Page 53 of Kings Fear No One
It becomes our routine.
Logan letting me sleep with him. My meals waiting for him. Our conversations mundane, like we’ve accepted our new living arrangement.
Logan leaves the toilet seat up and my hair gets everywhere. I put the TV volume on blast while he never tosses any of his clothes in the hamper.
“I have to wonder what you did before me,” I confess one morning. Shaking my head, I drop one of his flannels into the dirty clothes pile. “Did you just expect the laundry fairy to sort it all out?”
He cocks a brow at me. “You’re one to talk considering you’ve made a hobby of filling up the drain with clumps of hair.”
“I always clean up after myself!”
“Yet more hair keeps popping up. Blows right across the bathroom floor like a tumbleweed.”
My jaw drops in offense. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve been too busy wiping down the toilet when you pee all over it.”
“You’re welcome to use the bathroom in the hall, babe.”
“Don’t call me babe?—”
“What are you going to do about it?”
As I go to shove him in the chest, he catches my hands and links our fingers together. We’re locked into an unplanned dance. My steps backward. His, forward.
Tiny little sparks shoot through me at his skin touching mine. He’s warm, radiating a raw heat that’s energy encircling us.
His hand drops to my hip and awakens something deep inside. Something I don’t know how to describe but feels like an intense ache.
Logan seems to come to his senses. He lets go of me with a clear of his throat and a mention about heading out.
It’s far from the first time I sense it out of him. Desire he’s holding back.
I wake a couple mornings later to find the bed empty and Logan in the bathroom. My sleepy mind assumes he’s taking a morning shower ’til I hear a grunt from the other side of the door. I stay still and listen for the sound again.
It’s the first of several.
I crawl out of bed, tiptoeing over.
Logan groans a final time before he goes silent. I leap back onto the bed, pretending I’m still asleep, just in time for the door to open.
Confusion knots up my insides as I wonder if he was doing what I think he was doing. Yet he’s barely laid a finger on his wife…
He hasn’t touched me since we were in captivity. The last time was the night Abraham first had me. Is it because he’s repulsed by what happened? He doesn’t want me now that Abraham’s used me in that way?
The rejection takes on a life of its own. It stays on my mind throughout the day. Korine offers to swing by and take me for a mani-pedi, but I decline. I break out the steaks we’ve bought from our last grocery trip and prepare a big dinner.
I light candles and bake a red velvet cake. I’m in the only dress Logan hasn’t seen me in yet—a revealing dress that’s tighter than the others.
Mama would claim it’s a dress scandalous women wear. The kind of woman with no self-respect for herself who lets too much skin show, but what she thinks doesn’t matter anymore. I have a husband to seduce.
The slinky, skintight ensemble stops Logan in his tracks when he walks through the door. His eyes flick up and down, head to toe, and he scrubs his jaw.
“Since when do you dress like that?” he asks.
I pop a hand to my hip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Candles?”
“Sit down. I hope you’re hungry.”
