Exposed (Madame X, #2)(45)

He splashes hot seed onto my belly, groaning, and I watch it happen, watch him unleash and watch the semen leave his cock and watch it slash white across my dusky skin. I stroke him fast now and he comes and comes, and I watch him, not missing a single second. His forehead is pressing hard against my shoulder, and his arms are hard bars beside my face, and I twist to kiss one of his biceps. The other. And then I nuzzle his cheekbone with my lips, and he presses his mouth to mine,

and kisses me,

and kisses me,

and kisses me.

I am lost to this. I weep. His come is a tacky pool on my belly, and his cock is still hard in my hand. I wouldn’t give up this memory for anything, even if it was a pale imitation of what I really want.

“Isabel—”

I shake my head. “Mmm-mmm. No.” I kiss his lips. Taste his breath, and feel his emotions like a wave. “You’re right. I hate it, but you’re right. I don’t know what I would say. I want to say—I want to promise that I’d choose you. I do choose you. I want you. Only you. Only always you. But he messes me up and I know there is more between Caleb and me that I can’t back away from. I need answers from him. And I—I want so much more than this, but you’re right.”

He rolls off me, lies on his back, gasping, chest heaving, a forearm across his eyes, one knee bent, foot planted in the mattress. I stare at him, devouring his beauty. Tracing the contours of his muscles with my gaze, picking out individual designs from the jumble of his tattoos, the fall of his hair, the tension and conflict in his features.

“I wanted so much better for you than this,” he says, not looking at me. “You deserve . . . everything. Better than . . . this.”

“No, Logan. This was perfect.”

“I shouldn’t have let this get started.”

“If you tell me you regret this, Logan, I shall be very angry.” I don’t bother covering, don’t bother with the shirt, don’t bother sitting up or even wiping away the sticky pool of his come on my belly. I want it there. I like the feel of it there, the evidence of his desire for me visible as it dries on my skin.

He eyes me, and even now his eyes roam my body, my breasts, the shadow between my thighs. Then his gaze goes to mine. “I don’t regret it. I just wanted more for us.”

“So did I,” I say. “So do I.”

“Then why does this feel like good-bye?” He finally sits up, forearms resting on his upright knees, fingers hooked together.

It does, doesn’t it? The realization makes my chest ache. “Why do we never get more than a few hours together, Logan?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did. I wish I knew how to—how to fix this. You. Me. Us. Everything. But I can’t.” He swivels, and his knees brush my hip and my thigh. I remain as I am, staring at him, drinking him in. Memorizing his features, this moment, this feeling. “You have come so far from the broken, mysterious woman I met at that stupid auction. But you have a long ways to go yet. I can’t make the journey for you. I can’t make the choices for you. I can’t face Caleb for you. I can’t free you from him. He let you go, Isabel. But he didn’t set you free. He won’t do that. He’s not that type of man. He’s just not. You have to free yourself, and I can’t help you with that. I want you, but I also know anything that could be between us can only work if you’re strong and independent and fully your own person.”

“And I’m not, am I?” I rip my gaze away from his. “Not yet.”

A silence hangs. It is a strange, fraught quiet, filled with a thousand unspoken things. Words, sighs. Moans. Ghosts of the love we should be making right now, but aren’t. Because Caleb still has claws in my mind.

“Logan?”

He glances at me. “Hmm?”

“Tell me what you know about Caleb. Tell me what happened between you.”

He looks away, out the window. Gray tinges the sky. Exhaustion creeps at the edges of my mind.

Moments pass, and I begin to wonder if he’s not going to answer me. But then he speaks. “I was flipping houses, still. Making a killing on it, too. I had good taste, and an eye for the houses that would flip well and the ones that wouldn’t. I was getting to the point that I’d started hiring guys to do the actual construction work, and I was just picking the houses, buying them, and selling the flipped ones. And then I took a gamble on a huge mansion that had been foreclosed. It was outside Chicago a ways, in this gated community. On like six or seven acres. It was a f*cking mess. It had been bank owned for several years; no one wanted it. It was old, some pipes had burst, and it was just ugly, you know? That sort of overly gaudy decor rich people think they need to show how rich they are. Plush burgundy rugs, gold-plated door handles, thick dark walnut everywhere, too much furniture and not enough floor space. Ugly as f*ck, but it had beautiful bones. It was a huge project, which was why no one wanted it, you know? It really was a complete gut job; all the grass would have to be ripped out because it was all overrun with crab grass, all the beds were overgrown. Most flippers have a sweet spot of around two or three hundred thousand as a max purchase price. Once you get higher than that, you’re entering a whole new tier of things. You buy at four or five hundred, to get a good return you have to start seeing a sale price of nearing a million, and that level comes with its own complications. Well, this property was a huge risk. I got it for four hundred, because they were f*cking desperate to unload it at any price. That was a huge chunk for me, and I knew I was in for at least half that much in reno costs. It was worth easily double what I paid for it, just going based on previous sale prices of that property and area comps.