Wicked Ride (9 page)

He leads me with purpose. The
long strides and the way he grips my hand strongly but gently tells
me he’s determined
to get me someplace where we can sit down and talk.

Actually talk.

No more intent meanings hidden
within the depths of our eyes.

While it was an excellent means
to communicate when we couldn’t
actually converse, I’m looking forward to just hearing more of
his deep voice that has just the sexiest of rumbles to it.

Logan leads me to a restaurant
called “Frannie’s”
that looks like a log cabin. It has a flat, wide porch across the
front with several rocking chairs where customers can rock away the
time while they wait for a table. It’s past the early breakfast
rush, and there’s no one waiting outside. Logan leads me in,
nods at one of the waitresses, and pulls me through the restaurant to
the back where there’s a semi-private table in a corner by the
kitchen. He only releases my hand to let me slide into my chair, and
then he takes the one opposite me.

With quiet speculation, Logan
just stares at me, as if he can’t
quite figure out what to do with me, except maybe feed me. I’m
equally at a loss as to what to say, because talking about what
happened between us last night could be extremely dangerous.

So I pick up the paper menu
before me and start to study it. I don’t
look up at Logan, although I can feel the weight of his stare, but
I’m also so flustered to even be in his presence that I really
can’t see anything on the menu either.

“Why are you letting Magnus
sell you off?” Logan asks quietly, and my eyes lift until they
peer at him over the menu. His visage is troubled and stormy, and I
can’t have him incensed on my behalf. He could easily get me
angry over the injustice of it all and convince me to run, and I just
can’t do that.

“How about we talk about
something that doesn’t have to do with The Silo?” I say
quietly.

“So I can’t tell you
how unbelievable last night was?” he asks, his eyes turning
practically golden to match the heat of his words. “Since that
happened in The Silo?”

I squeeze my legs together and
duck my head behind the menu again. My privacy from such an intimate
question is short lived as his fingertips peek over the top and pull
it down. I notice his fingers are rough and nicked with cuts and
scars, a hazard, I would guess, of his job as a fly fisherman.

My eyes reluctantly go to his,
and reluctantly only because I’m
terrified of the way he makes me feel. “We really should forget
about it.”

“I’m pretty sure
that’s an impossibility on my part,” he says dryly before
leaning across the table so he can murmur. “And I know you
can’t either by the way you’re squirming in your chair
right now.”

Damn.

I immediately plant my feet hard
on the floor and make myself stay still. “Logan…
maybe another time—”

“Okay, if we can’t
talk about The Silo or the amazing orgasms we gave each other last
night, how about telling me a little about yourself? Where are you
from?”

“Brooklyn,” I say,
blinking in surprise at the abrupt change of subject, but with a
lingering tingle in my lower spine over the mention of the orgasms.
Because last night was the singularly most amazing thing that has
ever happened to me in my life. I knew the power of what an orgasm
felt like, but it never felt like that before.

Never.

“Your whole life?” he
asks to clarify.

“Yes. Born and raised. And
you?” I ask politely, not really liking this stilted, demure
conversation, but knowing we’re both better off not venturing
from this path.

“Chicago,” he says
with a shrug. “Although I’ve lived in quite a few places
since then.”

“Like where?”

He’s
prevented from answering when a waitress comes to our table and
places coffee cups before us without even asking if we want some,
although she does ask, “Want anything else other than coffee?”

Logan and I both shake our heads.

“Know what you want to
order?” she asks.

Logan pushes his menu aside,
clearly having eaten here before. “Three
eggs over easy, hash browns, bacon—crisp, toast—white not
wheat.”

The waitress scribbles and then
looks to me. “And
you, honey?”

“I’ll have the same,”
I tell her with a smile, not because that’s the easiest thing
to do but because that’s the normal breakfast I would order,
except sometimes I’d get sausage instead of bacon.

Seems our connection transcends
to breakfast foods now.

