The Billionaire's Intern: Logan Black (Forbidden Book 1) Read online

  No, she didn’t fear the press. She only feared what would become of her and Logan after he no longer needed her.

  “Do we?” she asked, her chest constricting. “Do we have time?”

  “I can’t promise you anything,” he said, dragging his fingertip down her cheek. “I wish to God I could.”

  “No guarantees in life, huh?” she asked, willing herself not to cry.

  “But there’s tonight. And tonight you’re with me.”

  *

  Logan paced the length of his office, waiting for Addison to come in. He felt like a caged beast. Or maybe that was just a way of romanticizing the hideous anxiety that was running through his veins.

  The opening was in an hour. A speech had been written for him, because there was no way in hell he was writing his own when he had next to nothing to say about the new endeavor.

  It’s ostentatious and far more plush than any human being needs anything to be. I hope you all spend a ton of money staying in it.

  That wouldn’t do. So he had to pay someone to make up inspiring words that he didn’t give a damn about. Anyway, as long as he could rattle off the speech, which he’d spent the day memorizing, as long as he could look at Addison he could get through it.

  She was his horizon line. His stability.

  She belonged to him now, and it would be far better for her if she didn’t. But he needed her. He had no other option now. No other way to keep his head above water.

  And this was it. The penultimate event. After this…he had no more excuses left as far as keeping her was concerned.

  There will always be other events. There will always be something.

  Yeah, but why the hell would she stay?

  Why not? Money. Sex. Companionship.

  It would be mutually beneficial. This week, he’d slept in a bed for the first time in four years. Addison wrapped around him, her hold on him as possessive as his on her.

  He had a feeling that as much as she professed to belong to him, he belonged to her.

  His very ability to use furniture properly was tied to her. If that wasn’t ownership he had no idea what was.

  The door to his office opened and in she walked, blond hair loose. For him. So he could weave his fingers through it. Her lips were red, because she knew he liked it.

  Her gown was black, stunning and elegant. Covering her delicious curves and pale skin, and somehow making her all the more tantalizing for it.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “I have to wear a tie,” he said.

  “And you haven’t put it on.”

  “No.”

  “Did you want me to tie it for you?” she asked.

  “That would be nice.”

  “But I don’t know how to tie a tie.”

  He let out a short, one-note laugh. “Luckily I do.” He took the tie off the back of his office chair and quickly set it right. “Like riding a bike. Why is it that stupid things like this are so easy to remember…and the rest isn’t?”

  “I guess when the hammer falls on your life, it breaks some parts beyond repair. And leaves tying ties largely intact. It’s not fair, really.”

  “Life isn’t,” he said, his voice rough.

  “Sometimes it is. What happened to my father was fair.”

  “But what he did to you wasn’t.”

  “No. It wasn’t. But maybe it was necessary.”

  “At least he was the casualty in his life’s war, and not you. I fear other people paid the ultimate price in mine.” For some reason, he flashed back to that night. To the screaming. To the pain.

  He’d been forgetting. It wasn’t fair for him to forget.

  Wasn’t fair for him to sleep in a bed. To be normal again.

  To have her.

  He shook those thoughts off. He had a party to get through and he had to keep his focus.

  “Logan, you can’t think like that. What’s done is done. It can’t be changed.”

  “As platitudes go, it’s true.”

  “It can’t be changed and you can’t go back.”

  And so much of him wouldn’t. Would never go back to being the spoiled, dead-end human being he’d been before. But if he could…if he could, none of those people would have died. Kelly wouldn’t have…

  But if the wreck hadn’t happened, if the island hadn’t happened, he would be the same man he’d been before setting foot on it. Shallow. A waste.

  Hard to regret. Impossible not to.

  “Science has really failed us on the time travel thing,” she said, deadpan.

  “So we can blame science for all this?”

  “Sure. That would cover the weather that caused the ship to wreck. It would cover biology, which explains us… So yes, I blame science.”

  Anger rippled over his skin and he wasn’t sure why. Except he didn’t like hearing what they had reduced to a word as cold as biology. What he’d dealt with on the island could be, in many ways, reduced down to science. To survival. Water was needed to live, infection caused death. Only the fittest would survive.

  Adapt or die.

  And yet it had been more.

  The grit it took, the bloody will to simply survive, wasn’t something that could be easily studied. Living his hell, and studying his hell, would come back with two different theories.

  And it was the same with Addison. With the need he felt for her. It wasn’t about a biological need to reproduce, articulated through arousal, and stymied by condom use. It was a deep, immeasurable need.

  “Biology?” he asked, approaching her, brushing her hair back from her face before tugging hard, tilting her head back, exposing her throat. “What biological urge makes you want a man who is barely more than an animal, princess? A man who has no control with you?” He raised his hand and curled his fingers around her neck, still holding her hair tight. “Your pulse is beating fast,” he said, his voice thick, “not because you’re afraid. But because this gets you off. Because I make you hot. That right there is the opposite of self-preservation. And it’s as unscientific as it gets.” He lowered his hand, his own heart thundering a response to her fluttering pulse, the impression of it still left on his thumb. “You can’t explain this.”

