Two Week Stay-cation // (Logan, Veronica) PG-13
It wasn’t until Veronica stirred that he realized what he’d been doing. Moving in time with her slumbering breaths, his fingers were running up and down the track of her upper arm. A stream of goosebumps was churned up in their wake.
She rolled her shoulder, a thoughtless, reflexive movement. Sleepy eyes wandered around in a dizzy dance until they found him. “Logan?”
“You fell asleep,” he murmured, not knowing how to acknowledge his caressing.
One of those forehead wrinkles he adored. “What are you doing?” She glanced down at her shoulder and then back up to him.
“I don’t know.” For the most part, it was the truth. Clueless or not about his motivation though, he didn’t stop.
When she swung her right arm across her chest to apprehend his wandering troops, they repositioned to intercept her attack. Veronica watched as rather than being neutralized, his fingers threaded with hers. Then, hating to stand still when there was so much new terrain to explore, he began stroking the inner edge of her hand with his thumb.
Seconds slid by like raindrops down a window, traveling at a languid pace even though their movements were erratic and hurried. With the passing of each one, her breathing accelerated. The transition was quiet and gentle, but he could feel that every seed of warm air fired from beneath the sunflower on her chest was reaching him quicker than the one before it.
Confusion was being projected up at him in so many forms. Through cloudy eyes that saw him but didn’t, so busy trying to understand what was happening that they couldn’t function properly. From the ripples between her eyebrows that hadn’t dissipated since she first realized what he was doing. From the restless swinging of her jaw, as if she wanted to ask another question, but couldn’t get her vocal cords to work.
So as much as he was enjoying this moment, as much as he wanted to just wrap his arm around her waist and pull her on top of him, he forced himself to speak. His unruly squadron of digits was responsible for those grey skies staring up at him; the least he could do was make an attempt at shining some light through them.
One monumental problem with this decision though was that he hadn’t prepared for this. Didn’t know what he wanted to say or how he was going to say it. All he could do was hope that his brain managed to string the right words together. And that she wouldn’t go running for the pool house once he was finished.
“I’ve… been thinking a lot lately,” he began, keeping his gaze locked to hers like a bloodhound on a hot trail. He brought their joined hands to his lips, and pressed a firm kiss to her fingers. An eternity dragged by before he released her, his greedy lips wanting a thorough taste of her vanilla flesh.
“About?” The word cracked as it escaped from her windpipe.
“About you.” He twisted his wrist so that this time, he could paste a kiss to the back of her hand. Then he captured the tip of her thumb between his lips, slipping his tongue across the salty whorls. Veronica gasped. A shudder arced through her, electricity lancing down her spine and fizzling through her skin into his. “And me,” Logan finished, this time leaning down to kiss the outer ridge of her shoulder.
“Wow, Logan…” She laughed when he was upright again, the sound fluttering out of her like a butterfly. Weightless and delicate. “I have too. Been thinking, I mean,” she mumbled. “I just… I never thought in a million years that you would be… thinking. To be honest I’m half expecting to wake up in a few seconds, and half expecting all of our friends to jump out of the bushes with hidden cameras and start laughing.”
She was babbling… and he loved it. Didn’t know if he’d ever witnessed anything more adorable. “Well, believe me. You’re awake.” Gently, he extracted his fingers from their current assignment. Reaching up, he combed them through the foremost border of her hair then circled back around to cup her right cheek in his palm. Though it was faint, he felt her lean into his touch. His heart missed one or two beats before picking its stuttering rhythm up again. “And… You are definitely not on Candid Camera,” he assured her with a slight grin.
Itching to push farther into this new world they were discovering, he trailed his thumb across her lips. They fell open as she took in a sharp breath. Bumping into the opposite corner of her mouth, he pivoted and headed back to the starting gate. Only this time, halfway through its journey, she puckered against his fingerprint. He paused, holding it there.
Encouraged, Veronica repositioned her lips and kissed him again. Third time around, she mimicked his technique from earlier and tasted his skin with the tip of her tongue. She then retracted far enough to toss him a ‘how am I doing?’, nervous kind of smile.
