Pursuit (7 page)

He took a stroke and intense pleasure lashed her. She cried out.

His lips tightened and he bared his teeth as he gritted out,
"That was good?" His lips flattened. "Or that hurt?" Lauren looked into his face and saw pure lust mixed with concern.

"
G-good," she stammered, trying to catch her breath.

He took another stroke and she cried out again.
"Oh, yeah,
good,"
he hissed out.

A
multitude of feelings inundated her as she hung on for dear life. The sexual excitement was without question, but underneath all that, just below the surface, Lauren was experiencing a plethora of mind-blowing sensations. He was amazing, his touch on her skin was amazing.

He held her in a tight vise that told of his involvement in the moment, that told of his total involvement
in her
. His arms, his eyes, his body as he hung over her smoldered with heat. His attention was all-consuming, inflexible as he all but held her captured beneath him with ruthless, commanding intent.

But there was more to it than the raw, almost feral sexual encounter. Below his dominant touch, below the uncontested duel that raged between them, she felt something else . . . the way he sucked in his breath, the way his eyes flared, the way his hands ran over her skin, there was almost . . . adoration there. Adoration and. . . care. As he held her so tightly, she felt as if there was a buffer between her and the rest of the world. As if she was safe in his arms and she could let go and enjoy the sensations he was inducing within her, because he
'd take care of her.

It was a heady, dangerous combination to her senses. His primal, aggressive force, combined with the sense of refuge she was feeling in his embrace was knocking her off-center.

She felt a shiver of response run through her at the stroke of his hand and suddenly her long-denied sexuality forced every thought from her head. The only thing left was the sexual being he'd awakened from dormant sleep.

He
found a steady rhythm, and within seconds, her womb began tightening and fireworks began exploding in her head. She tried to delay it, but she couldn't. She came hard and fast and had just enough snap to know that he was following her over the edge.

****

Lauren closed her eyes but he didn't give her much time to recover. He slid from her body and went to her bathroom. In a daze, she heard running water coming from the sink. He came back to the bed and made an attempt to put a warm washcloth between her thighs.

Lauren jerked away from him in delayed embarrassment and pulled back the covers and dove under them.

He stood by the side of the bed with a look on his face and a raging hard-on.

She stared at it, confused, her eyes wide.
"Didn't you . . . didn't you--"

"
Didn't I what?" he asked.

"
Didn't you . . . come?"

His expression filled with amusement.
"Yeah. The evidence is in the condom in the trashcan. Want to see it?"

She began shaking her head, but her eyes remained glued to his erection as the oxygen stuck in her throat.

He took the washcloth back to the bathroom and came back to stand over the bed again. Lauren watched him from under the sheet.

He put one knee on the bed and then made a move to pull back the covers. He looked as if he had every intention of having another bout of sex, but Lauren didn
't think she was ready for that quite yet and held on tightly to the sheet. What she'd experienced already had her brain fried like an egg, and above all else, she desperately needed to put a small amount of distance between them.

Even if that distance was only comprised of some clothes on her body and getting away from the bedroom.

She scooted up on the bed until her back was against the headboard and she held the sheet all the way up to her chin. His eyes narrowed on her and he moved onto the bed fully, up on his knees, and stared down at her. "What gives, sweetheart?" he asked as he ran a single finger on top of the sheet, from her knee to the valley between her breasts.

She shook her head,
"Nothing."

"
Let me have the sheet." His hand fisted around the edge of the cover.

She shook her head again.

"Are we playing a little game here? You want me to play along?"

Her eyes flared and her breath became lodged in her throat.
"No," she managed. "No game. I just n-need a little time, okay?"

"
How much time?" His muscles tensed and his gaze became pointed.

"
More than you need, by all evidence."

He smiled at that answer and continued to watch her and then reached for her once again. Lauren sucked in a breath and reared back from him.
"You remember what you t-told me?"

"
What was that?" he asked, his eyes going down to the breasts she was keeping hidden behind the sheet.

"
You told me to tell you . . . if you were pushing too hard." She licked her lips and let out a controlled breath. "You're pushing too hard."

At her words, his eyes found hers again and something flared in them that she couldn
't interpret. He nodded swiftly, only once.

She attempted to move them along and the situation out of the bedroom.
"That was Chinese take-out, right?" she asked.

"
Yep."

"
I'm hungry," she said simply and untruthfully.

