Logan’s voice was raspy with sleep and whatever had disturbed him.
‘It doesn’t help, going to the lounge. The nightmares follow me.’
Sitting up, Logan shuffled sideways, making a space on the bed for her.
As he tapped the mattress beside his hip he added, ‘I won’t bite.’
He leaned back against a pillow, looking exhausted and nothing like a man who might have light entertainment on his mind. Karina’s eyes followed his hands as they tugged the bedcovers further up his chest. He’d taken to sleeping in a tee shirt and shorts, but no clothing or bedcovers could blot out the image she already held of his body.
Easing down, she swung her legs up and stretched them alongside his—except hers barely reached past his knees. ‘I’m nothing like my mum and sister. Too short and not thin enough.’
Logan stared at her unglamorous pyjama-clad pins and picked up her hand to fold his strong fingers around hers. ‘You’ve got curves in all the right places, and for the record curves are not to be sneered at.’
He squeezed her hand.
‘Thanks...I think.’
She felt the shivers still passing through him intermittently. What were the nightmares about? she asked herself for the hundredth time. It was the one question she’d never verbalise. The look in his eyes when he came awake after one was not something she wanted to be responsible for bringing back.
‘I was kidnapped for ransom. In Nigeria. By guerrillas.’
Karina gasped, shocked at his disclosure and stunned that he’d read her mind. Squeezing his hand in return, she felt increasing shudders rock through him, and moved sideways so that her shoulder rubbed against his upper arm.
She finally managed a lame, ‘Logan, that’s absolutely terrible.’ What could she say? ‘Why did they take you?’
‘Money. They came into our quarters in the middle of the night and took three of us at gunpoint. That’s why I didn’t make it home for the funeral. I had no idea James and Maria had died until after I was released.’
‘Why didn’t we hear about this in New Zealand? Surely it should’ve made headline news?’ Reporters weren’t known for their discretion. Not the ones she’d dealt with, anyway. ‘Your parents don’t know, do they?’
‘No.’ Logan shivered again. ‘Because of my English passport my director didn’t dispel the notion that I was British, so I guess the local media missed that a Kiwi had been taken. Secondly, I was mistaken for the son of an English lord who was working at a neighbouring camp. Only after the man had been sent out of the country undercover were the guerrillas informed they held the wrong man.’
For someone who didn’t ever talk about this he suddenly seemed incapable of stopping. Karina held his hand and waited, wondering if he even realised he was telling her this stuff.
‘I got lucky,’ he said angrily. ‘Luck being relative. Six weeks after we were captured I saved a child who’d fallen in the river we were camped by. Technically the lad had drowned, but I was able to revive him. Turned out he was the leader’s only son. After a further two weeks of hanging out in a hut I was sent away with a man from a neighbouring village. At first I thought he was going to knock me off and leave me to the hyenas, but after four days I began to hope. Hope’s a strange thing. It grips you, teases, taunts, screws with your mind. We walked all night and most of the day, lying up under any tree we could find when the temperatures were unbearable. By day six I was getting so weak I doubted I’d make it to wherever we were headed, and then suddenly there was a small town on the horizon. After that everything was a blur until I found myself back at base.’
‘Thank goodness.’ Her thumb traced back and forth on the back of his hand. ‘What about the other two? You said they took three of you.’
‘Still in captivity, last I heard, but negotiations are underway with the US government.’
She shivered. Unbelievable. It was like something out of a movie: over-dramatised and unrealistic. Except this was true.
‘Those scars on your body...?’
‘The brutes enjoyed whipping us with the flat side of a machete. The slightest pressure either way and our skin would be sliced. Infections were rampant.’
Admiration for him ramped up, filled her heart. How did anyone come through all that and still be a kind, caring person like Logan was? Here he was, getting to know his nephew, working hard to improve the house for her—whether they sold it or stayed. Yet he said he would return to that area. Crazy. Why would he?
Turning, she saw wariness in his eyes as he watched her. Was he searching for disgust on her part because he felt he’d failed somehow? He’d be looking a long time.
Laying her head on his shoulder, she wanted to weep for him, but knew better. He’d hate that. She asked, ‘How long after reaching your base did you leave Nigeria?’
‘Three days. I was sent to hospital in California to be checked over and to talk to the shrinks.’
‘Then you came home?’ Did Motueka feel like home to him?
‘Home... It’s not a word I use often. I’ve always focused on being wherever I’m needed and not on putting down roots.’
