TWELVE
Alex wasn’t in bed with her when Janey woke the next morning, but she hadn’t expected anything less. Dusk to dawn. He couldn’t be seen.
She stretched beneath the blankets and a small smile curved her lips, despite the flash of pain at the thought that he couldn’t be seen with her. It hurt. It clenched inside her like an open wound, but oh, her body had the most pleasurable ache in it. She felt rejuvenated. Impossibly energetic.
Fat Cat was at the bottom of her bed, curled into a tight little ball. He must not have come to bed until after Alex left. Janey wrapped her robe around her, then lay down across the bed, creeping up to him as he lifted his head and glared at her.
“Aww, Momma’s sorry, Fat Cat.” She propped her chin on her hands, inches from his face, and smiled back at him. “But Momma got stroked last night. And mighty well. Surely you don’t begrudge me just a little bit of petting for myself?”
He blinked his eyes, narrowed them.
“It was really nice, Fat Cat.” She sighed. “All over. I could swoon at the thought of it, you know.”
He blinked and watched her almost curiously. As if he actually gave a damn, she thought, though it was a kind of happy thought.
“I wondered why you finally started demanding the petting,” she said softly, reaching out with a finger to stroke his nose. He liked that. Being stroked from between his eyes to his nose. He purred a little bit. “I want to curl into Alex’s lap and let him just pet me all night long, too, now.”
Fat Cat gave a disgusted little feline pfft. Janey let a laugh tickle her throat as the cat edged just a little bit closer.
“It was almost perfect,” she told the cat. “He was very naughty, Fat Cat.” She scratched under the cat’s chin as he listened.
“I was purring, too,” she drawled. “Well, maybe I was screaming more than I was purring. He’s really good, you know. Excellent, Fat Cat. How many virgins have you heard of actually coming their first time? And no pain.” She smiled. “He made sure it didn’t hurt.”
Another disgusted little rumble from the feline male.
“Now, we have a nice little trade going here, cat.” She rubbed around his ears. “I feed you ground steak and you listen to me talk. Look at it this way, it’s a damned good trade. I’d listen to Alex talk forever.” She sighed. “If he would just keep touching me.”
The cat rolled over on his back.
“Mushy talk means belly rubs, huh?” She laughed, scratching at his belly as he batted at her hands. “You’re spoiled, cat, you know that?”
He meowed sweetly.
“I love you, Fat Cat.” She whispered the words. “I’ve never told another living soul I love them. You know what happens when you love, don’t you?”
But she did love. She stared at the cat, watching those wise topaz eyes as she played with him. She did love. She loved her brother and her cousins. She loved this ragged old cat. And she loved Alex. She knew last night, taking him into her body, that she loved him.
“Time to get up, big boy.” She lifted him to the bed, stopping as Fat Cat jumped to his feet and arched before rubbing his face against hers. A soft purr rumbled in his chest and she wanted to hold him to her. Wanted to grab that chubby little body and rock him against her chest. And she couldn’t even explain why.
“Be good, cat,” she whispered. “Momma has to shower.”
She moved from the bed to the bathroom, shedding the robe and closing the door behind her.
She didn’t see the bedroom door push open, and Alex thanked God for it. The cat brushed past him with a growl and headed to his food bowl as the man stared at the closed bathroom door silently.
God, she made his chest hurt. Made his heart feel as though it were breaking inside his chest.
She talked to a fucking cat. He’d bet a hundred bucks she had never talked to another human like that in her life, and he realized he wanted her to talk to him like that.
It would have been dangerous if he hadn’t already decided the course he was taking. She would fall in love with him easily, he thought. He’d like having Janey’s love. And he’d make sure she never lacked for the petting she needed. Or someone to talk to. To dream with.
He’d filled her twice last night. Pumped his cum inside her until he thought he was dying from his release. He’d found her little calendar that morning in a kitchen drawer. Organized little thing that she was, she had the first and last day of her most recent monthly cycle marked.
She was in the best possible time of the month to conceive. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she wouldn’t.
He ran his hand over his hair. Zeke had picked him up at dawn as arranged, and Alex had returned to the house for his laptop and a few more changes of clothes. When he wasn’t on a mission, he liked to dabble in Internet security, tracing and hacking the secured sites he was paid to try to crack. It was a nice sideline.
