he'd reciprocated—nearly undid him.

“Mistress.” Burying his face in her neck, Logan began to move harder, faster, craving that delicious friction more and more.

He could have called her by her name—he knew in that moment that she would have allowed it.

But here, like this, there was only one true title for her.

Sliding his hand between their bodies, he worked his way down over her belly, through her folds, to find her clit. She cried out when he worked his thumb back and forth, and in turn he heard a roar building at the back of his throat when his climax began to gather in his toes, his testicles, the base of his spine.

“No.” He didn't mean to speak out loud, but he couldn't help it. He fought desperately to stave off his release, just long enough for her to come. “You first.”

“Together.” Then Scarlett wrapped those long dancer's legs around his waist, arching up to meet him, and he felt the shudders begin to work through her body. When she called out his name, he felt everything inside of him drawing tight, felt the erotic pull of her body demanding his release.

He exploded with the intensity of a runaway train, jetting
inside of her so hard that he saw stars. He came, and shuddered, and pulsed again, emptying himself, giving himself to her.

It wasn't until that very moment, his entire being wrapped up in Scarlett, that, despite having returned home from overseas and moving to Montana a decade ago, he finally felt like he had come home.

A
n incoherent cry woke Scarlett from a deep, delicious sleep, the kind that comes only when both body and mind are exhausted and empty.

Opening her eyes, she blinked into the weak, pale light of dawn, momentarily disoriented.

She was in Logan's room in Montana, not back in Vegas. The events of the previous night flooded back in, and with them came a bone-deep satisfaction.

Her stubborn sub had finally surrendered. She wanted to wallow in the bliss.

But then another cry sounded, and she came fully awake, remembering what had pulled her out of her dreams in the first place.

The mattress rocked beneath her, and hands reached out against her skin. Lurching upright, Scarlett squinted into the dim light, discovered Logan thrashing in agitation on the bed beside her. Sheets were entangled around his legs, binding him in place, and while restraints might have brought him a certain kind of peace while he was awake, they certainly had the opposite effect when he was sound asleep.

“Let me go. Let us out!” His voice was hoarse, raw. He turned toward her, and Scarlett jolted when his wide-open eyes met hers, unseeing, a quick glimpse of him before he rolled away again.

He was asleep, locked in the throes of a nightmare. And
judging by the sweat slicking his skin, the convulsive movements of his body, he wanted out of it, desperately.

“Logan.” Scarlett placed a hand on his shoulder, then just as quickly pulled it back. She'd heard that it was bad to wake someone while they were sleepwalking or dreaming. But she couldn't leave him to ride out this dream, not when he was clearly so miserable.

Helplessness washed over her, and she detested it, rejected it. Moving on instinct, she lay back down in the bed, shifting so that her front pressed along the length of his back.

“It's okay. I'm here.” Wrapping her arms around his waist, she held on tight, leaving his arms and legs free to move. “You're not alone.”

She continued to whisper soothing words to him even as his long, lean frame jerked and shuddered in her arms, initially resisting the embrace.

When she pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades, he stiffened. She did it again, and the first hint of tension began to melt from his body.

“I'm here,” she whispered again, holding him close. “Give all of this to me. I'll take care of it.”

It could have been five minutes or it could have been an hour, but finally, the big, hard body relaxed, melting into hers. Scarlett could hear her pulse pounding in her ears as the threat passed and her body started to come down from the adrenaline high.

What the fuck was that?

Slowly, the man in her arms shifted, rolling over to face her. His lids were open but at half-mast, his eyes sleepy.

“Scarlett?” Though he wasn't fully awake, she still saw the shame reflected in those pools of deep blue—shame that he had lost control, even in his sleep.

“Don't.” Though she whispered, she made her tone sharp. She didn't elaborate, but saw the shadows in his eyes start to drift away under her command.

She held him until at last his breathing was deep and even, and it was clear that he'd fallen back to sleep.

Scarlett was surprised to find herself shaking a bit as she eased out of the bed, pulling the quilt back up, tucking it in around Logan so he wasn't subject to the early-morning chill.

Knowing she wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep, she padded back to her room and quickly dressed in jeans and a thick woolen sweater. A Saturday, there would still be chores to do, but not as many.

