Chapter 16

Brooke banged the silver soccer-ball knocker against the red door. Hard. Repeatedly. Then she rang the doorbell about a dozen times. The excuse would be that the rectory was an enormous five-story house. The real reason, however, was that she was pissed as hell at Logan Marsh and needed to vent that fury any and every way possible.

The door opened. The sockless loafers and white linen pants told Brooke it was Knox before she got up past the blue silk pocket square in his blazer to his furious face. “Jesus Christ, are you here to arrest one of us? What’s with the—Brooke?”

“Hi, Knox.”

“Why’d you beat up on our door?”

“Because I hadn’t gotten through it yet to assault your roommate instead.”

“Ah.” He ushered her into the long hallway with pale blue walls and white trim. “Logan’s in for a world of hurt, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

His blue eyes gleamed, and his mouth curved up into a wicked grin. “I’ll bet I know why. Any chance you listened to the podcast today?”

“Yes.” Something she’d immediately regretted. And then realized that ignorance wasn’t bliss. It had been a good thing to discover how Logan really felt about her. About them. Not pleasurable, but good.

Knox led her up the dark wooden staircase. At the first landing, he asked over his shoulder, “Can I watch as you rip him a new one?”

“He talked about our relationship to a listening audience of…what, several million? I don’t think he’s exactly earned the privilege of privacy for my rebuttal.” In fact, Brooke wished she’d had the presence of mind to hop in her car and drive to the station and interrupt the podcast. Although, in the moment, she’d probably been too irate to string together a real sentence. “Call all the guys in, for all I care. Heck, get your butler in on the action.”

“Jerry’s got the night off. He’ll be sorry he missed this, though.” On the third floor, Knox turned right and knocked on the half-open door before walking into a sitting room. He dropped down onto the gray couch, put his feet on the coffee table, and crossed his arms behind his head. Basically, it looked like he was settling in to watch a show. “Marsh, you’ve got a visitor. And she’s packing a serious level of heat. You might want to put on your jock before you come out here.”

In the silence that followed, Brooke noticed a few things about the room. The dark gray walls. The squishy gray herringbone couch with deep orange pillows. A wall of shelves filled with handcrafts that looked like they’d come from the far reaches of the globe. And then Brooke hated that her gaze immediately scooted to the open doorway and the sliver of bed she saw past it. A bed she’d wanted to hop into with Logan. A bed she’d never thought to see through a red haze of anger and with Knox Davies along for the ride.

A door farther back opened and steam billowed. Logan came out, mostly naked. Her completely justified and righteous anger in no way prevented a punch of lust going right to her belly at the sight. Wet hair stood straight up, water droplets gleamed on his burnished chest, and a towel hung low on his narrow hips. “Why would I need a jock?”

Then he noticed Brooke, standing by the window. His eyes widened. He froze in the bedroom doorway. One hand shot down to grip the barely tucked edge of his towel.

“Hello, Logan. I have a bone to pick with you.”

“Hell, I’d put five dollars on him not having a bone left when you’re done with him,” Knox chortled.

Logan’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Get out, Knox.”

“Huh-uh. Brooke said I could stay and watch.”

An offer that she now kind of regretted. Logan certainly didn’t deserve any privacy for this discussion. But Brooke wanted it. She’d been embarrassed enough today in front of the whole world. Not to mention Katrina, sitting next to her on the couch, listening. Then, of course, freaking out on Brooke’s behalf and letting her rant the worst of her anger.

Logan wiped the water from his forehead with the back of his arm. “Isn’t Madison waiting for you down in the game room?”

“Yeah. You’re right.” As though an idea lightbulb went off above his head, Knox dropped his jaw and snapped his fingers. “You know, I should get her and let her watch, too.”

“Out,” Logan commanded, one arm shooting toward the door.

At the speed of a sloth in a food coma, Knox rose and crossed the room. “Brooke, we’ll be in the basement if you want to come down and have some wine when you’re done eviscerating him.”

“That’s a lovely invitation.”

“Remember, he may have acted like an idiot, but Logan’s got some good qualities, too. After all, he’s my best friend. So…if nothing else, he’s got excellent taste.”

Logan hooked a thumb at Knox as he closed the door behind him. “Listen to the man. He’s a certified genius.”

“He’s also biased,” she said dryly.

Ducking his chin—adorably—and looking up at her through those amazingly long lashes, Logan said, “Guess I was hoping you’re a little biased toward me, too.”