He’d been working on one of the new sites when he heard Janey talking in the bedroom.
He hadn’t expected her to be talking to that damned cat. And he hadn’t expected the loneliness, the need to share that he had heard in her voice. She was telling that cat secrets that she should have been sharing with close friends. Women needed to share those things; he knew that from raising Crista. They needed a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen.
And that was something Janey had never had.
He sat back down in front of the laptop at the kitchen table and turned his attention back to hacking into the site he had pulled up. The owners were worried that several new programs might have created some vulnerabilities. Alex hadn’t found any yet, but he’d reached the third level into the secured areas without too many problems. That wasn’t a good sign. It wasn’t the programs that were the issue so much as a lack of dedicated attention to keeping certain areas of their network blocked.
He was backing out of the programs when he heard Janey in her bedroom, teasing Fat Cat again. He wondered if that scruffy, fat-assed feline had any idea how lucky he was.
Securing the laptop and closing it up, he looked up as she rounded the corner into the kitchen and came to a dead stop.
Light green eyes widened as a rosy flush filled her face. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and a pair of socks. He doubted she was wearing panties, and the thought of it had his cock hardening again.
Unfortunately, they needed to talk before he took care of that.
“What are you still doing here?” She tucked several curls behind her ear as she moved past the table and glanced at the half-full coffeepot. “Coffee still fresh?”
“Coffee’s fresh.” Alex leaned back in his chair and watched her, hiding his smile as she let her gaze lick over him. “We needed to talk, though.”
Her gaze became shuttered as she shrugged and moved to the coffee. “What do we need to talk about?”
Janey couldn’t imagine anything from the night before that needed discussing. Repeating, maybe, but not discussing. And finding him in the kitchen this morning made her nervous, especially considering the fact he probably heard her talking to the cat. His expression was too stoic, his eyes too watchful.
“What are your plans for the day?” he asked her.
Janey shrugged. “Restaurant opens at four. We have a full reservation list. I need to type up the ad for the newspaper, call the college.”
She’d cemented that idea in the shower. As much as she loved being home, being around her brother, she was bringing too much grief to all of them. She’d return to California and see if it wasn’t easier there. Maybe a few years down the road, she’d manage to find someplace that reminded her of home.
“That’s not going to work, Janey.” His voice hardened.
“Of course it is.” She set her coffee on the table before reaching into the cabinet for the pack of sticky cinnamon rolls she kept there.
Pulling it down, she stared at the nearly empty pack before turning narrowed eyes to Alex. “You ate my rolls?”
His grin was unapologetic. “I was hungry. I worked up an appetite last night.”
And her face flamed again. Damn him.
“And that’s one of the things we need to talk about,” he told her as she set the package on the table and pulled out a chair.
“Why dissect it?” she mumbled. “Leave me alone.”
He leaned forward, braced his arms on the table, and stared back at her, his expression hardening now.
“The condom broke, Janey.”
She shook her head, feeling her brain go numb. “You’re not serious.”
He leaned back in his chair. “I’m very serious. It ripped to hell. Now we need to deal with it.”
She swallowed tightly. “It was just one time . . .”
“Twice.”
“It ripped twice?” Her eyes widened as she grappled to understand what he was saying.
His lips tilted in a strange half smile. “No. I just didn’t bother with one the second time.” He lifted his coffee mug and sipped as though they were talking about nothing more important than the weather.
She was in shock. There was no other explanation for it. Janey felt her lips go numb, but she felt a wild, impossible surge of excitement racing through her. She did a fast mental calculation and knew, she knew the chances of her becoming pregnant couldn’t be any higher than right now.
She licked her lips nervously. “Was it my fault?”
She had rolled the condom onto his heavy erection. She had loved doing it, but it wasn’t as though she had any experience at it.
His brows lifted. “How could it have been your fault?”
“Well.” She swallowed tightly, feeling the blush burning across her cheeks as she lowered her eyes to her coffee. “I put it on you.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Was there a vein of amusement in his voice? She couldn’t lift her eyes to see. Confusion jumbled through her mind. She hadn’t expected that. She wasn’t certain what he wanted her to say or what she was supposed to feel. She had a feeling this hard surge of joy, anticipation, wasn’t it.
