Deadly Sins (8 page)

“You really don’t like dogs?” She blinked back at him and the dislike—no,
disapproval
—was completely overshadowed by shock.

“Never met anyone who disliked dogs before?” He sipped at his coffee again, preferring not to answer the question directly.

“I have never in my life met anyone who didn’t like puppies. Kittens. Babies.” She shook her head as though it were completely inconceivable.

“Babies?” He paused in the act of lifting his coffee cup to his lips again.

As though he needed the caffeine after
that
statement.

“A very broad term.” She lifted her shoulders again, that graceful little shrug that lifted her breasts and rounded them just a little bit more. Just delightfully.

And made his hands itch to cup them, plump them, possess them.

“Ah, a broad term.” He nodded sharply. “Whatever the term, if you want the puppy, take it home with you.”

“My lease doesn’t allow puppies.” She glared back at him.

“Neither does mine,” he snapped back, almost in triumph. Hell, he should have thought of that excuse before.

Maybe not. Her expression became entirely too skeptical. “You own your home, Callahan.” There was just the cutest little snap to her voice.

He almost laughed at her. He would have, but that little mutt scratched at the door again, reminding Logan— He didn’t need puppies, kittens, or babies. Things happened. Bad things happened, and they could get taken away. They could be taken away permanently.

“I know your landlord,” he stated coolly. “I’ll have a talk with him.”

And he would. The little mutt was killing him, but he didn’t dare allow himself to get attached to the dog. No more than he dared to allow himself to get attached to his neighbor.

For the briefest second, he glimpsed sympathy in her gaze before it turned curious. “Why do you have to be a grump all the time? I know for a fact that the man who warned me away from him last week isn’t an asshole. Why do you have to pretend to be one?”

He finished his coffee.

“I
am
an asshole,” he assured her. “It’s just easier to warn prospective lovers that it’s only one night. I like my privacy and I don’t like ties.”

Her eyes narrowed. Pretty, dark eyes that seemed to mesmerize him, ensnare him. And almost made him choke on the lie he just let spill from his lips.

Hell, maybe he was hitting his midlife crisis or something, because it was all he could do to keep his hands off her or his heart from wishing. Hoping.

He was too fucking old for this shit.

“You’re lying,” she said softly. “Do you think everyone I meet in town isn’t real quick to warn me of the dangers of living next to you?”

Fuckers!

Logan sipped his coffee before replying. “You’re not listening.”

“I rarely do, “she agreed. “But it’s been twelve years. Surely you can afford to have a life now.

“And just four weeks ago some nutcase decided to copycat the Sweetrock Slasher and nearly killed my cousin’s lover.” His tone was intentionally harsh. “And that was after he’d already killed another woman. No, Skye, I don’t think it’s safe yet to have a life. And it’s sure as hell not safe to have a dog.”

It probably never would be.

“She’s an orphan, Callahan,” Skye finally sighed softly. “Like you. Like me.” She gave a small sad smile. “For some reason, she seems to want you, not me, and not anyone else. That’s a gift you rarely get. Can’t you just take her in for a few days?”

Logan set his cup back on the counter, careful not to allow himself to feel anger or to show any emotion where that unneeded information was concerned.

“I can take it to the shelter.” He lifted his shoulders as though it didn’t matter. “I’m sure it can find a family there.”

The recrimination in Skye’s gaze was, frankly, pissing him off. Because she had no idea how much he wished—

She breathed in slowly, as though forcing herself to maintain patience, before she set her coffee cup on the counter carefully.

“You don’t need anyone, do you? Did you even check on your grandmother?”

“I don’t have a grandmother.” He kept his tone even, but the anger and the hunger for things he knew weren’t his still burned inside him.

“I saw her at the pharmacy the other day,” she said then, her tone too soft, too filled with sympathy. “She asked about you.”

“And why would she do that?” It was almost a sneer, but he couldn’t seem to get it just right.

Her shoulder lifted negligently. “I don’t know, but she seemed very worried.”

