iron head- and footboards and a chocolate-brown spread.
There were framed pencil drawings on the walls, gardens in black and white. And when she moved closer, she saw the scrawled signature at the lower corner. "You did these? They're wonderful."
"I like to get a visual of projects, and sometimes I sketch them up. Sometimes the sketches aren't half bad."
"These are a lot better than half bad, and you know it." She couldn't imagine those big, hard hands drawing anything so elegant, so lovely and fresh. "You're a constant surprise to me, Logan. A study of contrasts. I was thinking about contrasts on the way over here tonight, about how things aren't lined up the way I thought they would be. Should be."
She turned back to him, gestured toward his sketches. "These are another blue dahlia."
"Sorry - not following you. Like the one in your dream?"
"Dreams. I've had two now, and neither was entirely comfortable. In fact, they're getting downright scary. But the thing is the dahlia, it's so bold and beautiful, so unexpected. But it's not what I planned. Not what I imagined. Neither is this."
"Planned, imagined, or not, I wanted you here."
She took another sip of wine. "And here I am." She breathed slow in and out. "Maybe we should talk about... what we expect and how we'll - "
He moved in, pulled her against him. "Why don't we plant another blue dahlia and just see what happens."
Or we could try that, she thought when his mouth was on hers. The low tickle in her belly spread, and the needy part of her whispered, Thank God, inside her head.
She rose on her toes, all the way up, like a dancer on point, to meet him. And angling her body more truly to his, let him take the glass out of her hand.
Then his hands were in her hair, fingers streaming through it, clutching at it, and her arms were locked around him.
"I feel dizzy," she whispered. "Something about you makes me dizzy."
His blood fired, blasting a bubbling charge of lust straight to his belly. "Then you should get off your feet." In one quick move he scooped her up in his arms. She was, he thought, the sort of woman a man wanted to scoop up. Feminine and slight and curvy and soft. Holding her made him feel impossibly strong, uncommonly tender.
"I want to touch you everywhere. Then start right back at the beginning and touch you everywhere again." When he carried her to the bed, he felt sexy little tremors run through her. "Even when you annoy me, I want my hands on you."
"You must want them on me all the time, then."
"Truer words. Your hair drives me half crazy." He buried his face in it as he lowered the two of them to the bed.
"Me too." Her skin sprang to life with a thousand nerves as his lips wandered down to her throat. "But probably for different reasons."
He bit that sensitive skin, lightly, like a man helping himself to a sample. And the sensation rippled through her in one long, sweet stream. "We're grown-ups," she began.
"Thank God."
A shaky laugh escaped. "What I mean is we ..." His teeth explored the flesh just above her collarbone in that same testing nibble, and had a lovely fog settling over her brain. "Never mind."
He touched, just as he'd told her he wanted to. A long, smooth stroke from her shoulders down to her fingertips. A lazy pass over her hips, her thigh, as if he were sampling her shape as he'd sampled her flavor.
Then his mouth was on hers again, hot and greedy. Those nerve endings exploded, electric jolts as his hands, his lips ran over her as if he were starved now for each separate taste. Hard hands, rough at the palms, rushed over her with both skill and desperation.
Just as she'd imagined. Just as she'd wanted.
Desires she'd ruthlessly buried broke the surface and screamed into life. Riding on the thrill, she dragged at his shirt until her hands found the hot, bare skin and dug in.
Man and muscle.
He found her breast, had her arching in delicious pleasure as his teeth nipped over shirt and bra to tantalize the flesh beneath, to stir the blood beneath into feverish, pulsing life. Everything inside her went full, and ripe, and ready.
As senses awakened, slashing one against the other, in an edgy tangle of needs, she gave herself over to them, to him. And she yearned for him, for that promise of release,