Page 40 of Exposed

“Don’t apologize, sweetheart. Cry if you need to. I’ve got you. I won’t let go.”

I can only cling to him and cry. My whole body shakes with shuddering, wracking sobs, as if a lifetime of pent-up tears are being ripped out of me wholesale.

I don’t know how long it lasts. Minutes? Hours? A measureless time of weeping. I think I have cried more in the last twelve hours than in all my life.

Eventually, I am able to breathe normally and the sobs and shudders fade.

I remain still, barely breathing now.

On top of Logan.

Aware of him, suddenly.

Completely attuned to every inch of him, stretched out beneath me. His arms around me, his chin tucked against the top of my head. His denim-sheathed thighs beneath mine, thick and hard. His breath on my hair. His hips nudging mine. My hands on his pectoral muscles, my breasts crushed against his sternum.

There is a shift then. A charge to the air. Electricity crackling.

And now, between one breath and the next, itissexual, the way I’m lying on him.

I can’t breathe again, but for a different reason.

I can’t breathe for wanting him.

Needing him.

“Isabel . . .” he breathes.

“Logan—”

“I need you to get up,” he says, and it isn’t what I expected. “There are still some people working out there, and in a few more seconds I’m going to forget that.”

“What would happen if you did, Logan?” I ask. I don’t recognize the daring, the boldness, the raw hunger in my voice.

His fingers twine gently into my hair and pulls, tipping my face up to his.

It’s me, this time,

kissing him,

and kissing him,

and kissing him.

My fingers wrap around the back of his head, clinging to the nape of his neck, pulling him closer, pulling myself higher on his body, needing needing needing to be closer to him, to press my lips more completely against his, to taste him, to feel him. I breathe him. His hand, resting on my back, slides lower. I arch against him, press my body against his. There is no part of me that isn’t touching him. I pause to breathe, gasping against his lips. I want more of me to touch more of him. I want all of him, all of me, all of us.

I crave completion, of a kind only Logan can provide.

He feathers his mouth against mine, a teasing brush of lips against lips, heat of breath on tasting tongue.

“That will happen,” he whispers.

“Oh,” I murmur.

“Yeah, oh.” His fingers are tangled in my hair, applying gentle delicious pressure to my scalp, keeping my face tilted to his. “And now I can’t stop.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I have to,” he says. “Or there won’t be any stopping at all.”