Page 31 of The Lost and the Found

I didn’t ask any of those questions, though. He wouldn’t give me a straight answer anyway. Instead, I waited patiently for him to speak. When he did, his voice was gruff, and his emotions were something I couldn’t decipher. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Well, you never answer any of mine.”

“What questions do you have?” he asked simply, as if we didn’t spend the whole afternoon with him trying to avoid answering me.

I shot him a look. “What do you want with me?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to swallow them back, or at the very least, wished I had worded them differently.

“Lots of things,” Logan said, a sort of dark humor in his tone. “None of which you’re ready to hear. But for now, I want you safe. I want you happy.”

I let out a rough laugh. “Being happy is something I know very little about. I think if that’s what you want, you’d be sorely disappointed.”

“Don’t you think you can be happy?”

I nodded. I wasn’t that much of a cynic. “Sure. I’m happy sometimes, but it’s fleeting. No one in my position can ever be happy for too long.”

I knew he was frowning again. “And what position is that?”

Alone, I wanted to say. Instead, I kept my mouth shut. I had said more to him than I had ever said to anyone. “I should go. It’s late, and I’m sure you want to get home. You’ve had a long day, no doubt.”

He shrugged, like he couldn’t care less about resting.

I made a move to pull away, but Logan wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me in close. I could feel his hot breath on my cheek, smell the scent of his peppermint gum.

“Do you think I’ll disappoint you? That I’ll leave? That’s why you won’t allow yourself to become familiar with the idea of me in your life?”

“I know you won’t be in my life long enough for that. People leave. They always do. Sometimes by choice, and sometimes not. It didn’t matter.”

My parents were a prime example of that. My dad abandoned his family when I was little—his choice. And the choice was taken from my mom.

“Then I will just need to prove you otherwise.”

And then Logan kissed me.

He pressed his lips against mine, and he pulled me in closer than before, as if he couldn’t stand the space between us, and I… I surrendered myself to the frantic movements of his lips, to the desperate feel of his tongue gliding against my own, to the sweet, sweet bite of his fingers on my waist.

Like all of the other kisses we shared, this one was untamed, fierce, and urgent.

My fingers moved around the skin of his neck, my fingernails digging in, leaving my mark in the only way I knew how. It was only fair, seeing as how much he had embedded himself into me. I needed him to feel the sting of the wounds my fingernails left behind when he washed himself tonight. I needed him to think of me, because I sure as hell wouldn’t be thinking of anything else but him tonight.

Logan pulled away first, and I tried to prolong the kiss by following his lips in the dark.

“Logan,” I pleaded.

He kissed me again, almost as if he couldn’t help himself. I clung to him when he pulled away a second time, so sure I wouldn’t be able to hold myself up any longer.

“I need you to leave, Hayden. I need you to be the strong one out of the two of us, because I sure as hell can’t pull away. Open the door and walk to your apartment. Don’t look back.”

“Logan,” I said again. I didn’t want to leave.

“Go,” he said. “Before I do something we both know you’re not ready for.”

As much as I didn’t want to, I knew he was right. I wasn’t ready to take whatever we had to the next level. For all intents and purposes, he was a stranger to me. Despite our obvious off-the-charts chemistry, I didn’t want this to go anywhere. At least… not yet.

Not until I could trust him.

I nodded and grabbed my bag. I climbed out the car and closed it behind me. Then I walked to my building and up the stairs to my apartment without looking back. Like the night before, I walked to the window and looked out, and there he was, waiting for me to turn on the lights before driving away into the dark night.

I collapsed on the couch, my legs weak from the kiss. My lips still tingled, and there was a familiar pounding between my legs that I couldn’t get rid of, no matter how much I wished to.

I was turned on from the kiss alone—so damn much, in fact, that I could barely walk.

Logan was dangerous, I decided then. A threat, not only to my carefully planned future, but to my body and my heart as well.

It would be smart to stay away from him. That was what any sensible girl would do, and I swore I had been a sensible one for most of my life.

But Logan…

Logan just made me dumb.

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