  The corners of her lips turned up slightly, a sad look in her eyes. “I guess not.”

  And again, he felt that he was missing something. A key. Something essential. And if he could only figure out what it was…

  But then it was gone. And she smiled at him. “Does it have to make sense if the sex is great?”

  “I guess not,” he said. “Shall we go?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Let’s.”

  *

  The room was a sea of glitter. Familiar faces swimming in front of his eyes. The ballroom was packed with couture, jewels and nightmares from high-society events past. This room was full of ex-party friends, women he’d slept with—only once—and people who had seen him drunk or high, or similarly making an ass of himself.

  People who were a part of the old life. The old him.

  He pulled Addison more closely to his side. The hold, for everyone out there, would appear proprietary. In reality, it was to keep the floor beneath his feet.

  This was the life he’d been avoiding. The room of people he hadn’t wanted to face. It was putting both feet back in this world, instead of keeping one on the island.

  And he didn’t know how to do that.

  You do it with Addison.

  He shook the thought off, moving deeper into the room, with Addison kept firmly at his side.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, her words quiet.

  “I am not going to run out of the room or injure any innocent bystanders,” he said. Okay was possibly a step too far.

  “That’s a start.”

  He moved through the words of his speech in his mind. Inauthentic words that meant less than nothing to him. But then, all of this meant less than nothing to him.

  He did it for a mother he could barely look at, a legacy th
at he felt detached from. He did it because he had to be the testament to survival, the miracle everyone saw him as. Because other people had died. And he lived.

  And that meant he had to find a way to make the living he was doing work. To be the person he had to be. And if it choked him, he would accept that. He didn’t deserve to live for himself. Not anymore.

  A familiar face separated from the sea of black and started moving toward them. Austin Treffen. Logan had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well for him.

  “Addison,” Austin said, not bothering to greet Logan. “I’m surprised to see that your internship duties required you to come as Mr. Black’s date.”

  He felt Addison stiffen beside him. “It wasn’t required, Austin, I elected to come as his date. Since I’m dating him.”

  His stomach clenched tight. Dating. If only that were the word for it. If only he could offer her something so mundane, so normal.

  Austin’s eyes locked on to his. “You’re lucky we’re in public right now, and I have no desire to attach any more scandal to the family name for the sake of my mother and sister.”

  “Lucky me,” Logan said, not taking his hand off Addison. He deserved Austin’s contempt, and he knew it. He had corrupted her. He used her in ways no man wanted his sister used, no matter that Addison liked it.

  He had a sister, and in Austin’s position, he might have done the same once. Back when he’d been able to care about such things. He might have pushed the double standard aside and railed at whatever man dared to defile the woman he still saw as a girl.

  “You bastard,” Austin said, keeping his voice low. “I let her go to work for you. I trusted you. You’re in a position of power and she—”

  “Is not a child, Austin,” Addison said, her eyes blazing, her voice even, and quiet. “I’m with him because I want to be. So spare me your posturing and older brother crap, will you?”

  “Addison…”

  “This is my life. And it was my choice to keep my relationship with Logan a secret, so I won’t even apologize for that. And now we aren’t keeping it a secret. And no, he’s not going to marry me. But honestly get off your high horse. You didn’t marry every woman you slept with, so don’t act morally wounded now.”

  “It’s because of who I am,” Logan said, understanding Austin and his anger completely. “Because I’m older. Because he knows I’m taking advantage of you.”

  “You aren’t, though,” she said. “You’ve never lied to me.”

  No. He’d just taken from her. And taken, and taken, sating himself and not giving a damn what he left her with. He’d let the selfish part of his soul out again, to play with her. And in the end, he would walk away because it was all he could do.

  Austin knew that.

  Austin hated him for it.

  He had every right to hate him for it.

  Logan hated himself for it.

  But he hated himself all the time, so he might as well have Addison.

  “No, I haven’t. But that’s not really the problem,” Logan said.

  “I’m not having this conversation right now,” Addison said. “My entire life has been for other people. And this isn’t. It’s not for you. It’s not even for him,” she said. “Most important, it’s not about our name, or our family. I’ve taken enough crap that wasn’t mine. I’ll happily deal with what I earn. And we’ll talk later. Tell Katy I said hi.”

  Logan expected Austin to take a swing at him, or to at least continue standing there looking menacing.

  But instead he nodded to his sister, then leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “We’ll talk when you’re ready,” he said, then gave Logan a short nod and turned and walked away.

  “Well, since I wasn’t in the mood to get my face caved in, I’m happy to have avoided it. If only because I have a speech to give.”

  “And because you don’t deserve to get punched in the face,” she said.

  “Oh, honey, I do. And a hell of a lot more than that. If your brother wanted to stab me in the back, it would be no less than I deserved.”

  “For what?”

  “Screwing with you like I have been. And for every other sin that came before you.”

  “You have to stop this, Logan,” she said, pleading with him, her words going deep. To a place he didn’t think she’d seen. “You have to stop punishing yourself.”

  Something turned over in his head. A card that had been there facedown. And now he could read it clearly. He could do nothing but punish himself.

