FOUR
Alex followed the others from the apartment almost an hour later, carefully keeping his expression calm and his mouth shut. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to chuckle. And that chuckle could risk his carefully laid plans.
It wasn’t often a man could claim he’d managed to maneuver not just one intrepid little Mackay female, but her brother and two cousins as well. Though, he wasn’t so sure about the cousins. Or the uncle. The three of them were a little too quiet, and a little too amused.
Mackays could be subtle when the situation called for it. It just had to suit them to do so. Now, Natches, he wasn’t so subtle.
“Touch her. Just one time. Even dare to touch her, Alex, and I’ll cut your dick off,” Natches warned him as they reached the trucks, his cousins and uncle trailing behind them.
Alex turned to him, staring back at Natches’s furious green eyes curiously. “Hell of a warning to give me, buddy,” he snorted. “I’m doing you a favor here, not the other way around.”
Natches was right up in his face and, under most circumstances, would have found himself flat on his ass for his trouble. Problem was, if he hit Natches, he would have three others just as mean he’d have to fight, and then all his planning would go to hell.
“You don’t do anyone favors,” Natches informed him heatedly. “And don’t think I forgot how you were watching her six years ago.” He gave Alex a disgusted look. “She was a baby.”
Alex stared back at him coolly. Janey had been seventeen at the time, which didn’t excuse him, but she hadn’t been a baby.
“I’ve done the Mackays plenty of favors,” he reminded Natches. “The past six years I’ve busted my ass and my team’s to not just do our job, but cover her when we’re not on assignment. When on assignment, I’ve invariably managed to find backup, Natches.” He sneered the other man’s name. “That was a hell of a favor, buddy.”
“From a man lusting after a kid,” Natches charged.
Alex had control. He’d majored in control. He was the king of control. But it snapped. Before he realized what he was doing, he had Natches’s jacket in his fists, throwing the other man against the side of the building.
“Don’t cross the line, fucker!” Alex snarled in his face. “Don’t even cross that line.”
He was surprised the others hadn’t jumped in. He was even more surprised when Natches’s expression lost its fury. His hands came up, not to hit, but to jerk Alex’s hands back.
“Christ!” Natches dug his fingers into his neck, shook his head. “Hell, Alex. I didn’t mean that, man.”
Alex stepped back, fury and guilt, more guilt than fury, pumping through his veins as he retreated.
“You’re right.” Natches ran his hand over his face and shook his head again. “You’re right. You’ve been in this all along, watching out for her. More than I was.” Torment creased Natches’s face. “You did what I couldn’t.”
And Alex had lusted. Every year it had grown, surged inside him until now. But Janey wasn’t a baby. She was a grown woman. An innocent, seductive young woman. And he was old enough to know better.
“Fuck it.” Alex moved back to his truck. “I’ll be here after dark. Hell!” He got into his truck and waited. He let Natches pull out first, then, as Dawg moved to the window, he hit the control and lowered the glass.
Dawg leaned against the door, watched Natches leave, then turned back to Alex.
“I know what he doesn’t.” Dawg nodded after Natches.
“And that is?”
“You want her too fucking bad to walk away.” Dawg turned back to Alex, his gaze steely. “And that’s okay. She’s a damned pretty woman.” His voice hardened. “And a damned vulnerable one. Break her heart, Alex, and brother-in-law or not, we’ll take you apart.”
Alex stared back as Dawg nodded, then moved away. Hell, Mackays were a pain in the ass.
He looked up at the apartment, and, standing there in the chill morning air, that cat cradled in her arms, was Janey. How much had she seen? Heard? From the look on her face, probably all of it. He knew the look of a pissed-off Mackay, and she definitely had that look. The only difference was, on her, it looked damn fine.
He lifted his fingers in a lingering salute and shot her a mocking smile before backing out of the parking space and heading down the street.
His things were already packed at home. He was prepared. He’d return in a few hours. And then what? He frowned at that question.
What? Seduce her? Show her how nasty he could get, then walk out on her later?
Hell. What was in his mind? What made him think Janey was anything like the other women who understood that when morning came, he would be gone?
So why wasn’t his dick listening? Hell, why wasn’t his head listening? He couldn’t stop thinking about her, remembering that kiss. The innocence was killing him, and God only knew, he thought innocence was a damned fine thing in a woman. So why did he want to destroy Janey’s?
