Remembering.
“No one will ever touch you again, Aster. No one but me.” He nudged my knees apart, and his jaw clenched tight when he drove two fingers deep into my body.
A moan rolled up my throat.
“I need you.” I whimpered it as my hips jerked toward his touch.
“You have me, Aster. You just had to accept it.”
Logan stepped back, and the man watched down on me as he stripped.
Slowly.
Purposefully.
He unwound from his jacket, then he ticked through the buttons of his shirt before he pulled it away to reveal those broad, muscled shoulders.
He toed out of his shoes and socks then undid his pants and stepped out of them before he shoved out of his underwear.
The man was a masterpiece.
Carved of an ethereal canvas.
Dark and wicked.
Beautiful and right.
My mouth went dry, and my insides shook.
“I’d forgotten what life looks like.” The praise tremored from my tongue.
The man towered there as twilight seeped into the room, the barest rays of white illuminating his smooth skin. Every muscle in his body was rigid.
Flexing with strength.
“I never thought I’d want this way again, Logan. Not once. Not until I ended up here.”
“Right where you belong.”
I gulped.
I had almost forgotten.
Had almost forgotten what it felt like to be loved by this man.
The way he watched me.
All consuming.
Logan’s expression deepened. Lines of fierce adoration. Strokes of grief and guilt. A shadowy mystery that glowed beneath absolute beauty. “I was a fool who didn’t fight for you once, Aster. You need to know that won’t happen again.”
Joy sprang up from the vacant places. From the places I never thought could be filled.
Where old pain howled and promised I was nothing but a fool.
All while dread threatened to lay siege. To clot out the hope because neither of us knew what waited. How we would find the freedom to continue to love this way.
I wondered if he saw it, my fear, because he leaned over me and brushed his thumb across my jaw. The words left him on a rough promise, “You are worth the risk, Aster. Whatever it costs. I will fight for you. Live for you. Kill for you. Whatever it takes.”