“Hey.” Sam stood from where he’d been sitting and pressed his palms against his jean-clad thighs. “You OK?” He placed one hand on my waist and pressed a soft kiss on my cheek.

Instead of answering, I looked around the hotel dining room, noting the large table he’d selected that was vacant except for him, his coffee and an open newspaper. “Where’s everyone else?”

“No one else is down yet.”

“Maybe they all had fishbowl cocktails too.”

He grinned. “Possibly.” Then he pulled me a little closer and inhaled. “You smell good.”

My breathing hitched as my hands landed instinctively against his chest. “There’s mango in the shampoo.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to look into his eyes and see any sort of remnants of our previous conversation.

“I like it.” Then, before I could do anything else, his mouth connected with mine, his hands shifting from my waist so his arm was wrapped around me, holding me up as he kissed me so passionately that I arched my back. For a moment, I wondered if I should kick my leg up in the air to put on a show for the other patrons, but all I could really do was hold on and kiss him back because man, could he kiss. He kissed me like the heroes do in books and in movies—with everything he had. Well, that’s how it felt anyway. I hadn’t been kissed enough times to know if it got any better than that.

When he set me back on my feet, I felt a little light-headed. “Wow,” I whispered.

Looking into my eyes, he held my face in his hands. “I love the fact that I’m going to be your first.”

“Can we please not talk about this,” I said, trying to pull away from his grasp and avoid any further embarrassment. I mean, who in this day and age was still a virgin at thirty-two? I didn’t want to address it. I just wanted him to pop my cherry and get this awkwardness over and done with. Devirginise me, dammit!

“Don’t run away again.” He caught me around the waist with one arm and held a finger under my chin to keep me from looking away. “Don’t look away either.”

“Can’t we just forget that you know?”

“Why? Are you embarrassed that you’ve saved yourself?”

“Well, it’s not like I did it on purpose. I just never had the opportunity.” Having an overbearing, uber-religious father on top of being socially awkward—someone who worked well with the dead—hadn’t exactly created windows of opportunity.

His grip around me tightened, and the finger under my chin shifted to tuck my hair behind my ear. “I think you’re perfect,” he murmured, his ocean blue eyes drinking in every feature of my face. “You’re pure, innocent. A ripe peach, untasted and ready to be picked.”

“Yes,” I gasped, wanting badly for him to pick me and taste me and do any number of things that men and women were made to do together. I wanted it all. With him. Now would not be too soon.

He grinned, then leaned forwards and sucked my bottom lip between his teeth teasingly. “Women like you are a gift, and I want to take my time unwrapping you. Can you let me do that, peaches?”

“Yes.” I nodded. Now I totally understood why he gave me that nickname. I didn’t really know what I was agreeing to, but being unwrapped by him seemed like a pretty sweet deal to me.

“Good,” he whispered, kissing me softly. “I’ll teach you everything I know.”

“I can’t wait,” I said back to him, my knees weak and my body aching with wanting. There was years’ worth of anticipation inside me. I wasn’t delicate and really didn’t want to wait at all.

“You gave me your word!” The strong voice interrupted the hormone-induced, lust-filled moment and caused the entire dining room to speculate in quiet murmurs.

“What the…?” Sam frowned, squaring his shoulders as he released me and looked towards the sound. Two men were arguing.

“Is that Nate and Abbot?” I asked when I heard another voice say something about “not touching her”.

Touching who? Has something happened to Holland? To Jasmine? I hoped Holland wasn’t in trouble again.

“You were supposed to keep her safe.” The words weren’t spoken as much as they were growled. I thought it came from Nate, but I didn’t know him well enough to pick his voice yet. Then I gasped when something hit a wall and someone grunted.

With a quick glance at each other, Sam and I rushed towards the sounds, the sense that something big was going down overtaking me. We arrived in time to find Nate slamming his fist into Abbot’s face.

Oh my Lord! I gaped in horror, watching blood run down Abbot’s chin. Sam’s arm went straight around me as he pulled me against his chest protectively, keeping me a safe distance from the ruckus. But not before I saw Nate punch Kristian in the face too. Poor Kristian! Nate’s eyes looked wild as he practically foamed at the mouth.