Because it was his. He wasn’t even going to let himself think she was his, just her innocence. He wasn’t going there, he promised himself. He had never let himself get mired in the quicksand of false love, and he wasn’t going to let it happen now.
Janey was more grounded than her brothers or her cousins thought she was. More mature than any of them believed. He had seen that in her, felt it in her. Or he was just fooling himself and creating an excuse to allow himself into her bed.
For a second, just a second, he prayed she was strong enough to keep him out of it. Otherwise, he had a feeling he would end up destroying both of them.
Janey was waiting when Alex arrived that evening. She’d called Rogue and rescheduled their girls’ night out. She hadn’t given the other woman an explanation and Rogue hadn’t asked for one. Janey had been torn, though. She wanted that night out. She’d never been dancing. She had never gotten tipsy in her life. She wanted to do both.
She wanted to sway to the music, laugh and have fun. She wanted to be female. Feminine. She wanted to wear makeup and that new skirt Rogue had talked her into buying.
This evening, she wore a pair of cotton running pants and a T-shirt. She hadn’t straightened her hair, so the loose curls feathered around her face, almost to her shoulders.
She’d had it cut immediately after coming out of the hospital months before. The long strands had hung nearly to her waist, and every time she felt the weight of it she’d been reminded of how often Dayle and Nadine had used her hair to drag her around.
Now it was shorter, easier to keep up with, and Janey actually liked the way it framed the almost narrow lines of her face.
She was twirling one of those curls around her finger as she sat on the couch going through bills for the restaurant and waiting on Alex. Yet when his firm knock sounded on the door, she jumped, startled.
She excused the reaction. In the two months she had lived there, she had rarely had anyone knock on her apartment door.
Standing, she moved to the door and looked out the privacy peephole to see him standing there. As if it would be anyone else. Opening the door, she stood aside as he walked in, a duffel on one shoulder, a hard, long, narrow case in the other.
Looking into the parking lot, she frowned when she didn’t see his truck.
“Where did you park?”
“I didn’t.” He moved through the apartment to the short hall, and directly to the spare bedroom, as Janey closed and locked the door.
“What do you mean you didn’t? Did you walk?” she questioned as she followed him.
“Zeke picked me up at the marina and drove me in. He’ll pick me up in the morning when he goes back on shift. It would be best if no one knew I was here with you.”
Janey froze in the hall as he spoke from the bedroom. She was surprised at the hard surge of hurt and betrayal that struck her at his words. Of course it would be better if no one knew he was here. He was considered one of Somerset’s favorite sons. He was in the Special Forces, part of the investigation that destroyed the homegrown terrorist group Dayle Mackay had been a part of. It just wouldn’t do for people to know he was living with a traitor’s daughter, would it?
She turned and moved back into the living room, to her place on the couch. She wished that damned cat would show back up. She would have had something to distract her from the sudden pain building inside her chest.
She punched the numbers into the adding machine for the next bill, wishing she could throw the damned thing at the wall instead.
It was best that people didn’t know he was staying there? Oh yeah, she could definitely understand that. Why hadn’t she thought about that? She should have. When she was trying to put all those big, tough males in their places this morning, she should have considered more than her own pride. She should have considered Alex’s reputation.
“Clean sheets?” Alex stood in the doorway now, his tone cool, the typical remote Alex tone.
“Closet in the hall,” she told him, her voice low, just as cool. She knew the robot tone, too.
She hadn’t made up a bed for him. Somehow. She frowned. Had she actually considered that he would try to talk his way into her bed again? The aberration that was last night flitted through her head. His touch, his kiss, the hunger she had felt blazing within him. Obviously, he had reconsidered that moment of insane lust. She should have done the same. She should have never canceled her girls’ night out. She should have left him here doing his damned job and gone out and had fun.
She pushed the adding machine back on the coffee table and tossed the bills back in their pile before rising to her feet and pacing the living room. If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be here. She could have been in the restaurant doing her job properly or out having fun. She hated vegetating in this apartment as she had done in the apartment in California.
If she had known how worried he was about anyone knowing he was here, she would have done just that. Instead, she moved into the kitchen, pulled open the refrigerator door, and pulled her wine out.
One glass. That was all she allowed herself a day. Well, sometimes a glass and a half. Tonight, just one glass. She poured the pale liquid before shoving the cork back in the bottle and returning it to the refrigerator.
So much for changing the sheets on her bed. That was wasted effort.
