Chapter 3

Logan

Despite her promises to not distract me from potential muggers, Veronica only makes it to the base of our stairs before she's kissing me again, her lips lighting up the base of my throat. Her tiny hand sneaks into my pants, as if I wasn't already having enough trouble walking.

"Veronica, behave," I tease in my best Austin Powers accent, and instead she squeezes the base of my cock. I groan and pin her against the side of the condo, jerking sharply up into her hand. She wraps a leg around my hips and bucks me closer, her eyes dark and hazy with sin.

A banging shakes the wall behind us, the AirBnb'ers shouting, "Learn to walk already!"

"Ung," is Veronica's very witty response to that, and then she's cupping my balls and doing something with a light scrape of fingernails that makes me break out in a sweat under the collar of my shirt.

I should have told Nicole to cut her tab of E in half, because my girlfriend is wild right now. Regular Veronica drives me completely out of my mind and wild Veronica very well might kill me. But it's too late now, because that beautiful rush is pulsing under my skin, too. I always want her, like my attraction to her is a river pouring through my veins into every corner of my body. But tonight, it's the whole sea.

I'm dancing so perilously close to the edge of control that it actually scares me when her hand finds the head of my cock and her thumb slips underneath with a quick, practiced little flick that wrings a growl from my throat.

I pick her up. I'm too far gone to sort out some normal way to carry her. Instead I just grip her hard enough and high enough that her feet are off the ground so I can get us the fuck up the stairs. Then I bend the key trying to ram it into the door.

"Veronica, the fucking door," I groan, hoping she'll take care of it, but instead she climbs me like a tree. Her legs come around my waist, the center of her rubbing right over my achingly hard dick, while she devours my neck with fierce bites and pretty little kisses. I get the key on the fourth try and shove the door open. Kiss her across the room and onto the couch, and then remember the fucking keys.

I dart back and rip them out of the door, slam it and lock it, and that is the last responsible decision I'm making all night, I swear to fucking God. I rip off my blazer and shirt as I head back to the couch, but Veronica's already giggling away down the hall, leaving a trail of clothes behind her. I catch a glimpse of naked, shapely buttocks and sprint after her.

I catch her before she makes it to the bed and she's full length naked against me, the slide of her bare skin against my clothes the most interesting thing I've ever felt. Her scent is doing something to me tonight. Like every time I inhale it, my nostrils flare and I feel like I'm going to float right off the ground, trailing along behind her like a cartoon character.

I boost her up onto the bed so she's on hands and knees and I growl my way down the backs of her thighs, scraping my teeth over her tight flesh. She shivers and I slip my thumb into the soaked center of her, working her over until she's bucking against my hand, writhing against where I'm kissing down her legs. I pull my hand away and replace it with my tongue, licking her deep and slow until she starts to shudder. Then I flip her onto her back in a roll of legs and sheets and nibble my way up to her naval, not giving her the orgasm she's mewling for.

She grips my shoulders, her fingertips exploring the exact line at the edge of my deltoids. Heat flares inside my head at her appreciation of my body.

"Logan," she chokes out, but it sounds like a question, not her usual, "please let me come" voice.

I bury my face in her neck, letting my weight press her down into the bed as I roll my hips against her. All the clothes between us are maddening. "Mmm…" is all I can say back to her, because I'm living on her scent and it just gets better the more of it I have.

"Wait," she groans, but she's bucking up against me even as she says it. She's found my hand, and she's kissing my knuckles where they're only half-healed from the fight with the Congressman's hillbillies. "I'm sorry," she whispers, and I'm confused until I remember the cabinet before that, all my blood on the scraps of wood.

"I'm fine, sweetheart." I duck my head to distract her with a kiss—sometimes when she's drunk, Veronica gets really protective and fusses all over me every time I so much as frown. If she's really drunk, she'll start crying and apologizing for stuff she said years ago. But she doesn't let herself that far out of control very often. Maybe twice, ever.