“Stop.” It was time to put his foot down and get her the hell out of his life and out of his head. “If you’ve heard the gossip, then you know everything. Stop being so fucking nosy.”

“And stop caring about you?” That couldn’t be an edge of regret in the question. “The big, bad, tough Logan can’t have anyone care about him, or care for anyone, can he?”

“They end up dead.”

And he couldn’t forget that.

“And you just sit back and accept it?”

“Hell, baby, it’s millions in cash, bonds, and property.” He laughed mockingly. “Wouldn’t I be stupid to turn my back on that?”

He would in a heartbeat if he thought it would change a damned thing.

But it wouldn’t. Just as leaving before hadn’t changed anything.

“You’re stupid if you think I believe a word of what you just said,” she said, her voice low now. “I listen to everything I’m told and I know how to put two and two together. Three big tough military heroes aren’t going to take this lying down. You’re here. You’re investigating it, aren’t you?”

Logan stared back at her narrowly. “I don’t give a fuck, Ms. O’Brien. All I intend to do is live here until those bastards die in order to prove to them they aren’t stealing a fucking thing from my parents or from me. After that, Corbin County can kiss my fucking ass.”

Silence stretched between them. Disappointment finally filled her gaze and the sight of it tightened in his chest, far too close to his heart.

“Do whatever,” she said coolly. “It’s time I head home. I have better things to do than try to charm Scrooge tonight. Have a nice, lonely life, Callahan.” She turned as though to leave.

He was damned if he wanted her to leave.

“Take the dog home with you,” he finally snapped as anger got the best of him. “If I wanted it, I would have brought it in. And I don’t have time for a trip to the shelter. Remember they put down unadopted dogs there. There’s no way that mutt is going to get a home the way it howls and cries twenty-four seven.”

And the puppy needed out of the mountain air. Pugs could sicken easily. They needed care. Just like women and babies did.

“If she wanted me, she would have come into my house the first two times I sweet-talked her across the yard instead of turning and hightailing it back to a door that stays locked against the poor little baby,” she informed Logan with that hint of anger. “What is your deal where this puppy is concerned? You can’t keep her and you don’t want to take her to the shelter. What do you want to do? See her starve in your backyard?”

“I don’t have a deal,” he said between clenched teeth, trying to ignore that deeper spark raging at him to end this now. “And I feed it.”

That spark that had his dick hard and his hands itching to touch Skye. It was the same spark he’d felt the first time he’d met her, strangely enough, in his own backyard just after moving into the house.

“You have something,” she informed him as she slowly straightened. “But nothing that relies on you, depends on you, or could survive without you. Right?”

And she just had to point that out, didn’t she?

“Deliberately,” he assured her as he watched her expression, her expressive eyes, and what he saw there had his chest tightening in both anger and regret.

Because he saw pity there. Pity and sorrow.

And he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

“You think all that responsibility is something to sneer about then?” she asked him accusingly, anger sparking in her own eyes then. “That it doesn’t matter, because there’s nothing or no one you can survive without?”

That wasn’t exactly true.

“I have my family,” he stated.

He heard that rasp in his voice that assured him he was losing control of that tight rein he had on his emotions, on his angers. On the fucking hunger to have her.

She had no idea—

No idea the hell he and his cousins had suffered through over the years and the losses they’d had no choice but to survive. Losses that had forced them out of Corbin County, only to once again force them back.

“Your grandfather?” she asked archly. “Or just your cousins? The cousins who own everything you have ever worked for or deserved in your life? One of whom has his own fiancée now? The other who has just invested in his
own
business? Possibly two of them? Everyone in this county is gossiping about the fact that you signed over everything you own, everything, Logan, to two cousins who are evidently determined to at least try to have a life.”

“And what the fuck is your point?” he snarled, feeling the loss of that precious, careful control now.

Damn her to hell, she had no idea how much it hurt to sign over everything he had ever dreamed of having in his life. To watch Crowe and Rafer fighting against the hell he could see was coming with every shred of lost dreams that still existed inside them to have a life.

