Pursuit (13 page)

"
What?" He made a grab at her but she stepped away and managed to elude him.

She slid her arms up and attempted to cover her breasts while she held her hand to her mouth, trying to suppress her nerves.
"I don't have anyone to wave a magic wand over me or sprinkle stardust in my hair and supply me with clothes and stuff.
I have to work
. I need to eat. Pay my bills. That kind of crap. What exactly are you suggesting I do? Quit my very high-paying job just because my boss likes the way I look and thinks it might bring him some business? Besides, I can't prove that. He's never hit on me. He's freakin' in love with his wife. If anything, he sees me as a granddaughter. The dude is old, Logan. Yeah, maybe he thinks I'm sweet and pretty and that I know how to help the sales guys get customers to sign contracts. Go figure. It's the world. It's out there everywhere."

"
Lauren--" He began to pull her back into his arms but she backed up a step.

"
Really
. I'm asking you what the fuck do you really want from me, Logan?"

His mouth clamped.
"Come back here."

"
No." She took another step back and shook her head.

He followed her, a dark mask clouding his countenance.
"Come. Back.
Here."

"
No.
And the truth of the matter is that you don't know what you want, do you? You
know
I can't quit my job." Rancor sharpened her voice. "You're just pissed because I have a life that doesn't include you."

"
That's not it," he intoned harshly, both accusation and a threat of punishment glittering in his eyes.

Lauren took another step backwards, wondering what kind of fire she was playing with.
"I think it is."

He took a menacing,
sexual
step forward. "You'd be wrong."

Lauren swung away and hadn
't taken two strides before he pounced on her.

Logan
's hands sank into Lauren's hips and he lifted her from behind and carried her, vertically, to the bed. He twisted her around, tossed her on her back and followed her down.

He loomed over her and something intense flared between them as they stared into each other
's eyes. They panted together; they were so close together that they pulled in each other's oxygen. His gaze raked over her naked chest and without hesitation, he reached down and stripped her skirt and underwear from her body, leaving her completely nude.

Lauren
's heart beat erratically as her body filled with a pulsing heat that held her in its grip. Logan's cheekbones tinged a deep red as he caged her in, and the tic in his jaw began throbbing, proving his involvement in the moment. The air around them electrified and her heart lurched with excitement.

He rose to his knees and then to his feet and shrugged out of his remaining clothes, never taking his eyes away from her. He came back to her fully naked, and Lauren began to feel a mild panic as he began to lift her leg to the position over his arm that he seemed to favor so much.
"Stop," she squeaked.

He halted with effort, fire blazing from his narrowed eyes. His nostrils flared and he shook his head as if to clear it.
"What the fuck, babe? You can't be asking me to stop."

Lauren heard the pure agony in his voice and took a deep breath.
God, no, she didn't want him to stop.
"I'm not asking you to stop. I'm telling you to get a condom."

With a rare moment of discomposure, he pulled away from her, a stream of obscenities leaving his mouth.

Returning to her twenty seconds later, he crawled back on top of her and pushed her legs apart. He lifted her leg until it was hooked over his arm and his other hand grabbed her wrists and manacled them over her head. He leaned down and kissed her, his tongue going in deep, tasting the farthest recesses of her mouth. His lips continued to cover hers hungrily and as he tasted her, his erection lay hot and heavy on her stomach between them.

His kiss suddenly became punishing, and Lauren
's heart skipped an extra beat as she realized the depth of the emotions conflicting him.

He lifted his head and stared down at her.
"Someday you're not going to ask me to wear a rubber; you're going to want my cum. You won't be scared of it forever. I promise you that, babe. It'll happen, mark my words."

What he was telling her was blowing her mind.
Was he telling her that she was going to want his babies? Was he acting as if that was what he wanted as well?
Lauren shuddered as he began to push inside, his manhood long and thick and probing.

