I could come from the kiss alone, nearly do.
“X...” he breathes, and the kiss is broken.
Ding.
I leap down off him, twist away and dart through the doorway, running for my room. Slam my bedroom door behind me. Dive under the covers of my bed.
I tremble.
I weep, so wired with ecstasy I could light a city. Weep, the tears wetting the sheet under my cheek, overwhelmed, overcome. And, as I weep, eyes clenched closed, I see him. Blond hair hanging around his face, and now his hand brushes though it, pushing it back. His eyes are warm, knowing, caressing me with their ultraviolet light. And I feel him, his body around mine, his hands on me, his lips on mine, his tongue inside my mouth. I taste him. Scotch and faint cinnamon.
Tears on my cheeks, chest heaving with a wild disarray of emotions, I am subsumed beneath a wave of need so potent I writhe on my bed, legs scissoring. My dress is hiked up around my hips, and I am covered under my blankets. I am hyperaware of my hand as it steals across my belly and between my legs. Slips under the elastic of my underwear. I lick my lips and taste the salt of tears and the faint impression of scotch and the flavor of Logan’s lips. I feel his mouth on mine. His hands on my backside, caressing, squeezing, exploring with such sweetpossessive gentility. And his kiss, how it blazed alight within me, fire in my soul, making me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt.
I touch myself.
I put my fingers to my privates, slip them into my damp heat, and I make myself come, once, hard, immediately upon contact, faster than thought, and I see his eyes, feel his breath, taste his need. I stifle a moan. I writhe against my fingers and pretend they are his, swiping against my clitoris, circling it... thus... making me come again, harder, and I pretend these are his fingers, two of them, diving deep into my slit, curling up and in, dragging wetness over my clitoris, and they are his fingers, smearing my essence in ever-faster circles until I jackknife under the blankets, huffing wild breaths of hot recycled air, teeth clamped down on my moans of his name.
“Logan . . . Logan . . .” Whispered, desperate.
I have to breathe fresh air. I toss the blankets back to my waist. Wipe at my eyes with my free hand. The one not still caught between my thighs. I’m not crying anymore, but I’m so distraught I don’t know how to even feel it all, how to express it. I could scream. Energy boils inside me, my entire body afire with adrenaline and memory and heat.
IneedLogan.
I need him. God, I need him. He makes me feel alive. I am free in him,withhim.
I rush to the window. Yes! There he is. Striding across the road, gait loose, easy. Hands in his pocket. He reaches the other side, stops, turns. Looks up. Can he know my window from all the others? It’s but a single rectangle of dim light in a city of incandescence. Am I lost in the glow?
I put a hand to the glass, palm flat, fingers spread next to my forehead touching the cool window. He sees me? He raises a hand, waves, once. And then, oh, then he puts his thumb to thecorner of his mouth, as if wiping away a droplet of moisture. A gesture, repeated, mirrored. A sign?
Thirteen stories up, yet he sees me? Is it possible?
He turns away, then. Descends the stairs down to the subway. Gone.
I quiver with the memory of his kiss, the aftershocks of my fantasy of his touch.
I’d do anything to make that fantasy reality.
Anything.
I know I will never sleep, so I go to my library and pretend to read, pretend I’m not thinking of him. Pretend I’m not machinating, hoping, dreaming—
Fantasizing of impossibilities.
I fall asleep in my chair in the library, lights on, in the silence, dreaming of blond hair and indigo eyes and lips that take me away from here.
Chapter 13
Iwake, disoriented, stiff.
And then I remember last night, and my fingertips touch my lips. I smile. I stretch, legs straightening away from the chair, spine stiffening and curling backward, arms tensed and trembling, a full-body stretch, feline and luxuriant.
Ding.
I blink in confusion; have I overslept? I am still in my dress from the previous day, hair messed and tangled and partially knotted, makeup smeared. I can feel makeup caked and flaking at my eyes.
The space of time between the arrival of the elevator and my front door smashing open is infinitesimal. A breath of a moment, less even.
A gargantuan black frame fills the doorway of my library. Thomas. “He sees the video from yesterday.” His voice is like the deepest bass note being electronically distorted lower. Impossibly deep, syrupy and yet somehow smooth as silk.
