Lovestruck Read online

  “I think I just had a migraine,” he says as he gets up.

  “Yeah, okay.” That makes sense. It’s much more reasonable than thinking I’d been full of glittering golden light that somehow knocked him out. I wasn’t even going to think about the restarting his heart bit. That had to be imaginary. It just had to be.

  Logan pulls me to him. “I have to say this now, and it doesn’t matter if you can’t say it back. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I whisper back. The words come easily, but I know somehow that this isn’t going to be anything close to simple. I know as much as I’d been hurt over what Asher had done, I love him still and entirely. It’s why I couldn’t tell Logan I was mad at him. It isn’t over between us, no matter how angry I am over what he did.

  How is it possible to feel this way about more than one person? I don’t know. I only know I love them both.

  Logan’s lips press against mine, the roughness of his stubble scratching against my skin as he pulls me in close. His hard body awakens the aching lust I’ve been drowning in. Heat burns through my core. I want him, need him. His kiss is greedy, insistent. I pull away to strip out of my clothes. It feels like they’re in the way and I want them gone. There should be no barrier between us. The desire in his eyes as he drinks in every inch of my bared flesh sends delicious shivers through my body.

  He pulls me against him and lifts, taking me towards the stairs. I wrap my legs around his middle as he climbs, gasping as his jeans rub against my swollen clit with every step he takes. My breasts bounce against his chest, my nipples stimulated against him with every movement. His hand grabs my ass, pushing me even closer to him. Feeling the swell of his erection under the fabric of his jeans sparks a fresh wave of lust. He’s taking me upstairs to fuck me. We’re actually going to do this. Finally.

  I’m wet and ready for him by the time we get to the top of the staircase, so close to coming and desperate to feel his body crushing mine to the mattress. He kicks the door closed and kisses me as I unwrap my legs from his body. I push his T-shirt up, and the feel of his hard abs makes me gasp. I’ve never seen him topless before. I step back and watch as he hauls it over his head.

  The body beneath is even more impressive that I could have imagined. “Holy shit, Logan. You’re like a sculpture of a God.”

  His lips twitch. “Wait ‘til I get these off.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “I hope your mouth isn’t cashing checks your dick can’t… Oh shit.”

  “What was that you were saying?”

  “Never mind.”

  He’s big. I’ve only been with guys who were average. Hunter had thought he was huge, but he’d added a few inches to his actual size whenever he talked dirty about his dick. It didn’t seem polite to correct him. Logan wouldn’t be lying if he told me he had ten inches for me. Fucking hell.

  Maybe I’m not wet and ready enough for him after all.

  “Lie down,” he orders. I climb backwards onto the bed, not taking my eyes from him. He climbs on top of me and his mouth devours mine before he begins to move his lips to my neck, then my collar, then my breasts. He spends so long flicking his tongue over my nipples that I’m practically seeing stars by the time he moves further south. I spread my legs wider as he inches downwards.

  “You’re so wet already,” he murmurs, before he runs his tongue through my lips.

  I gasp, and I know I’m so close if he does that again I’m not going to be able to stop myself from coming. “Logan, slow down.”

  He looks up at me and the desire in his bright blue eyes makes me shiver. “This is what slow looks like with me. Relax. We’ve got all night.”

  “Fuck,” I breathe, lying back.

  He licks with less vigor, his lazy motions driving me crazy. I start to thrust my pelvis upwards and he moves back, an evil grin on his wet lips. “Hey, you wanted me to take it slower. I’m just giving you what you want.”

  “You’re going to kill me,” I moan, chasing the climax he was so close to giving me before.

  He doesn’t deny it. My heart is racing as he presses a finger inside me. His tongue is still licking languorous circles around my clit. It feels so good I can barely stand it. Then he slips a second finger in, then a third. Sliding them in and out, opening me up for him. It’s going to be so intense when he’s inside me. I can hardly wait.

