If.
The single word that could make everything else possible, she mused.
God, now she was babbling even in her head, Destiny thought, trying to get hold of herself.
He was looking at her. Looking into her.
“I’m not used to partying,” she heard herself saying as her throat grew progressively drier.
Amused, Logan pushed back a wisp of her hair that kept falling into her eyes. His fingertips lightly brushed against her skin.
“Really?” he teased. “You could have fooled me.”
“I doubt that anything could really fool you,” she murmured.
He didn’t know about that. It seemed that all this time he’d been fooling himself, claiming that empty, shallow relationships were all he wanted.
That didn’t seem to be enough anymore.
Not nearly enough.
The night breeze was just warm enough as it wrapped itself around them. The area was still, its inhabitants either asleep or away.
Everything seemed to be focused on the two of them.
On her.
Destiny’s face was still turned up to his. A soft invitation he couldn’t make himself refuse even though he knew he should.
The next moment, his lips were against hers.
And all hell broke loose.
Chapter 13
Logan wasn’t sure just what he was thinking when he leaned over and kissed her. Most likely, he wasn’t thinking.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had to have told himself that this would just be a simple, uncomplicated kiss. But in the depths of his soul, he had to have known better.
There was nothing simple about sharing a kiss with Destiny.
He’d already learned that the first time around. No reason to expect that the second time would be any less exhilarating.
If anything, it was more so.
Because the moment he kissed her, Logan wanted more. An entire galaxy more. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to experience her and lose himself in whatever followed.
It was as if he’d lived for years in a cave and had, just now, walked out into the bright sunlight. It might take some adjusting, but it definitely did not even begin to flirt, even remotely, with anything that was even close to regret.
Maybe, if Destiny hadn’t kissed him back, he would have been able to harness this wild energy pulsing through him. Might have been able to get himself under control and stop after a few moments had gone by.
But she did kiss him back.
Hard.
And just like that, all bets were off, all the scaffolding that was carefully holding up his reconstructed walls now cracked and broke apart.
Logan’s hands ran up and down along her body, increasing her body temperature until Destiny was certain she was standing in the center of a lit fireplace instead of on her doorstep.
“Hold it,” she urgently breathed against his mouth as he continued to kiss her and make her head spin.
The words penetrated half a beat later, and with grave effort Logan drew back from his partner. Was she having second thoughts? Or had he misread her signals? Was he guilty of pushing too hard?
“If we keep this up out here,” she told him, her words coming out in breathy spurts as she turned toward the door and did her best to stick her key into the lock, “we’re going to get arrested.”
So he hadn’t misread the signs. Logan grinned. “I’ve got my handcuffs in the car,” he volunteered. “I could handcuff you.”
He found himself talking to an empty space. Destiny had unlocked the door to her apartment and left it open for him.
“Are you coming in?”
When he didn’t immediately answer, Destiny reached out, grabbed his arm and pulled him inside, impulsively taking the decision out of his hands.
“I guess I am.”
His words would have been followed with a laugh, but by then, the door had slammed shut and her lips were locked onto his again. It was all he could do to keep breathing. She had a way of stealing the air right out of his lungs.
Logan could feel his body heating as an urgency surged through him.
Eager to make love to every inch of this woman, he started to undress her—or tried to. He’d forgotten about the pearl buttons running along the front of her dress. There had to be a thousand buttons in the way.
A fail-safe obstacle to allow her a last chance to reassess the situation?
“Who designed this dress?” he asked in frustration. “Nuns in some cloistered convent in the Swiss Alps?”
Destiny’s heart was already beating in her throat, threatening to leap out of her body entirely. She’d never felt like this before, never experienced this level of desire before. It was all she could do to keep her whole body, including her fingertips, from trembling. This was by far the prettiest dress she owned, but in hindsight, she shouldn’t have worn it.
Too late now.
“It’ll go faster if we work together,” she told him, her words emerging in tiny bursts of sound. “You start at the top and work your way down. I’ll come in from the bottom and work my way up.”
He was already doing his part, his long, slender fingers more than equal to the delicate task. “Sounds like a plan to me,” he murmured, his lips and his breath grazing the side of her neck and sending shock waves through her body with every small, sexy kiss he pressed against her flesh.
The touch of his fingers against the sensitive length of the skin along her breasts generated one hell of a response within her. Yearning had multiplied in geometric proportions, and it was all she could do to keep from ripping her dress off.
But she didn’t want to destroy it. She wanted to preserve it, because in a very short while, the dress—and her memories—would be all she would have left of an evening that promised to go far beyond anything she could have possibly imagined.
Their fingers brushed against one another as they both reached the very last pearl button that needed to be freed.
Destiny dropped her arms to her sides as she let him do the honors.
