When I Awake…Psalms 139:18
I open my eyes, very reluctantly. Mmm…too early to get up. The sun is barely slanting through the windows.
I roll over. Logan’s gone.
I sit up, and push down the covers. The other side of the bed is cool, although the pillows and sheets are rumpled. Sometimes they aren’t, and I’ll know he didn’t really come to bed at all that night, even though he always stays with me until I fall asleep. Always stays until he knows I won’t have nightmares.
Until he knows I won’t need him. Then, sometimes, he must get restless, and he goes out. Sometimes he drives, usually the old motorcycle he picked up in West Virginia and fixed somewhere in between there and here. Sometimes he just walks. I don’t really know where he goes, because I don’t ask.
I don’t know why I don’t ask. He’d tell me. Maybe that’s why I don’t ask. He didn’t used to leave at all. I didn’t have to ask why about that.
I slide out of the bed, which is an old-fashioned iron-framed monster with brass knobs on each post, unpolished of course. The bed is high enough that my feet dangle over the edge without touching the floor until I get up, and it makes me feel childlike and tiny. The old oak floor is cool in the early-morning chill, but it won’t be in a few hours, I know. The heat comes up quickly once the sun rises.
In the bathroom, I take a minute after taking care of the usual bodily functions, brushing my teeth quickly and giving my hair a little less of an honestly bed-tousled look. The mirror over the sink is mottled around the edges with age and more than a few generations of humidity, giving everything it reflects a patina of antiquity. Still, I lean into it, studying my reflection carefully. It’s only partly the tarnished mirror that makes me look a little unfamiliar to myself. I like my new look, even if Logan isn’t quite sure about it yet. I stop on my way back to bed and push the window open to let in the scent from the garden, and I can’t resist leaning out to take a breath of the dewy air.
We’re in New Orleans. This is Lynn and Toby’s house, or rather, it’s the guest house behind it. The house itself is a huge rambling old place they got cheap, and Toby’s been fixing it up ever since—he says the big storm was just the last straw for the former owners and that it’d been falling down for as long as he could remember it, which is Longtemps, chérie. They bought it about a year after we were here, and someday when more of the house is ready they’ll take in paying guests, as Lynn puts it. Lynn does the garden, and she likes it wild and overgrown. She’s let old roses and honeysuckle take over the wall of the guest house, and it smells wonderful in the mornings.
I set the old windowframe about halfway open and scamper back into bed to escape the cool morning air. The guest house isn’t finished either, but it’s going to be beautiful when it is. Right now there’s still work to be done—this bedroom is one of the only finished rooms. So it’s almost camping, but with running water. I’m not that much of a country girl, not any more.
The bedclothes on my side of the bed are still warm when I snuggle back down into them. Old linens scented with lavender, and I’m wearing the green silk chemise I got down on Decatur Street a couple of days ago. Lynn still loves shopping.
It’s been a strange trip. It took us more than a month to get this far, mostly driving down the coast. I think Logan wanted to avoid any question of going through much of Mississippi, and I wanted to avoid asking any questions. It’s not that he wouldn’t answer, I know that. It’s just…I’ve been trying so hard not to plan anything. I spent so long doing nothing else. I just wanted to go with things, for a while.
I roll onto my stomach and reach over for the alarm clock. Five-thirty. I sigh, and put the clock back down on the nightstand, and adjust one green strap over my shoulder.
I decided when we got here that maybe a little planning was in order. I just don’t know exactly what I’m planning. Or maybe I do, but it’s just hard to figure out how to get there. There are things to be overcome. As usual.
The first few days we were away were hard on both of us. I don’t think Logan was as confident as he’d seemed before we left the Mansion, and I don’t blame him. He didn’t want to be there, but he wasn’t sure I was going to be all right away from, well, from medical help. Some days I wasn’t either. But it was the right thing to do, bless Jubilee’s interfering heart. I didn’t realize how much atmosphere matters, when you’re trying to get a new perspective on things.
I cried a lot. I’m not even sure why, exactly. I would be okay all day, kind of giddy even while we’d be travelling, and then at night I would crash and burn. I’d have these crying jags, or I’d get angry over stupid stuff, and I would take it out on him. And then the bad dreams, so he couldn’t even get away from me when I slept. He started out getting us separate rooms, and that lasted exactly two nights. It wasn’t worth the explanations when I would wake up screaming. Ugh, I don’t want to remember this, and I pull a pillow over my head to block out the memory.
He’s been so patient with me. After what I pulled at the Mansion, and after what I finally told him about Father Fallon, just the fact that he stayed, let alone still wanted to take me away with him, was pretty incredible to me. And the rest of the stuff I’ve put him through since then…and all he’s gotten out of it is to be back on the road with the same problem he started off with five years ago. It’s funny, in a sick way.
