HIS STRIDES WERE LONG. I took two steps for every one of his, trying to keep up. I spotted the elevator ahead, at the far end of the loft, directly in our path.
A voice called his name. “Logan?”
He stopped, turning partly to face the girl walking toward us. She was dressed all in black. Even her hair was dark as a raven’s wing. Dyed, I suspected. The only other color was the slash of cherry-red lips in her pale face. Her blue eyes shifted from Logan to me and then back again. I tried not to shift beneath her intense regard. She was beautiful in a devour-you-alive kind of way.
“It’s all right, Rachel,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
She nodded and turned with a sexy slink of her hips, heading toward the pool table and the crowd still gathered there.
Logan pulled me back toward the elevator. I wanted to ask about her. I didn’t think Logan had a girlfriend. After the pool-table scene that seemed evident. Girlfriends, plural, was more his thing. But something had passed between them. Something that wasn’t casual. Something proprietary.
He punched a button, calling the elevator, and then looked at me. His mouth lifted in a half smile that was familiar because I saw it almost daily on his brother. It almost put me at ease until I recalled that he wasn’t Reece. He wasn’t that safe, disarming guy who was head over heels in love with my best friend. This guy was wicked and immoral and trouble with a capital T.
He released my hand, waving me inside the elevator. I finally found my voice as he pulled the sliding door shut after us. Leaning against the back wall of the elevator, I swallowed a breath and willed the heat to cool from my face. “Well, wasn’t that very caveman of you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you want to make out with Bubba back there on that pool table in front of all those people?” He jerked a thumb behind him. “ ’Cause I can let you go back in there if that’s what you want. You just looked a little green. I thought you were going to puke.”
“I wasn’t going to throw up. And you don’t need to escort me. Hate to drag you away from the fun you were having, after all. Looks like your girlfriend Rachel might be missing you.” Or any number of females inside that loft.
“She’s just a friend,” he replied casually, thankfully not picking up on my catty tone. But I did. I heard it and I mentally kicked myself for it.
And yet I kept talking . . . still sounding like a judgy little shrew. “Somehow I doubt that you and any girl are just friends.” I knew his reputation well enough to conclude that. And I’d just seen Logan Mulvaney give the performance of the century on that pool table to back it up.
I crossed my arms as the elevator began its descent.
He crossed his arms over his chest, mimicking my pose. “I’ve known Rachel since seventh grade.”
“Aw. And you hang out at a kink club together now. How sweet for y’all.” I opened my mouth to ask if he knew those other girls on the pool table, too, but managed to stop myself.
He smiled, shaking his head. “You’re funny, G. Never noticed that about you before.”
But he had noticed me. A stupid little thrill coursed through me.
He continued, “I’m guessing Anna brought you.”
“You mean Annie?”
He shrugged like it didn’t matter that he couldn’t get the name right of a girl he had made out with once upon a time.
“I came with Annie but drove my own car.”
“Good. You can drive yourself home then. She likes to stay late at these things.”
Of course he would know that. Apparently he was a kink club regular.
The elevator settled to a stop and he slid the door open, asking, “What is it with you guys? First, Emerson, and now you’re here.”
I bristled as I stepped out. “You’re one to talk.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Emerson. This place is over your head. Hopefully, like her, you’ll have enough sense to never come back here again.”
This annoyed me. Maybe because I always prided myself on being so mature. I reveled when adults would tell my mother how composed and sensible and grown-up I was. It had always been a point of pride—for both Mom and me. But here he was treating me like a kid. And I was older than him!
Over my head.
You have marriage written all over your face.
Boring.
We stepped out onto the empty porch of the building. Empty because why hang out here when there was privacy inside to do all kinds of wild and wicked things? The type of things one did at a kink club. Things I had yet to learn about. Thanks to him.
I chafed my hands up and down my arms.
Everyone thought they knew me so well. Resentment simmered beneath my skin. He didn’t know me. Who was he to pass judgment on me?
