Never look back, p.8
Never Look Back, page 8
I was in his arms faster than I could prepare for it. Shock raked up my throat when he tightened his hold around me, the smell of him overwhelming as he pulled me against his hard, packed chest.
Clove and cinnamon and corruption.
“Logan, put me down.”
“No.” He turned and started in the direction of the double doors to the left of the kitchen.
“You take good care of her…if you don’t, I’ll be using this broom here for different purposes. Don’t think just because I’m old I’m not creative.” Gretchen shouted her threat from behind us.
“It’s becoming clearer each day that my housekeeper is a psychopath,” he grumbled below his breath.
Logan carried me into the wispy dimness of his room. The blinds were pulled, and the light from the main room whispered in behind us.
My eyes tracked the space.
There was a monstrous bed on the far left, and a TV nearly the size of the wall hung on the opposite side.
A fireplace was in the corner next to a sitting area with two chairs and a couch facing each other under the window.
It was cozy but somehow…hollow. As if a vacancy echoed back.
He headed into the bathroom and flicked on the light.
I blinked against the intrusiveness then squeaked when he plunked me down onto the counter.
“You’ve been here for less than three hours, and you’re already making trouble.”
“I think we’re in plenty of trouble, Logan,” I whispered.
I let a little of our truth seep in.
On a grunt, he rummaged through a cabinet next to the sink. He returned with tweezers, a cotton ball, antibiotic cream, and a bandage. He eyed me as he set everything on the counter. “I always told you that you were worth it.”
My heart fluttered.
The man so different.
So much the same.
I pushed out some of the strain, trying not to look at him, but unable to tear my attention away.
Unable to resist the energy that crackled in the atmosphere.
An old connection that searched for its union.
I had to be careful. So careful. But still I was whispering, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For doing this for me.”
A scowl scrunched his brow. “Who said I was doing it for you?”
My throat was tight. “Whatever the reason…thank you.”
He didn’t respond, he only hooked me with those eyes as he slowly knelt.
I heaved a sharp breath when he grabbed onto me by both knees. Fire raced my veins, that connection finding a place to take root.
“You cut yourself.” It was a soft accusation.
A frown pulled tight, and the words whimpered free, barely audible with him touching me the way he was. “It really wasn’t that big of a deal.”
He eased back on his haunches, and his left hand glided down the back of my calf to draw my leg out so he could inspect the bottom of my foot.
He dragged his finger down my heel. “It is a big deal. I already told you I take good care of what’s mine.”
My stomach bottomed out, and I tried to ignore what he insinuated. The way it felt for this man to touch me. The way I ached.
He inclined his head low enough that it concealed his face, but I could feel the intensity that blazed from his being, the way I used to feel him. A lifetime ago when life had belonged to us.
He twisted my foot then used the tweezers to pull the glass from the cut. I hissed at the sting, then I couldn’t breathe at all when he leaned in and blew over the flesh.
His breath was heated, and it swarmed me as if he were a scorching, summer wind.
A torrid, unrelenting flame.
I curled my hands tight around the edge of the counter to stop from doing something absurdly stupid like running my fingers through his hair.
My love for him throbbed with agony.
“Does it hurt?” he asked as he dabbed the cut with a cotton swab.
“It always has.” The confession wheezed past my dried lips.
I could feel him swallow. The way his shoulders went rigid.
He angled his gaze up to take in my face, his words as broken as the shards of glass. “Who is it you belong to, Aster?”
It was the same thing he’d asked me last night, only this time, he wanted a different answer.
I knew it. Felt the possession in the way his big hand curled around my ankle.
“You.” It trembled from my mouth.
At least for a little while, I did.
Because he’d chosen to do this for me. I just hoped whatever reason he’d done it for didn’t destroy me in the end.
“Good girl.” I could barely hear what he’d said, though I felt the caress of it skate up the inside of my thighs.
Need boiled in my belly, pouring out to touch every nerve ending as he cleaned the small amount of blood from the cut and applied a bandage.
“There,” he murmured.
“Thank you,” I said again, pushing it around the lump that had taken my throat hostage.
Everything was thickened.
The air and his words and the severity of his gaze.
Then he pressed his face to the inside of my calf.
I gasped.
“Do you want me to ruin him, Aster? Is that what you want me to do?”
Anxiety clouded the desire. My heart thudded at a furious, wicked beat. “I just want to be free.”
Hatred clawed through his expression. Only part of it was directed at me.
Logan suddenly pushed to his feet.
Menacing.
Beautiful.
Terrifying.
He lifted his hand and touched the necklace I wore, as if the star had branded him, too.
“Do you love him?” His voice dropped low as he shifted his attention to the ring I hated that I wore around my finger.
“No.” I couldn’t stop it from bleeding with pain.
“So you did it for what?” His words became blades.
“You left me without a choice.”
He pressed his face to my neck. I nearly drowned. Fell. Dug my nails into his back.
