“To know that you’re whole. That you’re here. That you’re mine.”
My throat nearly closed off. “Logan.”
It was a plea that had no clue what it was begging for.
“Do you want me to leave?” There was a tremor in his question.
I couldn’t make the right answer form on my tongue. Not when my mouth had gone dry, and I could barely squeeze oxygen into my lungs.
The atmosphere thickened.
Dense.
Every cell combustible.
Hinging on tonight.
When I didn’t answer, he stepped forward into the milky rays of moonlight that slanted in through the window.
I gasped when I saw him. There was a deep cut that had split open his bottom lip and blood and grime saturated his shirt.
“You’re hurt.” I shot upright as horror filled my spirit. I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t bring him danger.
He gave a harsh shake of his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
I tried to swallow, to stop the spread of flames, the crackle in the air. “How can you say that?”
“Because I’m here…standing in front of you right now.”
My feet were still planted on the mattress, my knees bent, the slip bunched up around my thighs. My hand was fisted in the material over my stomach.
Logan came to stand at the end of the bed. He winced once as he moved, guarding his side as he gritted through the movement.
He stared at me through the lapping shadows as if I might be a figment, too. As if he’d drifted through that same vacancy for the last seven years, the two of us floating through the nothingness that kept us separated.
My pulse raced my veins, so hard I was sure it was palpable. He reached out and trailed a single fingertip from the outside of my knee to my ankle.
Searing.
Scorching.
Inciting.
He angled his head, his profile so strong it verged on obscene, though his voice dropped to a grumble of agony. “Were you thinking about him?”
A wise woman would lie, one who held an ounce of self-preservation, but my head shook. “You know that I wasn’t.”
Logan leaned forward, and his breath whispered across the inside of my thigh. My heart bucked involuntarily in a bid to reach the one who’d left me adrift.
“Who then?” It was the roughest scrape of a demand, green eyes slicing through me with the sharp edge of a knife.
Everything shivered, and I tried to swallow, to regain some semblance of control when I’d slipped off the edge.
I squeezed my eyes shut to shield myself from the power of this man.
“Say it.” It cut through the air. Logan towered over me. His frame was rigid, hard, and held in some kind of restraint.
Hesitation rippled from my body and ricocheted against the walls, then the confession came tumbling out. “You.”