For a prolonged moment he only stared at her, and Lauren was very much afraid he was going to pounce on her again. But he didn
't. He merely rose from the bed in splendid nudity and held out his hand to her. "Well, then, by all means, let's eat."

Lauren knew her face was flushed red; she could feel it. She stayed under the covers and made no move to take his hand.
"No, that's okay. You go on and get dressed and I'll be in there in a minute."

"
I just saw you completely and totally naked, Lauren. And I gotta tell you, I approve, one hundred percent. You really don't have anything to hide from me." He reached down and snagged his jeans and pulled them over his hips,
sans
underwear, Lauren noticed.

Geez. She approved of his naked body a hundred percent as well. But then, he was awesome naked. Tall, muscular, tanned, there really wasn
't a single aspect of him that wasn't perfect. Well, at least physically. His total arrogance was another matter entirely.

But evidently, he planned on going easy on her because all he did was send her a searing look and then he walked from the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind him.

****

Logan forced himself to walk from her bedroom and close the door. Did he want to? Hell, no. He wanted to stay and sink inside of her again, and short of that, he wanted to stand back and watch as she crawled out from underneath that damn sheet she
'd hidden beneath. He wanted to see what she looked like naked, when she was standing. He wanted to span her waist with his hands and see his thumbs pressing against her abdomen. He wanted to see exactly how wide or how narrow her hips were in proportion to her breasts. He wanted to see the line of her naked collarbone and he wanted to see the hollow of her throat.

Most of all, he wanted
the right
to stand there and watch her, he wanted an invisible chain that bound her to him so she couldn't get away from him as easily as she'd just done, and he wanted the satisfaction of knowing that she wanted that just as much as he did.

He scrubbed his hand over his face in agitation when he realized the direction of his thoughts. He needed to get a fucking grip and slow the fuck down or he was going to send her running.

And damned if he would allow that to happen.

She was too perfect, too sexy, too sweet, just as he
'd told her. And he hadn't had enough of her yet. Not even close. He could still taste her on his tongue, and he wanted more. He could still feel his hands wrapped around her wrists, and he wanted more. He could remember the exact moment she'd exploded in spasms around him,
and he wanted more.

Yeah, he needed to get a grip and slow the fuck down before he scared her off. He definitely needed to tone it down a notch or two, because there wasn
't any way in hell she was going to get away from him this quickly.

He
'd play her game for awhile, let her think she was in control of this thing between them, because it wouldn't help his case a damn bit for her to know how goddamn
obsessed
he was already. He was feeling a hot, possessive streak that he'd never felt for another woman, an aggressive need to mark her as his territory.

He sucked in oxygen and blew it out slowly. Shit yeah, he needed to calm the fuck down. Not only would it scare the shit out of her, it was beginning to scare the shit out of him.

An hour later, they'd eaten together, mostly in silence, and Lauren moved around the compact kitchen cleaning up the mess. She glanced at Logan, feeling a subtle ache between her legs. Not so much of a sexual need, but an actual ache from where he'd been just a little over an hour ago. Her inner muscles had been stretched and exercised, and Lauren was feeling the effects already.

As she leaned over the counter, scrubbing at an invisible spot, her mind working feverishly, Logan came up behind her and she felt the hair pulled from her neck and his hot mouth on her skin.

Her hand stilled as a wave of heat transmitted itself from his body to hers.

She sucked in a breath as she felt his teeth sink into her skin as his hands reached around and enclosed her breasts.

She jerked in his arms and moaned softly. He tweaked her already tender nipples, and his mouth on her neck, just short of pain, was inducing a flood of moisture between her thighs that begged her to let him have his way in this. Lauren tried to capture a thought, any thought, but couldn't and only fell into the pleasure that his embrace induced.

After the episode in the bedroom, she
'd dressed in t-shirt and shorts, and now, she felt him drag her shorts and underwear down her legs. There was no need for him to seduce her; she was way beyond that.

Her cloth
es pooled around her ankles, and when he instructed her to step out of them, she did as he said without question.

She heard his zipper come undone, and the rustle of a condom, and within seconds, he was pushing into her from behind. He held her hips in his hands, and instantaneously, she flooded with wet heat. Seconds after he bottomed out within her, she contracted around him, and he groaned, and then began sliding in and out in a rhythm that sent ecstasy shooting through her body.

