Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

22. Logan

TWENTY-TWO

LOGAN

I looked back from where I’d flicked the switch for the fireplace that now cast my bedroom in a red-tinged glow.

Aster Rose hovered just inside my doorway. She wore a plush gray sweater that crisscrossed in the front, creating a deep V between her breasts. It was tucked into a pair of tight leather pants, high-heeled boots that came up to just above her knees.

She looked like a fucking seductress standing in my room. Like temptation. Like every-fucking-thing that had been missing in my life for the last seven years.

She fidgeted.

Twitched.

Unsure.

Oh, but we could be certain of one thing.

She wanted me. She fucking wanted me.

Even knowing what felt like insurmountable obstacles separating us, she wanted me.

The problem was, my head didn’t know how to keep up with my heart that was already pounding out ahead of us.

My mind full of questions while the rest of me just didn’t give a fuck.

The only thing that mattered was the feeling that coursed through my veins.

This steely determination that I was going to take back what was mine.

I wound myself out of my suit jacket and tossed it to the couch.

Aster throbbed.

I saw it. Felt it. The way her entire being flared. I could taste her sweet breath that ensnared me like an echo. I could feel the filaments that curled between us like silky bonds around our wrists.

I toed off my shoes, unbuttoned the cuffs of my shirt, and rolled them up my forearms. She watched the action like she was committing it to memory. Or maybe like she was going back. Back to where we belonged.

Lust battled with the anger that stroked inside me.

With the war the sight of her incited.

The truth that she was mine, but she didn’t quite know it yet.

“Come here.” It cracked through the quiet, dense air.

Air wheezed from her lungs.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she forced out.

“Tell me you’re not aching, Aster.”

She whimpered out a frustrated laugh. “That’s the whole problem, Logan. I’ve been aching since the moment you burst back into my life, and I don’t know how to handle that.”

I saw the dread written on her face.

Her fear.

Her belief that after this, she would have to leave.

“Come here, Aster.” I said it softer that time.

I didn’t know which of us was the gravity. Which one of us compelled the other because I knew right that fucking second I would follow her anywhere.

She approached like she was walking on a sea of black ice littered with cracks, and she was afraid she might fall through.

One misstep and it would be over.

While I was going to teach her how to disappear into the moment.

Then I was going to keep her there forever.

Rich locks of brown hair flowed around her precious face. Her eyes were alight, flames dancing in the depths. She tiptoed across the floor. She came up within a foot of me when she paused, and her chest shuddered, and the tiniest, neediest breath escaped her full, pink lips.

Then she slowly climbed down onto her knees on the rug. As something locked inside her broke. “Logan. I’m not sure I know how to stand any longer. I’ve been doing it alone for so long.”

“Fuck me.” It slipped from my tongue as sure as I was slipping into a dream.

Her throat worked as she looked up at me, as she sucked every last drop of self-restraint from the air.

Hers.

Mine.

I wasn’t sure.

The only thing I knew was I heaved a breath as heavy as stones when she whispered again, “Logan.”

She leaned up and pressed her cheek to the inside of my thigh, rubbed herself there, eliciting an inferno that scorched through my insides.

A whirlwind of heat.

I reached out and traced her lips with the pad of my thumb, urging her to look up at me.

Flames leapt.

Danced and played.

Ready to consume.

“Aster.”

It was praise.

Affection.

A threat.

“Was I always destined to end up right here?” Her voice was a wisp. Short rasps of uncertainty. “No matter where you went, would I find you there? Or is it all a horrible coincidence? A stroke of bad luck? Or maybe…maybe it’s a punishment?”

“Little Star. One tiny star hidden in a vast cosmos. The only one I can see.”

She choked out a pained sound. “Even if I can’t see you, I’ll know you’re there, and I’ll find my way to you.”

She repeated the promise I’d made her that night.

A promise that whipped in tattered shreds around us.

Taking her by the chin, I lifted her face farther. She looked up at me with this expression that slayed me through. “Did you believe it, Aster? Did you believe what I told you then?”

