Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

42. Aster

FORTY-TWO

ASTER

With my hand solidly held in his, Logan darted back through Absolution’s main doors, dragging me through the raving crowd that had only gotten rowdier as it approached midnight.

He ducked down the hall where we’d entered, then he was hauling me into a private room and locking the door behind us. He moved across the room and fumbled around at the wall and pushed open a hidden door.

What the hell?

Confusion whirled through my being while my heart soared.

I still couldn’t believe what had just happened with my father.

I didn’t think I’d ever felt more exhilarated.

More hopeful.

More alive.

Logan slammed it shut and locked the hidden door, too.

It closed us off to the smoky, opaque shadows that swam through the secret room. My attention raced to take it in. It held a game table and a couch and a small bar at the back. The décor oozed of 1920’s decadence.

Logan strode out in front of me, as if he couldn’t sit still. He roughed an agitated hand through his black hair as he paced.

His spirit was held in a lethal storm.

“What is this place?” I wheezed, chaos whipping through my being.

My breath hitched when he finally whirled around, the sight of his face clipping off my question.

The man was so obscenely gorgeous in the tailored suit he wore.

So magnetic my heart jolted toward him.

Those eyes flashed as they raved over my body.

Copper and green.

Stony.

Malachite.

Yet, still the farthest from opaque.

They were feral.

Angered and awed and everything in between.

“You did it for me.” Agony hurtled out with the hardened words.

“You did it for me.” Reverent torment. It underscored his disbelief and this vibrant anger that pounded through the room. “You promised your father you would never see me again if he spared my life? That’s why you married Jarek?”

My soul shook, and I pressed my hands to my chest. “I had no other choice.”

I knew until right then he never had really understood what I’d meant.

Every muscle in his body rippled with severity, edged in strength and rage.

“No, Aster, you could have chosen you .”

“And exist in a world where I knew you didn’t? Know that your love for me had been your end? Never, Logan. Never.” The confession wept through the room.

“What did he do to you?” Rage sprang from his spirit and burned from his tongue.

My eyes squeezed closed. “I don’t want him here right now, Logan. I don’t want him anywhere near us.”

Because for the first time…for the first time…Logan and I had a future. A chance. A possibility. The hope of life and a…family.

My heart pounded, and my eyes fluttered open when he murmured my name.

“Aster.”

It was acclaim.

Energy crackled, and he slowly moved my way.

“It was to protect me.” Coarse adoration filled the sharp edge of his voice. “That night, everything you said was to protect me.”

I could barely nod around the sorrow in my throat. “It killed me, Logan, standing in our special spot and telling you the greatest lie. It destroyed me all over again to cause you that pain. But it was so much better than the alternative.”

Emotion bottled in my throat. The truth and the secrets and the pain.

Reaching out, he tipped up my chin. Logan’s jaw was set, and his heat flamed in the space between us. “For years, I hated you, thinking you’d taken the easy way out. That you’d married a man with a name and power. That you realized I wasn’t worth the trouble.”

“I was the one who brought you trouble.” Soggy affection blew out with the wheeze.

He inhaled a shaky sound, then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to the spot where my shoulder met my neck.

“Little Star,” he whispered at the sensitive flesh. “I should have known. I should have known. But somewhere deep inside, my soul knew.”

Logan’s gaze deepened, locked on mine. “I should have fought for you.”

“And what would have happened then? It would have brought more tragedy.”

“You were worth the fight, Aster. Whatever it would have cost.”

“I didn’t believe it then,” I admitted.

“Tell me you do now. Tell me you understand the treasure that you are,” he demanded. His fingers gripped me by the chin, harsh and tender. “Tell me you understand you are worth the fight.”

“I know it now, Logan. I see it in your eyes.”

He edged back and slowly turned me around until I was facing an ornate, full-length mirror.

I met his reflection, the stony ferocity that rippled through his gorgeous features. “Beauty. My heart. My poetry,” he murmured as his fingertips fluttered down the slope of my neck.