It took only a minute of his hard strokes, and Lauren felt the wave sweep over her and she began coming. His teeth bit into her neck harder, and as his hands stilled on her hips and he held her grasped to him in a merciless grip, Lauren knew that they were coming together.

****

Fifteen minutes later, Lauren sat on the sofa in a daze. She'd cleaned up quickly in her small bathroom, and then moved out of his way so that he could do the same.

She picked up the remote while she waited for him, and absently began surfing through the channels, paying absolutely not a whit of attention to what was playing. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears, and no matter how much she tried to focus, she couldn
't believe that they'd had sex so soon after meeting each other, and to top it off, twice within a matter of an hour or so.

And not only that . . . she had the feeling that she hadn
't been just another notch on his proverbial bedpost. She wasn't worried that he'd never want to see her again. In fact, it was just the opposite. She was getting the vibe that after what they'd done together, his arrogance and his alpha tendencies were only going to grow.

He came to stand in the threshold between her bedroom and the living room, and as he remained there in silence, Lauren had no choice but to glance up. She found his expression foreboding as he studied her.

The look on his face put her back up. "What's wrong? What did I do?"

He frowned at her and shook his head.
"Nothing," he replied in a voice that was, by far, the gentlest tone she'd ever heard from him.

He continued to study her intently and Lauren swallowed.
"Then what's wrong?"

He flattened his lips and put one hand to his mouth in a fist, working it as if he didn
't want to voice his thought out loud. He looked away and finally, with resignation, back to her. "The condom busted."

Lauren was already more than a little disconcerted, and all she had was an automatic response,
"I'm sorry."

"
It's not your fault, sweetheart," he said gently.

He continued to watch her, almost carefully, and Lauren began to feel light-headed as the implications of his words began to register. A busted condom.
A busted condom. A. Busted. Condom.

"
You don't seem worried," he said, matter-of-factly, noticing the lack of expression of her face. "You're on birth control, then?"

All at once a roaring began in her ears and the residual shock she was feeling from having sex with him disappeared in a flash as another worry took precedence. She tried to speak, but the oxygen snarled in her lungs as she felt the blood drain from her face.

There was no question that he saw her reaction. "Honey, I'm clean, I swear."

She began shaking her head, and she stood to her feet and covered her mouth with both hands and spoke through them, her voice muffled.
"No."

Her stance probably reflected her horror and he left the doorway where he stood and walked swiftly across the small room and put his hands on her shoulders.
"I'm clean, baby. Calm down."

She tilted her head and looked up at him.
"I'm not on birth-control."

The horror she was feeling was now reflected on his face.
"What? Why?"

She broke away from his hold and paced a few feet away from him toward the kitchen area. Her panic was fast blending with anger.
"What do you want me to say here, Logan?"

"
Okay, I'm sorry. So you're not on anything."

"
No, I'm not," she said.

He studied her silently from across the room.
"What do you want to do?"

Logan seemed so adamant that he was clean that Lauren was going to trust him on that for the moment and think about the risk of pregnancy and whether or not she should go buy some emergency contraceptives. She wasn
't enthused about the idea, as the last time she'd tried the pill, it had made her so nauseous that she'd thrown up and been out of commission for a couple of days. And emergency contraceptives were probably about ten times as strong.

She didn
't want to panic. She began counting and realized almost immediately that she was probably okay.

She glanced up at him and shook her head.

At her silence, he asked, "What does that mean?"

"
I think it's going to be okay."

"
Are you sure?" he questioned quietly, but no less intently.

"
No!
But I think so."

"
You're not mad at me?" he asked.

The turmoil in her head was about to make her brain split in two.
"Why would I be mad at you?"

"
I don't know. The condom splitting. It was my responsibility and I fucked it up."

"
You had no control over that, right?" she asked, trying to breathe, trying to think.

"
That's right."

"
Okay, well, I think it's going to be okay. I'd rather not panic and put a bunch of hormones in my body that I
know
will make me sick." She shook her head. "But I don't know for sure, I'm going to Google it after you leave."

"
All right, sweetheart."

"
You seem pretty okay with trusting me on this," she said, trying to figure out what was inside his head.

He shrugged his shoulders.
"I trust you not to lie to me. And I've got your back on this, Lauren. If you get pregnant, we'll deal with it together."