Although really, getting away from the Mansion was a relief for Logan; at least he has that much.
I wish I could say the same for myself. This whole lack-of-planning thing has a way of turning on you. I don’t know when to do anything, or what to do at all. Half the time I feel like I’m pretending to be sixteen again, and the other half I’m being a complete bitch.
It doesn’t seem to bother him. Most of the time. I don’t know if I should just be grateful for that, or worried. Nothing I’ve done makes him angry, not since…
I keep telling myself I won’t be that way any more, and then the next thing I know I’m acting out again, wanting to stop, but I’m not sure how and I’m already in the middle again and...and I guess if there’s anything good that’s come out of that it’s that no matter what, I know I can depend on Logan being there for me. I do know that now. Because this, the fact that he’s not here right now? That doesn’t mean anything. He’ll be back. Not that it makes me feel any better about him having to leave in the first place.
I don’t know exactly when he thought of coming here or why he thought it was a good idea, but I think it was a good choice. Back to the beginning, in a way, only maybe a different ending. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t anything that premeditated. Maybe it was just force of habit, a familiar destination. Maybe he just figured I’d fit in, another crazy woman in the South. Dime a dozen.
I can hear an engine coming up the street, even from under my feather-packed barrier to the world, and I put the pillow back under my head where it belongs, turn on one side to burrow further into its softness. I wish I really were still asleep.
Because I do love it when Logan wakes me up. It’s only another couple of minutes before I hear his boots on the paving stones outside, and the door opening in the next room. Logan always takes off his shoes near the door, so it’s quieter as he comes into the bedroom. He leans over and slides one hand along the back of my neck. “Hey. You awake?”
I think he knows I am, really, but he doesn’t mind playing along. I stretch and let my eyes open just a bit. “Maybe.” I wait till he sits down, stretching his legs out along the bed and leaning back against the headboard, and then I roll over. “What’d you bring me?”
Logan’s opening a paper bag and pulling out a cup of coffee. “What do you think?” He hands the rest of the bag over, and I push myself up on one elbow to take it.
Before we leave this city, I swear to god, I’m going to force him to say the word beignet. Better yet, I’m going to make him eat one. “Ooh…still hot.” I pull off a piece, savoring the sugar and the crispness. “God, these are so good.” I sit up and unwrap more of my breakfast, using the bag as a napkin. “Sure you don’t want some?” Logan just raises an eyebrow at me, and I take another sugary bite and then lean in to kiss him. “Thanks.”
“Careful. Coffee’s hot too.” But he leans over to set the cup down on the nightstand, and now his hand is free to run along my bare arm, up to the thin strip of satin over my shoulder. I take another bite, just taking in the feel of his hand on my arm.
It took a while to convince him it was all right for him to touch me, more than just holding my hand or maybe stroking my cheek. Not his fault. I don’t blame him; I acted pretty crazy that first night, and it was a lot to take in, all at once. I was so careful all those years—I never had an accident, not once. No one ever got hurt because of me. Well, except for him.
It was exhausting, more than I realized. I know it was more than that for Logan. He doesn’t want to rush me into anything I might be scared of, or that I might regret. He still isn’t too sure about what’s going on in my head, I understand that. Neither am I, really. And part of it is my own fault, too, for ducking back into pretending I really am sixteen again and that this is just a do-over. That won’t work, and every time I catch myself being too childish, I remind myself that Jubilee would kick my ass for acting that way. And then I do it again. Idiot. I don’t know what I’m playing at, as my daddy used to say.
But I do know this much. I want him. And I wish Jubes was here right now to tell me, step by step, exactly what I need to do to make that happen.
I lean forward and kiss him again, and this time his tongue runs along my lower lip for a second, making me shiver. “You do want a bite,” I tease, and damn it, I’m doing it again, laughing it off instead of going with the feeling.
“You taste good without the sugary stuff,” Logan says, and that seems encouraging. So I break off another piece and hold it up to his mouth, and he takes it, wrinkling his nose a little. But I can’t help laughing again. He swallows the bite. “What’s so funny?”
“You’ve got powdered sugar. Right there—” I giggle again as he swipes at his chin, missing the dusting of sugar entirely. Some of it’s even in his beard. “Here. Let me.” Logan slides his hands up further as I lean in again to wipe his cheek clean, and then I change my mind halfway and kiss him again instead. I can feel his fingers against my hip, stroking gently.
I didn’t have any nightgowns of my own to bring along. I never wore one again after…well, after. I used to wear t-shirts, pajama bottoms, sweats. The first night after I got this chemise, though, I wore it to bed and I knew he’d notice. Logan was in the bathroom, and I just let him get into bed beside me and realize it for himself. He’s been wearing jeans or these loose-fitting pants he wears for meditation to bed. (Yes. Meditation. There was a lot I never knew about Logan.) Anyway, he liked it. I think he likes it now too, and from where his hand is I also know he realizes that I’m not wearing anything else.