Maybe I just needed more time to get used to the place. To find the thing that worked for me. Logan ushering me away wasn’t going to accomplish that.
“You don’t have any say about where I can go.” I walked past him and out into the night. It would be too embarrassing to return upstairs now. Not after he dragged me out of there.
“Hey,” he called after me. “No need to get all butt-hurt. I’m just trying to help a friend out—”
I stopped and whirled around. “Are we friends, Logan? Pepper and your brother are dating. That’s all. There’s no other connection between us. I don’t know why you feel the need to act all big brother. You’re just . . .” I paused, grasping. “ . . . a kid.”
The minute I said it, I wanted to take it back.
He didn’t look like a kid. Or act like one. Especially now.
He repositioned himself, spreading his legs a little wider, bracing his feet on the porch of the building. He didn’t look mad or offended. Worse. He looked amused. He actually smiled.
And that grin was devastating. Seriously. No wonder he had such a reputation. Girls must throw themselves at him. His mouth was sexy as hell, too. His lips were well-defined and wide, the bottom fuller than the top. Oh, the things I bet he could do with those lips. . .
I blinked at the totally wayward thought.
“You think I’m just a kid, huh?” His deep voice rippled over me like warm wind.
I nodded once.
He stepped down from the porch, coming at me, stalking like some kind of predator. I backed up.
He was just a kid. Just a . . . kid . . .
Aw, hell. My gaze skimmed up and down six feet plus of sexy man. Who was I kidding? He was so totally not a kid.
I tried to look down my nose at him the way I had seen my mother do countless times when squaring off with some mouthy delinquent. My sister and I called it her “principal look.” If she ever used it on us, we knew we were in trouble. But the effect was lost on him.
Yeah, he stood taller than six feet, but it wasn’t that. Logan had an air about him. A confidence rare for anyone, much less an eighteen-year-old guy. He held himself like someone who knew who he was and his place in the world. And that annoyed me. Why was he so damn self-assured?
“How old are you?” he asked, still smiling. A deceptive smile. Cunning almost.
“Twenty. And you’re eighteen. Still in high school.” I flung that at him almost like an accusation.
“For another couple weeks, yeah.” He nodded, absorbing this. “What month is your birthday?”
“November.”
“Okaaay,” he dragged the word out. “I’ll be nineteen in August. My mom held me back . . . didn’t want me to be the smallest kid in kindergarten.” It was hard to imagine him ever being the smallest kid, comparatively, at any point in his life. “So we’re twenty, twenty-one months apart, Georgia.” He arched an eyebrow at me, waiting for this to sink in. For me to realize we’re actually closer in age than I was willing to admit. That my calling him a kid was just . . . dumb.
I shrugged one shoulder, for some reason unwilling to give him that. “Maybe this place isn’t for you. Don’t you have a curfew or something?”
Pure contrariness had me tossing that out at him. I knew enough about his and Reece’s family life to know that he probably never had a curfew. Not since his mom died when he was a kid. His father was disabled and not exactly a check-the-homework-and tuck-’em-into-bed kind of parent.
He laughed deeply then, tossing his head back. It was a deliberate dig, and instead of getting offended, he laughed. It was a hypnotizing sight, the way his throat worked, tendons moving beneath that golden skin. The flash of his straight teeth. My belly dipped and I knew this was why girls my age and older forgot about his age and dropped their panties for him. He oozed sex and confidence. I blinked hard, disgusted with myself.
The sound of his laughter sent goose bumps over my flesh and settled in the pit of my stomach.
He stopped laughing to say, “I’ve never had a curfew.”
Never? I shook my head, telling myself now was not the time to marvel at his lack of supervision. My mom firmly believed no good could come of staying out past midnight. When I went home on break my parents still imposed a curfew on me. As if I wasn’t in my second year of college. As if I hadn’t been staying out all hours of the night doing all manner of naughty things. Yeah, okay, so I wasn’t. But I could be.
