He said, suddenly close. “What are you thinking of right now, Jenny?”
Her breath caught. “Nothing—nothing.”
“Your whole face changed. I noticed it before, when I took the picture of you. You were thinking about something you’d lost. Something you still wanted.”
“Logan.”
She meant to speak his name as a warning, but her voice caught. Not a day had gone by that she hadn’t missed her grandmother. Now he stood only inches in front of her, perceiving more than he should, close enough for her to smell the scent of soap on his skin. Should she tell him? Why was he asking so many questions? Why would he care? She lifted her face and found herself caught in his gaze, full of curiosity and something more needy, far more intense. The light around Logan spun, maybe nothing more than the wind in the trees, changing the light. But, real or not, it didn’t stop a pressure from building low in her belly, a coiling tightness she recognized all too well.
“Hell, Jenny.” Logan slipped his fingers into her hair. “You keep looking at me like that. We both know this is going to happen, sooner or later.”
He lowered his mouth to her lips.
CHAPTER FOUR
Logan’s mouth touched hers like a jolt of lightning. The electricity shot through to her toes. Jenny swayed back out of reflex but his lips clung. Her heart kicked up its pace, trilled in an odd rhythm as he rumbled a deep-throated sound and shifted his stance so that the heat of his big body poured over hers, as he dove in for another taste.
Had she said his name aloud? She thought she’d said something. She could barely think two words in sequence. Her breathing had dropped out of sync, she sipped air between kisses. He pulled back a fraction to rub his forehead against hers as he mumbled something unintelligible before he kissed her again. The sun braised her shoulders. The gurgle of the river sang in her ears. The wind teased tendrils as her eyelids became too heavy to stay open. The heavy scent honeysuckle cast a sweet fog over her mind. Her thoughts were the wind-blown seeds of a dandelion head, scattering far and wide, as Logan’s fingers dug into her scalp, as he urged her lips apart and teased her mouth with his tongue.
What was happening? She was standing—her feet flat on the soft bedding of pine needles—but she may as well be floating a few feet of the ground. His hair slipped soft between her fingers, the bristle of his jaw scraping the butt of her hand. She smelled the roasted coffee on his breath, felt the smooth slip of his teeth with her tongue. An ache intensified between her thighs and her knees threatened to weaken, to pull her down, and him upon her—
“Stop.”
He stilled, a swift hardening of muscle inches from her face. He pinned her in place with those pale green eyes. She took two stumbling steps away back, pressing the back of her arm against her mouth to stop the insistent throbbing.
Logan stood, his chest rising and falling, breathing hard.
She held up a hand though he hadn’t come an inch closer. “Let me catch my breath.”
“I like you breathless.”
“Logan.”
“Damn it, Jenny. Your eyes screamed yes.”
Her reflexive denial didn’t make it past her throat. She never was a good liar. She had wanted him to kiss her. She still wanted him.
She dropped her arm from her mouth and harnessed frustration instead. “Do you usually go around kissing the socks off of unsuspecting women?”
“It wasn’t your socks I was trying to get off.”
She clutched her chest, still imprinted with the muscular mysteries of that solid chest. “Listen,” she said, her pulse racing, “if this is some kind of man-in-the-wilderness, sex-under-the-open-sky kind of thing, you picked the wrong girl.”
“I really got your circuits crossed, didn’t I?”
“If it’s a quick roll in the dicranoweisia cirrhata you’re looking for,” she said, feeling more flushed by the minute, “I’m just not interested.”
“We just lit up the whole forest, Jenny.”
“It’s time to go.” She turned her back to him. At her feet lay the bag of honeysuckle blossoms she’d held in her hands before he kissed her. She must have dropped them, for the bag had burst open and now blossoms tumbled across the ground. “Once we’re home,” she said, crouching to stuff the flowers back into the sample bag, “we need to talk about the limits of this— Ouch!”
She heard the angry buzz, felt the vibration against her finger just as something pierced deep. She tumbled onto her backside and yanked her hand out of the bag, just as the body of a bumblebee fell from the stinger lodged in her skin.
She winced as the poisoned pain shot straight to her elbow, intensifying with every throb. She shook her hand in a vain effort to diffuse the pain.
A shadow fell over her as Logan crouched. “Let me see.”
“Just a sting.” She gritted her teeth. “Occupational hazard.”
“Bee stings can be serious.”
She winced an eye open, saw strained concern on his face. “It’s your fault I’m stung.”
“We both were distracted.” He turned her hand over, fully focused. “Where is it?”
“Doesn’t matter.” She yanked her hand away from him. “The pain will go away in fifteen minutes or so.”
“Sooner if you get the stinger out.”
“It’s emptied of bee venom by now.”
She cradled her aching hand
