Holding her now in his arms was like holding one of those sparkling things kids lit for the Fourth of July. A cool, thin, tall stick spitting heat and sparks, and he was the match that had made her come alive.
His first instinct was to sweep her legs from under her, lay her in the long, hot grass and grind his loins into hers. He squelched the urge. Though John had taken to the road anxious and distracted, Logan knew that his prankster of a friend could return any minute, claiming he’d forgotten something, just to see how the tableau played out after he left. Logan wanted no more interruptions.
So he tugged her toward the cabin. He yanked the pale green cotton off her shoulders, wrapped it down her arms and let it fall into the grass. He glimpsed the creamy fullness of her breasts, rising high in the cups of a satin bra sprinkled with tiny rosebuds. He skimmed his fingers under the edge of one cup and her lips parted in a gasp. He kissed her silent, tugged her up the stairs to the deck, then around to the shadows to the kitchen door.
Once in the coolness of the kitchen, she wrapped her arms around his neck. He seized her by the waist and hiked her up against the closed door. He buried his face in her throat. She smelled of strawberry shampoo, of the strawberry soap he’d glimpsed one day on the ledge of the bathtub when he’d gone to retrieve some shaving cream he’d left in the room. He vowed he’d be running that slippery pink bar over her bare wet skin before the day was done.
He could think of a hundred ways he’d have her in the week to come. In the back seat of his Ford. On a blanket in the yard under the moonlight. In front of the old fireplace. Spread-eagled upon him, in her bed. Pressed over the back of the couch. Right here, right now, against the kitchen door.
He flicked open the button of her shorts. The zipper split against the back of his arm as he thrust his hand down the front, under the elasticized edge of her panties, through the softness of the hair at the juncture of her thighs and farther, to slip his fingers into the cleft.
Her whole body flexed. She made a noise, a soft keening sound that vibrated in her throat. He rubbed the moistness between her legs with gentle strokes. Her heat intensified against his fingers. Reverberations shuddered the lean, full-breasted frame pressed so tight against him.
His erection strained against his shorts, rock-hard. He slipped his fingers deeper between her legs, then with her welcome murmured urging, he slipped them deep, deep inside the softness of her.
He stroked and stroked. Her body quivered tighter and tighter, so close to completion he could feel her. He stroked deeper, thinking, Another moment and I’Il tear off these shorts and give her more of me, send her reeling with the first stroke. Then he realized. with a jolt that she wasn’t wearing the diaphragm anymore.
He stopped his stroking for a moment and probed her deep, deep enough to know nothing lay under his fingers but hot, moist flesh. She must have taken the diaphragm out during her shower. He wanted her—now—and for a moment he toyed with the idea of filling her with his shaft and pulling out when the time came near, but he forced himself to discard the idea. He couldn‘t—he wouldn’t—put her at risk. Ginny wanted hot sex, not a lifetime commitment.
Right about now, he’d give her anything she wanted.
He started to withdraw his fingers, but she clenched her muscles and pulled his head close to her throat. He tasted the thin, salty sheen of sweat on her skin, felt the pounding of her pulse against his temple and realized how close she was to reaching climax, just with the touch of his hands.
He raised his head enough to see her face, flushed with exhilaration, her lips pillowy and soft, her eyes heavy-lidded. He wanted to hear her scream out his name as she climaxed against his hand, he wanted to watch her lose control.
“Hold on to me, Ginny,” he said, changing the angle of his fingers against her, shifting his hips so he could bear her weight. “I want to feel you—”
Then her muscles tightened against his hand as the first powerful throb of her orgasm spasmed through her body. She arched her neck, pressed her head against the window of the kitchen door, thrashed back and forth to the rhythm of the contractions shuddering out from her body’s hot core.
Still he stroked, deep and even and firm, watching her, feeling her orgasm against the flat of his palm, urging it to extend, on and on, watching her face until she let her chin drop. As the contractions ebbed, she blinked open her eyes and looked at him in unabashed amazement. Soft tendrils of hair had come loose of her chignon and framed her face, as soft-lipped and vulnerable as he’d ever seen it.
