Perhaps it was the lingering effects of a sound sleep or the distraction of Logan’s closeness that addled her thinking. But there was only one other “him” on her mind, and that was Quint. It made no sense that Logan would be talking about him.
“Who?” Cat whispered in confusion.
Before she could remember, an exultant sound came from his throat. His mouth came crushing down. The fire was instant. At that moment, with her head spinning and her body humming, it no longer mattered to Cat that it was Logan who ignited this blaze. No one else ever had, not as completely as this.
When she melted against him, Logan swept her up and took the three strides that carried them into the bedroom that had once been his, then hers, and now was one he was determined to make theirs. His fingers curled into the slick material of her nightgown and pulled the gown up around her arms as he let her feet settle onto the floor.
“Let’s get rid of this,” he said in a voice raw with the need to feel skin against skin.
Giving her no time to object, he dragged it over her head and slung it away. He heard her quivering gasp and saw her startled eyes, then his gaze traveled downward.
“My God, you’re beautiful, Cat,” he declared in a fervent whisper.
Uncertainty flickered in her eyes when he started to reach for her. Logan saw it and knew he could erase it. But he also knew he couldn’t stand any regrets or recriminations later. When she made a move toward him, he seized her shoulders and kept her away.
“Damn it, Cat, tell me you’re awake,” he ordered roughly. “Tell me you aren’t sleepwalking through some dream of him.”
But Cat knew what he was really demanding—make sure it’s me you want, not a stand-in for Repp. She wanted Logan. It frightened her how much she wanted him. She knew the deeper the love, the deeper the grief would be.
She wasn’t emotionally safe with Logan. Subconsciously Cat had known that all along. She had already lost too many people she had loved. Something told her losing Logan could be a more devastating loss than all the rest.
And the risk was there, much too vividly before her.
Her fingertips traced the area of raised flesh on his chest. Cat had seen too many of the scars from her father’s injuries and numerous surgeries not to recognize that the redness of Logan’s indicated it was fairly recent.
“You were shot, weren’t you?” she guessed.
“Yes.” His answer was clipped and impatient. “Cat—”
She shuddered uncontrollably at the closeness of the scar to his heart. Fear told her to use Repp’s name and push him away before she was hurt again. But pride made her lift her head and face the truth. “It terrifies me to want you this much, Logan. If—”
But Logan had heard all he needed to hear—his name. Any other words were meaningless now. He had a much more elemental form of communication in mind, the kind that used his hands, his lips, and his body. He was stunned to find in her arms a need that matched his own.
The raw urgency of it drove them both onto the bed, turning them wild as they hungrily sought all the pleasure to be found between a man and a woman. Time stood still, without a yesterday or tomorrow—only now, together.
There was no patience, no gentleness. This was a hunger that had waited six years to be sated, and now could wait no longer, driving each of them relentlessly, ruthlessly, with its desperate, urgent demands. But there never seemed to be enough.
As wave after wave of awesome pleasure swept through her, Cat suddenly understood that one moment would never be enough to satisfy her desire for this man. It would take a lifetime of moments—and more.
Surrounded by Logan’s warm, earthy smell, the firm pressure of his arm holding her close to him, Cat lay with her head on his shoulder, a place that seemed to be reserved just for her. Both her breathing and her pulse were far from steady yet. She could tell that Logan’s weren’t, either. Somehow that made all the inner tremblings easier to accept.
Tilting her head to look at him, she felt her breath take a funny little hitch at the possessive light in his eyes. She liked the way he looked at her. She liked everything about him, then immediately discarded the word. Like was much too tame a word to describe the things she was feeling.’
“I don’t understand how I could possibly be in love with you when I know almost nothing about you.” She marveled that such a thing could happen, then realized. “That isn’t quite true, is it? I know very few details of your life, but I do know a great deal about the man you are.”
If Logan had asked her to elaborate, Cat would have found it difficult to explain. Yet she only had to remember the times she had seen him with Quint—the patience he’d shown, the genuine interest and affection, the incidents of gentle but firm discipline and boyish playfulness—the calm way he had faced down her father and the bouquet of flowers she’d found in the bedroom, his clever questioning that had drawn the full story from her about Lath’s assault, his insistence that she wasn’t to blame and the subsequent lessons on ways to protect herself, giving her a sense of empowerment rather than making some extravagant manly vow to protect her. If she thought about it, Cat knew she could come up with more examples that would illustrate the knowledge she had gleaned about the kind of man he was—strong, intelligent, competent, sensitive, dependable, caring, patient, understanding, and determined.
Cat also knew she had deliberately not asked any questions about his past. It had been a defense mechanism, a way to convince herself Logan was a stranger. It was time to correct that.
“You told Quint you worked for the government?”
Logan was slow to answer. He was too shaken by her easy declaration of love. Love was a wor
d too many women used to justify going to bed with a man. He was stunned by how much he wanted to believe her.
“The Treasury Department, ATF.” Idly he rubbed his hand along the smooth curve of her waist, remembering how roughly he had taken her. But as tender as his feelings were inside, they were also that fierce and primative.
“Is that where you got this?”