Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

29. Aster

TWENTY-NINE

ASTER

Logan was a controlled windstorm. Severity bunched and bound his being, the man wrung like a tight cord.

A crated squall that whipped with energy and dark, dark light.

Crackling and snapping where the barely contained gusts sparked.

He helped me out of the car, and he threaded his fingers through mine in a fierce hold as he led me to the elevator.

He said nothing as he punched in the code, though his touch said everything. I could feel the vibration of it. The compulsion that guided us to a better place.

The elevator sped toward the top floor, while our hearts panged and raced and our spirits thrashed in the confined space.

It felt as if it were lifting us to a new destiny. A destination that had once felt impossible.

But after today? After him?

I gulped as I looked at the rigid set of his jaw. This beautiful, beautiful man who’d changed it all.

One who’d given me a reason to look forward. One who reminded me I was brave. One who made me remember that I deserved a better life.

A life I wanted with him.

The elevator door swept open, and Logan tightened his hold as he led me to his door. He let us into the quivering silence that danced within his apartment. Afternoon light seeped through the windows, muted with the sky that was cast in dreary grays.

It held us in whispers of anticipation. In a need so severe it felt as if I were wading into a tortured paradise, where you’d either reach the stars or stumble into the pits of Hell.

Tension radiated with each step as Logan guided me across the room.

Malachite eyes melted to gold when he looked down at me. His tongue stroked over his plush bottom lip. “Little Star.”

Just one glance, and he twisted me into a needy mess.

Or maybe that’s what I’d been all along—a needy mess that only he could undo.

He pulled me into the duskiness of his bedroom. It was strewn in silvered hues and crystallized shadows. He shut and locked the door before he pressed me against the wall.

He planted both forearms on either side of my head, caging me in, consuming me with his presence.

His aura whipped and whirred, corruption and clove, talons that penetrated flesh and sank in to take hold.

Claws that would never let go.

I didn’t want them to.

I wanted him to violate every part of me.

Keep me.

Wreck me.

Take me.

“Say it.” His forehead dropped to mine, the action an achy plea. Harsh gusts of air wheezed from his lungs. “Say it.”

I felt his teeth clench with the command. His heart pitch. His spirit possess.

“Logan,” I whispered his name, overcome.

He angled back and hit me with the fierce strike of his eyes. “Say it, Aster. Say it and fucking mean it.”

It didn’t take much to understand what he meant.

What he needed.

And I knew it was my truth.

My spirit gave as my hands fisted the lapels of his jacket, and the words flooded from my mouth on my own plea. “I love you, Logan Lawson. I love you. I am yours. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday. Forever. I’m yours.”

Logan growled.

Soul deep.

“Say it back,” I whispered as my hands curled tighter. “Say it back.”

Those eyes raced my face, tracing every inch. His voice became a rasp of conviction. “You think I don’t love you, Aster Rose? You are the very meaning of it. You are the one who taught me what it meant.”

He had me in his arms before my mind could catch up. His mouth captured mine. His kiss a bond.

He wound a hand into my hair as that kiss turned rash. Rugged and hard.

He stroked his tongue deep into my mouth to tangle with mine.

Passion stormed.

White hot.

Desperate.

An inferno that would lay us to waste, but I would be glad to live in the wake of his fire.

Logan tugged my body flush to his, friction and flames, and our heartbeats became frantic as new lifeblood beat through our veins.

A resurgence.

An awakening.

A dawning day where I’d stand in his light.

My dark, dark defender.

He climbed with me onto the center of his bed. He laid me there, and he hovered high as he gazed down.

“Say it again,” I begged because I’d done without for too long.

A big palm cupped one side of my face, warm and right, and his rugged voice cracked with devotion. “I love you, Aster. I love you with this heart that had forgotten how to beat. Not until it remembered you. It belongs to you, Aster. All of it. It always has.”

My fingertips stroked along the lines of his unforgettable face. “I think I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you. When I felt you at that doorway. It was the moment my heart came alive, and I’ve loved you every second since. I never stopped. Not once. Even when it hurt.”

His expression deepened, understanding the confession for what it was.

My tongue swept across my lips as I pressed out the words. “Every day we were apart, I was missing a piece of myself, Logan. I was missing you. You. ”

Grabbing my hand, he pressed my knuckles to his mouth. “Never look back, Aster. Never look back. From here, from this point on, it is you and me. Nothing else matters. Do you understand me?”

His voice grated with control, merciless in his demand. “Tell me you understand.”

My throat grew thick. “Nothing else matters but you and me.”

Logan jerked me up enough that he could peel off my jacket. “Fucking sublime. You in my bed. Where you belong. It’s time, Aster. It’s time.”

It was all a seductive murmur that whispered from his full lips, and his eyes flashed to mine before a grunt left his mouth. “Everything I do, I’ll do it for you.”