  I gasp sharply as he begins to lick harder, faster. I thrust my pelvis and run my hands through his hair, pulling him in tighter. My body shakes as I get closer to losing control. The climax hits like a ton of bricks. I fight to catch my breath as he removes his fingers from my clenching pussy.

  “Logan, I need you inside me.”

  He moves up, and I feel the tip of his dick slide into place. He watches me intently as he moves slowly to let it fill me, inch by inch. “Let me know if it feels too much.”

  I moan. “It feels so good.” It’s incredible. He fills me like no man has before. When he stops inching forward I bite down on my lip.

  “That’s all of it.” He kisses my neck, his voice husky. “This is all I’ve ever wanted, Eden. You are.”

  He starts to move, achingly slowly. I’m starting to realize that’s his style. It feels like a tease but my body loves every second of it. I feel a second climax building as he gazes into my eyes.

  “I would do anything for you, Eden.” His mouth finds mine and his pace starts to speed up just as I come under him. My pussy milks his dick as his tongue invades my mouth. I wrap my legs around him and never want to let go. He speeds up more, making me take his huge dick harder and deeper. The sweet agony makes me dig my nails into his back. I’m barely done recovering from the last one when I feel another climax building within me. He feels too incredible. I never want him to stop. He’s going to though, I can tell. He’s close. His kiss gets more frantic, his thrusts so hard I can barely handle them. His groan as he spills his seed deep inside me is enough to shoot my desire into overdrive. I come one last time, gasping in breath as he breaks our kiss. I’m shaking all over, sated but hungry for more at the same time. I could never leave this bed again.

  He moves off to collapse at my side. His arms quickly pull me to him, his lips landing on my shoulder before he breathes into my ear, “I finally got you. I hope you know, I’m never letting you go.”

  In the afterglow his words make me wriggle happily closer. It’s not until he falls asleep behind me and I pull the covers over us that I start to realize what the crazy imaginary friend of mine was going on about before. The happiness I’m bathed in right now isn’t going to last. There’s a good reason I was never sure about Logan, though I couldn’t admit what it was before.

  He wants me all to himself. That isn’t going to happen.

  Chapter Sixteen

  *

  LOGAN

  It’s not the first time I’ve watched Eden sleep, but it is the first time she’s slept in my arms. I slept first, for about an hour. When I woke, she was out cold. I still can’t quite believe it happened. That the attraction hadn’t been one-sided, I hadn’t been imagining the returned affection. I’d never been so happy to be proved wrong.

  But reality had to intrude sometime, and I’d already started to count all the ways this wasn’t going to work. I didn’t want to let go, but she was safer in the bed alone. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself fall asleep after. Protecting her meant staying alert, it meant being ready. I couldn’t afford to get lax.

  I found my clothes and my piece and brought them into the bathroom, leaving the door open so I could keep an eye on her. The episode with the guy she’d insisted had run out of the store was still playing on my mind. It was weird, and it made me want to check on something.

  There’s no cabinet in the bathroom, the mirror is flush to the wall above the sink and stretches the length of that wall. There are drawers under the sink instead. I open them, glancing back into Eden’s room as I do. She moves in the bed, but she still seems to be asleep.

  Pawing through the content
s, I can’t find anything that shouldn’t be there.

  When I close the last drawer, I have to wonder. Has she come off her anti-depressants? She’d been taking them for almost two years. If she’d stopped suddenly there might have been side-effects. Hallucinations sprang to mind, specifically. I’ll have to ask.

  The thought makes me groan. It’ll be like calling her crazy, and I know how much she hates the slightest insinuation of that. Most women hate it, but it’s the one word that could make Eden really, truly angry. Under the rage, there’s fear. Terror that she might be like her mother.

  “Shit,” I whisper, wondering how to deal with it. Speaking to her doctor might be my best bet, though if she’s dropped the pills I have to wonder if she’s halted contact with him too.