“You are every word I’ve ever written.”

I could almost see the scattering of stars strewn around us. As if each call of my heart had been hung in the sky.

Logan whispered, “Wait right there. Do not move, Little Star.”

Through the obscured light, I watched Logan’s silhouette move across the room. In the far corner, he pulled back a drape that revealed a massive safe, and he entered a code and pressed his finger to it.

Nerves skidded through my body. This sense that we’d tripped into a new place. That we both finally understood.

Anticipation filled the room.

His and mine.

Mine and his.

It coalesced.

Convulsed and intensified and came alive when he rummaged around for something protected within.

Significance filled the atmosphere.

Thickened and deepened.

The moment hinged on expectancy.

He kept his hand hidden when he slowly edged toward me. He stopped six inches away, his panted breaths lifting chills on the flesh of my back as he gazed at me through the faded mirror.

“You asked me what this room is, Aster. This is the room where I buried all my secrets. Where I attempted to leave my pain and my spite and pretend like every part of me hadn’t remained in Los Angeles with you.” His breath whispered over my bare skin, illicit chills that crawled like possession.

“I gave myself over to the greed, thinking I could find contentment in excess and wealth. Find purpose in the commitment I’d made to one day make Jarek pay for what he’d stolen from me. But there was no satisfaction in any of it because the truth was all that greed came down to one thing—my love for you.”

He pulled what he had hidden from behind his back and draped a necklace around my neck.

A massive stone dangled between my breasts.

A gasp raked free of my lungs.

Shock.

Confusion.

Hurt and hope and abiding love.

The ground trembled beneath my feet.

“One half of the twin stones,” I whispered. “How? You said you sold them.”

My fingers trembled as I touched it, and Logan leaned closer, his voice a rasp of admission. “It’s the only piece I ever had, Aster. I know Jarek told your father that I was responsible, but we were attacked that night, and that man killed your uncle. Jarek stood like a pussy on the sidelines while I tried to stop it from happening. The man ran with the other stone, and before Jarek could get to the second, I took it. I shot him because he was going to shoot me. I told you I always believed that night was a setup. I still do. The night I came back for you, I was going to go to your father and return the stone and tell him everything.”

My mind spun with the details.

With the truth that Logan had never done any of the things he’d been accused of.

That it was Jarek.

Jarek.

Deep down, I’d always known it, but I guessed it’d been easier to live through the loss and loneliness placing more of the blame on Logan.

“Why didn’t you tell me? You said you sold them, but you had one the whole time? Why do you still have it?”

It was an appeal. Both for then and now.

These stones that had ruined everything.

Greed.

It was what I’d believed him to be all along, and even then, I’d forgiven him.

Logan’s dark brow twisted. “I was going to, Aster. When you broke my heart, I had every intention of leaving there, selling it, becoming more powerful than your father and Jarek combined. I was going to ruin them. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. Not when I knew it was responsible for taking you from me.”

“You didn’t tell me? This whole time, you had it, and you didn’t tell me?” I wondered how the accusation held no anger.

Logan fiddled with the chain, severity coating his voice. “I didn’t trust you, Aster, that first night. You were still just the Costa princess to me.” His mouth pressed behind my ear. “My tormenter. My greatest regret. The one I hated myself for still loving.”

“And then?”

“And then I was terrified you were still going to leave me. That you were going to disappear. I needed an advantage. An asset to wield if I needed to. Even before you understood it, I promised myself I was never going to let you go.”

“And now?”

His hand slipped from my shoulder and down my arm, and he threaded our fingers together. “And now…we do this together, the way we always should have.”

“And you don’t know where the other half is?” I clarified.

His head shook. “The last time I saw it, the man who killed your uncle ran with it.”

Pain lacerated my soul. “Jarek did it.”

He’d set up the whole thing.

Disgust blew through the agony. The pain Logan and I had been through.

It was over the twin stones.

I knew it to my soul.

“I’ve always believed so.”

“I hate him so much.”

It should be impossible to hate someone so much.

“He’s at his end.”

