“I want to tell them to fuck off.” His plate clattered onto the coffee table, appetite clearly destroyed by the topic. “They’ve never been the best parents, and they’ve pissed me off a million times with their treatment of Shannon… and they’ve done it again. To my kid. A kid who has been through a fucking war… a kid whose feelings you can’t play with because her feelings have already been crushed to hell by her own mother. They knew this. I told them this and still they held out on her as grandparents. Now because they’re ready they think they can just waltz into her life?”
I sat up, putting my own plate down so I could scoot closer to him. I rested my hand on his thigh, drawing his gaze. Our eyes locked, and like always, my whole body zinged pleasantly in reaction to our connection. “I understand you’re pissed off at them, and honestly, I am too. I don’t want them in Maia’s life. But that’s not my decision, and it may be yours… However, you have a very smart girl on your hands, and she’s already lost out on so much. Perhaps you should give her the choice. Be honest with her about them, about their attitude and about the possibility that they could hurt her… and then let her decide for herself.”
He stared at me a moment before leaning in to brush his mouth over mine. My lips tingled as they parted under the sweet kiss. When he pulled back, he cupped my face and brushed his thumb against my lower lip. “I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
My breathing stuttered at the confession, and I felt that happiness swamp me again.
Just as quickly the panic set in.
Logan was filling my head and my heart and my body with him.
What happened if he walked away again?
Suddenly I was jerked toward him, my hands fluttering against his chest to catch myself. I stared, wide-eyed, into his face, which was now but inches from mine. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, his voice gruff. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to make you trust me so I never have to see that fear in your eyes ever again.”
I closed my eyes at his sweet promise and leaned my forehead against his jaw. “I’ll try too. It’s just going to take time.”
“I’ve got all the time in the world, Grace. All the time in the world for you.”
The sun felt wonderful on my skin. The waves were crashing to shore. I had no worries, no responsibilities, just never-ending white sands.
Life was perfectly, gloriously cliché in its utter heavenliness.
“Grace.”
I squeezed my eyes shut tighter against the sound of the masculine voice in my ear.
“Grace.” The voice became more insistent. “Grace, wake up.”
Suddenly my sun lounger was flipped on its side and I awoke with a jolt. Breathing hard, I blinked against the darkness of my bedroom, and as my eyes adjusted to the light, my heart only started to hammer harder against my chest. Logan was sitting on my bed.
“What?” I whispered in worry, leaning over to switch my bedside light on. Logan was sitting on my bed wearing nothing but a pair of faded old jeans. I forced my gaze to his face. “What’s wrong? Has something happened?”
His violet eyes were hot on me, his silent presence potent.
My breath caught.
My lower stomach clenched against the burst of tingles between my legs.
“Logan?”
He placed a hand slowly on either side of my hips and leaned forward until his face was so close to mine our lips were almost touching. A fierce hunger flashed across his face, and I gasped, feeling arousal shoot through my body.
He wanted me.
Suddenly he grasped me by the nape of the neck and hauled me against him. His mouth captured mine. I instantly melted into him and wrapped my arms around him, my fingers pressing into the muscle beneath his hot skin.
His kiss was hard, demanding, almost punishing, and I reveled in it. Logan groaned, the reverberations causing my nipples to tighten in reaction, and I shuddered. My reaction ignited something inside of him, and he shoved me roughly onto my back before hauling the covers off me. I stared up at him in aroused astonishment as he tugged on my pajama shorts. He slid them deftly down my legs along with my underwear and then he was braced over me, nudging my thighs apart as he stared down into my eyes. Logan’s hands encircled my wrists and he pinned my arms above my head as he pressed his jeans-covered erection between my legs. “Grace,” he whispered hoarsely, the word filled with need.
“Logan,” I pleaded.
His right hand left my wrist to draw down his zipper. He shoved his jeans low enough to release his erection and then returned his hand to my wrist to pin me to the bed.
Suddenly I wasn’t underneath him. I was across the room, watching him glide his body into a woman. Was it me? Was I having an out-of-body experience?
The headboard rattled against the wall as Logan fucked me toward climax.
“Logan, oh God!” a woman I recognized cried out, and I tensed.
It wasn’t me he was with.
I felt sick. Terrified.
No!
“No!” I cried out, my head jerking up from my pillow.
My eyes adjusted to the dark.
It was a nightmare.
Just a nightmare.
“Grace.” The mattress shifted beneath me, and light suddenly poured into the room. A second later Logan was braced over me, his concerned gaze on my face.
I immediately burst into tears.