He had no choice. Someone had to watch out for the other two. Someone had to be seen as the Callahan monster to, he hoped, make the monster haunting them back off.

“What do you have for yourself, Callahan?”

“One too-nosy neighbor who doesn’t seem to know how to call me by my first name rather than my last and a too damned delicate pup that refuses to let me find it a home?” he questioned harshly as his arms dropped from his chest and he advanced on her, his head lowering as he glared down at her. “What business is it of yours, Ms. O’Brien?”

The anger and needs surging through him had him moving then. Had him making what he knew, even as he did it, was the biggest mistake of his life.

He touched her.

Before he could think or stop himself, he had his hands on her upper arms, pulling her to him, bringing her flush against his body as though he needed her.

“I have a hunger eating my guts out for a woman that I know has happily-ever-afters shining in her eyes.” He held her like a desperate man. As though he needed her touch. “That won’t happen with me, and you’re determined to hurt both of us by pushing it.”

As though he needed something or someone to claim.

And Logan knew he didn’t. He didn’t dare.

“You would never make one night with me enough,” she repeated her warning, her eyes spitting back at him furiously. “What kind of game are you playing? You warn me off, then jerk me in your house as though you have no other choice but to fight with me over a dog we both know you want. You want that damned dog almost as bad as you want me in your bed. Why, Logan? Why can’t you have either of us?”

“Because I don’t dare.”

As he stared into her wide, surprised gaze Logan realized he’d wanted her since that first glimpse he’d had of her. And he shouldn’t. That small taste he’d had of her last week as he held her beneath that tree hadn’t been nearly enough.

He shouldn’t want her, but he craved her. Craved her with a need that made no sense and a sudden, overwhelming hunger that he couldn’t seem to control.

And maybe she was right. One night would never be enough. But they would both pay for it.

“Are you waiting on your common sense to return again?” she whispered, her fingers gripping the tops of his biceps, kneading them.

She wasn’t protesting or pushing him away. She wasn’t fighting it. But he was, with every ounce of control he was fighting it, and he was losing.

Her fingers were kneading the tensed muscles of his biceps. Straight little nails nipping into the hard flesh covering them and sending sparks of fiery sensation straight to his balls.

“Hell if I know.” He was trying to stop himself. “I didn’t show any last time. Why should I do it now?”

There was no way to stop what he knew he was about to do.

Holding her gaze, drawn by her, feeling as though he was held to her by chains as invisible and yet as tight as any made by man, Logan knew he was doomed.

His head lowered, his lips touching hers, feeling them part, feeling the silk and heat, the tremble of hunger. As he watched the darkening of her gaze and the flutter of her lashes as they drifted closed, he knew he was a goner.

He’d fantasized about fucking her for months. Hell, he had so many scenarios in his head that sometimes he thought he could fuck her for a decade and never experience all of them.

But this one he’d never envisioned.

This one he’d never allowed himself to have because he’d known what it would do to him. The very thought of having her, here in his home, where he would never eradicate her memory, did things to him he couldn’t consider.

A flood of sensation seemed to wrack his body as every muscle tightened furiously. Slowly, exquisitely slowly, her lips parted further, accepting the intimacy of his tongue with tentative excitement as he licked against hers.

Her hands stroked over his shoulders, her breathing becoming hitched as her heart pounded as furiously as his. Tightening his grip on her hips, he dragged her closer, lifting her. Pulling her against his body. Running his hands to the luscious curves of her ass, he had to hold back a groan of sheer male hunger. Gripping, lifting her before he could stop himself, Logan had her on the center island and her legs curled around his hips as he pushed the hardened ridge of his cock against the heated, wet warmth between her thighs.

She was short, curvy, delicate as hell, and he fit between her thighs perfectly. Pushing the thin, incredibly soft fluff of her gown and robe over her hips, he groaned in need, and realization.

She wore no panties.

His hands slid beneath the material to her back.

God, she was killing him with this need for her.

His dick was throbbing in a little happy dance that was driving him insane as she pressed more firmly against him.