Moisture blurred my sight, and that old pain welled fast. I was impaled by the onslaught of the mistakes and manipulations we’d been victims of.

Our child.

Our child.

“Why didn’t you come to me that night?”

“Our whole world exploded that night, Aster. I’d just shot Jarek Urso, I didn’t know if he was dead or alive, and I only had half of what I’d been sent to retrieve for your father. Your uncle was dead and Jarek had blamed me for it. I was a kid, Aster, a kid who had gotten himself in far too deep. I was fucking terrified and had no idea what to do.”

His thick throat tremored when he swallowed, grief the strike of a match in his green eyes. “I made it home only to find out Nathan had been killed. The rest of us were in danger. Trent forced me to leave with them that night, insisted that I never step foot in Los Angeles again. He’d said I’d be signing our death certificates if I did. Even with all of that, I called and called you, Aster, I fucking tried, but you never answered, and I came back the first moment I could sneak away.”

My soul shivered, and tears streaked down my cheeks. “You didn’t forget me.”

A possessive growl rumbled from Logan’s chest. “Forget you, Aster Rose? You inhabited every recess of my mind. Every crevice of my heart. And you lived in every drop of blood that beat through my veins. Just like I know now I beat through yours.”

He pressed his face to my neck. “I hate what you had to do. Hate that you sacrificed. But I get it because I’d die every single day for you.”

“Logan.”

“Little Star.”

“My destination.”

Intensity blistered from his being, and Logan stepped back a fraction to twine a loose lock of hair around his hand. “And here we are,” he rumbled.

“And I’m never looking back.”

“Never.”

“Love me, Logan, and don’t you dare stop.”

A rough chuckle vibrated his chest. “Stop? Oh, Little Star, I already promised you I was going to ruin you tonight.”

His lips fell to my shoulder and ran up the side of my neck.

Fire flamed.

I exhaled a shaky breath as he kissed a path down the length of my exposed spine until he was kneeling behind me.

He bunched the silky material of my dress around my waist.

Cool air caressed my bottom, at odds with the heat that throbbed between my thighs.

I sucked for air.

Lust hissed from his mouth. “Fucking gorgeous. Your ass, Aster. Perfection.”

He splayed a palm over my cheek, then he angled down to kiss along the strip of the lace between my crease.

I jolted forward, nearly buckling in two, and I grabbed onto the sides of the mirror for support.

Logan grunted when I did.

“Good girl,” he murmured.

He spread my cheeks then pulled the fabric aside so he could let his tongue take its place.

He licked me from my clit to ass.

Desire bloomed, tendrils that spread to embed in every cell.

“Logan.”

His tongue rimmed my asshole as he drove two fingers deep inside me.

Pinpricks of pleasure lit.

I pressed back, needing more.

“More.”

“You’re about to have all of me.”

Intensity bounded through the room, and I swore, I felt the walls enclose to box us in.

A dark sanctuary where it was only me and Logan.

As if we were back beneath those hidden stars.

This love that had been twisted and disfigured but had never broken.

It unfurled then.

Complete and whole.

Logan rose to standing, and he undid his pants. Stony eyes searched my face through the reflection as he pushed his fingers between my thighs and rubbed my center. “Say it.”

I gasped and whined and angled forward in a plea for more.

“I’m yours.”

The second I said it, he grabbed me by the waist and drove into me in one possessive thrust.

So deep it drove a deep sob from my mouth.

“Do you feel that, Little Star?” he grunted.

Logan pulled nearly all the way out before he drove back again.

My thighs shook.

I felt him like an avalanche.

A rolling of bliss.

An undulation of possession.

“Mine,” he grated.

It was grit.

Gravel.

A claim.

The truth that I had always been.

“Tell me,” I demanded back.

Our gazes tangled in the reflection.

He banded one arm across my stomach, and the other splayed wide while it slowly traveled up my abdomen and chest until he was holding me by the front of the throat.

