As the tears began working their way down her cheeks, the door to her suite opened. Heart pounding in sudden alarm, Scarlett was too overcome by panic to move. When Logan stepped into view, she was awash in relief.
“You came back.”
His gaze swung in her direction. “I never left.”
“You weren’t here when I came to get water.”
“I stepped outside to talk to Lucas.” He gestured with his cell phone. “I didn’t want to disturb you.” As he spoke, he narrowed the distance between them. “Is your jaw still sore?”
He’d moved within reach and before she could question the wisdom of her actions, Scarlett pressed herself against his strong body. She wrapped her arms around his waist and felt him tense. But when his hands touched her shoulders, it wasn’t to push her away but to gather her still closer.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re safe.”
And for the first time in a long time, she knew she was. Letting someone take care of her wasn’t comfortable for Scarlett. She’d developed a deep and wide streak of distrust not long after reaching puberty. The older brother of one of her fellow actors had cornered her in a dressing room and stuck his tongue down her throat. Afterward he’d threatened to say she’d come on to him if she told anyone what had happened. She’d been twelve years old at the time and was just beginning to understand what it meant to be a woman.
“I’m not always strong,” she told him, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “Usually I’m terrified that what I’m doing is completely wrong.”
Logan stroked her hair. “You’ve sure fooled me.”
“That was the idea.”
* * *
Logan drew Scarlett toward the couch. They sat together in the middle with little space between them. Scarlett snuggled against his side and her lips curved into a dreamy smile when his arm came around her shoulder. It was a serene, domestic moment, unlike their normally tempestuous encounters. The invasion of her home had cracked her shell, knocking her off her game.
For the first time he didn’t question whether this was honest fear or just a performance to make him sympathetic toward her. He’d seen her acting range. She could transform herself into whatever played into a man’s fantasy. Since he’d criticized the way she dressed, he’d noticed her wardrobe had become more professional. Was she donning another costume, one designed to win him over? Did she even comprehend what she was doing? Or was it second nature to her?
“You’re a hard woman to read, Scarlett Fontaine.”
Tonight, she’d been as rattled as he’d ever seen her. So much so she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she was afraid.
Her sigh brushed his neck. “I hate to admit it, but you bring out the worst in me.”
He was silent a long moment. “Why is that?” He asked the question, not expecting she’d tell him the truth.
“I guess I want too much for you to like me.”
Her declaration caught him off guard. Had she recovered her equilibrium? Was this an act? She’d been prickly when he’d told her he wasn’t going to take advantage of her. She hadn’t appreciated his chivalry. And she’d been right to say that few men would’ve let her go to bed alone. Sitting alone out here with nothing but an unlocked door between them was a harsh test of his willpower.
“Why do you care what I think?”
“Because I like you and I know you don’t approve of me.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why do you care what I think?”
“There aren’t a lot of people who don’t like me.” She huffed out a small laugh. “I know how that sounds, but I’ve always had a knack for winning people over.”
“I’ve seen you in action many times.”
“I can hear it in your voice. You don’t approve of how I behave.” She sounded grumpy.
Against his better judgment, Logan found her dismay charming. “Does it occur to you how ridiculous it sounds to say you want me to like you when you’ve been provocative and difficult at every turn?”
“I’m simply responding to your scorn.” She flashed him a baleful glance. “Call it self-preservation.”
Hadn’t he been just as guilty of provoking her? “Should we call a truce?”
“And have you lose interest in me because things become boring between us?” Her green eyes had regained some of their wicked sparkle. “Half the reason you find me so attractive is because I keep you guessing.”
“You’re sure I find you attractive?”
He’d no sooner uttered the challenge when her hand curved across his thigh. His muscles twitched in response and her lips arced impishly. That she was touching him to prove a point was the only thing that kept him from flipping her onto her back.
“If you knew all my secrets,” she said, “you’d find me deadly dull.”
“I can’t imagine that’s possible.”
To hell with his earlier stance on not taking advantage of her in a vulnerable state. There was only so much temptation a man could take. And the pressure behind his zipper demanded that he give up the fight.
