Addiction

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Lugging the huge carryall through the front door, Logan wondered what his stepsister would call a big bag – this thing weighed a tonne. He rubbed his tired eyes as he looked up, seeing her reflection in the glass wall to the rear of the house. Her dark blond hair fanned out around her in soft waves as she lay sprawled on his couch in a tangle of limbs.

Feelings of protectiveness welled up in him as he scooped her up, cradling her slight weight in his arms. He would kill the bastard, he decided. Champagne Chimp – as he’d always referred to her boyfriend, Taylor – wouldn’t know what hit him. She snored softly, curling into his chest. How could anyone cheat on Sophie? She was an absolute sweetheart, and a looker too. He smiled as she immediately snuggled into the bed he placed her in. “G’night Soph.”

“Logan?”

“Mmm?” He paused at the threshold of the bedroom door, turning his head to look back at her hazel eyes open in a slit.

“Stay with me a while,” she whispered. She sounded so broken, all he could do was nod.

Tactfully ignoring the fact that her shirt had ridden up high enough to expose her ribs, he toed off his shoes and climbed in beside her, thanking God that he’d chosen a room with a large bed. It was one thing sleeping in the same roomy bed as your stepsister, and another entirely to cuddle up in a single.

“Thank you,” Sophie mumbled, turning into his side and resting her head on his shoulder. Logan groaned quietly as she slid her arm across his stomach, her fingers playing lightly with the hem of his shirt. “I don’t know what I ever did without you.”

Logan remembered the first day he’d met his new sister like it was yesterday. He had just turned eighteen, and had a chip on his shoulder the size of an iceberg. He didn’t know why his dad had chosen to marry so late in life. He didn't like his choice of wife, and hated the fact that he had a new stepsister. He certainly didn’t like that he was supposed to treat her like a real sister, just because his dad said they were family. They weren’t family. They would never be family. He’d hated his dad for that.

Of course, his sick attraction to her didn't help, and the fact that he'd kissed her sweet lips on her seventeenth birthday was an exquisite form of torture by memory, but they'd grown closer after the death of their parents and from then on they’d been inseparable. But Logan realized that no matter how much he loved her, he could never think of her as his sister. He wanted her too damn much. From the time he'd entered her life, she’d driven him half mad with her short skirts and slinky shirts. The woman, had a figure to make a man weep, and try as he might, he could not ignore the attraction he’d felt.

His father had noticed, and commented often enough that Logan had stopped visiting much when they were alive. He regretted that now, of course, but hindsight was twenty-twenty, or so they said.

Watching her sleep, curled up beside him, he once again reminded himself of just how out of bounds this woman was. Don’t go there, pal. She wriggled in her sleep, one slender leg curling around his thigh, and he sighed. She still drove him half mad with short skirts and slinky shirts.

*