What is going on?

“What are you doing, brother?” Sam demanded, his voice stern but even. I’d never seen anything so frightening in my life and turned away, burying my face in Sam’s shirt.

Nate didn’t respond. Instead he turned his attention to Jasmine and growled at her. “If you lay another fucking hand on my wife, I’ll forget you’re a woman and make you pay like a man.”

Oh, now I know what this is about. When we were getting dressed for the wedding. Holland made some drunken taunting remarks to Jasmine, which was when Jasmine backhanded her. Nate must’ve seen the bruising, or perhaps Holland dobbed Jasmine in. Either way, this was insane. Nate looked ready to attack his own mother.

“Then tell your wife to get with the program. She’s either with one of us, or she’s a liability.” Jasmine’s chin tilted up, a defiant set to her jaw. She wasn’t backing down.

Neither was Nate. His hulking frame seemed to curl around her menacingly, his voice taking on a tone that sent chills down my spine. “Holland is not yours to order around. She is mine. Do you hear me? Touch her and I don’t care who you are to me, I will destroy you without mercy.” Jasmine’s eyes went wide as Nate withdrew his threatening stance. Then he turned and addressed the rest of us. “Don’t forget that it’s you who needs me, not the other way around. Touch my wife again—any one of you, for any reason—and I’ll make you pay. I promise you that.”

Then he turned and stalked off, leaving the rest of us stunned silent. My mind though, was never silent. Like Sam, Nate had been forced to marry Holland. I’d never seen such fury in someone’s eyes, but to think that anger had been because Holland had been hurt? As much as I despised strong-armed tactics, Nate had been nothing short of fierce in his defence of my friend. He scared the living crap out of me, but at least he was willing to fight for her honour. I had to wonder if I’d ever inspire that kind of emotion in Sam. Would he ever fight for me?

“You’re shaking.” Sam’s arms tightened around my frame.

“I’m fine,” I insisted. “But we need to get them cleaned up. Why don’t you get some ice and meet us in Abbot’s room? Jasmine and I can help them get there.”

Sam looked at his mother with a quirked brow, as if asking ‘Is that cool with you?’ Jasmine nodded and together we took the twins upstairs, Abbot sporting a split lip and Kristian a cut brow.

“Why didn’t you hit him back?” I asked Kristian as I pressed a damp cloth over his eye.

He winced a little from the pain, then met my eyes. “Because he’s right. We need him more than he needs us.”

“That doesn’t give him the right to hit you and get away with it.”

He shrugged. “He had to hit someone. If he did nothing, it would mean hurting his wife was OK. Would you prefer that?”

Never. Violence was never the right answer.

“I’d prefer it if no one got hit at all.”

“Sometimes fists speak louder than words.”

Sam arrived with a bucket of ice, placing a handful inside a napkin and handing it to Kristian. “Think you’ll be able to see out of that tomorrow?”

Kristian chuckled a little and shook his head. “Nah, mate, he got me good. Eye’s already closing up.” He pulled the ice away from his face and showed Sam the swelling on his eye.

“Always has had a good right hook on him. What’d you do, anyway?”

“He didn’t do anything,” I answered for him, taking his hand and guiding the ice back to his eye.

“I just told him that I didn’t know how his wife’s face got bruised.”

“Which is true,” I said. “He wasn’t even in the room when it happened.”

“When what happened?” Sam asked, looking between us.

I dropped my gaze to the floor. I didn’t want to be the one who dobbed in his mother.

Kristian didn’t volunteer the information either.

“Somebody had better tell me what the hell is going on,” Sam boomed, causing me to jump slightly and close my eyes against the sound. I hated yelling. When I was small and my parents would fight, I used to take all the toys out of my chest and climb inside it with my blanket, then close the lid to muffle the sound. Once, I fell asleep in there and they thought I’d run away. When I woke up, there was a policeman in the living room asking for a recent photo of me. Boy, did I get a whooping over that. I couldn’t sit for a whole day, plus they took my toy chest and cut it down as firewood. I just sat on my bed and blocked my ears after that.