She moved back to the couch and looked at the clock. Hell. It was barely six thirty in the evening. She had at least another eight hours before she went to bed herself.
“Are we having dinner?” he asked as he moved into the kitchen.
“If you’re fixing it.” She lifted her glass and sipped as she stared at the curtained window across from her. “Or ordering it. Whichever you want to do.”
She sure as hell wasn’t ordering it for him. And she bet her ass he wasn’t going to order anything. That would require actually letting someone know he was there.
He didn’t say another word.
“Whatever.” She rose to her feet and moved to the phone. “Burgers or pizza?”
His expression was stoic, dark. He watched her, like she’d seen Fat Cat watch a mouse once. Pondering. Considering. Was it really worth his time?
“How ’bout both?”
She nodded and picked up the phone. She ordered enough food for her brother and her cousins to share. She’d done that before. They’d just assume Natches and the others were going to be there tonight.
There. His nice, pristine reputation was still intact. And she felt as though something had shattered inside her.
“Janey.” He caught her arm as she moved past him, pulling her to a stop. “What’s wrong?”
“What would be wrong?” She blinked back at him with false innocence. “My big, bad-assed brother and cousins decided I needed a watchdog, and I was stupid enough to agree to let you stay. Hell, I thought you’d at least protest.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked quietly. “I don’t want to see you hurt. Those letters are serious, Janey. Someone wants to hurt you.”
“Someone wants to hurt my feelings and run me out of town,” she argued, fighting to keep her tone placid. “You’re the one that ran to Natches and the others like a damned spy.”
“So I’m the one being punished?” He stroked her arm as he released her, running the backs of his fingers down it, and nothing more.
He stepped back. As though he remembered he shouldn’t touch her.
“Yeah. Something like that.” She moved away from him.
She made it as far as the couch.
“How long did they give you for the food?” he asked.
“Forty minutes.” She shrugged, sliding back into her seat and reaching for her wine.
“Enough time.”
Her head jerked up at the sound of his voice. He was stalking toward the couch. He’d shed his jacket; the dark T-shirt stretched across powerful shoulders and biceps. His jeans were snug, clearly revealing the erection she had refused to check for earlier.
“For what?” Her voice was weak, breathless.
She was a fool. She should put her foot down right now, let him know she wasn’t going to be a toy for him any more than she would be for anyone else.
But then he knelt in front of her. Slowly, his hands cupped over her knees and drew her thighs apart, wide enough for him to slide between them.
“Don’t do this.” Her hands moved to his shoulders, but she wasn’t pushing him away.
What he did to her should be illegal. He made her weak, made her unwilling to fight.
“I don’t think I can help it, Janey.” He slid his hands up her thighs, the heat of his palms burning her through the cotton pants she wore. “I didn’t sleep worth shit last night.”
That made two of them. But this wasn’t going to help either of them sleep at night, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to help her keep her heart shielded against him.
“You were too busy plotting to sleep,” she accused him. “You didn’t have to tell Natches about those letters.”
“Yeah, I did.” His gray eyes were darker, his lashes surrounding them like a heavy shadow. “I won’t let you be hurt.”
Janey pressed back into the couch cushions behind her. She could smell him, and she needed to escape the dark, heated scent.
“Take your shirt off for me, Janey,” he whispered. “Let me see you. Just a little bit.”
Her nipples peaked harder than they were before.
She licked her lips, her breathing becoming rougher, harder, as his gaze latched on to that action.
“I dare you,” he challenged her. “Come on, Janey. Tease me. I give you permission.”
“Tease you?” she repeated. “I have a feeling it would be like a lamb teasing a wolf, Alex. We’ve already established the fact that you can make me respond.”
“Make you respond?” His thumbs rotated inside her thighs. “Do I force you to respond, Janey?”
“Don’t play word games with me,” she protested, hating this response to him, hating herself for being so weak.
His lips quirked. She loved his lips when he did that. The wide, sensually full shape of them made her hungry to taste them. Made her desperate to feel them.
“Can I take your T-shirt off, then?” He leaned closer, his lips touching her jaw as Janey felt her lashes flutter at the warmth of the caress. “I’d do it slow and easy. Give you time to protest. I’d unwrap you like the prettiest present.”
She felt his fingers move beneath the hem of her shirt, lift it. She shook, felt herself trembling as the material cleared her stomach, then eased over her breasts.