I forced myself to hold tight to the counter before I let myself go.
“There’s always a choice, Aster.” He pulled back, hurt a whorl that eclipsed the light in his eyes. “There’s always a choice.”
“And you made the wrong one.” I shouldn’t have said it, shouldn’t have given it to him, but I was swept into his arms before I could think through the implications of what I’d done.
His nose was at my jaw. “Did I?”
I wondered if he didn’t know. If he didn’t understand. Or if the only thing that had really mattered in the end was the greed.
“I hate you. You’d do well not to forget it.” It sounded of pain. A rush of regret. Hurt that slayed.
My arms curled tighter around his neck. “I hate you, too.”
I guessed we were both good at telling each other lies.
Maybe it was the only way either of us would survive this captivity. The only way we’d make it through the torment of wanting something you could never truly have.
Because he could never know what his actions had caused. The dominos that had been set in motion. The promise I’d made the one thing keeping him alive.
He carried me into the main room.
Gretchen looked up from where she was dumping a dustpan of glass into the trash. “See, manners. It isn’t so hard, is it?”
He grunted at her. “Keep it up, Gigi, and your days here are numbered.”
She cracked up. “That’s cute, young man, considering this place would fall down around you if I weren’t here to keep it in order. Besides, I know how much you love me.”
He grunted again. “You really know how to bust a man’s balls, especially one who signs your paycheck.”
“Pssh. I’d do it for free since I love you right back.”
I felt the wobble of affection at the corner of his mouth, rising beneath the rage that simmered in the bare space.
I tried to ignore the way his body felt pressed against mine as he carried me through the main room and back into my bedroom. Tried to pretend my skin wasn’t shimmering with the vestiges of his touch when he sat me on the edge of the bed.
He started to turn and leave, though he paused when I called behind him, “You’re happy here?”
Logan glanced back. “My family has always made me that way.”
“I used to.”
He tapped the doorframe with his knuckles. “Yeah, but you stopped being her a long time ago.”
Grief cut through the middle of me, and I choked over the regret that wanted to get free when he walked out without saying anything else.
Fisting the comforter, I fought the moisture that burned at my eyes. I had to keep it together. Stay focused and stay the course.
This wasn’t about reconciling with Logan. There was nothing that could heal a wound that went that deep.
More than that, there was no way to undo what had already been done.
This was about my freedom. About recovering my life. About finding new direction.
I jolted when a minute later Logan strode back in. He carried the bags he’d dropped onto the floor and placed them next to me on the bed.
A frown pulled to my brow. “What’s this?”
“Do you plan to wear that dress forever? Or that tee? Not that I would mind all that much.” He cocked a grin at that.
Wings fluttered in my chest.
Crap.
I swallowed hard. “I guess not.”
“Then you’ll need more clothes.” He moved to the doorway then paused to look back at me. “What do you need on Jarek?”
Gulping, I forced myself to focus on the mission. “Everything. Anything. I just need to prove to my father the snake that he is.”
A difficult task when I’d been raised by a brood of vipers. Crimes expected. Cruelty required.
In the end, it would be Jarek’s loyalty that counted.
“That should be easy enough.”
“I’m afraid there won’t be anything easy about this.”
Jarek would kill anyone that threatened his position in the family. My father had no sons, and his brother was dead thanks to the man in front of me, which meant Jarek was next in line to take his place as the boss once he passed.
He would be none too keen when he found out my intention was to take that from him.
If I knew him well enough, he’d think at any time, I’d come crawling back, and I doubted he’d say much to my father, considering he was the one who’d made this dirty, messy bed.
I prayed that and my father’s promise would give me time.
“Are you okay with that?” I pressed.
Logan shrugged too casual a shoulder. “He took what was mine. It seems only fair I take it back.”
He started to duck out only to pause, hesitate, then stare back at me as if he wasn’t sure about what he was getting ready to say. “I have a family thing tonight. Be ready at six. Pick something a little more…practical?”
Confusion bound, but I nodded quickly.
Dipping his head, he stepped out and shut the door.
I dug into the bags.
Jeans and tees.
Sweaters and a coat.
Boots.
A few more dresses as beautiful as the one I’d worn last night.
Toiletries and makeup and undergarments.
I tossed the lid off a box to find a silk night slip.
It was white and covered in the soft innuendo of stars woven into the material.
My spirit clutched.
Like a fool, I pressed it to my nose and stared at the door where he’d just been.
Little Star. Little Star.
Damn him.
I had to be careful, or he was going to ruin me all over again.
EIGHT
ASTER
I emerged from the bedroom at six, wearing black leather pants, a purple sweater that was slinky and loose but hung just right, and a pair of knee-high heeled boots.
I had a heavy gray wool coat draped over my arm and a handbag that was mostly empty slung over my shoulder.
If there was something to be said about Logan Lawson, he had really good taste.
