Incredibly, his body responded. Again? After a night that extreme? He didn’t think they’d slept for more than half an hour at a time.
And when they had, he’d been embedded in her.
“Is that what keeps you so hot looking—your vibrant eyes, and that strength and virility you seem to ooze?” she asked. “Sex really suits you.”
Startled, he laughed. “Doesn’t it suit everyone?”
“I suppose,” she nodded, curling her fingers around his shaft. “But it definitely suits you.”
Logan frowned, even as he bucked into her hand.
She’d accused him of using sex as his anaesthetic. His drug of choice to escape his demons? Maybe that was true of him in years gone by. But now—with Min?
He wasn’t numb.
Maybe it wasn’t sex that suited him. But who he was having sex with.
He switched their play, flipping her to her stomach, teasing her that way. He lifted her hips so her soft, round ass pressed against him. He wrapped an arm beneath her, to toy with her most sensitive spots.
He’d play it as she’d said—just another fling. Another round of passionate, careless sex with just another woman.
But it wasn’t any woman.
It was Min’s glorious hair sweeping down her back, Min’s beautiful butt curving up to meet him. Min’s challenging eyes gleaming at him as she craned her neck to look behind her and challenge him.
Min who made him work. He grabbed her hips, digging his fingers into her soft flesh and fucked her harder. Pounding, almost brutal. Pushing her until her eyes glazed over and her cheeks were scarlet, her whole body drenched in sweat as orgasmic shudders ripped through her.
But she was still damn silent.
An hour later he dragged himself to shower and dress and face his family.
“I’d better go apologize to Connor,” he said to her. “Then we’d better get out of here.”
“You mean I’m going to have to move?”
He grinned at the way she lay sprawled diagonally across the bed, a picture of wanton pleasure. Poor babe was all worn out? He’d take her back to Manhattan and let her rest up. With him. “I’ll bring you some coffee. Won’t be long.”
He went downstairs to hunt out his brother.
“Logan.”
He paused halfway down the stairs. As good a mood as he was in, he didn’t feel like a lecture from his mother.
“You slept well? We missed you at dinner last night. I didn’t realize you were planning on staying an extra night,” she said as she caught up with him.
“We were tired, it’s been a busy week,” Logan answered.
“Don’t let her get away, will you?” his mom said. “She’s the best possible candidate for you. She’s discreet. She’s stoic.”
Candidate? Logan paused on the last step and turned to look at his mother. “Why would she need to be stoic?”
His mom didn’t meet his eyes, just kept her gaze firmly on the wide doorway that led to the great hall. “You’re a Hughes.”
“Actually, I’m not like him, Mom.” Logan refused to be like him. “And it’s for that very reason that I’m not going through with this. My engagement is a charade. Sorry if that’s going to embarrass you after all the effort you put into the party.”
His mother looked shocked, then angered. In that suppressed way she did so well—her eyes widening, her lips tightening, her voice too measured. “That’s a mistake. You should marry her.”
“No, your marriage was a mistake,” he interrupted. He couldn’t stand it. “Your choosing to put up with all that—”
“What?” his mother flared, turning her sharp-eyed glance on him. “You don’t know everything. You don’t understand the subtleties. There’s more to your father and me than you’ll ever imagine. It might seem inconceivable to you, but we work well together.”
“Yeah, you work.”
“All relationships are work,” she said. “So it’s wise to enter one that’s mutually beneficial, for many reasons.”
His mother was trying to convince him to enter a ‘convenient’ marriage? Really?
“Mom, as the offspring of your supposedly beneficial marriage, I can say it’s not all its cracked up to be.”
His mother sighed and walked forward into the hall. “You always were a romantic.”
“What?” Logan caught up with her.
“Always thinking everything should be perfect. You give up when you realize it isn’t.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” This was the woman standing there looking more perfect than some magazine matriarch. “I know there’s no such thing as perfect, but you guys exemplify fucked up.”
And he wasn’t doing that to Min. She deserved so much more. He was so angry he couldn’t speak. Now he knew how Min felt. Frustrated, gagged in a way that wasn’t exciting.