Scraping the mess of her hair back into a bun, she blinked at herself in the mirror, startled by how vivid and alive she looked, even in the early dawn hours.

She'd thought she had a pretty good handle on who she was when she left Vegas—had thought she'd known what she wanted. She'd always had an innate confidence, a belief that she could handle whatever life threw her way.

She'd had to, or she never would have made it through the foster system in one piece.

But as she turned from the mirror, headed down the stairs in search of coffee, Scarlett contemplated the fact that being with Logan was showing her that she might have facets of herself that she didn't know yet at all.

Until now she'd thought she had all the answers, that she could be the rock for him to lean on as he learned how to give up control.

“Christ.” Scrubbing her palms over her face, Scarlett entered the kitchen to find a half-empty pot of coffee. Pouring a mugful, she chugged it black, burning her tongue in the process.

But it cleared her mind enough to think.

She hadn't spent a night in Logan's bed before. She hadn't known he suffered from nightmares. And the dream she'd just helped him escape told her that his demons were far darker than anything she'd ever anticipated.

She was a twenty-four-year-old woman. She wasn't sure she had the tools to do the right thing faced with such deep-seated pain.

But she also knew she would do everything within herself to try, to be there for him. Still, the intensity of the scene the night before, his ultimate surrender, and the events of that morning had left her more than a little shaken.

She couldn't handle any more caffeine. Setting her empty mug in the sink, she pulled the kettle out of the cupboard, filled it with water from the tap, and set it on the stove to make some tea.

“You're up early.”

Scarlett heard the quiet click of the back door before Luca spoke. She turned with a fresh mug and a packet of chamomile tea in hand, not bothering to smooth out the troubled crinkle that she knew furrowed her brow.

“Let the dogs out into the dog run.”

“Thanks.” She smiled tiredly at Luca before opening the paper packet, extracting the tea bag, and twining the string around the handle of her cup. After Logan had fallen asleep the night before, she'd tiptoed downstairs to make sure that Luca and Bren had found everything they needed. She hadn't been worried about them making themselves at home—Luca was close enough to both her and Logan that she'd known he would feel comfortable. “Couldn't sleep anymore.”

“Do you need to talk about last night?” A Dom to the core, Luca touched others like he had every right to, and while she might have bristled if another Dom tried it with her, when he wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, she simply sighed and settled back into the hug.

“No,” she replied honestly, placing her hand over Luca's much larger one where it rested at her waist. “Last night went better than I'd hoped.”

He squeezed her waist, and then Luca lifted her onto the counter, turning her as he did so that their eyes were nearly level. “What has you so troubled this morning, then?”

Looking into Luca's dark chocolate eyes, Scarlett was tempted to lean on him, to beg him for help, to let him take away some of her burden. And he would let her—entirely apart from their friendship, the Dom in him wouldn't be happy unless he gave her the support she couldn't give herself.

But she was a Domme, too. And by pushing Logan until he'd surrendered to her, she had said without words that his burdens were hers to share.

Hers, not Luca's. And as the minutes passed, taking her farther away from that awful moment upstairs, when she had seen her long, lean alpha male writhing in agony on the bed, she felt stronger, more able to handle it.

So rather than accepting the implied offer, Scarlett smiled wryly and reached out to cup one of Luca's cheeks in her hand for a quick squeeze. The dark shadow of his stubble tickled her palm.

“You warned me he wouldn't be easy.” Pushing Luca away, she slid down off the counter when the kettle began to whistle, wanting to catch it before it shrieked.

“I see.” Luca's eyes tracked her around the kitchen as she poured the steaming water into her teacup, adding a squirt of honey. She'd been here in Montana, in this house, for only a few weeks, but it already felt like home.

“I know you do.”

Luca would see what she wasn't saying—that she'd discovered that Logan's complexities ran so much deeper than
just a stubborn alpha of a submissive. He had history that would be hard to navigate.

But they would do it together.

“Go easy on him, Scarlett.” The corners of Luca's eyes crinkled with concern as they regarded her thoughtfully. “I know you must be a little upset that he hasn't told you everything yet. But believe him when he says that he can't.”

“I'm not upset with him.” The thought hadn't even crossed her mind. Some Dominants demanded a certain level of trust right from the beginning, but Scarlett had always thought of a D/s relationship as a dance, a meeting of two sets of needs and desires trying to entwine in a way that worked for both parties.

