Then, too impatient to wait when she remained frozen, he claimed her mouth, driving his tongue deeply inside her with a violence that scared him even more than it frightened her. His hands slipped beneath her T-shirt and unhooked her bra.
“You taste delicious. Like champagne,” she said.
He should slow it down, but he couldn’t.
With a shudder, his arms wound tighter and he forced her closer.
“Two glasses. Couldn’t resist,” he said. “Not much really.”
His breath was loud and harsh now. He wanted to possess her with every cell in his being, and he was fast losing control.
Besides pressuring her, what he was doing was probably wrong on a dozen levels. But when she began kissing him back, hesitantly at first, her lips were sweet and hot and quivering beneath his. Then when she gave him all she had, he was soon driven past all thought and reason.
As if shocked by the pleasure he gave her, she let out a startled cry.
His arms wound tighter. He had to have her. And it was more than a physical need.
To hell with right and wrong and sanity, he thought as his need blazed ever higher until it consumed him.
“Did you bring a condom this time?” she whispered, sounding as frantic with passion as he felt.
Six
Cici was being stupid, and she hated that because she always regretted being stupid later. Logan Claiborne was the one man she should never sleep with because he held the key to a part of herself she wanted to protect forever.
So why had she made sure he had plenty of condoms? So why was she lying naked on his bed with him sprawled heavily on top of her? They’d barely started making love, but already, with his every caress, with his every kiss, he was stripping her soul so bare that she felt like she was crashing and shattering and flying into a million jagged pieces.
After he was finished with her tonight, would she ever be able to feel whole again?
Logan’s mouth traveled from her throat down her belly, across her scar, pausing there and kissing it so tenderly that she wept.
Her breath stopped and she began to quiver. In a flash she remembered holding their precious son in her arms that one time.
Their son. The only human being she’d ever loved half so much as that darling child was Logan.
Only when Logan’s lips moved ever lower, and he found her softest, most secret flesh and began stroking her there, could she stop thinking about their lost baby and breathe again. But soon, too soon, he had her emotions in turmoil again and she was, clinging and shaking, but by then he was, too.
Wet and ready for him, even before he spread her legs and laved her long and deeply, she drove her finger through his hair and drew his head closer, moaning as his skillful mouth and deft tongue licked her and sent shiver after shiver hotly pulsing through her, evoking forbidden longings she hadn’t felt in years.
Hadn’t wanted to feel!
She bit her lips and tightened her fists in an attempt to fight her fierce pleasure. But it didn’t work because what she felt was too powerful.
A younger, more naive Cici had imagined herself madly in love with him in this same room. She’d lost that happy, glowing feeling at immense cost to her soul, because he’d thrown her away. To save his brother, he’d claimed.
She did not want to be in love with him again. He was too cold and logical. Too cruel. He’d shown her once that he was a man who always did what was best for him or his family.
But what if she was no more in control of her easily bruised heart than she had ever been?
Maybe her fierce anger and the self-destructive hatred that had driven her to taunt death had been the dark side of her love for him. What if she was willing to risk anything to be his, willing to pay any price for another chance?
When his tongue found the zone and began licking small, satiny circles, a series of wild thrills such as she had never known rippled through her. Opening wider, she arched her pelvis against his mouth.
The garçonnière was an utterly dark cocoon. Nine years ago, in this same bed, she’d been a virgin. Again she reminded herself that he’d taken her and then had cruelly discarded her.
What would he do tomorrow? With these worries in her mind, the hotter her passion grew as Logan claimed her with his mouth and tongue, the more her emotions spiraled into fear.
She’d borne him a son with hair the exact dark shade of Logan’s. When the doctors had told her that they’d lost her little boy, she’d asked to hold him. After his funeral, she’d locked her terrible secret in her heart, intending to keep it there forever.
Until tonight, when Logan had walked into the ballroom and looked at her, his gaze as lost and feverishly dark as her own broken soul, she’d believed herself incapable of ever loving him or ever sharing her profound loss with him. Now old emotions were reigniting.
He spread her legs wider. His tongue delved deeper, and she moaned as the throbbing excitement built, spreading like a ravaging flame that devoured every part of her until she burst in a final explosion and became completely his.
Breathing hard, she shut her eyes.
Do we choose those we love? Or are they a gift? Hadn’t he always possessed her soul?
“For nine years I’ve wanted to do that again,” he whispered, “to taste you, to hear you moan like that. To give you pleasure.”
At his husky words and tender embrace, she held onto him tightly, not daring to let herself believe anything he said.
It was just sex. “Don’t say things we’ll both regret.”
“The last thing I want is for you to regret anything about tonight,” he murmured. Then he moved up to straddle her.
“No regrets. I promise. I’m a big girl now.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew his mouth to hers.
“I was a fool nine years ago,” he said.
“So was I.”
“You were only naive, but I was cruel. Can you ever forgive me?”
“That will depend on what you do next.”
“I don’t want to hurt you like that ever again.”
