need much.
She’d spent most of her time alone, and when she didn’t want to be alone, she could open her window and listen to the noise on the street below. When she’d wanted company, she could sit on her stoop and chat with her neighbors, or go for a walk along Flatbush Avenue, listening to the people around her chatter in an array of languages. She’d picked up some Spanish living there, but didn’t know enough to really communicate fluently.
Sometimes she’d treat herself to a Junior’s cheesecake—reputed to be the best in the world—and stop by to see how old Mr. Sanchez was doing. He’d managed to hold his ground and not be pushed out of his lifelong home as building owners started renovating in order to raise rents and attract wealthier, younger Manhattanites. Just a month after she’d moved, he’d passed away from pneumonia.
She wondered who’d moved into the place now that he was gone, and a strange sense of hollowness overwhelmed her. She thought of his smile as she stared down at the fig tree, and spun away from the window, needing to get out and away from her dark thoughts.
Brochures littered the desk by one of the tall windows, things to see and do, but she walked past them. She just needed to escape for the moment. If she was going to be stuck here, she had to find something to do, but touristy activities weren’t usually her thing.
True to Ian’s promise, she had seen a sign when she arrived instructing guests to shut off their cell phones, and there wasn’t a phone or a TV in the room—one phone and one TV were in a central room downstairs. The only computer in the place seemed to be the one the hostess had used to process reservations; otherwise it was really a low-tech operation.
She was going to get the jitters if she didn’t keep herself busy. Curiously, an image of Logan popped into her mind as she walked out of her room.
2
LOGAN LAY on the sand, letting the heat soak into his skin as he forced himself to be oblivious to everything and anything as he sank into an afternoon nap. Focusing on the repetitive wash of waves rolling onto the shore, his muscles seemed to loosen, the sand cradling his body like a hug.
Naps were a luxury he almost never allowed himself, but he had to appear to be a committed vacationer. Just a guy trying to decompress from a very stressful time at work.
A shuffling in the sand interrupted his meditation and he opened his eyes to see a deliciously curved female bottom clad in the briefest of shorts, the cuffs of which graced the undersides of shapely thighs. Those were some legs. He could just make out the edge of a white bandage covering one thigh and frowned—she’d hurt herself.
It didn’t stop him from admiring the feminine musculature as she braced herself in the deep sand, her bare feet planted firmly as she bent over the task of opening the beach chair that she’d apparently rented from the vendor on the sidewalk. The chair was not cooperating.
Logan helped himself to a long, leisurely view of her legs as she held the stance, smiling when she muttered something at the chair while struggling with it. He was about to offer assistance when she finally popped the contraption open, the sudden jolt of energy propelling her backward toward him.
He braced himself for impact, but she regained her balance at the last moment, though the halting action kicked sand up into his face, fortunately missing his eyes. He sputtered, wiping the grit from where it stuck to his damp skin. The beauty returned to her spot about ten feet away without so much as a second glance, sinking down into the chair, unaware she’d plastered him with sand.
He watched her stretch out and start to read, and figured the show was over. Moments after he lay back down and started to reenter that fuzzy stage of napping he’d worked hard to attain, an odd mumbling sound disturbed his concentration.
It was coming from the woman in the chair. He propped himself up on one elbow. Was she talking on a cell phone? Sitting up, curious just because, he got just close enough to hear….
“…and he laid her back, gently, as if she was the most treasured thing he’d ever had in his possession, and stared into her eyes as his long, thick hardness throbbed inside her.
“‘I want all of you, Rose, and I want you to take all of me….’”
Whoa! What the heck? Then Logan realized she was reading aloud to herself, a racy novel, apparently. She wasn’t speaking loudly, but in a soft, throaty mumble that certainly made him want to hear more. He leaned in and listened a little more closely.
“‘Please, Russell…I love you. I need you. I need…more!’”
Russell? Russell and Rose? Logan quirked a grin. This was pretty good.
“She tightened around him, waves of pleasure crashing through her though she tried to hold back, but Russell wouldn’t let her. He thrust himself into her, pushing red-hot pleasure through her like a sword that pierced her completely and took her breath away—”
“Okay, now that just doesn’t sound like fun.”
He didn’t realize the comment had actually come out of his mouth until the sexy mumbling ceased. The woman swung her incredible legs over the side of the chair, peering at him over the same stylish sunglasses she’d been wearing earlier that day when he’d met her by the door of the inn. He hadn’t recognized her from the rear view, nice as it had been.
“Pardon me?” The sexy whisper she’d been reading in shifted to a cool interrogative, and he cleared his throat. There was something about when a woman peered over the top of her glasses that was so totally sexy and completely intimidating. Especially when paired with the high cheekbones and those amazingly shaped lips. She caught his gaze and held it. Not that he was intimidated, even though her tone remained cool and challenging.
“You have an opinion you’d like to share?”
He smiled in what he hoped was a friendly and charming manner. “I thought the whole sword piercing thing didn’t sound very…romantic. Or pleasurable. I wouldn’t want a woman to feel like that when I was, uh. You know.”
A delicate eyebrow raised, and her head cocked sideways as she blinked at him.
“When you were…what?” Her tone was innocent, but suddenly he felt like a mouse being batted around the kitchen floor by a cat. He leaned in a little more closely, softening his own tone, meeting the challenge.
“When my thick, throbbing hardness is buried inside of her.”
He’d give her credit; she didn’t even blink and didn’t back down. She looked back down at her book, studying it for a moment, then looked back at him.
“Actually, it was his long, thick hardness throbbing inside of her.”
“Sorry, you’ll have to speak up a little more next time, so I get it right.”
“Maybe you should be minding your own business.”
“Hey, you were reading out loud—Sarah, was it?”
“Still is.”
“Well, I was sleeping, but you kicked sand in my face when you stumbled back from that chair, and you’ve interrupted my nap—twice. I couldn’t help but listen in, you were reading aloud for everyone to hear, and since I couldn’t sleep…”
