“Fuck me.” Dawg growled in resignation as he moved back and let himself fall into the chair behind him. “Just let me kill Campbell myself. That would be so much easier.”

“Can your conscience handle it, then?” Timothy asked.

“Natches’s can,” Dawg suggested. And he was certain it could.

“No doubt,” Timothy agreed. “But we’ll be the ones who will know the truth as she cries. As she haunts the house and wonders what could have been. Is that what we want?”

“She’ll be alive,” Dawg pointed out logically.

“Will she? Are you sure about that?”

Dawg’s lips thinned.

“Would you have been, if something had happened to Christa in that first week after she returned to Somerset?”

No, he wouldn’t have been, Dawg admitted. He would have been a dead man walking.

Rising from the chair, he stared down at the Homeland Security agent. “You know what the hell is going on.” Dawg was damned certain of it. “If anything happens to her, I’ll know whom to discuss it with.”

“All we can do is pray, Dawg,” Timothy said heavily, the fact that he was worried about her clear in his voice as well as his expression.

Dawg would definitely pray.

His uncle Ray used to tell him, Rowdy, and Natches that praying was good, but God liked to help those who helped themselves.

It was time to back up those prayers with a little old-fashioned action.

Mackay style.

Turning, he stomped from the office without waiting for a reply or an argument. Neither would do any good.

She was his sister.

He hadn’t been able to protect her as she was growing up, and he hadn’t been able to ensure that her life was lived with at least a measure of security.

He was making up for lost time, and he’d be damned if he would let Brogan Campbell or Timothy Cranston fuck that up.

* * *

She should have known he would show up at some point.

On second thought, she had known he would show up. She’d actually expected to see him when she’d arrived home.

Stepping from the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel, she closed the door slowly and stared across the room to where he was sprawled in the easy chair sitting next to the patio door.

As she leaned back against the door, he rose slowly to his feet, the blue-gray of his gaze gleaming in the low light burning next to the chair.

He’d obviously had a shower himself. The jeans he’d worn earlier that night had been exchanged for a lighter pair, the white shirt for a short-sleeved lightweight denim, though the boots were absent entirely, his feet bare. And he still looked far too sexy and far too dressed.

And she was far too underdressed in the large towel she’d wrapped around her body. A body that was becoming far too sensitive as the adrenaline still simmering in her system began to come to a rapid boil.

“Why are you here?” she whispered, fighting the pulsing arousal she had yet to cool.

“I wanted to make certain you were okay.” Rising to his feet—her heart began to race furiously—he stalked slowly toward her.

“I’m fine; you can leave now.” She really needed him to leave now. Now, before she made the ultimate mistake of jumping his bones.

His lips tilted in a beginning curve of a smile.

“Are you scared, little rabbit?” The amused rasp of his voice sent heat racing through her lower stomach to clench deep inside her womb.

As he came closer, Eve found her grip tightening the towel where it was tucked above her breasts, gripping it with desperate fingers. The heat afflicting her womb flushed her face before racing through her body as the velvet slide of her juices eased from her pussy.

Hell, this wasn’t fair—to want him like this, to ache for a man so much, and to have his touch denied her.

He paused in front of her, his hand lifted, the back of his fingers glancing across the tenderness of her cheek.

“It makes me sick, knowing your pretty face has been bruised because of me. Sandi would have never targeted you if she hadn’t been aware of my interest.” His eyes moved over her face, intent, filled with purpose and regret. “I promise you, though, I’ll make sure you never have to worry about Sandi or anyone she knows, ever again.”

Shrugging nervously, her breasts rising and falling as she fought to breathe, Eve shook her head slightly. “She just thought she could clear the playing field,” she whispered.

“Bullshit,” he growled, anger licking at his gaze. “She belongs to Donny, and no matter the rumors about their relationship, there are some rules in the touring club, just because so many couples are so often in such close quarters. One of those rules makes her off-limits to any member of the club as long as she and Donny are together, and she knows it. The rumors of her and Donny taking lovers outside their relationship has never been true that I’m aware of anyway. Besides, she’s not the type of woman who draws me, Eve.”

Nervous energy had her mouth drying out, her lips aching for moisture—for his kiss—her tongue peeking out to moisten them. Her breasts felt too tight and swollen, her breath catching as Brogan’s gaze latched onto the parting of her lips as she fought to draw in air.

“So what type woman does draw you?” she found the breath to ask.

“You draw me, Eve,” he answered immediately, his voice low, deep, as dark as sin and sex itself. “More than you know. More than I should have ever allowed.”

His hand turned, cupped her cheek, then pushed his fingers into the hair at her temple, easing back until he could clench the heavy thick strands at the back of her head. The other hand gripped her hip, holding her still as Eve’s fingers clenched at the towel with a death grip.

Because she knew what was coming.

Staring up at him, she had plenty of time to say no.

“I promised,” she breathed out on a sob instead, torn between this man and a hunger she couldn’t deny, and the brother who had saved her and her family’s lives. “I promised, Brogan.”

