Wild: The Ivy Chronicles (9 page)

Chapter 10

M
AY SLIPPED INTO
J
UNE
and summer arrived.

Logan didn’t ask to crash at the apartment anymore, and I tried not to wonder why. According to the shift schedule, he was still working. He just wasn’t knocking on my door at the end of the night. Maybe it got too weird that night he wrote his name on my skin. Despite the chemistry between us, I wasn’t going to sleep with him. Maybe he decided he already had one female friend and didn’t need another one. I did force him to watch a chick flick and then sleep on a bumpy futon. Whatever the case, the days passed without any more encounters and I told myself it was for the best.

With the advent of summer, I didn’t need a jacket in the evenings anymore. Not that I was out too much at night. The mornings were still chilly though when I stepped outside Mulvaney’s into the smoky blue predawn for my morning runs. But by the time I finished my newly amended route that cut through a nearby park rather than campus, I was sweating and the crisp air felt good on my skin.

I developed a new summer routine. After my runs, I showered and headed to campus. I worked in the library through the afternoon. Usually by myself. I hadn’t seen Gillian since our first meeting. Sometimes Connor would join me, although he wasn’t tasked with compiling statistics. I didn’t mind his company. Working on research was a solitary task, and his presence kept me from getting lonely. There were several more coffee dates at the Java Hut, and I guess they were dates because he always paid.

I was usually home before dark. Lame existence, I knew. What twenty-year-old was in bed by ten? That was probably why I agreed when Connor asked me to dinner and a movie. To save me from total, utter lameness.

It was nice. Nice to be out with someone with similar interests. Even if all we ever talked about was Dr. Chase’s research project and mutual classes we’d both taken and his grad program and what I might do after graduation. So very adult. So very boring. Nothing like Logan, who said outrageous things that made my face burn fire. But who needed that?

I knew going out with Connor on a Friday night was a risk. I had timed most of my comings and goings around when Logan was working so we didn’t have to run into each other. The shift schedule was conveniently posted on a wall in the kitchen, and after I agreed to the date I had checked and seen that Logan was working that night. It had taken sheer willpower not to reschedule with Connor. I refused to be that big of a coward. So what if I saw him again? He wouldn’t try anything. He’d made that much clear. Not unless I expressly invited him, and that so wasn’t going to happen.

Mulvaney’s parking lot was packed. I knew it would be on a Friday night. As Connor pulled up to the curb and peered through the window at the rowdy line snaking out the back door, he looked concerned. “Want me to walk you in?”

“No, it’s fine. I can squeeze through.”

“You sure? I don’t mind.”

“I’m fine. Once I’m inside it’s a short walk to the kitchen and no one can go in there except staff. The door to my loft is in the back of the kitchen.” At his still dubious expression, I added, “It’s safe. Promise.”

His gaze flickered to mine, the brown eyes softening. “I had a really good time, Georgia.”

“Me, too.” I nodded, hating this part. The awkward good-night. Would he kiss me? Did I want him to? He must have read something in my demeanor because he settled back in his seat without making the dreaded move. “I’ll text you.”

“Sounds good. Thanks for tonight.”

When I opened the car door, all the sounds that had been muffled were suddenly amplified. It was like diving into a pool of voices and activity as I pushed through the back line.

“Hey!” one girl exclaimed. “No cuts. We’re waiting.”

I ignored her and kept moving until I spotted the familiar face of Chris, one of the bouncers checking IDs at the door.

He waved me through, snapping at people to get out of my way and let me pass.

“Thanks,” I said loudly over the din. He nodded and flashed me a smile.

I continued ahead, trying to hurry toward the kitchen, but there were a lot of people crowded around the counter, ready to place their orders, and they were very protective of their space, glaring at me like I was trying to cut ahead of them in line.

I felt out of place in my maxi dress. It was sleeveless, held up only by tiny halter straps that wrapped around my neck.

Good for a date, but not exactly what one wore to a bar, and I felt that keenly in the lingering looks I was getting.

“Excuse me,” I said to a trio of guys who blocked my path to the hatch door in the counter that I needed to reach. They all wore baseball caps and their faces were flushed from beer and heat.

