A Soldier's Christmas (6 page)

Logan’s pulse throbbed like the rest of his
body after Emma’s heated gaze had traveled the length of him. He briefly met
her eyes before he did some looking of his own.

Her auburn hair fell around her shoulders,
and caressed the top of her round breasts. Her waist was trim and led to curvy
hips and shapely thighs that made his mouth water. His gaze met and held Emma’s
as he took a step closer and cupped the back of her head.

He’d yet to taste her plump lips, at least
the way he wanted to. As his head dipped, he heard Emma’s sigh of pleasure, and
then his lips met hers. His tongue traced the soft fullness of her lips before
he covered her mouth hungrily. His arousal for the woman in his arms was
difficult to ignore and as she wrapped herself around him, there would be
no doubt in her mind about how she affected him.

He forced his mouth from the delicious
softness of Emma’s, but he found that he couldn’t stop touching her with his
lips and carried on kissing her. Along her chin and down to the hollow of her
neck before his lips found
their
way instinctively
back to hers.

Their bodies clung together, and it was the
urge to thrust his pelvis into Emma that had Logan ease the kiss. His body
ached for her, but he wasn’t going to make love to her, yet.

Logan brushed a gentle kiss across her
forehead, and stepped back. He found her hand, and held tightly. “I have three
weeks,” he smiled, “to make sure you never want to leave my side.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t intend on making
love with me for three weeks?”

He smirked. “You weren’t listening. I said
that I have three weeks to make you never want to leave my side, and I intend on
making love to you, over and over again, to help your decision along.”

He saw the minute his words sunk in.

Emma smiled, not just with her lips but her
eyes lit up with happiness. “I already know what my answer will be.”

She moved to the window and gave him a view
of her shapely bottom when she bent to look out. He groaned and averted his
eyes, but they wouldn’t leave Emma and kept seeking her out.

“You hungry?” he asked, not recognizing his
voice. “They deliver dinner to the room if you ask.”

Emma looked over her shoulder at him, and
smirked, “If you’re not on the menu, then I’ll have the chicken with sautéed
potatoes, chocolate mousse, and a glass of white wine to wash it all down with.”
She shrugged. “And having it delivered to the room would be good. I don’t want
to share you with anyone.”

“That suits me just fine.” Logan turned away
before he touched her again, and found the telephone in the room.

It didn’t take him long to place their
order, and he sighed with relief when it wasn’t Adele or Greg who took the
order. He expected Adele to deliver the food, though. She wouldn’t be able to
help herself.

“How long did they say the food would be?”
Emma asked from behind him.

He turned and wrapped an arm around her
shoulders, pulling her into his body. Emma wrapped her arms around his waist
and looked up at him.

“Not long,” he answered. His hand reached
up and caressed along Emma’s smooth cheekbone. She nuzzled against his hand,
her eyes closing in pleasure. “I think I may need to stop touching you for
now.”

Her eyes blinked open. “I don’t agree.” She
kissed his cheek, and stepped back. “But, I do need to remove my clothes for
tomorrow from my purse.”

Tomorrow?
Clothes
?

He watched as she removed
a shirt
and pink underwear from her large purse. He couldn’t
remove his eyes from the silk in her hands, and the image in his head of her
wearing the items she held had his blood pumping south.

Emma noticed the direction of his gaze, and
smirked. “Just in case it’s taking you a bit to figure it out, I have no
intention of going home tonight. I’m not leaving you.” She opened the wardrobe
and placed her clothes on the shelf with his shirts. “You might disappear.”

“I’m not going anywhere, unless you’re with
me.” He moved to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “But you have to
stop flashing your silk underwear.” He kissed her nose. “I’m only human, and
you’re one sexy woman.”

Her face lit up. “Sexy.” She grabbed hold
of the belt loops on either side of his jeans and tugged him against her. “Hmm,
you’re not so bad yourself.”

He laughed, and rubbed his pelvis against
her. “That’s what imagining you wearing those silk pink panties did to me.”

“I’m wearing the same set but in purple.
You’ll see those for yourself tonight so you won’t have to imagine what I look
like in them.” She teased. “I forgot to bring anything to sleep in.”

He groaned and dropped his forehead to
Emma’s. “Your parents are going to kill me.”

She chuckled. “No they won’t. But, I have
to admit that with me staying here tonight, the whole town will be aware of
that fact by morning.”

About to open his mouth to reply, someone
knocked on the door.

“Food.” Emma smiled. “Should I get the door?”
She glanced at his groin and grinned.

Logan twitched behind his zipper and knew
he should agree, but he wasn’t going to let her face Adele on her own. “No, I’m
good.”