My head spun, rushing to keep up with the tornado that was this man. The stark ferocity and the tender loyalty.

Everything.

Everything.

Leaning down, he kissed the edge of my mouth before he ran his lips along my jaw and up to my ear. “Now you know, Little Star. Now you know you’re mine, and I’m not giving you back. Not this body or this heart or this mind. I’m going to own them all.”

Shivers raced, and he continued his assault, kissing down my neck as he began to wind up my shirt. He edged back to his knees so he could pull it over my head.

My hair fell around my bare shoulders. Heat flushed, racing my skin as fast as his eyes devoured it.

With a growl, he tossed it to the floor. “A vision. You sitting there. Do you have any idea?”

He glided a single fingertip over the curve of my breast along the edge of my bra. “Fucking perfect, Aster Rose.”

Logan dipped his thumb beneath the lace, and he watched my expression as he dragged his nail across my nipple.

Sensation streaked far and fast, and it tightened to the hardest peak.

I was already gasping, and he’d hardly touched me.

He gripped me by the back of the neck and dragged me forward for a kiss.

A kiss that altered reason.

One that changed standing.

One that shifted meaning.

Logan’s mouth was hot, delirious fire. The darkest, deepest ocean. A magnificent sea where I would drown.

He kept flicking his thumb over my nipple while he kissed me into a messy puddle of desire, then he licked down my neck in a low, seductive path. He nibbled and sucked at my flesh as he went.

Down, down, down until he yanked the cup of my bra away and closed his mouth over my breast.

A tiny yelp escaped, and my fingers drove into the locks of his black, thick hair.

I held on tight as he sucked and licked and stroked me into a frenzy.

He reached around and flicked the snap to my bra so he could pull it all the way off.

“Logan…Logan…please.” My body arched toward him. “Please.”

“What do you need, Aster?”

“You. I’ve always needed you.”

Since the day he’d brought the best part of me to life.

Severity flashed through his gaze. A possession so intense I felt it rumble the ground.

The man was an earthquake. A firestorm. Obliteration.

I wanted to be wrecked.

Destroyed.

For the two of us to reform and reshape as we rebuilt the pieces that had been littered between us.

I wanted to come alive under his hands and his body and his sweet, hardened heart that was littered with cracks.

I wanted to bleed into the secret places inside him that had always been reserved for me.

He slipped off the bed, and he tugged me by an ankle to the side.

“Logan.” It was a wheeze, my hips bucking a fraction.

“I know what you need, Little Star. Don’t worry, sweet girl, I’m going to give it to you.”

He tugged off my boots. One then the other. They clunked to the floor.

The air shivered and flashed.

Logan’s sexy grin went wicked when he leaned over me so he could reach the button of my jeans. He set it loose in the same second as he pressed his nose to my belly button.

He exhaled.

Flames lapped.

He kissed over my abdomen as he pulled down the zipper, whispering, “I’m going to give it to you, again and again and again. Forever, baby.”

Tremors rocked through my body as he edged back so he could peel both my jeans and underwear down my legs. “Look at you, Little Star. Fucking glorious, the only one I can see.”

I writhed, a naked, itching mess on his bed.

Those eyes grazed over every bare inch of my skin.

Etching.

Slaying.

Remembering.

“No one will ever touch you again, Aster. No one but me.” He nudged my knees apart, and his jaw clenched tight when he drove two fingers deep into my body.

A moan rolled up my throat.

“I need you.” I whimpered it as my hips jerked toward his touch.

“You have me, Aster. You just had to accept it.”

Logan stepped back, and the man watched down on me as he stripped.

Slowly.

Purposefully.

He unwound from his jacket, then he ticked through the buttons of his shirt before he pulled it away to reveal those broad, muscled shoulders.

He toed out of his shoes and socks then undid his pants and stepped out of them before he shoved out of his underwear.

The man was a masterpiece.

Carved of an ethereal canvas.

Dark and wicked.

Beautiful and right.

My mouth went dry, and my insides shook.

“I’d forgotten what life looks like.” The praise tremored from my tongue.

The man towered there as twilight seeped into the room, the barest rays of white illuminating his smooth skin. Every muscle in his body was rigid.

Flexing with strength.

“I never thought I’d want this way again, Logan. Not once. Not until I ended up here.”

“Right where you belong.”

I gulped.

I had almost forgotten.

Had almost forgotten what it felt like to be loved by this man.

The way he watched me.

All consuming.

Logan’s expression deepened. Lines of fierce adoration. Strokes of grief and guilt. A shadowy mystery that glowed beneath absolute beauty. “I was a fool who didn’t fight for you once, Aster. You need to know that won’t happen again.”

Joy sprang up from the vacant places. From the places I never thought could be filled.

Where old pain howled and promised I was nothing but a fool.

