Wild: The Ivy Chronicles (11 page)

A thousand butterflies took flight in my stomach at the way he looked at me. I felt like a deer caught in headlights. Denial was impossible. I didn’t have it in me to lie. “I have to meet someone,” I said hurriedly, suddenly overwhelmed at the idea that I’d been on his radar all this time. Even before I kissed him outside the kink club.

“Sure. Don’t want to be late.” He stepped aside and waved me through the kitchen.

My fingers nervously flexed on the strap of my messenger bag. Something had changed. He wasn’t the same. There was a new resolve in his eyes, a firmness to his voice that made me uneasy.

Suddenly his previous promise to leave me alone didn’t feel like such a promise anymore. At least not one I believed. No. As I walked past the counter toward the exit, I felt his stare on my back and didn’t feel safe with the assurance that it was “all on me.” For some reason, I felt certain that Logan was done waiting for me to make the first move.

Chapter 12

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK WE
had an honest-to-God heat wave. Girls who stayed on campus through the summer could be found spread out on towels in the quad in tiny shorts and tank tops. Some wore bikinis. And where girls in bikinis were, guys could be found hovering close by.

Walking past the quad on the way home from the library, I thought about Emerson and how she would have been one of those girls last summer, happy to flaunt her body in a bikini and flirt with hovering guys. Now she was busy with her new life—Shaw and their bikes and her art.

I hadn’t seen her since the night I moved out, so I was eager for Pepper’s birthday party tonight. It was at the new house. Just a small group. Mostly couples, so I had asked Connor to go with me. I didn’t know if we would ever be anything more than friends—okay, so I knew we would never be more than friends—but he was a good guy and seemed excited to go.

Of course, Reece went all out and splurged on Pepper. He catered the party, so the delicious aroma of char-grilled meat greeted us when we stepped inside the house. Pepper let us in, hugging me and whispering in my ear. “He’s cute.”

I smiled in acknowledgment and accepted the margarita placed in my hand.

“For you,” Emerson said, then turned to meet Connor. She didn’t treat him to the same bubbly welcome that Pepper had, and instead regarded him with the icy reserve of an overprotective father—but then that was Em. Trust wasn’t given but earned.

We soon split off into boy-girl groups, Connor joined the guys and Emerson, Pepper, Suzanne, and I stood in a tight circle.

“You always go for the uptight ones,” Emerson accused around the salted rim of her margarita glass.

“He’s cute,” Suzanne offered. “And looks nice.”

Nice: aka, boring. “He’s
not
uptight,” I insisted, knowing this much was true at least. He was not like Harris.

Em lifted a dark, finely arched eyebrow. “He’s a grad student. In the Business School.”

“Stop it. You’re being judgmental,” I snapped.

“Be nice, Em,” Pepper chided. “She brought a date to my birthday. She must like him.”

I smiled and hoped it didn’t look like the wince it was. I didn’t like him
that
much. To be fair, when he’d tried to kiss me yesterday at the Java Hut, I dodged his lips. Not a good sign. Deep down, I knew the reason I brought him with me tonight. He was meant to be a buffer. If Logan showed, which was very likely, then I would have a date to keep him at bay. Not that I expected Logan to misbehave. This was Pepper’s party . . . at his brother’s house. It would be fine.

Especially after the other night. I’d seen him twice from a distance: Once inside the bar as I was heading to my room. And another time as I was in the parking lot getting into my car and he was heading across the parking lot to start his shift. I felt his gaze even though I pretended to be looking somewhere else beyond him each time. Yeah, I knew he had seen me. He’d made no attempt to speak to me. Not even a wave. I had effectively killed things between us—just as I’d intended. And if I felt a tiny bit like crap over that realization, I’d get over it. It wasn’t the first disappointment of my life. It wouldn’t be the last. Mom had taught me that lesson well. Life was full of disappointment.

My real father had been one of her biggest disappointments. The few times she spoke candidly with me on the subject of him, she had been clear. He was the greatest mistake of her life. She regretted it. Him.
Me
. She didn’t say it but what else was I to interpret? Some mistakes were like that. Colossal and irreversible. Logan Mulvaney would not be that mistake for me.