They stopped talking and looked down at me.

“I’m trying to get through,” I explained, pointing beyond them as though that would help make them understand.

The taller guy in the group pointed to his chest. “Through us?”

I nodded. “Yes. Excuse me,” I said again.

“What will you give me?”

I blinked.

He pushed back his cap, revealing sweaty dark hair at the crown of his head. “Yeah. You gotta pay a toll.”

I laughed nervously.

I was about to start my third year of college. I’d been to plenty of bars. Been hit on by drunk guys. However, I was usually in the company of Emerson or Pepper or Suzanne. And usually it was Emerson’s mouth that did the talking—telling guys like this off.

“Come on, guys,” I coaxed. “I’m not cutting in line. I just need to get to the kitchen.”

He looked at his buddies and cocked his head as if considering my request. “Maybe just a kiss?”

His friends laughed.

Anger flashed through me. Who was he to make demands of me? I get that some other girl with a few beers in her might not have minded the attention. She would probably be happy to play his game, but I wasn’t one of them.

He leaned down until our faces were on level. “Come on. Give me some sugar.”

I clenched my jaw, tempted to take a swing at that face with those puckering fish lips. My fingers curled into a fist, ready to take a swing at his ruddy, perspiring features. “Get out of my way.”

Then suddenly he was out of my face. Logan was there, stepping around me. He shoved Fish Lips hard against the shoulder and knocked him off balance. The guy staggered. Clearly the alcohol didn’t help his equilibrium.

Regaining his footing, he came back at Logan with a double-handed shove.

Logan stood his ground, hardly budging from the force. He stared Fish Lips down, indifferent to the two guys on either side of him who suddenly looked ready for a fight. I licked my lips and glanced around to see if help was coming from any of the other bouncers. Three to one weren’t the best odds.

And then Fish Lips’s gaze flicked to the Mulvaney’s logo on Logan’s shirt, clearly recognizing him as staff. Some of the tension ebbed from him as he demanded, “What the fuck, man?”

Some of the fight went out of his buddies, too. They no longer looked ready to jump Logan.

Fish Lips went into instant restrained-pissed-guy mode, puffing out his chest and practically standing on his tiptoes to match Logan’s six-feet-plus frame. “What’s your problem?”

Logan jerked his thumb in the direction of the back door. “You can take your boys and go for the night.”

“You’re kicking us out, man?”

“Harassing girls is something we frown on,
man
.”

Fish Lips looked ready to argue, his hands flexing open and shut at his sides.

One of Fish Lips’s friends clapped him on the back. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Come back in here and harass any girl again and you’ll be blacklisted from Mulvaney’s,” Logan added.

Fish Lips snarled as he started walking away with his boys, his body twisting beneath their hands. “Like I’d ever step foot in this shit hole again.”

I turned an uncertain gaze on Logan.

He was staring at me unwaveringly. That stare alone made me feel like I needed to apologize. For what, I didn’t know. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I moistened my lips. “You didn’t need to do that.”

Both his eyebrows winged. “Oh, no?”

I shook my head and then yelped as he grabbed my hand. “What are you doing?” I demanded over the buzz of voices as he pulled me through bodies.

“Escorting you to your room.” He flipped up the counter, and instantly we were free of the hot press of humanity. It was like suddenly breaking through the water and taking your first deep breath of air.

“That’s not necessary,” I said as we walked past Karla working the counter and back into the kitchen. Cook didn’t even look up from where he was shaking salt over fries. “I can make it on my own now,” I said, digging my key out.

Logan ignored me, plucking my key from my hand and unlocking the door to the loft. Still holding on to my hand, he pulled me up the stairs after him, his feet heavy thuds on the wooden steps. “You really think it’s a good idea to live above this bar, Pearls?”

I bristled at his use of that nickname. “It’s just for the summer.”

“What? Mommy and Daddy won’t spring for a pimp apartment. You gotta stay here?”

I bit back a “no.” He didn’t need to know the particulars of my life—that my parents only paid my way as long as I did exactly as they instructed.

“I’m home now.” My sandals hit the steps hard in my mounting anger. “You can go. I don’t want to keep you from your job.”