His hand curled there, pulling me up and forcing me to lean my weight against him, and his mouth came to my ear. “I’m yours, Aster. Fucking yours, and I’m always going to be, and I won’t stop until that truth is your peace.”

He bent his knees and thrust into me again.

A cry jolted from my lungs.

“That’s right, Little Star. Feel what I do to this sweet body.”

“I feel everything.”

Logan growled and took me harder. “I love you, Aster Rose.”

He stepped back, and he pressed his hand to the back of my neck so he could bend me over.

My hands shot back out to hold onto the mirror as he began to pound into me from behind.

He was so big as he filled me again and again.

Overpowering.

Overwhelming.

“Your pussy is perfect, Aster. The way you fit me. Nothing has ever felt better.”

Pleasure gathered like the same storm that had brewed in his eyes.

Whimpers ripped from my throat with each relentless drive of his body.

“It’s mine, Little Star. All of you.”

He reached around and pressed his thumb into my mouth, making me suck, before he withdrew it and began to swirl it around my puckered hole.

Sensation raced.

Beautiful and dark.

“Feel me, Little Star.”

He worked it inside, deeper and deeper with each stroke of his hips.

He met the deep, maddening rhythm of his hard fucks.

“Logan,” I whimpered, not sure if it was too much or not close to enough.

I pushed back and drew away and got lost in the brightening glow of coming bliss.

“Touch yourself,” he commanded.

My fingers fumbled to my clit, unable to keep my knees from bending forward as I held onto the mirror with my other hand to keep myself upright.

Whimpers and cries of desperation flooded from my mouth, his name a prayer I would never cease saying.

He took me harder then.

Impossible.

Too much.

Too right.

His cock and his thumb ruthlessly, perfectly in sync.

My fingers frantically tried to keep up.

Stroking and stroking as pleasure swarmed.

It was a sea of sensation, rising from the deepest abyss. Growing stronger. A current that surged and swept.

He took me ruthlessly.

Merciless in this offering.

Vicious in this atonement.

I could feel nothing else but the man who consumed me.

Body and soul.

Mine.

He’d meant it.

And in it, I found the most beautiful bliss.

“Look at me, Aster,” he grunted through his raving strokes.

My eyes met the severity in his.

“Do you have any idea what you do to me? Your tight cunt and this gorgeous ass and your unforgettable face. I won’t ever let you go. Not this time. Not ever again.”

“I love you, Logan.” It came out with the air that wheezed from my lungs.

“Everything,” he muttered in return.

Our hearts raced, and our spirits shook, and our bodies begged.

Merged and twined and became one.

That dark sea swirled and thrashed.

Sensation erupted from the depths. From the places I didn’t know.

It eclipsed reason and sight.

He drove and possessed.

I split apart.

Soared.

Ripples of pleasure raced to touch every cell, to infiltrate every fiber.

“Oh god,” I cried, my knees going weak as pleasure took me whole.

Logan tightened his arm that was banded around my waist because I could no longer stand.

He continued to drive into me as my walls throbbed and pulsed around him.

“Aster…fuck…yes.”

He took his pleasure, and he gave me mine.

Wave after wave.

Unending.

Infinite.

Logan grunted low as he buried himself completely.

His body quivered and poured.

Bliss cracked through the room.

A blackout.

Dark, dark ecstasy.

Spent, I dropped to my knees when he loosened his hold, but Logan only scooped me into his arms.

His heart raced at a jagged beat, and his breaths pitched from his lungs.

“Logan.”

I bit my lip at the way he was looking at me. The man so gorgeous my stomach quaked all over again.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

My heart twisted when he smirked. “I thought you’d get it by now that I take good care of what’s mine. Get used to it, baby, because I’m going to be doing it for the rest of my days.”

Shouts seeped through the walls. The countdown had begun.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

Logan held me tighter as his spirit danced with mine.

“Five, four, three, two…”

Logan mouthed the last, One.

“Happy New Year, Little Star.”

I pressed my face into the warmth of his neck. “It’s not just happy, Logan. It’s every wish I’ve ever made.”