“Doesn’t that hurt it?” I gasp.
He shakes his head. “So innocent. Didn’t you ever watch videos? Online? Or look at pictures at least?”
I suck in a quick breath as I continue to watch him stroking himself. His eyes are locked on me. His inspiration seems to come from watching my reaction to him.
“I always kept SafeSearch on,” I whisper breathlessly.
“Of course you did,” he murmurs. “My little virgin. But you like looking at my cock, don’t you. You can barely take your eyes off it.”
I look up from his pulsing member to meet his eyes. “I think I was waiting for you even though I didn’t know it.”
He groans and lets go of himself, reaching for me in the same moment and crushing his lips to mine. “Good answer,” he growls between punishing, demanding kisses. If I’m not careful, he’ll swallow me whole.
And I just might let him.
He’s back over top of me, but finally it’s not the rasp of smooth, Italian fabric against my skin. It’s him. Hot skin against skin.
He might not let me touch him with my hands, but so much of the rest of us is touching. And I can feel him there against my thigh, hot, hard, and pulsing. His cock. A pulse of heat clenches in my stomach and then shoots down between my legs. I bite down on his tongue in my mouth, I can’t help it.
But that seems to drive him even crazier. One of his hands tangles in my hair and the other slides down my waist and then around to my ass, first cupping, then squeezing, then slapping my ass. My hands are still above my head and I writhe in his arms.
“Harder,” I gasp out my dirtiest desires because he is my safe place. Nothing is off limit, nothing is wrong here. While I can’t use my hands, at the same time, I’m unleashed.
And he obliges. Oh hell, but he obliges. He slaps my ass and the sharp sting of pain while he continues to devour my mouth makes all my pleasure centers light up. I focus on the sting, the way it ripples outwards like a pebble in a pond to the rest of my body and then lingers as heat on my skin.
And then, because he always knows what I need before I can even think to ask, he spanks me again, even more sharply. I cry out and bury my head in the crook of his neck, my hands fisting above my head and my hips thrusting blindly towards his.
It’s so thrilling to have this much contact with his body, so much more than he’s ever allowed before. If all I have to do is keep my arms above my head, I’ll show him I can obey the rules. This is heaven. Better than heaven. Where will he take us next? Will we finally— Will he explore me with more than his fingers?
Gods, I want it with every fiber of my being. I don’t want to be a virgin anymore. But only if I’m with him. I want him to make me a woman. His woman.
I want us bound together in every way. I want to feel him inside me. I want to surround him with my womanly softness and let him bury himself deep. He’s been my safe place and I’ll show him I can be his. And eventually he’ll learn he doesn’t have to hide any single part of himself, not anything—
I open my eyes and breathe in the manly scent of him, my cheek pressed against his firm chest. I’m so close that for once, my near-sightedness isn’t a hindrance and I admire the expanse of his skin, the hair that dusts his pecs, the constellation of freckles on his shoulder…
Wait.
WHAT?
I jerk away from him and scramble so I can sit up. Then my hands shoot out and I grab his arm and pull him closer—well, I move myself closer to him—I probably couldn’t move him if there were three of me.
Closer examination proves what can’t possibly be true. But it is.
I know this constellation of freckles. I know it well. One summer, me and this shoulder and the man attached to it became very, very familiar.
“What the fuck?” I ask just as he yanks his arm out of my grasp, eyes flashing angrily. “You promised not to touch me.”
He’s already pulling his shirt back on but I know what I’ve seen. And there’s no going back.
“Logan?” I ask, my voice breaking on the two syllables. “Logan, where have you been all these years?”
Twenty-One
Logan
“Logan,” she cries the name I haven’t heard spoken aloud in so long, and certainly not from her lips. It’s been years.
And then, before I can seize control of the situation again, she reaches forward and yanks the mask off my face. Her touch sears me as the mask falls away. Not because it hurts. I lost feeling in most of that side of my face a long time ago. But it still stings when she gasps and her hand goes up to her mouth in shock.
“Logan, what happened?” Her eyes fill with tears.
This is the part where most people run. I know just how hideous my face looks. The skin from my forehead to my chin on the left side is a mottled spiderweb of angry, red, vein-like scars. My left eye barely survived. My ear didn’t.
Flesh-eating bacteria will do that to a man.
I broke all the mirrors in my apartment when the ‘accident’ first happened. Ha. Accident.
The flood of memories brings all the barely-buried rage back to the surface and I snatch Daphne’s wrist out of the air when she reaches forward like she wants to touch my face, to touch the freakshow science experiment I’ve become.
“Don’t,” I snap, not letting go of her wrist. Her tears spill down her cheeks.
“What happened? You just disappeared. I looked for you but you weren’t online. Your emails bounced back undelivered. I went to your apartment but you were gone. I couldn't find you anywhere. I thought— Dad said you—”
“Tell me,” I sneer. “Where did the great Dr. Laurel say I’d gone? What lie did he tell you?”
Confusion colors her face. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“He did this to me!” I roar.
She immediately starts shaking her head, looking horrified again for the second time in as many minutes. “No, Logan, you can’t believe that! Dad would never— What even happened? Is it a burn of some kind? Or—”
“Bacterial infection. The rare flesh-eating kind.”
Her mouth drops open.
“A strain so rare the doctors said they had no earthly idea how I could have contracted it. Except that Belladonna labs had a research sample in-house at the time.”
“Well then it must have been an accidental cross-contamination. One of the lab techs didn’t follow proper safety procedures or—”
“Stop being willingly obtuse,” I shout, letting go of her and spinning away, giving her my back. “Your father and Adam wanted me out of the company. They’d stolen my research and had already colluded to profit off of it. They just needed me out of the way.”
Is she still going to keep defending them even with the evidence right in front of her? Of course she will. I’m a fool if I think the past few days have made any difference at all.
“Logan. Nothing you’re saying makes any sense to me. What are you even talking about? What research?”
“I was the one who discovered the anti-aging capabilities of the molecule we were developing. Adam said we should explore the commercial possibilities in cosmetics as a money-making opportunity. All he saw was dollar signs. I said no, that we couldn’t get distracted from our core mission of focusing on curing Battleman’s and other rare diseases.”