He slipped his hand out of her shorts, curled his fingers around her bare waist, settled her weight upon the ground and waited until he was sure she had found her footing.
She wasn’t so tall, really. Barefoot and weak-kneed as she was, she had to blink up at him. Absently, he curled one of those loose tendrils around his finger, eyed the sheen of the hair, then let his gaze drift back to her clouded whiskey-colored eyes.
She looked as if she was trying to say something but couldn’t seem to find her tongue. In the end, all she managed was a soft, tremulous smile and two breathless little words.
“Oh…my.”
“Yeah,” he said as a grin tugged at his mouth. He pressed his forehead against hers. “This is going to be good, Ginny. So very, very good.”
GINNY WONDERED if there was a limit to the number of times a couple could make love in a given span of time. If there was, she and Logan had not yet reached it. For even now, lying naked and soaking wet on her bed, sated from yet another bout of lovemaking, she wanted him again.
She said, breathlessly, “How many times was that?”
Logan groaned. “Don’t know. Six? Seven?”
“Seven, I think,” she said, closing her eyes, feeling an incredible urge to arch her back like a cream-fed cat. “Not including last night.”
“I count six.”
“Definitely seven,” she insisted, splaying her hand on her bare belly and feeling the slippery foam of leftover strawberry soap on it. “The shower, the living room—”
“The hallway,” he said, a certain timbre to his voice. “Don’t forget the hallway.”
“Yes, the hallway,” she added dreamily. “Then twice on this bed, once on the carpet, and then the kitchen.”
“Kitchen doesn’t count for me.”
“Ah,” she murmured, her lips stretching in the most lascivious of grins. “Then it’s seven for me, six for you.”
“You owe me one, Ginny.”
“Okay.” She lifted herself lazily on one elbow, rolled to her side to eye Logan, naked and flat on his back, his skin gleaming with water and soap. She rolled her finger around one dark nipple. “How do you want it, Logan?”
Logan’s eyes flared open. A certain part of his resting anatomy twitched. A rakish grin spread across his face. “I can’t believe you.”
“Mmm.”
“You’re going to kill me.”
“With pleasure.”
He laughed. Aloud. She realized it was the first time she had ever heard him laugh. She liked the sound. Short, sincere, from the center of him. It made her warm inside to know that she’d given him pleasure. In more ways than one.
Things had changed, of course. By her estimation, they had definitely changed for the better. She’d discovered that hot sex was a wonderful thing when a woman was sharing it with a man as skilled and sexy and masterful as Logan Macallister. Right now, hot sex was definitely enough.
“Well,” he mused, seizing her hand from his chest and lifting it to his lips, “I can think of a few ways of doing it that we haven’t tried yet.”
“Just a few?”
“But,” he added, “right now I’m hungry.”
Just then, Ginny’s stomach growled. “Mmm. So am I.” She frowned and thought of the empty refrigerator, then perked up. “You know, I think there’s some whipped cream in a can in the kitchen…”
“You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“I am hungry,”
she said, letting her gaze drift meaningfully down his body. “Why not kill two birds with one stone?”
He rumbled a laugh, a different sort of laugh, a rough and ragged sound, then nipped the inside of her wrist. “Save that thought for later, my little sex kitten. You might think I’m superhuman, but right now I’m in dire need of more sustenance than whipped cream.”
“Mmm.” She tried not to sound too deflated. “Guess man cannot live on love alone, huh?”
The minute the words left her lips she regretted them. The word love hung in the air between them. She met his gaze and saw the word register in his thoughts, as well.
I should have said sex, she chided herself. Man cannot live on sex alone. They were having a week of hot sex, not love, he’d made that as clear as day, and she had accepted it wholeheartedly. Commitment was apparmtly as frightening a word to him as it was to her. This was the perfect solution, she was sure of it. Both of them had been very careful since that conversation in he backyard to keep everything they said light and easy between them—not that they’d had much conversation between bouts of lovemaking. Bouts of very in-cense lovemaking. Nonetheless, the intervals in becween had been full of banter, full of sultry laughter and totally devoid of any serious conversation.
