Wild (The Ivy Chronicles #3)(30)

Some of the fight went out of his buddies, too. They no longer looked ready to jump Logan.

Fish Lips went into instant restrained-pissed-guy mode, puffing out his chest and practically standing on his tiptoes to match Logan’s six-feet-plus frame. “What’s your problem?”

Logan jerked his thumb in the direction of the back door. “You can take your boys and go for the night.”

“You’re kicking us out, man?”

“Harassing girls is something we frown on, man.”

Fish Lips looked ready to argue, his hands flexing open and shut at his sides.

One of Fish Lips’s friends clapped him on the back. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Come back in here and harass any girl again and you’ll be blacklisted from Mulvaney’s,” Logan added.

Fish Lips snarled as he started walking away with his boys, his body twisting beneath their hands. “Like I’d ever step foot in this shit hole again.”

I turned an uncertain gaze on Logan.

He was staring at me unwaveringly. That stare alone made me feel like I needed to apologize. For what, I didn’t know. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I moistened my lips. “You didn’t need to do that.”

Both his eyebrows winged. “Oh, no?”

I shook my head and then yelped as he grabbed my hand. “What are you doing?” I demanded over the buzz of voices as he pulled me through bodies.

“Escorting you to your room.” He flipped up the counter, and instantly we were free of the hot press of humanity. It was like suddenly breaking through the water and taking your first deep breath of air.

“That’s not necessary,” I said as we walked past Karla working the counter and back into the kitchen. Cook didn’t even look up from where he was shaking salt over fries. “I can make it on my own now,” I said, digging my key out.

Logan ignored me, plucking my key from my hand and unlocking the door to the loft. Still holding on to my hand, he pulled me up the stairs after him, his feet heavy thuds on the wooden steps. “You really think it’s a good idea to live above this bar, Pearls?”

I bristled at his use of that nickname. “It’s just for the summer.”

“What? Mommy and Daddy won’t spring for a pimp apartment. You gotta stay here?”

I bit back a “no.” He didn’t need to know the particulars of my life—that my parents only paid my way as long as I did exactly as they instructed.

“I’m home now.” My sandals hit the steps hard in my mounting anger. “You can go. I don’t want to keep you from your job.”

“Saving damsels from drunks is part of the job requirement.”

We reached the top floor and I tugged my hand free of the warm clasp of his fingers. “Yeah?” I tossed my handbag on the futon and turned to face him.

“Yeah,” he tossed back. “I’m pretty sure it’s even more important to my brother when the damsel happens to be a good friend of his.”

I narrowed my eyes on him. “Did Reece tell you to look after me?”

He snorted and crossed his arms over his chest, advancing on me. Those well-carved lips curved as he spoke. “That goes without saying.”

“Oh.” I inched back, stopping when the back of my knees hit the edge of the futon. “You think he would approve, then, of you hitting on me?”

Chuckling, he stopped directly in front of me, leaving only a thin line of space between us. “I don’t answer to my brother. I’ve been my own man for a long time.”

I had a flash of memory then. Pepper telling me that Reece was only eight when their mother died. Logan would have been just three then. And their father was a mean drunk. Cruel and bitter even before the accident that put him in a wheelchair. Yes. By all accounts, Logan had been his own man for a long time. He had missed his childhood entirely.

The breadth of his chest was so close, vibrating with an energy and vitality that made something inside me quiver . . . stretch soundlessly toward him in response. But it was an invisible thing, buried deep inside me. I refused to let it loose.

I made no move. No sound. The clean, musky scent that I was coming to learn as belonging to him enveloped me, filling my nostrils.

He lifted a hand, dragging his thumb down my cheek. His fingers trailed down my throat, stopping just above my neckline and picking up a lock of hair, rubbing the long strand between his fingers. “I don’t check with my brother for approval when I decide that I want a girl.”

I swallowed. He wanted me. I knew that, I guess. Even if he had stopped spending the night on my futon. But still . . . hearing him say it like that. While he was looking at me like he wanted to devour me. Like I was the one thing on this earth that he needed.

He continued, “This is between us, Georgia. It’s no one else’s business.” His fingers tightened around my hair, wrapping it around his fist and forcing me closer until our bodies were flush.

Us. It was tempting to believe there was an us. That there could be.

“There is no us,” I whispered, my lips brushing his jawline as I spoke. Deliberately. Because I had to. Because I couldn’t stop myself.

“Because you won’t let it happen,” he countered, his fist tightening in my hair, tugging my head back to look him in the eyes.

Was that why he’d been staying away? Because he was mad at me for not putting out? I shook my head and then froze as he bowed his head, burying his face in my neck, nuzzling my skin and turning slightly so that his mouth grazed my ear. “Let it happen, Georgia.”