And when he did, slipping the back of the halter over her head, the soft blue dress floated to the floor, leaving her dressed only in his warm gaze, a pair of high heels and a scrap of white lace that had to be the ultimate minimum in undergarments.
That he didn’t bother being gentle with. In a second, the undergarment was history.
The next moment, naked, Destiny was wrapped around his torso, her mouth all but hermetically sealed to his as a second wave of fire ignited between them.
He was kissing her, stroking her, touching her until she was utterly mindless. None of her surroundings registered.
They could have been in her living room, her kitchen, or on her bathroom floor for all she knew. The only things she was aware of were the all-consuming craving within her and the fact that he wasn’t sating it. He was feeding it, making it grow.
And she was aware, too, of the fact that somehow, though she didn’t remember if she was responsible or he was, his clothes had vanished from his body. What was beneath was tanned and toned and hard.
Doing her best to draw air into her lungs in small fits and starts, Destiny began at first hesitantly, then progressively with more confidence, to run her hands along his utterly tempting body.
Touching, teasing, stimulating.
With each pass, the thrill increased for her until it was all but unmanageable.
She wanted him with every fiber of her being, her very core moist and yearning for that final burst of fulfillment.
But even as she raised her hips to him in a silent, sensual invitation, she discovered that Logan was intent on prolonging her experience.
Instead of driving himself into her, he took her a little at a time, making love to her body with his hands, his lips, his tongue. Creating small, lethal climaxes for her.
Even as he brought his mouth down on the hollow of her elbow, she felt a strange, wondrous miniexplosion within the center of her very core.
Her eyes flying open as her breath caught in her throat, she looked at Logan. Just what was he doing to her?
But even as she sought to ask, he’d moved on to another part of her body. And it was the same thing all over again. He was re-creating the explosions. She felt them along the slope of her throat, the swell of her breasts—first one, then the other—and then he began to move lower.
The area around her navel quivered uncontrollably with anticipation as he left a soft, hot, moist trail of intertwining kisses, working his way slowly, methodically down to his primary target.
When he coaxed her legs apart, she was certain that Logan was preparing to enter.
And he was.
But not the way she’d thought.
His breath just barely brushed along the most sensitive part of her, causing ripples of desire to seize her.
To prepare her.
Nothing could have prepared her. Not for this. Not for the sensation that followed as he lightly, subtly flirted along the outline of her femininity with just the tip of his tongue, teasing her until she thought she was going to scream.
And then he finally thrust his tongue into her.
She scrambled up eagerly to meet the explosion, her hips arched and raised as she grasped what turned out to be the sheet from her bed with both hands. She was yanking, pulling, trying to keep herself anchored to earth even as she rushed to absorb the incredible sensations that were rocking her body.
Bringing her to the edge of ecstasy and then pushing her into its swirling cauldron.
Every single part of her felt as if it was lit up and rejoicing.
And then, exhausted, spent, her body collapsed back against the mattress.
Dazed, trying vainly to somehow seal in all the delicious sensations still humming through her body, Destiny became aware that Logan was moving seductively up along her body, his body’s hard ridges rubbing against her softer contours.
Arousing her all over again.
As if what had just transpired had been only an appetizer, foreshadowing the main course.
She’d thought herself completely drained, but she was wrong. From somewhere deep inside of her, a second wave of energy materialized, eagerly rushing up to meet what was about to come.
Gathering Destiny into his arms, Logan looked into the dazed wonder in her eyes for a moment, savoring it before he sealed his lips to hers.
He’d done this—made love to a woman—so many times before that he had actually lost count. And yet, somehow, though he couldn’t quite explain why even to himself, this felt different.
Was different.
The look of dazed wonder mixed with absolute pleasure in her blue eyes didn’t feed his ego, didn’t give him the usual sense of satisfaction that he’d done his job by pleasing his partner. Instead, the look in her eyes stirred him, excited him.
It made him want her in a way he couldn’t remember wanting anyone else.
Ever.
His heart pounding hard against his rib cage, Logan pulled her closer than a breath to him.
And then he entered her.
Not with a driving force but with a measured gentleness that grew and steadily increased until the rhythm seized them both. They moved in unison to a timeless melody that grew more powerful and demanding until the final crescendo resounded and the ultimate fallout drenched them both, echoing through their bodies simultaneously, as if they truly were one.
The starbursts receded.
Logan didn’t loosen his grasp, didn’t draw back as the final coda faded softly into the whispers of the night. Instead, he continued to hold her, continued to savor what had just happened between them and found himself more than a little reluctant to let that sensation go, forcing him to return to earth and to reality.
He could actually feel her heart hammering against his. Hammering so hard that with very little effort at all, he could see the two hearts—hers and his—merging into one.
The thought lingered on his mind.
The fact that it did startled him. Since when was he given to something so sentimental? Something so, for lack of a better word, sappy?