There was the right path and the wrong path, and if I ever had any doubt which was which, I need only ask my mother. She always had an opinion, and I knew she would want me to avoid guys like Logan Mulvaney.

I think you want me to say dirty things to you
.

I cringed. Some guys were impossible to forget though.

“Georgia knows I’m just messing with her,” Em said, snagging my attention back to the here and now. “If she really likes this guy, then I’m going to love him. You know that, right, Georgia?”

I nodded reflexively and then froze as the front door opened and Logan stepped inside. A thousand prickles rushed over my skin. He wasn’t alone either. Rachel was with him. I was never so relieved in my life than at that moment. I had a date. He had Rachel with him. I took a big gulp of my margarita.

Pepper clapped her hands and made it across the room to hug him. Even as tall as Pepper was, Logan easily folded her in his arms. Pepper hugged Rachel, too—an embrace the girl accepted awkwardly. His gaze did a quick sweep of the room before landing on me.

We stared at each other across the living room. The moment struck me as so strange. This guy had been in my sphere for a long time, but I’d only thought of him as Reece’s impossibly beautiful, shallow kid brother. Never considered him beyond that. Never thought of him as more. Never been tempted.

And now, in this room, he was the center of my universe. Everything in me prickled with awareness of him.

A hand brushed the small of my back and I sucked in a sharp breath. Connor stood beside me. “You okay? Can I make you a plate of food?”

“Not yet.” I shook my head and took another sip of the margarita Emerson had placed in my hand. “Thank you.”

Connor looked longingly at the spread of food across the room.

“Go ahead,” I encouraged. “Make yourself a plate.”

“If you don’t mind—”

“No, go. Shaw is already eating.”

“Okay.” He dropped his hand from the small of my back and headed for the table of food. When I looked back across the room to where Logan had stood moments ago, he was gone. I scanned the room, skipping over the dozen or so people mingling. Some standing, some sitting. He was gone. But then so was Pepper and Rachel. She must be giving them the tour of the house.

“Not hungry?” Emerson asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, that guacamole is calling my name. I’ll be back.”

I stood there by myself for a moment. An old Johnny Cash song played low on the air. Connor’s gaze met mine as he listened to something Shaw was saying. He sent me a nod and angled his body as though he was on the verge of breaking away to join me. Like a good date should do. Only I realized I didn’t want to get trapped in small talk with him just yet.

Before he could reach me, I moved out of the living room and stepped into the hall that led to the guest bathroom. It was past the study with the French doors and guest room. I heard footsteps behind me and hurried, half-afraid it was Connor following to check up on me. Fortunately, the bathroom was unoccupied. I slipped inside, but didn’t have a chance to shut the door all the way behind me.

It swung inward, and Logan slid inside before I fully realized what was happening. He locked the door behind him and leaned against it, crossing his arms over his chest. He loomed there, staring at me almost expectantly.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “You can’t be in here with me!”

“What are you doing with that tool?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me, Pearls. Did you bring him to make me jealous?”

I laughed, but the sound rang brittle, so I cut it short and just stared at him in my best imitation of my mother’s cool, principal glare.

“Hardly.” Studying his face, I could see that he was serious. For once that mocking humor was nowhere in evidence. “There is no reason for you to be jealous. We’re not a thing.”

He said nothing, just stared at me with those bitter-hard eyes. The blue was like some kind of frozen marble.

“Not a thing,” he echoed, his lips unsmiling. He usually always smiled. Even on those rare occasions when he was serious, he had that derisive smile on his lips. But not tonight. Not now.

Suddenly the bathroom felt claustrophobic. “Look. We don’t really know each other. And you agreed to back off—”

“Maybe I changed my mind.”

That made me take a step back. I laughed nervously. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have a date out there. You have . . . Rachel.” So they were just friends, but she had come here with him. “Nothing is happening here.” I motioned between us. “Nothing is going to happen here. You need to step away from the door.”