“Just think about it, Logan. She is suitable. She knows how to make a stand without making a scene.” His mom turned, her back ramrod straight, as if she’d never give an inch, when he knew full well she never stood and fought for herself. “Don’t throw everything away the way you usually do.”
“I don’t throw everything away,” he retorted. “May I remind you I’m the CEO of my own company.” Not just the damn model. He’d made it a success beyond their dreams, and he helped realize other dreams with his investment portfolio. He had an eye for picking winners.
His mother glanced at him, her expression utterly dismissive of his achievement. “You throw away anything that might hurt you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
#BleepBleepBleep
Standing in the airport terminal, Min shifted from foot to foot. She couldn’t wait to get on the plane. Summerhill might be beautiful, but she was so done with the extreme cold. And she didn’t mean the weather.
Logan’s parents? Colder and less malleable than glaciers. His father ignored him. Hadn’t spoken a word to him the entire weekend, as far as Min had seen. It was like each pretended the other didn’t exist. Only in public, at the party, had they stood alongside each other and smiled. But they’d never looked at each other.
And his mother wasn’t much better—it was shallow pleasantries in clipped tones all the way. No wonder Logan felt so freaking cold.
And now, she was doing the same, keeping the smile plastered on her face as she listened to Logan exchanging pleasantries with Keith, her mother’s latest boyfriend.
There were photographers about. Even though the airport security people had put them into a private lounge, there were windows and two creeps with long lenses. Interest in Logan and her didn’t seem to be dying. As they’d walked through the concourse, those photographers had called for her to show the ring—they’d heard it was amazing. Granite-faced, Logan had tightened his grip on her hand, drawing her closer, hiding the ring.
Finally it was time to board. She went into her mother’s embrace.
“Don’t screw this one up,” her mother said, too loudly into her ear and then turned to hug her future son-in-law. “It was so lovely to meet you Logan. You won’t leave it too long before you bring Min to visit me, will you?”
Min winced. Logan just smiled.
“Mothers, huh?” Logan wrapped an arm ‘round her shoulder, drawing her in against him as the flight attendants started their safety checks. “I thought mine was bad enough. You never want to just tell her to back off?”
“I’m not like you,” Min said, covering her sadness with a smile. “I can’t just c-cut people or things out of my life. She’s my mom. At the end of the day, I lo
ve her.”
She wanted her to be happy. She wanted her to let Min herself be happy.
Logan looked down to her hand, rubbed his thumb over the large diamond on her finger. “What doesn’t she want you to screw up?”
Ugh, he’d heard that? “Our engagement.”
“Why would she think you would?”
Min’s body chilled. But she knew she ought to tell him. It was weird he hadn’t asked her already. “This isn’t the f-f-first time I’ve been engaged.”
She felt him freeze as he absorbed her words.
Then he looked at her, compelling, waiting until she glanced back up at him before he spoke. “Tell me about it.”
“Don’t you know it all from the security file you have on m-me?” She looked back down at her nails, rubbing at a speck where the polish had chipped, hiding from the promise of trust in his eyes.
“That only covered your education, where you worked, where you lived, whether you had a criminal record—”
“So it didn’t detail my sex life?”
He shook his head.
“Thank g-goodness for small mercies. I feel so much less invaded now.”
He chuckled, but soon became silent again. “Come on, tell me.”
She hesitated, she’d never told anyone the humiliation that had caused her so much hurt. But this was the guy who’d confessed his worst to her yesterday. She ached to do the same—to have someone know, understand, empathize. She knew Logan would be that person for her, the one to listen without judgment. And help lift that old burden. “He wasn’t unlike you.”
Logan adopted a fake outraged look. “So I’m just your usual type?”
“Rich, spoilt...” she winked. Then shook her head and whispered. “He was nothing like you. Not in any way that really m-matters.”
His expression softened, his fingers stroked over the back of her hand. “So what happened?”
“My mother thought he was perfect,” she whispered. “For a while, so did I. We met at c-college. I thought he liked me.” She couldn’t believe it when he targeted her, the quiet one in the corner of the media studies class. “He was p-popular. Lots of friends. Total cool crowd, you know?”