He backed away and opened the door to a
grinning Adele
and
Greg. His eyes
filled with amusement when he met Greg’s.

“Come in.” He stood back, and his mouth
watered as the smell of the food hit him. “That smells good,” he said as his
stomach growled.

“So, Logan, you and Emma, huh? Never saw
that one coming,” Greg mumbled.

Emma chuckled and stayed silent while Adele
looked between them both.

“Have you known each other long because I
can’t believe you’d be here, Emma, after only just meeting someone?” Adele
questioned.

Logan hissed between his teeth. “We’ve
known each other for two years, and if you don’t mind, we’d like to eat our
meal while it’s still warm.” He took hold of Emma’s hand and waited for them to
leave.

Greg didn’t look too happy with his mom,
and Logan guessed they’d be having words once they left the room.

As soon as the door closed, he turned to
Emma. “Are you okay?”

She nodded.

“Babe?”

“I’m okay, Logan. I was shocked to have
Adele talk to me like that, but I really am okay and don’t doubt my decision to
be here with you.” She reached up and kissed his lips. It was a mere touch of
lips that lasted for a second, all too brief.

He joined her at the table for dinner, and
couldn’t decide what he wanted to do with her. She was beautiful and fresh
faced, and she had an innocence about her that touched him deeply. He didn’t
doubt for a second that she had a naughty side, and he couldn’t wait to see
that side of her. He was just unsure about how wise it was for them to share a
room when he constantly wanted to peel her clothes away.

She had a beautiful figure and his eyes had
taken in every inch of her as she moved. The thought of having her naked and
spread out on his bed caused his dick to ache. Who was he kidding? His dick had
been involved from the minute she’d stepped into his arms back at her parents’
house. He’d just had better control over his body while being glared at by her
mom and brother-in-law. Emma’s sister had been happy to have him there, even if
the other two hadn’t.

He’d already been in love with Emma before
he arrived in town, and before he met her, he’d hoped he wasn’t in love with
the
idea
of Emma as opposed to the
woman herself. He was glad to know that it was this woman who held his heart.

“Are you not hungry?” Emma asked, watching
him while she ate her potatoes.

He glanced down at his plate of food and
realized he hadn’t touched any of it. “I am. Just distracted with thoughts of
you.”

Her eyes widened in surprise before one
side of her mouth curved upwards. “Good thoughts?”

“Oh, yes.”

He dipped his head and ignored the
speculative look that appeared in her gaze.

The food was delicious, and, although they
ate in silence, Emma wouldn’t have exchanged the company for anything. They’d
both passed glances back and forth through most of the main course, and it had
just felt nice to be with Logan.

From the minute he’d shown up at her house,
she knew that her life was about to take a turn in a new direction—a direction
that she couldn’t wait to take. Somewhere over the past twelve months, her mom
had stopped pushing her into marriage and decided she wanted to keep her at
home. And the sad truth was that she let her. Instead of standing her ground
and admitting to the life she had started to create for herself, she kept silent.
If she chose to tell her family, it wouldn’t go down too well because she’d
kept it a secret.

She had a bad feeling that her mom might
know what happened to her letters to Logan, but how had she not received the
ones Logan sent to her. Emma had been the one to check the mail on a daily
basis.

“What happened to your letters,” she
blurted the question out, and caused Logan to pause with a spoon of the
chocolate mousse on its way to his mouth. “I was just thinking.” Emma put her
cutlery down and Logan followed suit. “Say for instance that my mom is
responsible for you not receiving my letters. I don’t understand how I never
received yours because I’m the one who would bring the mail in.”

“I wish I knew.” Logan drank from his
bottle of water.

Emma sat back and wondered aloud, “My mom
mailed most of the letters to you; apart from a few that I mailed myself.” She
chewed on a fingernail. “But then, why did you not receive any over the past
six months because there is no way I didn’t mail some of those.” Emma sat back
and sighed, no closer to knowing what happened to their letters.

“The letters would have come through the
same post office, right?” Logan offered.

Emma sat up straighter. “Oh...Maggie runs
the place, and she’s a good friend of my mom’s.” Emma’s heart sank. Surely her
mom wouldn’t be so cruel as to stop their letters from reaching their
destination. “If what I’m thinking is true, then isn’t that illegal, especially
for Maggie?”

“Yeah.” Logan wiped his mouth on a napkin
before he laid it on the table. “We need to be careful, Emma, and maybe ask
your mom if she has any idea why the letters stopped. I don’t want to accuse
her if she’s totally innocent, but I do need to find out why, otherwise, it
will only continue to annoy me.”

