Bedeviled Angel (20 page)

"Of course. Jeez, what do you take me for?"

"What did you think could have happened to me?"

"I… guess I thought you'd turned up the heat and burned yourself or something."

Melody tried to look innocent, and Logan shook his head. "You did turn up the heat, didn't you?"

She raised an annoyed brow. "What makes you think so?"

"The expression you're wearing; it's one I'm beginning to recognize. You use it when you're up to something. I saw it first when you and Shane tried to cook, then during your interview with Gardner, during dress rehearsal, and the other night when Vickie's grandmother gave you away."

"Smart ass."

Logan kissed her brow. "God help me, I'm beginning to find the look—" He became serious, but hesitated, as if waiting for something.

Melody wet her lips, parted them, and his mouth came for hers with a hot rush of need. Nothing slow and building; the kiss started fast, hard and open-mouthed. Hot and greedy. He wanted her. She wanted him.

Logan adjusted his hips, parted his legs.

Melody raised her knees, curled into him, pressed her bottom against his erection, teasing the tiger.

He held her face as he sipped from her lips, cupped her bottom, kneaded it even as she moved against him.

Melody slipped her hand beneath his shirt to sift through the mat of silk on his chest. He took his mouth from hers, gazed into her eyes, blue piercing gold, hot need meeting hotter. With unspoken permission, he slipped his hand beneath her blouse, into the cup of her bra, searing her as he touched her.

At the first sizzle of contact, his fingers to her nipple, skin to skin, she groaned and surged, and he did the same. He nipped at her lips, her neck, matching moves, sending wild electric sparks to and from every needy corner of her body.

He removed his hand and she cried out at the loss, but he turned her in his arms, spread her legs, and tucked her knees on either side of him, until she sat open and throbbing against him, nothing but the fabric of their clothing between them as she straddled him in the chair.

"I want to see you," she said against his lips when he took her mouth again. "I want to hold you in my hands."

Logan groaned and surged the more, his movements as involuntary as his hard, thickening length.

Melody barely remembered him opening her blouse, before his lips closed over her nipple and he suckled her. As he did, he began a slow-building rocking rhythm against her that quickened over time to a hard, heavy thrust… and she came… to her shock and his delight. And though her face burned, he found her center, and he made her come again, and again.

Melody felt his rapid heartbeat, heard his ragged breaths, and went for his zipper.

"Dad? It hurts, Dad!"

MELODY sat in the rocker in Shane's room and accepted him from Logan's arms. It was time for more medicine, so they gave it to him, then she rocked him while Logan sat on the floor beside the rocker and held an ice pack to his son's bruised and swollen ankle.

After a few minutes, Shane closed his eyes and drifted off, and Logan placed his hand over Melody's on his son's leg. "Thanks," he said.

It took about an hour before they could settle him in his bed again, without him crying out.

Melody stood back and yawned.

"Tired?" Logan asked.

"Bushed," she admitted.

"Me, too." He took her hand to lead her down the hall. "Come on. I'll tuck you into bed."

Melody pulled up short, caution riding her, afraid he'd want to go farther than was prudent. "Bed?"

"Yeah, you can have it; I'll take the sofa."

"Oh."

Logan gave her a suspicious look. "What did you think I meant?"

Melody firmed her spine and resisted temptation, strong after her meltdown in his chair. "No offense, Kilgarven, but I'd rather have the sofa."

He raised a brow at her sudden change in attitude and shrugged. "No offense taken, Seabright, but you slept like a dream in my bed the last time you stayed over."

"Yeah, but I didn't like the dreams I had there." She'd liked them too much.

Logan warmed, remembering what he'd almost done, afraid her dreams had been more real than she knew. With a deal of guilt, he headed for the living room. "Suit yourself,'" he said. "But the bed's yours."

FOR Melody's second show, Logan remained standing behind the audience from the beginning, aware, as he had not been before, that his decision had to do with her making love to the cameras. He wanted her looking at him when she made love, in the same erotic way she had looked at him the other night straddling him in the chair.

As if she understood his intent, she played to him throughout the show, made love, not to the cameras, but to him.

Did she realize it? Did she know that they were reliving every hot and sexy moment in that chair on live TV, with no one the wiser?

The meal was a success, pot roast, dumplings, and all. Her cherry slump came out on the under-baked side, but the hungry crew testified to its success, nevertheless. Gardner grumbled about the dessert, but he never mentioned the great pot roast, though he ate enough for two.

Melody made that night's headlines. "Sexy witch turns up the heat." So much for nobody being the wiser, Logan thought.

