Page 34 of Until You Found Me

She wastes no time in swirling circles where she’s swollen, imagining his mouth finding hers and his tongue sweeping in. His fingers replace her own, the change electric in her vivid imagination. Intensity sneaks up with shocking speed, coiling her muscles and urging her hand to double its pace.

She pictures him nestled between her thighs, heavy inside her until she’s full enough to ache in all the right ways. The blanket twists in her other hand as it all begins to crest. Her back bows off the bed, hips rolling as if to drag him further inwhen he isn’t there at all, the gasp of her name into the shell of her ear from a phantom lover sealing her fate.

Every bit of pleasure is rung out until it fades, sparking a few extra seconds before she relaxes against the pillows.

How long should she wait before doing that again? How long does she have to wait before he might be here with her?

“What the hell am I thinking?” she whispers, pulling her hand out from under the covers.

She’s torn between wanting to chase this high over and over, wanting to chase it with him, and fearing it could ruin everything. Being with anyone should be the furthest thing from her mind, but her emotions are such a clustered mess that making sense of them is impossible.

Her whole life now is wrapped up in this man and that dependence scares her. It means she has to be careful. Practical. He may not even want her. She isn’t any sort of prize, that’s for fucking sure. Then her mind wanders to his careful smile and she pictures him moving above her with those same kind eyes….her legs around his waist and his wide shoulders flexing as he thrusts…

“Screw it.” She shoves her hand back under the covers and aims for orgasm number two. Trying to overwrite all her jumbled memories with imaginary ones of Logan can’t hurt either of them if he never finds out.

Eventually, she falls asleep wishing he was beside her, knowing that wish may never come true.

* * *

Tessa is surprisingly good at manual labor. Logan gives her simple tasks at first, saying she shouldn’t overdo it, but soon she’s helping him raise poles and screw cabinets into the floor.

“You’re a natural at this.” He nudges her shoulder with his when they break for water on the second level, amid a half-done master bedroom.

He’s been doing that more often, touching her in small ways that feel special. Contact from him is dolled out carefully and she yearns for more, rolling her shoulder with a sigh, tense from hours of hard work. “Felt good to do something productive today.”

“That doesn’t look like it feels good.”

“Just sore. I’ll get used to it.”

“Turn around, lemme see.”

He whirls a finger and she turns, looking over her shoulder as he approaches. His face is serious as if this is an important task and he makes contact with her shoulder carefully, working his thumb along the back of her neck before following the curve to the forming knot.

Some far away part of her brain encouraged her to complain about the pain, hoping he might do exactly this, but she’d be lying if she said she expected him to take the bait.

“Hurt too much? I can stop.” He pauses when the shiver up her spine is too heavy to ignore.

“No, it’s okay.” She stops short of begging him to continue. If she thought casual contact was both too much and not enough, then this is a brand new rollercoaster she wasn’t prepared to ride.

The radio playing switches to ‘Let’s Get It On’ and she smirks, glancing back at him when his touch slows. She expects he might back away when the disembodied voice encourages them with raunchy lyrics. Maybe make somejoke, or pretend he never offered to rub away all her aches and pains.

She’s pleasantly surprised when he keeps going.

“You should start charging for this,” she teases. “Open a business.”

“Logan’s Seaside Massage Parlour?”

“Complete with happy endings. You’d make a killing.”

He’s silent for a beat while the mouse in his head falls off the wheel. In that instant, she regrets her saucy tone and wishes she’d listen to the practical side of her brain that keeps telling her not to flirt with him.

He huffs and steps away, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, uncertain but amused.

She laughs to cover the embarrassment. Of course he doesn’t want her. If he did, she would know. All she knows now is that she’s making him uncomfortable.

“We only got a few more poles for today, then we can call it,” he says, indicating they should get back to work and grabbing the ladder where a spiral staircase will be.

He told her before not to apologize for her dirty mind. She hopes he meant it since she currently resides in the gutter and has no plans to leave in the near future.

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