This reminder of my sheltered existence just made me more determined to live my life on my own terms. To do tonight what I set out to do. To stop living such a boring existence. I was twenty and I’d been living the last four years like a married woman. School. Studying. Sex once a week. Shit. Liar. I couldn’t even be honest with myself. The last year with Harris we maybe had sex every month.
Standing there looking at this incredibly hot guy who had a hell of a lot more experience than I did and was younger only flustered me. I flipped the hair back over my right shoulder, noting that his eyes followed the move, skimming over the long trail of blond hair before moving back to my face. Suddenly, I was glad that I had styled it so carefully for my date and worn it down in soft waves tonight.
“I’ll leave. Fine. For tonight.” I started to walk past him, but he blocked me.
“Meaning you might come back?”
I edged back from the wall of his chest, careful not to touch him. I think Reece mentioned his brother played sports. It explained the breadth of his shoulders, which tapered down to a lean waist. The flat stomach. I’d glimpsed Reece without a shirt when he stayed the night with Pepper. It was criminal. Logan was in good shape. My gaze flicked over him. Okay. Great shape. He was probably ripped under the black shirt he wore. Just like his brother. Ridiculous six-pack, defined biceps and all. I swallowed against the sudden thickness of my throat. Shoot me. Was I actually drooling over a guy still in high school?
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
He rubbed a hand over his scalp, dragging his hand over the close-cropped dark blond hair. “That guy you were talking to? The one you were about to get busy with on the pool table? Georgia,” he expelled my name on an exasperated breath.
“You don’t have a clue about the things he’s into . . . the things he’ll do to you.”
I shivered a little beneath the weight of his blue eyes. “I can handle myself.”
“Does Pepper and Em—”
“Pepper and Emerson aren’t my parents,” I snapped. “I’m a big girl, thank you very much. I don’t need permission to be here.”
He looked me up and down, his gaze lingering at my throat. “Sure you do, Pearls. You fit in here about as much as a bull in a china shop.”
My hand flew to my necklace. The pearl necklace had been a graduation present. For some insane reason the hot sting of tears pricked the backs of my eyes. I would not cry. He would not make me cry.
“I’m tired of people telling me who I am.” First Harris. Always my mother. I lived halfway across the country and she was still trying to tell me how to live my life. Even Pepper and Em.
And now him. This guy who didn’t even know me.
I nodded toward the door. “Maybe I want to hook up with that guy and have him do those things to me. Ever consider that?” I deliberately let it sound like I knew what those things were.
“You don’t even know what those things are,” he retorted, seeing right through me. And how did he do that, anyway? Did I have a sign around my neck that said TOO BORING TO FUCK? Harris’s face flashed across my mind. I need more, Georgia.
I fumed. I could be more. I was more.
“Yes, I do. He told me,” I lied. “When he whispered in my ear.”
His eyebrow winged. “Really? I heard he likes it when the girl dresses up as a dude and puts on a strap-on. You into that, Pearls? I would have pegged you for the type of girl who’s only ever done it missionary-style.”
I sucked in a breath. Insulted, yes. Shocked, too. Shocked that he had guessed that about me.
He laughed, nodding. “Yeah. Thought so.”
“Asshole,” I spit out. Another first. I had never called anyone a bad word before. It wasn’t something ladies did.
“Why don’t you go home to your safe dorm room and forget about this place?” His look then was part pity and part smirk. I could have handled the smirk. It was the faint pity that got to me. I wasn’t pitiable. No way.
How dare he talk to me like I was the child? I was an adult. I came out tonight to have a good time. To put an end to my drought and prove to myself that I wasn’t boring. I could be spontaneous. I could be unpredictable.
I could be wild.
Before I could stop and think about what I was doing, I stood on my tiptoes, circled his neck with my hands, and pulled his head down to mine.