away to explore my jaw and the delicate place where it connects to my neck.
And the look on his face the entire time he does it—like he’s awed. Like I’m a forbidden museum and he’s finally allowed to touch the exhibit for the first time.
But no, it’s so much more than that, because our eyes are locked the entire time, and each external touch is connected to an internal touch, this zing of intimacy I didn’t know could exist.
And my face is just the beginning. His exploratory massage continues down my neck, outwards to each shoulder, down my arms.
I’ve melted into the mattress at this point, but I don’t want to miss a thing, so I keep my eyes drowsily open.
I swear though, if he does all this just to put me to bed, I’m going to kill him. If this turns out to be another soothing exercise to help Daphne sleep because she’s too sick, that might actually fucking break me.
But then I see all sorts of implements on the table beside him in an open bag. There’s the feather and the crop, yes. But also big fat candles with luxuriant looking wax. I’ve heard what these are for but obviously, never tried them for myself.
Master catches me looking and his eyes go dark.
“I want everything with you,” I whisper.
I see the pain enter his eyes. Pain and indecision.
“No. Stop it. And don’t look away.” If my hands were free, I’d grab his face and force him to look at me. “I want everything.”
But by his face, I see that he still doesn’t understand. He still sees this, me, as something to fix.
“This is your fault, you know. You taught me how to want things, and now I do. I want the big life and I want you and I want kids—” his eyes go wide and shit, I didn’t mean to say that, so I hurry on— “and I want…everything. I want an explosive sex life and decades under the sunshine.” I look over his beloved face. “I want to grow old by your side.”
He drops his big body to mine and cradles my face. “You will. We will. I’ll find a cure.”
I shake my head. I’m not just looking for false platitudes. I know some people like to hear people say it’s okay, that everything’s going to be okay. But that’s bullshit. There’s no cure for this. My mom died. I watched her die.
“You’re not listening,” I say, exasperated. “You just want to fix, fix, fix.”
“I’m going to,” he asserts, as if there’s no other possible outcome.
I sigh. Maybe that’s how it has to be in his head. He literally can’t fathom there being any other outcome. But that’s a game I can’t play. And I can’t pretend for his sake. If I try, it will start to build up between us and Logan refuses to allow that so—
“I don’t know what to do with you,” I mutter, banging my head back against the pillow.
“Do nothing,” he says, laying the whisper of a kiss across first one nipple and then the next. “Let me take care of all the doing. Lay back and let me give you a big life. Explosive sex. Let me make you want things and then give them to you.”
I giggle at him repeating my words back to me verbatim. At least he’s a good listener, even if he’s ignoring the underlying gist of what I was saying and diving straight for the sex. Shocker.
“You think too much, little genius. No more thinking. No more talking. Give in. Relax your muscles or I stop. That’s your only instruction.”
A small part of me wants to balk. I want to keep arguing with him. I want to pick a fight and push him away.
“I want to fight the whole world,” I whisper, a tear sliding out my eye. Embarrassed, I try to wipe it away but of course my hands are tied.
“Don’t hide from me. Never hide from me,” Logan says, eyes searching mine and seeing too much. “You want to fight, you fight me. You want to rage, you rage at me.”
He disarms me with those few words.
I go limp on the bed, all my anger diffusing and running out of me like water out of a drying sponge. Wait, what? That’s not how this works. Usually when I’m feeling bad, nothing can take away the anger. Except that it slowly fades into a gray depression.
But Logan’s hands are on my body, massaging up