“I feel many things toward you at this moment.” Brooke wouldn’t lie. She wouldn’t dispute the fact that Logan just standing there mostly naked set lust butterflies loose in her stomach. But she wouldn’t sugarcoat why she came over here, either. “Most of which are completely buried beneath a one-two wallop of anger and embarrassment.”

He took a couple of steps backward. “Can I dress before we get into this?”

“No.” In fact, to be sure her decisiveness on this particular point got through to him, Brooke charged at him and grabbed the edge of his towel to keep him in place. And tried to ignore the heat of his skin all but burning the backs of her fingers. “No, you may not. You went on that Naked Men podcast and threw your so-called naked emotions out and about for people to listen to, and made me feel thoroughly naked, so now you have to stand there and stay naked while I yell at you.”

Hanging on to his towel during that rant kept her about a breath away from his face. From the thick stubble darkening his jawline. From the lips that she could hardly believe he’d used today to throw her so supremely under the bus.

“Just don’t say naked again.” Logan smirked, a lazy curl of his lip filled with such sensuality that Brooke almost gasped. “Pretty sure you just used up your quota for the day.”

Okay, now she did gasp. At his utter lack of timing. And/or sensitivity. Infuriated even more, she backed away, throwing her hands in the air. “Damn it, Logan, this isn’t something to joke about.”

“I don’t even know what ‘this’ is.” Frustration lowered his voice to a near-growl. “How about you go back, start at the beginning, and loop me in?”

“Fine.” Proximity dulled her anger. So Brooke moved to the fireplace. She rested her arm on the brick mantel and toyed with a mask made from clay and straw, painted a lurid red. That sure focused her back to a laser-beam intensity. “What gives you the right to parade our relationship on air for others to judge? How dare you expose me like that?”

“Those are two completely separate questions.”

Seriously? She whipped around to glare at him. “Do not be a smart-ass right now.”

Logan held up his hands, palms facing her. “Hey. I’m not. The first question has an easy answer. Like you said, it is our relationship. Which means half of it is my relationship. I can talk about my relationship. My side of it, my problem with it—that’s all my right to air for the world.”

“Your relationship, and your choice.” Brooke spat out the words, hoping her derision came through loud and clear. Even though he had a teeny, tiny bit of a point…

“Yes.” He stalked closer, bare feet making no sound on the parquet floor. “And as for the second question, I didn’t expose you. I didn’t say your name. I didn’t even use your initials. I didn’t do a single thing to give you away. As far as I know, the ACSs, Madison, and your friend Katrina are the only ones who know we’re seeing each other. Nobody else had a clue before today, and they sure as hell don’t have one because of anything I said.”

Why did he have to make so much sense? Maybe Logan did have the right to share his relationship problem with his four closest friends…and the entire world. Maybe, now that she thought about it, he had bent over backward not to reveal her identity.

Yet.

That could change, though. “But they could know. Someday. If word gets out, people will remember the whole rant you gave on the podcast and then they’ll be able to put two and two together and know it was about me.”

“That’s a big stretch.”

The only solid response that came to mind was from Through the Looking-Glass—“sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Brooke doubted that Logan was a huge Alice fan. So she moved on to her final, unassailable point.

“Logan, you called me onion dip. It was humiliating. Any possible stretch is too much.”

“I compared you to chips and dip. It was a compliment.” He stated it with the same amount of conviction as when he’d declared the Nats his favorite team.

If he actually believed that, this needed to become a teachable moment. If not for this relationship, then for whatever woman wound up with him in the future. They’d owe her. Big time.

Brooke’s fingernails scratched across the mantel as she tried to suppress all her unresolved anger into a tight fist. “In no country, in no language, is being called onion dip a compliment.”

“It means you’re irresistible.” Logan grabbed her fist, stroked it to flatness, and covered it with his own hand. “It means that even when my head tells me that I’ve had enough of you, that I should step away, I can’t. I need more. I crave more.”

He truly meant it. Brooke believed him. The words, his words, right now flayed at her heart. Because they were the antithesis of what she’d heard on the podcast. When he’d all but begged for an escape hatch for the “accidental relationship” into which she’d dragged him.

No.

Huh-uh.

She snatched her hand from beneath his. “You’ve got one heck of a way of showing it, Logan. Nobody handcuffed you to me. You asked me to meet your sister. You asked me to Screen on the Green. You text me every day and call me. You’re the one driving this relationship train.”

His eyes popped wide. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m on the train. But it’s a runaway engine. I’ve got no control.”

“Baloney.”