“Don’t pretend like there isn’t something here. Like we haven’t been dancing around it for weeks now, Georgia.” He jabbed a finger toward me, coming off the door, advancing. “You started this.”

I backed up, swallowing, miserable. Yeah. That night at the kink club. That kiss. And then I showed up at his baseball game like some kind of groupie.

I sucked in a deep breath. “I admit we have chemistry, but that’s not anything either one of us can’t find with someone else. Someone more appropriate.”

He tossed his head back and let loose a harsh laugh. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

I blinked, itchy heat flooding my face like swarming ants. I didn’t like being laughed at. Not like that.

He lowered his gaze back to me. “You’re fooling yourself if you think chemistry is an automatic thing you can find with anyone . . . It’s not something you can find with that asshat out there.” He looked me up and down. “I doubt you had it with your last boyfriend either. You always looked too bored when you were with him.”

I
looked too bored? That was an interesting description considering Harris dumped me because he claimed I was boring.

“You have chemistry with me,” he added, “because we’d be good together.”

The air fairly crackled around us, jammed full of his provocative words.

I shook my head, marveling, “Where do you get off being so arrogant? How do you know I don’t feel it with Connor out there—”

“Because you’re in here having this conversation with me. You haven’t walked away.”

Damn
. Good point. I hadn’t even tried to leave the bathroom.

“I didn’t want to cause a scene.”

“I’m not stopping you from leaving.” He waved a hand past himself.

“You want to see me walk away?” Bravado rang out in my voice and my chin went up a notch. “Watch. I know it might be a new experience for you . . . girls giving you their backs but here goes.”

I strode right past him, dodging around him, my wedge heels biting hard into the floor.

I felt as much as heard him come after me. The rush of movement sparked the air all around us like electricity, and my heart actually hurt for a second in my chest, squeezing so tightly with awareness, anxiety, and I don’t know . . . something else.

When he grabbed me and whirled me around, I started to tell him just what I thought about his inability to keep his hands to himself, but I didn’t get very far before he released my shoulder and grabbed my face. Words died in a sputtering choke as I stared into those dark blue eyes inches from mine, his big hands holding my face.

“You’re right.”

“About what?” I said distractedly, focusing way too much on that mouth of his with the deep indentation right there in the center of his top lip. God. I had tasted that mouth. I ached to do it again, only this time I wanted to run my tongue over the indentation. I didn’t do that last time. I wanted to lick and savor and nibble at it. Need for him strangled me and I knotted my hands at my sides.

“I’m not used to girls turning their backs on me.” He studied me in the hazy orange glow of the bathroom’s light.

“B-but you said I’d have to ask for this . . . for
it
from you. You said you wouldn’t touch me,” I reminded him, needing him to keep that promise now more than ever.

“Sometimes plans change. They have to . . .”

He brought his mouth close, his nose the barest brush on my cheek, our lips not touching, but I felt the puff of his breath as he spoke. “Do you know what you do to me, Georgia?”

“I have a d-date,” I sputtered.

Something dark glinted in his eyes, and I was struck with the knowledge that I was way out of my depth with this guy. He knew more. Had seen more.
Done
more.

“Wrong answer,” he growled.

“What do you want from me?” I bit out, frustration bubbling up inside me. I gazed at him helplessly, shaking my head.

“You haven’t figured that out yet?” He stared at me, his eyes sliding from my eyes to my mouth, down my body and then up again. Alarm bells went off in my head.

His hand circled my neck. “Fuck,” he growled. “Then I haven’t been clear enough.” His mouth slammed over mine.

Chapter 13

H
E CLAIMED MY MOUTH
in a bruising, teeth-clanging kiss. I tasted lime and salt, and I felt like I was drowning in the sea. My hands flew to his shoulders for balance, then in desperation, I was clinging to him when I should have been pushing him away. He knew this though and wanted to prove a point evidently.