"
What's that supposed to mean?" Lauren felt her stomach tighten in rejection of his possible meaning.
What was he going to do, pay for her to terminate the pregnancy?

"
What the hell do you think it means?
It means I'll help you raise the kid. Marry you. Support you financially. Learn to love a baby. Whatever you want, I'm here."

Lauren was all at once ashamed of what she
'd just mentally accused him of. So maybe the guy wasn't all macho jerk with only fantastic sexual charisma.

"
How soon will you know?" he asked her.

"
Not soon." Lauren didn't want to have a conversation this intimate with a guy she hardly knew, but she'd forfeited that when she'd chosen to have sex with him. "I'm safe because it's so early in my cycle."

"
So, like what? Three weeks?"

"
Yeah, something like that," she agreed.

"
You can buy a kit thing and find out sooner, right?"

"
A kit thing?" she repeated with a hint of sarcasm.

"
Test. Whatever," he growled.

"
Yeah, and I will," she said.

He watched her for a long moment and then crossed the room and slipped his hand under her chin and lifted until her eyes were on his.
"Whatever you do, it doesn't mean we're not having sex for three weeks."

"
You want to take another chance?" She almost shrieked.

"
I don't think I have a choice, darlin'." He leaned down and kissed her ear and then breathed softly into it, his arms wrapping all the way around her. "You've got me well and truly addicted."

She shuddered softly and his voice in her ear held a questioning tease.
"I'll toss the rest of the condoms that came in that box, of course." His hand slid down and gripped her gently at the vee between her legs. "You've got some here we can use later tonight, right?"

She pushed against his shoulders and after a pause he reluctantly released her.
"I can't believe that's all you think about!
And no!
I don't have any here."

The look in his eyes was remarkably mild as he studied her.
"Sweetheart, I'm only human."

"
I--I want to be alone now."

His eyes narrowed on her.
"Only if you promise you forgive me and that you'll see me tomorrow night."

Lauren desperately needed time to regroup, but she couldn
't deny that his unwavering interest was almost hypnotic to her senses. She knew she shouldn't feel that way. He was too arrogant, too macho, too much entirely
.
"Yeah, I promise."

****

Logan climbed in his truck and drove home, all the while thinking about everything that had just taken place. He'd wanted to stay with her, but she'd kicked him to the curb without so much as a qualm.

He guessed he couldn
't blame her.

She wasn
't on birth control
.

The meaning behind that sank into his brain. So maybe it was true that the hormones made her sick, but she had other options. And the fact that she had no condoms in her apartment was telling.

It was just as he'd suspected;
she was sweet
.

Damn. He wasn
't supposed to want to bang a sweet girl.

Sweet girls meant trouble. They were a threat.

He took a stabilizing breath and acknowledged the truth.

Too bad he had no damn choice in the matter.

****

As arranged via text message, Logan knocked on Lauren
's door at seven o'clock. Somehow, he had no idea how, more than a week had slipped by and they'd seen each other almost every night.

She
'd texted him a few days before that she'd taken a pregnancy test and it was negative. Thank fuck.
Shit, he was relieved
. That congealed ball of emotional crap banging around in his stomach
was
relief, right? What the hell else could it possibly be?

He
'd had a presentation the night before and hadn't been able to see her, so the forty-eight hours without her was about to drive him insane. He'd thought this shit would have cooled down by now, but it hadn't.

He tried to suppress the arousal seemingly caused by just standing in front of her door, but it was damn near impossible. She was all he
'd been able to think about all fucking day.
How fast could he get her little ass naked?

She answered right away and held the door open for him, but her cell phone was glued to her ear. She ushered him in with a vague smile as she spoke into the phone but her words made his mood deflate.
"Yes, sir. We've got it covered. John arranged for ten tickets to the Lakers game. My flight gets in at noon. I'll grab a rental and see you at the office."

Logan hung back and observed her with his mouth flattened. As she listened to whomever she was talking to, she shut the door and motioned him toward the couch.
"Yes sir, I've worked on it and the amortization of the two properties combined will easily turn a substantial profit. We're going to make money off the deal, no problem."

Logan sat down as a tension he couldn
't explain stabbed him between the shoulder blades. Lauren's soft voice continued as she walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. "I don't mind." As Logan listened to her soothe the man on the phone with her feminine tones, his head began pounding. "It's actually really interesting for me to see how the sales side of the operation works. If it eases your worries to have me there, it's no problem."