Playing with Temptation (20 page)

It was a difficult promise for Logan to make, because it was equally important to him that Emily accepted Raina and everything about her. But ultimately, he had to respect Raina’s request. For now. “Okay. I won’t say anything to her.”

She exhaled a stream of breath and seemed to relax. “Thank you.”

He returned both hands to the wheel as he navigated the Camaro off the freeway and onto side streets. The interior of the car grew quiet again, until Raina’s soft voice broke the silence.

“Who is Charlotte?”

The unexpected question hit Logan like a punch to the stomach, mostly because the inquiry had come straight out of left field. “How do you know about Charlotte?” he asked, even though he knew the culprit was most likely Emily.

“Your sister mentioned her, before things went south at the dinner table,” she said, her tone lighter than it had been since the incident she spoke of. “She said she was your ex-fiancée but didn’t give me details about what happened between the two of you, and you don’t have to, either, if you’d rather not talk about her,” she rushed to assure him.

At some point, he would have told Raina about Charlotte, and he figured now was as good a time as any if it helped give her a better sense of the boy he’d been and the man he’d become. “Charlotte and I were high school sweethearts. She was quiet and demure and naive in a way that made me want to take care of her.”

“In other words, a good girl?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s what I believed,” he said, unable to deny the truth as he briefly glanced from the road to Raina. “I was so infatuated with her. She was everything I thought I wanted when it came to a wife and my future. I always knew we’d get married someday, but I really wanted to be financially stable and have a decent amount of money in the bank before we did get married so we could afford a house of our own and have a family without struggling to pay our bills.”

“Not many young people think like that,” Raina commented, sounding impressed. “They usually just jump into marriage, have babies, and live paycheck to paycheck.”

“Exactly what I
didn’t
want,” he stated emphatically. “And working at the auto shop full-time at minimum wage wasn’t conducive to supporting a wife and family.”

“And taking care of your sister,” she added softly, remembering what he’d told her at breakfast yesterday morning.

He nodded in agreement. “Yeah, that, too.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility for someone so young.”

“My sister is the only family I have, and I really thought Charlotte was
the one
, and even though she was upset when I signed up for the military and left for Afghanistan without marrying her, I knew I was doing the right thing. I put an engagement ring on her finger as a promise to marry her. I moved her into my small apartment to take care of it while I was gone, and sent money home for both her and my sister to live on, and put the rest in the bank for the future.”

He turned into the parking lot to Raina’s complex and brought the car to a stop in a space near her unit. She made no move to leave the vehicle, clearly wanting all the details, and so he glanced her way and gave them to her.

“I kept in touch with Charlotte the best I could during that first tour of duty, but as the months went on, her letters and packages grew further apart, and whenever I did get the chance to call her, she always had the excuse that she was busy working or taking on extra hours, but I could feel the distance growing between us, and I think in my gut I knew something was up, even when she swore everything was fine.”

He stretched his arm across the back of her seat, touching her silky hair and running the soft strands between his fingers. “After a little over nine months in the military, I was granted my first leave. I wanted to surprise my sister and Charlotte, so I flew back home, and at six a.m. on a Saturday morning, I let myself into my apartment and went to the bedroom, only to find Charlotte in
my bed
with my best friend, Tommy. They were sleeping, but the way they were naked and wrapped around each other told me clearly just how intimate things were.”

She sucked in a breath, her eyes widening in shock. “What did you do?”

His fingers found their way to the nape of her neck, and he absently stroked his thumb along that soft patch of skin. “I was sick to my stomach, and I wanted to scream and yell at the both of them and wreak some havoc and flip some tables, but instead, I remained oddly calm and controlled, thanks to military training, and propped my backside up against the wall and waited for one or both of them to wake up.”

“Who was the first?” she asked, her voice low but undeniably curious.

“Charlotte. But she didn’t see me right away and started to go down on Tommy to wake him up. Surprisingly, by that time I was more disgusted with the both of them than angry, and just when she had him good and hard and Tommy was about to come, I cleared my throat to let them know they had a visitor.” He grinned deviously.

