Selena

 

It was only after Logan had broken in the cabin, as he called it, that I had a chance to really pay attention to it. We were sweating and naked on the bed when I finally looked around the room. We'd stumbled into the room together, stripping clothes off like it burned us, and we were only focused on each other until now.

 

The whole cabin was made of logs on the outside and on the inside it was all wood. The walls, the floor. The ceiling was normal and there were tiles outside.

 

Two bedrooms, one of which was an office, an open plan kitchen complete with a breakfast nook and a lounge that had a spectacular view over the lake. It was quaint and magical and almost fictional. I didn't think I would have been able to write something this spectacular even if I tried.

 

The furniture looked like it had been passed down from one generation to the next with a floral pattern that dated back to the fifties and a box television that didn't even have cable. That was okay, though, because who wanted to watch television when you were in a place like this. There were hills all around us, rising up a little and trees everywhere so we were secluded without it being stuffy and closed off. The air was crisp and I was sure air pollution was a million miles away. Just like everything else, which included my work at the library, the book club ad everything else.

 

The book club.

 

I hadn't thought about that when I'd left. I was sure I'd missed a meeting. No one had called me, but maybe Joanne had assumed.

 

I ran inside and fetched my phone. Logan was on the couch typing something on his, looking nervous again. I hoped he wouldn't be tense the whole time we were here, but I had to remind myself we weren't here on vacation. We were here hiding out. Still, it seemed like a great way just to escape.

 

I dialed Joanne's number and after a while she answered.

 

"Where have you been? I tried phoning this morning and it went straight to voicemail. When I stopped at your place to drop you off at work you weren't in."

 

"I'm sorry," I said, walking out onto the deck that jutted into the lake, slicing into the natural round shape of the water. "I'm out of town for a while."

 

She was quiet for a beat. "And this was something you just decided on last minute?"

 

I sighed and sat down. The water lapped almost onto the deck the lake was that full, and the sound was calming in the same way the ocean was. I liked it here. "I'm with Logan. He took me to a cabin in the woods."

 

"What? When did this happen?"

 

I smiled. "We just arrived."

 

 Joanne made all sorts of sounds that ranged from surprise to horror and back to surprise. "That escalated quickly. The last time we spoke you were telling me how he was a two-faced asshole and now you're on holiday with him?"

 

I stretched out my legs and closed my eyes, feeling the sun on my skin. "You were right about him. It was his crazy ex that messaged him. She's been causing a lot of trouble, being a threat, so we're away for a while."

 

Joanne snorted. "So let me get this straight. You weren't fine with the message that came through and you were ready to write him off, but now your lives are in danger and you think that's fine? You went with him?"

 

Putting it like that it really didn't make sense. "I don't know what to say...I trust him. He's different than the rest of them."

 

I told her about the Girls and Boys Club and how it happened that we ended up on the beach with his tires slashed. I told her about May and the library, and I told her about his club and his past that was so bad and he turned out so great despite it. Joanne listened to everything quietly, gasping and commenting in the right places, and when I was done she cleared her throat.

 

"Do you know what I'm getting out of all of this?"

 

I shook my head. "What?"

 

"That you're falling for this guy."

 

I laughed. "Really? You didn't get that maybe he's honorable and maybe I'm living the adventure I usually read about? Or write about?"

 

"Well, that too." She laughed. "But even though it all sounds very romantic and life threatening and all that, you have to be careful. Are you sure you're safe? The last thing I want if for something to happen to you during this real life fantasy."

 

I looked toward the cabin where Logan was standing just outside the front door, looking in my direction. I waved and he lifted a hand in a half wave.

 

"He'll look after me. You should see how he is about his men. He's so different than the standard badass biker."

 

"Well, maybe when you get back you'll introduce him to me."

 

I wasn't sure if she was sarcastic or not, but I said I would. I hung up.

 

When I walked to the cabin Logan looked at my phone. "Who did you call?"

 

"My friend, Joanne. I needed to let her know I wasn't going to our writing meetings for a while so she didn't panic when I didn't rock up."

 

He nodded. I couldn't help but laugh. "You don't have to look so suspicious. She's on our side. Besides, if she alerts the police that I'm missing and the last person I saw was you that might be a problem."

 

Logan shrugged. "I have something for you."

 

He produced my manuscript. Finally. I shook my head and took it from him. There were pages with notes attached. He'd made an effort to go through it all and comment. It moved me.

 

"This is a good place to write a bit. It's quite and clear and away from the mess of the city. I thought it would inspire you a little."