  Getting dressed, I check my cell and curse under my breath. The battery is seconds from death. My chargers are in the other room. I put it down. It’s probably on the late side for a call to the doctor’s office, and he’d just about taken my head off the last time I called his cell after hours. Someone had better be dying, he’d informed me. I suppose in hindsight the food poisoning Eden seemed to have picked up at the time wasn’t bad enough to drag him out of bed after midnight, but the man was paid a fortune to look after her and I refused to take any chances when it came to her health.

  I run a hand through my hair as I realize there’s one risk we did take today. It hadn’t even crossed my mind to ask about protection. I’d been too caught up in the moment. She had too.

  For a second I don’t care. The thought of impregnating her, of actually having children with her makes me smile. It would be fast, I suppose, for her. I’ve loved her for years. I’m ready to propose and get started making a family. I have no idea what page she’s on and assumptions are a bad idea when it comes to Eden. Seven years with Hunter and she hasn’t talked about the possibility of having kids once. Maybe she doesn’t want them, or maybe she isn’t ready.

  Is she still on the pill? I haven’t seen evidence of those in her bathroom drawers either.

  I move back into the bedroom and check her bedside drawers on my side. Empty. The floorboards creak a little as I move around and check the other drawers. She doesn’t move. I’m not that surprised. She could sleep through a thunder-storm.

  The contents of the other drawer are equally reassuring and disturbing. She is still on the pill, as far as I can tell. I haul Asher’s piece of trash book out and wonder if setting it on fire would be too extreme. Part of me doesn’t care if it is. The other part reminds me the fire alarms are in good working order despite the security alarm being a disconnected piece of shit. I don’t want to put the book back now that I’ve found it though.

  Doing something symbolic to it felt more appropriate. She was done with the creep who wrote it the second she kissed me back. That would have been enough, if she didn’t have this.

  The part of me that had reminded me about the fire alarms wanted me to put it back in the drawer. She would know if it wasn’t there. The part that had wanted to set it on fire wanted her to know I’d taken it. It would be a clear message that I wouldn’t put up with his presence anymore. She’d have to tell him she was done with him. It was heavy-handed. Insulting, probably.

  Sighing, I put the damn thing back. We’ve literally just gotten together. She’ll get rid of it on her own, she’ll tell him she can’t see him again in the morning.

  If she doesn’t, I’ll take it out back and burn it then. As soon as I settle on the compromise, I settle into the chair in the corner of the room. When there’s a camera system installed, I’ll be able to monitor her from other rooms. The feed would be sent to a tablet. It wouldn’t matter where I was that way. I could keep an eye on things.

  Chapter Seventeen

  *

  EDEN

  Waking up alone felt a little strange, when my last memory is collapsing into sleep in Logan’s arms. I also don’t usually wake up naked. Pulling the sheets in close, I sit up in bed and blink as I realize Logan’s sitting on a chair in the corner of the room.

  “Hey,” he says, clearing his throat and sitting up straighter.

  “Did you seriously sleep in that chair?”

  “I didn’t sleep.”

  “You’re kidding.” I know he isn’t.

  He shakes his head, cracking a fraction of a smile. “Since when do I ever kid about things?”

  Never, I guess. “Well. Are you cooking breakfast?”

  He gets up and goes to the balcony door, rattling the handle. He nods after that. “Okay. I’ll head down once you’re locked in the bathroom.”

  I roll my eyes and get up, no longer bothering to protect my modesty. “No-one broke in last night. They didn’t get in while we were naked, either. I’m surprised you even let that happen, considering…”

  He closes the gap between us to pull me in close and gaze intently into my eyes as his hands pull my wrists behind my back. I gasp as a smile slowly spreads across his lips.

  “No-one will hurt you while I’m around, Eden. I won’t let them get close enough.”

  “Even if I’m distracting you?” I grin a little as I break his grasp to drop to my knees. He practically growls as I stroke the front of his half-buttoned jeans. Rock hard already.

  I just get the last button undone when the doorbell rings. His closed eyes open and he curses violently as my hands fall away. “The glazier.”

