"Later," she said. "Hot and fast now, slow and tantalizing later."

"Right."

He kept going, got her naked, then he let her have at him. She pulled off his slacks with due haste, but stopped halfway to his knees. "Time out. Black briefs. Oh, glory."

"Why, thank you." But while she appreciated, he grew more rigid and uncomfortable before her eyes.

"Yum," she said.

"Too late to savor, Witch, you wanted it fast. You're getting it fast." Logan shed his slacks in record time.

"Oh," she said, still focused on the nest of his arousal. "Just let me feel all that nice soft black cotton... and everything." She stroked him through the briefs, took him from his cocoon and into her greedy hands, and turned him into her submissive slave. She handled him with gentle reverence, kneading and nuzzling with fingers and lips, growing him, breath by gasping breath, stroking him against her cheek, nibbling with her lips, until he got so close to coming, he took her down on top of him.

"So much for making it last," he said as he slid into her, in one fast, incredible thrust, burying himself to the hilt, satisfying a longing so sharp, it hurt to achieve, yet felt so wondrous, he could hardly bear it. He wanted the same wild and unexpected pleasure for her, and more. He wanted to make a memory.

She came almost at once, making him slick, easing his heaving way. When he caught his breath, when they both did, he rolled her to her back, still inside her, and rose over her. "That's one," he said.

"More," she said arching, pulsing tight around him as if to help.

"Greedy," he said, rising to the occasion and going for two, pretty certain that giving her as many orgasms as she wanted, before his turn came, would about kill him.

She wrapped those incredible legs around him, taking him in, working him deeper still, with muscles that pulled and swallowed, kneaded and pulsed.

He began to move faster; he had to. She was milking him, wringing sanity from him with every pulsing beat, every rotation of her hips, each stroke of her palm and scratch of her nails.

She came again, thank God, and he'd survived, amazingly. But he was falling deeper under her spell with every involuntary squeak, every explosive orgasm in which she took full and uninhibited pleasure. Have mercy.

When he thought he couldn't take a second more of her torture, when he pumped into her so hard, he was afraid he'd hurt her, Melody reached between them with both hands, cupped his balls, and held them firm against her. Logan groaned and he growled, begged her to stop, begged for more, and he knew in a flash that no other woman would ever mean as much to him as this one.

He cried out, cursed her, and kissed her as if to devour her, and spilled his seed in a climax that made any previous explosion seem like nothing in comparison.

If he lived, he thought-his heart beating in his head like a drum-he would survive to be a hundred, because he was tougher than he imagined.

"Melody?" He pushed himself up in a panic, fought dizziness. "Oh God, I've killed you." He'd pinned her to the bed, crushed her, hair wet, face pale and still. She wasn't even breathing.

He rolled off her, called her name, felt for a pulse at her throat. "Melody? Melody, speak to me."

"Shh." She didn't open her eyes. "I'm floating."

Logan laughed and collapsed, pulled her against him, and buried his face in her neck. "Thank God." He let himself float as well, until the air in the room nipped a chill along his nether regions and the wind outside the window became louder than the pounding of his heart. He grabbed a blanket, pulled it over them, felt Melody's slowing heartbeat, the gentle way she breathed as she slept.

As he warmed, Logan began to replay every incredible fly-me-to-the-stars moment.

Melody woke, feeling his talented hands raising her again toward that star-sprinkled place where he'd brought her before. "Mmm." She stretched like a cat so supremely content it didn't want to move. "Now," she said, all but purring. "Now it can be slow, sensuous, lay me on a cloud sex."

Logan laughed and kissed her. He kissed her slow and easy and with the experience of a lover. "More, she wants, after she's damned near killed me."

"Tell me another one. We have to do it in the shower, too," she said. "I want my fair share. I will not have Nikky one-upping me in the shower."

Logan pretended to pass out from exhaustion, but when she began to lift his eyelids, he laughed and pulled her full atop him. "Good thing I didn't know you were insatiable or that you kept all those tricks up your sleeve, or I'd have been walking around embarrassing myself for weeks."

"That's exactly what you were doing."

Logan chuckled. "I'd hoped no one noticed."

"Everyone noticed. What time is it?"

Logan put on the light to see his watch. "Nearly five."

"Come on, we're running out of time." Melody hopped out of bed and reached for his hand.

Logan groaned and fell back against the pillows. "It's too early to get up."

"Exactly. I have time to make you cry for mercy in the shower."

He opened his eyes. "I hate to admit this, but I think you ruined me."

"That's okay, stud, leave everything to me. I love raising the devil." She gave him a wink before disappearing into the bathroom. Logan rose and followed. "How is it that you're so talented, after having so little practical experience?"

She struck a match to light some candles. "I read a lot."

"That must be some reading material. What are you doing?"

"Setting the mood," she said. "Gold is for attraction." She purred and lit a gold candle. "Ruby red is for passion. Start the shower, why don't you? I like it nice and... hot."

After Logan got in the shower, Melody lit the indigo candle, for defenses, as in, she would need plenty, because she was falling, and hard, for Logan, "stuffed suit," Kilgarven.

"Books, huh?" he said when she got in and began to soap him up in the most seductive manner she could manage.

She looked up at him. "And I was primed."

"I've heard that before."

"Well, this time I'm telling the truth."

She saw the dawning in his eyes as he kissed her, with relief and passion, and maybe something as frightening as she herself had been feeling. Where was that indigo magic when you needed it?

"You were supposed to let me do all the work," she said, a breathless few minutes later. "Here, hold on to the top edge of the stall on both sides and don't let go. I'll take care of everything."

"Something tells me I'm going to regret this. I don't think I have the staminaa... aahhhh."