  And he hadn’t been. He’d been forgetting.

  He’d been letting go.

  And holding on to her.

  Suddenly he heard a voice coming over the speakers. His mother. She was standing at the podium, her blond hair glistening beneath the lights. All grace and poise as she spoke about his father. About her late husband and everything he’d built the company to be. And how now the torch was being passed to her son.

  A son who was born for this position, who had endured a trial by fire and emerged strong. Who had conquered tragedy to be here.

  He gritted his teeth, balling his hands into fists. He’d conquered no tragedy. He’d caused tragedy. Left death and devastation in his wake.

  Just as there was no miracle, he was no great conqueror. He was a villain. He deserved no celebration. He was a killer. Selfish. Evil.

  He knew what he was. Even if no one here did.

  Why didn’t his mother wonder? Why didn’t she ask why he didn’t come visit more often? Did she suspect? That looking at her, that seeing her joy, her love, her happiness at his return burned him because he deserved for her to look on him with disgust?

  And the way Addison looked at him…

  Addison. Who knew everything.

  Addison, whose eyes sent him messages he couldn’t read. That he was afraid to read.

  “And now my son, and the CEO of Black Properties, has a few words to say regarding the new property and the direction of the company. I’m sure we’re all anxious to hear his ideas.”

  His ideas carefully worded by someone else. His ideas already approved by his mother. She wasn’t waiting to hear what he had to say, because the speech writer had sent it all to her first.

  Because he was here to be the man she wanted. To fulfill the vision she saw him fulfilling.

  He released his hold on Addison, his body cold where she’d been, his heart rate increasing as he got farther away from her. He needed her. Damn. He needed her, and it wasn’t fair to her.

  And it wasn’t right for him to have her.

  Logan, please…

  Shit. Oh, shit. He didn’t need to hear Kelly now. He couldn’t breathe. He swallowed hard and made his way to the podium, the crowd closing in. People closing in.

  He stepped up onto the podium and looked at his mother. He tried to force a smile, but he found he’d lost control of the muscles in his face. That he couldn’t remember which ones to command to create the expression anyway.

  “Are you all right, dear?” his mother asked, quietly, her expression one of concern.

  Of course you’re all right. She can’t see you as anything but. He swallowed hard and nodded, moving to the podium and facing out toward the crowd.

  “Good evening,” he said, black spots flashing before his vision.

  He saw through the sea of people, saw pale skin and red lips. His focus going to Addison. Her lips moved. Breathe. It looked as if she said breathe. And he did. The spots started to fade.

  The words he’d memorized started coming to him, falling into order, rolling off his tongue. Memorization he could do. This he could do. He knew it. He didn’t have to feel it, or think it. He only had to say it.

  He didn’t suppose he was managing to be engaging. He could hear the rough, overly monotone sound to his own voice. Could feel it in the set stillness of his face. But he was still speaking. He was still going. And the speech was being said. He was standing at the head of the room. In his father’s place. Saying what was expected. Doing wh
at was expected. In shoes, no less.

  He kept his eyes on her, his words fading into the background. She filled the moment. Filled the space. In his head, in his chest. He was afraid whatever it was would break through, tear him open and let everything dark and dirty that was in him spill out in front of all the people here.

  Because all this, the good that Addison filled him with couldn’t exist alongside the ugliness that was in him. She was pure light, and it couldn’t exist alongside the darkness.

  He was saying something about the brownstones. About future projects. Growth and profits, green builds and some other crap. And he didn’t care. He couldn’t even make sense of it.

  He didn’t want to. He just wanted to watch her. Because this was the end, and in that moment he understood it.

  Austin had seen just how unsuited they were. How unfair of a match it was. How much he took. There she was, pale and drawn and concerned for him. For his wounds, wounds that he’d ultimately inflicted on himself.

  She was the one trying to heal a man who hadn’t slept in a bed all night for four years until last night. The woman who was letting him hold on to her as they walked through a crowd. A woman who was broken and bleeding inside because of her own issues. Issues she was pushing down so she could deal with his.

  I don’t even know who I am.

  And so he was taking advantage of her brokenness, and reshaping her into something that would fit his life. But Addison Treffen wasn’t made to live in the shadows. She couldn’t spend her life shut in his opulent prison, on call for him. For wild bouts of rough, uncontrolled sex.

  So he could hold on to the island, and to her, and to his sanity. So he could try and fit all these things into his life that simply didn’t fit.

  He couldn’t hold her in that hell. He could barely stand it; why should she?

  She should be free. Of her father. Of the Treffen name. Of him.

  He hadn’t been able to save Kelly. But he could save Addison. He just had to make the unselfish choice.

  He had to choose her instead of him.

  He looked away from her, guilt, a presence so constant he’d thought himself immune, forcing him to break their eye contact. He didn’t deserve her help. He didn’t deserve what she did for him.

  He reached the end of the words he had in his head, and he hoped that it was the end of the speech, and not a mental block. But ultimately it didn’t matter. People started moving. Clapping. It was his cue to wave or smile. He did neither. He walked off the stage and back into the crowd.