  I smile and head to the bathroom. “You can deal with that. I’m going in the shower.”

  He’s still standing there when I close the bathroom door. I hear him move once I lock it.

  I close and lock the other door before I run the shower. The afterglow of the night before is still bathing me, clearly. I don’t look like someone who’s just slept for more than half a day. My skin is practically glowing. Getting into the shower, I get cleaned up. It doesn’t take long. Washing my hair is off the table, though it’s going to need cut again soon. I hadn’t exactly kept my stylist on retainer when I’d left L.A. I doubt she’d fly out here to touch up the holographic style she’d dyed into it. She loved my hair. Said she’d never seen someone with natural platinum hair before. I suppose my coloring’s kind of unusual, but I don’t think it’s anything special.

  I take my time getting ready, starting to hum under my breath as I put on make-up. I realize it isn’t a song I’ve already written, or something in the charts. It’s something new, original. Has my muse returned? Holy shit. I’m starting to feel the melody more clearly. No words are coming yet, but I know if I started to play it out, they’d come.

  I rush to dress, pulling on the first pair of jeans and T-shirt I can find once I have my underwear on. I probably should look for something sexy, for Logan’s benefit, but my thoughts are entirely focused on the new song that’s starting to come. I hum it as I zip my jeans, ready to rush down to my studio, and only stalling when I remember I haven’t taken my pill.

  It would have been a hell of a thing to forget after the night I’d just spent with Logan. I open the drawer and the song dies on my lips. The book steals my breath. How the hell did that get there?

  I pick it out and look it over. Hardcover, looks the same as the girl from the library’s copy. I hadn’t put it there, and it hadn’t been there yesterday morning. Dread begins to fill me. That was before I went out for a two-hour wander around town with Logan. I go to the balcony door and check the handle. Locked.

  What the actual fuck? I open the jacket and a slip of paper falls to the floor.

  I crouch to pick it up. The handwriting isn’t familiar, but as soon as I start to read, I know who it’s from.

  Please, just read it, Eden. My brother can be an idiot, but he wrote this out of love.

  Sasha. I’d been sort of friendly with her a long time ago. She can be a real bitch when she wants to be, but when it comes down to it, her heart is usually in the right place. Sighing, I close the book. I put it back in the drawer with the note and take my pill before I can forget. I’ll need to talk to Sas
ha. Find out how the hell she got in to leave the book. I’m not sure I should tell Logan, but I might have to if she doesn’t tell me how she got in.

  I leave the room and go to get breakfast. My muse has been silenced by the shock-find. I can only hope she’ll return once my stomach is less empty. Spending time in my studio won’t cause Logan to freak out but leaving to pay Sasha a visit might. Especially if he knows who she is. There’s no way I’ll tell him. There’s also no way he’ll let me go out on my own, and wandering around town asking people where she lived would make him suspicious. Sighing, I cross my fingers that my muse will come back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  *

  ASHER

  One bad decision can really screw up your whole life. When I was younger, I’d thought that decision was not making a move to show the girl I loved how I felt. The timing wasn’t right, but I hadn’t known that in the moment and I’d tortured myself over it for a long time. Then the bad decision became moving on from Eden. She’d said yes to someone else. So, I found another girl to ask out. Everything changed between us that summer. Things were never the same again. She decided to leave. I knew there was more to that decision, a whole lot more, but I also knew it was easier for her to leave once things changed. She didn’t have anything left tying her to Rapture.

  Now? I knew the real bad decision was saying yes to writing her autobiography. The offer had come out of the blue when I was thinking about her, and honestly, it had shocked me. Apparently, the publisher had asked for a list of her oldest friends and it had ended up a list of one. They’d told me if I didn’t want to do it they’d pay a stranger to compile the details. That had made me reconsider. I knew how the news had spun her past when they’d found out about her mother’s problems. I’d asked what would happen next if I said yes, and that was when I ended up choosing my road to hell.