“But you’re also a beautiful woman in a world with a lot of predators.”

She softened again. “I’m fine. Really.”

“Yeah. And smart and capable. This visit was for my peace of mind. Thanks for humoring me.”

“You’re really different away from the club.”

Logan shrugged, his smile self-deprecating. “I’m not a twenty-four /seven kind of Dom. In the club, subs better not fuck with me or there’s going to be punishment. Outside the club? I’m just a guy, with other concerns and thoughts . . . and regrets.”

He was going to get personal, and a part of her didn’t want to stop him.

Her hand shook as she poured herself another glass of wine, then held up the bottle. “Drink?”

“No, thanks. I won’t overstay my welcome.” Logan turned for the door.

Tara didn’t examine the feeling, but she knew that she wasn’t ready to see him go. “Logan?”

He turned. “You need something, baby?”

Before she could talk herself out of it, she nodded. “Answers.”

She settled herself on the edge of the bed, then watched as he folded his big form into an ugly green plastic chair with sleek economy of movement.

“I’m wide open.”

God, where the hell should she begin? It had been an eventful day by any standards, but the information Xander had dumped on her late this evening gnawed at her brain. How much of what he’d said was true?

“What does the tattoo on your ribs really say? I know what you told me but . . .”

“That’s not important.” He dipped his head, looked away. “What happened in high school is. Don’t you want to know about that?”

In the past twelve years, she’d sworn that she had gotten over Logan. Now she knew she’d been fooling herself. Brad had accused her of giving him up for Logan. He’d been right. Logan had reminded her what it was like to truly feel and want and hurt again. The avalanche of emotion had smacked her hard. Had she, maybe, not built much of a life with Brad because she’d been subconsciously waiting for her withered relationship with Logan to blossom to life again?

It sounded absurd on the surface—but Tara couldn’t deny that his pull still lured her in like no man ever had.

Eventually, she’d have to listen to his explanation, but she wanted this conversation on her terms. “Do you have other tattoos?”

He pinned her with a cautious look. “Yeah. I’m in the navy, and I’ve been drunk overseas more than once.”

“You regret them?”

His somber stare wiped away any levity. “No. Cherry, ask me about our breakup.”

He’d promised that he wouldn’t explain until she asked him, and he was trying to live up to his word. Tara bit her lip. What if there was some explanation for everything? What if it was something that made her want to forgive him? After the magnitude of his betrayal years ago, did she want to? She was damn sure that it would be easier—and safer to her heart—to go on being angry with him.

But maybe, a voice whispered in her head, it was no longer realistic.

“Is it true that you haven’t had sex in the last five years?”

“God damn Xander,” Logan cursed, closing his eyes. “What didn’t he tell you?”

“If what he said is true, he didn’t hold much back.”

He rose, paced, stared out the window into the shabby parking lot. A moment later, he seemed to come to some decision and turned back to her. “Yeah, it’s true. Even before then, sex had become . . . infrequent.”

When Xander had spilled this secret, Tara had been sure the guy was insane. To hear Logan fess up to this absolutely blew her mind. “Why? In high school, you loved sex. If those rumors were true, you had a lot of it.”

“I don’t know exactly what you heard back then, but yeah. I took advantage of the fact that I was the J.V. quarterback and the tallest guy in my class. I figured out quick that if you could make a girl feel special for a moment, then it wasn’t too hard to get her horizontal.”

Tara grimaced. “God, you sound like a pig.”

Logan shrugged, the black T-shirt lovingly hugging his wide shoulders and muscled chest. “I was sixteen. I’m sure I was a pig. Then came you.”

She rolled her eyes. “It was a long time ago, and I don’t think for one minute that I had any lasting effect on you. You fell right back into bed with Brittany Fuller a few hours after we broke up.”

“I was drunk, and I was angry.” He swallowed. “Afterward, I felt really empty. When she left . . . I cried.”

She reared back, looking up into his taut face. She’d expected to see him laugh, but Logan was dead serious. Shock pinged through her body.

“The pattern sort of repeated itself a lot for the next few years. I’d meet a random girl, pick her up hoping she could bring me out of my funk. At first, I’d realize how lousy I felt after the sex. Then the feeling began to hit me in the middle. I got a lot of girls off, then sent them on their way, leaving them to wonder why I hadn’t finished fucking them.” He shrugged. “Masturbating was easier, less emotional.

“Then I found BDSM and met Mitchell Thorpe. A whole new avenue opened to me. I suddenly controlled everything. The females didn’t expect sex. And I realized that I could absorb a sub’s sexual energy and use it to propel me to my next self-induced orgasm. It worked.”

“Logan . . .” God, such a damaged life broke her heart. Because of her? Really? Tara didn’t know what to say.

He stepped closer and wrapped a hand around her nape, his hot touch searing her skin. “It worked until I saw you again. I never got over you. A week ago, I couldn’t find a woman on the planet who could tempt me to want to have sex with her. One look at you—even before I knew it was you—and my first thought was of getting deep inside you and never leaving.” He trailed his thumb down her cheek. “That’s what I think every time I look at you, Cherry.”

A whole new wave of shock reverberated through her body. The girl who had once loved him wanted to leap up, wrap her arms around him, and offer him whatever he needed to feel whole. The woman she’d become after he’d burned her wasn’t sure how to believe him. He’d said that he loved her the day he took her virginity. Barely twenty-four hours later, he’d broken her heart and taken another girl to bed.

