Janey arched, crying out his name as his lips covered a hard, sensitive nipple, pulling it into the hot depths of his mouth. He sucked her with hungry draws of his mouth, sending pleasure shooting from the tight tip to the needy depths of her pussy.

She writhed against the bed beneath, her legs parting as his thigh pushed between them. The hard muscle

ground against her clit, and she felt the tightening, the erotic flames of pleasure beginning to sear her.

The sensations raced from her nipples to her womb, curled around her clit, and struck inside her sex. She could feel the clenching, building need. The desperate pleasure that she knew would only grow, only become deeper, hotter, until he filled her, until he triggered the explosive ecstasy she knew she would only feel in his arms.

“I love how your nipples taste,” he growled as he moved from one to the other. “So tight and sensitive.”

His teeth rasped one; his tongue licked, and a lightning stroke of white-hot sensation whipped through her body.

She could feel the perspiration gathering on her flesh. The need tearing through her. She had to have him, soon. If she didn’t—oh God, she couldn’t bear it if she didn’t.

Her head thrashed on the bed as his lips moved from her nipples. He kissed the underside of her breast, sucked a bit of the flesh into his mouth, and she knew he’d marked her again. Knew it and loved it.

Then his lips were moving lower. His tongue licked down, his lips kissed, his hands parted her thighs farther as his head came between them. And he licked her pussy. One long, slow lick through the saturated cleft. When he reached her clit, he licked around it. Never enough pressure. He blew a heated breath over it, kissed it, and she nearly exploded into a million fragments.

His chuckle was wicked.

“You’re going to tease me,” she gasped.

“I’m going to adore you,” he drawled. “Soak every taste and touch into my soul, Janey.”

He licked and sucked. He kissed and had her screaming his name.

“Oh yeah, ah, baby, I love your sounds. Your cries and screams.”

He stabbed his tongue inside her clenching sex and she nearly came undone then and there. She could feel the tension building in her womb, in her clit. The pleasure was so intense, so brilliant, it was nearly painful, and she wanted more. She craved more. She gripped his head, her fingers digging into his scalp as she arched to his lips. Her head thrashed. Her legs tightened around his head.

Groaning, he moved to her clit, licked around it, kissed it, then sucked it into his mouth as his tongue flickered, hot and quick, over the tender bud and left her screaming through her orgasm.

“Now ride me.” He pulled her over him before the last waves of pleasure were finished rushing through her.

She still had her shoes on, her stockings. She had no idea what had happened to her panties or when he’d torn them off her. She was sure he must have torn them. He seemed to really enjoy tearing her panties off her body, and she loved it.

“God, I nearly came when you threatened to ride me like your own personal stud,” he groaned as she straddled his hips. “Do it, baby. Ride me straight to paradise.”

She gripped the base of his cock and eased over him, pressing it against her, her eyes closing, her head falling back as she felt him stretching her, filling her.

She was slick and wet; he was hard and thick. Like heated, silk-covered iron impaling her, stroking once-hidden nerve endings and sending sharp, intense flares of sensation racing to her womb.

She took him in one long stroke, easing down until he filled her completely, burrowed so deep inside her that there was no beginning, no end to either of them.

“Oh yeah, honey.” His lips pulled back in a snarl of pleasure as his gaze narrowed. “Now ride me.” His hands clenched her hips. “Damn, you look pretty like that.”

She followed his lead, lifting and rising, grinding against him and crying out his name as the pleasure began to build again, the heat surging through her.

It was pleasure and pain. It was agony and ecstasy. It was like belonging. Like finally discovering the one place in the world where she knew she could find that elusive happiness that had never seemed quite real.

Until Alex. Until he touched her, held her. Until he let her own him.

She would teach him to love her. Eventually.

For now there was this. Taking him as he took her, loving it. Riding him, rising and falling on the stiff length of cock, until they were both crying out with the release rushing through them.

She tightened on him until her muscles seemed to lock. Inside her, his cock swelled thicker, throbbed

harder, and the heated, harsh spurts of his release pushed her own climax higher.

Sweat covered them, slickened their bodies as she relaxed against him. It was a damned good thing breathing was natural, because Janey wasn’t certain she could have found the strength to draw a breath if it wasn’t.

“Oh man, that was so fucking hot.” He breathed out roughly. “I want to do it again.”

Her muscles were shaking. He was practically draped on the bed beneath her. She could barely manage a laugh.

“Right now?”

He grunted. “A few minutes, maybe.”

“Minutes?” She couldn’t move yet. She was so limp, so weak, she just lay against him. He was still buried inside her, still hard, though without the steely strength of moments before.

“Okay, tens of minutes, maybe.” He tried for a laugh as she groaned and lifted herself from him, collapsing on the bed beside him.

“Maybe I’ll let you nap first.” He turned to his side and wrapped his arms around her. “For a little while.”

She smiled and kissed his chest, feeling him relax against her. He hadn’t slept well while the Mackays had invaded his home.

She cuddled closer and let her eyes drift closed. Just for a little while, she told herself. A nap. But the nap became deeper, stronger. In his arms, safe, she let herself relax, and it was hours before she awakened.