He pulled back slightly, his mouth a hairbreadth from my own. I inched forward, chasing that mouth, but he kept himself just out of reach, pulling his head back, making me come after him, tormenting me, forcing me to take what I wanted. Dimly I realized this, but I didn’t care. Not anymore. I was past caring. I only needed.

With a frustrated moan, I grabbed his face in both hands and held him still for me. It was a giddy, headlong dive into sensation. I kissed him. I took. I claimed. Like before. He had sparked a fire inside me and those flames were burning hot now. I did what I wanted.

I sucked on his top lip, my tongue finding that dent at the center . . . tasting it, loving it, savoring it with my lips, tongue, and teeth.

My hands drifted down from his face, fingers curling into his shirt, bunching the fabric in tight fists as I rubbed my tongue against his. He made a growling sound and backed me up until we collided into the door with a thud, rattling the hinges and knob.

I should have cared at the sound, at the noise we were making—anyone passing could hear and wonder. But I didn’t. I didn’t care. I only felt.

The naughtiness and savagery of it thrilled me. I was making out in a bathroom in a house full of people with a guy who wasn’t even my date.

I was wild and free and totally reckless.

His fingers curled around my wrists and lifted them off his shoulders. In one fast move, he pinned my hands against the door on either side of my head.

A small gasp escaped me. He lifted his head to look at me, his eyes so smoldering I felt their burn, their power as effective as his hard body trapping me against the door.

I tried to tug my hands down so that I could touch him again, but he held them fast. He shook his head once at me, sending a clear message. I wasn’t to move my hands. I was under his control.

My feminine hackles bristled at this show of dominance, but another part of me stirred, responding to his command over my body.

He kissed me again then. His hands slid down my arms. When I started to lower my arms, he snatched my hands back and held them to the door. “Keep them there.”

I obeyed, butterflies erupting in my belly.

Suddenly it dawned on me. This was him. The not-good, not-wholesome guy he had mentioned on the futon in my apartment. It was his hands pinning me hard to the door. I was staring at
him
, my eyes wide open and absorbing every inch of him as his lips ravaged mine.

The pressure of his mouth increased. His lips grew more demanding, his tongue a deeper tangle with mine as his bigger body pushed even closer against me.

I felt his cock through our clothes, the hardness grinding into my stomach and everything in me liquefied.

His hands resumed their slow descent and this time I didn’t move mine. I kept them against the wall, a true feat as his passed down my rib cage and then came around to claim my breasts.

I cried out, the sound swallowed up in his mouth as his hands molded to my breasts through the thin fabric of my dress. His fingers unerringly found my nipples through the fabric, pinching and rolling. Bolts of pleasure-pain lanced through me.

His hands moved with purpose. Sure, swift, and just a little rough. I never knew it could be like this—I never knew I wanted it to be.

He bent slightly, his erection grinding right where I most needed him. I moaned again into his mouth.

A heaviness pooled in my muscles and my arms began to weaken and shake, slipping from where I held them against the wall.

As if he sensed their movement, his hands slammed mine back into place against the wall, his voice a hard rasp against my mouth. “Leave. Them. There.”

“Oh.”

It was the only sound, the only word I could make. My panties were wet. I would have been embarrassed if I wasn’t so turned on. I moaned into his mouth, clinging to his top lip, then his bottom, then warring my tongue with his again.

His hands left my breasts and slid down, bunching my hem in his hands and dragging my dress up around my hips. His lips moved against mine as he spoke. “I have wanted to do this ever since you first kissed me.”

Before I could fully understand what
this
referred to, he slid his big body down mine and hooked one of my thighs over his shoulder. He traced a finger against the crotch of my panties. Heat scorched my cheeks because I knew he knew how much I wanted him now. As if he didn’t have a clue before.

He made a groaning sound and looked up at me, his eyes heavy-lidded and full with the promise of delicious things to come. “You’re so hot, baby.” He pulled my panties aside so that I was exposed to the air, his gaze. It was shocking, and the most exposed I’d ever felt, but I was so aroused I couldn’t move. Couldn’t try to cover myself from his eyes. His touch.