“We weren’t together long enough for you to get that hung up on me, and I—”

“Yeah, we were.” He closed his eyes. “And I think I left scars on you, too. Cherry, please, ask me why I broke up with you.”

Tara trembled. The million-dollar question. If she asked it, she feared that everything would change, that the answer could throw her into a tailspin all over again. Being able to open up physically and emotionally to Brad had been a real step up for her. In college, she’d only managed drunk sex. Sober, she couldn’t bring herself to let anyone touch her. But she’d broken through with Brad.

And now he was gone.

If she didn’t get the answer to this question, would she remain in limbo, hung up on Logan forever? Maybe they both needed this to cleanse themselves of the past and move on.

That didn’t mean that she wasn’t scared as hell to hear the answer.

“A-All right, Logan. Tell me.” Her voice broke up as tears welled. She was fucking terrified. “Why?”

“Thank you.” He leaped on the bed, pushing her flat on her back and covering her body with his own. He pressed their foreheads together and drew in a deep breath.

“Logan . . .” He was so close, felt so good, that she couldn’t breathe.

“Tara, I had to protect you. The sick fuck who’d killed my mother sent me more than one note threatening to kill you if I didn’t walk away. Then when you showed up at school late that day with a broken arm . . .” Logan told the entire story, the words halting at first, as though recounting all this hurt him, but Tara could feel his will and his anguish as he explained.

When he was done, she blinked and tears filled her eyes. If he’d told her this story earlier, she would have tossed it back in his face angrily and called him a liar. She would have assumed it was some sob tale he’d spent years inventing, designed to dupe her into dropping her panties so he could get her into bed again. Now, looking at the torment tightening his face, she couldn’t doubt that this was the truth as he knew it.

“Why didn’t you tell the police? Or tell me?”

“There was no way I was going to risk you any further. You were beyond precious to me.” He cupped her cheek. “I would have done anything to keep you safe, and at sixteen, I couldn’t think of another way. Please understand.”

Oddly, given the circumstances and their age, she did. And she was both touched and crushed by his words. All the time they’d never had together, all the things they’d never had the opportunity to do . . . The relationship may not have been one to last happily ever after. But how much pain would they have never experienced if it hadn’t been for that note on his pillow and the relationship had come to its natural conclusion?

“Your mom was such a nice lady. I’m sorry. And the police never caught her killer?”

Logan shook his head with deep regret. “It’s in cold-case status now. A new detective tried to tackle it about four years ago. He called my dad and me, checked with some of Mom’s old neighbors, asked questions of the people she once worked for. Nothing. One of her neighbors said she thought she saw a man entering her apartment that afternoon, but she was elderly and a bit senile. My mother never mentioned a boyfriend, not to me, to her neighbors, or her coworkers. There were no prints at the scene, no DNA left behind. This psycho randomly chose my mother. The police have no record of any similar case, either.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pain crawled all over his face. “I am never going to forget what it was like to drive to her house, so excited to tell her about us, then find her so still. Dead.”

Her heart went out to Logan. It was a lot to deal with at sixteen. He’d been reeling, grief-stricken. A note like the one he’d received from the killer warning him away from her would have both scared and confused him. Tara couldn’t blame him for the decisions he’d made then.

“Cherry, if I’d had my way, we would have stayed together, gone to prom as a couple, graduated hand-in-hand.” He shrugged. “Built a life together.”

A part of her really wanted to believe that, but after everything that had happened, she couldn’t imagine that alternate universe. “Why didn’t you ever try to tell me all this after your mom’s case cooled down?”

“After you changed your cell, I only had your stepfather’s home number.”

And she’d always made Adam answer the phone and tell him off. “You could have come to see me.”

“I tried. Remember a couple of Christmases ago? You slammed the door in my face.”

She had. And now she regretted it like hell. “We’ll never know the paths our lives would have taken if things had been different. I may be training to be a submissive. I may even have submissive tendencies. I don’t know that I could live this life.”

“You could, baby, under the right circumstances. It doesn’t have to be in a club, if you don’t like that setting. I just want to be with you. I’d vow to be the most loving Dom ever.”

“Isn’t that kind of an oxymoron? What, you’d boss me around in a tender way?” She raised a disbelieving brow.

“Yeah. Say the word, Cherry, and I’ll show you exactly what I mean.”

His words, along with his body heat settling under her skin, made her tremble. “I just lost a fiancé today, and there’s been too much water under the bridge. Maybe . . . your hang-up isn’t about me in particular. Is there another incident—”

“I know what happened. I know what’s in my heart,” he growled each word fiercely, fisting the cheap bedspread beneath her. “It was you. It’s always been you.”

Those words sounded so romantic, and the female in her really, really wanted to believe them. But they almost didn’t compute. Yes, she’d pined for Logan, but him for her?

Oh, God. Her next confession was going to open her up wide, but he’d been so painfully honest, how could she be anything less? “I saw a therapist shortly after college. I went to him for a good two years. He suggested that my hang-up about you stemmed from the fact that our break was really sudden. He suggested that I simply needed closure. Maybe that’s what you need, too. Maybe we just needed to talk it all out and know the score—”

“No. I know what I need, what I’ve always needed.” Logan wriggled his hips between the slight spread of her thighs, forcing them wider, until his cock settled right against her pussy. “Cherry, I need you.”