The day was surrendering to night and she couldn’t seem to get comfortable again.

Pushing away from a still-sleeping Alex, she forced herself from the bed, stretching, trying to ease the aching tightness that perhaps the position they had used had put in her hips.

Smiling at the thought, she went to the bathroom. She needed to shower, then maybe she would fix dinner. She was getting hungry. She hadn’t really been hungry in days.

She dampened a washrag, cleaned between her thighs, and when she pulled it back, she froze at the slightest blemish of a stain on the rag.

Agony rushed through her. It clenched her chest, her stomach. It burned through her with a blaze of pain so sharp, so fierce, she wondered if she would survive. She dropped the washrag and slid slowly to the floor, her head on her knees as she fought not to howl with the ferocity of the anger and the hurt that tore through her.

Between one second and the next, fate had destroyed her, and she didn’t know if she could survive it.

Alex wasn’t certain at first what brought him awake. But his eyes jerked open, and his hand went automatically to where he knew Janey should be.

She wasn’t in the bed beside him, but he could hear her. Something he had never heard from her—muffled, soul-shattering sobs.

His heart went to his throat as he jumped from the bed. He didn’t bother with his pants but moved quickly to the bathroom, where he found her, crouched in the corner where the sink and the wall met, her head buried in her arms, her knees pulled up to her breasts.

Beside her lay a damp washrag, the faintest hint of her feminine cycle staining it.

He’d known she would start. The tempting sweet taste of her earlier had been earthier, the sweet syrup a little sweeter. He’d known by the changes in her nipples, the tighter grip of her body.

“Janey.” He knelt beside her, running his hands over, making certain she wasn’t hurt. “Sweetheart. Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong. Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, but the sobs were heartbreaking. They were wounding his soul.

“Baby. Come here. You have to talk to me.” He picked her up, despite the stiffness in her body, and carried her back to the bedroom, where he sat down on the bed, holding her close.

“This isn’t like you, Janey,” he whispered. “Why are you crying, darlin’? You’re breaking my heart.”

She cried harder. The sobs were heartrending, torn from her, despite her attempts to hold them back, and Alex had never felt so helpless in his entire life. He searched his mind frantically. Had he hurt her

during sex? Said or done something to hurt her feelings?

Were her emotions just messed up? That happened that time of the month, he knew, but he had never expected it to be like this from Janey. Not that he minded, but he had to blink back his own tears at the sound of her sobs, and real men didn’t cry like this.

“I’m sorry.” She turned into him, curling against him like a frightened kitten, her arms tight around his neck, her body shuddering as her sobs became harder. “I’m so sorry.”

“God, Janey, why?” He held her as tight as he dared, and yet he had a feeling she needed more.

“Sweetheart. What do you have to be sorry over?”

“I’m not.” Another shudder and sob. “I’m not pregnant, Alex. I’m not having your baby.” And the tears flowed hot and filled with pain against his chest. “I’m sorry. I failed. I failed.”

Alex frowned. He gripped her chin and lifted her face, his chest clenching at the agony in her green eyes, and then he knew. He knew why she was crying; she was so filled with pain that Janey had finally, truly cried.

“Do you think a baby was all I wanted from you, Janey?” he asked, his voice husky. Dear God, how had he allowed her to believe something like that?

When she didn’t answer, his voice hardened. “Is that all you think I need—a fucking breeder?”

He was close to anger with her. The tears still fell, and her beautiful eyes were shattered. Because she thought that was all he wanted from her.

“We had a deal.” Her breathing hitched. “You wanted a baby.”

He laid her back on the bed carefully and rose. He took his time pulling on his jeans, keeping his back to her as he heard her breathing again on a sob.

“I love you.” He said the words slowly, keeping his back to her, because he knew what he felt was so much more. But Natches had said sometimes they needed the words. He’d give her the words.

“You liar.”

Alex turned in time to see her grab a glass he had set there earlier and throw it at him. If he hadn’t ducked, it would have probably laid him out on the floor.

But she wasn’t crying anymore.

“I don’t lie, Janey,” he snapped. “And the next time you throw something, I’m spanking you.”

“Your spankings make me come,” she sneered. “Big whooping deal. Just let me put my shoes on so I can shake in them.”

He propped his hands on his hips, glaring at her as she moved from the bed. She threw him a furious look. She didn’t bother to dress. A second later, a slender little finger was poking in his chest.

“You kept me because you thought I was pregnant,” she accused him. “You gave yourself, committed yourself to me just like you committed yourself to the military all those years.”

Alex blinked back at her. “I left the military, Janey. I wouldn’t leave you.”

Her eyes flamed in green fire. The light green darkened, sparked, raged.

“I’m not pregnant, Alex. You don’t have to let me own you anymore and you don’t have to lie to me.”

“Accuse me of lying to you again, and I promise you, the spanking you get won’t make you come, baby,” he warned her, his voice quiet. “I said I love you. I didn’t keep you as you call it because I thought you were pregnant.”

“Then why else?” She sent him a scathing look. “The daughter of a traitor, remember, Alex? Daddy’s perfect little girl that smiled sweet and did what Daddy told her to do. Why the hell do you think Augusta Napier thought I was corrupting you?”