He bent down and captured her mouth in a slow kiss meant to satisfy his need for deeper intimacy with her. She moaned beneath his lips and twisted her body until she was sliding backward. Unwilling to be parted from her even for a second, Logan broke off the kiss and scooped his hands beneath her ass, repositioning her with her spine flat on the couch, his weight crushing her into its soft cushions.
“Are you okay?” he asked noticing her slight wince. He pushed a hair away from her face and eyed the spot where the intruder had hit her. “If your jaw is hurting, we should stop.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Logan wasn’t convinced. “You’ve swelled up a bit where he hit you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Really?”
“Just shut up and kiss me.”
As fierce as his desire was for her, Logan wasn’t about to rush the moment he’d been fantasizing about for weeks. No matter how deeply lust sank its talons into his groin, he intended to explore every inch of her skin, taste each sigh, absorb the entirety of her surrender.
He applied gentle kisses to her parted lips, causing her to murmur in encouragement. With his weight pinning her, she had little hope of wiggling and driving him mad with provocative movements, but her hands were free and she used them to her advantage.
After ruffling his hair and tracing his spine, she tightened her grasp on his shirt and pulled it free of his pants. Braced against the first touch of her skin against his, he kept up the slow seduction with his lips and tongue. She sighed as her palms connected with his lower back. Logan couldn’t prevent the instinctive twitch his body gave as she raked her long nails up his sides.
Ignoring the heat blazing between them, he cupped her cheek and licked at her lips, running his tongue along her teeth before flicking her tongue. Beneath his palm he felt her facial muscles shift and knew she was smiling. He kissed her nose, a grin of his own blooming at her heartfelt sigh.
“Why so impatient?” he teased, taking her plump lower lip between his teeth and sucking ever so lightly.
Her nails bit into his back. “Because five years of foreplay is too long.”
“Five years?” Carefully avoiding her bruised jaw, he nuzzled the soft skin below her ear, inhaling her smooth, fresh perfume and the sharper tang of her earlier stress. If nothing else reinforced his need to take his time, this reminder of what she’d been through tonight did. “Is that what we’ve been doing all this time?”
“Of course.” She adjusted the angle of her head to grant him better access to her neck.
“How do you figure?”
“You don’t seriously think all that animosity between us was anything other than frustrated sexual energy, do you?”
He knew what it had been on his part, but was surprised she admitted to being similarly afflicted. “Are you saying you’ve wanted me this whole time?”
He tried to make his voice sound shocked, but ended up fighting a groan as she found a way to free her left leg from beneath him. By bending her knee, she was able to shift his hips into the perfect V between her thighs. Her intimate heat pressed against his hip even through the layers of fabric between them. Breath rasping in and out of his lungs, he held perfectly still to savor the sensation.
“Of course.”
He believed her because whenever they touched, the walls tumbled down between them. And in this place where they communicated truth as easily with words as they did with their bodies, he was in serious danger of falling hard.
Was that why he’d doubted and taunted her all these years? Because he suspected that if they had a civil conversation he might have to face just how crazy he was about her? All her flaws became insignificant. All his misgivings seemed to be paranoia.
“Make love to me, Logan,” she pleaded when the silence dragged on too long. “Don’t make me wait any longer.”
“I want nothing more,” he admitted. “But let’s take it slow.”
“Slow?” She didn’t look happy.
“Slow,” he confirmed. “You’re worth savoring. Relax.” He reclaimed her lips and soothed her with soft, romantic kisses. “We have all night.”
* * *
Scarlett put her impatience aside and let Logan set the pace. The ache between her thighs didn’t abate, but neither did it intensify as they exchanged a series of slow, sweet kisses. The give-and-take of his lips against hers was comforting and the fog of desire dissipated from her mind, offering her a chance to enjoy the feel of his strong body where it pressed against hers and the subtle cologne he’d applied for their date tonight. She concentrated on relaxing her muscles, ignoring the hunger needling her. Logan was right. They’d waited this long. Why rush it?
