Clearly, he did.
Relished it.
The way his eyes traced the redness that flushed up my chest to my cheeks when that thought sent my mind tumbling right back where I kept trying to keep it from going.
“But I guess that would only be fair considering I know exactly what you wear when you’re sleeping.” A taunt and a tease.
“I think I should pass.”
He sat forward. “I think youareafraid.”
My teeth clamped down on my bottom lip, and I wrapped my hands around the steaming mug. “Yes.”
He pressed forward. “I would never hurt you.”
I looked up and met his stare head on. “You already have.”
Lines of regret cut into his hard, chiseled face. So gorgeous. Too much.
“Aster…”
I tried to look down. To look away. But he still surrounded me. If I listened closely enough, I could hear the fierce rhythm of his heart, the way it’d once woven with mine, the man a ghost that would forever beat in my blood.
And here he was, alive and real and ruining me all over again.
He inhaled a heavy breath. “I think we need to discuss some things.”
Unease squeezed my ribs. I peeked at him. “We probably should.”
He took a sip of his coffee, every edge of him intense. The question left him like the topple of stones. “You want to leave Jarek? Permanently?”
Fidgeting, I inhaled a shaky breath. “You know I do.”
“And what will your father think about this?”
There was bitterness there. My father the root of it all.
The evil.
The injustice.
Although Logan had fed right into it.
I gulped around the knot laced tightly in my throat. “Like I told you, I spoke with my father yesterday, and he’s giving me thirty days.”
I watched the way every muscle in his body flexed.
“And what do you plan to do with thirty days, Aster?” The question was icy.
“My father thinks I need time. Time to myself. Time away.A vacation.” I left out the defective promise I had made. “He agreed, and he promised Jarek would stand down and leave both of us alone until then. He thinks it will teach Jarek a lesson for being so reckless.”
Hatred burned across Logan’s flesh, and I could almost feel the throbbing of the cut on his mouth. My chin lifted farther, my attention on his wound. “But it won’t, will it?”
Logan sat back, malice in his posture. “I doubt there’s any lesson that prick could learn.”
“I’m not going back to him, Logan. I just…” I paused, looked away, tried to gather my thoughts before they came rushing out on a flood of words. “I need the time to find a way to prove to my father that Jarek has become disloyal. That he is wrong for the family. Wrong for me.”
A blister of rage bludgeoned the air.