Page 68 of Whenever You Call

But then her hand rested on my bare chest, and she leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Logan,” and my name had never sounded so fucking sweet in the last thirty years of my life.

I lifted my head instantly. “Hannah?” I croaked.

“Hey,”

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t sleep.”

I squinted harder, my sight adjusting just enough to see the outline of her flawless body as she knelt on the bed beside me. “Everything okay?”

“It will be… in a minute.”

She pulled the comforter back and slid her bare legs beside mine, the heat of her skin making my breath stick in my throat as I willed my heart to stop racing. She lifted my arm above her head and slipped into place until she was curled up beside me, eventually placing my arm back down around her shoulder so she could settle her cheek against my chest and wrap her arm around my waist.

I froze in place, not knowing what the hell to do. My body turned rigid beneath her, knowing this was a step too far, as my hand hovered over her hip, too scared to let it fall against her in case she screamed at me to let her go.

Guilt and confusion consumed me, churning me up inside. There was no way Hannah couldn’t feel it pouring out of me.

She wore some kind of nightdress that, thankfully, covered the most private parts of her body, but I could still feel her full breasts pressed against my skin. I felt her heart beating, and her warm, silky-smooth thighs tangled up next to mine.

I had to suppress a lethal groan that would have told her all too clearly how things were changing for me. How my thoughts were drifting into a territory I couldn’t pull them back from.

I should have pushed her off and told her she’d gotten it all wrong, that this wasn’t right, but then the memory of her tear-filled eyes came back to me, and I thought,if this is the one thing that I can give her tonight to make tomorrow easier, she can have it. She can have anything she desires of me, even if it eats me alive and buries me in my own shame the next morning.

My hand fell slowly toward her hip before resting there carefully, and she released a soft breath, her body relaxing beneath mine and her cheek nuzzling into my chest even more.

“I know I’m taking too much,” she finally whispered. “It’s something I’ve never really done before, but you make me feel like it isn’t a bad thing to tell you what I need, and I need this tonight, Logan. I need you to hold me.”

I’d become mute, too caught up in focusing on every point of contact where our bodies touched, desperate to stay in control and not grow hard or turned on beneath her.

Which seemed almost fucking impossible.

Hannah Moore was, without a doubt, the most gorgeous person I’d ever had the privilege of getting close to. I’d spent so long focused on respecting her, but now none of that seemed to matter when all the blood rushed to my groin, my every thought suddenly turning to a fantasy featuring her naked beneath me—my lips pressing promises of adoration against hers. Because if there was one thing I knew I was good at, it was worshiping a woman’s body—of fucking them into oblivion until they forgot their own name, leaving them with only one thing to focus on as they climbed higher and higher beneath my touch: me.

I hadn’t had sex in months, and that shit was starting to show.

I had to squeeze my eyes shut and force myself to breathe, which only sharpened my senses even more, making every place she touched me throb in delight.

“I figured holding me in the dark would be easier for you,” she said, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Why would you think that?” I croaked.

“Because, for some reason, you look ashamed of yourself every time you get too close, and I’ve already seen too much of that in my life. At least this way, I figure I still get to be in your arms, and you don’t have to hide yourself from me.”

If words could cause literal agony, Hannah had just wielded that weapon over me, and now my chest had been split in two, torn between protecting her, and protecting myself.

She was always going to win.

“What do you want from me, Hannah?”

“Just this,” she said, her arm tightening around my waist. “Human contact. Another thriving heartbeat next to mine. Another person’s sleeping breaths filling the air. Someone I trust. A friend.”

“A friend,” I repeated, trying to convince myself that’s what this was—that no other emotions were at play here because I had everything under control.

Like fuck you do,that inner voice of mine taunted.

This couldn’t go on.

---