She blew air out between her lips and looked around the room thoughtfully. Her eyes stopped on my DVD collection and her face lit up. “Let’s go the cinema.”
I considered my workload and then I considered how difficult it was for me to work at the moment because I kept thinking about the man next door. I could do with the distraction. “Okay. Do you have something in mind?”
“There’s that new action flick with Nick McGuire.”
Nick McGuire was the new action hero of the moment in Hollywood and very, very pretty. I knew exactly why Maia wanted to go see the film, and it had nothing to do with well-sequenced car chases. I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”
We decided to walk into Morningside, where there was this wonderful art deco theater we both loved. You could either buy a ticket for an ordinary individual cinema seat, or you could purchase an armchair or sofa. We bought tickets for a leather sofa to share and headed inside.
“I need the loo,” Maia announced as I took my seat on the small sofa. “I’ll be right back.”
“Get some popcorn on your way back.” I handed her some money, and she nodded before disappearing out of the theater.
The trailers were finishing up and Maia still hadn’t returned. Sometimes the lines for refreshments could be terribly long, but she had been gone for quite some time and I was getting worried.
I’d just bent down to get my phone out of my bag when the leather of the sofa creaked and the whole thing depressed with someone’s weight.
Much more weight than the weight carried by a slender fifteen-year-old girl.
I sat up, and the light from the cinema screen lit up Logan’s face. His body pressed against mine on the small sofa.
My heart started to pound. “What are you doing here?” I whispered frantically.
His eyes smiled. “Maia decided against the movie.”
I was going to kill her. “That little traitor.”
Logan shrugged his shoulder against mine. His heat was soaking into me along with his delicious cologne. “She’s on my side in this, Grace.”
I glowered at him. “Apparently everyone is.”
There was a glint of remorse in his eyes. “I’m sorry about the girls today. They are, too. It was overkill.”
“And this with Maia? What do you call this?”
“Necessary.” The deep, determined rumble of that one word made me shiver. He really needed to stop creating that kind of reaction in me.
I cursed my body. “You’re not playing fair.”
He gave me a slow, seductive smile. “No. I’m definitely not.”
Someone behind us shushed us, and I turned to look at the screen. The film had started and I hadn’t even been aware of it. That was pretty much how the next ninety minutes went.
If anyone asked me about the film, I’d have no clue what to tell them because, other than a make-out scene, I paid little attention to anything but the man beside me.
The force of the attraction between us was never so evident as it was in that dark theater. I had to give Logan his due. He didn’t try to seduce me with touch. He let his presence do all the work. My senses were on high alert beside him. My body reacted to the heat of his and my skin felt on fire from the beginning of the movie until the end. His knee pressed against mine out of sheer lack of space, and my whole being was focused on that point of contact. The pressure of the touch expanded, crawling up my leg until it almost felt like his fingers were trailing over my skin. During quiet scenes in the movie, I could hear the soft inhale and exhale of his breath beside me. Sometimes his cologne would linger into my space and activate memories of the night we had passionate sex against my kitchen wall.
That was the worst.
Because I remembered feeling him inside me.
I squeezed my legs together, trying to deny the rush of arousal, but I couldn’t.
It only increased when Nick McGuire started making out with his beautiful sidekick and heroine.
The film wasn’t R-rated, so it cut to another scene, but clothes did come off and we got to watch a gorgeous couple in nice underwear glide against each other before it did.
I saw Logan’s hand curl into a fist on his knee, and I had a suspicion I knew what was going through his mind. Was he willing himself not to touch me?
I couldn’t breathe.
When the film finished I shot up out of my seat and brushed past people, muttering apologies as I tripped over the belongings they had scattered on the floor at the foot of their seats.
Once outside the theater I gulped in the fresh, cool air of the summer night and turned to stare at Logan as he joined me. I didn’t know what to say.
“Let me walk you home.”
Since we were both going that way, it seemed childish and petty to deny him.
For a while we walked in silence, the tension crackling between us.
“You could have left,” Logan suddenly said.
He was right. At any time I could have stood up and walked out of that theater. “Apparently, I’m a masochist.”
He grunted at that. “I’m quite sure that was an insult.”
“Logan…” I sighed wearily. “Let’s not talk.”
“I’d prefer not to. Right now I’d prefer to be kissing that fucking sweet mouth of yours.”
I flushed and stared at him, wide-eyed. “You can’t speak to me like that.” I glanced around, making sure there were no bystanders to his flirtation.
“Babe.”
“Don’t ‘babe’ me. In fact, quit with the ‘babe’ thing completely.”
“Fine. I’ll quit with it if you can tell me you didn’t feel that inside the theater. Tell me while I was getting hard just sitting next to you, breathing you in, that you weren’t thinking about what it’s like to have me inside of you. Tell me you weren’t thinking about me fucking you. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I want to fuck you and then I want to make love to you…” He drew closer to me as I kept walking, trying to walk away from the words that were making my heart rate speed out of control. “And I want to repeat it over and over for the rest of our lives.”
My breath stuttered, but I kept walking.
Until suddenly I wasn’t.
I blinked at the abrupt movement as I was jerked sideways down the alley between two boutiques.
Logan loomed over me, pressing me against the cold, shaded brick wall. “Tell me.”
My lips parted to deny him, but I couldn’t.
He kissed me, crushing my mouth beneath his in an angry, desperate kiss that curled my toes in my shoes. I hated that the scratch of the bristle of his short beard sent goose bumps of arousal up all over my body. I hated that my breasts swelled with need, pushing up into his chest, pleading despite everything for his touch. I hated that my skin flushed and I tingled between my thighs.
I hated that I kissed him back just as desperately.
At the press of his erection against my stomach and the simultaneous brush of his thumb against the side of my breast, the jolt of lust that moved through me had the effect of reminding me of where I was and whom I was doing this with.
I gave Logan a gentle shove, and he immediately let me go.
His chest heaved as he stared down at me, more than a glimmer of triumph in his eyes.
I huffed and pushed past him, darting back out onto the safety of the street.
He caught up with me, and I felt his question without him having to voice it.
“So there’s attraction between us,” I said quietly, feeling vulnerable and, for some strange reason, lonely. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Oh, it means something,” he disagreed, and I could hear that damned determination in his voice, along with not a small hint of cockiness. “You told me yourself, babe. You don’t light up for just anyone… and you become a blaze whenever I put my hands on you.”
“I really don’t like you right now.”
Logan grinned. “That’s okay. As long as you love me, nothing else matters.”
“You are so arrogant,” I huffed. “Have you always been this arrogant?”
“Don’t confuse arrogance with confidence.”
I made a face and stomped ahead, grumbling under my breath at the way his long legs easily caught up with me.