Deadly Sins (3 page)

Had he become so suspicious over the years, so hard and certain that everyone had ulterior motives that he couldn’t accept someone for who and what they were? Was it impossible for him to accept that a woman could just want him?

Swiping his fingers through his hair, Logan admitted it was damned hard to believe that anyone in Corbin County did not have an ulterior motive.

He’d spent a week on the computer and on the phone with damned near every contact he possessed in the information business. The background check he’d done on Skye O’Brien had come up as clean.

Well, with the exception of a few too many speeding tickets. And there was that time in college she’d gotten a little too drunk and had propositioned a cop outside a bar.

Normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill, girl-next-door adventures.

And he didn’t want to believe it. Suspicion was a vicious, sharp-toothed demon that gnawed at his mind.

Suspicion turned to hunger as she came into view.

Long, dark waves spilled down her back, and she was wearing another one of those damned, vintage nightgowns that made the animal hunger that already tore at his balls rise to a howl of pure lust.

The black filmy lace looked so damned soft, he ached to touch it. To touch her.

The material molded over her breasts, all the way down to her delicate waist before falling to the floor in a long sweep that trailed majestically behind her.

He wanted to strip it from her body. To peel it slow and easy from her shoulders to her hips and watch it pool at her feet.

Naw, once he got it to her hips, he wasn’t watching anything but those incredible breasts.

Suddenly the soft strains of a sensual R&B instrumental began to fill the night rather than the raucous dance tunes she usually played.

She wasn’t the best dancer he’d ever seen, but damned if he didn’t love watching her move.

She had a natural sensuality to every step she made, to every twist of her hips and every pleasure-loving step she made.

Even now, as she peeked curiously in the direction of his patio, he could see the urge to move to the music eating at her. And he had to grin.

He’d deliberately left the lights out, so she would believe that he was gone. For the past week, she hadn’t danced for him once.

She closed the curtains on the sliding doors and kept the lights down low, and he’d known, fucking known, she was dancing and denying him the chance to watch. But now she thought she was alone.

Scratching at the raspy short beard that covered his lower face, Logan tipped his head to the side and watched as she began to sway.

Slow and easy, her arms lifting above her head, her hips began to move in langorous, sensual circles. Fuck him. He’d never been so hard, so tormented with the need to fuck one woman in his life.

The pulsating, let’s-fuck music drifted like a heated breeze through the night as her movements, maybe not in rhythm to the music exactly, but definitely in rhythm to the hunger raging through him, tormented him.

She was dancing for a lover.

Enticing. Sensual. Pleading for a touch.

Her hands lowered, one crossing over her stomach as the fingers of the other slid down her neck, her head tilting back. The hand crossed over her stomach, gripped her own hip before her fingers curled just enough to allow her nails to rake over her hips.

His abs tightened, flexed, as he felt the ghostly sensation of those nails raking over his own hip, rasping over his flesh and sending bolts of sensation to strike at the taut sac of his balls.

Hell, he could jack off to the sight of that and probably come hard enough to lose the strength in his legs. A sight like that begged for sex. Pleaded for a man’s touch. Made him ache to bury his cock between her thighs and demand that her hips sway and roll with just that rhythm.

He was a second from striding across the distance that separated them when a new sound intruded on the night.

At first, Logan was certain he had to be hearing things.

A soft, distressed little whine.

Stepping into the house on silent feet, he grabbed the weapon he kept on the shelf next to the patio doors before moving to the edge of the doors he’d slid open earlier.

There it was again.

“Ease up, little bastard.” The hiss of the demand had his muscles tensing, denial surging hot and furious through his body.

Stepping from the house, careful to stay within the shadows, Logan waited.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Saul Rafferty had aged in the months since Logan had last seen him. He had been with his wife, Tandy, at the time.

He’d stared at the old couple, and told himself he hadn’t seen the sheen of tears in Tandy’s eyes, or the desperation on her face.

Saul had been just as cold and hard-edged as always. He had led his wife past their only grandchild, continuing on their way as though Logan hadn’t existed.

“Come here, you crying little shit.” Despite the harsh words, Saul’s tone lacked the gruff disgust Logan normally heard in it.