“I need to know as well.” Emma stood, and
slipped onto Logan’s lap, her arms went around his neck as she rested her head
against his chest. “I missed you.”

Logan dropped his chin to the top of her
head, and whispered, “I missed you, too.” He placed a kiss to her silky locks.
“So much, Emma.” His hands caressed, back and forth, along her back.

She felt pleasure at his touch and the way
his hands moved over her back. Her mind drifted and she wondered what it would
be like to be under him—naked. She could feel his strength through his
shirt and wanted to feel his chest against her bare breasts. Her nipples would
harden, like they had done, while his chest hair tickled them to arousing
tightness.

Her breathing had become heavier, and so
had Logan’s, not to mention the hardening bulge beneath her bottom. Emma wiggled
and smiled when Logan gripped her to him, and a small gasp escaped between his
lips. “Stop. Wiggling.”

Emma raised her head and met Logan’s
aroused blue eyes. She cupped his face, turned to straddle him, and rested her
forehead against his. She rotated her hips over his hardness, and bit her lip
in pleasure as they touched in just the right spot between her legs. “I’m
yours, Logan. I have been since the beginning. Please make love to me.”

He caught his breath. “I need for you to be
sure, because I won’t let you walk away from me after I’ve made you mine.”

Emma’s heart soared when she realized that
Logan was in the relationship with her just as deeply as she was with him. She
didn’t need to think about her answer because she’d been ready for him for a long
time. As she dipped her head and fluttered light kisses along his lips, she
gave him her answer.

She felt Logan as he slipped his fingers
through her hair and held her head in place while he deepened the kiss. Their
tongues caressed as their mouths melded together. Emma’s arms were tightly
wrapped around Logan’s head as she kept him under her.

Her senses swam in pleasure at the taste of
her man, and shards of lust, which caused her nipples to tingle and harden into
tight, aching buds, trailed down between her legs as they soaked her panties.

Logan was rock hard as she rocked and
ground down on him, but it wasn’t enough. She needed more. She needed him
inside of her.

Breaking from the kiss, Emma grabbed
Logan’s shirt and yanked it over his head. She practically purred when she saw
his golden torso with a light sprinkling of hair that disappeared beneath the belt
of his jeans. As she scraped her nails down from his chest to rub over his
nipples and along his waist, his stomach muscles quivered and hollowed out as
he moaned.

“We need to slow down,” Logan hissed as
Emma dipped her finger into his jeans. “Emma...
fuck!
”

Her finger while inside his
jeans,
discovered his erection so she teased and aroused him
more by lightly dragging her nail over the crown and into the wet slit. She
rubbed his wetness around the thick head and met his heavy-lidded gaze.

His breathing was heavy and his legs
trembled under her as she dipped her head and lapped at his nipples.

“I want you so hot for me that your control
snaps.” Emma bit a nipple and felt his reaction as he jerked against her
fingers. “I want to feel all this steel,” she squeezed his shaft and watched as
his eyes closed, “inside my tight sheath.” She licked up to his ear and nibbled
his lobe. “I’m on the pill to regulate my period, so I want to feel you release
inside me, and I want to know what it feels like to have your seed dripping out
of me…claiming me.”

Logan growled and shot to his feet with
Emma clasped tightly in his arms. He dropped down onto the bed with her under
him, and nothing had ever felt as hot. “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to go
slow with how worked up I am.” He went for her shirt, and froze with one hand
on the shirt and the other on her purple, silk clad, breast…

Bang.
Bang. Bang.

Emma thought she was hearing things.

Bang.
Bang. Bang.

“Oh, God.” Logan dropped his head to her
chest and panted against her. “I can’t...get that.”

“Do you think they’ll go away?” Emma asked,
but she already knew the answer.

Bang.
Bang. Bang.

“Fuck,” Logan cursed, and reluctantly
climbed from Emma.

Emma sat up and found herself nearly eye
level with Logan’s groin. He looked really hard and uncomfortable behind his
zipper.

Her eyes met his.

“I’ll survive, but I can’t get the door.”

“You go into the bathroom, and I’ll get
it.” Emma stood and placed a soft kiss to his lips. “We’ll pick up where we
left off after they’ve gone.” She straightened her clothes, ran her hands
through her long hair and, before she unlocked the door, she looked over her
shoulder to make sure Logan had disappeared into the bathroom. He was just
about to close the door when Emma spotted his shirt on the floor. “Logan, take
your shirt.”

He grabbed it and closed the bathroom door as
he threw her a tortured grin. Emma turned and pulled the door open. She wasn’t
happy with the interruption and planned on giving Adele a piece of her mind,
until she met the smirk on her brother’s face.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m staying in town tonight so I thought
I’d stop in to see you.” He grinned and walked into the room carrying a package,
which he left on the table by the door. “You alone?”