What the hell was happening to him?
Having rolled off her and gathered her into his arms, Logan looked down into the face of the woman who had coaxed forward this person within him that he didn’t recognize.
He wasn’t certain whether to be worried that he had momentarily had some sort of a hallucination, or whether to just plain run for the hills because what had just gone on was decidedly different from anything he had ever experienced before. It had in effect exposed him to his own vulnerability, and that couldn’t be good.
“I guess,” he murmured, the words settling against the top of her head, “that you’re never too old to be surprised.”
Was he saying that she’d surprised him? That he hadn’t thought she would be any good at this and discovering that she was had knocked him for a loop? Or was there some kind of other, hidden meaning behind Logan’s words?
She was having trouble thinking clearly. All she knew was that her insides still vibrated like a tuning fork struck hard against a concrete surface.
“I surprised you?” she finally asked, needing to know. Bracing herself for his answer.
“No, I surprised me,” he told her honestly.
He really hadn’t thought that he would respond to her this way. That making love with her so completely, he’d find himself not satisfied but actually craving more.
Craving her even as his body was still warm from their first go-round.
Destiny shifted, her body brushing up against his as she looked up at him.
“I don’t understand,” she confessed.
Neither do I, really.
But that wasn’t an answer to give her. He was supposed to be the one with all the answers. Or at least that was the way he felt.
“I’ll explain it later,” he promised, tilting her face up to his with the tip of his finger against her chin. Logan proceeded to lightly graze her lips with his own.
The excitement struck like lightning in a cornfield, instantly setting him on fire.
“With pictures,” he added, his breath growing shorter again.
“Pictures?” she repeated, feeling her pulse once again threatening to break right through the sound barrier.
How was it that he could make her so crazy so fast? Half a second ago, she’d been too exhausted to even breathe properly. How, then, could she possibly be ready to go at it again with him?
But she was ready. Oh, so ready, as anticipation hummed in her veins.
“What kind of pictures?” She pushed the words out with difficulty, all of her focused on the explosions gathering within her throbbing body.
Excitement swiftly moved through her, filling every nook with sunshine.
“Pretty ones,” he told her with effort.
Or, at least he thought he told her.
He definitely couldn’t swear to it because his mind was, even now, retreating, losing the ability to form even simple complete thoughts.
All that was there now was desire, once again growing to gigantic proportions and promising to be even more unwieldy the second time around.
Which was more than all right with him.
It was the very last semicoherent thought Logan had for a long, long time.
Chapter 14
Destiny was fairly sure that what had happened between Logan and her that evening after his sister’s wedding was a one-shot deal.
Well, technically, it was a three-shot deal, she’d corrected herself, because they’d made love a total of three times by the time Sunday-morning light had crept into her bedroom.
She had a feeling that Logan pretty much felt the same way.
Given that, it was rather difficult to estimate which of them was more surprised when Sunday began to take on the same qualities of the night before.
They were making love less than five minutes after they woke up.
Destiny wasn’t e
ven sure just how it started, only how it ultimately wound up. She’d even, for a few seconds before she’d become aware that Logan was awake, started to think about the case.
Or rather, she’d realized that something in the back of her mind was bothering her about the case. Something elusive nagging at her that she felt she should have caught by now.
But before she could fully concentrate on trying to summon it to the foreground and begin to explore exactly what was bothering her, her body was otherwise engaged, sending her mind back into the netherworld.
* * *
“You know,” Logan told her a little while later as he collapsed beside her on the bed and another exquisite marathon lovemaking session between them had taken its place in history, “we just might be setting some kind of record here.”
It took her a moment to pull enough air into her lungs to be able to answer him. “Well, I know that this is certainly my personal best.”
The moment the words were out, Destiny realized she’d just shared too much information. On the one hand, it seemed rather silly to feel awkward about what she’d just told him. After all the man had now seen her naked for the better part of three-quarters of a day.
But on the other hand, a month ago she had not even known him well enough to say hello to him when she passed him in the hall. Other than the fact that he was Sean’s son, Logan had been a stranger to her.
He certainly isn’t a stranger now, is he?
No, he wasn’t. But, other than being her temporary partner for this case, she really didn’t know what Logan was.
Logan had propped himself up on his elbow and was looking down at her face. The smile on his lips went straight to the place responsible for taking memories and pressing them between the pages of time, to remember and treasure for as long as possible.
“I certainly have no complaints on my end,” he assured her softly.
Destiny could feel desire stirring within her. Again.
Okay, this was just impossible. How could she have turned into this insatiable, love-hungry creature after all these years of doing without and getting along just fine? she silently demanded. Until yesterday, she’d been completely convinced that she didn’t need this kind of reaffirmation, that sex was something she could easily do without, thank you very much.
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