Logan smooths the silk garment back over my hip and raises his hand to tug at my hair. Lynn and I went on a little girl’s night makeover spree the other night. She put green streaks in her hair and I did platinum in mine. Toby thought it was hilarious, but I think Logan was a little unsettled about the whole thing. “You still don’t like ‘em, do you?”
He tilts his head, considering. “Might be gettin’ used to it.” Then he grins. “Long as you like it.”
Logan handles change pretty well, usually. When he slid under the sheets beside me that night, though, he didn’t do anything. He always holds me at night, but when he felt the silk under his fingers he just stopped moving. And I knew I had to say something, make sure he knew it was all right for him to go further, so I asked if it was just my imagination that he wanted to touch me. ‘Imagination’ was the right word to use, I think.
He just shook his head when I asked him that, and then he pulled me closer and he kissed me, and I hadn’t realized until that moment how scared I’d been. Not of him, but that he’d never kiss me again the way he had just after we’d discovered he could touch me. But that was all he did—he kissed me, just a little carefully. But until then he hadn’t kissed me on the mouth at all, just my forehead or cheek or on the back of my hand.
But then he stopped, and damn it, I let him stop. Pretended to fall asleep, and eventually I really did. I don’t think he did. And when I woke up in the morning he was already up, outside, doing something to the truck that had him covered in axle grease.
Logan’s hand has moved from my hair back to my neck, and he’s giving me a searching look. “What’s goin’ on in there?” he asks.
That’s a deal we made. Either of us asks, the other one answers, no matter how hard it is. Which is why I don’t always want to waste that on the small stuff. I lean over to put my beignet down next to his coffee. “Wondering how long you’re going to keep being this careful with me,” I tell him, and hold my breath a little.
Logan doesn’t answer, not directly. But he doesn’t look away from me, and after a second his hand on the back of my neck draws my head down to his, and my heart speeds up when his lips touch mine, the familiar-strange almost-panicky feeling starting in the pit of my stomach. Butterflies.
More like hornets. Buzzing.
I close my eyes and try to relax, just go with it, forget about everything else but him.
But I can’t forget me, not ever, and I am not at all sure about what I’m doing. Oh, goddamn neuroticism, I never listened when the girls talked about making out. Am I even doing this right?
And then his hand slides around to my cheek and he lifts my face away from his, and I know I’m not. Damn!
“Hey.” Logan’s trying to make me look at him, and I don’t want to. “The hell is going on with you?”
“I’m trying to seduce you,” I snap irritably. “Only I’m no good at it.” And then I want to fall through the bed and the floor and hide in the dark, because he starts laughing. I try to pull away, roll over and bury myself under the covers, but he won’t let me.
“Hey,” he says again, and tightens his arm around me. “Sorry.” He still sounds amused, but he doesn’t let me go. I feel his mouth against the top of my head, not exactly kissing me, but it’s almost more intimate. I can feel his breath even as his chest rises and falls against my cheek. Then he says something I can’t quite hear, and I raise my head.
“What?”
He looks away for just a second, but then he meets my eyes, and I see something there, something slightly wary but new. “I said, you don’t have to try that hard.”
Oh.
I reach for the buttons of his shirt. I’m not sure he’ll let me, but he does, just watching as I undo them one by one, and when I push the shirt down over his shoulders he shifts a little to help me get it off. It’s so warm here, he doesn’t wear more than one, and I run my hands over his bare chest. Logan just watches me, until I lean down to press my mouth against his shoulder, and then he lets his head back against the pillow with a short puff of breath that isn’t quite a sigh.
I feel his hand brush lightly against my back, then come up to gather my hair out of the way so he can run a finger along my exposed neck, and I shiver. It’s just not fair, what that simple touch does to me. I catch my breath, and duck my head against his shoulder so he won’t think it’s too much for me and stop.
I love the way he smells. Maybe it’s a little bit of him and his hyperactive senses left in me, I don’t know, but I could lose myself right here, in the scent of his body that rises from the hollow of his throat, and before I think about it I dart my tongue out to taste him there, salty-musky and warm, and his head turns to one side as I work my way up his neck, to where that scent is even stronger, behind his ear. And when I kiss him there, his breath hisses out between his teeth, and I feel a little thrill of power. It’s me, making him feel that. Me.
I gather my courage and let one hand—ungloved, still so strange—move down his chest to the waistband of his jeans. I fumble just a bit with the first button, and get it undone. Then the next, and I’m so focused on the mechanics of what I’m doing that I almost forget what else it is I can feel under my hand until his hand comes down over mine. Not stopping me, not moving it away, just holding me still, there, for the moment.