Her throat bobbed heavily when she swallowed, and her eyes filled with the mist of old-broken dreams. “I believed you.”

“But you didn’t wait for me.” The words cracked.

Blinking, she forced out the confession. “My heart did.”

The air thinned, and my blood thundered. This manic crash that wanted to tear its way through.

“Did you feel it?” she asked. So quiet. So unsure. “Did you feel my heart through the space, even when you couldn’t see me?”

My hand splayed over the side of her face. “Every day, I thought I was losing my mind, Aster, the way every road wanted to end with you. Every fucking minute I wanted to come to you. Find you. To listen to the call of your voice that forever echoed in my ear.”

Shifting, she pressed her mouth to my palm, kissed it gently, lingered there for the longest time.

She held my hand to her face like her haggard breaths could heal our wounds.

I eased down onto my knees, took her face in my hands, and stared at her through the lapping shadows. “Did you feel it? Did you feel me?”

Tears slipped from her gorgeous eyes, the moisture seeping into the webs of my fingers.

“You are the only thing, the only one, I’ve ever felt.”

“Aster.” I leaned forward and pressed my mouth against hers.

Aster inhaled like it was the first time in years she could breathe. Then her hands spread over my chest and up around my neck.

I kissed her slow. My lips in a constant press and pull with hers. Soft laps and tiny flicks of tongue.

Without breaking the kiss, she fumbled through the buttons of my shirt.

The first.

The second.

She moved faster the farther she went.

She gasped a little sound when she got the last one free, and she pressed her palms to my bare chest and ran them up over my shoulders to push back the fabric.

I was quick to wind out of it, needing to feel her heat, the touch of her hands, the raking of her eyes.

They flew over me like a storm. Like annihilation. This one single girl who held the power to destroy me. She’d done it before, under the covenant of a thousand secret kisses, so I should have known better right then.

But yesterday didn’t matter. This moment was the only one I could control.

My skin was unmarred except for the single tattoo that ran up my side from my waist to my ribs.

She whimpered when she saw it.

GREED.

Aster edged back a fraction, and she glanced at me once in question before she turned to watch as she ran her fingers over the ink.

“It stole you from me.” I could barely hear her heartbroken words over the crash of her heart. The pound, pound, pounding that ravaged and shook.

She was wrong.

“Everything I ever had belonged to you.”

Everything I’d ever done had been done for her.

Every lie told in her favor.

She looked back at me. “Our worlds have always been against us.”

I set my hand on the side of her face. “Then let’s burn it down.”

She leaned forward, and she was kissing along my bare chest, over that rampage that beat against my ribs, over the hatred that churned in my soul, over the word that had cost it all.

Greed. Greed. Greed.

Who I was bred to be.

What my father created.

I’d stolen. I’d manipulated. I’d contrived.

But this time…this time, the gain had taken new shape, and I wouldn’t stop until she was mine.

My hands drove into her hair as she kissed lower, and I lifted as she went, until she was dipping her tongue along the band of my pants.

I almost came undone right there.

Lust buzzed in my ear. Stampeded like gasoline as it sped through my veins.

Every muscle in my body went hard.

It was a greedy sound that rumbled up her throat when she undid the button and pulled down the zipper.

The sound reverberated through the room. Banged the walls like a promise.

“Aster.”

It was a grunt.

She was heading in a direction she wasn’t ready for.

Aster sat up so she could push the tips of her fingers under the material. “Please. Just let me touch you. Let me feel you. I know it’s temporary but?—”

I cut her off by closing my hand up around her throat. “Don’t fucking say it.”

It killed the words right there, and her eyes rounded in fear.

I knew she wasn’t afraid of me, but she was terrified of what I might do. The lengths I would go. I’d promised her freedom and I fucking meant it.

All the way.

“Please,” she said instead, sagging forward with her mouth finding my chest again. She worked her way down in frantic, frenzied kisses. “Please.”

She left a trail of flames. A fire in my gut. A burn across my flesh.

