Page 25 of Walk Through Fire


  God, was I.

  We were again on our sides and Logan threw a thigh over my legs, pinning me, hindering my movements so I couldn’t help. What he was doing to me was all him.

  Better.

  Oh God.

  So… much… better.

  “Logan,” I whimpered.

  “Breathless, Millie?”

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  He drove his fingers deep and pressed hard with his thumb.

  I shoved my face deeper into his neck and dragged my nails down his back.

  “Logan,” I wheezed.

  “Now I got it,” he growled, rolled into me, his fingers gliding out.

  I opened my legs and felt his cock glide in.

  “Oh yes,” I whispered as he rode me, slow and gentle. I slid a hand up his spine into his hair and wrapped my other arm at an angle across his back. “More, Low.”

  He kissed me, long and wet, but that was all the more he gave.

  So when he broke the kiss, I lifted my knees and begged, “Please, more, baby.”

  He buried his face in my neck and worked his mouth there, still thrusting his cock deep, rhythmic, but slow, his hand gliding up my side and in. His finger and thumb finding my nipple and rolling gently.

  Torture.

  I’d take it.

  I’d kill for it.

  Die for it.

  Anything for a million more moments like this or anything I could get with Logan.

  But still, I needed more.

  “Snooks.” I swung my feet in, digging my heels in his ass and using him to lift up. “More.”

  I didn’t need my second word.

  On my first, he went faster, pounding, like he’d lost control.

  Then he took my mouth and I knew he’d lost control.

  And there it was. What we’d had while playing our game. What we’d always had. Never going through the motions. Connecting fiercely, even savagely, with a hunger that couldn’t be quenched. Clutching, thrusting, gasping, grunting, scratching, clamping, joining.

  “Logan!” I cried, and felt his hand in my hair tug sharply, yanking my head back and it began to move over me.

  “Never forget, Millie.” His voice scratched the words into the skin at my throat. “Never forget this ever.”

  I would have given him my assurances that forgetting what we were sharing was an impossibility, but I couldn’t.

  The best orgasm I’d had in my life was rocking through me, shaking me to my core, embedding itself into my soul so there was no way I could forget.

  I endured it gladly, gripping his hair, clenching him to me every way I could, every way, and heard his grunts of exertion as I felt him pound deep, God, straight through me. Like his cock drove through my gut, my heart, right to my throat before he lodged himself inside. His head jerked back, his body shuddering, rooted in mine, covering mine, wrapped in mine, and I absorbed his orgasm with every part of me.

  Finally, he collapsed on me and I took his weight, all of it, and I did it knowing he could never move and I’d be happy. He could squeeze the breath out of me and I’d be happy.

  I had him back, really back, and if it was only just this once, I’d be happy.

  His hand relaxed in my hair so I could right my head and he slid his mouth to my ear.

  “You love me, Millie?” he whispered there.

  I closed my eyes and clenched him tight to me.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “You always loved me?” he asked.

  I clutched him so tight it was like I was trying to fuse with him.

  “Yes, Low.”

  “You wake up every day knowin’ you’ll love no other man but me?”

  A tear I couldn’t control slid out of the side of my eye.

  He’d done that for me.

  And I’d done it for him.

  And he deserved to know it.

  “Yes, baby.”

  He lifted his head and looked at me through the moonlight.

  “Then whatever you were thinkin’ starin’ at the snow, stop it. We lost each other. Now we’re found. And nothin’ else matters.”

  He believed that.

  Me?

  God.

  I just hoped it was that easy.

  “Okay, Logan,” I whispered.

  “Okay,” he whispered back, moved in and kissed me.

  He took his time, it was long and deep and wet and sweet. And even if he hadn’t given me all the words he’d given me just then and during our day together, that kiss would have said it all.

  So no, oh no.

  I’d never forget this.

  Not in my life.

  And when he broke the kiss, he swept his thumb across my lips like he was trying to seal the memory of it there.

  He didn’t have to.

  Then he asked, “You wanna clean up?”

  I wasn’t leaving his arms until I had to.

  “You can sleep in the wet spot,” I teased.

  I heard humor in his voice when he muttered, “I’ll get a cloth.”

  He hated the wet spot.

  Crazy, but I loved having that back.

  “It’s late, or super early. You’ll crash. You won’t even know it,” I told him, holding on even when he was trying to separate.

  “Won’t take a second,” he muttered in reply.

  All teasing was gone when I declared, “Logan, you leave me, I’ll shoot you.”

  He stilled.

  “Though, I don’t have a gun but metaphorically I’ll shoot you,” I went on stupidly.

  He didn’t move or speak.

  “I’ll sleep in the wet spot,” I gave in.

  He rolled us to our sides, his cock sliding out but he kept his hips between my legs so his weight was resting on my thigh.

  I didn’t care. My leg could fall asleep, all blood circulation curtailed, and I’d deal to keep him wrapped in me.

  He reached out and jerked up the covers.

  He was settling in.

  I wanted him where he was but this was a surprise. And I might want him where he was but I wanted him to want to be where he was more.