“I hit her,” Jasmine confessed as she entered the bathroom with a bloodied washcloth in her hands. “She wouldn’t shut the fuck up, so I made her. She obviously went crying to Nate over it.”

“Nah,” Abbot said, leaning against the door frame with his own bag of ice against his lip. “I don’t reckon she did.”

“Then how did he find out?” Jasmine said.

Tugging his unruly shoulder-length hair behind his ear, Abbot bounced a shoulder. “I don’t know. But he came down last night demanding to know what happened. She told him she fell, and he didn’t believe her.” He nodded towards Kristian. “We backed up her story, but he didn’t seem to believe us either.”

“Yeah, he put a hole in the wall in our room as a warning. Said it’d be us if he found out we were lying,” Kristian added.

“Guess he followed through with his threat, then,” I said.

Kristian nodded. “Maybe he kept at her and she cracked, told him the truth. He’s had this massive caveman boner for her since they met. He’ll do anything to keep her. I suggest we give them some space. He’ll calm down. He always does.”

Once the twins were cleaned up and Jasmine seemed to relax—with the help of a hefty glut of whiskey in her morning coffee—Sam took me outside for a walk along the beach so I could clear my own head.

“You were pretty great back there, jumping in to take care of the wounded the way you did. I can see why Jasmine thinks you’re going to fit in well with the family.” He stopped and picked up a shell, throwing it sideways into the water so it skipped along the surface.

“She said that?” After her comment the previous night, I wasn’t sure what she thought of me at all.

He nodded, then threw another stone. “Said you’ll make a good wife and mother, that she sees you being good for us. She’s looking forward to having another woman around the house.”

My mind was stuck on the part about being a mother. They expected me to produce children?

“And what do you think about all that?” I asked, trying to keep my slight panic hidden.

He looked at me for a moment, then took my hand, lacing our fingers together. “I think you’re a hell of a lot stronger and smarter than anyone has ever given you credit for.”

I smiled and caught my hair in my free hand, stopping the chocolate strands from whipping me in the face. “Is that a compliment?”

He pulled on my arm a little, guiding me until we were toe to toe. Then he lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. “Yeah, peaches, that’s a compliment,” he said, just before he brought his mouth to mine. I hesitated, then slowly slipped my arms around his neck and curled my toes in the sand. God, I love it when he kisses me.

“Thank you,” I murmured when he released me, leaving my cheeks flushed and my legs shaky.

“For kissing you?” He grinned as if he thought that a funny thing to be grateful for.

I guess he’s never been hard up for a willing pair of lips to kiss.

I nodded. “And for being nice to me. I know this probably isn’t how you imagined getting married, and I know I’m not the ideal choice for a man like you. So I appreciate that you’re giving this a chance when you could just as easily be callous and resentful.”

He released a slow breath. “Why do you keep putting yourself down like that?”

“I’m not,” I argued. “I’m just being honest.”

“No. You’re being self-deprecating. I’ve told you that I like you. I’ve told you that I think you’re rare and perfect. Do you think I’m lying to you?”

“No, I just… I think you’re being kind.”

Placing his hands on my arse, he roughly pulled me flat against his body, his hardness pressing into my soft lower belly. Oh my. “Does this feel kind to you, peaches? Or does it feel hard?” He ground his hips to further punctuate his words. Oh my my.

“H-h-hard,” I gasped, my mouth suddenly super dry.

“So, when I tell you that I think you’re gorgeous and that I want you, do you believe me?” He rolled his hips again.

I closed my eyes. “Y-y-yes. I b-believe you.”

“Then I don’t want to hear you putting yourself down or doubting what I think of you again. If I say I like you, if I say I want you, if I say I’m ecstatic that I’m going to be the first man inside that tight little snatch of yours, then that’s exactly what I mean. I won’t lie to you, Alesha. We might be thieves, but that doesn’t mean we’re bad people.”

“OK,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He took a hold of my chin. “Don’t be sorry. You’re a Cartwright now. You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”