Still watching me, he rubbed a single finger over me, gliding it against my moisture until he found that spot. The spot that Harris never seemed to know even existed. Logan found it instantly and pressed down, rolling it slowly. Eyes fastened on my face, he bent his head and placed his mouth there until all I could see was his dark blond head. All I could feel was his lips and tongue, sucking and pulling on my clit, drawing it deep between his teeth. My head dropped back on the door and a shudder built, working its way up my body from where his mouth devoured me.

I brought a hand down, helpless, unable to stop my fingers from lacing through his hair.

I turned my head sideways and caught sight of us in the mirror. Me with my leg thrown over his shoulder and his head buried between my thighs, my fingers speared through his hair. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. My eyes looked fogged over . . . like they belonged to someone else entirely.

His mouth eased its pressure on me and I almost wept. So close. I was so close. My grip tightened on his hair as his tongue lightly played on my clit, the teasing strokes tormenting me.

I whimpered his name and he paused to look up at me.

His eyes went dark at whatever he saw in my face. “What do you want, Pearls? Do you want me to lick you harder?”

I nodded.

He ducked back down and drew me into his mouth with a deep, savoring pull. Still, it wasn’t enough and he knew it. My hips lifted in an effort to give him more of me, but he just lifted his gaze back to mine. “You want my mouth to fuck you?”

Oh. My. God.

My chest squeezed tight and I remembered his promise to say dirty things to me. He’d meant it.

I nodded.

“Let me hear you say it then, Pearls. Say: Fuck me with your mouth.”

I gulped. Oh. God.

His hand tightened where he held my thigh, each of his fingers an individual brand.

I moistened my lips and God help me if his blue eyes didn’t follow my tongue and darken even more. I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “Fuck me with your mouth.”

My voice didn’t even sound like it belonged to me. It sounded tinny and faraway. Like I was some other girl pinned against a door with a hot guy between her thighs. And I was. This was not Georgia Robinson from Muskogee, Alabama. I wasn’t the lauded Principal Robinson’s daughter.

His mouth was on me again, and I bit my lip to stop from crying out. My head dropped back, rattling the door as my orgasm welled up inside me.

He knew exactly what to do. His lips and tongue flayed me until short gasps burst from my lips. I arched my spine off the door, my fingers splaying wide in his hair. The coil twisted and tightened as he worked me over.

A knock thumped on the door behind me. “Georgia, you in there?”

I slapped a hand over my mouth at the sound of Emerson’s voice, but Logan didn’t stop. If anything, his attentions grew more persistent, frantic, and hungry. He eased a finger inside me as his mouth lapped and sucked at me.

I shattered inside, shudders working up through me as Emerson knocked again, vibrating the wood behind me.

“Georgie?

“Be out in a second,” I croaked as Logan stood with a satisfied gleam in his eyes, letting my dress flutter back down over my thighs.

My chest heaved. I couldn’t meet his eyes. His fingers grasped my chin and forced me to look at him. “You go out first. I’ll follow later.”

I nodded jerkily and turned around, slipping out the door, my legs shaky as a leaf in the wind, but at least I was escaping his too-knowing stare.

Only that brought me face-to-face with Emerson.

“You okay?” Her keen gaze traveled over me.

I nodded, blocking the door. “Yes, fine, thanks.”

“You’ve been gone awhile.” She smiled ruefully. “Not hiding from your date, are you?”

I had forgotten about Connor. “Something like that.”

“I knew you weren’t into him.”

I shrugged. “He’s nice . . . and we’ve been spending a lot of time together this summer.” I wasn’t even sure what I was saying. My body was still reeling from the aftereffects of my first orgasm. There’d been close calls before. I had even thought it had maybe happened a time or two, but now I knew. It had never happened before. Even after years of having sex with Harris, I had never had an orgasm

Until tonight.

Em’s voice recaptured my attention. “Don’t fall into another boring as hell relationship, Georgia. Please?”

My cheeks stung thinking of what I had just done with Logan—what I had just let happen to me. It was a far cry from boring.