All while dread threatened to lay siege. To clot out the hope because neither of us knew what waited. How we would find the freedom to continue to love this way.

I wondered if he saw it, my fear, because he leaned over me and brushed his thumb across my jaw. The words left him on a rough promise, “You are worth the risk, Aster. Whatever it costs. I will fight for you. Live for you. Kill for you. Whatever it takes.”

You are worth it.

You are worth it.

I didn’t think I’d ever felt as cherished as I did then.

“Love me, Logan,” I whispered desperately. “Love me, and don’t you dare ever stop.”

Logan’s expression was sheer devastation as he slowly climbed up onto the bed.

Energy swelled.

Filled up the bare space that raged between us.

Logan’s heart thundered.

Powerful and bold.

While mine wept and rejoiced.

I swore, right then, as he climbed to hover over me, that those two broken organs tangled and tied. Bound together to make something whole.

His expression churned through a million emotions.

Love.

Tenderness.

Joy.

Possession.

I traced my fingers along the contours of it like I could keep all of it for myself.

Like we could find it together.

Logan shifted so he could kiss over my fingertips, devoted and soft. Harsh and sweet.

“Aster Rose.”

It was like coming home.

“This is it, Aster. After this, there is no letting you go. You’re mine.”

Throat thick, I gave him an erratic nod. “We fight together. We live together. We love forever.”

Severity flashed through his expression.

The man took me in one rigid thrust.

It was close to a sob that tore from my throat when he filled me.

Tortured greed and frantic desperation.

My nails clawed at his back while pained pleasure shimmered behind my eyes.

It’d been so long.

So long.

“Mine,” Logan rumbled where he pressed his face to my throat.

Logan’s body consumed me, so big and full that the only thing I could breathe was him.

Grunting, Logan curled a hand in my hair, and he yanked it back farther so my throat was exposed and my chest arched from the bed to crush against his.

“Look at you, all spread out for me, this body taking me the way only you can. Fucking perfect, being in you.”

He remained completely still as desire burned inside me.

“Logan.” I whimpered it.

“What do you need, Little Star?”

“You, I’ve always needed you.”

“You have me. Forever.”

He kissed my throat before he pulled back and began to move.

He moved in slow, measured thrusts.

His gaze remained unrelenting, his stare ruthless as he took me.

He consumed me.

He claimed me.

He rebranded me with the mark of his body.

His lips were parted as he panted. He worked over me, all that lean, hewn muscle flexing in ripples of strength.

Every thrust was obsession.

Every drive possession.

Gasps wisped from my throat, and I lifted to meet him as I begged him for more.

His hips began to stroke faster.

Bliss prickled and teased, a whispered promise that hummed from the edges of eternity.

A song that grew louder.

A rhythm that climbed toward a crescendo.

He gathered me closer as if he could never possibly get me close enough. “You feel so good. So right. How’s it possible, Little Star? How’s it possible you do this to me? Do you have any idea? Did you know my perfection is you?”

He grunted it with each jut of his hips.

Friction flamed and fanned, and our hearts picked up the same rhythm as our bodies.

Jagged.

Erratic.

A desperate devotion that thrummed and churned and grew.

It built to a point where it was blinding.

Blind love.

Because there were no guarantees.

There were only our oaths and our truths.

It didn’t matter what either of us had done in the past.

Not the scars or the betrayals or the grief.

It was only this.

Now.

So I fell into this man who I’d promised I’d never trust again.

A man who was supposed to be my enemy.

My lover.

My destination.

My North Star.

Pleasure blossomed in every cell.

It shivered and trembled and expanded.

It sizzled then blew.

Every molecule in my being ruptured.

There, beneath the savage loyalty that blazed in his eyes, I broke apart.

His name rasped from my lips. “Logan. Logan.”

A moan of my spirit. A shattering of my soul.

I fractured into a million unrecognizable pieces. Splintered apart.

And I floated somewhere in that paradise that only existed in his hands.

Wave after wave.

Flood after flood.

Rapture.

Ecstasy.

Logan edged back and took me by both knees as he climbed onto his.

He pounded into me, scoring himself deep.

Frantic.

Wild.

Unhinged.

I felt it when he came. When his bliss was mine. When every muscle in his gorgeous body tensed and he let go.

A guttural moan ripped up his throat as he poured into me.

Pleasure pulled every muscle in his chest and abdomen taut.

“Fuck, so good. So good,” he muttered incoherently before he slumped forward.

Pants jetted from my mouth, and every fiber in my being vibrated with aftershocks.

It was a feeling that went bone deep.

Satisfaction.

Contentment.

This man who was everything.

How could I ever have believed otherwise?

Those arms wound around me, and his nose ran up my cheek until his mouth was at my ear. “You might be mine, but you, Little Star, own me.”