Logan shook his head. “What the hell? Don’t you ever swear?”

Really? He was trying to get out of their fight—no, their serious discussion—by changing the subject? Brooke had to put up with juvenile attempts like that fifty times a day in her classes, when someone didn’t want to answer a question.

“No. I teach kids, remember? It’s too easy to slip up and say the wrong thing if you’re in the habit of it. But if I did swear, I’d be doing it right now.” Tears clogged her throat, thickened her voice. So Brooke turned away. Went to the window, with its view of dusk tipping the treetops with a lavender haze. “You hurt me, Logan. You didn’t think about my feelings. You didn’t ask if you could talk about me. You just forged ahead, solo. That’s not a relationship. That’s the hallmark of a hookup. Zero emotional entanglement or expectations.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you. Can you help clarify, though? Are we in a relationship?”

Bad enough he wasn’t listening to her. Now it seemed he hadn’t even bothered to listen to himself. “Isn’t that what you were complaining about on air?”

“Escarlata, you got sidetracked by your anger and didn’t pay attention to the whole thing.” Suddenly behind her, Logan curved his hands around her shoulders. “Yeah, I get why you’re angry. I should’ve asked you first. I’ve never done a podcast before. I didn’t know I’d have to come up with the day’s topic with zero notice. I panicked. All the guys said, It’s just us shooting the shit. So I talked to them about what was on my mind.” His forehead thumped gently onto her crown. “Damn it, Brooke, it turns out you’re always on my mind.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“We agreed, back on the island, to have a one-time fling. Because that’s all I’m good for. And now, yeah, I’m pretty sure we are in a relationship. Which I don’t know how to do. Which I didn’t want, because I don’t want to hurt you. And despite all that, I can’t stay away from you. Can’t stop thinking about you. Can’t stop craving you. Can’t stop wanting to share things with you. I can’t stop falling deeper and deeper for you. I don’t understand it, I don’t know how to deal with it. But I cannot resist you.”

“Ditto,” she said, the word more breath than sound.

Without saying anything more, Logan’s lips landed on her neck. They seared a line from her collarbone, up to her ear, and once his hand shoved aside her hair, across her ultrasensitive nape. A full-body chill made her jump.

Logan clearly took that as a sign to proceed. His hips surged forward, trapping her against the window. Not that there was anywhere else on earth that Brooke would rather be. The hard proof of his instantaneous arousal jerked against the small of her back.

His words had more than soothed her ruffled feathers. They’d wrapped around her heart like a velvet hug. They’d unlocked all of the feelings Brooke had been tamping down, out of fear that they wouldn’t be reciprocated. The future didn’t matter. Not right now, anyway. What mattered was that they cared for each other. A lot.

So Brooke abandoned herself to the intoxicating rush of sensation everywhere Logan’s body touched hers. Which was, indeed, everywhere. The towel covered little of him. And she didn’t want it to cover any of him anymore. So she yanked at its edge. Hard. Felt a rush of satisfaction when it swooshed to a puddle on the dark floor.

Logan chuckled, dark and dirty, right in her ear. “That’s how this is gonna go? You’re gonna try to rush me? Rush my thorough and proven mad lovemaking skills?”

“I don’t need skills.” Brooke reached around to grab his fine—and finally bare—ass. “I don’t need to be seduced again.” Then she dug her fingernails in just enough to make sure he got her urgency. “I just need you.”

“Sweetheart, it’s impossible for me to do this without seducing you all over again, every damn time. But there’s more than one way to do it.” Logan bit down on the curve of her neck. At the same time, he thrust one hand up the loose edge of her lemon-colored handkerchief top to cup her breast. His other hand wedged under her waistband to cup her. To cup her so intimately that a deep shudder ran through Brooke’s body.

God, she was more than halfway there, and she was the one still wearing clothes.

He squeezed, alternating hands, in a rhythm that had Brooke swaying and grinding against him in almost a dance. The whole time his lips kept sucking at the sensitive flesh along her nape. Brooke wanted to feel all of Logan’s skin that she’d just bared. But it didn’t seem the best use of her hands right at the moment. Instead, she slammed her palms against the glass to give her leverage to press into his touch. And hooked her ankle around his calf to connect them at yet another juncture. Just that tiny bit of rough hair against her skin upped Brooke’s arousal.

Everyone she’d slept with prior to Logan had been the same type: polished, urbane, a little too slick and/or earnest. Guys who need the frame of a suit hanging off of them to give them the proper manly shape and swagger. Logan needed nothing. He was rugged. Muscled. Masculine to the nth degree. So darned sexy that, yes, his calf hair turned her on. Which she’d never known to be a thing until this very moment.

