by Bella Andre
She closed her eyes and a low moan emerged from her throat. Moment by moment, touch by touch, he was seducing her defenses away.
She grabbed at his hips to pull him in closer—oh God, she wanted him closer—to her wetness. Her hips bucked into his thick shaft and he held himself still as she rocked and rubbed and pushed against him, desperate for release.
“That's it,” he said, encouraging her madness. He bent his head back down to her chest, pressing her breasts close together so that he could take both stiff peaks into his mouth at the same time.
“You taste so good. So sweet.”
He lifted her into his arms, carrying her up the stairs as if she weighed nothing at all. Even as he navigated the steps and the hallway, he nipped at her lips, tasted the sensitive crevasses of her mouth with his tongue.
He was taking her to his bedroom.
To his bed.
Her sex clenched at the thought of being naked beneath Logan. She shivered as he flicked the tip of his tongue against the corner of her mouth, and he smiled against her lips.
“Do you like that?”
She was hesitant to look into his eyes, frightened to give too much of herself away if he saw how much this meant to her. At last, she found her voice.
“Yes.”
He captured her mouth again, harder this time, his lips and teeth and tongue telling her just how much he desired her. He pulled back, his blue eyes dark with passion.
“And that?”
She reached a hand up to his mouth and let her thumb and fingertips graze his full, masculine lips. “Yes. So much.”
More than he knew.
He sucked her index finger in between his lips and she closed her eyes and relaxed into his strong, muscular arms, drunk from his tongue on her skin. She'd never known fingers could be so sensitive; never had a man spent so much time on her. Other men were only interested in foreplay as a means to an end. With Logan, she could tell that her pleasure pleased him.
He pressed a kiss onto her palm. “Tell me everything you like. Tell me everything that makes you feel good.”
She stroked his chin, his stubble deliciously rough. “I don't need to. You already know.”
A low growl vibrated in his throat and she watched, mesmerized, as his Adam's apple moved in his tanned throat. She ran her hand down to his neck, then past his collarbone and over his tight band of pectoral muscles. His heartbeat was strong and fast as he continued to hold her without strain, allowing her to explore his body at her leisure.
His nipple grew hard as she leaned closer and pressed a kiss into his shoulder. His skin jumped beneath her lips and, for the first time, she realized just how badly he wanted her; that he was barely holding on to his own self-control.
She swept her tongue out along his collarbone and tasted a faint sheen of clean sweat on his skin. His erection swelled against the side of her hip and his passionate reaction emboldened her further. She grazed a stiff tendon with her teeth, loving the taste of him, his masculine scent. He was just as beautiful beneath her lips as he was to her eyes.
He carried her across the room, laying her beneath him on his bed. “I've wanted to do this for so long.” He bent his head down to one breast and suckled her. “And this,” he said as he laved the other.
She gasped with pleasure and arched into his mouth. Back and forth, he swirled his tongue on her breasts, kissing her flesh, softly nipping her sensitive skin. Every move he made aroused her, made her grow increasingly damp and desperate to feel the hot, hard length of him pressing into her sex.
“Please,” she said, and a moment later his hands were on the waistband of her jeans and he was undoing the zipper and pulling them down her thighs.
“So beautiful,” he said in a low voice as he slid her shoes and jeans to the floor. “So damn beautiful.”
She waited with delirious anticipation to feel his fingers—or possibly, if she was really lucky, his erection— between her legs, and was utterly unprepared for warm breath on her heated skin. Her hips bucked into his mouth of their own volition, as utterly out of control as she'd ever been.
She was frightened by this intimacy, yet she craved it too badly to possibly make him stop.
And then his mouth came down fully over her cotton-covered mound and she stopped thinking altogether. She cried out his name as she moved against his lips, his teeth. His tongue found her clitoris through the fabric and waves of satisfaction moved through her, over her.
His touch was turning her inside out, but right now, right in this moment, losing control felt right. Because she felt safe with Logan.
His fingers grazed her hipbones, then stalled. She instantly knew what he was asking. His erection pressed hard against her—he was as crazed with lust as she was—but even then, he waited for her to lead him forward.
She whispered “Yes” to tell him it was all right to continue, that she wanted him to remove her panties, that she was desperate to drop all the remaining barriers between them.
He pressed a kiss to her stomach, just below her belly button, and she sucked in a breath, waiting. And then, slowly, much too slowly, he slid her Love Lake Tahoe panties off her hips.
“I can't wait another second to taste you.”
The fabric was still at her thighs and she should have been prepared for the slide of his tongue on her clitoris, for the muscles at the base of her stomach to clench and pull, but she wasn't.
Nothing could have prepared her for Logan.
Slow warmth moved through her as his tongue slipped and slid over her heated flesh. He cupped her butt cheeks to shift her mound higher, closer to his mouth. She wanted to watch this beautiful man touch her so intimately, but her eyes closed as she arched her neck, her body straining toward him. Alternately he sucked at her clit, pulling and dragging on her arousal, then swept his tongue down the slick length of her labia.