She cups my cheek, her legs tight around my hips. "I don't mean…" Her voice catches. "I don't want to make you lose control again. Not if it makes you hate yourself in the morning. It's just all so much, this feeling, and I know I'm a little crazy right now, and I want you, I mean I always want you but you know what I mean and…" She bites her lip and groans a little, her nipples peaking hard against my chest.

I reach between us and unbutton my jeans. "Are you saying you're too horny from the E and you're feeling guilty for attacking me?" I try not to laugh, because she's so earnest right now and I was having my own worries, just a minute ago. But the idea that her seducing me could be anything but amazing? Is just wrong.

She nods, her eyes glittering. "Last time, it was so good I couldn't even think, and you left me your therapist's card afterward."

The corner of my mouth twitches. Okay, possibly I could have handled that better. "I had a lot of…feelings." I shove my jeans down. "And it was fuck all hot, yeah, but I don't like to be out of control with you, especially not in bed." She's so small. And I can be very physical.

The part of me that can throw the whole snap of my body weight up against a wave…the part of me that thrills to a fight, whether it's with fists or jets… There's an energy that rides me sometimes, quivering in all my muscles, and I should be more careful with Veronica than that.

"You didn't hurt me," she gasps, rubbing herself against the full, hard length of me with a shiver that leaves her eyes rolling back in her head. "You never hurt me."

"But I could have." I can hardly think, even now, with the way she's all around me.

"I just wanted to know you were scared, too. Because if you weren't scared to lose us, and I was the only one…" She clutches my hip, her nails digging in, and I stare down at her.

"Veronica, I wasn't as scared because I knew I wasn't losing us." I brush her hair back. "You didn't dump me, remember? You just said we couldn't call it marriage." I pull away long enough to shuck my pants and boxers and surge up onto the bed. "If you think I would ever leave you, you haven't been paying attention."

"I can't…" She breaks off, her hands roaming over my chest.

All night, she hasn't been able to stop touching me. Even before the drugs kicked in. And that small, lonely part of me is soaking it up like I can never get enough proof that I'm what she wants.

I kiss her forehead, gently. "You can't what, love?"

"I can't lose you," she gasps, her voice throaty with the tears she doesn't want me to see. She's burying her face in my neck like I won't be able to feel them against my skin, and I stroke the back of her hair. "Not the way all my clients always lose their husbands. To other women and jobs and they always end up hating each other and I don't want us to hate each other."

I nip at her ear, a little charmed by how Drunk Veronica is deeply horny and deeply emotional all at the same time. I can't say I mind.

"Okay," I say agreeably. "I guess I won't hate you, then."

She smacks my shoulder. "Logan! I'm serious."

I kiss her neck, trail my tongue all the way up to her ear until her nipples are peaking hard again. "Um, okay, I will hate you? Sorry, sweetheart, I got distracted by your perfect breasts." I dip my head to kiss the left, then the right. "What was the right answer again?"

I've got her giggling now, but her eyes are still a little watery. "So, you're not mad at me?" Her voice is teasing, but she's not joking.

I prop my elbow next to her head and ignore the bolt of fear. She started it, and I'm not passing up my one opportunity this decade for my girlfriend to be in the mood to talk about her feelings.

I am also not surprised that it took illegal drugs to put her in that frame of mind.

I kiss her soft eyebrow, then her chin. Then her lips. "I love you," I whisper, very softly, because she knows how much I mean it, which means it always frightens her.

Veronica doesn't like to get attached to things that can be taken from her.

"I asked you to marry me because I wanted us to promise to commit to each other, no matter what, not just for however long it's easy or convenient." I pause. "I'm sorry, and I should have known better. I did it because I crave anything that feels like stability. That's why I wanted a house or a condo, not an apartment. Part of why I love all the rules and traditions and contracts in the Navy. And I know to you, those kinds of promises feel like they're daring fate to take away whatever you just said you want to keep forever."

I dip my hips and slip inside her with one long, gentle thrust. She's impossibly wet, and she flexes around me, her head falling back for a second as she loses the thread of the conversation in a quick gasp of pleasure.

