He sits up and tucks his legs beneath his buttocks, and I wrap my legs around his waist. He cups my bottom and holds me up. Lifts me, lets me fall down to impale him in me. I clutch his shoulders and lift myself up, relax down. This way, he drives up into me so deep it takes my breath away, sends stars bursting behind my eyes, novas of amazed ecstasy detonating inside me.
I surge against him. Drive against him. Cling to him and breathe against his skin and smell him and go wild on him, around him. Let go, let the madness out, growl and whimper and scream as my climax builds with his.
“Logan, god, Logan . . .”
“Isabel. Fuck, oh god.” He bites my earlobe and then speaks to me as we love each other with mad abandon. “If I tell you I love you and then you go back to—if you go back, I’ll break. I’ve survived a lot . . . rebuilt my life more than once. I can’t do it again, not after you. You’re everything to me now. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m fucking gone for you, baby. I don’t want to take this back, but I’m fucking scared to goddamn death that I won’t be enough for you, that he’ll still have his fucking hooks in you, and—” He rhythms his words to his movements.
“Never, Logan,” I cut in. “Never. I won’t do that to you. I won’t go back. I won’t take it back. I’m yours, Logan, please please please believe me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
We still move together, and he’s still going somehow, still holding back, some kind of superhuman control keeping him back from the edge until he’s ready to let go.
“Sorry for what?” he asks.
“For going back. For letting—what happened, happen.” Neither of us is willing to say it out loud, not now, not in this moment. I give him all my truth. “I didn’t mean to. And I hated it. Every moment, I hated it. And I hate myself for letting it happen. I was yours then. I was yours from the moment I saw you in that bathroom, from the first time I heard your voice.”
He’s losing it now. His movements are ragged, lurching, and his breath is coming in gasps, and his grip on my buttocks is so strong, so powerful.
I’m there, too, ready to come apart all around him.
He can’t let go, though. I can tell, I can sense it.
I touch my lips to the outer shell of his ear, sunk down on him, fully pierced by him, his cock throbbing inside me, his hands keeping me aloft. I let go, let him hold me, let our joined bodies hold me. I cup his head, feather my fingers through his hair and writhe on him, inhale his scent.
I whisper to him. “I love you, Logan. God, I love you.”
He arches his spine and pushes up into me and his voice rises in a wordless shout of release, and I feel him explode inside me. He flings us over so my back hits the mattress and he’s above me and pushing into me wildly, his mouth on mine, and he’s coming and coming and coming, driving into me so powerfully my breath is stolen. I’m with him, riding this with him, and now I’m coming apart too, and like I promised I clench around him as hard as I can and I scream his name and rake my fingernails down his back.
“Isabel . . . I love you, Isabel.” He says this as he sags against me, his hips moving furiously. “I love you so much. So fucking much.”
We collapse, I go limp, and he sinks against me, his face on my chest between my breasts, my hands smoothing in gentling patterns on his back, tracing the lines I gouged into his skin, both of us shuddering still.
Our sweat commingles.
Our breathing synchronizes.
I feel complete, for the first time in my life. I need nothing. Nothing but this. Nothing but him. Nothing but us.
And then Logan rolls off me, goes into the bathroom, and returns with a wet warm washcloth. He parts me and cleans me, gently and tenderly. Tosses the cloth into the bathroom and lies beside me.
That act alone means everything to me. The fact that he never looked away from me.
That each moment we just spent together was each of us giving, and thus each of us receiving exactly what we needed.
He climbs into the bed beside me, gathers me in his arms, cradles me against his chest.
I listen to his heartbeat. “Can this be forever?”
“Yes, Isabel. This is our forever.”
“Promise?”
“On my life.”
And that is all I need.
THIRTEEN
Logan is asleep; I am not. I cannot. His digital clock says it is 4:30 in the morning. I should be exhausted. I should be sore. I am sore, but not at all tired. Deliciously sore, perfectly achy. I feel delicate.
On the inside as well as the outside.
I lie on my left side and watch Logan sleep, gaze at the boyish innocence on his face. Absorb the beauty in the slack weight of his muscles as he rests. He’s drooling a little, and I’ve been stifling a giggle at it for an hour and a half now. I half want to wipe it away, but I don’t want to wake him, and it’s just so cute I can’t.
I’m fighting tears. Warring with a maelstrom of emotions. I’m so happy, deliriously happy. Vibrating with joy. Overwhelmed with incredulity.
He loves me. He loves me.
ME.
Logan Ryder told me he loves me.
Tears prick the corners of my eyes as I consider this, as I relive over and over and over the wondrousness of that moment, hearing those words.
But then I think of . . . everything else.
Caleb.
Caleb’s lies.