He tilted her head up. “Oh, wait until you see the bears, baby. And don’t forget all the deer.”
Bears? She was pretty sure she didn’t want to meet any bears, but a few pretty deer would be nice. “Deer are sweet. Like Bambi.”
He snorted a little. “Yeah, darlin’, sweet things. Baby, you don’t know much about nature. Those sweet little deer will eat a dead body. Actually, they’ll eat a live one if it’s not moving too much.”
“Ewww. That’s horrible.” And hopefully not true.
“Just about any animal will eat you if you let them.” His smile faded and his eyes trailed back to that spot he’d been staring at before.
She turned her head slightly. “What is it, Logan?”
He let her go, taking a step back before sitting down in his chair. He was quiet for a long moment, and Georgia missed their intimacy. “A little over a year ago, I was working right here. We had one overnight prisoner. He was a Russian mobster, and his boss came for him. Nate wasn’t here. It was just me and Holly and Alexei. You have to understand that Alexei had infiltrated the mob in order to kill the boss. Pushkin had killed his brother, you see. Anyway, when they came for him, we were outnumbered and outgunned, and Alexei needed to buy some time and there was only one way for him to do that. He told Pushkin that I had the information he needed.”
She sort of knew the story, but hearing it come out of Logan’s mouth in flat, unemotional tones made her stomach turn over. “They beat you up, didn’t they?”
“Oh, baby, that is a term you use for a bar brawl. This was so much more. This was an artist at work. A brutal artist, but a master all the same. He kept bringing me right to the edge of death, right where I was certain it would be over and I would be free, and then I would realize there was no freedom. There was only more pain and more loss. He took me into that office right behind you and he showed me how weak I am.”
She really didn’t like the way he was talking. Like he was still in the moment, a piece of him trapped there forever, a sort of purgatory like that never-ending poem she’d been forced to read in college. “Logan, you’re not weak.”
“You don’t know everything, Georgia. I don’t know that I want you to know everything. I just know that I have a lot of trouble being in this place. I used to love it here. I know that sounds stupid, but this job was the first time I felt like I was an adult. It was the first time I was on my own, even though I went home at night. I loved walking in here because I felt like a man. Now I hate it. This is my hometown, and I can’t stand being here because of that office.”
She looked back. It was a totally innocent-looking office, just a wooden door with an opaque glass inlay that announced Sheriff Nathan Wright worked in there. The door was slightly open, and she could see a bank of bookshelves and the start of a desk. “Is that where it happened?”
He nodded. “They took me in there and worked me over.”
And he couldn’t get it out of his head. She could see that plainly. Seth had once told her she was his business muse. It was a silly thing to say, but she’d loved the title. Muse. A muse inspired creativity and pushed an artist forward. Logan needed a push. What if he needed a muse, too? She had a stupid plan. It was so dumb, and it just might work if she was willing to open herself up to complete and humiliating rejection, but then sometimes the muse just had to take a chance.
Georgia kicked off the sneakers she’d been wearing.
“What are you doing?” Logan asked, his eyes widening as though he expected her to do something totally terrible.
“When I was a kid, I ended up getting stuck in my closet while my mom and her boy toy played around all over the house. My dad was gone and my brothers were in school, and the whole thing scared the crap out of me. By the time Drew found me, I was shaking and I wouldn’t go back in my own closet for weeks. It was a pain in my nanny’s ass because I wouldn’t dress myself or even pick up my own shoes.”
“Georgia, this is not the same. Are you taking your shirt off?”
She was. She unlaced the top of her blouse and slipped it off. She was lucky she’d selected a halfway pretty bra. It was pink and pushed her boobs up, and Logan suddenly wasn’t staring at the sheriff’s office door. Yes. This could work.