She had only just broken him down to his first level of submission. There was plenty more to work through between them before he would trust her with his darkest secrets.

But the fact that he'd done so in his sleep, turning to her to shelter him, to be soothed, warmed her heart.

“All right, then.” Running a hand over the stubble that lined his jaw, Luca nodded, accepting her decision that the subject was now closed. “Well, we've got to get going. The meeting at the restaurant is in a few hours, and I need to check into the hotel and clean up first.”

“Off the farm, into the boardroom?” Scarlett teased, blowing on her tea to cool it.

“Hardly.” Luca's tone told her exactly how excited he was to be conducting business in such a rural location. But he was thorough—he wouldn't have been able to make his billions any other way—and Scarlett knew that he would do what needed to be done, regardless of how long it kept him out of the city.

“Is Bren staying with you?” Though Scarlett now
understood that Luca had allowed the submissive to accompany him just as a means to help her work with Logan, she was still a bit curious at the full nature of their relationship.

“No. I'm taking him to the airport before I check into the hotel.” Luca's voice was wry, and Scarlett saw that he knew exactly where her mind had strayed. “We enjoyed each other last night, more than I had anticipated. But he came out here just to see you.”

“Oh.” A pang of guilt took up residence in Scarlett's chest. She knew that she'd never led him on, but she also knew what it felt like to have feelings that weren't returned.

“He'll be fine.” Again, there was that hint of something
more
in Luca's eyes, something regarding Bren, but it was gone in a flash, so quickly that Scarlett thought she might have imagined it. “But I do have to get going.”

“Thanks for coming.” She accepted Luca's hug, inhaling the familiar scent of her mentor. When they drew apart, she hesitated, then blurted out the question that was plaguing her.

“Luca, you know things about Logan that I don't yet. Do you think . . . ? Do you think I'm capable of handling everything? Of being strong enough to support him?”

Luca ran a hand through her hair, a gesture of simple affection. “Do you remember what I said to you that first night you met him?” He waited, patient with her as always.

“You said . . .” Scarlett racked her mind, and when she remembered, she felt relief at her mentor's confidence flood her body.

If anyone can handle him, it's you.

Clutching her tea, she saw Luca to the front door, waved at him and Bren as they drove off. If Bren was upset with her for not returning his feelings, he didn't show it as he grinned out the passenger's side window at her and waved goodbye.

Making her way around the side of the gigantic house
once Luca's sleek, ridiculously expensive SUV had disappeared into the horizon, Scarlett retrieved both Mongo and the new rescue dog, herding them inside for breakfast.

“And you'll let your new friend eat first,” she told Mongo sternly. “He needs it more than you.”

In response Mongo did a little dance that made the belly in question jiggle, and Scarlett couldn't help but laugh.

Scooping the smaller dog off the ground, she carried him back into the kitchen, hugged him close to her shoulder as she measured out more kibble samples.

“He sure doesn't look like he has anyplace else he wants to be.”

Scarlett stiffened, but forced herself to relax before turning around to face Logan as he walked into the room.

Freshly showered, he was dressed for work already—well, half dressed, the button of his jeans still not done up, his plaid shirt open over the solid wall of his chest, his feet bare.

He made her mouth water and her heart stutter all at once. And that feeling, she realized, would help her be whatever he needed her to be.

“What about you?” she asked, stroking her hand idly over the pup's matted fur. “What's on the agenda for today?”

Her eyes searched him anxiously as he made his way across the kitchen, then pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Did he even remember waking her with his nightmare a few hours ago? Did he know that she now had a bit more insight into why he was the way he was?

And then he knelt at her feet, the amber light of the morning sun making him seem lit from within.

He lifted his head to look at her, and though she could tell that some of the apprehension over submitting that he'd had before last night had returned, he seemed to be doing his best to hold it in check.

“We're going to take a day off,” he told her, his eyes a clear, bright blue. “To do whatever your heart desires.”

A
fter so many years of locking away the trauma deep down inside where even he couldn't have access to it, last night he'd let someone get a step closer to opening him up, something he'd never intended to do. He knew why he was submissive, and it wasn't a deep, dark secret—he just enjoyed sex more when someone else had control.