“Marie…” He half-whispers my name, and my lips are against his ear so it’s easy to whisper back.
“I want this,” I tell him, and I can feel his fingers close harder over mine, where they’re clasped together. “I just don’t…know what to do.” I press my lips against his temple, just above those ridiculous sideburns, and breathe out my last request. “Show me?”
Logan’s grip on my hand tightens again, and then he moves, so quickly it takes my breath away, and suddenly he has me on my back, and it’s his mouth against my neck now, making me squirm with the sensations running through me. He knows what he’s doing, so much more than I did, knows just how to use his teeth and his lips to find the most sensitive spots. And nothing happens to him. That still amazes me, but I can’t think about it, not now.
Logan captures both my hands in his and raises my arms over my head, and then his mouth finds mine again, gentle at first but then more demanding. It startles me just a little when his tongue slicks between my teeth, and he must sense my tension increasing, because he lets go of my hands and pulls back just a bit. But I bring my hands to his head to keep him there, and now I’m aware of so much more, the shift of the muscles in his arms as he holds himself up over me, the rough fabric of his jeans against my legs, and the slow heat building in my belly. I recognize that feeling now.
He meets my gaze for a second and the look in his eyes is almost too much. I want to tell him it’s okay or don’t stop or anything coherent, really, but he doesn’t wait for that. He bends his head back to my neck and then I feel his fingers on my breast, molding and caressing. His thumb flicks over my nipple and I gasp with that sensation.
God, his hand there is a thousand times better than my own. A million.
Then he brings his mouth down over the taut bud of flesh, so hot over the cool green satin that I almost scream. His tongue teases me through the fabric, and without thinking I arch my back up into that contact. But he raises his head and I open my eyes—I hadn’t quite realized I’d closed them—and he’s half-grinning lazily at me in a way I’ve never seen before. “You like that,” he tells me.
For answer I reach up and pull the strap of my chemise off that shoulder, baring my breast, and that smug grin of his disappears in a hurry. I don’t have long to savor that little triumph, though; a second later his mouth closes over my nipple and it’s so much more intense that all I can do is try to remember to breathe. He doesn’t stop there; his tongue slicks up my breastbone and his mouth closes over the base of my neck just as his hand slides between my legs.
I cannot move a muscle. His hand there is heavy and warm and the pressure is making a pulse begin to throb inside me, but for the moment it’s only his tongue and teeth that move, working against my neck, suckling and scraping against my skin. When he finally, so slowly, eases that pressure against me, dragging his palm up towards my stomach, one finger moves deeper, separates me, somehow slides into me.
Logan’s mouth leaves my neck but his other hand doesn’t leave my body. I open my eyes again and he’s there, no trace of amusement left in his expression. I manage to raise one hand far enough to touch his face, my fingertips running along his jaw. “You okay?” he asks, and I just nod. “Good.” He leans down and his lips touch mine once. Twice.
Then his hand closes around my wrist , pulling it away from his face, stretching it up above my head, dragging me along the bed. It’s so unexpected that I let out a little shriek of laughter and start to sit up, and Logan catches me by the hips and pushes me back down onto the pillows at the head of the bed. “Don’t move,” he says, and then his hands slide up to my waist, taking the hem of my slip with them, and I’m still giggling like an idiot as he leans forward to kiss my stomach because his beard is tickling me, and he licks at my belly button and that tickles even more.
Logan’s hand closes over my ankle, and my laughter dies away as he pushes my foot up along the bed, towards my hip. The hornet-butterflies are back as his mouth moves lower, lower, my toes are curling under with the tension in my muscles but his hand holds me still, and when I feel his breath over me there I hold mine.
His tongue flicks against me, tasting me, and blindly I raise my arms and grab onto the iron frame of the bed with both hands. Don’t move, he told me, and the only way that’s going to happen is if I’m holding myself down with solid metal. And then he’s kissing me, licking at me, driving every thought from my head except that he can’t stop what he’s doing or I’ll just die, right here and now. And he doesn’t, but he seems to know just how to bring me to the edge and then back, changing his pace, the pressure, teasing the most sensitive places until I’m practically writhing under him.
My anchor, his hand, leaves my ankle. My eyes are open but I don’t think I’m seeing anything and I know I’m making sounds without making sense. Logan makes a sound of his own, deep in his throat, and I feel it all the way to the core of me. His tongue curls against me and then one finger is sliding into that deep part of me and the throbbing in my belly comes together and…
Holy Christ. Hallelujah. World without end.
When I can see again, when I’m gingerly forcing my cramped fingers to detach themselves from the frame of the bed, the first thing I see is Logan. And that self-satisfied grin is back on his face.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
We move on to the inevitable and crashing conclusion. Or something like that.