I nodded. Maybe too vigorously. Stepping forward, I grasped Emerson’s arm. “Don’t worry about me. I won’t be diving back into another relationship, boring or otherwise,” I assured her, eager to lead her away from the bathroom. “C’mon. I’m hungry.”

She resisted, pulling back on her arm. She jerked a thumb behind her. “I need to use the bathroom.”

The bottom of my stomach fell out. “Uh . . .” My gaze flipped from her to the door and back again. “Nah, come on and get a margarita with me.”

“Well, wait a second and I’ll join you.” Her hand moved for the doorknob and I gave her a hard pull, desperation making me less than subtle at this point.

She angled her head and gave me a funny look. “Georgia, what—”

The door opened then and Logan stepped out, his face expressionless. There was no smile. Nothing in his eyes that revealed what had just happened. He looked normal and casual and not like he was stepping out from a bathroom where he had rocked my world.

“What. The. Hell.”

My gaze swung to Emerson. She was staring daggers at Logan and looking at me like she didn’t know me at all.

“Don’t tell anyone.” The words tumbled from my mouth. “Don’t tell Pepper.”

Pepper would tell Reece. I didn’t expect her to keep secrets from him. And Reece could
not
know. This was of vital importance. The only person I could want to
not
know more was my own mother.

I could well imagine Reece ripping into Logan under the assumption that his younger brother had somehow taken advantage of me. I didn’t want that. He might have followed me into the bathroom and started this tonight, but I had wanted this. Since that first kiss, we had been heading toward this.

Emerson looked uncertainly between us. “It’s no one’s business what you do . . .” She stepped forward and jabbed Logan in the chest. “But just so you know. You fuck her over and you can kiss your balls good-bye.”

Logan nodded, looking unfazed at the threat. “Understood.”

“Emerson,” I croaked, heat flooding my face.

She nodded as though satisfied, her features relaxed into a less severe expression. She stepped close to say into my ear. “Jesus. And here I was worried you were sliding into a pit of perpetual dullness. Just be careful.”

That said, she slipped inside the bathroom.

I breathed easier. She hadn’t said the words, but I knew she wouldn’t tell anyone.

Facing Logan again, I was startled to find his expression no longer casual. He looked pissed. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone either. No one needs to know that you’re fucking around with Reece’s little brother. It will be our dirty little secret.”

I shook my head. “Logan—”

“Go back to your date, Georgia.”

My
date
. The reminder hit me with a pang. I had forgotten about him again.

“Logan,” I repeated, reaching for his arm, but he pulled it away.

“I primed you. Maybe he can finish you off tonight. Just don’t expect him to fuck you like I would.”

I flinched and without thinking my hand lashed out, slapping him soundly across the cheek.

His face gave the barest turn from the force before righting to look me over, his deep blue eyes drilling me. “Nice, Pearls.” He fingered his cheek. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

I stared, horrified.
I don’t. I don’t have it in me
, I wanted to say.

And yet it was a hard thing to argue when I had just in fact slapped him.

I had never struck another person. As in ever. Not even Amber when she overfed my hamster and killed it. It was just another first, courtesy of Logan Mulvaney. What would be next if I continued to do whatever it was I was doing with him?

A heavy pause full of wild emotions I couldn’t even name pulsed like a heartbeat between us. Crazy as it sounded, I still wanted him. More than ever. I wanted him to grab me and pin me to the wall again. God, I was messed up. He’d insulted me. I’d slapped him. These were not normal things two people who liked each other did. And then I understood. Liking had nothing to do with it. This was wanting. Desire. Lust.

He turned away then, his big body striding down the hall, his steps thudding over the wood flooring.

“Great,” I muttered, standing there for a moment, wishing I could call him back and erase that last couple minutes. Wishing I could explain the real reason I didn’t want Reece to know. That I was only looking out for Logan. Well, partly. True, I wanted to spare him an ass-ripping by Reece. Partly. But there was a part of me that was embarrassed, too. I could pretend and lie to him but not myself.