Bad Love (Modern Romance Book 2) Read online

  “I’ve always wanted to do that. I’m not very good with geometry, but I love the colors and the animals you can make.” I smile. “We never had pets growing up, but I’d love to make a zoo of paper ones.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “Everything takes time. Especially when you have a kid.” He waits, and I find myself going on. “It’s okay though. You also get surprised by the most beautiful moments.”

  “Sounds special.”

  “It is.” I clear my throat, reminding myself to focus. "So, I asked Ben to work on making the vibe smart.”

  “Smart.”

  I tell him what we discussed, and the crinkles around his eyes ease a little, relief blending with admiration.

  “That’s genius, Peach,” he says, and I ignore the buzz down my spine at the praise and the nickname. “We need to give it an epic name.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “How about Pleasure Platinum?”

  “Maybe you should stick to naming beers.”

  He shrugs good-naturedly. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  I lean in, feeling the thrum of energy I haven’t felt all week in my veins. “I’m going to make this work, Logan. This product.” His jaw flexes despite his casual posture. “We’re going to make this happen. We’re going to win your bet.”

  I had no intention of uttering such a promise, but the look of trust and gratitude on his face makes it worthwhile.

  “I know we will.”

  By the time our lunches arrive, I wish the café would drop away and leave us in this bubble of possibility.

  I force myself to pick up my fork and refocus. “So, with the product in good hands, now I’m trying to line up advertising. I have a few opportunities, but there’s one big fish I’m trying to land.”

  “It’s not working,” he guesses.

  “It will,” I decide, determined. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Tell me.” It’s his boardroom voice, the one commanding enough to work on a subconscious level before I can even think of denying.

  “It's called The Future of Sex show. And it's exactly the right time.”

  As we eat, I fill him in on the details. Why this could be an amazing opportunity. How it’s perfect in every way.

  “But when I reach out to them,” I say as I set down my fork midway through my salad, “they turn me down, say their advertiser spots are full.”

  Logan finishes his wrap and wipes his hands on his napkin before pulling out his phone. He enters a few things, then scrolls through. “But the website says they’re still looking for advertisers.”

  Indignation works through me. “Exactly. That’s what I told them, but I haven’t gotten a straight answer."

  Logan studies me. "You really want this advertiser?"

  “With the amount of foot traffic they have, we could move half your target in one weekend.”

  He balls up the napkin and drops it on the table, a wicked gleam in his eye. "Then let's go get them."

  When Hunter and I go to the headquarters of the Future of Sex publication—the one responsible for the trade show—and get admitted, I tell the woman at the desk who I am. She grudgingly says we can have five minutes with the team between meetings.

  To my surprise, when I turn back for Hunter, he shakes his head. “You’ve got this.”

  He runs his hands down my arms and gives me a smile that sends my pulse skittering before I go inside where two men are seated at a conference table. I introduce myself, and recognition sets in on one of their faces.

  I explain what I said on the phone. "Our product would be perfect. What's the advertiser fee?"

  They exchange a look. "We looked up your firm and client list. I doubt it's within your firm's budget."

  My teeth grind together. "Well, I won't know until you tell me."

  They exchange a smirk. “It doesn’t sound like the right fit.”

  And that's when I realize—they're being sexist about sex toys.

  Unbelievable.

  I go back to the door, letting out a grunt of frustration.

  Hunter catches my eye from across the waiting room, lifting a brow. I don’t like looking weak, but I can’t hide the desperation on my face. We need this advertiser.

  In two seconds, he's on his feet and across the waiting area, following me into the conference room. He stops in front of the table, looking between the men with the kind of confidence I couldn’t buy.

  "Gentlemen. Logan Hunter." His voice drips charm, and I can't help watching in admiration. Hunter's commanding in a way that doesn't put off the other men.

  "Wait, I recognize you. You're the beer guy," one of the men says after a minute.

