Blue Dahlia

that slow smile.
    “Don’t even think about it. I couldn’t be less interested in kissing you at the moment.”
    “Then I’ll kiss you, and maybe you’ll get interested.”
    “I mean it.” She aimed the hose like a weapon. “Just keep your distance. I want to make myself perfectly clear.”
    “I’m getting the message. Go ahead and shoot,” he invited. “I sweated out a gallon today, I won’t mind a shower.”
    “Just stop it.” She danced back several steps as he advanced. “This isn’t a game, this isn’t funny.”
    “I just get stirred right up when your voice takes on that tone.”
    “I don’t have a tone.”
    “Yankee schoolteacher. I’m going to be sorry if you ever lose it.” He made a grab, and instinctively she tightened her fist on the nozzle. And nailed him.
    The spray hit him mid-chest and had a giggle bubbling out of her before she could stop it. “I’m not going to play with you now. I’m serious, Logan.”
    Dripping, he made another grab, feinted left. This time she squealed, dropped the hose, and ran.
    He snagged her around the waist, hauled her off her feet at the back end of the patio. Caught somewhere between shock and disbelief, she kicked, wiggled, then lost her breath as she landed on the grass on top of him.
    “Let me go, you moron.”
    “Don’t see why I should.” God, it felt good to be horizontal. Better yet to have her horizontal with him. “Here you are, trespassing, watering my pots, spouting off lectures.” He rolled, pinning her. “I ought to be able to do what I want on my own land.”
    “Stop it. I haven’t finished fighting with you.”
    “I bet you can pick it up where you left off.” He gave her a playful nip on the chin, then another.
    “You’re wet, you’re sweaty, I’m getting grass stains on my—”
    The rest of the words were muffled against his mouth, and she would have sworn the water on both of them went to steam.
    “I can’t—we can’t—” But the reasons why were going dim. “In the backyard.”
    “Wanna bet?”
    He couldn’t help wanting her, so why was he fighting it? He wanted the solid, sensible core of her, and the sweet edges. He wanted the woman obsessed with forms who would wrestle on the floor with her children. He wanted the woman who watered his pots even while she skinned him with words.
    And the one who vibrated beneath him on the grass when he touched her.
    He touched her, his hands possessive as they molded her breasts, as they roamed down her to cup her hips. He tasted her, his lips hungry on her throat, her shoulder, her breast.
    She melted under him, and even as she went fluid seemed to come alive with heat, with movement.
    It was insane. It was rash and it was foolish, but she couldn’t stop herself. They rolled over the grass, like two frenzied puppies. He smelled of sweat, of labor and damp. And, God, of man. Pungent and gorgeous and sexy.
    She clamped her hands in that mass of waving hair, already showing streaks from the sun, and dragged his mouth back to hers.
    She nipped his lip, his tongue.
    “Your belt.” She had to fight to draw air. “It’s digging—”
    “Sorry.”
    He levered up to unbuckle it, then just stopped to look at her.
    Her hair had come out of its band; her eyes were sultry, her skin flushed. And he felt those roots take hold.
    “Stella.”
    He didn’t know what he might have said, the words were jumbled in his brain and tangled with so much feeling he couldn’t translate them.
    But she smiled, slow and sultry as her eyes. “Why don’t I help you with that?”
    She flipped open the button of his jeans, yanked down the zipper. Her hand closed over him, a velvet vise. His body was hard as steel, and his mind and heart powerless.
    She arched up to him, her lips skimmed over his bare chest, teeth scoring a hot little line that was a whisper away from pain.
    Then she was over him, destroying him. Surrounding him.
    She heard birdsong and breeze, smelled grass and damp flesh. And heliotrope that wafted on the air from the pot she’d watered. She felt his muscles, taut ropes, the broad plane of his shoulders, the surprisingly soft waves of his hair.
    And she saw, as she looked down, that he was lost in her.
    Throwing her head back, she rode, until she was lost as well.
     
    SHE LAY SPRAWLED OVER HIM, DAMP AND NAKED AND muzzy-headed. Part of her brain registered that his arms were clamped around her as if they were two survivors of a shipwreck.
    She turned her head to rest it