Matter of Time (6 page)

She tore her eyes away from Logan long enough to meet Lucas’s gaze. She still didn’t have a good handle on her breathing, but she was able to make her head work well enough to nod once, indicating she understood he wanted her to talk to Logan and she would grant that wish. A smile curved his lips and he closed his eyes like a man saying a prayer of thanks. Then he squeezed Logan’s shoulder and slipped off into the club.

Switching her attention back to Logan, she swallowed her heart, which was wedged in her throat, licked her lips, then swallowed again. “Hello, Logan… What are you doing here?”

*

What are you doing here?

Logan assumed Lizbeth meant other than trying to shake off the cold sweats that took over the second she turned and ran from him. He recognized his mistake the moment the words left his mouth, even without Lucas’s muttered curses for emphasis, but he was so taken aback by her presence he couldn’t keep himself in check. However, he’d learned his lesson, so taking Lucas’s solid advice to tread carefully, he slowly, cautiously made his way to the end of the bar, a few feet from where she sat eyeing him warily like one would a wild animal.

Which sort of made sense given he probably looked rabid with his rapid-fire pulse and the desperation he imagined burned in his eyes. He hadn’t been lying when he said she was still the most beautiful woman in the world, and trying to keep his distance from her was like trying to stop ocean waves from rolling on shore. Her gravitational pull was undeniable.

As he moved a couple steps closer, he watched a series of indefinable emotions dance across her face. Her beautiful chocolate eyes were no longer narrowed or pinched at the corners, but she continued to blink rapidly and occasionally rolled them to the ceiling, trying hard to keep the shimmering moisture from spilling over.

His heart clenched in response to what he assumed were tears of pain and not joy—since she hadn’t flung herself at him while announcing how great it was to see him—and if so much as a single tear slid down her cheek, he wouldn’t be able to keep his distance.

Her teeth sank into her bottom lip so hard he feared she’d draw blood, and her breathing sharpened and shoulder muscles went rigid as he took another step closer. If he examined her tightly clenched fists, he expected he’d find puncture wounds in her palms.

Lucas better be right about this, or Logan would beat the shit out of him for putting Lizbeth through this.

When he was close enough to speak without yelling over the club’s thumping bass, he said, “I’m here to see you.”

One more step, then he sat on the barstool two down from hers. The seat put him close enough to comfortably talk, but not touch, because damn him, it was all he could do to keep from brushing that stray hair from the corner of her eye or holding her hand to massage her punished palm.

After a moment, she nodded and said, “I guess the next question would be why. Why, after all this time, do you want to see me?”

After shifting over one stool closer, he rested his elbow on the bar, laced his fingers together to keep his hands occupied, and said, “Bobbi Jo and I are finished.”

Holding his breath, he watched her face, measuring every blink, muscle twitch, and deep swallow, trying to gauge her reaction. He’d never seen someone hold themselves so tightly together, and the complete lack of reaction had him wondering if Lucas might’ve been wrong after all.

Just because she still cared didn’t mean she would give him another chance to eviscerate her—something he’d never let happen again, but she didn’t know that. All she had to go on was past experience, and…

He blew out a breath and his shoulders slumped as he began to prepare for the worst. He still hadn’t gotten to the meat and potatoes of why he was here, and while he wanted to lay it all on the line, to tell her he still loved her and beg for the chance to start over, he needed to heed Lucas’s advice.

Forcing himself to take a more casual approach than he wanted, he said, “How would you feel about catching up with an old friend?”

A
s Logan stared at her, green eyes filled with hope and apprehension, Lizbeth could only stare back in dumbfounded silence. What did that mean? Sit at the bar, have a few drinks, find out how she’d been doing, then tell her, “It’s been good seeing you. We should get together again in another fifteen years.”

His throat jumped as he swallowed roughly and the muscle in his jaw tightened with tension. The fear in his eyes increased as hope waned, and God help her, she couldn’t stand to see that inner light extinguished.

She couldn’t logically think through something that was ninety-nine percent emotional, but what if she took the emotion out of it? What if she reduced them to a baser, primal level, like animals circling each other in the wild?

A dog in heat didn’t study the neighbor’s Doberman and wonder if he would be around the next day. The bitch rolled over, allowed him to take what he wanted, and enjoyed the hell out of it. Comparing her and Logan to dogs seemed ridiculous, but that was the only way she knew to cope with the overwhelming magnitude of the situation.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she slowly, tentatively reached out to him. With a barely-there touch, she pressed her index finger to the edge of his forehead, drew it across the unfamiliar scar at his temple, then down to the one intersecting his upper lip. He closed his eyes and moaned as a shudder shook his torso and his head fell back on his neck.

Seeing him respond to her touch as strongly as ever gave her the courage to continue her exploration. Using a whisper-soft touch designed to drive him crazy, she traced the outline of his upper lip, then pulled a long, slow sweep along the bottom one.

