Insider (Exodus End #1)(87)
Author: Olivia Cunning

“Unlike Logan,” Steve claimed. “He’ll fuck anyone.”

So that was why guys picked fights with Steve.

“Including me,” Toni said. Logan couldn’t see her face and couldn’t tell by her voice if she was upset or not. “Boy, he must have low standards.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Steve said, reaching across the table to squeeze Toni’s hand.

He was really asking for an ass-beating now. No one touched Toni but Logan.

“Get your hands off of her,” Logan growled.

“Or you’ll do what?” Steve asked.

“Introduce your face to the bottom of my shoe.”

Dare sighed and shook his head. “We get it, Logan. She’s yours. You don’t have to lift your leg and piss on her.”

Max chuckled. “I’m actually enjoying this. How often do we get to tease Logan about his feelings for a woman?”

That’s it, I’m going to have to kick all their asses. The queue for ass-whippings starts here.

Toni lifted a hand to cover his. He hadn’t realized he was squeezing her shoulder so tightly until her gentle touch brought attention to it. He immediately loosened his hold and tried to smooth out any damage.

“He doesn’t have feelings for me,” Toni said. “We’re justfriends.”

She was so very wrong about that, but he was still too much of a chicken shit to correct her. Why were jumping out of airplanes and doing back flips on his dirt bike and playing concerts in front of a hundred thousand people easier than telling this sweet woman that he was over the moon for her? It made no fucking sense to him, but it was a fact. Sharing how he felt terrified him to the bone.

“Of course he doesn’t,” Steve said, laughing hysterically.

Several hours later, they left the tour bus parked in the lot behind the arena and a limousine shuttled the band members and their weekend luggage to the hotel—because limousines were far less noticeable than tour buses. Right. Logan convinced Toni to leave her cameras and recording devices locked under the bus, but she insisted on bringing her laptop in case she had time to make progress on her book. Logan, however, was determined that she wouldn’t have a second to spare on work. Tonight and tomorrow were all about play.

“It doesn’t feel right to make someone else do my laundry,” Toni said on the elevator after Logan had collected his room keys from Butch.

She’d wanted to bring her dirty clothes so she could head off to a laundry and wash them. She wouldn’t have time for that nonsense either.

“It’s not a big deal. We pay someone to come clean up after us on every off day. It’s their job. You wouldn’t want to deny them their job, would you?”

“I suppose not, but I should at least pay them out of my own pocket.”

Logan chuckled. Then he brushed her hair behind her ear with one hand. “I don’t think they’ll notice a few extra socks in the mix. Unless they drive themselves batty wondering why the mates to those socks have vanished.”

“I hope they don’t discard them. My sister would be so upset.”

“Your sister?”

She pushed her glasses up her nose with the back of her wrist. “It wouldn’t interest you.”

“When are you going to figure out that everything about you interests me?”

Her slight smile and the blush on her smooth cheeks made him want to kiss her.

“Birdie had a very hard time learning how to dress herself,” Toni said. “One morning she came into my room before the sun had risen, so proud of herself for having picked out her clothes and put them on without help. Her striped shirt was on backwards and her floral print leggings were wrong side out and she had on two different socks.”

The look of love on Toni’s face as she talked about her younger sister made Logan’s heart swell. He wondered if anyone would ever wear that expression while thinking of him.

“I was tired and not ready to get out of bed yet, so I told her she’d done a good job but her socks didn’t match. I was hoping she’d let me sleep a while longer, to be honest. So off she went to find matching socks. But then she couldn’t find the mates, and she was so upset. I helped her search and we eventually found them in my sock drawer. I put them on as a joke and it made her so happy that we were both mismatched, but matching, that it became a regular thing. Every time we go to a store we buy several pairs of socks and divvy them between us. That way we’re always mismatched but matching. It makes Birdie giddy.”

Logan kissed her forehead. “And here I thought you were just quirky.”

She grinned up at him. “I’m plenty quirky,” she said, “but mostly I’m a slave to the happiness of those I love.”

She said the word love so freely, he had no doubt she felt it deeply. And he envied her for both abilities. The elevator doors opened on the top floor just in time to stop him from spouting some sentimental bullshit he was sure to regret saying later.

“This is a nice hotel,” she said, studying the narrow corridor. “Which room is mine?”

“You’re staying with me.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

She poked him in the gut. “Yep.”

He released an exaggerated sigh. “I thought I was going to have to resort to jerking off.”

“You can still do that,” she said so quietly, he almost hadn’t heard her.

“You’d like to watch, wouldn’t you?”

She shrugged, but he remembered what had happened the last time he’d stroked his cock in her presence. She’d become a self-taught expert at sixty-nine.

“I know it turns you on.” He slipped his key card into the slot on his door, glad the rest of the band had decided to stop at the restaurant for dinner before heading to their rooms. With the exception of a rather discreet member of their security team camped out next to the elevator, the corridor was empty. “What else turns you on, Toni?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, scowling with introspection. “I do plan to find out tonight.”

“And all day tomorrow.”

“I doubt we’ll need the extra day to figure it out. I’m not all that complicated.”

“You’re the most complicated woman I ever met,” he said as he opened the door to their room.

She laughed when some of the balloons blocking their entrance floated out into the hall. “Is this the right room?”