Emma resigned herself to him being in the
room and closed the door. “No, I’m not on my own as you probably know.” She
narrowed her eyes. “Mom called you. Didn’t she, Travis?”

He grinned. “Yeah, she did.”

The bathroom door opened and Logan stepped
out.

Emma met his gaze as he walked over to her,
and slipped his hand around her waist. Logan then held his hand out toward her
brother. “Logan,” he offered his name and Emma sighed in relief when her
brother shook his hand. “Travis, Emma’s brother.”

“Now you’ve met each other, what did Mom
say?” she asked Travis impatiently, and noticed Logan’s frown so added, “Mom
called Travis to come find us.”

Logan’s frown deepened, but Emma turned
back to her brother for answers.

“She said you’d gone off with him, and that
she wanted me to come get you and take you home.” Travis grinned as Emma rolled
her eyes. “I told her that you were well past the age of consent and that she
should leave you alone.”

She laughed with amusement. Their mom
wouldn’t have left it at that. “And?”

“Oh, come on, sis. You know what Mom’s like
these days,” he hedged, “I told her I’d find you.” He smirked. “I never said
one word about taking you with me, though.”

Emma moved forward and hugged her brother.
“Thank you.” She kissed his cheek. “The connection we have,” she glanced at
Logan, “is hard to explain and I’m not sure I want to. It’s between Logan and
I, and I wish Mom would stop trying to keep us apart.”

“You eating this?” Travis pointed at her
mousse.

“No, and will you stop looking at the
food.”

“I’m hungry.” Travis picked her mousse up
and grabbed her spoon before he dropped his ass into a chair. “So, what did Mom
say before you left the house?”

“Nothing much.” Emma sighed and let Logan
shove her into a chair at the table before he sat in the remaining one. “She
just wasn’t her welcoming self.”

Emma loved how Logan constantly had to
touch her—whether it was a hand on her thigh, or to wrap a lock of hair
around his finger. She loved it, and was disappointed that her brother had interrupted
them before anything else had happened. Everyone had to sleep at some point, so
there was hope for
them
yet.

“Travis? Can I ask you something that
you’ll keep to yourself?”

Her brother stopped eating and looked
between them before he nodded. “You know that I don’t gossip.”

“This is harder than I thought,” Emma said,
her lip quivering.

Logan held her hand and asked the question
for her, “Do you think your mom had something to do with Emma and I not
receiving each other’s letters?”

Travis’s eyes widened before he became
thoughtful. “So,” he frowned, “am I correct in presuming that you both wrote to
each other over the time and neither of you received anything?”

“Correct,” Logan answered.

Travis whistled. “I’d be very surprised if
Mom had something to do with your lack of mail, but, I guess, you can’t rule it
out.” Travis glanced at Logan, and held his gaze before he stared out of the
window. It was as though he was trying to decide on what he was going to say.
Finally, he said to Emma, “You know how Mom was about you writing to him,
especially while you dated Seth. Perhaps she does know something, but I
wouldn’t assume until you’ve asked her.”

“I know, but Mom’s changed. A couple of
years ago she couldn’t wait to marry us off, and now it’s as though she wants
to keep me at home.”

“You’re nothing like Mom described,” Travis
said to Logan, and laughed. “Think she might need new glasses.”

Emma had had enough. “Travis this isn’t
funny.”

“I know it isn’t.” He got to his feet, the
mousse forgotten. “I’m going to leave you alone, and I’ll tell Mom that you’re
asleep in my room. No one needs to know otherwise. At least that should buy you
some privacy. But tomorrow is a new day, and you need to go home and sort
everything out.”

Emma enjoyed the warmth of her brother’s
arms as he hugged her close. “I love you, sis.”

“I love you too, and thank you.”

Travis shook Logan’s hand. “I’m trusting
you to look after my sister.”

“You have no worries there. Emma means
everything to me. She’s safe.”

“Good.”

Travis headed for the door, and said over
his shoulder with a nod toward the package he’d brought in, “I’m damn proud of
you, Emma,” with raw emotion in his voice. He cleared his throat. “I’m leaving
you a present...R. Logan.” He smirked, and let the door slam shut behind him.

Emma was too stunned to move. How the hell
did Travis know her big kept secret? Her eyes fixed on the package that he’d
left by the door but she couldn’t move.

“Do you want me to get it?”

Emma nodded.

Logan grabbed the package.

“What’s inside?” she asked, feeling
nervous.

Logan pulled out a copy of her newest book.

“I guess it’s safe to say that he knows
about you, and that he’s proud of you for this.”