Memories, stark and brutal, clashed with the need rising, sharp and hot, inside her.
“You’re so pretty, Janey.” His voice was like a sigh, breaking through the fear that would have risen inside her. “I’ve wanted to tell you for years how pretty you were, and I knew better. I knew I had no business wanting you, thinking about you.”
Her arms lifted as he drew the shirt over her head and dropped it to the couch beside her.
She was breathing hard and fast now, her breasts rising and falling, framed by the white lace of the demi bra she wore. Her nipples were hard, sensitive, pressing into the thin cups as he stared at her, his expression tight, his lips parted as his own breathing roughened.
“It should be a sin for a woman as pretty as you to be a virgin,” he told her. “You should have been loved slow and easy. Taken all night long. Licked from the sweet curves of your lips to the tips of your toes.”
She was enthralled. His hands pressed against her sides, moved up until they paused just beneath the swollen curves of her breasts.
Janey watched him carefully. Her breasts were tender, sensitive. They had been ever since Nadine had bruised them. The bruising had been deep, but the mental scars had gone deeper.
“I know what she did,” he whispered, as though reading her mind.
Janey cringed at Alex’s words and tried to push him away from her.
“No, Janey,” he whispered. “No secrets between us. Not like this. I won’t hurt you.”
“Yes, you will,” she protested, her voice hoarse. She couldn’t seem to maintain that veil of cool disinterest with Alex as she did with everyone else. “You won’t be able to help it.”
He lifted his eyes from her breasts to her face. “Do you think I’m that rough?” he asked her.
“You could probably make me beg you for any touch you wanted to give me,” she admitted. “But I can’t handle you, Alex. Not right now. Not like this.”
He grimaced. “No games, Janey. I promise. I’m too old for games. We agree to just this, and no one gets hurt.”
Just this? Just sex?
She watched him, miserably aware that she wanted him with a strength that was going to destroy her. She knew it would. She could feel it coming.
When his lips touched hers, there was no fight left in her. Except the fight to see how much deeper she could make him kiss her. Her lips parted beneath his, a moan slipping past her throat as her nails dug into the material covering his shoulders.
Tongues dueled. Licked. Tasted. One hand moved from beneath her breasts to cup her neck. His hand was so large that his palm and fingers curled from the side of her neck all the way around the back of it. His fingers were calloused, rasping against her flesh.
He was so big, so hard. She wanted to feel him over her, around her, surrounding her. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her hands flattening to feel the flex and power of his muscles beneath them.
God, that turned her on. The way he kissed her, the way his muscles tensed as the kiss deepened, the way he groaned into their kiss, a sound as hungry as her own. But it was darker, sexier.
“Damn, I love your lips, Janey.” He sipped at them, nipped at them. “They fit me, baby.”
Janey forced her eyes open in time to watch his head lower.
She stiffened as his tongue stroked over her collarbone.
“I’m dying to taste your nipples,” he rasped, his hand moving from her neck back below the breast, where it had rested before. “I want to feel them hard and hot against my tongue. I bet they’re sweet. As sweet as candy.”
His hands moved, drawing the straps of her bra from her shoulders, easing the cups just beneath her nipples.
“Alex. Alex. I don’t know about this.” She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t seem to draw enough oxygen into her lungs. Couldn’t find the strength to push him away.
“Are you scared of me, Janey?” He breathed the words over one nipple. “Do you think I’m going to hurt you?”
She shook her head, but she didn’t know if that was an answer.
“Watch me, darlin’,” he crooned, looking up at her, his lips lowering farther. “Watch me love this pretty nipple. See what it’s supposed to feel like.”
At the first touch of his lips, sensation tore through her nipple to her clit. Janey arched, driving the tip between his lips, against the moist, hot flesh of his tongue as he licked over it.
She froze. She swore the ability to breathe was forgotten as she felt the pleasure erupt inside her. Like flames. Like tiny explosions set off beneath her flesh and searing her with their heat.
“How pretty,” he murmured, pursing his lips and kissing the tip before sucking it gently, easily, back into his mouth.
Just her nipple. He licked it with his tongue as he sucked it slow and easy. His palm cupped her breast, nearly swallowing the curve before she could even consider fear. Calloused palm and fingers, just holding the swollen flesh. Cupping it. Framing it as he sucked at the hard, sensitive tip.
“Alex.” She was breathing again, rougher than before. She felt fevered, too hot, too sensitive. She had been cold earlier. She shouldn’t be hot now.