Logan didn’t respond with words. He knew that anything he said would just sound patronizing. Or really, really lame. Instead, he moved in slowly, dispatching his thumb to stand with the rest of his hand, and held her steady as he kissed her left cheek.
He hovered over her then, nose brushing hers, treading in the ocean of her gaze, waiting for the moment when she gave him the cue to descend. There was a long hesitation though. Many instances where he saw her asking him to make the dive, but it was never quite there.
“Is everything… is this… okay?” he ventured, hoping he hadn’t just caused the spell around them to evaporate.
“I…” When she paused, he could see conflict boiling within her. Like she wanted to add something to this recipe they were preparing, but was worried that her chosen ingredient would spoil it.
“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” she finally admitted, the sentence vaulting out of her. She followed it with laughter, as if she was expecting him to do the same and had decided to dampen her humiliation by preempting his reaction.
Veronica must’ve been disappointed though, because he didn’t laugh. “I know,” he said gently, a smile playing with the corners of his mouth. As puny as they were though, those two words carried a whole novel’s worth of meaning. One whose pages he hoped she was reading. They said that she didn’t need to be embarrassed. He was aware of her lack of experience in this arena, and had still brought his lips close enough to hers that an ant could jump between them. They said she didn’t need to feel pressured; she could offer him no more than a peck on the cheek and it would be enough for him.
Of course, if things went farther than that…
Veronica returned his smile, put at ease by his response.
He watched as a fresh bottle of confidence scrubbed away the apprehensive film she was coated in. She blinked… and then he saw it. She was ready.
Part of him couldn’t help being amused at how much they were negotiating with each other. Using not one, but two languages- that of their bodies and their vocal cords -to communicate. All over a simple kiss. He was beginning to wonder, too, if that wasn’t part of what was attracting him to her in the first place.
A deep breath washed through him, replenishing his mind, heart, and muscles with oxygen. Preparing them to remember every detail of these next moments, and to execute them with expert accuracy. Fingers crawling to the rear edge of her jaw, he used that spot as a fulcrum to guide her forward, and swallowed her lips with his.
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Veronica’s heart stopped. Actually stopped. It was that split second of death that occurs just before an engine bursts to life, turning over at a ravenous pace. Jumping up to one, two, three thousand revolutions per minute. After that brief pause, her heart did the same thing, roaring and rattling against the bony cage of her chest.
Unsettled by the softball-sized organ nestled between them, her lungs began a marathon of their own. Thankfully, Logan had released her by this point, allowing her to gulp down the gallons of air demanded by the two heaving balloons.
Looking up at the catalyst for this physiological reaction, she smiled, part of her unable to believe that she’d just purchased her first kiss. With Logan Echolls. Lying on the lawn of his back yard at around three thirty in the morning on a weekday.
“I can’t believe this is hap-”
His finger fastened her lips together. “Less talking. More kissing.”
Their lips met again and again. Like two knights facing off at the beginning of a battle, each strike was different than the one before it; a chance for them to get to know each other. The union wasn’t always perfect or symmetrical. Once he missed her lips completely, instead catching the little stretch of skin just below her nose. She hit the corners of his mouth more than once. Some encounters were firm, while others had the touch of ballet slippers gliding across a dance floor.
“Okay so far?” he asked during a break in the action, referring back to the anxiety she’d expressed less than three minutes ago.
“Yeah.” Veronica nodded, body buzzing over their innocent lip locking. “Very.”
“Good.” He kissed her forehead and her nose. Pecked her lips again. “You ready to try something new?”
She hesitated, wondering what he meant by ‘new’. This ‘beast in the sack’, as Lilly had referred to him, could have a radically different definition of the word in comparison with hers.
“We’ll keep it above the neck, I promise.”
He was teasing her, just a bit. Still, she could see that he was telling the truth. “Okay.” She agreed partly because she wanted to, and partly because she was caught in a whirlpool of new thoughts and experiences and sensations. Now that she’d touched his skin with hers, in a way that was more than just two friends accidentally colliding with each other at the lunch table, she wanted more. Patches of flesh on her arms and legs were crying out, wondering why they weren’t getting attention. Her lips were tingling, blood pulsing through them. Kindling was being added to the small flame at the crux of her thighs, creating an ache that was familiar but far more powerful than she’d ever felt.