He stopped just an inch inside of her, at the place where he stretched her, at the place where she desperately needed him to go farther. Her eyelids closed but he wouldn
't have it. "Open your eyes and look at me."

Lauren
's pulse skittered as she opened her eyes. His mouth was flattened, as if he were fighting his arousal, trying to prove a point to her. "I get that you have to go out of town." His fist released her hands and he sank his fingers into her scalp, holding her hostage. "I get that you have to have a job," he growled,
"for now."
His lips pulled over his teeth in a snarl.
"But that doesn't mean that I have to like it."

He pulled back and pushed all the way inside and Lauren mewled in the back of her throat as his fullness inundated her, her wet heat easing his way. His hand tightened and his face was slashed with lines of arousal.
"But while you're away, while all those motherfuckers are sitting with you and fucking around with you and doing nothing but dreaming about
fucking your little ass,"
he paused, as if his own words enraged him, and took another stroke and slammed back in. "Don't you forget that you belong
to me.
Every inch of you, Lauren.
It's mine
. You understand me? I'm not going to share. I'm
never
going to share, and I'll kill any cocksucker who tries to take what's mine." His hand left her hair and slid down and lifted her chin. "Do you understand me?"

"
Yes." It was all Lauren could say. She understood all right.
She understood
that she shouldn't love the tone of his voice,
but she did
. She understood that she shouldn't find his words and his actions hotly addicting,
but she did
. She knew she shouldn't love his over-the-top machismo,
but Jesus
, she did. And just as long as he continued to protect her, take care of her and cherish her and want her as badly as he did, she was going to ignore what she
should be
feeling, and concentrate only on what she
was
feeling.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, ready to concede this to him so he
'd put her out of her misery and start
moving.
"Yeah, I understand. I'm yours and you won't share," she repeated succinctly. "Is that what you're telling me?"

His fingers pinched her chin and he kissed her hotly, firmly, just once.
"Yeah, that's it," he growled.

She pressed her hands to the back of his neck to urge him closer.
"
I agree,
so will you just shut up and fuck me now?"

The last thing she saw on his face was total satisfaction before his mouth came back to hers. He began pumping into her with long, even strokes that completely decimated her and sent her heat index soaring. He adjusted her legs and sank in even more deeply, going all the way inside and hitting the sweet spot that had her coming in seconds.

Lauren heard a ringing in her ears and a faint scream coming from somewhere in the room and barely recognized that she was the one making the noise.

Logan reared up on his knees and began hammering her with such inflamed strokes that she thought she
'd died and blissfully floated off to heaven.

She heard his low groan, and then it turned into a heavy growl as he pushed against her womb, coming inside of her and completing her in a way that she knew only he would be able to.

****

Lauren was gone for four days and Logan somehow managed to play nice on the evening that she returned. She had no idea how he managed it, but she gave him big points.

He took her out to dinner and he made slow, hot love to her, three times, in his bed. He didn't refer to her trip at all, not even once, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Since he managed to restrain his words, she couldn't really hold it against him when he held her just a little bit tighter, breathed in her scent just a little bit deeper, and pushed her to achieve more orgasms in one love-making session than she'd ever thought possible.

Yes, he played
very nice
. But the next night, it came close to all hell breaking loose again. And Lauren really didn't know how it didn't. She had a happy hour and dinner meeting scheduled with new clients that she couldn't get out of. There were several members of their team going, and unfortunately, Nico was one of them. The guy just never really seemed to get that Lauren was involved with someone else, even though both she and Heidi had reiterated that fact to him several times.

He was obnoxious the entire night. His attitude reflected poorly on their company, and Lauren was so pissed she could hardly see straight. They managed to perform well at work together, so why did these after-hours meetings seem to screw him up so badly?

She breathed a sigh of relief when the evening was over. They almost got the client to sign, and there was little doubt in her mind that by the end of the week, they would.

She said goodbye to the members of her team, and she drove the clients, a man and a woman, to the airport.