Coming to the end of the hall, I stalled.
My nerves rattled.
Logan hadn’t given me a whole lot to go on other than he had a family thing.
A family thing.
Anxiety bristled beneath my skin. Like, with his brothers? Their families?
The little boy’s face tickled the back of my mind. The sweetness. The way Logan had looked at him.
Undoubtedly, the child, Logan’s entire family, was a huge piece of his world.
I got it.
I just wasn’t sure why he wanted to share it with me.
The only thing I knew was I felt his attention like a landslide when I stepped out from behind the seclusion of the hall and into the main room.
Logan looked up from where he stood at the end of the island typing something on his phone.
The man was so disgustingly gorgeous in his fitted suit.
Intimidating.
Jaw-dropping.
Those eyes flashed as they took me in.
Copper and green.
Stony.
Malachite.
Though tonight they were far from opaque.
They glinted in the flames that leapt in the fireplace.
Scorching rocks that could sear me through.
Fiddling with the hem of my sweater, I glanced down at what I’d chosen. “Is this okay?”
“It will do.” His tone was grit.
He pushed from the island and came my way.
A slow prowl, a monster testing its prey.
He stopped a foot away, and he tipped up my chin, deceptively soft. “They say the devil is so beautiful you wouldn’t be able to look at him if you saw him in his original form.”
My insides quaked. I was pretty sure he had our roles reversed.
“And you have a hard time looking at me.” Still, I let him have the perception.
I ached that he was right there, so close I could touch him, though I knew how dangerous it would be if I did.
He leaned closer, his presence destroying all sense, his voice a rough scrape he released at my ear. “The fucking problem is I can’t seem to look away.”
A whimper crawled my throat and chills flashed across my skin.
He inclined closer. “Is that what you are, Aster? The devil? Here to tempt me? Lead me into sin?”
“Ironic since that’s what I’d always thought about you.”
When it’d come to Logan Lawson, I’d always done the exact opposite of what was expected of me.
His thumb caressed the length of my cheek, the hard, chiseled angle of his jaw clenched.
In restraint.
In disgust.
I couldn’t tell.
“Maybe because we both were born in the pits of Hell.” It left me like some kind of surrender. Or maybe it was an out for both of us. A reason for the pain.
He kept sweeping the pad of his thumb along my jaw.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
“We were supposed to escape it together.” That time, his words gritted with spite.
The bitterness I couldn’t seem to get over boiled inside. I almost demanded to know how much he’d sold the stones for. If he understood what it’d cost.
Instead, I let the resentment bleed out. “It seems like you’re doing pretty well for yourself to me.”
It was me who had been left behind.
I could hear the grinding of Logan’s teeth. “You don’t know anything about me.”
He was right.
I didn’t.
Not anymore.
All except for this connection that still felt so alive.
Except for the torment, the mischief, the loss, the sweetness that I saw play in his eyes.
He suddenly straightened and moved away from me so quickly that I stumbled forward a step, not even realizing I’d given myself over to his hold.
A shattered breath heaved from my lungs as he moved for the door, the man ignoring that every second of this push and pull was wrecking me.
“We need to go. My brothers will have my ass if I don’t show on time.”
“Both of them will be there?” I asked on a worried breath.
He chuckled out a rough sound. “What, are you scared?”
Um, his brothers were terrifying, but that didn’t have anything to do with it.
“Maybe it would be better if I stayed here.”
He was back to touching my face, his voice this low, growl of a promise that shook me to the core, even though it was clearly meant to be a tease. “Don’t worry, Aster, I’ll protect you. You keep forgetting I take care of what’s mine.”
Logan whipped his car into the parking lot of a—my head jerked around to read the sign—Christian elementary school.
I could feel the confusion claw its way across my face as my attention jumped back to Logan.
Seriously, what in the world was happening?
He didn’t even glance at me as he drove through the packed lot in search of an open spot, which by the looks of it, we were going to have to park along the street.
Apparently, most of Redemption Hills had shown for whatever this family thing was.
I’d thought it would maybe be a dinner. Or more than likely, a deal…the dirty kind dealt in dingy backrooms of seedy clubs or maybe in upscale basements like last night.
My chest squeezed as I watched the droves of families weave their way across the lot toward the main buildings, bundled in their jackets and scarves, their cheeks pinked and excitement filling their eyes.
Logan drove around the side of a building to another lot around back where he finally found an open spot tucked between a minivan and truck.
When he killed the engine, a swath of silence took over the cabin, and the man stared out the windshield at the flurries of snowflakes that fluttered from the darkened heavens.
Tension stretched thin.
Questions that swelled and taunted.
Old hopes and long-dead dreams.
It was insane being so uncomfortable with a man who had once been my refuge.
Finally, he glanced over at me, his tongue sweeping his lips in a rush of agitation, as if he’d just then thought better about bringing me here. “My niece and nephew have a dance performance to kick off the holiday season.”