“It doesn’t change anything.” She lifted the cup of coffee and sipped at it, ignoring the heavy silence that filled the room then.
“Excuse me, but I could have sworn you just said it didn’t change anything,” he stated, his voice dropping, lowering.
Janey forced herself to lift her gaze, to meet his hard, flinty one.
“That’s exactly what I said. If I’m pregnant, I’ll deal with it.”
“And how exactly will you deal with it?” His lips thinned. “You wouldn’t consider getting rid of my baby, would you, Janey?”
Shock raced headlong through her. She stared back at him for a moment in disbelief. It took critical seconds for the accusation to fire inside her brain and disbelief to burn away beneath anger.
Cold, brittle mockery curled at her lips. “Your opinion of me sucks, Alex.” She pushed back from the table, abandoning her sweet breakfast as anger curled through her. “No. For your information, I’d never consider harming our child.”
The accusation hurt. It sliced through her soul with a ragged edge and left her bleeding, aching in pain. She had forgotten; she had let herself forget to hold back with Alex. She had slipped up last night. Realizing she was in love with a man softened a woman. Made her weak.
“Good. Then I’ll talk to Natches tonight. We can get married in the morning after securing the license at the courthouse.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared back at her coolly. None of his emotions showed; she had no idea, one way or the other, what he even thought about a child.
Janey looked at the cup of coffee, wondering for one insane moment if it had been drugged. Or if Alex had just lost his ever-lovin’ mind.
“No,” she finally said carefully. “We’re not getting married.”
This was happening too fast. Too many emotions were crowding inside her now, racing through her brain, making it impossible to make sense of everything.
For one moment, wild, impossible joy had filled her. Alex wanted to marry her? She could keep him, hold him close to her. For how long? Until he realized the cost of marrying her? A woman everyone in the county wanted to convict as a traitor? How long would it take him to hate her?
“Janey.” He came out of his seat, his finger pressing into the top of the table, so commanding, so dominating. It was equally sexy and irritating. “I won’t allow my baby to be raised without me. Period. You don’t want to test me on this.”
“Until we know whether or not there’s a child, the point is moot.” She had to force the words past her lips. “Until then . . .”
“Until then, I’ll be fucking the hell out of you daily,” he growled, moving around the table to jerk her into his arms. “And I think I’m addicted to the feel of your pussy bare, Janey. There won’t be any more condoms. How long do you think it will take you to get pregnant if you’re not already?”
“I think you’re crazy,” she gasped. “Listen to yourself, Alex. This won’t work. You know it won’t work.”
“Why?” He pushed her against the wall, not ungently actually, the move too damned sexy. It made her wet. Made her want to weaken, to surrender to him then and there. “Tell me why it won’t work, Janey.”
“Do you love me, Alex?”
Janey already knew the answer. She knew, but it still tore a hole in her heart to see the answer in his face.
“Don’t believe in fairy tales, sweetheart.” He sighed, touching her cheek with his fingertips. “Sometimes I forget how young you are.”
How young she was? As though age had anything to do with love. Since when?
Janey jerked away from him, barely restraining the urge to throw something at him. Glaring at him instead, raging inside, she faced him, her fists clenching at her side.
“Well then, remember,” she said scathingly. She wasn’t going to bother to even try to hide the anger. Screw it. She’d been in Somerset six months, and hiding beneath that damned mask of unconcern wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all Alex. “Remember how young I am, Alex,” she told him, mocking anger twisting her lips. “Because I won’t marry a man who doesn’t love me. Screw it. You and this damned town. I deserve better than a man who thinks loving a woman is a fairy tale or a town that thinks I’m such a tramp I’d sleep with that disgusting excuse for a father that I had. You know what? You can all go to hell.”
His arms went over his chest as he stared back at her silently, coolly. She recognized that posture. Did he really think that flashing those impressive biceps of his was going to change her mind?
From the corner of her eyes she caught a glimpse of that bite on his neck, and the shiver that rushed through her, barely hidden, almost weakened her knees. She had one on her neck as well. Her shoulder, across the tops of her breasts. Her stomach.
Her breathing became shallow. Okay. They’d snacked on each other like ravening beasts the night before and broken a rubber. She could deal. That didn’t mean she was going to marry a man who didn’t love her.
