I breathed him in, afraid to let go.
When he pulled back from me, I could only stare into his eyes, hoping I would be able to read in them what he was thinking. But I couldn’t. Instead I held perfectly still, wrapped around him, as he pressed the softest, sweetest kiss to my mouth. My lips tingled as he gently pulled out of me and lowered my legs to the floor.
“Are you on the pill?” he said softly.
I froze at the unexpected question.
And then it hit me.
I’d let him inside me without a condom.
How could I have been so stupid? “I’m on the pill,” I whispered, because I was, but that wasn’t the point!
Some of the tension he’d been carrying melted out of him as he bent down to pull on his underwear and jeans. I stared at him as he zipped himself back up and then took a step toward me.
What was he going to do next?
I had no idea what was going on here.
To my surprise he took hold of the hem of my dress and slowly lowered it back down into place. And then he grasped the straps of both my dress and bra and gently tugged the upper half of my clothing up until I was covered.
Legs trembling, I could only stand there in my state of shock as he trailed his fingertips across my cheek. “Did I hurt you?”
I shook my head.
In answer Logan took my hand in his and led me through the flat to the bathroom. “I’ll let you get cleaned up and then we need to talk.”
Locking myself in the bathroom, I did as he suggested, my skin burning as flashbacks from the sex hit me again and again. I leaned against the sink and stared into the mirror at my flushed cheeks, my too-bright eyes, and my hair, which was tumbling out of the grips that pinned it in place. What was going on with Logan? He was acting affectionately, but strangely for someone who had just had mind-blowing sex.
And he couldn’t deny it was mind-blowing. I felt how hard he’d come. Just as hard as I had.
I flushed again.
What did “we need to talk” mean?
There was only one way to find out. Butterflies alive and well in my belly, I kicked off my shoes in the hallway and tried to walk calmly into the kitchen, where Logan was sitting on a stool at the counter.
I slid onto the stool next to him.
He turned his head to meet my gaze, and the look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know.
Everything I didn’t want to know.
And the rejection, the pain, was awful.
It was this burning ache in my chest… quite unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
Logan lowered his gaze, appearing so solemn, that the ache intensified and began to crawl up my chest toward my throat until it felt like a hand choking me.
“This can’t happen again, Grace,” he said, confirming all that I’d seen in his eyes.
And I’d never felt loss like it. It was different from the pain of walking away from my family. I’d deliberately lost them.
I didn’t want to lose Logan.
It hurt, and that hurt was only magnified by the loss of something else. Hope.
Before this I hadn’t even realized that underneath my claims of logic and rationality I’d clung to the fantasy of Logan and me, but I had. That fantasy had sustained me in a way that I knew probably wasn’t good for me in the long run, but it had made each day a little brighter and filled with anticipation.