She bit her bottom lip, trying to contain the mirth sparkling in her eyes. “You didn’t!”

“Yeah, I did, and Charlotte screeched and nearly bit off his dick when she jerked away from him, and Tommy couldn’t get out of that bed fast enough, except the sheet got tangled around his legs, and he fell flat on his face with his bare ass up in the air.” Their
oh shit
reaction had been comical, and Logan had to admit that having the upper hand in that moment had been so satisfying and had gone a long way in soothing his bruised ego.

She burst out laughing. “Serves them both right. Did you beat the crap out of your friend?”

“I wanted to. Badly,” he admitted. “But I knew it wouldn’t change anything, and I didn’t need to end up in jail for assault while I was still in the military. Besides, Charlotte was just as much at fault, and I figured they could have one another.”

He shook his head, still unable to believe her gall. “What gets me the most is that she didn’t even have the decency to tell me about her and Tommy. She was living in my apartment, using the money I sent her to live off of, and shacking up with my best friend while I was trying to make a better future for the two of us. And you want to know the excuse she gave me as to why she was screwing my best friend?
She was fucking lonely
,” he said bitterly. “As if me being in a godforsaken war-torn foreign country for nine hellish months wasn’t lonely, depressing, and miserable for me every goddamn day.”

She touched her hand to his cheek, her gaze glimmering with compassion and understanding. “Charlotte didn’t deserve a man like you.”

“She did me a favor,” he said, meaning it as he rubbed his jaw against her palm, her caring warmth suffusing deep into his bones. “In the long run, I’m not sure I would have been happy with someone so passive and weak and insecure.”

The pad of her thumb skimmed across his bottom lip, the beginnings of a naughty grin lifting the corners of her mouth. “No more good girls for you, huh?”

“Nope. I much prefer them bad.” He caught her wrist and sank his teeth into the heel of her hand and heard her breath catch in the shadowy car. “Very,
very
bad,” he murmured shamelessly.

His voice had dropped to a husky pitch as heated desire replaced those past memories of Charlotte’s deceit that no longer felt like a stab to the heart. Yeah, he’d done the right thing by walking away, because now he’d found a woman who was so perfect for him, in so many ways. And he’d do whatever it took to make sure she gave them a chance beyond his temporary assignment as her bodyguard.

She leaned across the console, her breath warm and damp in his ear as she whispered, “Wanna be bad with me?”

Oh, fuck yeah.
His dick swelled, totally on board with that idea, as well. “That depends.” He moved his head back so he could look into her eyes, which were already eating him up with all sorts of sinful promises. “Are you going to try and cock block me again?”

She laughed lightly and dropped her hand to stroke the hard length of his erection beneath the fly of his jeans, teasing him with her seductive caress. “If I do, you can spank me.”

He grinned. God, he loved this delicious power play between them, that sassy mouth of hers, and her attempt to be in control when he knew, in the end, he was going to be the one to make
her
scream, beg, and melt for him. “I’ve got something far dirtier and kinkier in mind tonight than spanking.”

There was no mistaking the flash of excitement that brightened her eyes. “Then why are we sitting in your car when we could be in my bedroom doing those dirty, kinky things?”

Why, indeed.

This
was what they were good at and where he could connect with Raina not only physically but intimately and emotionally, as well. And tonight, by the time he was done with her, he’d make sure that she was marked and claimed and there was no question in her mind that she was completely and utterly his.

*     *     *

Dirty, kinky, messy,
filthy, with a whole lot of improper fucking thrown in for good measure…Raina wanted it all with Logan Cruz.

Desire suffused her entire body as she leaned back against the wall by the closed front door, impatiently waiting while Logan did his normal sweep of her apartment. Within a few minutes, he finished his job and was walking toward her, his stride purposeful, as was the blazing-hot gleam in his eyes that told her she was in for another wild, intense, and pleasurable ride with him tonight.