  “We sleep like this, I’m gonna leak on you,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t care.”

  What?

  He’d always cared.

  “You find the drip irritating.” I told him something he knew because he always dealt with these matters for precisely that reason.

  “Right now, don’t care,” he returned.

  I sighed. “I’ll go clean up.”

  His arms around me tightened. “Babe, you leave me, I’ll shoot you and I do have a gun.”

  I stilled.

  “Christ, it’s ten your body clock’s time, middle of the night my time,” he declared. “I fucked you hard, gonna crash in ’bout three seconds you shut up. I crash, I won’t feel shit.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled. “Okay.”

  “So shut up and drift,” he ordered.

  Yes, years ago, I found the bossy hot.

  Now it was kind of annoying.

  Hmm.

  At first I shut up because I didn’t have anything to say.

  Then I had something to say so I stopped shutting up.

  “You own a gun?”

  “Own five, only got one with me. And you know I own guns, Millie. Owned three when we lived together.”

  This was true.

  “You have one with you?”

  “Millie.”

  “What?”

  “How about we talk about this tomorrow when my cum isn’t drippin’ on me, irritatin’ as fuck?”

  “I can go clean up, Logan,” I noted again.

  He sighed, heavy and deep.

  I shut up again.

  It was then, with the reference to him having a gun, it occurred to me in all that happened, he didn’t know Benito Valenzuela visited me.

  “Logan?” I called.

  “I’d stop her talkin’ by fuckin’ her face but fuck if I don’t have that in me right now so do I
stick a sock in her trap or listen to her babble?” he asked no one because he certainly didn’t say that shit to me.

  I forgot about Benito and snapped, “Stick a sock in my trap?”

  “Millie, it’s two in the mornin’. Even when I was twenty-four, after fuckin’ you hard, I needed some shut-eye before I had another go at you.”

  This was true. Though those were catnaps and I usually stirred him from them with blowjobs.

  A point to ponder.

  “No clue how,” he muttered grouchily. “But forgot how much you liked my dick.”

  “I’m not angling for more sex, Logan.”

  “You pushed my buttons back in the day, babe, what’d you get?”

  Oh man.

  I got fucked.

  Logan used sex for a variety of purposes, including ending fights, getting me out of bad moods, or turning the tables on a discussion he found aggravating.

  I shut up.

  Logan was silent.

  I was the same.

  Then the bed started shaking and it wasn’t me doing it.

  “Logan?” I called.

  He pulled me deeper into him and his voice was unsteady with his laughter when he said, “Fuck, it’s so good to have my girl back, it’s not fuckin’ funny.”

  God.

  I loved that.

  Loved it.

  Maybe we could do this. Maybe it was going to be that easy.

  I melted in his arms and started to stroke his shoulders.

  “Go to sleep, Low,” I whispered.

  He found my mouth, touched his to it, then settled back in.

  “’Night, beautiful. Drift good.”

  I smiled, pushing in closer, my face at the base of his throat where I kissed him.

  “’Night,” I whispered against his skin. “Sleep well.”

  “Tangled in you, only good sleep I’ve had for twenty years.”

  It was no surprise I felt the same, which made it even more unfortunate mine was messed up with jet lag.

  I closed my eyes and snuggled deeper, shifting my hand to play with the ends of his hair.

  I felt him enter dreamland and he did it rolling into me so I was to my back, his weight was partly to my side, but his hips were still between mine, his face in my neck.

  I pulled the covers up over his shoulders, then kept playing with the ends of his hair, feeling him, smelling him, holding him…

  And lying in the wet spot.

  I tamped down my giggles.

  Then, later, I finally fell asleep.

  High

  When he heard his phone ring, High opened his eyes, seeing, smelling, and feeling Millie.

  This meant for the first time in two decades, Logan “High” Judd woke up smiling.

  He heard his phone stop ringing, and although he wanted to stay right where he was, he couldn’t.

  He had to get up, check his phone, and if it wasn’t who he thought it was, he had to make a call and do it while his girl was asleep.

  It wasn’t that he wanted to hide that from Millie. It was just that he needed to introduce it to her slow-like.

  One thing was certain from the last two days. He had to handle Millie with care. He had to pay attention. As they rode out their reunion, he had to have total focus on her even when he had other important things in his life that needed his focus.

  This was because he needed to take care of her.

  It was also because he was not about to let anything spook her so she slipped through his fingers again.

  So he carefully extricated himself from her, exited the bed, made sure she was covered, and found his briefs. He yanked them on, and his jeans, pulling his phone out of his back pocket.

  He checked the screen.

  The call didn’t come from who he thought it came from.

  It came from Tack.

  Tack could wait. The call he needed to make couldn’t.

  He went to the bathroom, took a piss, washed his hands, brushed his teeth, and came back out to the bedroom. Eyes to Millie curled up in bed looking peaceful, his lips curved up. Then he nabbed the Henley he wore the day before off the floor and tugged it on as he walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  He started to make coffee at the same time he hit the buttons on the phone and put it to his ear.