“So, where else have you
lived?” I ask again after the waitress leaves. I occupy my
hands by adding a little milk and sweetener to my coffee, although
Logan apparently drinks his black since he doesn’t doctor his
up, so I know there are ways in which we differ.

“Several places really,”
he says in a flat voice. “Texas. Spent a little time in
Southern California. Then Washington and Oregon. Landed here a little
over a year ago.”

“And before you started
traveling?” I ask, my elbows resting on the table and my coffee
cup held before me with both hands.

“I was in Chicago working a
dead-end job,” he says, and the flatness in his voice goes so
monotone, it’s almost difficult to distinguish the words from
one another. There’s so much antipathy for whatever his life
was in Chicago, that it’s clear it’s not a subject he
wishes to discuss.

So I remain quiet and take a sip
of my coffee.

“What did you do in New
York?” he asks, attempting but failing miserably at the
generalized conversation you might try if you were out on a first
date. But we are well beyond that. Logan had his mouth on my clit
last night, and I let him come down my throat.

I shrug, playing it vague and
loose with the real truth. “My
father does some apartment management-type stuff, and I help him out
with that. But I was in the process of looking at some local colleges
I could go to.”

“For what?” he prods,
his coffee remaining untouched.

I shrug again. “I
don’t know. Not sure what I want to be when I grow up, but I
figured I needed to get started, right?”

“Depends,” he says
neutrally. “How old are you?”

I don’t
even hesitate in my lie. “Twenty.”

He lowers his head slightly and
curses under his breath. “Fuck.”
I can tell this displeases him. I’m not sure why, because I
know Magnus has propagated the gossip grapevine at The Silo with my
“age” and my sexual status—“virgin”.
It’s common knowledge to everyone, so this shouldn’t be a
surprise.

“I would have thought you
were older,” he says to clarify.

“Why’s that?” I
ask, my head tilted.

“You just have a wisdom
about you that I can’t quite explain. I find most of the
younger women I meet to be flighty… unsettled. And here you
are, in a pretty untenable situation, and yet, you handle it with a
solid backbone. You’re a strong woman, Auralie, and most
twenty-year-olds don’t recognize that within themselves.”

I hate that he’s
so close to the mark, but he’s right. Growing up the way I did
made me street smart and gave me wisdom I didn’t ask for at a
very early age. But I could say that whether I was fifteen, twenty,
or twenty-five years of age. I’ve been more mature than my age
for as long as I can remember.

“So I ask again,” he
says, his voice going hard and demanding. “Why is a woman as
strong as you doing this?”

Emotions war within me. I’m
pleased and warmed he cares enough about me to ask, but also
affronted that he’s judging my actions. We may have some sort
of connection that can’t quite be explained at this point, but
he has no right to be piqued by my choices because he could never
understand my motivation.

It’s
with irritation I snap at him. “You mean debasing myself by
sucking unknown men’s’ dicks and letting another stranger
eat me out in front of a crowd of sexual deviants?”

He jerks back with true surprise
on his face, before clarifying in a voice low and rumbling with
dissatisfaction over my answer. “I’ll
let the stranger comment pass. I’ll also let it pass that you
failed to mention I made you come harder than I guarantee you ever
have in your life. And if you enjoyed what you and I did, that was in
no way debasing yourself. Plenty of people get off on that type of
thing, and there is nothing wrong if you enjoyed it. So, again…
I’d really like to know why a woman such as yourself—who
is strong, confident, and smart—feels the need to do this? And
I want to know this because I want to know if I can help get you out
of this situation.”

I immediately shake my head.
There is no way I am involving a good man in my very bad and
fucked-up circumstances. “You
can’t help.”

“Perhaps I can—”

“Logan,” I say with a
firm voice. “Leave it alone. If you can’t do that, then
I’m out of here.”

And I don’t
want to be out of here
,
I tell him with a pointed look.
I
like your company and looking at you and listening to your voice, and
hell… even
silence is golden between us. So please… don’t make me
leave.