Oh, she didn’t want to ruin this… this…this thing becween them. These fragile, tender, hesitant, unsure emotions she couldn’t even put a name to. She wished she could just suck the words back into her mouth, chew them and choke them down. Anything rather than to feel this dark shadow stealing between them.
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s true,” he said, his voice deceptively light. He slid to his side and reached up to cug her lower lip from between her teeth. He gave her a soft, easy smile. The tension that had grown taut becween them eased and faded away. “I think I might be able to live on you, my delectable strawberry-scented wildcat.”
She breathed out a laugh, grateful that he hadn’t withdrawn, grateful that he’d ignored her gaffe, grateful that in her usual blundering way she hadn’t destroyed whatever it was growing between them.
“But right now,” he continued, rising up to rub the tip of his nose along her cheek, “I’m in the mood for pancakes.”
“Pancakes?” She glanced over to the digital clock on the night table. “It’s eight o’clock at night, Logan.”
“We had burgers for breakfast and each other for lunch. We might as well have pancakes for dinner.” He nipped her forehead with a kiss, then settled back. “I know a great pancake house in town. Open all night. Twenty-four-hour breakfasts. Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, thick waffles—”
“Waffles?” she said, imagining the fragrant squares dripping with maple syrup and flecked with cinnamon. “As in Belgian waffles with dollops of cream?”
“You got it, Red.”
“Oh…my.”
“Hey,” he said, seizing her by the shoulder, “that expression is reserved for post-coital bliss with me.”
A bubble of a laugh rose within her, floating its way to her throat. “I don’t know,” she murmured, “Belgian waffles can be really, really good….”
He pressed her back on the bed. “I’ll show you really, really good, lady.” He dipped his head to one breast. “And then we’ll compare it to those waffles.”
An hour and a half later, Ginny lifted a forkful of waffle dripping with syrup to her lips. The waffle melted in her mouth, and the taste of fresh maple syrup and rich cream exploded on her tongue. As she chewed, she gazed at Logan over her fork and concluded without question that sex with Logan Macallister was a hundred thousand times better than waffles.
He knew, too, for his mouth twitched in that sexy, knowing grin, and those green eyes glowed with shared knowledge. Ginny resisted the urge to glance around the nearly empty pancake house to see if the other patrons were staring at them… while Logan made love to her with his sultry, hooded eyes.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” he said, shifting on the bench.
“Doing what?” she asked, slipping another forkful of waffle into her mouth.
“Eating like that,” he said, his gaze shifting to her lips as she chewed. “You did the same thing last night with that pizza. Drove me out of my mind.”
Ginny swallowed and speared another piece, swirling it deep in the maple syrup. “You’re criticizing how I eat?”
He sucked in a breath as she lifted the fork to her lips. “The way you eat should be banned. The way you slip your lips around a fork like that. Then pull the food off so…deliberately.”
She felt her lips tug up into a smile as she deliberately lengthened the time it took to tug the small piece of waffle off the tines of her fork.
“Then move your mouth like that,” he continued, his voice choked, “looking up at me with those smoky brandy eyes of yours.”
“Are you suggesting,” she said as she swallowed anew, “that I’m not eating properly, Dr. Macallister?”
“It’s positively obscene. Makes me want to throw you across this table, rip off your shorts and have my way with you.”
“I am,” she said, spearing another piece of waffle and closing her thighs together as a quiver of sexual desire shook them, “doing everything correctly, I believe.”
“Oh, yeah.” He shifted again, this time leaning his crossed forearms on the table. He’d shoved his plate of pancakes, half-eaten, to one side of the cluttered table. “You’re doing it right, Ginny. You’ve been doing everything right today.”