She pressed her hands to the wall behind her, her heart beating heavily in anticipation as he closed the distance between them, his toned, muscled body moving with lithe grace—a gorgeous body that was nothing short of a woman’s sensual playground.
Her
playground for tonight, she thought, already feeling the deep, clenching need he so effortlessly ignited in her.

“Everything good?” she asked breathlessly.

His green eyes glittered with wicked intent. “Yeah, but it’s about to get a whole lot better.”

As soon as he reached her, he plunged both of his hands into her loose hair. His fingers gripped the strands tight against her scalp, and he tipped her head back, holding her in place as his head descended. Her lips parted on a soft gasp, and he seized her mouth in a deep, tongue-tangling, scorching kiss that stripped away every thought in her mind except for the lust and hunger vibrating between them.

This was exactly what she needed. Mindless pleasure and a blissful distraction from everything that had happened earlier at his sister’s, along with the hurt and disappointment she wanted to forget. Making sure all those vulnerable emotions were locked away, she focused on the here and now and this delicious man who was all hers for the night.

With a soft moan against his lips, she pulled his T-shirt from his jeans and pushed her hands beneath the hem until she touched his firm abdomen. She quickly skimmed her hands higher, dragging the soft cotton with her, and he broke the kiss so she could strip the shirt over his head and toss it aside. Then he was back again, his mouth devouring hers, his hips grinding his confined erection seductively against her pelvis.

Reaching her hands between them, she unbuttoned his jeans, unzipped them, and skimmed her palms into the waistband of his pants and briefs, then around to his backside. She pushed both down off his hips and slid her hands over his firm ass, then lower, until his jeans and underwear were bunched around his thighs and she felt his rigid shaft spring free.

She brought her hands back around and wrapped her fingers around his cock, feeling the solid length of him in her hand for the very first time. He was thick and hard, his flesh like heated velvet over a rod of steel. She squeezed and stroked him in a tight fist, and with a deep growl, Logan pulled his mouth from hers and slowly unraveled his fingers from her hair as his gaze met hers, burning with the need to dominate.

“Get on your knees and suck my cock,” he rasped darkly.

His command made her wet and her stomach flutter. She wanted to obey that order, and he obviously
expected
her to, but she planned to exert her own bit of power over him while she still could, because she knew with him, having any kind of upper hand wouldn’t last long. “There is nothing I’d love to do more than get on my knees and suck your cock,” she said, skimming her tongue across her bottom lip in anticipation. “But I have one condition for you.”

He raised a dark, insolent brow, clearly not used to negotiating anything. “And what condition is that?”

She leaned forward and licked a path up to his ear, tasting the salt on his skin. “Flatten both of your palms on the wall and keep them there while I suck you off,” she said as she circled the pad of her thumb around the head of his shaft. “If you touch me with your hands in any way to try and dictate how this blow job is going to go, I’ll stop, and you can finish the job yourself.”

He chuckled, a deep rumble in his chest. “You’re so fucking bossy.”

“My mouth. My rules.” She gave him a sassy grin. “No hands allowed. Think you can manage that?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” he drawled, his gaze glimmering much too confidently as he splayed his hands on the wall on either side of her head. “No touching. My hands won’t ever leave this spot on the wall.”

“I’ve yet to get my mouth on
you
, and I’ve got a lot of ground to cover and don’t want any distractions,” she said, placing a hot, damp kiss on his neck, then lightly biting a patch of skin, making him groan, long and low, and shift restlessly on his feet. “I want to lick you, taste you, and make you burn.”

“Already there, sugar,” he said huskily.

Determined to enjoy this small amount of control that was hers for a while, she leisurely kissed her way down his neck to his shoulder, then across his wide chest. She grazed her teeth across his nipple and flicked it with her tongue.

On a sharp inhale, Logan’s hips jerked reflexively, rocking his erection into the clasp of her hand.

Smiling, she continued her journey downward, loving the way the chiseled muscles of his abdomen flexed and tightened against the hot, open-mouthed press of her lips against his taut flesh. She used her tongue to trace and count each one of his eight-pack abs and followed the tempting, well-defined line of muscle that led from his hip down to his groin until she was finally on her knees in front of him.