 

I turned and looked to the trees and the hills and the water and nodded. "You know what? It does."

 

Of course, I didn't get much writing done at all. It was a novel idea, but I didn't get around to it. It was just Logan and I in each other's company all the time, and that meant we had a lot of sex. What else were we going to do? It was the first time since we started seeing each other - which, I'll admit, wasn't very long ago - that we had time all to ourselves and we didn't have to worry about being dressed afterward. We could laze around naked in bed all day and then do it again when we felt like it.

 

We slept naked. We swam naked. And we spent a lot of time with each other, on each other, in each other.

 

The bathroom was primitive with just a shower, a toilet and a basin. It didn't matter. We made do. We had sex in every room, multiple times. It sounded obscene. A lot of it wasn't sex, though; it was making love. Somewhere it had gone over from fucking to something more sensual. The first time it happened I was taking a shower.

 

I woke up earlier than usual from a nightmare that Logan was shot. The sun wasn't in the sky yet, but the black of night had started fading away to give space to the dawn. I stood outside for a while, trying to get the fresh air to snap me out of it, but it was chilly and it was uncomfortable to stay outside. I locked myself back in the house again and decided instead to take shower.

 

The whole bathroom was simple but the showerhead was something Logan had replaced with one of those water saving massage heads. The shower was luxurious even though the bathroom wasn't. I stepped underneath the hot spray and let the water run down my body. I wanted it to wash away everything I'd dreamed and all the horrid feelings that had come with it.

 

"Are you okay?" Logan asked a moment later, popping his head into the door. The bathroom was steamed up, as was the glass wall that made up the shower cubicle, and the view of him was blurry.

 

"I didn't mean to wake you."

 

"It's okay. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something wrong."

 

I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, speaking through the water. "Just a nightmare."

 

Logan came into the bathroom and closed the door, keeping all the warmth and steam inside.

 

"Do you want to talk about it?"

 

I shook my head. "Not really. It was about losing you."

 

He was silent for a moment. He pushed open the glass door and stepped into the shower with me. We'd showered before and I liked how he filled up the space so our two bodies were crammed together in the tiny cubicle. He cupped my face in his hands and looked me in the eye. His eyes were dark and serious. The hair around his face started sticking to his skin from the water splashing onto him off me. "I can't tell what the future is going to hold for us, but there's something you need to know. I will make sure that nothing happens to either of us or my men to the best of my ability, and you will never lose me as long as it's in my control."

 

There were so many loopholes I could think of to that statement but I wasn't going to go there. It had just been a nightmare, induced by why we were here, the last couple of days and the thriller I was writing that I'd been thinking about. I'd just scared myself, that was all. I nodded. "I know."

 

Logan lowered his lips to mine and kissed me. He tasted like the hot water that ran over both our faces. He stepped closer to me and our bodies melded together. I felt his hard sex against my stomach and my body responded as it always did, but this was different. This was sensual, emotional. We kissed for a long time, his hands staying on my face and in my hair.

 

I was the one who reached down and wrapped my fingers around him, sliding up and down his shaft. The kissing changed immediately, like I'd changed channel. It became hotter, more urgent, and his hands started roaming. The hot water streamed over our skins and the air was so filled with steam it felt like we were breathing water.

 

Logan turned me and pushed me against the wall. The contrast between the cold tiles on my back and the hot water and Logan's body on the front of my body was huge.

 

He lifted my leg with his hand so he could position himself between my thighs. He slid slowly into me. He was hard and thick and filled me up and I loved the feel of him inside of me. It felt natural. It felt right.

 

He looked at me and kissed me again, and he interlinked his fingers with mine, holding one hand up against the wall. My other arm was wrapped around his neck, hand on his shoulder. I gasped as he slowly pushed into me and out of me, relishing the sensation, the closeness. The orgasms that followed were soft and serious, like the sex had been. I found that he coaxed out of me often resembled how we did it. Hot and wild, fast and intense, soft and emotional.

 

I orgasmed twice before he finally picked up the pace enough to release inside of me. When he did it felt like he gave a piece of himself to me.

 

"Selena," he said when it was over and his mouth was buried in my neck. It was the first time he'd used my name in long time; he'd started calling me sweetheart or angel.

 

"Hmm?"

 

"I think I'm falling in love with you."

 

The comment came out of nowhere and I didn't know how to respond. Logan saved me from that dilemma. He kissed me, and kept kissing me for so long that the window for a reply passed and I wasn't set in a predicament.