His jaw locks tight. I can see
the irritation flash in his eyes, along with frustration and some
unfulfilled need, but he only holds that for a moment before every
bit of it clears out and there’s
nothing but understanding left.

“Okay,” he says
softly. “I won’t ask you why you’re doing this, but
just know… if you want to try to figure another way out, I’m
ready to help you do it.”

I know I just shut him down tight
a second ago, but I can’t
help it when my mouth opens, my vocal chords engage, and a single
whispered and needful word comes out, “Why?”

Logan finally picks up his
coffee, blows across the top, and takes a sip while looking at me
over the rim. When he sets it back down, he says, “Because
we’re tethered.”

“Excuse me?” I ask,
not in a tart, offended way, but in an I’m-completely-confused
way.

“From the moment you and I
first locked eyes on each other, there was an understanding of sorts
between us. I don’t know the how or the why something like that
happens between two people, and fuck… we spent three days
communicating through looks and body language, but you can’t
deny it, Auralie… you and I have something that ties us
together, and I’m not sure what it is. But it was absolutely
confirmed after the way we consumed each other last night.”

God, and I know it too. I felt it
from the very first time we beheld each other. Call it metaphysical
or just a product of my underused imagination, but there is a
connection there that I’ve
never experienced with another human being in my life.

“You with me?” Logan
asks quietly.

I nod, getting ready to speak the
words back to him, but the waitress arrives with our food. The
intimate connection is broken as we both lean back a bit so she can
set the plates down. After she leaves, Logan picks up his utensils.
While he busies himself
pulling his eggs over onto his hash browns and cutting them all up
together—same as I like to do— he says casually, “I’ve
got a fishing trip this afternoon, but I’ll pick you up at six
tonight. I’m taking you out to dinner.”

I just blink at him, my own
utensils in hand and poised to mix eggs and potatoes together.
There’s not one part
of me that enjoys being bossed around, and I’ve gone most of my
life not ever having to withstand that, but for some reason, I like
the way he just told me that’s what we were doing tonight.

So I just nod and smile, then I
pull my eggs on top of my hash browns.

Fuck you, Magnus. I’m
doing this for me.

Logan

We walk into the Blue Lion, my
hand on Auralie’s
lower back as I guide her in. It’s strange… seeing her
in normal clothing. By normal, she’s wearing a pair of white
skinny jeans with black flats, a graphic t-shirt, and a black,
blazer-type jacket. The clothing’s not overly expensive, but it
is stylish, at least from what I can remember of my days immersed
back in a life filled with style and culture.

I have to keep mentally barking
at my dick to stay down—not that I didn’t need that same
advice when she was dressed all virginally sweet in The Silo, but for
some reason tonight…
the way she looks like a normal, beautiful young woman makes her all
the more attractive to my senses.

It makes me wish for something I
hadn’t thought
possible in my lonely existence.

I also know this is a fool’s
quest, but I can’t fucking help myself from wanting to be
around her when I can. I can’t even have the promise of fucking
her after dinner tonight, but it just doesn’t seem to matter.

I’m
helplessly drawn to her like a moth to flame.

A hummingbird to sugar water.

A bear to honey.

And what-the-fuck-ever other
cliché you can think of that describes an irresistible need to
have something—it’s
what I have right now. It’s why I never once hesitated when
Magnus offered me a deal to exchange information for a night with
Auralie. It’s also why I didn’t bother going to Bridger
for advice because even though I was being selfish and taking
something I wanted, it was eating at my gut a little to get involved
with her. And Bridger could always be counted on for good advice.

The problem is that I didn’t
want to hear Bridger’s good advice because it would prevent me
from being with Auralie, so I stayed away from him.

It would be an absolute
understatement to say I’ve
been obsessing about Auralie since last night. That utterly fucking
amazing sixty-nine session in the Black Room, where a woman has never
tasted better to me and my cock has never shot off like that. And I’m
not going to lie… the fact it was being done in front of all
those other men who wanted that same crack at her but would never
have it the way I had it last night made it all the better.