  "I am. I’m sure I could send you a case." He grins. "But let’s focus on one thing at a time. As my colleague no doubt explained, this will be a product for women. It'll incorporate the latest technology. It’s called Pleasure Platinum."

  I bite my cheek as Logan spins through the product information, remembering precisely what I told him at lunch. I knew he was a good listener, but this is next level. It’s like he’s taken it and twisted it into exactly what the men want to hear. I see it on their faces even before they exchange a look.

  "You’re a difficult man to turn down, Mr. Hunter. Let's do it."

  One of the men holds out a hand for Hunter to shake, but Hunter only stares at it.

  Do it, I'm hissing inside.

  But Hunter’s smile falls away, his posture stiffening in a subtle way I notice only because I know how relaxed he usually is. When he speaks, his voice is flat. "So, you'll make an exception for me but not for her."

  My jaw drops.

  The gaze of one of the men flickers between us, but the other man chuckles. "You know how it is. This is a competitive industry. Need to make sure our advertisers are ready to play ball with the big boys." He winks.

  Hunter meets my gaze, and I wish I could decipher the hard look on his face.

  He turns back to the men and leans his clenched fists on the desk. "Go fuck yourself. Given your line of business, that should come naturally."

  I jog past the stunned admin, chasing Hunter out the front doors. "What the hell was that?" He holds the door to the car for me as the sunshine makes me squint.

  I slide in, still numb, staring at the raised privacy screen that makes the back feel like we’re in our own world. “You realize that was our best chance of making the sales target?” My throat burns. “What if everything you’ve worked for just went up in flames?”

  Hunter’s head drops back against the headrest, the fury from a second ago still smoldering behind his eyes. “My mom and grandmother run into assholes who won’t do business with women. I refuse to support it. No matter how integral they think they are. No business is too big to fail.” He cuts a look out the window at the building we left behind. “And no person is too important for basic decency.”

  He meets my gaze again with an earnestness that has my breath sticking in my chest. My tongue darts out to lick my lips.

  I didn't need him to stand up for me.

  He did it anyway.

  I can't remember the last time someone did that. About anything.

  I’ve been trying to push him away, but in this moment, I can’t remember why.

  His gaze works over mine, and he sees something in it that makes him still. "Kendall—"

  I cut off his words with a kiss.

  Not because Bad Kendall’s clawing at the roof of the box I’ve shut her in, dying for a hit of Hunter-brand sexiness. Because the feeling inside me after what he did for me is too huge to be contained.

  Hunter sucks in a startled breath that ends on a groan, his fingers threading in my hair as I slant my mouth over his.

  If there’s a right way to kiss, I don’t know what it is. He doesn’t seem to mind the way I’m pouring myself into him, expressing with my lips and tongue what I can’t with my voice.

  I don’t know how long we kiss, but when I
pull back, his eyes are dark, his breathing rough. The car conducts its dance of start-and-stop through the gridlock of Manhattan traffic around us.

  “It’ll take at least twenty minutes to get back.” The low murmur is mine.

  Desire and wariness fight in his dark gaze. “You sure?”

  I nod.

  Hunter grunts against my lips as I drop my mouth back to his, pressing myself against his erection.

  I don’t know what I’m doing, but for the first time in a long time, I’m okay with that.

  I feel more myself with him. Braver. Bolder.

  But before I can get too cocky, his hands jerk my shirt from my belt, making my pulse skitter.

  I meet him touch for touch. My hands caress his abs, the hard ridges of muscle, in a way I’ve been dreaming about all week.

  Getting myself off in that bathroom under his hooded gaze was one thing. But every fantasy since has involved his hands on me. His mouth.

  His cock inside me.

  I haven’t even seen his dick, and I haven’t wanted to see one since that curious high school phase.

  I want to see his.

  I want to learn it with my eyes, to graze it with my fingers.

  I want to kiss it. To suck it. To know how it tastes and to hear what sounds he makes the moment I find out.

  I moan against his mouth, pressing my center against him.