“You know it’s not going to be that simple.” He finally spoke, and when he did she wished he had just kept his damned mouth shut. His tone was implacable, his expression determined.
“Yes, it is going to be that simple,” she informed him. “Starting today, Alex, my life is going to simplified exponentially. Number one”—she held up one finger—“I’m no longer pretending to be some damned robot that doesn’t mind the little strikes and barbs that come my way. Number two”—she held up the second finger—“I’m not going let you or anyone else dictate to me how I walk, talk, dress, or act. And number three”—before she knew it, she had her finger buried in his chest and her voice had risen—“I will not marry any man who doesn’t love me.” The finger came back to her, to her chest, and determination struck a hard, fierce blow there. “I’m not unworthy of love, no matter my age or who the hell my biological parents are. So stuff that along with your arrogance and go straight to hell.”
She turned on her heel and stomped to her bedroom. She had work to do. She’d wasted too much time in the past months letting people, people she didn’t know and who didn’t matter to her damned life, affect her. She loved Somerset, but she could leave. She could go anywhere she wanted to go now, and there was nothing and no one to stop her.
Except herself.
She slammed the door shut, locked it, then leaned against it and slowly placed her hands over her stomach as her eyes closed.
She could be pregnant. That changed her plans. Until she knew for certain, Alex was right—she couldn’t leave. But if she was pregnant, there was no way she could stay either. She wouldn’t let her child be subjected to the prejudice and cruelty this county was heaping on her. Especially Alex’s baby.
Alex was considered one of Somerset’s favorite sons. A Special Forces soldier who had survived untold wars. He returned home wounded, healed, and went out to fight again. He was a hometown hero, sleeping with a traitor’s daughter.
Funny, how those same people saw Natches as a hero as well. Well, not funny perhaps. They had stood aside all those years that they knew Natches was getting the hell beat out of him at home. When Dayle had disowned him, many had turned their backs on him as well, until Dayle’s arrest. Now he was a hometown hero, too, and they’d found someone new to punish.
She pushed her fingers through her hair and fought back the anger rushing through her. Anger wasn’t going to help her. Pride, determination—screw all of them.
She stalked to the closet, drew out the clothes she’d already chosen to wear today or this evening. The restaurant opened its doors at four, but the employees arrived hours before that. She needed to be downstairs, overseeing everything within the hour.
She usually enjoyed her coffee and rolls first. But no, this morning Alex just had to drop his little bombshell before she could even get that first jolt of caffeine into her system.
She had no doubt it was deliberate.
Her hands were still shaking with anger as she rolled sheer black stockings up her legs and attached the lacy elastic band to the straps of the matching garter belt. Black panties came next, the thong eliminating any hint of panty line beneath the black mid-thigh-length silk skirt.
From her dresser she pulled free one of her favorite bras. One she had rarely worn outside the house. The demi bra gave her breasts a little added volume and, when paired with the violet short-sleeved silk-lined knit sweater she wore, made her feel sexier, more in control.
She buttoned the tiny violet buttons that ran up the sweater, buttoning it far enough that only a hint of cleavage was left showing, and Alex’s bite marks were well covered.
There was no way in hell to hide the one on her neck completely. She applied her makeup then, following Rogue’s laughing advice, applied the heavy cover base to the mark before using a touch of foundation to blend it in against her skin. It was still there, but it wasn’t glaring.
Hell, if she couldn’t hide it, she may as well own it at this point, she told herself. But as she stared into the mirror and brushed her hair to curl around her neck, she couldn’t find it in herself to be ashamed of it. Simply wary. Alex didn’t want others to know where he was sleeping at night, and she didn’t want to harm the reputation she knew he had in the county.
Thankfully, the cut and style of her hair helped to hide the mark. She knew it was there, though, and she had the memory of how it had been placed there. The mark on Alex’s neck couldn’t be hidden without a ton of makeup, she thought, as she applied her lipstick and stared at her own kiss-swollen lips.
What the hell had she been thinking when she’d done that?
Oh, she knew what she was thinking. Ownership. If only for a few days, however long it took for the mark to recede, everyone would know he had been claimed. It didn’t make a whit of difference, because no one would know who the hell had claimed him. But she knew. She knew, and each time she thought of it her stomach clenched at the memory.