"Oh, I think you do." She soaped him everywhere, giving particular attention to the part growing in her hands. "Nice," she said, sliding it between her breasts, lathering them both vigorously.

Logan groaned, and he swore, he reached for her a dozen times, and she ordered him to put his hands back where they belonged. And then she knelt before him, but before she realized what he was doing, he had her back against the shower and he'd slipped inside of her, pounding her, raising her so high and so fast, she screamed with her cataclysmic release, and he did the same. "So much for slow," she said, when she caught her breath.

He soaped her, languorously, played every sensitive spot, gave her the same attention she gave him, except that he made her come, not once, or even twice, but four extended times. Now she was the one begging for mercy, as her knees buckled and she slid into his waiting arms.

He carried her back to the bed, and they slept for almost an hour, unmoving, dead to the world, wrapped in damp sheets and each other's arms, until the sound of a honking horn woke them with a jolt.

"Jeez, what time is it?"

"After six," Melody said. "We have to go." Her knees nearly buckled as she rose.

Logan pulled her back down. "The world is about to intrude. Give me one more kiss to remember."

Melody went into his arms, and they kissed as freely as the wind, the way they would never kiss again. He cupped her cheek, she grazed a finger down his fresh growth of beard. "I love your beard in the morning."

"Careful or I'll never shave again."

He cupped her and brought her close. "I love your ass, morning, noon, and night. Did I ever tell you that?"

"Er, no, you never did."

"Well, I do. Get some clothes on before I forget we're leaving."

Melody came back wearing her dress, ready to be zipped. Logan accommodated her. "I like this on you."

"I wore it to get your attention."

He turned her to face him. "You always have my attention."

"I wanted to look as nice as Tiffany always does."

"Clothes can't make her beautiful. I saw her face when Max gave you that raise. She's a jealous cat."

"You're insulting Ink and Spot."

Logan chuckled, glad they'd stepped from regretful to playful. Together they put the sofa back together and tidied the office. Mel put the sheets in a bag to take home and wash.

"All set?" he asked.

They looked around, as if they would never see the place again, though they would never view it in quite the same way, and they both knew it. Melody worried about going back to the way things had been between them.

Logan worried about going on without her. He knew what he had to do, and he wasn't looking forward to it.

The Volvo had survived the storm fine in the garage, but it didn't get them far, because a tree blocked the exit. They turned around and tried getting out the other exit, but a bulldozer clearing an obstruction in the road blocked them there, so they abandoned the car in the garage and walked home.

The bracing, storm-clean air smelled of fresh cut greens, and sea salt. Melody and Logan walked hand in hand, not saying much, stopping to kiss a time or two, through the bricked mall, by closed shop windows, wishing it wasn't too early to get a Morning Glory Muffin or the best pancakes in the world.

When they got to Salem Common, in front of the Hawthorne Hotel, Logan asked Mel to sit for a minute. She did, and he braced a foot on the bench to face her. "I robbed a convenience store when I was twelve, got arrested, and was brought before a juvenile judge named Jessie Harris."

Melody nodded. "Not the background of a tight-assed stuffed suit."

"Nope. The past of a man forced to trade in his beat-up 'hog' for a briefcase, his bad-boy image for a job, and carelessness for fatherhood. I like the me I've become, though. I'm not making excuses, not even for the stealing."

"Jessie told me a bit about the way your father treated you and your mother, but not much."

"He said I'd never amount to anything."

"Hey, our fathers predicted the same for us."

"Nah, yours is mild... and redeemable." Logan extended his hand. "Have I shocked you?"

"A bit." She rose and leaned into him. "Makes me like you more."

"No kidding?" He kissed her brow. "Guess I should have told you sooner."

They made their way past Pickering Wharf and The Gables to the street where they lived. With Halloween a memory, Salem was the image of any other sleepy New England town, except for having some of the most beautiful historical architecture Logan had ever seen. A great place to raise a boy, he remembered thinking. Too bad that hadn't worked out.

He kissed Melody on the porch before they went in the house. A kiss good-bye.

He believed she knew it as well. Good-bye to intimacy and a future that could never be. They would both move on, move forward.

Logan had a son to raise-none of the choices he made were for himself. Melody had a life to conquer, every choice she made based on survival. Her parents had about crippled her in that way, he thought. His father had nearly done the same to him.

Funny how the past could direct the future, no matter how hard you tried to keep it from happening.

Melody pushed her door open. "Kira, Shane, we're home." She turned to Logan. "They must have gone upstairs after all."

He ran up. "Hey, sport, I'm home."

Melody heard Logan shout. She got halfway up before he came out. "They're not here."

"They're not in my apartment, either."

When there was no answer at Kira's or Jessie's, Logan punched in 911 on his cell phone. "I'd like to report my son missing."

Chapter Twenty-Three.

LOGAN watched his hand tremble as he told the police dispatcher he'd been out all night on a job emergency and hadn't seen his son since five the night before. The dispatcher said the boy hadn't been missing long enough for them to start a search, but when Logan asked for detective Grey, he promised that Grey would be right there.

Logan and Melody walked through the neighborhood calling Shane's name. They rang Jessie's doorbell, just in case, but no one answered. "She should sell the house," Melody said. "It needs a family in it."

"Screw the house; my son is missing!"

"I won't kid you, you're scaring me, but I think you're overreacting."

They woke their neighbors fronting the harbor, but they hadn't seen Shane, and they weren't pleased to be roused, either. Melody came up beside Logan as he looked out over the harbor. "This is stupid," she said. "There's a logical explanation."

Logan said nothing then, but back in the driveway, he cursed. "I can't believe I let you talk me into letting that witch baby-sit. Of all the irresponsible..."

"Kira is not irresponsible, and neither am I for suggesting her, if that's where you're-"