“Let me finish my story.” She started working on her jeans, praying no one needed justice or saving for the next little bit. “So Win finally decided he’d had enough and he came up with a plan. He threw an ice cream party in my closet. I loved chocolate ice cream and I never got any because my mom didn’t like fat kids, but she was scared of Win. He was a formidable teenager. He and Ben and Chase and Mark and Drew were eating ice cream in my closet one day, and they wouldn’t give me any until I came in. So I got mad and I threw a fit, but they were already really good at ignoring me when they needed to. And finally I went in and I sat on Win’s lap and I had a chocolate ice cream sundae with pink sprinkles and three cherries. Best ice cream I ever had, and my brothers played with me all afternoon. We had a tea party. You should have seen them, big brawny kids playing with dolls. And I could go in my closet again because I didn’t hear my mother screaming. I heard my brothers laughing, and I tasted chocolate ice cream.” She pushed her jeans off her hips and tossed them Logan’s way. She was down to cotton pink panties and her bra. She knew she was big, but Logan hadn’t liked her Spanx, so here she was in her glory. “I’m your chocolate ice cream, Logan. Come and take a bite.”
She turned and walked into the sheriff’s office and wondered if she could get arrested for being naked in here. Actually, now that she thought about it, she should be damn glad the office was unoccupied. She hadn’t been thinking. Oh, god, she was nearly naked in a law officer’s inner sanctum. She was going to get thrown in jail. She was going to get laughed out of town.
What was she doing? Chocolate ice cream sex. That was what she was trying to do, but it was dumb. Logan was right. They weren’t the same thing at all. Georgia took a deep breath and turned, ready to run, but a big body blocked her way.
Logan stood in the doorway, his eyes hard and his hand twitching, but he closed the door and locked it behind him. “Take off the rest. I want to see what you’re offering me.”
She took off the bra and shoved the panties aside because he should know what she was offering him.
Absolutely everything she had.
* * * *
Logan let his back rest against the door as he watched Georgia undress, her hands pushing the little pink cotton panties down her curvy legs. He was glad she wasn’t wearing that same torture device she’d had on the night before. She didn’t need it. She was gorgeous the way she was. She was so fuckable, his dick actually hurt as he looked at her. He could feel his cockhead already weeping because now he didn’t have to guess at what it would feel like to slide inside Georgia Dawson. He knew now, and it was heavenly.
And he still didn’t want to be inside this office.
Georgia started toward him. She wasn’t as confident as she wanted him to believe. He could see it in the tightness of her mouth and the set of her shoulders. Her smile, usually vibrant and generous, was strained. He was only now starting to really understand her, to see past his own shit and get to know what made Georgia Dawson tick. She was Hurricane Georgia, an outrageous brat, but she was also a woman who had reached out to Kitten and been a friend. And now she was so scared she wouldn’t be enough for him so he couldn’t walk out of this damn office, no matter how much he wanted to.
Georgia needed him, and she’d signed a contract. She didn’t know it yet, but he’d scrawled his name on the line above hers before walking in here. She was his by right of contract, and that meant he owed her. She could be quite fragile at times, and he just couldn’t break her again.
She wanted to learn D/s? He would concentrate on that and not what had happened to him here. Surely he could do that. Nate’s office was the biggest in the building and had its own bathroom, complete with a shower. Bliss County was a small organization with few people on staf
f. They often worked overnights. Logan himself had slept on the cots in the two cells outside many times before…yeah, he was going there again.
“Knees, Georgia. I don’t doubt that you understand what I mean by that.” She seemed to have been studying up on the subject.
And apparently, practicing. She fell to her knees before him with the grace of long practice. Her golden head dipped forward, eyes on the floor in front of her. She placed her hands on her thighs, palms up, and spread her knees wide. He didn’t have to correct an inch of her form. When Georgia decided to do something, she went all out. He’d learned that she might be lackadaisical in most parts of her life, but when she decided something was important, she was all in.
“Natalie?” He suspected her sister-in-law had been the one to show her the ropes.
“And Kitten, but only for a few days before I left for New York.” Georgia kept her head down as she replied.
