He pressed his face into my jaw, let his lips travel the length until he was murmuring in my ear, “Oh, make no mistake, Aster. We will.”
He stepped back and readjusted his jacket.
I sagged against the wall, heaving for the air that no longer existed.
His jaw ticked, and his stare was a flood of potency. “I have to attend to something. Do not leave this apartment. Do you understand me?”
“Where would I go?”
He was back in front of me, his thumb on my lips and his words in my ear. “Good girl.”
Then he was gone.
ELEVEN
LOGAN
It was halfpast ten when I weaved my way through the throbbing crowd toward the private booth tucked at the far back corner of Absolution. Absolution was the club Trent ran and owned, though a piece of that pie went to both Jud and me.
Our businesses were all tied. Bound together since the three of us were bound in blood and loyalty.
They earned the money.
I invested it.
Multiplied it and turned it over.
It was my calling. What I’d been bred to do.
What fed my addiction and destroyed the last vestiges of goodness inside me.
Lights strobed over the crowd, and lust stroked the air with an undercurrent of greed.
Tonight, a cover band was on the stage, the place packed and wild and hedged with a vibe of decadence.
I inhaled it like it might help me regain my footing.
Because I was tripping in a direction I couldn’t allow myself to go.
I should’ve always known Aster Rose would be a dead-end, and I was pretty sure if I didn’t get smart, that dead-end was going to land me six feet underground.
Things were already turning south in my brain. Leaving her there tonight? After walking in on her wearing that nightie? That shit had been one second from being impossible. How easy it would’ve been to slide my hands under the slip to get to all that sweetness.
To set my dick free and take her against the wall.
It’d been so fucking long since I’d been in that body, in that perfection, that I’d nearly walked right over that line.
Felt what she might give.
Topping it off was the memory of the way it’d felt sitting next to her at my niece and nephew’s performance. Like she’d been there all along. Where she’d belonged. My mind raced with the possibilities that my brain knew better than to go to.
It’d left me shaken.
Hungry for things that really should sour on my palate.
I’d only intended to push her a bit. Tease her. Tempt her the way she was tempting me. Then I’d touched her, and all bets were off. I couldn’t handle the way she’d looked at me with those fire-agate eyes.
The way she had to stop herself from letting the pleas drop from her tongue. I had nearly lost it right then, and I knew I had to get the fuck out of there before I did something stupid.