Unbelievably sad. She’d had problems, but she had always known where she belonged. ‘And now?’ she asked softly.
‘I haven’t a clue. I still need to help people. That’s in my psyche. But do I do that in Africa or Asia? Or right here in Motueka? I haven’t a clue,’ he repeated.
‘Go easy on yourself. Sort those nightmares out first.’ She leaned harder against him.
Logan wrapped his arms around her and brought her even nearer. His chin nestled on her head. Strands of her hair lifted with each of his breaths, then floated back down onto her cheek.
This felt right. If she pressed her cheek hard against his chest she felt his ribs, and now she understood why they stood out as they did. He needed feeding up. Under her ear, his heart beat fast. Occasionally a shiver still shook him. Lifting her hand, she touched his chest, his chin, paused. Pulled back and snuggled close again.
They stayed like that, listening to the house creak as outside the night air cooled down towards freezing point. Then Logan moved carefully. His lips brushed her forehead, trailing feather-light kisses from one side to the other and then down her cheek to her chin and along her jawline. Over her throat, moving slowly downward to the V in her pyjama jacket, his breath so soft it caressed her.
Her breathing faltered around the lump of desire suddenly blocking her throat. Lifting her hands, she slid her fingers into his thick, dishevelled hair and massaged his skull with soft circles, holding him against her breasts.
Logan groaned and pulled away to tug her down the bed until she was on her back. His fingers shook as he tried to deal with the buttons keeping her chest covered. ‘Help me here,’ he muttered through gritted teeth.
With a hand on his chest she pushed him away and sat up to shuck off her robe. About to attack the buttons on her top, she paused, drinking in the sight of Logan’s chest as he hauled his tee shirt over his head.
‘Karina?’ The shirt landed on the floor. He was staring at her with such hunger in his eyes.
‘Do you want to stop? Say so if you do.’
Her eyes tracked the outline of his ribs and moved over those muscles as she shook her head, not trusting her voice. To hell with the buttons. She jerked her top over her head and then lay back to lift her butt and slide her pyjama bottoms down past her thighs.
Logan returned to where he’d left off; kissing a trail between her breasts, moving to one breast to tease her until she thought she’d scream with need, only have her other breast put through the same tummy-tightening, heart-cranking sensations. Her muscles grew tighter and tighter. Her centre was wet.
Her hands flailed against the bed as she tried to reach for him. ‘I have to touch you!’ she cried.
‘No
. Not yet. One touch and I’ll be gone. Let me give you this.’
‘But I want to feel you. My skin on your skin.’
It was torture to lie there, being made love to without giving something back. She wanted Logan to feel what she was feeling, to share the sensations pouring through her, yet he didn’t seem to think he was missing out.
‘Your turn’s coming. You’ll get more than a handful, I promise.’
Again that beautiful mouth shifted its centre of attention, this time trailing more of those delicious kisses over her stomach before moving ever downward, until he reached the hot, molten apex at the top of her legs. Any thoughts about what she should be doing to Logan were lost as he went from kissing to licking and all too quickly drove her to the brink with a gripping need clawing through her.
Just when she knew she couldn’t take any more without exploding into a thousand pieces, Karina moaned. ‘I need you inside me.’
Logan hesitated. ‘Do you have a...?’
Karina shook her head. ‘It’s okay. I have an IUD.’ She’d had it fitted while she was married, as Ian hadn’t wanted to start a family.
Logan rose above her to kneel between her legs, his reaction to her big and beautiful. She reached for him, slid her hands over, around his length. And cried out. Beautiful.
Logan lowered his body and pressed the head of his erection to her. Her hands stroked until he pushed inside, deep within her heat. As he filled her she nearly wept with joy and love. When he withdrew to drive inside again her breathing caught, her lungs stalled, her muscles quaked with need. Then her climax cracked, whipped through her, taking over and blotting out all thought, leaving only exquisite sensations rocking through her.
Slowly Karina’s breathing came back to something like normal, as did her heart-rate. Logan lay sprawled half across her and she held him tight, making the most of this moment. His chest rose and fell rapidly. Sweat glistened on his back. She tugged at the bedcovers. In the chilly night air it wouldn’t be long before they were cold, despite the heat between them.
She wanted to laugh and to cry, to be quiet and to talk. She wanted to repeat what they’d just shared, yet was worried it might not be the same. She couldn’t believe that making love after all this time could be so wonderful, that she’d been wrong to think she would never know a man again.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.