I grunted when she made it down to my hip bone on the left, and she followed the line of it with her tongue as she pushed my pants and underwear down to the middle of my thighs.

My cock sprang free and bobbed against my stomach.

Hard as fucking stone and set on possession.

“I want you so fucking bad, Little Star. Do you have any clue? Any idea the times I thought of you? Imagined you?”

“I hope as many times as I thought of you.” It was a whimpered confession.

She leaned over and licked my head right over the slit before she returned those gorgeous eyes to me. “I can’t believe I’m looking at you like this. On this day.”

My chest tightened.

I wanted to suppress it. Shun what she was referring to. Like either one of us could forget that night.

A moan got free as she curled both her hands around the base of my dick, and I reached out and pressed my thumb between her plump, wet lips. I pushed it in and drew it out. “Are you going to fuck me with that sweet mouth?”

She stroked me once, from base to tip and back down again.

Pleasure built like a summer storm.

One fucking touch and this girl had me shaking where I knelt.

“Do you want me to?” It came out with a tremor of her soul, and the barest, smallest tease. “It is your birthday, after all.”

I touched her face again, my voice a low growl. “Don’t you dare do anything you don’t want to do, Aster. Not now. Not ever.”

Not with me.

Not with that bastard I was going to put in the ground.

“I have never stopped wanting you.”

Then she was slipping her gorgeous lips around my cock and sucking me into the well of her mouth.

I nearly came with the feel of her. At the pleasure only she could bring. This girl who was everything.

“Fuck, Aster, baby…I love your mouth.”

I could feel her smile around my length, then she licked up to my engorged head, sucked long and slow before she was consuming me all over again.

My hips jutted and jerked.

Bliss threatening to take me whole.

I was not going to last.

Not with her hot mouth and her sweet heart and the old dreams that could no longer be repressed.

“I can’t believe I’m with you like this. Could die right here, baby. So good. So fucking good.” It mumbled from my mouth on a slow slide as she sucked me up and down. She took me deeper and deeper with each pass until the tip of my cock was gliding to the back of her throat.

I grunted as she took me whole.

She stroked me in sync.

My hands were fists in her hair, guiding her harder. Faster. Deeper.

“Good girl.” The affection fell from my lips. “You’re perfect. So perfect.”

I sat up high on my knees, my hips thrusting as she took me as far as she could, the girl close to gagging, and there was something about it that fully set me off.

The way she hummed and moaned, the reverberation vibrating me to the bones. It wound me straight to the point I was going to blow.

Pleasure raced my spine, my balls fucking tight.

She grabbed me by the ass with both hands and gave herself over. Let me lead this frantic rhythm.

I took her in long, deep strokes.

She urged me faster.

I split apart.

Prisoner to this girl’s mouth and hands.

But it was her heart that had always fit me just right.

Aster whimpered as she swallowed around me while I sat there on my knees jerking.

Completely fucking shattered.

I choked a needy sound as I slipped out of her mouth then tucked myself back into my pants while Aster continued to kneel there, pressing her thighs together.

I saw the flash of a war in her eyes, the way a part of her wanted to run, escape what she should already know had been coming all along.

I had her scooped up and tossed to the couch so fast she yelped.

“Think you’re going somewhere?”

Her eyes were wide and round as her gaze roamed over me where I stood hovering over her, while I took in the delicious sight of this girl writhing in need on my couch.

Her tongue stroked her lips that were still wet, and that was all it took.

I was hard again.

“I should.” It sounded of submission. “I should go, Logan. I should leave this city before it hurts any more than it’s already going to. Before I bring trouble to your door.”

I tsked and trailed a fingertip over her knee. “I thought I told you that you’re worth the trouble? Besides, did you really think I’d let you walk out that door without making you come?”

Her hips jutted from the couch in a needy plea.

“There’s my girl.”

My girl. My girl.

She’d know it soon.

I dropped back to my knees, and I grabbed her by the ankle and unzipped one of her boots.

Her breaths were shallow as I dragged it off. I turned to do the same to the other.

Both of us were held in this feeling in the air.

Dense.

Dark.