 

The truth was, verbalizing it was scary as hell, but I think that I might have felt the same. I was falling in love with him, too.

 

The time I did spend writing I worked on the manuscript, changing my male love interest into someone who resembled Logan. I worked on the character until every word and every action was on par with what I knew to be real in my life. Kylee was my character in this fictional world. I wasn't married or in a world I didn't know wasn't real, but I could relate to her confines, her parameters, the rules she had to live by. I resonated with the concept that everything had to be perfect and still she never fit in. That was how I felt about a lot of thing in my life.

 

A lot of things besides Logan. The whole thing with him and the club and his ex trying to take them down might have sounded like a new kind of prison - one of fear and hiding - but the truth was the more time I spent with Logan, the more he set me free.

 

I worked from the start and every time I rewrote something I left it for a while before rereading it. It felt like everything was different in my life, and because of that, everything was different in my story.

 

Kylee Strickland was a good wife in a cut and paste life with a husband that took his job seriously. The rules were there but she saw them as something to abide by than fight against it. She saw it as a way to teach herself how she ought to be.

 

Stan was the overseer at a morgue during daylight hours, making sure the bodies coming in were labeled and put on ice. Sometimes it felt like he put her on ice, as well, like she was just another body he'd made sure was in the right place.

 

He came home at six on the dot every evening and they ate supper at seven. Kylee made sure the house was clean for her husband. She decorated it with plants and flowers and all things colorful that made life just a little less dull when he was away from the office. She tried to tell herself this was the way to go, this was how everyone else did it, too. She tried to make peace with the fact that everyone who gave themselves over to a way of life had to die a little in some ways to truly be happy.

 

***

 

The doorbell rang, shocking through her, ripping her back to reality. She felt like she'd been caught in the act. She shoved all the papers and letters back into the file and returned it to the drawer under the book.

 

In her room, she stepped into kitten heels and looked in the mirror. Perfectly put together besides the haunted look in her eyes. She practiced a smile before walking to the door.

 

She kept that smile plastered on her face and opened the door. A man stood on the other side. He was rugged and wild with an air to him that suggested he was the alpha and he challenged everyone that dared question it. Black hair, eyes like ice, leather clothes that screamed danger. Kylee swallowed hard. Had he come for her?

 

"Mrs. Strickland?"

 

Kylee nodded.

 

"I'm Duke Cox. I'm someone hired to come to you when your husband files for a lawyer."

 

"You don't look like a lawyer."

 

She’d never heard of this man in my life. She wasn't aware Stan would file for one.

 

"I'm not." He didn't offer anymore, like Kylee was on a need to know basis. She wanted to know. She wanted to know who he was and what he wanted. She wanted to know what he wanted with her. For safety, or course, she told herself. Even when his muscles bulged against his shirt and his leather pants looked so tight around the hips they looked painted on.

 

"How can I help you?" She sounded more in control than she thought.

 

"There are some documents I need to collect from you when Stan Strickland disappeared."

 

Who the hell was this guy?

 

"Disappeared?" He was too calm about this. Kylee was torn. Half of her was attracted to this bearer of bad news, to this sin eater. The other half was dizzy with questions. Disappeared. Documents. Too much information bounced around her mind.

 

"You do have the documents, don't you?"

 

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

 

"Don't play games, sweetheart." His voice was rough.

 

A shiver ran down Kylee's spine. He cocked and eyebrow and his look made her feel unbalanced. There was something about this man. She needed to avoid him. She was a married woman.

 

"You're Annie Strickland, I know you are."

 

Blood drained from Kylee's face and for a moment the world went black.

 

I wasn't a good writer by a long shot, no matter how sweet Logan was about it. But I felt like here, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nature and a man who was starting to fall in love with me, I could do more than before. How did I know that his affections for me were sincere?

 

Every day someone drove up from the city. Every time it was another member of his gang, and every time without fail they would bring me a gift Logan had asked them to bring along.

 

A book, a bunch of flowers, a necklace, a box of chocolates. Normal, cliché gifts, but the way he did it made it seem like every gift was unique.

 

After he delivered the gift he would take a walk with the man who arrived. They would disappear into the woods to talk business and sometimes they would stay away for hours. Every time he came back he seemed anxious and nervous but I noticed how hard he tried to keep it all away from me. He was never removed, he was never distant and he always made sure I was taken care of first and foremost. Even when he had to spend a lot of time on the phone.

 

I was starting to learn that Logan, as badass and arrogant as he seemed, was the kind of person who put everyone else before himself. It was a good quality. It was completely unexpected from a biker.