“No flashlights?”
“No batteries.” He lit the candle closest to her and blew out the match. A curl of blue smoke rose between them. “Candles are more romantic anyway.”
He raised his lashes and looked right at her within the golden glow of light. The silence of the room was broken only by the patter of the rain outside, the flare of another match, the hiss of a drop of water falling from Logan’s hair into the hot wax. She could see his eyes—those fierce green eyes. The rest of him was an outline of a shadow against the gloom. Standing here with her skirt pasted to her legs, her knit tank clinging to her breasts, she felt as naked as the day he’d seen her damp from the shower.
If there were a way to tap into the electricity zapping between them, there’d be no use for a new transformer in these woods. Why weren’t the lights buzzing on? The coffeemaker burbling? The old electric mixer sparking up and whirring?
He murmured, “You’re thinking too much, Red.”
Thinking? She could hardly string two thoughts together, her heart was pounding so hard.
“I can hear your mind working.” His voice was husky, his face close enough to feel his breath. “Tell me when you figure it out.”
“Figure out…what?”
A muscle in his cheek flexed. “What you really want.”
She knew what she wanted. As clear as the flash of lightning in the room. She couldn’t seem to find her tongue right now, to make it work, to speak the ideas spinning in her mind, but every time a sentence surged to her throat, her better sense pulled it back. Excitement kept knocking up against resistance, and terror tempered her enthusiasm, but she knew what lay at the bottom of it all, knew it in every cell of her body. Her tongue tingled to lick off the rain beading on his throat. Her fingers ached to comb through the dampness of his hair.
“I know what I want,” Logan said, taking a dangerous step closer.
“Say it,” she said, her teeth chattering, and not from any cold, “a girl needs to hear it said.”
“I want you, Jenny.”
His words spiraled through her, making her inner muscles squeeze with promise.
His voice dropped. “You need more details?”
“Y-yes.”
“All right then.” He curled a hand around her waist and slipped the other into the wet tangle of her hair. “I want you naked on that bed in the room where I first saw you. I want to lick every drop of rain off your body.” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “I want to hear you scream my name when you come.”
She gripped the counter’s edge. “That won’t knock the shine of the diamond, Logan.”
“We’ve both been pretending there nothing between us.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
Her throat closed up. She knew this was going to happen, she’d known it in her bones. The desire rising in her felt volcanic. She’d spill over any minute now. She hadn’t felt this lit up by a man’s touch since those summer nights as a teenager.
“Jenny.” Logan pulled back so he could see her face. “Was that a yes yes or just a random articulation?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Yes as in you’ll let me strip off your clothes?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll let me run my hands over your body?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you’ll let me—”
“Stop talking, Logan.”
She dragged her hands up the hem of his polo shirt to feel the ripple of his naked abdomen. A liquid heat surged between her legs. He made a sound, a deep-throated grunt. He smelled like rain. Crisp and clean and hot-wet. The ridge of his erection pressed against her lower belly. The solid wall of his chest crushed her breasts.
She watched a pulse throb in his throat, beating away the seconds. Images rose in her mind of tangled sheets and love-bites and rug-burned knees and the rough surface of a man’s tongue where she now squeezed her legs together. Then he lowered his head and kissed her like he did in the sunshine of the woods, proving that lightning could strike twice.
The world slipped away. There was no more kitchen, no floor beneath her feet, no rain pattering on the windows, no candlelight flickering, no roof over her head. His kiss obliterated everything but the shift of his eager body against hers, and the blood coursing hot and hungry through her own.
He drove his thigh between her legs, forcing the hem of her skirt up. Leaning back against the counter, she ran one knee up his khakis, giving him better access. Her breath hitched as his thigh hit the delta between her legs. He broke the kiss and added some friction, watching her as she struggled to breathe.
The edge of the counter cut into her backside. Her body swayed back over the sink. Rainwater dripped from his hair onto her face. Her heart raced, stumbled, and raced anew. It had been too long since she’d felt like this. And why now, why this was happening, when she’d tried so hard to feel this way before, and had failed to find the magic? What alchemy did Logan possess to flick her on so brightly, without any effort at all?
He pulled away a fraction, giving her leave to scrape her fingernails up his bare abdomen, past the plates of his chest, to wind around his neck. He looked at her from under the shadow of his hair before cupping both her breasts over her shirt with eager hands.
Her nipples strained against the lacy bra, aching for his touch just as he lowered his head and sucked on a nipple through the fabric. He sucked again, pulling the nipple to a tip, teasing it before he gasped a breath and hauled himself up, saying, “Bed.”
White spots burst before her eyes. Either she was passing out or her brain was short-circuiting.
“As much as I want to haul you up against the sink and take you right here,” he said, “I promised you naked