  He’d called her yesterday, before Millie got up and again after Millie crashed the first time.

  And he’d learned from Deb that his girls were disappointed the snow came right before a weekend so they were shut in but not shut out of school.

  Though, Deb reported they had plenty of food and all was good.

  The second time he phoned, he’d talked to his girls, both now ecstatic about the snow, both wanting him to come over so they could go out and do shit in it.

  He couldn’t and he lucked out when he heard Deb say in the background, “I know you want to see your dad but I also know you don’t want him driving in this snow. It’s dangerous. You can see him after the roads are cleared.”

  With her doing it, he didn’t have to say no to his babies, something he found difficult to do, which in turn didn’t make Deb happy.

  On this thought, after pouring the water in the coffeemaker, he was shoving the pot under when she picked up.

  “Hey, High,” Deb greeted.

  She’d always called him High. Not once did she call him Logan. She knew his name—it was on their marriage certificate, their kids’ birth certificates—but he’d introduced himself to her at the bar where they met as High and he’d never been anything but all the time they were together.

  Truth be told, not many people called him Logan anymore. Even his mom and dad had reverted to using High most of the time.

  So that had become Millie’s.

  And now he had her back so he had Logan back.

  There was something significant about that that he wasn’t going to sift through while on the phone with Deb.

  But he understood it. He remembered the man he was before her, with her.

  He also knew the man he became when he lost her.

  Having that name back was like having that man back. Washing away the shit of his life without Millie and starting clean.

  It would take more than that but that didn’t mean it didn’t feel fucking great.

  “Hey, Deb,” he replied. “The girls good?”

  “They’re hoping for more snow so school will be canceled tomorrow,” she told him. “But it’s good. They’re clearing the roads. Company sent us home on Friday, so I’ll probably need to go in this afternoon to do some catch-up so I’m not swamped on Monday. But Mom said she could come around and look after the girls when I do.”

  Deb had a great job, made good money as the manager of the shipping department of a computer parts factory in town. They had five factories all over the world and were corporate through and through, but they weren’t assholes, which was good in times like these since they did shit like send her home when a storm got bad.

  And he knew Deb’s mom, Connie, would look after the girls. Her son had taken a job in Idaho, married a woman there, had kids there. Her other daughter had moved to Alabama when her husband had been transferred, and obviously their kids went with them. So Connie only had Cleo and Zadie to shower with love and attention and she had a lot of both for her grandbabies and she did it as often as she could.

  High liked Connie. She was a good woman. Her husband had walked out on her when her kids were young and then did only the minimum of what a father should do for his kids financially and to be in their lives, so it was all on her to raise them and do it right.

  This had been one of the reasons why Deb had accepted his ring. It wasn’t lost on her how hard it was for her mother to do what she did for her children. She didn’t want that for herself or her own kids.

  So she took his ring and the only way that didn’t end as a massive fuckup was that they had Zadie and they both loved their girls.

  “Cool,” he muttered, pouring beans into the gr
inder, then setting the bag aside. “Got somethin’ goin’ down but would like to see ’em tomorrow.”

  “That works, High,” she replied.

  He drew in breath and looked out the window over Millie’s sink that showed a view of her courtyard and his truck, all covered in snow.

  It was gorgeous.

  And looking at it, it struck him some of the changes in his Millie, some of the things she’d built along the way, absolutely did not suck.

  And looking at it, after what had happened the last two days, what they’d lost, he knew he couldn’t dick around.

  So he lowered his voice when he went on.

  “Also need for us to have a conversation, private. You and me, not the girls. Nothin’ bad. Just need to talk to you about something.”

  There was barely a beat of pause before she stated, “You’re with someone.”

  He felt his head jerk in surprise at her jumping right to that.

  Then he asked, “You talk to an old lady?”

  He heard her laugh. It wasn’t filled with humor. It wasn’t bitter either. Deb was and always had been no-nonsense. Almost emotionless. Definitely passionless. She didn’t get bitter.

  She loved her girls. Like any good mother, like her mother taught her, she showered love and attention (and when it was needed, discipline) on her daughters.

  Other than that, there was nothing there.

  “A Chaos old lady phoning me to gossip?” she asked, then continued, “I don’t think so.”

  He should have known.

  She was not a fan of Chaos. Therefore, Chaos were not fans of Deb.

  He turned his back to the window and rested his hips against the counter. “Well, I can confirm it’s that.”

  “You’re a free agent, High,” she pointed out.

  Yeah.

  Passionless.

  She was the same kind of lay. She got the job done. But there was nothing else to it.

  She did her wifely duties. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t shit, it was never close to what he had with Millie back in the day and now, but he’d never stepped out on her. No one caught his eye to push him even to considering it.

  But even if it had, he wouldn’t have done that to Deb. A man was any man at all, no matter what was going down at home, he didn’t fuck over the mother of his children in any way, but especially not that way.

  So he didn’t.

  Another reason why they finished things. Not because she wanted to find something good. Not because she gave enough of a shit about him that she wanted him to find that for himself.