Her muscles clenched with need. She wanted all of him, wanted to be filled with his huge, hard shaft. She opened her mouth to beg, to plead, but before she could utter a word, he slipped one thick digit inside of her.
Her breath stopped as she clamped around his finger. With painstaking slowness, he slid it in to the knuckle. She pushed against his hand, trying to take more of him inside. All the while, his tongue kept a steady beat on her clit. He added another finger to his sensual onslaught and she rode his fingers, pressed into his tongue. But instead of letting her crest the peak, he forced her to ride the ridge of pleasure, backing off when she got too close. He slid his fingers in, then out of her slick passage.
Higher and higher she flew, her muscles tightening one by one until she thought she might shatter.
“Please, Logan,” she finally begged, even though she was a woman who'd never begged anyone for anything, ever.
He grasped a thigh in each hand and dragged her legs wider. Just the simple act of repositioning her and the feel of his hair brushing against her belly was enough to send her crashing over the edge. He thrust his tongue inside her and her muscles clenched and convulsed around him.
And then he was focusing every ounce of his attention on her. Licking. Sucking. Pulling at her until she wanted to scream with joy.
She'd never known it was possible to feel like this, like she was dying and coming to life all at the same time. He didn't stop licking her until her final tremor. She'd never known orgasms could be all-consuming, had never been limp and shattered afterward.
At last, she collapsed back onto the bed, gasping for air. Logan shifted his weight from between her legs and brought his mouth back to her breasts, tenderly nuzzling the undersides. Unlike other men who went straight for the nipple, he acted as if he had all the time in the world, and she found herself blossoming again beneath his mouth. She ached to feel his entire weight over her, and now that she'd found her breath again, all she wanted was to feel him sliding into her heat.
He lifted his head, a half smile on his beautiful lips. Lips that had brought her pleasure she'd never imagined possible.
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“Soon,” he promised, “but not quite yet.”
She shifted and her foot grazed something hot and smooth. He immediately went stiff beneath her and, suddenly, she wanted him to know the torture of being teased—of being made to wait for something that was long past due.
She flexed her ankle and arched her foot, then pointed it and slid her toes slowly down his long length. Two could play the same game of anticipation and boundless desire.
Logan was levered above her on his forearms, his biceps and triceps shaking beneath her fingertips. And then the thick head of his erection was pressing into her heat.
The words “You win” came from his mouth a moment before he imprisoned her lips beneath his.
She bucked her hips into his hard heat, even though she knew better than to make love without protection. She was that far gone.
He allowed the head of his penis to slide into her, to stretch her wide, far wider than any other man before him. His eyes were blue-black with desire as he pushed inside another inch, and then another.
Her muscles gripped him tightly to pull him in farther. All the way in.
But Logan was a master of control, and her body ached for him as he pulled out and reached into his bedside table for one of the aforementioned condoms. He sheathed himself without her help—Lord knew her trembling hands would have been no use at all—and repositioned himself between her legs. He cupped her face and kissed her long and sweet.
She slid her hands against the great wall of his chest, then over his rib cage to hold on to his outspread lats. She shuddered as her forbidden dreams of making love to her mystery man from so many months ago came true.
“You're mine, Maya.”
His passionate words rocked her to the core and she opened wide for him, moisture flooding her canal to ease his passage. Again and again, he thrust his hard, thick length into her. His heavy weight pressed her into the bed and his skin grew slick beneath her hands. Sweat beaded between her breasts and he bent his head to lick it from her skin without missing a beat, the steady propulsion of his hips driving her back up to what should have been an unattainable peak.
She'd never come more than once a night, not even hours apart. But here, beneath Logan's mouth and hands and erection, she was heading straight for another explosion, one that promised to be at least as powerful as her first.
He lifted his head again and locked his eyes on hers, knowing what was coming. And then his hands were in her hair and his mouth was on hers and she was wrapping her legs around his waist and rocking into him.
A cry of ecstasy tore from her throat and merged with his growl of pleasure as spasms wracked her body, starting from her heated core and working their way out to her skin, to the tips of her toes and fingernails and each hair on her head. She rode the length of his shaft again and again, her orgasm breaking her completely. She didn't know how long they lay together afterward, his wonderfully heavy weight pressing into her. It could have been seconds. Minutes. Maybe even hours.
Maya had known from previous experience that Logan could play her body like a fiddle … but she'd had no idea it would be a symphony.
Being with him felt—just as it had six months ago—so incredibly right, even though it was wrong for a million different reasons, more so now than it had been six months ago. Back then, she supposed she could claim the disorientation of grief for her impulsive actions. But now, minutes after begging Logan to take her hard and fast, her excuses fell flat.
Yes, she'd almost died.
Yes, she'd needed to feel alive.
But those were simply excuses for taking exactly what she wanted.
And she'd wanted him fiercely. Even though being with Logan—wanting Logan with every fiber of her being—spoke to her deepest fears.
Her mother had barely spoken at her father's funeral. But the one thing she'd said to Maya was forever etched into her brain.
Don't let yourself love a firefighter. It will only break your heart.