Then don’t, she thought as he put on a condom.
When he finished, she kissed his lips in a long, soul-shattering kiss. When she felt his sheathed manhood probe at the velvety folds of her secret entrance, she opened her legs, and he plunged—deep and true. For a long moment, he simply held her and was still, and she savored the sensation of being joined to him.
Oh, the pleasure, the immense pleasure that only being with him could give her.
“I promise not to hurt you,” he whispered.
She nodded, not really believing him. After all, he’d promised such things before.
Slowly his hands began to caress her hair. Then his mouth brushed across her lips, her cheek, before moving down to her throat.
Bending over her, he began to move with her in such abandon, she was soon crying out.
Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she arched her body higher and higher, meeting his every thrust. Their passion built, and she surrendered completely, exploding with him.
Afterward, she buried her face against his shoulder and held on to him for a long time, wishing, no, longing for so much more than a man like him could ever give a woman like her.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, his arms tightening around her as he brushed her hair out of her eyes.
The confused emotions in her heart made her suddenly shy. “Sex makes people, especially women who are fools like me, do and feel the craziest things. I could write a book on the subject.”
“Please don’t. Not if you’re going to write about me.”
She giggled. “You’re a prude. You know that, don’t you?”
“Conservative.”
“Not in bed.” She smoothed her fingers through his chocolate dark hair. When the thick lock fell back over his brow immediately, she pushed it back again and smiled. “Only afterwards, do you get uptight, when you fall back into being your true self.”
<
br /> “My true self? Who the hell is that? Do we ever know our true selves? For years I did what my grandfather taught me to think was best for the family.”
“I found mine behind a camera.”
“Lucky you.”
“Or not. I saw too much pain. I can’t even pick up a camera now.”
“You didn’t answer my original question,” he said. “What were you thinking a while ago.”
“I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.”
“Then I’ll make love to you again, in the hope that you’ll remember.”
“Will that be your only reason?” she teased.
As soon as he began to kiss her, the moist warmth of his mouth and tongue had her shivering in newly heightened awareness of him, maybe because the first time they’d made love tonight, he’d broken down all the walls of her resistance and she was wide open to him now. As before he swept her on a dark tide of passion to the other side of the moon, to a wild place that was theirs alone, a place where she forgot herself and might have whispered desperate, foolish things against his ear, but fortunately in that last shuddering moment, she remembered all that divided them.
In the past he’d hurt her, and it had taken her years to get over it. Who was to say that although she was older and wiser, it couldn’t happen again? No matter how close to loving him she felt, she could not let herself succumb.
“I never thought I’d feel like this again,” he said afterward, triumphant that he’d taken her to such heights, maybe because his manhood was still embedded deep within her and she was clinging to him fiercely.
She couldn’t think with him inside her. She felt too warm and snug, too safe, and such feelings were not to be trusted.
“I have a lot of making up to do for how I treated you, don’t I?” he said.
“An entire lifetime wouldn’t begin to suffice,” she said. “So we agree then, that you owe me?”
He pulled her even closer if that were possible. “Big time. I will make it up to you. I swear. I don’t care if it takes an entire lifetime.”
Her heart caught as she eased herself out of his arms. Not that she was about to let herself hope for anything from him, for she had learned that hope, not fear, not grief, was the cruelest of emotions. And men like him would say anything in bed. The truth would come in the morning.
When he yanked the sheets around them and wrapped her in his arms again, she thought about the dark-haired little boy they’d lost, the little boy he didn’t know about…yet.
Then, soon, because of Logan’s body heat and his tenderness, the image dissolved. For the first time in years, she felt almost safe even though she knew she shouldn’t, not with him, not ever with him.
Despite her misgivings, she fell into a deep, fathomless sleep.
Logan woke up first, wrapped in the warmth of a beautiful woman, the one woman he should not be with, their tangled sheets reeking of steamy sex. Alert, in the dazzling light of a new morning, he froze.
It was a helluva shock to find Cici’s head resting so trustingly on his shoulder. Not that it should have been. What did last night mean?
Had he been lying to himself when he’d been so determined to send her packing? Remembering how tenderly she’d held him each time after they’d made love, he winced. She was sweet, as sweet as she’d been as a girl. What did she want? Need? Had he ever thought of that once?
Had he simply used her?
She deserved better.
Hell, any woman deserved better.
Even as the memory of her mouth all over his body stung him, he told himself she couldn’t possibly fit into his life. Last night hadn’t changed anything. And yet….
Slowly, trying not to wake her, he shifted his weight. Gently placing her head onto a pillow, he had eased himself almost to the edge of the bed before she stirred. Rolling over, she faced him. With a happy little sigh, she tenderly traced her fingertips down the length of his arm.
“Logan,” she whispered dreamily.
“Right here,” he murmured, trying to resist the instant high voltage coupled with the unaccountable tenderness he felt for her.
Long lashes fluttered again, revealing dark eyes glimmering with too much hope and affection. “I thought you’d be long gone.”