Saul sure as hell couldn’t be doing what Logan thought he was doing.

But he was.

Logan waited silently as the old man made his way around the edge of the house.

In one arm he carried a whining little bundle, in the other, his hand gripped a small Igloo pet house.

“What the fuck are you doing, old man?” Logan shoved the gun in back of his jeans, propped his hands on his hips, and glared at his grandfather.

Saul didn’t even appear surprised.

“I should have known you wouldn’t have the decency to actually be gone.” Anger filled his rasping tone. “Can’t just be up-front can you, boy? Have to keep the damned lights out and pretend you’re not even here.”

The response didn’t even make sense, but the bundle in his arms gave an excited little yip and all but jumped from Saul’s grip.

“You’re not fucking doing this to me again,” Logan snarled as Saul set the pup in the grass. It bounded ecstatically over to him.

Chomping down on the strings of Logan’s sneakers, it gave little baby growls, tugging and begging to play.

The Chinese pug was damned small and cute as fucking shit and he didn’t want a damned thing to do with it.

He didn’t want to remember the one other pup he’d had as a kid, or its death. He sure as hell didn’t want the responsibility of keeping this one alive.

The lights on Skye’s patio flared on, the music shutting down as she became aware of the presence of Logan and his grandfather outside.

“Logan?” she called out to him, the concern in her tone making his chest clench.

Only his two cousins had ever cared what the hell happened to him. What was he supposed to do with a sexy neighbor who now seemed to feel the same?

“Everything’s fine, Miss O’Brien,” he called out, refusing to glance over at her. “Mr. Rafferty is just taking himself and his damned dog and leaving.”

“Keep your voice down,” Saul suddenly snarled. “You’re stupid, boy, do you know that? Ain’t got an ounce of the sense your daddy had.”

“Don’t.” Logan was in Saul’s face faster than he would have thought possible, definitely before he could consider his actions. He was almost nose to nose with the old man, staring down at him as fury pounded in his blood. “Don’t mention my father. Don’t mention either of my parents. Don’t say their names. You’ve pretended they didn’t exist for over twenty years, and now, as far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist for you.”

“Sucks don’t it, boy?” Saul responded, refusing to back down. “Knowing we share blood.”

“We don’t share a damned thing, Mr. Rafferty,” Logan sneered.

Saul didn’t even have the good grace to flinch. “Keep hating me, boy. It’s the best thing for both of us.”

“Then stay the hell off my property and keep your damned animals away from me.”

“Your grandmother’s dying, Logan.”

Saul’s comment, so out of character, so outside of the conversation, caused Logan to still, to stare back at him, confused.

“What the hell did you say?”

“She’s dying.” Saul’s voice thickened as he lowered his gaze and stared the pup that suddenly sat next to Logan’s foot, its wrinkled face filled with happiness as it panted up at him. “That one’s from the last litter of her favorite little bitch. The runt. She wanted you to have her. She begged me to bring her to you.”

Begged him?

She’d wanted him to have it for what reason? She hadn’t cared if he lived or died for over twenty years and now all of a sudden, she gave a fuck?

He highly doubted it.

He should tell Saul that he didn’t give a damn, Logan told himself, but he couldn’t get the words past his lips. There had been a time, long ago and far away, when he had idolized this old man and his wife. He had spent hours playing with their puppies and had sat on his grandfather’s knee as Saul read to him.

He’d convinced himself he only imagined those years. They couldn’t have happened.

But they had.

“Take her back,” he ordered. “You’re not doing this to me again.”

Again. He’d been ten when Saul and Tandy had given him his first pup. Three months after Saul’s daughter—Logan’s mother—and his son-in-law had died in a blazing crash on a mountain road, that pup had been poisoned.

It had died in Logan’s arms, the vet refusing to answer his door, to help the boy who stood outside screaming for help. Begging the son of a bitch to save that dog.

“I didn’t do it to you.” Saul met his gaze. “I had no reason to try to kill you, Logan.”

“You killed the dog.”

