He follows me up the steps and immediately shoulders his way inside, like the world’s least subtle bodyguard.
I kick off my Chucks at the door and toss my keys in the dish, vaguely aware that Logan is taking inventory of my apartment like he’s updating a database—sofa, kitchen counter, wall of postdoc notes above the desk, explosion of clothes on the back of the chair. My life, frozen in time because I’ve been practically living at his apartment since that night we said ‘I love you’.
I open my closet and start rifling through the mess—dresses, jackets, the one pair of heels that doesn’t make me want to eat concrete—and behind me Logan paces from kitchen to living room, reading all my sticky notes, probably memorizing my grocery list out of anxiety or boredom.
He slides into my bedroom in time to see me holding up two dresses—the blue one from Sweden and a black, body-con thingthat technically isn’t mine (Serena gave it to me because it barely covered her ass and our height difference meant it covered mine). “Which?” I ask, pinning them against me, eyebrows raised.
Logan’s eyes flick from the first to the second, but instead of answering, he just stares. Like, really stares. Not the clinical way he observes data, but the way he looks at a problem he wants to touch, unspool, devour.
He clears his throat. “Try them on.”
I glance over my shoulder and catch the look on his face. Transfixed, thunderstruck, the faintest edge of hunger around his mouth. It makes my knees wobble, even as I laugh and roll my eyes, because it’s only Logan and only ever Logan who looks at me that way.
I duck behind the closet door and shimmy out of my T-shirt, pulling on the blue dress first. It’s less a dress than a soft, stretchy aura, the fabric clinging to my boobs and hips like a second skin. I step out, twirl once, and cock a hip. “Too on-the-nose? Or do you think Serena will let me live?”
Logan’s eyes rake down and back up, slow as an MRI scanner. “That’s… informative,” he says, voice scratchier than normal. “I think you’d win Sweden’s Next Top Particle Physicist, but?—”
“But?”
He blinks, and instead of finishing his sentence, he yanks me closer by the hips and ducks his head, burying his mouth against my jaw, the hinge just below my ear. “But I want to see the other one,” he says, words hot against my skin.
It’s not even the words, so much as the way his hands slide down, fingers splaying over the clingy fabric, gripping the curve of my ass like he’s entitled. For a second, I forget what planet I’m on. I’m just here, in my bedroom, Logan’s breath in my ear,his hands hungry and possessive in a way that’s so new it almost makes me laugh. Almost.
“You want a fashion show?” I say, but it comes out strangled, half-dare and half-plea.
He kisses under my jaw, the tip of his nose catching my earlobe, and I can feel his smile against my neck. “I want the next one,” he says. “I want to see it on you and then I want to see it off you.” The bass in his voice lights up every synapse I own. I think I am supposed to laugh or call him out on being corny, but my hands are shaking as I turn away and grab the hanger. I don’t even make it the three steps to the closet before Logan’s arms are around me from behind, palms sliding under the hem of my dress, fingertips finding the edge of my underwear and skimming upward as if he’s mapping my entire body for weak points.
I brace my hands against the wall, half to steady myself and half because I want to. He kisses my neck—tender but greedy, all at once—the tip of his tongue flicking against my pulse point, one hand slipping under the blue fabric to palm my breast. He’s breathing hard, hands possessive and decisive in a way that would be terrifying if I didn’t trust him with my life, and I want him inside me so badly the dress might as well be made of tissue paper.
“We’re supposed to change and go,” I hiss, but Logan’s got me boxed in, his arms braced on either side of my head. He nuzzles my jaw, and the sound he makes—half-laugh, half-groan—is primal, dark enough to melt the floor out from under me.
“Five minutes,” he promises, but his hands are anything but efficient.
He rolls my nipple between his fingers until my knees threaten mutiny. The fabric is thin enough that it might as well be skin, and when he pushes it up around my waist, his touch scrapes electricity up my thighs. I should protest, maybe evenobject on principle, but all I can do is arch back and let him have his way with me—because I want it, god, I do, I want the mess of it, the urgency, the proof of how alive he is now, how this is a man who can go a dozen rounds with a board of directors and still end up here, worshipping me like I’m his oxygen.
His hand plunges between my thighs, finds me already soaking through the stupidly soft cotton. He drags the fabric aside, groaning into my skin at the heat of it, and I’m openly panting now, rutting against his hand because I need him so bad it’s an embarrassment. I grab his wrist, urge him harder, and he bites down softly at my neck in a way that makes me want to shatter.
He works me over with his fingers—slow at first, lazy teasing, but I’m not in the mood to be edged. “Don’t fucking tease,” I manage, and he laughs, low and a little mean.
“Always so demanding,” he says, but his own voice is rough as torn leather. He plunges two fingers inside, thumb hitting my clit with just enough pressure to short-circuit my brain. I moan, scattering the sound into the drywall, my face hot with the shock of how fast he can unravel me. Behind me, Logan grinds his hips against my ass, shameless and hard, and I shift my feet apart to give him better access, every ounce of shame drowned by how fucking good it feels to be wanted like this.
He slips his fingers out just as I’m about to break and spins me, crowding me against the wall so my knuckles scrape paint and my lungs scrape air. My dress is around my waist, tits out, and he doesn’t hesitate—just lowers his head and sucks a nipple into his mouth, biting so my knees buckle. I reach between us, desperate, and fumble open his belt, yanking his fly down with claws for fingers. He curses against my breast, and for a moment that’s all I can hear, the syncopated gasp of his zipper, the way I breathe his name, the stagger of his exhale as I shove his jeans and underwear down just enough to free him.
He doesn’t say anything—just grabs my ass, hauls one thigh up around his waist, and lines up. I dig my nails into his shoulders and hiss, because he’s already pressing in, thick and heavy, and the angle is greedy, desperate, the glide taking a second that feels like forever. My back arcs, shoulder blades pressed hard against the wall, feet suspended mid-air, and the dress rides up to my ribs, trapped between us.
He fucks into me with these short, urgent thrusts. His teeth scrape over my collarbone, and my hands scrabble at his hair, his neck—anything I can grip, just to stay anchored in the slipstream of pleasure. I can’t stop making noise, can’t filter it, can’t even care how loud I’m being. I’m drenched, wild, and so full of him that my own body barely registers as mine. It’s just the firestorm that happens when Logan lets himself be animal instead of machine.
“Fuck, Audrey.”
He keeps going, hard and fast, slamming me into the drywall with each thrust. Every pulse of him inside me is a dare, a promise, a data point in whatever grand algorithm he’s running in his head—but in this moment, there’s nothing but the raw math of sex, the proof that this is the only version of us that counts.
“God. Logan.”
I come first, an embarrassing wreck, my thighs shaking as I clamp around him and drag a full-throated groan loose from his mouth. He follows, whispering my name like a confession, pushing in deep and then holding, trembling, until every muscle in his body lets go at once. He buries his face in my neck and just breathes, and I close my eyes and let the aftershocks rattle me apart and put me back together all at once.
His body is so warm, all sweat and skin and the sweet, animal glue of us, that when he finally eases out and lowers me to the ground, I nearly stagger. I catch myself on the edge of mywardrobe, grinning like a drunk, and he just looks at me like he’s never seen me in color before. A long second passes, then he puts a hand to my face and kisses me with such gentleness, I feel something inside me shift.
“Dominic is going to kill us,” he says, voice hoarse. “We’re going to be so late.”