Her breathing stalled.

Icy fingers of sensation, internal ghostly caresses feathered over her body, preparing her for his touch.

“What did you promise?” The cropped length of his beard brushed against her cheek, the feel of the closely clipped growth of his mustache rasping against the lobe of her ear as his lips caressed the upper curve. “Did you promise not to be a woman? Not to be hungry for my touch, Eve?”

He brushed a kiss against her ear, moved lower until his lips caressed beneath her jaw, smoothing against skin so sensitive that the feel of his kiss sent tiny explosions of heightened pleasure rushing through her body.

“Brogan . . . please . . .” But what she was begging for even she couldn’t say for certain.

Was she begging for release?

Was she begging for more of his touch?

At this point—

His head lifted, his nose rubbing against hers in a gesture that smacked so heavily of affection that Eve was lost.

It wasn’t love, but no one . . . no one had ever stared down at her with such hunger in his eyes, such gentleness in his smile, and touched her with such easy affection.

The woman she was couldn’t help but reach out for him as the sensualist, normally so well hidden inside her, came out to play, to luxuriate in the added warmth of affection.

When his head tilted, his lips slanting over hers, she had no choice but to accept the deep, stinging kisses and hungry licks. The hunger that raged inside her wasn’t for sex. It wasn’t just to relieve the lust that burned inside her.

Burning need raged through her body. Equal parts sexual and emotional: the need for touch, for warmth, for that hidden quality that couldn’t be faked or practiced overwhelmed her control.

Emotion.

If not love, then affection.

If not forever, then the hope that forever might happen.

Loosening her grip on the towel, Eve slid her hands to his shoulders then behind his neck. One hand slid into the warmth of his hair while the other held tight to his shoulders.

Weakness assailed her, stealing the strength from her knees, sapping the memory of her promise and the will to deny him.

“Eve. Ah, baby,” he growled against her lips a second before he lifted her to him.

His hips jerked into hers, the heavy ridge of his erection pressing firmly against the intimate mound between her thighs. The feel of the towel loosening from between her breasts brought only a second’s thought before it was pushed away.

She would remember why she wasn’t supposed to let him touch her when the cold light of day burned away the sensual illusions he was weaving around her.

For now—for this moment and this man—she needed just a little time, just a night to prove to herself that when morning did come, she would still be the woman she was now.

Brogan’s kisses became deeper, more drugging, filling her with such a sense of overriding hunger that nothing mattered but his touch and touching him.

Her hands slid to his broad chest, her fingers shaking, clenching in the material of his shirt. Sensual, sexual intoxication dragged her deeper into the chaotic needs rising inside her, refusing to allow her to think or to control the hunger raging through her.

The feel of Brogan’s hand sliding along the naked skin of her hip, caressing its way higher until it rested just beneath her breast, was like pouring an accelerant on the fires already raging out of control inside her.

Her fingers unclenched, trembling; she was desperate to touch him. Struggling with the buttons of his shirt, her hips shifted against his, the ache between her thighs building.

The heavy erection pressing against her had her body reacting with feminine demand, with a need to feel him hot and naked against her, taking her, driving into her with the power and fierce heat she could feel throbbing beneath his jeans.

As the last button slipped free, she pushed at the material, forcing it over his shoulders and whimpering beneath his kiss when the garment would go no farther.

A second later his hands cupped her rear and then turned and strode the few feet to the bed. His kiss never paused; the hunger raging through it never dimmed. When her back met the mattress his head lifted, forcing her eyes to open, her hands to tighten around his neck to bring him back to her.

He wasn’t leaving her, as she had feared.

His lips traveled instead to her jawline, then beneath it, moving down the column of her neck as it arched back, an agony of pleasure attacking her senses as his teeth raked against her flesh. His tongue licked and stroked, playing with her nerve endings and sending sensations racing through them. His lips kissed, took fiery tastes of her skin at intervals, and moved lower with each kiss as she arched to him.

Chaos clashed with the pleasure rising through her system as need burned through her senses. Lying naked beneath him, Eve was aware of every point of contact as the material of his jeans brushed against her thighs and hips. The rasp of chest hair brushed across her nipples, sensitizing them further.

His hand was at her hip, holding her still as she tried to move beneath him; she was desperate for some point of contact against the swollen, aching bud of her clit.

A whimper escaped her as her nails bit into his shoulders, the feel of his knee suddenly pressing between hers and driving the hard muscle of his thigh against her pussy dragged a startled cry from her lips.

Her juices trickled from her vagina, saturating the folds beyond and spilling a heated layer of slick warmth along her clitoris as she rubbed herself against his thigh. The stimulation against the bundle of nerves sent shards of sharpened sensation exploding to her womb. The driving need for more—more touch, more sensation—rose inside her with a burning force.

Heat brushed against the curves of her breasts; the rasp of his beard rubbing against the tender skin sent her hands searching between their bodies and finding his belt.

She wanted him naked. She wanted bare skin meeting bare skin from breast to ankle.