Logan abruptly let go. Before she could complain, he undid the knot holding her top at her neck. It slid to the floor a second ahead of the skirt he thumbed over her hips. Then he banded an arm across Brooke’s stomach and lifted her off her feet. The move pushed a gasp of surprise from between her lips. He carried her from the window back over to the couch as she took advantage of the position to press a line of kisses along his jaw.

He spun her in midair so that she landed on her back. Logan moved the deep orange pillow against the high arm, and then pulled, hands beneath her knees, until her butt rested on it, leaving her spread wide for his hungry stare.

“You want me? You’ve got me, Brooke. I didn’t expect it, and I sure don’t know what to do about it. But you’ve got me now. So take me.” A single swipe had her panties off of her legs. He opened a carved wooden box on the coffee table to retrieve a condom and rolled it right on. Fast, at first, until he noticed her watching. Then he slowed down, cupped his darkly furred sac with one hand while he rolled the condom the rest of the way down his significant length.

Brooke could watch that all day. The contrast of the pulsing, faintly red tip and paler shaft against the brown hair and tan skin dried up her mouth…and sent moisture surging to a different part of her anatomy. He was so big. Big everywhere. Big thigh muscles. Big feet, she’d noticed, suppressing a giggle at the implication when they were by the window. Big in height, that always made her feel ultrafeminine. Big in the breadth of his chest and the width of his back that made her so easily picture him literally putting villages back together with his bare hands. And big, oh so big, in the strong, hard penis that now lined up exactly where she wanted it.

Logan pushed inside of her. Slowly. So slowly that she actually felt the ridge of his tip as he entered. Every inch stretched her, filled her. Delighted her. Intoxicated her. Because either she was drunk on happiness, dizzy with lust, or D.C. was having its once-a-century earthquake.

When he was fully seated, he brushed his fingertips below her belly button in a random pattern that swirled desire just underneath the surface of her skin. “Are you ready?”

“Sooo ready.”

His hands slid around to grab her ass. Then Logan pistoned in and out in a hard, fast rhythm that was perfect in its semi-roughness. He cantilevered her up, so that the bottom half of her body no longer even touched the cushions. The angle pushed him deeper. Logan was literally at her core, at the center of her body, her heat, her need, her world.

He grunted his pleasure, which made Brooke suddenly aware that she’d been moaning and writhing and twisting, and scratching her nails against the fabric. No. Deep was good. Close was better. She kicked off her sandals to cross her ankles behind his back. And then she tightened her abs and pushed off the couch—and all the way up, to land against his chest. Brooke locked her wrists at his neck.

“Holy shit.” A wide grin accompanied a slow, disbelieving shake of his head. “This is why people get off on dating cheerleaders, isn’t it?”

“One of the perks. I’ll show you more later, if you like. I can still do the splits from any angle.”

“Christ. I have to survive this round first. And you’re so tight and hot, I don’t know how much longer I can last.”

“Like I said before, I’m ready, Logan.”

Hands still clamped on her ass, he took five long strides to put her back against the smooth, cool wall. His hips moved faster. Brooke went absolutely crazy around him, biting at the thick ridge of muscle along his shoulder while her nails raked against his scalp.

Their harsh, panting breaths synced into unison. Heat built inside her like a supernova until it finally exploded with a powerful rush of pleasure along every single nerve ending in her body. Brooke keened her pleasure loudly. Logan immediately captured her lips and swallowed the last of her cries, as his own cascaded down her throat, along with the final jerks deep inside her.

With muscles as limp as if she’d just had a ninety-minute hot stone massage, Brooke kissed the tan curve of his shoulder. “Logan, I think the earth moved.”

“Must be one of D.C.’s once-a-century earthquakes,” he mumbled into her hair.

Brooke burst out laughing. Talk about being in sync.

“What’s so funny?”

She turned her head a little to stare into his gorgeous eyes as he carried her into the bedroom. “Maybe it’s just that we’ve been friends for so long, but there are times when we seem to be eerily perfect for each other.”

Logan laid her down on the bed. Then he knelt, straddling her, and said with absolute seriousness, “More often than you even know, Escarlata.” The words were immediately followed by a soul-stirring kiss, full of tenderness and the complete opposite of the urgent sex they’d just shared.

Oh, boy. That did it. Brooke was officially falling in love with Logan. Or, more to the point, had already fallen too far to turn back.