Finishing up, she slid her feet into three-inch black heels, made certain her hair was still curled over the side of her neck, then left the bedroom.
Alex was still there.
He rose slowly from the kitchen table, where he was working on the laptop, and stared at her, his expression granite hard now, his eyes flat, distant.
Poor little Alex, the stupid little girl he was having to watch over wasn’t obeying him near as well as he would like. She almost snorted at the thought.
“I have twenty minutes to get downstairs,” she told him, moving to the fresh pot of coffee just finishing in the maker. “Can I drink this cup of coffee without being harassed?”
He closed the laptop slowly as she turned back with a full cup and lifted it to her lips. His expression was nerve-racking. She had never seen him look like that.
Pissed, obviously, she thought. That was too bad, because now she was pissed.
“It’s harassment to ask for one logical reason why you won’t marry me?” His hands were placed carefully on the table. Broad, calloused, strong male hands. Yeah, she loved those hands, too.
“I told you why. It was a completely logical reason.” She’d lived without love for most of her life. She wanted love. She needed it.
“I care for you, Janey.” He sighed. “You’d never have to worry about me cheating on you or hurting you.”
He’d already hurt her, more times than she could count. The very fact that he went to such lengths to keep anyone from knowing he was staying with her had the power to rip at her heart if she let herself think about it too often. And she thought about it often.
She loved him. As she stared back at him, she realized, in some ways, she had loved Alex for years. Every time Dayle had allowed her to come home, she had looked for him, asked about him. She had been fascinated with him. That fascination hadn’t changed.
She lifted her coffee to her lips and sipped, hoping the caffeine would clear her head. Despite the years she had spent keeping herself alone, isolated, giving Dayle no one he could use to strike out at her, Janey had managed to retain a few dreams. And one of those dreams was love.
“I deserve more than just a man who cares for me,” she finally told him. “You can care for a pet. I want to be more than that to someone, Alex. I need more than that.”
He wiped his hand over his face and exhaled roughly. “Janey, sometimes you’re so damned mature you frighten me, then times like this you make me feel like a fucking cradle robber.” He rose from his seat, frustration lining his face now as she watched him carefully. “Sweetheart, listen to me, what you’re looking for doesn’t exist, and you’re only going to get your heart broken looking for it.” His face hardened then. “And if you’re carrying my child, then that baby will suffer the effects of however you hurt yourself. Is that what you want?”
“We’ll discuss that if it happens.” Her voice was a hell of a lot calmer than she was.
“It will happen.” His arms bracketed her, his hands slapping against the counter beside her. “Trust me, sweetheart, if it didn’t happen last night, then it will tonight or the night after. Because fucking you without latex is too damned good to give up.”
“I hope you’ve had blood tests lately,” she stated calmly.
Janey was anything but calm. She could feel her nipples beading, her pussy heating. Hell, she could feel her womb shaking in anticipation at the sight of the lust flickering in his gaze and his tight, forbidding expression. If she looked, lowered her gaze to his jeans, she knew what she would see. If she gave him the slightest go-ahead, he’d be buried inside her.
So thick, so hard. He would push between her thighs, stretch her, burn her with pleasure.
“Look at your face,” he said, his voice rougher now. “I can see the need in your eyes, baby. You want me, again. Pumping inside you, filling you with my cum. It was hot, wasn’t it, Janey? So hot it’s addictive.”
Oh yes, she did want him. The want was like a fever inside her.
“It was hot,” she whispered back, moving to set yet another unfinished cup of coffee on the counter.
“You want me, Janey.”
She turned her back to him, gripping the counter with desperate fingers as she closed her eyes and fought the need. No, she didn’t want him; she loved him. She loved him with a strength she hadn’t believed in herself. That was, she’d loved him until this morning. Until he had offered her marriage, without the love.
“Want isn’t enough.” She shook her head, feeling him behind her, feeling his breath at her neck.
“Do you love me, Janey?”
She blinked against the tears that would have fallen. She wasn’t going to cry for him.
Turning back to him, she lifted her gaze to his, forcing the emotion back, forcing the pain back. It didn’t matter what she felt, she told herself. It never had. All the wanting in the world wouldn’t change that. “You don’t believe in love, Alex. So it doesn’t matter one way or the other, does it?”