“Dude, you can’t talk around her unless you want me to interpret,” Matt warns.
Logan clenches his hands together and bites his lips just as hard. He looks like he wants to say something. But he can’t. Not with Matt there. “Go to bed, Logan,” I say.
Logan shakes his head. He starts to sign, and Matt starts to talk. “He doesn’t want you to sleep on the couch,” Matt says. Matt sighs heavily. He gets to his feet. “How do you two communicate normally?” he asks, exasperated.
I can’t tell him that Logan talks to me. So, I just shrug. Everyone else in this family shrugs all the time. I might as well take up the habit. Become a master at evasion. “He can go fuck himself,” I say. “I’m sleeping on the couch.”
“Shit, man, what did you do?” Matt asks.
Logan signs something quickly.
“Damn. You should make Paul sleep on the couch.” He chuckles. “Seems like he deserves it.”
Logan stalks back into his room. Matt looks at me, grinning. “You’re turning him inside out,” he says.
Apparently not. He didn’t even look at me when I was naked.
“What are your intentions with Logan?” he asks. His voice is quiet. He’s not threatening me. I think he’s genuinely curious.
“I don’t have any intentions. He tossed me over his shoulder both times I’ve been here. It’s not like I had much choice in the matter.”
“You could have said no,” Matt clarifies. He holds up a hand to stop me when I open my mouth to talk. “Paul was just trying to protect him. He’s never brought a girl home before. Not one he really likes.”
“I’m the first one he won’t sleep with, I guess,” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
Matt nods. “Yes, you are. That means you’re special.” He tweaks my nose as he walks by and I make a face at him. He has cancer. I can’t be mad at him. Particularly not when he’s being so sweet. He turns back to face me. “He’s never wanted something real with a girl. Give him time to explore it before you start expecting more from him.”
“That’s just it,” I argue. “I don’t expect anything.”
“Yes, you do.” He looks sorry for me, and it pisses me off.
“Apparently, I’m the only girl in the city of New York that he won’t sleep with.” I harrumph like a two year old who just dropped her ice cream.
“I can’t believe I’m discussing my brother’s lack of sexual appetite with his girlfriend,” Matt mutters.
“I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Oh, honey,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re his first girlfriend.”
I turn to look toward Logan’s room. I don’t know what to do.
“Don’t fuck with him,” Matt warns. He’s suddenly very direct. And the intensity in his face is almost scary. “And don’t break his heart.”
“He’d have to love me for that to be an issue.”
Matt snorts. “You’re clueless, aren’t you?” he asks.
“Apparently,” I say.
Matt wraps my head in his arm and squeezes me against him, rubbing my head playfully with his knuckles. He stops and sniffs me. “You smell good,” he says. He laughs. “We don’t have much around here that smells good.”
“Thank you,” I grumble.
He pops me on the tail and points me toward Logan’s room. “Go talk to him,” he says.
I yelp and look back at him over my shoulder. I can’t believe he just did that.
“That was a ‘get your ass in the game’ smack. Not an ‘I want to see you naked’ smack,” he warns. I didn’t doubt what he meant.
“I don’t mess with Logan’s women,” he says. He told me that the first night.
“It’s a brother thing,” we both say at the same time.
Matt grins. “Exactly,” he says.
When I walk in Logan’s room, he’s laying back on the bed with his arm laid over his eyes. He doesn’t look up when I walk in, so I touch his knee. He uncovers his eyes and lifts his head, looking up at me. His blue eyes blink for a moment, and then he sits up. He tangles his fingers with mine and pulls me closer to him. “Don’t sleep on the couch,” he says.
“Matt says we should wake Paul up and let him sleep on the couch.”
Logan’s eyes get wider and he smiles. “I like that idea. But I would rather sleep with you any day.”
“You could have fooled me,” I spit out.
“What?” he asks. Could he not see my lips? Or did he not understand what I said?
“I was standing stark naked in front of you, Logan. And you didn’t have any interest in me.” I hold up a hand to stop him when he opens his mouth. “I get it. You don’t have feelings like that for me. It’s all right.”
Suddenly, Logan jerks my hand, rolling me gently onto the bed. His body covers mine, and his face is a breath away from me. “You think I don’t like you that way?” he asks. He’s looking into my face like he’ll find something he’s missing there.
“You laughed at me.”