I hitch her leg up over my hip, stroking it softly as I stay seated inside her, as close as we can ever get. Alone and safe in our home. I cradle her face and will her to trust us.

We're dangerous, capable people, and if we can't keep each other alive and safe in this crazy world, no one can.

"I know those kinds of promises are the opposite of what makes you feel safe," I tell her, holding her gaze. "I was selfish, asking anyway because it was what I needed. And yeah, for a second, it hurt like hell when I thought you didn't want to be with me as much as I wanted to be with you."

"Logan that's not—" she begins to protest.

"I know," I interrupt. "I can see it all over you. You're scared I'm going to leave because you won't marry me." I start to move inside her, and her body arches with tension, the sensation unbearably intense right now. "You love me."

I don't know if it's the drugs, or the closeness of this conversation, but I'm not just guessing—I can feel it tonight. Like it's seeping from her body into mine. Like I'm reading it in how tightly she holds me, with her legs and her arms and even deep inside, where she clasps my cock and willingly takes me into her body.

And suddenly I remember the way she surveyed the other guys in the bar tonight, how unimpressed she looked, and the way her gaze kept coming back and locking onto me. I surge into her faster, my heart thumping fast with the reminder of it all.

"I can't lose you," she says again, her eyes sparkling with tears. "I wasn't supposed to ever love anyone this much."

I kiss her, long and playful and confident with all these truths I suddenly know about her, before I pull back to smirk. "I'm irresistible. How could you help yourself?"

She tries to scowl at me and ends up laughing, and I love the sound of it so much that I'm grinning as I fuck her. I grin even harder when she stutters and loses her breath.

"Jesus. Do you think it feels like this to other people?"

I haul her leg up and press her folded knee against my chest so I can rail into her deeper, more intimately. "Sex? Oh hell no. We're blowing other people away at sex."

"No, I mean this…" She's panting, clenching around me, her hands running over every bit of my body she can reach. "How…"

We're both breathing too hard to hold a conversation and she feels so good I can't stop thrusting, rubbing myself deeper into her. But she keeps trying.

"How it…" she gasps. "I can like…feel everything, like I can read you through your skin. Like I know you."

I roll us onto our sides, tuck her in closer and lean my forehead against hers as I anchor her lower back and give her deep, powerful pushes that lock me hard into her body. "You do know me."

"Yeah, but…"

I love how hard she's trying to explain this to me, at how close her words skim to the disjointed impressions that have been passing through my head all night. I grab my hand and tangle our fingers together. "I feel it, too."

It's crazy, supernatural even. I remember feeling more optimistic toward other people the last time I was on E, but that was more of a fuzzy "I love you, man" kind of thing. Which on me, translated more as a, "I can almost tolerate your presence" kind of thing. It was nothing like it is with her.

I always feel so much for her, but even that's a little sharper tonight, like a clean radio signal with no interference. And she's so beautiful and fuck, I missed her so much on this last job. No one makes me laugh the way she does, so quick you never expect what she might say next. Conversations with everyone else always feel so sluggish. Like you have to explain every last thing.

And sex…I've had more sex than any person probably should ever have, and it never lit me up this way. Like a light pouring out from the very core of me, sparkling across every nerve ending. I can't stop kissing her, driving my body against hers, living on every gasp and moan that tells me she's feeling it with me. The impossibility of how good it really is between us.

I don't know when we stop talking. Maybe because we're communicating more deeply than that now. She wants to touch every part of me, let our bodies come together in every different position I can invent. It's like she's reading all my secrets through my skin and it's an exhale of relief to let her. Because right now, she's finally letting me feel how desperately much she loves every piece of who I am, who I've been. Who I might grow to be.

I'm drunk on it, this feeling that's maybe what I've been looking for my whole life. An utter, immutable certainty that I'm loved. That I will be loved until my last breath. Now that I have that, nothing else can touch me. Nothing else could possibly matter.

Maybe this is what it feels like to be safe.