“And Lana.”
“What makes you think we have anything to do with Lana?”
“The other day, when you drugged me, you showed me pictures of them together.” I raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t drug you.” He scowled, then pointed at the side of the tower.
I headed there, but Logan reached for my hand and held it in his, steering me in the direction he wanted. My heart skipped.
“What are you—”
“Just play along.”
“Oh. Okay,” I whispered as he pulled me onto the side of the building, beside the door.
My back was against the wall as he caged me in with both arms on either side of my head. A few people walked by, talking and laughing. My eyes widened on Logan’s. He was looking at me but didn’t say anything. More people walked by. He rolled his eyes, exhaling.
“You’re going to have to move and press yourself against the door,” he said.
I was only two steps away from it, so I moved in that direction. One, two. Logan moved with me as if we were in the middle of a dance. I felt the cold surface of the metal door behind me as I looked up at him.
“Wrap your arms around my neck.” He leaned forward, making it easier for me to reach. I did as I was told, ignoring the way my heart galloped as I wrapped my arms around him and he hoisted me up slightly with his knee between my legs.
His eyes were on the door as he pulled something out of his pocket. I couldn’t make out what. I looked beyond him, watching the people as they walked back and forth, keeping a lookout in case anyone walked too close to us. It was too dark beneath the tower for them to see what we were doing. We probably looked like two horny college kids, not two thieves who were about to steal a painting allegedly worth millions of dollars.
“Keep your eyes on me, sweetheart. Don’t worry about everyone else.” His voice was gruff as he concentrated on the lock behind me.
“If I don’t worry about everyone else, I’ll focus on the fact that your leg is between mine and I look like I’m about to kiss you.”
“Is this turning you on?” His lip turned up, his gaze flicking to mine.
“No.”
“Liar.” He chuckled darkly, going back to the task at hand.
“Aren’t you getting tired of having my weight on you?”
“Nah. I can carry you all night long.” His gaze was on mine again.
The way he said that, with that undeniably sexy undertone, made my stomach flip. I licked my lips. He kept staring, his hands working on the lock. It made me wonder what else those hands could do if given the task. I needed to stop. My overactive imagination and libido needed to simmer down. Yet, I couldn’t stop looking at his lips and wondering just how soft they’d be against mine. It was the situation we were in. It was. He was mean and rude, and he didn’t like me.
“Let’s take a selfie by the tower!”
I tore my gaze from Logan’s and looked at the group of guys walking in our direction. They were all wobbling on their feet, obviously drunk, but they were coming our way nonetheless.
“Are you almost done? They’re coming this way,” I whisper-shouted.
“Fuck. I swear I almost got it.” The door clicked. I gasped, smiling at him. He’d unlocked it. He shoved the tools in his hands into his pocket. “Now we have to wait until they leave.”
“I’m really uncomfortable in this position,” I whispered.
The guys came closer. They were on the grass now, walking directly toward us. These were the things that pissed me off about humans. Why did they have to take the picture right beside us? Why not on the other side of the damn building? It’s like arriving at an empty parking lot and deciding to park beside the one car there. Stupidity. Logan shifted me so that he was carrying me, his hands on my ass as he hoisted me against the wall. I gave out a soft, unexpected yelp.
“What are you?”
“Stop looking at them.”
I brought my eyes to his. He was entirely too close to me, his nose touching mine, his mouth just a touch from mine. I wrapped my arms tighter around his neck, so that we were closer still, our breath mingling, and as the guys finally reached us and stood just a few feet away, Logan’s mouth pressed against mine. The kiss seemed to suck the air out of my lungs. It started as what I would call a soap opera kiss, fake, just lips moving, no emotion, but it quickly bloomed into something more.
With our wet hair and faces and adrenaline pumping through us, the kiss turned into something animalistic—needy and hot, completely overwhelming. His tongue rolled against mine with a familiarity that made me second-guess every kiss in my past. The way he devoured my mouth made me think there was no way I’d been doing it right, no way the guys who came before him had any clue what they were doing. Our surroundings vanished, the drunk guys taking pictures, the people walking, the task at hand were all second place to this. Logan broke the kiss slowly, as if it was taking every ounce of self-control to do so. His breathing was hard as he searched my eyes.
“They’re gone.”
“Huh?”
“The coast is clear. We can go inside now.”
“Oh.” I blinked, unwrapping myself from him and placing my feet on the ground slowly. “Right.”
He opened the door and pulled me inside. I wasn’t sure what I thought was going to transpire, but it was definitely not business as usual. That’s exactly what happened as Logan took the stairs two at a time and I followed behind, heart pounding, trying to ignore the rawness of my lips. He was a player. That’s what they did, they kissed girls and moved on without second thought. Who knows how many of them he’d kissed this week alone. I shook the thought away. It didn’t matter. When I reached the top of the stairs, I brought out my phone and aimed my flashlight. I could see why Marcus said the door was small. Not terribly small, just smaller than people were today.
“When do you think this was built?” I asked as Logan stepped forward with his tools to break in.
“Eighteen-hundreds.”
“No wonder the door is so small,” I said, illuminating the lock with my flashlight. “Where’d you learn how to pick locks anyway?”
“Jail.”
I stepped back. “You went to jail?”
“No.” He made a noise that I wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a scoff. “You’re moving the light.”
“Sorry.” I stepped forward.
He turned the knob and pushed the door in, standing up and letting me pass. I pointed the light inside the room. It was a tiny room, with a couple of boxes, and the painting. It wasn’t in a frame—it was just on the wall, tacked on as if it were elementary school artwork in a grandmother’s kitchen. I removed it carefully from the wall and rolled it up as I was told, stuffing it into my shirt for safekeeping.
“You’re going to put a fifty-million-dollar art piece in your shirt like it’s a five-dollar bill?”
“They had it tacked onto the wall like it was a kid’s painting,” I said. “Besides, it’s the only way to get out of here without looking like we stole something.”
I was feeling good about the whole thing as I walked down the stairs until the alarm started going off. Logan and I looked at each other for a second before we took off running at full speed. My footsteps landed on the concrete as I chased after him, holding onto my chest with one hand and swinging my other arm for momentum. The ground was wet and my sneakers sloshed as I ran faster, harder. There were police sirens approaching, the unmistakable lights of a police car illuminating the night. Logan stopped running suddenly and turned to grab my hand, ushering me toward the woods. We didn’t speak, our breaths coming out in pants as we walked through the woods, and the same area we’d done the previous exercise in. We walked to the other side of the street, where there was a black four door Porsche with the lights on.