Sure, she could fight it, and maybe she should fight it. But it was so much easier to just let herself get pulled along. To slide down the drain and follow this tide of new sensations through its maze of turns even if she had no idea where they would lead her.
Logan flicked his thumb over her bottom lip, the fleshy tab flexing downward and then bouncing back up. Veronica was hauled out of her reverie by the electric flare of his touch. “Open your mouth,” he whispered.
Understanding that he was planning to take them from calm city roads to a roaring highway, she took a moment to prepare herself. To realize that this was about to go beyond simple sixth-grade spin-the-bottle contact. And that she could either lay here and continue to overanalyze every new move, making sure she signaled every turn and stopped at every intersection, or she could buckle up, strap on a helmet, and barrel past her caution and hesitation.
She decided on option B. To put her trust in Logan, even for just this night, and let him guide her to their new and undeclared destination. So after those few seconds of hesitation, she took a breath and then complied. Like a drawbridge revealing the entrance to a mighty castle, her jaw lowered. Puffs of warm air consumed the kingdom’s visitor, who was waiting just an inch away.
Sealing her mouth with his own, he reached out to slide his tongue along hers. A smooth, gentle paintbrush exploring a new canvas.
A jolt went through the center of her, diffusing through the rest of her body like a mug of warm cocoa. At the same time though, she began to giggle.
Logan broke away, a confused frown knitted to his brow. “What?”
She was vibrating beneath him, torso captured and now controlled by the amused noises sputtering out of her. “Nothing.” She attempted to appeal to him by laying a hand on his chest, a signal that she wasn’t laughing at him. “It just… That felt really weird.” Like her mouth had been invaded by a slug. “I’m sorry.”
Catching up to her, Logan joined in on the laughter. “It’s okay. I guess I forgot how weird it feels.”
“Been a while since your first kiss, huh?”
“A little.” He chuckled again, running his hand down her arm. “For future reference though, when you’re fooling around with a guy, he definitely won’t take it as a good sign if you burst out into uncontrollable giggles. Major mood killer.”
“Somehow I think I could’ve figured that one out on my own, but thanks.”
A bucket of cold air washed over her as he began rolling back onto the ground. Shivering at the sudden loss of his body heat, Veronica grabbed a chunk of his shirt to stop his progress. “Where are you going?”
“I thought… maybe you were done for the night. With this.”
“Hey.” She tugged him closer, glad to have her bio-furnace back. “You were the one who woke me up. Again. I was doing fine, napping out here on the grass.” Her eyes dropped, somewhat embarrassed to let the next words leave her lips. “Don’t you think… you should make it worth my while?”
The moment she looked up again, about to get his feedback about the movie-cliché lameness of her question, he descended. Her petite gasp of surprise allowed him the chance to skim his tongue over hers again, conditioning her to the tactile sensation. After a short period of this gentle exploration, Veronica decided to take action. She pushed back. Snuck her tongue underneath his, slid it up, and forced their dance onto his side of the floor.
He broke away again, this time just long enough to grin down at her.
Veronica grew braver second by second, mapping out the various quadrants of his mouth. She twirled her tongue around his, slid across the roof his mouth, peeked into the caverns of his cheeks. Logan only allowed her access for a short while though, and soon mounted his own defense.
Eventually, they were sparring with each other the same way they did every other moment they were together, except now they used a slightly different method.
He nipped her tongue and then her bottom lip, and a little mewl tumbled out of her. Energized by the sound, but both of them needing a chance to drink in some oxygen, he began biting and sucking and licking his way along the ridge of her jaw.
She panted as he traveled, fingers weaving into his hair, holding him to her.
He descended along her neck, following the line of her carotid artery. The pipe throbbed against his lips, mimicking the way her body was pulsing beneath him. Every now and then her hips would jump up, or her chest expanded enough that she could feel her nipples scrape against the fabric of her t-shirt. Veronica tried to keep the involuntary movements under control though, not knowing how much new stimulation she could handle. Eventually, he found his way to her ear, where he began nibbling her lobe, tongue surveying the new crests and valleys it found there.
