I thought your family needed a better explanation than the one they’d been served. I didn’t realise you were only interested in being truthful up to a point.’
‘You should have.’
She wanted to rattle him, Evie realised. Pick away at his anger and his armour and see what was underneath. ‘You can’t dominate me any more, Logan. You need to realise that.’
‘I don’t want to dominate you,’ he muttered. ‘I never wanted that.’ He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and looked away. ‘But it happened.’
‘I thought I was in love with you. Week one of an intensely sexual, sensual relationship,’ she argued. ‘So much to feel and to learn and, yes, my focus was on pleasing you. I like to think I’d have regained my equilibrium at some stage. That the relationship dynamic would have evened out in time. But I guess we’ll never know.’
‘I don’t want to dwell on the past, Angie. I just want you gone from my life now.’
‘Which is in itself an exercise in enforcing your will over mine.’ Evie moved forward until she was crowding his space; nothing weak about that move. ‘That seem right to you?’
‘You can’t marry him, Angie.’
‘You really think Max would still have me after the fuss you just made?’
‘He’s got fifty million reasons to ignore the fuss I just made,’ said Logan gruffly. ‘You don’t. You need to end this now.’
Logan’s hand went to the back of his neck. From there, it was only too easy for Evie to let her gaze run over the hard angle of his jaw, the stubble just starting to show, and from there to his lips. A woman could fixate on those lips.
‘Don’t,’ he warned huskily.
‘Don’t what?’ Wonder if she could coax them open? Wonder what it would take to make them say the name Evie instead of Angie? ‘Don’t tempt you? Don’t wonder what we might have had if you’d stuck around long enough to find out? Because I do wonder what we might have had together, Logan. I can’t help it. And I’m sure as hell wondering it now.’
‘Nothing good.’
‘You don’t know that. You barely know me. What if I am a match for you now? Ever thought of that?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe you should,’ she cautioned gently, and touched her fingers to his lips and he went still as a statue but he let her do it. ‘What if we could bring this passion between us under control?’
‘We’d get lost,’ he muttered as her fingertips strayed to his jaw. ‘I’d get lost and I can’t afford to, Angie. I can’t.’
‘What if I know the way?’
‘Do you?’ he asked, and then his hands were on her waist, dragging her towards him, and his lips crushed down on hers, desperate and tortured, no half-measures with this man and there never had been. It was all or nothing, and his kisses inflamed her as desperation turned into desire hot and sweet. And then he took his tongue to her mouth and lit an inferno.
A step backwards towards the bed for him as Evie set her palms to his chest and drank deeply of his passion and his pain. A step forward for her, and then they were falling, and he was beneath her, and his eyes were closed and his ravenous mouth never left her skin.
Her dress proved a poor barrier against Logan’s clever hands, the thin shoulder straps sliding down, and then he swept the bodice down to reveal the swell of small breasts and the tips of her nipples. He set his tongue to one, and then lips, and suckled hard and Evie gasped as he took her to the edge of pain, and he knew exactly where that edge began, damn him, and when to retreat and bring pleasure coursing in its wake.
Palms to his shoulders, with only the warm cotton of his shirt in the way and she wanted his clothes gone, and hers, but when she tried to undo his shirt buttons he wouldn’t let her, pushing her hands away with ruthless efficiency. ‘No,’ he muttered.
And then he slung his arms beneath her thighs and slid her up and over his chest and onto his mouth and licked his way past her panties and into her, and if she thought he’d been a skilled lover ten years ago it was nothing to the expertise he wielded now.
With tongue and with hands he opened her up and drew her out, until her gasps became pleas and her pleas turned into a breathless stream of nonsense as she rode him, no room for his pleasure now, it was all about Evie, and what this man had always been able to do to her in the bedroom, and that was make sensation the only thing that mattered and self-control nothing more than a wispy memory.
This wasn’t submission, she thought hazily, sliding her hands down to tangle in his hair, holding him exactly where she wanted him and it didn’t take long, not long at all, before Evie shot to orgasm, wave after wave of pleasure so fierce and fine that her body arched like a hunter’s bow.
He let her rest, momentarily. He let her catch one breath, maybe two, and then, just when recovery seemed possible, Logan clamped his mouth over her again and came at her sideways with his tongue and slung her skywards once more.
No control over her response whatsoever as she cried out her release and prayed she hadn’t been too loud, but it wasn’t submission. Evie clung to the faintest of hope that surrendering to pleasure wasn’t submission. It was just …
Sensitive now as she toppled forward, her forearms landing on the bed above him and her head resting on her arms. A tremor shook her, a juddering reminder of where she’d just been and what Logan had just done to get her there.
‘That wasn’t submission,’ she said breathlessly as she tried to think of a smooth move that would get her body back down level with his body.
There was none.
‘I was on top,’ she said as she crawled back down his body the clumsy way. ‘I am on top.’
Which sounded lame, even to her ears.
‘I could have done anything with you, Evie. Anything, and you’d have let me.’ He worked his mouth across her nipple again and had a little party there and all she could do was whimper and strain against him and hope to hell he got it into his head to party harder. ‘What is that if not submission?’ he muttered.
‘Participation,’ she said. ‘Participation resulting from stimulation. You need to work on your definitions.’
And she needed to work on him. Cautiously, Evie inched her way further down Logan’s big body until her face was level with his and her hair fell around their faces like a curtain.
He didn’t look rested or anywhere close to content. Evie closed her eyes and rested her forehead gently against his, breathing in the scent of him and the scent of her still on him. He tasted of her too, as she licked at his mouth, coaxing and cajoling until he did what she wanted, which was open for her with a groan, but when she went to undo his belt, he clamped her wrist and dragged her hand back up to his chest.
‘Don’t,’ he said against her lips and she pulled away, just a fraction.
‘Why not?’
‘No