All seemed well and the only thing she had to deal with now was Logan. She wasn't too worried though, because she'd pretty much figured out how to handle him. She usually just let him have his tirade and then she let him dominate her in bed, which he seemed to need, as it was the only thing that soothed him. And it didn't hurt that she craved it, as well.

There was one thing she
couldn't
do, and that was worry about her job. So, she didn't. She didn't worry about her job, and she didn't worry about Logan. It was true that his dislike of her job was a huge conflict, but in her mind at least, she'd figured out a way to make the two most important things in her life coexist.

So everything was going fairly damn well until her car spluttered and died. She
'd been at the secondary, smaller airport on the south end of town, and now she sat in her car and wondered what to do.

If she called Logan, he would use this as an excuse to rage at her for being out too late, putting herself in danger and all that.

Unfortunately she didn't have Triple A. And her father, who had always taken care of stuff like this for her, was at home in Ohio. For a brief moment, she thought about calling Heidi or John. But there was just one problem with that. Logan would find out and that would piss him off as much or more than her being out in the first place.

She abruptly quit putting it off and called Logan and waited.

"Where you at?" he questioned without any preamble, instead of answering with a simple
hello.
Lauren heard the sound of his voice and as always, it sent pleasure all the way to her toes. Would she ever get used to his caveman-like grunts? He never spoke in complete sentences. Everything was so basic with him.

"
I dropped the clients at the airport," she tried to sound matter-of-fact but wasn't sure she'd pulled it off.

He must have heard something in her voice.
"And?"

She took a shuddering breath.
"Please don't go off half-cocked."

Three long seconds passed before he answered neutrally,
"Okay."

"
My car broke down," she announced on a deflated sigh.

"
Are you with the car now?" His voice was suddenly all terse, very business-like.

"
Yes. On the shoulder of the road."

"
Okay, that's good. Do me a favor, baby." His voice gentled and wrapped around her like a caress. "Look around you. Where's the closest place with a lot of people?"

Lauren held the phone to her ear and swiveled her neck.
"There's a McDonald's across the street."

"
Can you cross the street safely?"

"
Yeah."

"
Okay. Grab your purse, switch on your flashers, and get over there and then call me back.
Do it now."

****

Logan forced himself to breathe slowly and steadily as he went to meet her. He knew she was safe; there wasn't any reason he should be panicking. He focused on that calming thought as he drove up to the McDonald's some twenty minutes later. He walked into the fast-food restaurant, and found Lauren sitting in a booth, reading on her cell phone. She glanced up with a look he couldn't read when he came to stand over her.

He attempted not to touch her, just to prove to himself that he could, but it was out of his control. He leaned down and planted a kiss on her lips.

He stood back to his full height and studied her. She looked a little shell-shocked. "I didn't see your car."

She frowned.
"They towed it."

"
What? You couldn't stop them?"

"
No. They said it was in the way and someone might hit it and get hurt. I didn't want to argue because they might have been right."

He gave her a look and tilted his head toward the door.
"Let's go."

Lauren followed him to his truck. He started the engine and then leaned toward her and tilted her chin up.
"Are you okay?" He ran his eyes over her but he couldn't make out what was making her hold herself so stiffly.

"
Yeah, just waiting." Her voice sounded resigned and he didn't care for her loss of animation.

"
Waiting for what, babe?" he asked, as gently as he could while he inhaled the fragrance of her skin and tried to absorb the calming knowledge that she was indisputably safe.

"
Waiting for you to start yelling," she responded softly.

Guilt pierced him.
"What makes you think I'm going to yell?"

She watched him, studying his features.
"You want to, don't you?"

He tried like hell to lie to her, but he couldn
't. "What I want to do is strangle your boss."

A tiny hint of a smile lifted her lips and she leaned over and kissed him on the lips.
"Thank you."

She was thanking him?
"For what?" he asked, the pleasure of her touch fucking with his brain just like it always did.

"
For not taking this out of my hide," she said, cutting her eyes to his.