  There’s a flinty understanding that's more than skin deep as Hunter cups my breasts as if I’m all he needs, playing with my nipples until they're hard as glass.

  "Didn't know random acts of feminism were the way to your heart, Peach," Hunter rasps into my neck as his touch moves up my body.

  "That's not my heart, Hunter."

  His appreciative chuckle lights me up. All I want is to show him how much I want him.

  The daughter, the mother, the professional… all of them want to be here, over him, under him, and see what we can make together.

  Hunter runs a finger from my navel to my hip, trailing between my thighs. I bite my tongue, but the gasp slips out anyway. His touch inches closer, slowing.

  Too slow, I want to scream.

  His smug mouth tugs up as if he knows. When his fingers slip under my panties and he groans at what he finds, I go from out of control to delirious.

  "Fuck, you're sweet," he murmurs. I imagine I hear the click of that barbell, as if his tongue's as thick as his cock.

  Each line he paints down my wet slit, each circle of his thumb, has my body clenching.

  I've never been touched like this. Not by anyone.

  "I'm gonna taste you," he promises. "See if you're like peaches everywhere."

  I want him to.

  I’m lost in the feel of his hard body leaping beneath my hands. I reach for his pants, desperate, and work down the zipper. My breathing stops as I part the fabric and reach for him, too needy to be self-conscious.

  What.

  The.

  My fingers close around him, and I pull him out.

  He's hard and thick, and judging from the bead of liquid at his tip, he’s ready for so much more than my shaking hands.

  But not every beautiful thing in the world is meant to fit inside a woman’s body, and for a moment, I doubt myself.

  Logan doesn’t notice. He shifts up, and we manage to get a condom out of his wallet.

  Once he's covered, he adjusts my hips over him.

  I’m about to ask him to go slow when I realize my panties are still on. I reach for them, but he stops me.

  "Leave them." I hear the smile in his voice. "I like the idea that I can't wait to get you naked to fuck you."

  My gaze jerks to his, floored by the word “fuck” from his lips. "Even if it's not true?"

  When I feel him brush between my thighs, I still. Not fingers. Bigger.

  "Says who?"

  "Hunter—"

  Before I can get out the words to stop him, he's pulling me down on him.

  Oh my God.

  Every inch sliding inside me has my eyebrows shooting up to my hairline.

  When he finally stops, my body's spasming around him, my fingers digging into his shoulders until they're white.

  Hunter's lips brush my ear, the piercing making me gasp and clench around his cock. “Can I tell you a secret? Your notebook’s full of shit. Rainbows aren’t nature’s gold.” I pull back enough to look in his wicked eyes. “This is.”

  He thrusts into me one, twice.

  I'm helpless. Out of control. I’m fighting it, fighting him, arching away, even as he finds a rhythm that has me trembling.

  His shoulders are tight, his hands gripping my hips. But it's his face that affects me. The tightness in his jaw, the parting of his mouth as he watches what he's doing.

  What we're doing.

  His chin lifts as if he senses my attention, and he goes still, his gaze working over mine. “You okay, Peach?”

  Okay. What is “okay”?

  I forget what it means, and I don’t care. What I am is full. Full of Logan Hunter. Because he’s inside me.

  I have a foot cramp, and we’re in the back of a limo, and Logan Hunter’s cock is beautiful and inside me.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  Relief edges into his expression. Then he leans forward to press his lips against my throat.

  I love knowing I can take this man, who’s so self-assured and easygoing in public, and make him vulnerable.

  My eyes fall closed, and I shiver against the coarse scrape of his stubble. The feel of his warm breath on my skin has me relaxing a degree. Enough for me to melt around him. He keeps dropping kisses across my neck, my jaw, and my muscles unclench one by one.

  Until he rasps, "Can you take more?"

  There's more? But I realize I'm nodding when he tugs my hips forward.

  It changes the angle, and he's going deeper.