Saul shook his gray head. “The pup ate your food at that damned Social, in the community center. Your food. I wasn’t there and I sure as hell didn’t hire someone to kill a kid. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t a’ killed an innocent animal just to get to you. It broke your grandmother’s heart—”

“Nothing about me ever broke either of your hearts.” It wasn’t possible. They would have had to care first.

“Boy, you don’t know shit.” Contempt filled the words, then Saul glanced to his side.

Skye was still standing in the doorway. She couldn’t hear what was being said, but she seemed to be keeping watch.

Her arms crossed over her breasts, a glare on her face. She didn’t look the least bit happy to see Saul Rafferty there.

“That girl’s worried about you.” Saul lifted his lip as though to sneer before giving up the effort and shaking head wearily. “Tandy wanted you to have her. I brought her to you. It’s that damned simple.”

“Take it back. She didn’t want me and now I don’t want either of you or your fucking dogs.”

“No, all you want is your be-damned pride and your certainty that you have all the answers,” Saul bit out furiously, his aged body seeming to tremble. “That’s why I say your daddy was a damned sight smarter, Logan. He knew better than to just listen to his own fucking pride.”

“And whatever he listened to got him killed,” Logan snapped. “Didn’t it, Saul?”

It was their suspicion. Logan, Rafe, Crowe. They knew their parents’ deaths hadn’t been an accident. Their fathers had grown up on that damned mountain, had learned to drive on that road. They would have never headed across it during a blizzard.

Unless they’d had no other choice.

“You’re a fool.” Saul lost the anger in his tone. “A fool, boy, and you’re too damned blind and filled with pride to see it.”

“Oh, I see it.” Hatred burned inside him and clashed with the memories of the boy he’d once been and had hung on to for so long. “I’ve seen it for a long time, Mr. Rafferty. Seen you for the monster you, Marshal Roberts, and John Corbin always have been. Tell me, did you kill my father’s parents like you killed your own daughter?”

The old man flinched then. Agony filled his gaze, and though Logan wanted to deny it, wanted to convince himself that Saul Rafferty didn’t have enough feelings to know grief, still, he couldn’t deny it was there.

It twisted his lined face and tightened his lips and caused the other man to shake his head slowly.

“No,” he finally whispered, his voice so rough Logan could barely understand the words. “No, Logan. I didn’t kill them like I killed my own child.”

Stunned, not by the non-admission so much as by the single tear that slipped from Saul’s eye, Logan could only stand in shock and watch as, head down, shoulders weighed low, Saul turned and walked quickly out of the yard.

The sound of a vehicle starting up at the side of the street pierced the darkness long moments later and reminded Logan that the old bastard had forgotten something.

“Son of a bitch,” he cursed as he stared down at the pup. It had curled against the side of his shoe and was now asleep.

“Logan?”

Turning his head he watched as Skye made her way across the short distance between their patios, her expression worried as she watched him.

“Want a dog?” Keeping his tone cool and unconcerned was suddenly the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.

“She looks like she knows where she wants to be.” Bending to her knees, unconcerned of the grass beneath the delicacy of her gown, she ran the backs of her fingers gently down its tiny head.

She was rebuffed quickly.

A tiny growl and the pup moved from her, curling at Logan’s heel before he bent, picked it up by the scruff, and deposited it in the little doghouse Saul had brought.

He stalked into the house then, slamming the door closed against the sad little whines it sent up at being barred from the house.

“Logan?”

She had to follow him, didn’t she?

“Go home, Skye,” he told her wearily. “This really isn’t a good time.”

“Is any time a good time for you?” Her tone wasn’t confrontational, but neither was it kind and caring.

What the hell did he expect? He’d known months ago tact wasn’t her strong suit.

“No. No time is.”

He turned back to her as she shifted, moonlight spilled through the glass doors, washing over the gown and robe, making them no more than a shadow around her body, outlining her in an aura of dark magic.

“Fine, I can leave.” She shrugged. “Stay here and enjoy your own miserable company, Logan, since no one seems to be good enough to share it with you.”

Before he could stop her, she turned and stalked away from him, leaving the house quickly, careful to keep from slamming the door on the wiggling little pup attempting to get in.