Hell.
He should have been. He didn’t know what to say. He only knew he didn’t want to hurt her any more than he had to. “I’m where I want to be.”
“Really?”
“Really!” It had been heaven lying in her arms. That part was undeniable. Determined to leave as fast as possible, he threw off the sheet and then couldn’t help but admire her beautiful body. And her smile. She had an incredible smile. Then he frowned when he saw the vague, moon-shaped scar on her abdomen that he’d first noticed the afternoon he’d barged in on her. Without thinking, his hand lightly traced the white curve.
“What happened to you here?” he murmured, growing more concerned when she trembled.
Her eyes snapped open. Meeting his, they grew huge and confused, so painfully confused, and then tears, real tears filled them. Before he knew what had happened, she was turning away from him.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “You’ve got to tell me.” Gently, he placed his hands on her shoulders and felt her body trembling even harder.
Her face was pale. Her lips quivered when she turned toward him again. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “At least, not right now, when you probably have a million things to do.”
Alarm filling him because she was so passionately upset, seemingly for no reason, he pulled her closer. He felt guilty as hell, wondering if this fresh emotional turmoil could possibly be his fault.
“Tell me,” he said, forgetting everything he needed to attend to in New Orleans and concentrating on her.
“I tried to tell you…once…”
But, as she was about to begin, his cell phone began ringing, interrupting her.
“Go on,” he said, ignoring it.
But his ringing phone had her distracted. “Hadn’t you better answer that first?” she said.
“It can wait.”
“No. Go ahead. It doesn’t really matter. You know how easily women become emotional. You have important things to do.”
She turned away, and he reluctantly lunged for his phone.
No sooner had Logan said hello, than Mitchell Butler blasted him. “What the hell did you do to my daughter?”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She becomes very upset every time I ask her a question or mention your name.”
“Okay,” he said, feeling guilty as he waited for more.
“No! It’s not okay, and until I find out what you did to her, the merger’s off.”
“I can explain.” But could he?
“Then get your sorry ass back to town and do so.” Mitchell hung up.
“What’s wrong?” Cici asked. “Was that Alicia?”
“Her father. He’s calling off the merger. I need to call Hayes.”
She nodded, her expression cool, as he punched in Hayes’s number.
Hayes answered on the first ring. Logan didn’t bother to identify himself. “Butler just called. He wants a meeting.”
“I know. This afternoon. At one sharp. He says the merger’s off. Mind if I ask what the hell’s going on?”
“I can be in New Orleans in an hour or so. I’ll explain everything then.”
“Must have been some party. Did Miss Bellefleur throw you another one of her curve balls? Did you strike out or hit a home run?”
“Don’t hold your breath until you get the update.” Logan flipped his phone shut and whirled on Cici.
“Sorry about all that,” he muttered, feeling bad about how he’d treated Alicia. Suddenly he was too aware that their lives were on opposite tracks. “I guess I’d better get back to New Orleans and start putting out all the fires I’ve started.”
“Sure,” Cici whispered, but her voice caught. And her face was paper white. “I’ll make yo
u some coffee and toast, so you won’t have to stop for breakfast on your way home.”
“You were telling me what happened to you,” he said as he grabbed his slacks off the floor.
“Not now, when your world’s in pieces because of me and you’re in such a hurry,” she whispered, her voice sounding sad and lost as she turned away.
“But I want to know happened to you,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter. Like I said, it’s obvious you have truly important concerns this morning.”
“Cici…”
Ignoring him, she opened a can of coffee.
“Well, if she wouldn’t tell him, she wouldn’t tell him. He had to respect her reasons and let it go, at least, for now.
He dressed hurriedly. Not that he didn’t look a mess with both his shirt and slacks so wrinkled they looked like he’d slept on them. Hell, he probably had.
“Last night was great,” he said.
“Right,” she said, popping two pieces of bread into her toaster.
“Incredible,” he persisted.
“I’m glad you feel that way…if you do.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means whatever happened last night, this morning…these phone calls are your reality.”
“Hell.”
“Then tell me I’m wrong.”
He couldn’t even look at her, much less lie to her, so he stared out the window for a long minute while that telltale nerve in his jaw jumped painfully. “Look, I do have to get back to New Orleans as fast as possible.”
“Of course. I know.” Her teeth chattering, she wrapped her red robe more tightly around herself and concentrated on her toaster. Frowning, she began to tap her nails on the counter. “Damn it, why are appliances always so slow?”
Hoping to dispel the distinct chill in the morning air, he smiled and said, “It’s because you’re watching it.”
She didn’t look up from her toaster. He could tell she was in an even bigger hurry than he was for him to be gone.
“Hey, would you quit worrying about my toast? I can eat on the road.”
“I’m not…worrying…about your stupid toast. Or you. I’m thinking about my looming deadline. I need to work. You’re not the only one with a life, you know. I need to get some writing done. No more procrastinating. The last thing I need is this distraction.”
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