“Logan,” she moaned, though it was barely above a whisper, the fingers of her left hand digging into his shoulder. Lightning was exploding in front of her eyes. Every nerve in her body was firing, some reporting excitation by his flesh and others begging for it. The main breakers were being thrown at several new outposts. The ticklish pink discs on her breasts, a pit deep in her gut, and the junction of her thighs. All of them were crackling with hot energy.
Hooking his arm under hers, he rolled back and pulled her on top of him. She braced herself by flattening both palms against his chest. A curtain of blonde tendrils surrounded them, and she did her best to push it out of the way without interrupting his musings at her ear and neck.
She was hungry to taste him again though. “Come here,” she demanded, turning her head to find his mouth. Their noses brushed, foreheads pressing together for an instant before they were reunited.
He held her head gently, hands getting lost in the wavy ocean of her hair. After a few more seconds of combat, Logan downshifted to a tranquil speed. He slid his tongue along hers in one long movement before breaking their seemingly endless kiss.
“Mmm…” Veronica purred as warmth melted through her, turning her muscles into gooey marshmallows. A contented sigh scurried out of her as she snuggled against his firm pectoral muscles, fingers toying with the collar of his shirt.
He curled his arm around her, hand cupping her shoulder. “So?”
She looked up, propping her chin on him. “So… what?”
“Was it worth your while for me to wake you up?”
Hiding her bashful smile, she tilted her head down so she was staring straight at his chest. “Yes,” she murmured. “Most definitely.” Looking up at him again, she found she was suddenly fighting against a set of anchors dangling on her eyelids.
“Wow.” He half laughed, his other hand coming to rest on the small of her back. “Either I’m way better at this than I realized… or it really is time for you to get to bed.”
“Mm. As much as I hate to admit it, I think you’re right,” she sighed, not sure how her body could go so quickly from a state where every piston was firing at maximum velocity to this lazy idle.
They sat up together, a clumsy mess of limbs that weren’t accustomed to being entangled. He was the first to stand, offering her both hands to help her in the same task. Walking back to the pool house, their fingers played together like a set of chimes in a gentle summer breeze. Barely touching, but each contact set off an echo that vibrated through them and the atmosphere.
Following Backup inside, Veronica pulled back the mess of covers she’d left behind, clearing a spot for her to enter the bed. She turned around to say good-bye, and was surprised to find Logan standing just inches away from her. He caught her cheeks in his hands and bent down to lay a chaste kiss across her lips.
“I want you to know,” he whispered, eyes bright. “That tomorrow morning I’m not going to regret a single second of what just happened.”
He kissed her again. Another long, burning kiss that set a brush fire roaring down her throat and into her core. It weakened her legs and made her fingers constrict around the fabric of his t-shirt, pulling him closer, doing anything to make it last.
“This wasn’t an accident,” he continued. His fingers skimmed over her ears and skated down the sides of her body. She felt them land at the edge of her shirt, and shivered as their icy tips snuck underneath and melted into her skin. “And it wasn’t a mistake.” His lips sewed a final button to her forehead before he broke away.
“Good night Logan.” She spoke just loud enough to let the true tones of her voice sneak through. It seemed an insufficient response, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. She was having enough trouble wrapping her mind around everything that had happened out in the yard. Absorbing the full impact of his most recent statement was just too much for her exhausted brain to handle.
Watching him leave, she didn’t climb into bed until he closed the back door of his house behind him. Buried under layers of cotton and goose down, she curled up next to her Pit Bull, and fell into a world of dreams that couldn’t hope to compare to the night she’d just had.
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Logan scaled the stairs to his bedroom, each footfall heavy.
Peeling away from Veronica just now had been like removing a band-aid. Nothing about it was pleasant, and his body screamed at him to stay, to just let the scrap of plastic remain. But he couldn’t. Veronica had needed him to go; she needed the space, the chance to process everything that had just occurred. So he’d kept pulling, until she was alone again, and he was back in his own house and his own bed.
Afterwards though, a quick reflection on all that had happened provided him with a cool balm for his stinging skin.
He’d kissed Veronica tonight. And she’d kissed him back. Several times. Which meant he finally had answers for all those questions he’d been asking himself.
Having found the cure for his insomnia, he plummeted into sleep.
(( End Chapter Six ))
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