“Eyes up.” He was satisfied that she obeyed immediately and that going into submissive mode didn’t take the light out of her eyes. He’d found some subs simply enjoyed giving up control, and submission was like their drug of choice. The minute they found sub space, they zoned out, merely following orders, but staying someplace inside their head where he couldn’t touch them. Kitten had been very much like that, but Logan wanted more. He wanted Georgia’s fire. He wanted connection and a flow of emotion from him to her. And he totally wanted a blow job. Seth had gotten a blow job, but none for Logan. “Very carefully, take my cock out.”
There it was. A playful light hit those baby blues of hers, and she immediately went about tackling his belt. Her perfectly manicured fingers worked the belt and then the fly of his pants. She unwrapped him like she was carefully unwrapping a gift and didn’t want to mess up the paper. She pushed the front of his slacks aside.
His cock was desperate. Already thick and hard, he could feel himself pulse as she started to peel his boxers off his hips. He looked to the side and caught sight of Nate’s stapler.
And his erection dissolved like a pile of sugar in a rainstorm.
“Sir?”
Fuck. He took a step back and thought about running, but she was looking up at him and she deserved the fucking truth. And maybe she was right. Maybe it was long past time to try to reclaim this space. Leo had told him to talk, that keeping it all inside, hiding it, made the whole episode seem like something dirty when he was the innocent one. “Georgia, do you really want to know? It’s not pretty.”
He was back against the door, his fly open and his heart racing. Let her say no. Please. If she backed away, then he could, too.
She got to her feet and, without a hint of self-consciousness, wrapped that gorgeous body around him, putting her head right against his chest. “I want to know everything, Logan. Sir.”
He let his hands wind around her. He’d been able to send her away once, but he wasn’t sure he could survive it again. If he wasn’t going to let her go, then he had some serious work to do, and it started with talking about what had happened in this room. “The stapler bugs me. I want to throw it out, but I can’t tell Nate why I want to throw it out.”
“Did they hurt you with it?”
“He, Luka, the man who tortured me, thought it was funny to use it on me. He would ask me a question and if I didn’t answer it properly, he would shove a couple of staples into me. He started on my chest and worked his way down.” The words were difficult to even speak. They felt dumb in his mouth. He’d kept them inside for so long, and now he was telling the story twice in one day. “It sounds like such a little thing, doesn’t it? I know some subs who like that little spark of pain. It’s called needle play.”
“This wasn’t play, Logan. And they work up to it and their Doms are careful. This wasn’t supposed to be fun and don’t make light of the pain. I can’t imagine it.”
“Over and over, he did it. I think when Caleb was done he’d pulled over a hundred staples out of me, and he pulled fifty alone off my cock.” There, he’d said it. God, he hated to say it. Leo told him it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, but shame was welling up inside him. He’d been laid out and bare, his most private parts on display for rough use and brutality.
“Logan.” She breathed out his name, and her hand found his chest. She pushed away a little, her eyes trailing down. “What did he do to you?”
The question was asked with a tight jaw, her voice shaking a little and not with fear. She was angry. Volcanically angry, and Georgia’s rage had the opposite effect on him. It calmed him. She was ready to fight, to avenge him when he outweighed her by a hundred pounds of muscle. He pulled her back, a little sigh of peace rushing through him. She wasn’t disgusted. She wasn’t pitying him. She wanted to kill the son of a bitch who had hurt him.
“He’s dead, baby. You can’t take him out. And I survived.” He’d survived. He was alive. He had a chance to make things better. It settled on him. She wasn’t pushing him away because of his weakness. Not yet, anyway. “Now let me finish.”
She laid her head back on his chest. “All right. But I would kill the bastard if he was still alive.”
He had no doubt. She was fierce when she wanted to be. Somehow the words were easier now. “He started out by beating the living shit out of me, but that was just the warm-up. Then came the stapler incident. God, I hated him touching me. He had his hand on me and I thought he was going to rape me. Oh, Georgia, I wanted to die. I really did. I wanted to die, but I couldn’t. I got hard. That felt like a betrayal.”
