I shake my head. “Mmm-mmm. No.” I kiss his lips. Taste his breath, and feel his emotions like a wave. “You’re right. I hate it, but you’re right. I don’t know what I would say. I want to say—I want to promise that I’d choose you. I do choose you. I want you. Only you. Only always you. But he messes me up and I know there is more between Caleb and me that I can’t back away from. I need answers from him. And I—I want so much more than this, but you’re right.”
He rolls off me, lies on his back, gasping, chest heaving, a forearm across his eyes, one knee bent, foot planted in the mattress. I stare at him, devouring his beauty. Tracing the contours of his muscles with my gaze, picking out individual designs from the jumble of his tattoos, the fall of his hair, the tension and conflict in his features.
“I wanted so much better for you than this,” he says, not looking at me. “You deserve . . . everything. Better than . . . this.”
“No, Logan. This was perfect.”
“I shouldn’t have let this get started.”
“If you tell me you regret this, Logan, I shall be very angry.” I don’t bother covering, don’t bother with the shirt, don’t bother sitting up or even wiping away the sticky pool of his come on my belly. I want it there. I like the feel of it there, the evidence of his desire for me visible as it dries on my skin.
He eyes me, and even now his eyes roam my body, my breasts, the shadow between my thighs. Then his gaze goes to mine. “I don’t regret it. I just wanted more for us.”
“So did I,” I say. “So do I.”
“Then why does this feel like good-bye?” He finally sits up, forearms resting on his upright knees, fingers hooked together.
It does, doesn’t it? The realization makes my chest ache. “Why do we never get more than a few hours together, Logan?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. I wish I knew how to—how to fix this. You. Me. Us. Everything. But I can’t.” He swivels, and his knees brush my hip and my thigh. I remain as I am, staring at him, drinking him in. Memorizing his features, this moment, this feeling. “You have come so far from the broken, mysterious woman I met at that stupid auction. But you have a long ways to go yet. I can’t make the journey for you. I can’t make the choices for you. I can’t face Caleb for you. I can’t free you from him. He let you go, Isabel. But he didn’t set you free. He won’t do that. He’s not that type of man. He’s just not. You have to free yourself, and I can’t help you with that. I want you, but I also know anything that could be between us can only work if you’re strong and independent and fully your own person.”
“And I’m not, am I?” I rip my gaze away from his. “Not yet.”
A silence hangs. It is a strange, fraught quiet, filled with a thousand unspoken things. Words, sighs. Moans. Ghosts of the love we should be making right now, but aren’t. Because Caleb still has claws in my mind.
“Logan?”
He glances at me. “Hmm?”
“Tell me what you know about Caleb. Tell me what happened between you.”
He looks away, out the window. Gray tinges the sky. Exhaustion creeps at the edges of my mind.