Crush(22)

His hands started tugging my dress up. “Everything about you is my business,” he growled.

It was then that I realized he must have seen me with Michael and he was jealous.

Jealous!

Was he trying to make his mark, stamp his claim on me? Well, I wasn’t his. He’d had a choice; he’d chosen not to be with me. I turned around and shoved him away. “No, Logan, you’re wrong. We’re not together anymore and nothing about me is any of your business.”

My words were cold and they killed me to speak them, but for the past few days I’d been just barely holding myself together. If this little tête-à-téte, or whatever this was in the bathroom, went any farther, it would surely make me crumble when he was finished marking me and then left me alone—again.

Logan grabbed my wrist. “Don’t say that, Elle.”

My breath caught when I looked at the real him, not the reflection of him. His eyes were wide. Pupils dilated and dark. So intense. And his lips were slightly parted, the lower one wet from where he’d just swiped his tongue. So delicious looking.

The urge to kiss him was too much to bear and I had to close my eyes to try to find my center, but I couldn’t. The sexual tension between us was off the charts and quickly causing my control to shift.

His hand was still holding my wrist and he let it slip lower. Before I knew it, he was tugging me into a bathroom stall and I was going willingly.

Saying nothing, he pushed me against the door, hard enough to rattle it. He moved closer until we were face-to-face, chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip, and then his hands were lifting my dress.

I shuddered when his thumb moved back and forth against the inner skin of my thigh. Slow, even strokes. This small touch was enough to electrify me and the shudder of my breath echoed in the small space.

He leaned even closer and his lips brushed my earlobe. “Tell me you’ll wait for me.”

I turned my head the tiniest bit toward him. I felt like I was going to break in two right there, I was so torn.

But I had to keep my stability—for Clementine.

My lips barely moved when I said, “I can’t do that.”

“You can.”

I shook my head. “I can’t, Logan. I can’t put my life on hold for something that might never come.”

The air around him crackled dangerously. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth.”

His lips skimmed down my neck. “Do matter what you do, you’re mine, Elle. Mine. You’ll always be mine.”

Torn between giving in to him and holding on to what I knew was the right path for me, I had to get away from him to think clearly. In a split-second decision I reached behind me and unlocked the latch, causing the door to swing open. I didn’t deny that I was his. He already knew I was. My body’s reaction to him alone was enough to confirm that, but I did say something I knew would make him dislike me, or maybe even hate me. Keep him from following me and tearing me apart. “I have to get back out there. Michael will be wondering where I am.”

“Michael,” he spat.

Guilt set in and I had to push it away. I was doing what I had to do. Still, I tried to ease the burn of my words. “Logan, I’m here with him to support him politically, not that I owe you any explanation.”

His expression cleared. I couldn’t read him at all. But then he leaned back against the sink and gripped the edge tightly, and I knew he was hurt.

I hated this. All I wanted was to be with him, but our separation wasn’t my choice.

His jaw twitched.

My eyes were glued to him. Under his clothes, I could see the impressive muscle tone of his arms and chest that I loved to have pressed against me. I could hear the way he breathed. I could almost taste his lips on mine.

“Don’t, Elle. Just don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what, Logan? Go on with my life?”

His eyes were flat, his expression lifeless. “You know why we can’t be together right now. All I need is some time.”

I was shaking my head and lashing myself at the same time. I felt physically sick. “I gave you a choice and you didn’t pick me. There is no in-between. Not for me. There can’t be.”

His gaze remained steady, unblinking; his mouth was straight, almost a frown. “This is our story. There can be whatever we want.”

My fists and jaw were clenched. When it came to us, he wasn’t right. “How does that work? The in-between, I mean. We call each other on the sly, maybe meet up to f*ck in secret, in a bathroom, a backroom, someplace where we are with other people so no one knows we’re together?”

The look of pain and despair he gave me was one I’d never seen.

The ache in my chest flared, but I didn’t stop. I had to put an end to this before I couldn’t. “Tell me, Logan, in this in-between, do we not only f*ck each other but f*ck other people too, to make the sham all the more real?”

Red seeped into his face. “Fuck you, Elle.”

His words punched the air from my lungs. I wanted to fall to my knees right there and say I was sorry, but I had to stay strong. I had to end this between us for good, because I knew he would keep going with the back and forth. “We shouldn’t be seen together. Do you want to be the first to walk out of here or should it be me?”

He pulled his bowtie loose and unbuttoned the top button but didn’t answer me.