His kisses did unexpected things to her emotions. Lighter than soap bubbles, joy pushed outward from her center. Logan made her feel like no other man ever had. Cherished. Appreciated. Understood. The excitement she’d expected to feel as his body mastered hers was tempered by the need to relish every second of their time together.
“Why are you smiling?” Logan asked, drifting his lips across her eyelids and down her nose.
“I’ve never necked on the couch like this.”
“Never?” Surprise peppered Logan’s question. “I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true. Necking is something you do with your boyfriend on your parents’ couch or in the back of your boyfriend’s car.”
“Seems to me you had both a boyfriend and access to a couch and car.”
“I wasn’t a normal teenager. For one thing, I didn’t go to regular school. I had tutors and studied between scenes. For another, my boyfriend at the time liked partying with friends and hitting the club.” Not kicking back and hanging out alone with his girlfriend.
“Oh, right, you were dating that boy-band reject back then.”
Hearing Logan’s derision, Scarlett wished she’d kept her mouth shut, but now that the door was open, she might as well step through.
“We started dating when we were fifteen.” Lost in girlish, idealistic fantasies about love, she’d relished their role as America’s sweethearts, but their private interaction wasn’t nearly as romantic as their public one. “After being fired from
That’s Our Hilary
because my image was becoming too sexy and getting offered nothing but vampy bad-girl parts, I tried to clean up my image by trotting out this vow of chastity until I got married.” The armies of paparazzi following them had eaten it up. Reacting the way any normal eighteen-year-old boy would, Will had dumped her.
“You’re a virgin?” Logan did a lousy job hiding his amusement behind mock surprise.
“Don’t be absurd.” To punish him, she rotated her hips and rubbed her pelvis against his erection. His eyes glazed with satisfying swiftness. “After Will and I broke up, I discovered celibacy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.”
“So, you’ve never necked on a couch before,” he prompted. “Anything else I should know about?”
Too much. But those things would have to wait until she had a better handle on what was happening between them. “One revelation per day is all you’re going to get.”
“At this rate, it’ll take the rest of my life getting to know you.”
His offhand remark created a vacuum between them. Scarlett kept her eyes lidded and her breath even as she said, “It never occurred to me that you’d let it take that long. You’re so impatient when it comes to getting answers.”
“Some things are worth waiting for.”
It wasn’t like Logan to be cryptic, but Scarlett had no chance to question him further. His lips returned to hers with more intensity, and she knew the time had come for serious play between them.
When she’d dressed in the lounge suit, she hadn’t planned on Logan’s strong, sure hands smoothing over her curves, but now she was glad she hadn’t slipped into her underwear first. As bare beneath the hot-pink fabric as the day she was born, Scarlett knew the instant Logan’s fingers discovered her secret.
“Scarlett,” he groaned her name as her nipple tightened against his palm. “What you do to me.”
She arched her back and bared her throat for his lips and tongue. After working her into an unsteady mess, he glided his mouth across her collarbone and deposited gentle kisses in the hollow of her shoulder. His chin nudged along the edge of the fabric as he dusted his lips across her breastbone and worked his way toward her cleavage.
The zipper of her lounge suit surrendered beneath the downward pressure of Logan’s fingers. She gasped as cool air washed across her bare skin, but his lips skimmed over her ribs, warming her once more. Desire rushed through her as Logan finished unfastening the jacket and laved her quivering stomach. Sensation lanced straight to her hot core, leaving her head spinning.
Impatience clawed at her, but the man refused to move at the speed she so desperately craved. Now, instead of kissing her lips and neck, he was paying entirely too much attention to her abdomen, rib cage and the ticklish spot just above her hipbone.
“Logan, there are other parts of me that are hungry for your attention.” She tugged on his shirt, urging him to stop ignoring her breasts.
“Are there, now?” He kissed his way upward. “And what might those be?”
“My breasts are feeling very lonely.” She gathered them in her hands and offered him their aching fullness.