  "Oh, Logan, where are you putting that?" I mumble. It’s embarrassing, but my verbal filter seems to have deserted me around the time he pressed inside me.

  "Breathe, sweetheart," he murmurs, chuckling.

  I feel him everywhere. I can't speak. But I have to breathe, I reason, because otherwise he'll split me in two.

  My finger traces the leather seat behind his head, needing something that’s not his wild male heat to ground me. To remind me I’m still me.

  Gradually, the feeling changes inside me. Morphs from fear and nerves into need, blinding in its simplicity and audacity.

  And the second I get comfortable, he’s moving. Short, determined strokes I sense aren’t as long as he’d like, given where we are.

  His hands dig into my ass, my skirt bunched around my waist, but it’s his lips on my collarbone that distract me. As if he’s containing all of me between his hips and hands and mouth, and when that smooth metal drags over my skin, my eyes roll back.

  I feel myself squeeze him, and he groans. “Shit, you’re so damned tight. You go, I’m coming with you."

  It’s a warning as every press of his body builds me up, spins me tighter. It's all I can think about. He thrusts again, making me gasp, my eyes squeezed shut.

  His hand finds my hair, tugging my head back to meet his filthy gaze. His forehead’s damp with sweat—his or mine, I don’t know. I come like that, my body arched, his eyes full of sex and heat.

  I clench around his cock and feel his groan as much as I hear it. The shockwaves of pleasure roll over me, starting at my core and radiating through every nerve in my fingers, my toes.

  Then Hunter's coming too. I feel heat deep inside me, the shaking of his hard thighs against my ass. The hand in my hair loosens, and I collapse forward.

  I'm wrecked. I might have marks from him on the outside, but none of that registers as deeply as the satisfaction on the inside that's new.

  It's startlingly intimate, his breath mingling with mine as we stare at each other through half-lidded eyes.

  Hunter and I…

  No.

  But we did, and it was…

&nbs
p; Wow.

  We're still like that when my phone rings.

  I almost hit Dismiss, but it's a ringtone I rarely hear. "Hello?"

  "Your mother. She's fallen. She was so disoriented.”

  I'm scrambling off Hunter, his gaze looking surprised, as my father's voice comes through the phone.

  His panic is horrifying. I’ve never heard my dad sound this scared.

  “I didn't know who else to call. Your brothers aren’t around—"

  “Of course, Dad. Just take a breath. It’s going to be fine.” I'm adjusting my clothes as fast as I can. "I'll be right there."

  I hang up, righting my shirt and tucking in the hem.

  "What is it?" Hunter demands, reaching for my arms. "Slow down."

  I can't feel his hands because my body's numb. "An accident. My mom had a fall. She was disoriented."

  "Broken bones? A concussion? Stroke?" Hunter rattles off half a dozen questions that have me shaking my head and squeezing my eyes shut.

  "I don't know. But I have to go."

  The car stops, and I buzz down the window to see we've arrived at our destination. I shoot straight up. "Rory. I can't get him from school."

  Hunter follows me out of the car, adjusting his own clothes somewhere along the line, and shadows me while I call Rory's after-school care. She tells me she can't keep him late tonight. I try Rena too but don't get an answer. She's probably in meetings.

  "I can do it."

  I turn to see Hunter's serious face. "Do what?"

  "Watch Rory tonight."

  I stare him down.

  It's wrong to even consider it. But by the time I get there and come back, it'll be dinner time. Rory's in school, then at after-school care until five.

  He'd only be with Hunter for an hour. Two tops.

  I'm low on options.

  And if I call the school and explain to Rory, he'll understand.

  Time's ticking away.

  I hit a contact on my phone, my gaze locked on Hunter's.

  15

  The door I knock on is black set against yellow painted brick, with a sign that says, "Bumblebee Childcare.”

  The woman who opens it looks to be in her sixties, with fluffy gray hair that she pats as she takes me in. "Hello—oh, my."

  Her gaze sweeps me, and when it returns to my face, it’s full of appreciation.