A need that glowed like a beacon from the abyss where I’d tumbled.
I should tell him,no. That all of this was a bad idea, and I would leave and do it on my own.
But rather than climbing out of this pit, rather than letting him go and setting him free, I was only dragging him deeper.
* * *
I stood in front of the full-length mirror looking at my reflection. I’d donned the red dress. It had the deepest, plunging neckline I’d ever seen, halfway down my midriff where it nearly touched my belly button. It exposed the inside curve of my breasts that were covered by the thin, silky fabric.
A slit ran up the side to the top of my thigh, ending only a second before it became obscene.
I’d paired it with the black strappy stilettos that had arrived with the rest. My hair was down, done in fat, full curls that bounced around my shoulders and landed in the middle of my back.
I felt beautiful.
Sexy.
At least I shivered at the thought that Logan might see me that way. That maybe it was what he’d envisioned when he’d picked it out.
I blew out a sigh as I glanced at the huge round clock that hung on the far wall of the room.
Two minutes.
They passed like stagnant honey, sweet and deploring, like as the seconds dragged, they begged me to come to my senses.
But as I waited for Logan to arrive back home to whisk me away to wherever we were going, I felt the faint vestiges of who I’d once been skim through my consciousness.
For a moment, I remembered what it’d felt like to hope. When I’d woken each morning with a blaze of excitement in my belly. When I’d loved to be touched by a man who’d touched me in a way no one else but he could do. Before I’d realized the true meaning of what losing something you loved meant.
I drew in a deep breath to contain it, to hold it back before it busted free.
Then that control was slipping when I heard the two slight knocks on the door before it drifted open.
Logan stood there.
The master of my universe.
The one who made me question it all.
He wore the same suit he’d been wearing this morning when he’d left.
He didn’t need to change.
He was the most striking man I’d ever seen.
Then.
Now.
Forever.
Black hair effortlessly mussed, his jaw shadowed by his short, trimmed beard. Everything about him was potent.
Provocative.
A temptation that felt impossible to resist.
A lure that called and pleaded and tempted from the doorway.