“Well then,” she sighed as she lifted the fork dripping with maple syrup. She tipped it up and licked off a drop with her tongue. “Miss Marples will be quite pleased I learned my lessons well.”
“Miss Marples?” he mumbled, watching the trail of her tongue across the bottom of the fork. “Who’s she, a madam of a bordello?”
“Oh, no.” She slipped a bite of waffle half in her mouth, then mouthed the edges. She chewed slowly, deliberately, then swallowed. “Miss Marples was my teacher in etiquette at the finishing school.”
“Finishing school.”
“She wouldn’t approve of lovemaking in a public restaurant.” Ginny tilted her head, felt the brush of her unbound hair against her bare shoulder. “Not during working hours, anyway.”
The look Logan gave her was worth all the gold in Fort Knox. Ginny laid her fork on the side of her plate and pulled the straw out of her milk shake. Defying all the dictates of etiquette, she licked the dripping shake off the length of the straw, then sucked the rest through until it slurped.
Logan laughed. A low, rumbling, sexy laugh, and the sound sent sexual vibrations winging through her. Their gazes met across the table and danced together, and Ginny felt wonderful. She felt…different. She felt saucy. For certainly this wasn’t cold, stuffy Dr. Eugenia Van Saun sitting across this booth from wideshouldered Dr. Logan Macallister. This wasn’t Dr. Eugenia Van Saun the ice queen, not this woman wearing her skin, eating waffles at ten o’clock at night and doing things with food and her lips that she planned to do later with parts of this handsome man’s most private anatomy. She hadn’t thought about work in more than twenty-four hours. She felt exhilarated, wild, her hair flowing down her back, her legs bare, her toes tracing Logan’s shin under the table, her breasts loose under the cotton shirt, this man’s gaze bright and eager on her as if she were the sexiest, most desirable woman in the world.
She held the feeling tight and reveled in it. Maybe a little too desperately, for she knew it was temporary. As temporary as the bargain she’d struck with him, for one more week of hot sex.
Logan reached across the table and ran his finger up the length of her forearm. “Did you really go to finishing school?”
“Uh-huh,” she said around another bite of waffle. “For one summer. My parents wanted me to know how to set a formal dining-room table, but they didn’t want that training to interfere with my more academic studies.”
“Finishing school,” he murmured, “brings images of pearls and white gloves.”
“Oh, we wore pearls and white gloves. In fact, we were required to wear them at teatime.”
“How Victorian.”
“Of course, there were times when me and the girls would wear our pearls and our white gloves and our afternoon dresses…and no underwear at all.”
Logan made a quiet choking sound. Ginny let herself grin. The story was a bald-faced lie. She’d studied etiquette at finishing school as fiercely as she’d studied Rachmaninoff at her piano lessons. She wouldn’t have dared do something so sensual, so bold. Not then, anyway. Right now, she felt as if she could do anything.
Then the dishes and glassware clattered as Logan leaned across the table and kissed her full on the lips. A hot, hungry kiss that broke every last rule of social propriety and brought upon them the surprised stares of the entire pancake-house staff.
“One more comment like that, Ginny,” he said roughly as he pulled himself away from her, “and I am going to haul you across this table, propriety be damned.”
“Mmm,” she murmured, licking her lips as if his kiss had been as tasty as the Belgian waffles. “Promises, Logan. Promises, promises…”
They didn’t linger long at the restaurant. On the way home, somewhere along the side of the country road, Ginny finally found out what it was like to make love in the back of a pickup truck.
LOGAN KNEW ITWAS CORNY, but he wanted to hold Ginny’s hand. Just hold her hand as he drove back to the cabin. The night breeze flooded the cab, bringing with it the smell of oncoming rain. He had just made wild love to her in the back seat of his truck, touching her as deeply as a man could touch a woman…and now they sat, sated and content, next to each other. Yet he was scared to death of the simple act of taking her hand in his own.
It seemed too tender. Too intimate. Too much like a promise that this wild relationship they’d dived headfirst into would turn into something more. Something concrete. Something forever.
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