25. Aster

TWENTY-FIVE

ASTER

It was surreal waking in the arms of a man you were supposed to despise and know you’d never felt safer.

Knowing you’d never felt more alive than you did with the steady thrum of his heart beating against your ear.

The blankets were down around his waist, and every inch of him was bare except for his underwear. His skin was warm and smooth, glowing like bronze beneath the streams of early winter light that bloomed at the base of the window in a show of brilliant golds and blazing oranges.

His breaths were long and deep, even and sure, as sure as his arms that still held me the way they’d held me the entire night—as if they were created for me.

For security.

For surety.

A promise to see me through the night where he would continue to love me in the light.

I knew it.

I felt it in the way his pulse sped at my touch. In the way his chest expanded each time he looked at me. In the oaths that fell from his tongue. The way even in his sleep, he seemed aware, as if his body gravitated to each movement of mine.

Every shift, tucking me closer.

Each breath, drawing me nearer.

It terrified me. Terrified me because I couldn’t fathom ripping myself away. Couldn’t imagine having to leave this sanctuary that had come to feel like a home.

It was getting harder and harder to deny that I hadn’t stumbled into where I belonged.

I knew I was falling.

Sinking.

Going under.

And I wasn’t sure I’d ever break the surface again.

Just thinking it felt like a risk. For both of us. For our hearts and our minds and our physical safety.

It wasn’t just our hearts on the line.

Jarek was a monster, and my father was the overlord of it all. But I’d seen his compassion before. Both times it had been given to me out of the love he held for me, as twisted as it was.

Hope sparked in that secret place I’d kept like a dream.

What if…what if my papa could understand? What if he really saw? In his harsh, traditional eyes, could love ever count?

I angled so I could peer up at Logan’s face—so perfect I had to wonder if he were real. Wonder if I’d gotten so lost in the loneliness—in the vacancy—that I’d conjured it all.

That game.

The bet.

My plea.

This man, who through it all, through all the pain I had caused him, still promised to stand by me.

Fight for me.

As if he felt every question ripple beneath my skin, those stony green eyes blinked open in the rays of sunlight that streaked into his room. It was the gold flecks that glinted and flamed.

Severe and without shame.

He didn’t hesitate. He pulled me on top of him until my chest was pressed to his. That was all it took for my breaths to jolt. For my heart to hammer and the blood to pound like chaos through my veins.

One touch from this man and I lit.

A needy rasp flooded from my mouth when I straddled him. The slip I wore bunched up high on my hips, and on instinct, I rubbed myself against him, his dick hard and huge where it was pressed against the thin fabric of my underwear.

Tiny pinpricks of bliss flickered. They spread like the splay of fingers around my waist and pooled low in my belly.

I whimpered a needy sound. Rocked over him again. I needed more because when it came to him, it would never be enough.

Logan curled a hand in my hair as he met me, his hips barely lifting from the mattress. He spread his other palm out over my bottom to guide me in the slow, seductive rhythm.

In the hazy, iridescent light, our bodies rolled.

Hitched and bucked. The sounds that wheezed from our mouths was close to silent, bated in the thickened, dense air.

It felt as if another chink had come loose somewhere. The reservations holding me together were steadily, quickly, resolutely breaking apart.

Soon, there would be no foundation.

Just a freefall with no chance of survival when we struck the bottom.

We’d hit it, I knew we would. But the falling felt so good.

The pleasure that built and buzzed.

The whooshing of the blood in my veins.

Logan held me by the back of the neck, our noses close to touching, though he didn’t bring me any closer. He just rocked against me again and again while he watched me with this look that I knew would do both of us in.

“Logan,” I finally whimpered. Needing more.

“What do you need, Little Star?”

“I need you.”

He shifted us so his cock was no longer against where I needed him most, but his fingers were there instead, slipping beneath the edge of my underwear.

My walls clenched around his fingers when he drove them deep.

I moaned.

Whimpered.

Rode his hand.

Harder.

Rising up on my knees and grinding back down.

His hold tightened on the back of my neck. “Do you like it when I fuck you with my fingers, Aster? Wait until it’s my cock. Do you remember what that was like? How I fit you?”

This time the moan that rolled up my throat was desperation.

“Please.” My nails scratched at his chest, clawing for a way inside, while my mind raced with all the inevitabilities.

We were going to end up a broken pile of rubble.

Toppled stones. A house of ruin.

Logan flipped me onto my back.

I gasped when he shoved his underwear down and freed himself.

He fisted his shaft and ran his hand up his long, thick length.

My entire body arched from the bed. “Please.”

He dropped down closer, and he rested on one forearm while he continued to stroke himself with the other. His mouth was at my ear. “I’ve wanted to hear you beg for so long.”

“Is that what you want? To punish me?” I asked him the same thing I’d asked last night.

Because this was torture.

“No, Aster. I want to touch you. Please you. Make you feel the way only I can. I want to worship this body the way it deserves to be worshipped. Take you hard and soft and every way in between. Give you the pleasure only I can give.” He gritted the words between clenched teeth.

“I’m going to send you to the stars, and then I’m going to keep you there because when I finally have you, I’m going to make you come again and again. And you’ll beg me, Aster, I promise you, you’ll beg me…but I will be more than happy to oblige. But not until you know. Until you understand. You are mine, Aster. Mine.”

A needy whine rolled from my tongue.

Logan pulled the crotch of my underwear aside and pressed himself against my center.

I cried out at the tiniest flare of relief.

At the heated, hard, velvety flesh of his dick where he rubbed himself through my lips.

It was pure sensation overload.

I was slick and wet, and he slipped through me like a perfect, miraculous tease.

Friction and torture.

Friction and torture.

Because I wanted all of him. To let go.

The tip of his head was engorged, fat and throbbing, driving me mad where it hit me each time he rubbed it over my clit.

I met him, rocking and grasping and pitching in a bid to get closer.

“Logan.” My nails scraped down his bare back. Pleasure raced and gathered. Tingles that swelled and spread.

Rising.

Lifting.

Taunting.

Ragged grunts tore up his throat, and he dropped his forehead against mine as his hips snapped in a frenzied play of pleasure.

Rutting and jerking.

Giving in his restraint.

“Aster, what you do to me. Do you understand? Do you have any idea what you mean?”

His thrusts became rigid, faster and harder.

Bliss built.

Built and built, until I broke.

Euphoria.

It scattered and blew as the orgasm ripped through my being. A shockwave that rushed like wildfire. Consuming. Destroying.

And still, it was not enough.

This man who was too much.

Overpowering.

Everything I’d ever wanted.

He thrust twice more before every muscle in his body bowed in ecstasy, and he was quick to push up the slip I wore.

He came on my lower belly, my name a low, searching moan.

“Aster.”

I writhed below it, aftershocks rocking me through, my hips still pleading.

My eyes grew wide when he swirled his fingers through the spill of his body then he pushed them back inside me. He drove them in slow and deep three times, then his mouth was at my ear, “Soon.”

I was gasping when he withdrew then pushed off the bed. “Wait right there.”

What the hell was he doing to me?

He strode for the bathroom, so freaking tall and wearing nothing but his underwear, his shoulders wide and his back rippling with taut, packed muscle. His ass was round and perfect, and I was sure this man was set on complete annihilation.

He glanced back at me from the doorway. “And don’t even think about taking off, Aster. There’s no use in hiding from me. I’ll just come and find you.”

“But what if I get you into trouble?” Old murmurings rocked loose, a tease and our heart’s greatest secret.

Pure devotion was embedded in his smirk. “Do I look like the kind of guy who cares?”