“You couldn’t help it. It’s a biological response, baby.”
“That’s what Caleb told me, and Leo told me, but at the time, it felt like I was aiding in my own torture.” He leaned over and let the smell of her hair wash over him, so different than the smell of sweat and blood. Georgia smelled clean and sweet, like strawberries. And her skin was touching his, a velvety caress to take the place of beefy hands smacking him. He could talk about it because for once he wasn’t back there. She was his anchor. “Do you know why I don’t have any scars on my cock?”
She nuzzled against his chest. “Why? I wondered because I’ve seen it up close, and it’s perfectly beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful.” And his cock was engaged again. How could he expect it to lie still when she was so close? Even here, in this room where he’d lost so much, he couldn’t ignore her. She was right. She was stronger than the memories of this room because all of the sudden, he didn’t see himself laid out on the desk. He saw her spread and waiting for his pleasure. When he looked at that desk, he would always see Georgia—her golden body and soft soul—waiting for him.
He picked her up, gripping the globes of her ass in his palms.
“Logan!” Georgia shouted, her eyes widening in surprise.
“I’ll tell you the rest, but I’ll do it while I touch you. Lie down on the desk.” He ran a hand across the top, sending everything to the floor with a little crash.
He set Georgia right there, right where he’d been forced to survive. Her hair spread out across the dark wood. He palmed a breast, loving the way her nipples peaked under his hand. She was ridiculously responsive, as though she’d been made just for him.
And Seth. But Seth wasn’t here. A little sliver of guilt pulsed through him. She was supposed to belong to Seth, but he pushed that aside. She’d been his first. She wanted him and Seth wanted them all to be together.
“Tell me why you don’t have scars.” Georgia bit her lip as though she was trying not to cry out, and he started to play with her nipples.
He gave one a little twist and loved how she wriggled on the desk. It gave him the perfect opportunity to discipline her. He opened the big drawer where he knew Nate kept supplies. He pulled out two binder clips, twisting the silver handles back and forcing them open, bending them slightly. He couldn’t use them as they were. They would be too tight. He wanted light pressure, not real pain. Just a little bite to let his sub know she should stay in line or there would be some consequ
ences.
“No moving, baby. You’re here for my pleasure.” He leaned over and let his tongue find her breast. Her skin tasted sweet and clean as he sucked her nipple into his mouth and let his teeth bite down lightly. He played for a minute before allowing the little berry to pop out of his mouth. With a quick turn of his hand, he placed the binder clip on her. He moved to the other nipple and gave it the same treatment and then stepped back. He was perfectly satisfied they wouldn’t cause damage, but she looked awfully cute in bondage, even off-the-fly, office-supply, perverted bondage.
And he’d spied something else in Nate’s desk. His boss liked to complain about people having sex in his office, but he obviously got plenty here himself since he had a tube of lube and a box of condoms stashed right next to his pencils and yellow legal pads. Logan knew damn well which items got used most often. Nate never took notes.
But first, he had to finish the story. “Stay still. You were right. This is calming me down. I’m not even tempted to haul ass out of here anymore. I like it here, but that day was rough on me. I still feel it in my bones.”
“But at least you’re talking about it now. You have to know that I love your scars. They mean that you’re alive.”
He shrugged out of his shirt, his fingers finding the circular scars there. “The bastard smoked. He burned me. That was some serious pain. Sit up. I want some therapy.” She’d started this, so she could handle what he needed. He helped her sit up, arranging her legs so he was in between them. “Kiss them, baby. You say they don’t bother you, but they bother me.”
She didn’t hesitate. She leaned forward and put her mouth right over the scar, her lips pressing to his skin.
This was what he needed. He didn’t need to walk the dungeon, finding comfort in every sub there. He just needed one sub. The right sub. The one who could make things bright again. His Georgia.
She kissed the burn scars across his chest, taking her time with each, her fingertips tracing the lines as though memorizing each one before she placed her lips over them—a benediction. With each kiss, each caress, he felt lighter, younger than before.