“Saving damsels from drunks is part of the job requirement.”

We reached the top floor and I tugged my hand free of the warm clasp of his fingers. “Yeah?” I tossed my handbag on the futon and turned to face him.

“Yeah,” he tossed back. “I’m pretty sure it’s even more important to my brother when the damsel happens to be a good friend of his.”

I narrowed my eyes on him. “Did Reece tell you to look after me?”

He snorted and crossed his arms over his chest, advancing on me. Those well-carved lips curved as he spoke. “That goes without saying.”

“Oh.” I inched back, stopping when the back of my knees hit the edge of the futon. “You think he would approve, then, of you hitting on me?”

Chuckling, he stopped directly in front of me, leaving only a thin line of space between us. “I don’t answer to my brother. I’ve been my own man for a long time.”

I had a flash of memory then. Pepper telling me that Reece was only eight when their mother died. Logan would have been just three then. And their father was a mean drunk. Cruel and bitter even before the accident that put him in a wheelchair. Yes. By all accounts, Logan had been his own man for a long time. He had missed his childhood entirely.

The breadth of his chest was so close, vibrating with an energy and vitality that made something inside me quiver . . . stretch soundlessly toward him in response. But it was an invisible thing, buried deep inside me. I refused to let it loose.

I made no move. No sound. The clean, musky scent that I was coming to learn as belonging to him enveloped me, filling my nostrils.

He lifted a hand, dragging his thumb down my cheek. His fingers trailed down my throat, stopping just above my neckline and picking up a lock of hair, rubbing the long strand between his fingers. “I don’t check with my brother for approval when I decide that I want a girl.”

I swallowed. He wanted me. I knew that, I guess. Even if he had stopped spending the night on my futon. But still . . . hearing him say it like that. While he was looking at me like he wanted to devour me. Like I was the one thing on this earth that he needed.

He continued, “This is between us, Georgia. It’s no one else’s business.” His fingers tightened around my hair, wrapping it around his fist and forcing me closer until our bodies were flush.

Us
. It was tempting to believe there was an us. That there could be.

“There is no us,” I whispered, my lips brushing his jawline as I spoke. Deliberately. Because I had to. Because I couldn’t stop myself.

“Because you won’t let it happen,” he countered, his fist tightening in my hair, tugging my head back to look him in the eyes.

Was that why he’d been staying away? Because he was mad at me for not putting out?
I shook my head and then froze as he bowed his head, burying his face in my neck, nuzzling my skin and turning slightly so that his mouth grazed my ear. “Let it happen, Georgia.”

He bit down on my earlobe and pleasure spiked through me strong enough that my knees almost buckled. I grabbed his shoulders, holding on to him. He released my earlobe and breathed into the whorls of my ear, his voice coming out hoarse. “Do you know how you look in this dress? How badly I want to pull it up around your thighs.”

I exhaled a ragged breath and shivered, shaking my head no.

His mouth skated down my throat, lips skimming over the straps. “I want to tear these tiny little strings, rip them off with my teeth . . .”

God. I’d never had anyone
breathe
words that hot into my ear before. I didn’t think I even remembered conversation happening when Harris and I fooled around, but Logan talked. Something told me he would talk all throughout it. Sexy, dirty words. And I had to be honest with myself—I liked that. I wanted that.

He gave my hair a slight tug, pulling my head back even farther and arching my throat. “Then I’d do other things to you. With my mouth. My tongue. My teeth. I’d taste all of you, every inch of your sweet peach skin . . .”

A thrill shot through me. I felt his words as effectively as a skilled touch.

With one hand still fisted in my hair, holding me hostage, his other hand was free to roam, free to toy with one of the straps that he had threatened to tear. “Were you on a date, Georgia? Is that why you put on your pretty dress? Did you let him kiss you? Touch you?”

I made a strained, incoherent sound and shook my head.

“No?” he asked idly, giving my head another tug. “He didn’t kiss you?”

“N-no.”

“Good. Because that wouldn’t be very fair to the bastard, would it? Kissing him when it’s me you want.”

I sputtered, then laughed hoarsely, fighting to hold his brilliant blue gaze and not look away. “God. You’re arrogant.”