Desperate.

Different than the night when I’d touched her in her bedroom.

That had felt like a hallucination.

This?

This was a fucking promise.

“Logan.” She whimpered that, a low sound in the back of her throat as she lifted her ass from the couch. I pressed my face there, to the front of her leather pants over her pubic bone. I took her by the outside of both thighs when I did, and I spread her wide so I could run my nose over the length of the seam.

She jerked. “Please.”

“What do you need?” It was a rough scrape against the heated air.

“You.”

“When did you stop needing me?” My fingers moved, only they hesitated at the top button of her pants.

“Never. I never stopped.”

I ripped the row of buttons open, and Aster mewled in anticipation as I dragged the tight material down her gorgeous legs.

Full hips and lush thighs.

I wound them off her feet, leaving her in her sweater and a matching gray satin thong.

She looked so perfect sitting there.

Her lips parted.

Her eyes wild.

Her heart hammering.

A fucking fantasy I’d long since forgotten to dream.

I pressed my finger to the little thatch where she was wet between her thighs.

“Even if you lied with your mouth, I’d know you want me, Little Star. Look how wet you are. You’re drenched, aren’t you?”

I ran my finger up and down, up and down, pressing the fabric deeper between her lips with each pass.

She rasped. Lifted her hips from the couch again. “You’re teasing me.”

“You deserve it, don’t you think?” It was close to playful as I dipped the tip of my finger beneath the edge of her panties and dragged it along the sweet spot where her thigh kissed her pussy.

She gulped for air. “Is that what you want? To punish me?”

I pressed my nose to the spot my finger had been, my words a low breath. “No, Aster, I don’t want to punish you. I want to give you the world. I want to chase down every dream you’ve ever had and give it to you. Kill everything that threatens it. I want to fuck you. I want to keep you. I want to feed you and love you and protect you. I want to live for you, Little Star.”

Aster gasped, then her hips bucked high when I ripped her panties from her body. I had my mouth on her faster than she could protest. Before she could say the words I hated.

Thirty days.

Thirty days.

Fuck that.

Fuck Jarek.

Fuck her father.

I fucked her with my mouth, instead.

Drove my tongue deep into her cunt.

Aster fisted my hair in both hands. “Logan.”

I licked her everywhere I could taste her. Tongue thrusting into her pussy before I lapped up to suck her throbbing clit into my mouth, scraping it with my teeth.

Aster moaned and jerked. “Please, Logan. Please. I want to feel you. All of you.”

I edged back to look at her. “You want my cock, baby?”

Her head nodded frantically against the back of the couch.

“No. Not until you know you’re truly mine. Not until I have you, heart, body, and soul. Not until you get that I’m not letting you go.”

I dipped back down between her thighs, hoisting her up so I could lick between her cleft, tongue stroking her asshole because I was going to take that, too.

Aster was an earthquake in my hands. Vibrating. Shaking. A tremor that would bring down her walls.

I slipped higher until I was back to sucking at her needy clit, and she was begging me all over again.

I pushed two fingers deep into her body, rubbed her in that place that had her losing all sanity. I pressed down on her lower stomach at the same time.

“Oh god, Logan…how…I didn’t think it was real…thought it was a dream.”

“It’s real, Little Star. It’s you and me.”

She came apart right then.

Beauty in my hands.

I led her through, as she tightened and quivered and floated toward the sky.

I held her there, whispering, “You’re mine. You’re mine.”

I was going to keep saying it until she understood it.

She slumped down, gasping for breath.

I eased my fingers out of her, then sat up higher so I could kiss her mouth.

Soft and slow.

Tender.

Because I saw the panic in her gaze, rising up from that place that had been broken apart.

“Wait right there.”

Pushing to standing, I moved into my bathroom where I started a bath in the massive tub because I was intent on taking care of this girl. On showing her what she deserved. Who she was and what she meant to me.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that when I walked back out to get her, Aster Rose was gone. I knew she was afraid.

She had to learn to trust this.

To trust me.

And how would I ever fully trust her if she never stayed?