She hadn't had to say it again at Tony's funeral. It had been understood.
Now Maya was in a hotshot's bed, in a hotshot's arms. Logan was everything she'd ever wanted. Strong, courageous, willing to help people in need regardless of the risk to himself.
But all those pluses were minuses too.
The very things she admired about him, all of the things that made him so attractive, were the same things that made what he did on a daily basis so dangerous. She wished she could keep this contentment of being in his arms, hide inside of it.
But she couldn't allow herself to love—and lose— another man like him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MAYA STIFFENED and unwrapped her trembling legs from around his hips. She pushed against his chest, and in the aftermath of the most powerful lovemaking of his life, when all he wanted was for Maya to stay cradled and warm against his chest, Logan had no choice but to release his hold on her, to give her the space she demanded.
He'd been desperate to claim Maya as his own. She was so damn beautiful—and so incredibly responsive, even more responsive than he'd remembered. She'd seemed equally as possessed, and he'd wanted to be gentle with her, wanted to erase the threat of death that hung over her. And he hadn't been able to resist the sweet pull of her body, her slick heat.
“We shouldn't have done that.” Her voice was raw. Unsteady.
“We both took what we wanted, what we needed,” he said, tipping her chin up with his fingertips to force her to look him in the eye. He wouldn't let her talk her way out of what had just happened. “There's nothing wrong with that.”
A faint haze of satisfaction still covered her features, even as he watched her recoil from her loss of control. She was the most frustrating—and most seductive— woman he'd ever known.
She shifted away from him. “I shouldn't be here with you. Naked. In your bed.”
He sat up, unconcerned with his own nakedness. “Don't ask me to apologize for what just happened. Because I won't.” He dropped his eyes to her bare breasts, her soft skin red from his rough handling. “Not this time. Or the next.”
She pulled the sheets up to tangle over her hips and thighs, before covering her chest with her arms and looking away, her mouth pinched tight even though her cheeks were still flushed from satisfaction.
“No matter how hard you fight it,” he said, “no matter how much you wish we didn't have this connection, we do. This isn't over between us.”
“It has to be, Logan. It's not even the fact that I'm here to investigate you. I can't date a firefighter. I just can't.”
All at once, it was clear to him what was going on in her head. She thought that hiding herself away from everyone and everything that reminded her of her father and brother would keep her safe.
“Only once have I had to tell a woman that she was a widow.”
Her eyes flew to meet his. “Kenny? You had to tell his wife? But you were just a rookie.”
“The superintendent wanted to make sure I had it in me to make it back from the edge.” He thought back to that shitty afternoon, in the blazing sun, watching his awful words make a pretty woman cry. “I'm not going to lie to you. It was one of the worst things I've ever had to do.” He touched her hand. “But the next day I was back out there on the mountain. To quit then would have made Kenny's death even more pointless.”
She didn't say anything, but he hoped she was hearing what he was saying.
“You're incredibly strong, Maya. You're one of the strongest people I've ever met.”
“I want you to understand,” she said in a very serious voice. “You're wonderful, Logan. Anyone can see that. And you're right, our connection is …”
She didn't finish her sentence, but the rosy color splashed across her cheeks and her plump lips, reddened from their kisses, spoke volumes.
“I can't do what my mother did. I can't spend the next five, ten, fifteen years sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring.”
He wanted to argue with her, but he co
uldn't. Not when she'd been through hell already. How could he blame her for wanting to protect herself from more unbearable pain? He should have been happy to just be with her, naked in his bed. But he wasn't.
He wanted more.
Out on the mountain, when he was facing a fire, he knew to move slowly. Patiently making his way closer, inch by inch if that's all he could get. Rushing the flames never worked. Only a slow assault would get him closer to the flames, to the point where he could overtake them.
Yet again, he needed to take a page from his hotshot experience. He was moving too fast with Maya. He needed to back off and give her time. Otherwise, he'd lose her.
“I don't want to pressure you into anything.”
She smiled a crooked little smile. “You're not. I just want you to know where I'm coming from. What just happened was great, but I don't want to lead you on. It wouldn't be fair.”
She was the most honest, straightforward woman he'd ever known. His own conscience kicked into overtime.
“You've been completely honest with me,” he said, knowing for certain that he could trust her. “Now it's time for me to come clean with you.”
Surprise whiplashed across her face. “I'm not going to like this, am I?”
“Probably not,” he admitted.
“I'm listening.”
“You know that trails lead into Desolation from behind Joseph's house, don't you?”
Her brows furrowed. “I saw that on the topo map, but I hadn't thought …” She quickly worked out what he was getting at. “You think he's involved in the fire in some way?”
Logan shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “I sure as hell hope not. But with his memory failing, I can't stop thinking that anything is possible.”
Maya sat up quickly, the sheet falling off her breasts to her hips. Logan fought to keep his attention on what she was saying, rather than on her spectacular curves.
“Including the possibility that he started the wild-fire?”
This time he wasn't going to leave anything out, not even the most incriminating details. The only way she could help Joseph was if she knew the full, unvarnished truth.