I’m tempted to break into his room, but the knob turns, and Logan stands in the doorway, with only a towel around his waist. Logically, I know he had to throw it on, but a part of me thinks this is another mindfuck, him weaponizing his beautiful body against me. Before he has a chance to say anything, I shove past him.
“The hell is wrong with you?” he asks, spinning around to face me. There’s something perverse in his gaze as he stares me down.
“You know what’s wrong with me. What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Tonight, his lie stings more than usual. I rush him, cornering him so his back is against the door, seizing him by his throat. There’s an impulse to force him to confess, but I battle it, shaking my head as I war against this part of myself until I feel like it’s about to tear me apart. Why is he doing this to me?
“I’m honest with you, Logan, share my most private thoughts, and this is what you think I deserve?”
“I’m sure you deserve a lot worse than this,” he throws back at me.
“I have given you your space. I have respected your need to wrap your mind around everything I told you…and you just…”
“Is it really giving me my space to watch me in the security footage?”
“This is my house, and you know these cameras are up. I saw you discover where they were so you could inflict this on me.”
He’s silent, not denying it, but I notice for the first time since I placed my hand against his throat that he’s not resisting or pushing me away. I start to pry my hand away, but he snatches my wrist, keeping it in place. I yank it away from him. If this is what he wants from me, he sure as hell doesn’t deserve it.
“I don’t know what to think of these games you’re playing with me,” I say, feeling like they might tear right through me.
“If it’s so painful what I do to you, then maybe you should show me just how painful.”
A wickedness rises within me at the thought, something I quickly dismiss. “You don’t want that.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
He’s not wrong, especially as he stands there, full of determination.
“Then tell me,” I demand.
His expression shifts to fear. He hesitates, then starts to speak just as there’s a knock at the door.
“Boss, boss!” Krychek calls from the other side.
“As if now’s the fucking time,” I mutter. Logan moves aside so I can open the door. “What do you want?”
But I can tell by the way his eyes bulge that he has news.
“They found Wilmore.”
Before I know it, Logan’s at my side, and it seems we’ve both set aside our fight.
We have bigger problems to worry about.
*
It’s not thirtyminutes before my guys deliver two men to us, with bags over their heads, which Jaime and Krychek remove before strapping the men up naked, having set another stand for our guests in one of the rooms in our basement—a nice clean one to get as messy as necessary.
Logan’s got that wild look in his eyes, teetering on the edge, at any moment likely to snap and let the animal loose on them. But like me, he’s learned to quiet those impulses, knows we won’t get anything out of them if we lose ourselves to the whims of our darker sides.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” Jeff Hartlow, Wilmore’s bodyguard, says. “You touch a hair on my head, and you’ll have the wrath of our allies raining down on you.”
“Once we kill you, you think anyone’s gonna fuck with us again?” I ask.
“Kill us? For fucking what?” He sounds genuinely oblivious, but I’d be just as compelling if I were in his position.
