Logan (Carolina Reapers 4)

Logan stilled entirely, surveying me as I smiled at the pictures.

“Your sister, right?” I asked, and he nodded.

“Yes, that’s her,” he said, his voice cracking. I tilted my head at him. “You don’t…you aren’t…”

I widened my gaze. “Logan, what’s wrong?”

He cleared his throat, shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said a bit too quickly. “It’s just that…normally when people see the pictures, they comment on…” his voice trailed off, and I shook my head.

Yes, it was apparent Kate had Down syndrome, I knew that much from when he’d told me, but that isn’t what I saw.

“You know me better than that, Logan,” I said, squeezing his hand. “You want to know what I see?”

He pressed his lips together, nodding.

I pointed to one picture where Kate looked no older than six. “I see a sister who has a mischievous side, stealing your Oreos behind your back.”

Logan huffed a laugh.

I pointed to another. He looked ten, she looked eight. “I see a sister who adores her brother.” She held his hand as they walked toward a school bus.

Another. “I see a girl with a wild side.” This one she rode on the back of a motorcycle, Logan at the front—he could’ve been seventeen or eighteen.

I stepped to another, this one the most recent. “I see a woman who owns her style.” Kate wore a hot pink feather boa, blowing out the candles on a birthday cake Logan held before her.

I turned to face him. “You know what else I see?”

He shook his head, his eyes lined with silver.

I reached up and cupped his cheeks, ensuring he met my eyes. “I see a man, a son, a brother, who adores his family. Who would do anything for them. Who loves unconditionally. And there is nothing more attractive or inspiring than that.”

“Delaney.” He sighed my name at the same time he snaked his arms around my waist, pulling me flush against him. He kept saying my name as he trailed his nose along the seam of my neck, chills erupting in his wake. I arched into him, unable to stop the reactions of my body to his touch, to his scent, his heat.

And just when I was sure I’d burn forever with the need of this man…

His lips met mine, igniting the flames to totally, utterly consume me.

9

Logan

“Where is your bedroom?” Delaney asked against my mouth.

I pulled my lips from hers and stared down at her. Had I just heard her right? There was no way she was actually asking me that. Not when I’d done everything I could to put physical distance between us and what happened last week. Fuck, I could still taste her on my tongue.

Towing the friend line had been hard as hell, but I’d done it, and now she was asking me where my bedroom was?

“Delaney?” Maybe she’d meant that she wanted to continue the tour. That was possible, right? My dick was already hard, hoping she’d meant it in the other way—the impossible way.

She rose on her toes, slipped her arms around my neck, and kissed me. Her lips were soft against mine, but she raked her teeth across my lower lip as she drew back. “Where is your bedroom, Logan?”

There was nothing but desire and honesty in her eyes.

The small tether I had on my control started to fray, the threads unraveling so fast that I could barely keep a hold of my own need.

“It’s the door behind you,” I answered, my voice dropping low.

“First-floor master, huh?” She arched an eyebrow.

“Delaney, are you sure—”

Her mouth covered mine again. “I’m sure.” Her eyes flew wide as she stepped back, her arms falling to her sides. “Wait. Am I reading this all wrong? Oh God, do you not want me? Is that the real reason you didn’t take it further in my apartment?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I closed the distance between us, gripped her perfect ass in my hands and lifted her so she could feel exactly how badly I wanted her. She gasped but wrapped her legs around my waist as I backed her against the bare wall.

“Does this feel like I don’t want you?” I rocked against her as I switched my grip, anchoring her hair with one of my hands. It was down tonight, tumbling around her shoulders to curl just over her breasts. Fuck, it felt like silk in my hands. She felt like silk.

“No,” she murmured with a hitch in her breath, gripping the back of my neck.

“I want you,” I said it out loud just in case the physical evidence wasn’t enough. Then I dropped my lips to her jaw, her ear, the soft skin of her neck, punctuating my sentences with open-mouthed kisses. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. I think about you all the time. I fantasize about sliding inside you and taking you slowly until you come around me, then fucking you so hard we’ll never recover. I think about you when I’m in the shower, when I’m driving, and even when I’m at work, which gets really fucking awkward because I don’t exactly have the kind of job that tolerates distraction.”