Her muscles were shuddering as they continued to grip and suck at his fingers. Her juices didn’t ease from her; each inner convulsion had copious amounts of fluid spilling in rapid succession to his fingers and her thighs.
When that last ecstatic shudder rippled from her pu**y, it was to the feel of him easing his fingers free and the knowledge that there was still so much to come.
There was still more to experience, because she wasn’t quite satisfied yet.
Far from it.
“It’s not enough,” she whispered as she felt him moving away, and she tried to sit up, tried to touch him, to caress him and fulfill all those pent-up fantasies racing through her veins.
Some sense, some hidden intuition, warned her that it was over. Her chest tightened with it as her eyes opened and she glimpsed the tightness of his expression, the regret in his gaze.
As he helped her sit up he caught her hands, holding them between their bodies as she stared back at him in surprise.
“Logan?” She could feel her chest tightening, a realization that even though it wasn’t enough, in his eyes she could still see it was finished.
“It’s enough, baby.” With his free hand he stroked back the hair that had fallen over her face, his gaze tortured, the hardened length of his c**k free of his jeans and throbbing fiercely against her thigh.
She looked down at the thick, heavy shaft before lifting her gaze again.
“Is it?” she asked then, feeling a vein of pain-filled anger beginning to unfurl inside her.
“It has to be.” Stone-hard, his emerald eyes like green ice despite the ragged sound of his voice, he denied what they both knew for a certain fact.
They were both still desperate, aching for the completion.
He stepped away from her, fixed his jeans, then bent and picked his shirt and her nightgown from the floor.
Skye didn’t say a word as he pulled the nightgown over her head and helped her arms into their places. Once he pulled the material over her br**sts she realized it was all she could do to keep from crying.
Her lips were actually on the verge of trembling.
How long had it been since she had cried?
Surely not since she was an adolescent. She’d always fought not to cry, because her father had always told her that big girls didn’t cry.
Well, she was a big girl now, and all she wanted to do was sob as Logan turned away from her and pulled his own shirt over his head.
His back flexed, the muscles clenching with hard ripples as he jerked the shirt on, then pushed the strands of hair falling over his rugged face.
Turning back to her, he stood silent and still, watching her, his breathing as harsh and uneven as hers.
Drawing in a hard breath, Skye slid from the counter slowly before he crossed the distance to help her down. She didn’t want him to touch her again. She was terrified if he did, then she might weaken from the force of the emotions racing through her.
Who could have known that he would have superhuman self-control? For damned sure he had more than she. Because there was no way in hell she could have denied him after experiencing the power of the need racing through both of them.
Her stomach clenched as emotion and ragged regret swelled inside her. And anger.
Damn him. He might be a glutton for self-punishment, but she sure as hell wasn’t.
And she’d just f**king had enough.
She was here for a reason, and it wasn’t to torment herself over a man who wanted nothing as his own. Not a truck, a house, a puppy, or a lover. He sure as hell obviously didn’t want a future with anyone or anything and had no dreams of sharing his life outside whatever f**king bond he had with his cousins.
Fuck him.
Fuck him and f**k destroying herself over something, someone, she should have known from the beginning—hell, she had known from the beginning—could never be hers.
Bending, she snatched the robe from the floor, pulled it on and tied it quickly, clumsily as she held back her tears.
Turning on her heel, she moved quickly from the darkened kitchen and all but raced to the patio doors.
“Skye, goddamn it, wait!” he snarled behind her, his voice barely loud enough to hear despite the fury she could feel throttled inside it.
She didn’t wait. She couldn’t.
She would end up either sobbing on the floor in front of him or begging him to f**k her and finish it.
Sliding open the patio doors before he could reach her, she bent, scooped up the little Chinese pug puppy, and all but ran across the short distance to her own patio, then into the house.
Skye was tired of listening to the baby cry alone. At least she would have someone to cry with now, she thought as the puppy’s whines became more pitiful as Skye closed and locked the patio doors behind her.
She flipped the curtains closed without turning around.
She was too frightened that if she turned, then she would see Logan. If she did, she would definitely end up begging. And if she didn’t, then the pain might actually bring her to her knees.
Holding the little scrap of fur to her chest, she moved through the house to the other side and the small in-law suite she had taken for her bedroom.
Closing the door behind her, she breathed in roughly and stared down at the sad, damp eyes of the puppy as she stared up at her. The pug’s expression was puzzled and hurt, as though she, too, simply couldn’t understand why Logan couldn’t love her.
Why Logan refused to love her.
“It’s okay, little baby,” Skye said roughly as the puppy whined sadly once again. “It’s okay; I’ll just cry with you.”
Because for some reason, for one insane moment last week beneath the sheltering branches of the old oak tree, she’d actually believed Logan Callahan might want, just a little bit, to consider a lover, a puppy, a future.
And she had never imagined just how wrong she was.
She’d never realized just how serious he’d been when he’d told her it couldn’t happen, that he wouldn’t let it happen.
She would be no more than a one-night stand. And that was something she knew her heart wouldn’t survive.
It was something her reason for being here couldn’t accept.
For the first time since her parents’ deaths, the first tear fell, and the puppy whined against Skye’s chest again.
For such a small, young animal she was unnaturally attached to a man who didn’t want him. She didn’t want to leave Logan’s property. As though leaving might steal a chance of her seeing the man she had already decided was her owner.