WHILE Melody paced with outrage the next morning over the critique of her show as "a cheap try at sex in the kitchen," Tiffany came by the office to give Mel the evil eye and invite Logan to lunch.

FOR the next week, Melody taped "spots" for the show in and around New England. One day, she shot a promo beside Boston Common, another in a swan boat, then later, on the deck of
Old Ironsides
. The following couple of days, she headed for Mystic, Connecticut, and Newport, Rhode Island.

Logan barely saw her. He missed her during the day, but now that her kitchen was finished and she'd moved back downstairs, he missed her more in the evenings.

Tiffany was trying to fill in the gaps, keep him from being lonely, he thought, since she turned up just about everywhere he went that week. Having Tiffany pop up became so common, it made Logan wonder if one of the secretaries wasn't giving her his schedule.

Logan honestly wished he missed Tiffany when they were apart in the same way he'd missed Melody the past few days.

For two more interminable days, Mel shot commercials at Plymouth Plantation and on the
Mayflower
. Later, they would return to the plantation to shoot her Thanksgiving show. Gardner had decided to tape that one, since she would be cooking off-site.

She returned to the station for the first time that week just as Logan was leaving the office on Friday afternoon, but if Tiffany had not waylaid him with a poor excuse for an excuse, he might have missed Mel altogether.

Logan realized, as he saw Melody's surprise at coming face-to-face with him, that she had been avoiding him, likely because he'd made her come three amazing times in his favorite chair. He got hard every time he sat in it now, and if she remembered the experience as vividly, she must surely be running scared.

Melody Seabright, running scared. Logan almost grinned.

"Hi, shark bait," she said, recovering and breezing into the office. "What are you still doing here?"

"Shark bait?" Logan followed her in, glad for a reason. "Excuse me?"

"Since 'Daddy's Girl' has been chasing you like a shark after blood, I think the term applies."

"Is nothing sacred in this place?"

"Hey, why are you still here? You were supposed to pick up Shane again tonight, remember?"

"Just running a bit late," he said. "Let's go pick him up
together
, like the old days."

Melody looked at the clock, grabbed her purse, and scooted him out of the office. "A bit?" The echo of a scold entered her voice as she started down the hall.

"He's going to be frantic. Why did you wait so long?"

"It's not that late." She'd all but accused him of neglecting his son, damn it.

Prepared to argue, Logan checked his watch, but it was late. Terribly so. Almost an hour later than usual. He stopped, struck by the fact that Melody was acting more responsible than him at the moment. "I did call down to say I was on my way." He caught up to her. "Thanks for worrying about him."

God, he wished she was the stable sort, a woman around whom calm, rather than chaos, normally revolved, a woman like Tiffany—but
not
. Tiffany, who, this very afternoon implied they already had some kind of date, except, Logan's senses were too full of missing Melody to care.

To hell with Tiffany. He was with Melody now, finally. Alone.

When the elevator doors closed, Melody didn't know who reached first, but she found herself pinned against the wall, the rail at her back, not that she cared, because Logan's mouth was opening over hers. A mouth she'd craved for days, his taste, his touch. God, she'd missed him.

They devoured each other, starved, she thought, as if they hadn't touched in years, when it had only been a week. Seven long, frustrating days, during which they'd passed like ships in a fog, circling but never meeting, searching but never finding.

"Oh," she said, when he placed his lips to the vee at her blouse and cupped her so close to her core, she nearly came. "Maybe if…"

"I know," he said. "I think so, too."

"I meant—"

"What?" He brought her so close, she felt his need pulsing against her, his thumb teasing so near, she "wept" for more. "What did you mean?" he asked, skimming her center, as if learning the shape of her were as important as touching her.

"Never mind," she said, afraid to voice so cliched a notion as getting it out of their systems, afraid he'd take her up on her offer, afraid he wouldn't.

"You think we should go for it, scratch the itch and be done with it?" he asked.

Better she should play dumb, make him think that was his idea. "It?"

"Us, sex, 'it.'"

"I see your point."

"I know you do. Because it was your point first."

"What makes you think so?"

"I'm psychic." He cupped the back of her knee, the one she held against his erection, and rocked it against himself the way she had been doing, and Melody blushed, even as she flowed with the electrifying sensations.

"No strings, no commitments," she warned.

"Absolutely," he agreed.

"Do you think once would be enough?" she asked as she bit his ear and tugged on his lobe with her teeth.

"However often it takes," he said. "I'm willing to go the distance."

She looked up at him, and they kissed, an exhilarating new awareness vibrating between them, until the elevator signaled their imminent arrival and Logan groaned, loathe to relinquish the charged moment.