His head lifted, but only to move to her other nipple. As he treated it to the same careful caresses, Janey closed her eyes and fought to hold on to her senses. She was sure there was a reason why she shouldn’t be allowing this. She knew there was, but the reason slipped beneath the pleasure.
Her hands held the back of his head now, trying to force him closer as she arched to him, watched his lips drawing on her, the way his cheeks hollowed as he suckled her. He kissed the hard nipples. Let her watch him lick them.
Oh, that was so good. Watching his tongue lick over the hard tip, curl against it. Her thighs clenched as sensation tore across her nerve endings again, shattering between her thighs, filling her clit, the aching depths of her pussy. She didn’t know how to fight this. She didn’t want to fight it. She wanted it to continue forever.
“I knew how sweet your pretty nipples would be.” He kissed one peak, then the other. “Hard against my tongue. Like sugar candy.”
Her nails dug into the back of his head, wanting him there again, wanting her flesh in his mouth again.
“I’m going to kiss your clit just like that, Janey. Kiss it slow and sweet. Draw it into my mouth and lick it nice and soft while I suck all its sweetness.”
She wasn’t going to survive this. She was going to melt into a puddle of pure need at his feet if he didn’t stop saying these things to her.
“Then I’m going to push my tongue into your tight pussy.” His expression tightened, lust flaring hard and deep in his eyes. “I’m starving for you, Janey. For every touch, every fucking taste.”
She was going to orgasm from his words alone. She was going to flame out of control and scream out in need if he didn’t do something. Fast. She could feel herself peaking, feel the pleasure building and tearing through her until she didn’t think she would survive the culmination of it.
His hands gripped the band of her pants, drew them down as she lifted to him. She needed this, too. She wanted it. Wanted his mouth on her. Wanted the pleasure and the torturous heat tearing through her.
Her lips parted to beg. Her breath had gathered to push the words out, when a hard, loud knock sounded at the door.
“Delivery, Ms. Mackay,” a young male voice called out. “Hey, hurry. Your cat’s growling at me.”
Janey flinched. Alex moved.
He pushed the straps and cups of her bra back in place and had her shirt over her head before she could blink. His expression was no longer sensual, no longer filled with lust. It was tighter now, harder.
She pushed her arms slowly through the shirtsleeves and readjusted her pants. Yeah, now she remembered why she should have never allowed him to touch her.
Shame burned through her. Jerking from the couch, she moved quickly to the kitchen, aware of him behind her, sliding to the side of the door. He checked the privacy peephole before moving to the side, where he wouldn’t be seen.
Damn him. Damn Dayle Mackay and this town and her own stupid, traitorous body.
She jerked several bills from the kitchen drawer where she kept extra cash and moved to the door. She shot Alex a glare, hating him as much as she hated herself at that moment.
She swung the door open, pasting a smile on her face for the young delivery boy. Fat Cat shot into the house, sliding past her legs and heading for his food bowl, no doubt.
She handed the boy the money. “Keep the change, Robby,” she told him as she took the food.
“Wow, thanks, Miss Mackay. And tell your family I said hey. Natches was in the pizza house last week right at closing. He had to sweet-talk the owner into opening the kitchen long enough to bake his wife one of those pizzas she’s been craving.”
Another forced smile, a little laugh. “Chaya likes her pizza.”
“Yeah. And always right at or right after closing.” Robby grinned. “They always give Natches grief, but he talks them into it.”
“He can be a charmer,” Janey agreed.
“Night, then, Miss Mackay.” Robby nodded his shaggy head. “Take care.”
“Good night, Robby.”
She closed the door and locked it. She paused for a second, then turned, tossed the food to the table, and faced Alex.
“There’s your damned food. What you don’t want, put in the fridge. You can eat it tomorrow night. I’m going to bed.”
And he let her go. She felt his eyes on her, felt the hunger behind her, but he let her go. Only Fat Cat followed, meowing softly as he jumped up on her bed and stared at her as though questioning why she wasn’t watching the news. Why she was crying.
And yes, there were tears. For just a moment. As she sat at the edge of the bed, risked Fat Cat’s displeasure, and pulled him into her arms.
His fur caught her tears, but the ragged sobs were contained inside her chest. Where they had always been contained, all her life.
The man she had always fantasized about had touched her, and he was ashamed of her. Now just how was that for hell?