Her breath caught in her throat and she gasped in surprise as his lips parted and his teeth latched onto her finger, capturing her in the velvety heat of his mouth. His tongue wrapped around her and he sucked once… twice… a third time. The force of the suction shot through her arm, into her chest, and dropped into her sex with the heat and intensity of an atomic bomb.

Good, so freaking good, just as always with him. Simple caresses and touches were more powerful and intimate than full-on sex with anyone else, and she closed her eyes and allowed the carnal energy swirling between them to carry her away.

As the room spun and she grew lightheaded, like being caught in a massive vortex, a terrifying thought jumped into her brain. What if the past fifteen years hadn’t been a nightmare, but this was nothing more than a dream?

If so, it was the best, most realistic dream she’d ever experienced, and she prayed she never woke up.

She cracked her eyes open and watched his nostrils flare as the heat continued to build between them. She needed to be closer. To taste him. To feel him pressed against her. Scooting to the edge of her seat, she pressed her knees between his legs and smiled as his eyes flashed hotter and his chest rose and fell rapidly. His mouth was masterful, and while the suction on her finger did crazy things to her entire body, it wasn’t enough.

When she tugged on her hand, drawing him closer while also indicating she wanted him to let her go, he released her finger with a loud
pop
. The sound was like a starting gun, and in the next instant, his lips crashed down on hers, hot, hard, and demanding. Logan had always been sexually dominant, but this… this was unlike anything she remembered.

One hand slid through the hair at her temple, then wrapped around the back of her head and held her in place while he angled his head and deepened the kiss. His tongue thrust in and out of her mouth, harsh and nearly punishing, and when he nipped on her bottom lip, both of them groaned with the pleasurable familiarity.

The past fifteen years melted away, and she was a twenty-year-old girl again, standing in his bedroom, getting ready to crawl into his bed for the first time. They’d kept their relationship platonic for a year, respecting the boundary constraining them because of his off-and-on relationship with Bobbi Jo. But the night he came back to school and told Lizbeth he and Bobbi Jo had broken things off for good, it took less than thirty minutes to ditch their friends at the restaurant and make their way back to his condo.

His hands tangled in her hair and held her head in place as he ravished her mouth. She clawed at his shirt, trying to get to the hard muscle and soft skin beneath. She couldn’t get close enough, fast enough, and desperation had her whimpering into his mouth.

When he drew back to grab a breath, she latched onto him to keep him close. “More. I need more.” She looked around the club, searching for someplace to go. They were in a sex club. Surely there was someplace that offered more privacy than two barstools in front of Jason.

Pressing his hands to her cheeks, holding her firmly in place, he pressed a kiss to the corners of her eyes, then her nose, and finally a quick peck on her lips. “I have a room. We can go there and talk.”

Talk.

Another flashback, to the last time she saw him, was like an arctic blast dumping a truckload of snow on her hot and sunny beach. Her eyes widened and her limbs grew numb with fear and regret and self-loathing for being so stupid to think she could have one more time with Logan.

A master at putting on her game face when necessary, she didn’t even have to think before the shiny plaster mask fell into place and the internal locking mechanisms clicked into place, blocking the hurt and humiliation and sealing them off in a self-contained room to be dealt with later.

But Logan wasn’t fooled by her act, and abject horror colored his expression as he shook his head frantically and squeezed her face, holding her tighter. “Shit. No, no, no. That’s not what I meant. Don’t go back to that night. Stay with me. Right here. Right now.”

While she could physically fake it with a smile bright enough to light the room and pretend everything was A-okay, her emotions and mental capabilities were arrested, making it impossible to formulate a coherent thought or sentence.

As she remained silent, Logan’s panic peaked, then slowly receded. He studied her face, drew in a shuddering breath, then released it on a strong exhale. “I know we can’t pick up where we left off all those years ago. And I don’t know if you can ever trust me again. But I came here tonight to ask if we could start over. Get to know each other again and see about building something like before. I don’t want to rush things and you have regrets come morning. That’s the only reason I wanted to slow down.”

Start over? Build something like before?

He’d finally gotten around to the point of this visit, and again, she couldn’t process the information. It was too much and she didn’t understand how any of what he proposed was possible. But she also knew if she walked away from him and went back to her lonely hotel room, she would spend the rest of her life hating herself for being a coward.

“You said you have a room?”

His grip on her face relaxed and he nodded. “Yeah, upstairs. Lucas refurbished the theater’s old hotel rooms into private rooms for club members’ use. I have one for the weekend.”

“I want to go to your room. But I don’t want to talk.”

Nothing good ever came from talking, but sex with Logan had always been out-of-this-world fantastic, and right now, that’s all her emotional bucket could hold.

Without hesitation, he slid off the barstool and grabbed her hand. “Deal.”

*