Last, if Morgan was Brandon Ross’s fiancée, she’d be wasted on the boring, uptight bastard. Brandon would ignore the needs he didn’t understand and couldn’t fulfill, fantasies Jack would bet his eyeteeth she had. Satisfying her fantasies required someone with more balls, tenderness, and self-control than Brandon ever thought of possessing. He almost felt sorry for Morgan. In fact, he might be doing her a favor in the long run…

But pity wasn’t going to stop him from getting his overdue revenge against the asshole who’d fucked up his life.

First, though, he had to get Morgan out of the club alive.

As they hit the door at the back of the dark strip joint, he dragged her through a curtain that led to a backstage area. Abruptly, the pounding music stopped and wild clapping began. A slender brunette with large artificial breasts wriggled her hips at the crowd of men shoving bills in her miniscule G-string. Morgan stared, clearly uncomfortable with that much nudity and touching with complete strangers. Good. Despite the fact he’d been to dozens of places like this, he wanted a woman willing and eager only for him, not a whole room full of stiff dicks.

Looking away from the dancer, Jack scanned the crowd. He knew the mood of the clientele, the feel of revelers seeking hedonistic fun. Across the smoky room, a guy in jeans and a black sweater looked around the room, rather than at the stripper exiting the stage and giving the audience a prime view of her ass. A few feet from him, another in a suit lurked in the corner, wearing a watchful scowl. He didn’t fit in. The bulge inside his jacket hinted to Jack that the guy might have a shoulder holster full of weapon.

Either of these dudes—or neither—could be Morgan’s would-be shooter. But Jack knew they couldn’t afford to take chances.

As nonchalantly as possible, he turned Morgan to face him and covered their sudden stop in the crowd by pulling her against him and planting a series of kisses on her neck. She tensed.

“Cher,” he called.

Others near them would hear an endearment. Morgan’s nod told him she took it as the warning he intended. She forced the tension from her shoulders.

“I see a couple of men who look suspicious,” he whispered on the soft, soft skin of her neck. “Anyone look familiar?”

She hesitated, and Jack took advantage of her distraction and breathed in her sweet raspberry scent, brushed his lips against her soft-as-sin skin.

“I can’t think with you doing that,” she whispered harshly.

He dropped a hand down her spine, over the curve of her ass, more because he wanted to than because it was necessary. But it helped with the image that they were lovers who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves.

“You can. You will.”

Morgan breathed out a four-letter word, and Jack smiled. If her curse hadn’t told him that he was getting to her, the pulse picking up speed at the base of her neck would. The scheming part of him loved knowing he affected her. So did his sexual side. Oh, he didn’t forget that the shooter was probably somewhere near, but the asshole was too smart to shoot with so many able to see his face. And the sick jerk had no reason to believe that Morgan wasn’t Alyssa.

“I can’t see. It’s smoky, and I’m too short.”

True on both counts. Damn!

Curving both arms around her body, Jack anchored Morgan against his chest. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder, reminding him how small she was. With her big personality, her size was easy to forget.

Given her story, she’d been through a whole lot lately. He couldn’t help but admire her grit to go on, her strength to fight.

“Let’s get out of here, just in case one of them is your gunhappy nightmare.”

Morgan nodded, but he felt her trembling. Jack eased back to look at her face. Under the thick makeup, her blue eyes clearly reflected the knowledge that she was being hunted. But equal parts fear and determination tightened her lush mouth. She wasn’t giving up.

Neither was he.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he assured her. “Take my hand. Smile. Good enough. Now, follow me out the door.”

Slowly, Jack wended his way through the crowd, working the far side of the room as much as possible. He stopped to answer a greeting, endure some backslapping from frat boys he’d helped out of a scrape once, all of whom assumed fucking Alyssa would be every man’s version of paradise.

The suspicious characters cast glances over them as they neared the door. The dude with the suit kept his gaze glued to Morgan. Jack covertly watched the man assess her, eyes narrow with speculation. Running would only alert the asshole if he was Morgan’s stalker.

Instead, Jack whirled Morgan around and grabbed her. Her eyes went wide as he held her face between his palms and slanted his mouth over her own.

Right away, her softness assaulted him. After a gasp of protest, Jack sensed Morgan forcing herself to relax. To submit. At the press of his lips, she opened to him slowly, slowly, with shy hesitance that made him burn with need. A delicious uncertainty flavored her kiss, making him hard as a pike. But it wasn’t enough—either to convince the assassin chasing her or to assuage the hunger that churned like a violent storm in his gut. He couldn’t wait for more.

A growl erupted from this throat as he dove into the kiss and urged her soft lips to part wider. He entered her mouth with a ravaging thrust of his tongue. And groaned as her wet, sugary heat and hot cinnamon-spice flavor exploded across his senses. Tangled with the taste of her fear.

Morgan began to kiss him tentatively. Unfurling to him, softening. Soon, she uttered a soft moan and matched his rhythm, her tongue seeking his when he retreated. She clasped his shoulders and clung, slanting her head until their mouths fit perfectly. Gripping her tightly, he sank deeper into her. The flavor of fear on her tongue receded. She trembled—but now her reaction didn’t have a damn thing to do with fright.

Morgan gasped…then surrendered, opening completely.

Crushing his delight at her lush response, Jack promised himself there would be plenty of time later to fuck her, screw Brandon out of a bride, and enjoy every moment of her soft, shy responses. Later.

Ending the kiss with a nip of his teeth on her plush lower lip, Jack opened his eyes in time to see the slick in the suit talking to some of the regulars around him. Jack made sure he blocked Morgan from the view of guys who hung out here at least once a week. He hoped like hell none of them would remember that they’d never seen him kiss Alyssa like that.

Mr. Suit listened, then nodded his thanks. Disappointment shadowed his face. The guy in the jeans and sweater had disappeared.

“I think we’re good to go,” he murmured to Morgan. “Let’s get out of here.”

Again, he took her hand. He led her right out the front door. The crowd on the street swallowed them up quickly, and Jack smiled.

Once the danger had passed, once he knew they hadn’t been followed, he could concentrate on Morgan—and every delicious way he could think of to make her surrender. #

Within minutes, Jack led her to his truck, parked on a dark side street. Morgan hesitated. Brandon wouldn’t be happy that she’d left his car behind, but what were her other options? She couldn’t argue with Jack’s logic that her stalker would be looking for it on the roads since he’d followed her here.

That settled, Jack tucked her into the passenger’s seat of his sleek black truck. She’d have to be blind not to see his gaze lingering on the length of her exposed thigh and cleavage offered up by Alyssa’s purple leather slut garb. The miles of skin it exposed made her want to find the nearest tent and throw it on quickly. Another part of her, though, heated at his look. The arrow of need that shot straight to her still-aching clit, encouraging her to inch her skirt a bit more and flash Jack a come-hither glance. She resisted the dangerous temptation.

The familiar dark desire, coupled with the stress and uncertainty, crashed in on her. How had her life gone downhill so quickly? How had she found herself at the mercy of a stranger who made her ache with a longing that shamed her?

“Don’t leer,” she snapped.

Jack looked away in his own good time. “Why not? You look good.”

“I look like a whore.”

Faster than lightning, he leaned across the cab and crowded her personal space. He smelled like midnight and elemental male. Like danger.

“You look available and willing. You don’t look for sale.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Non, it is not.”

Jack said nothing more for long moments. He eased away and started the truck, then pulled away from the tree-lined street and took off into the dusk. Then they headed southeast, toward the heart of the bayou.

With another hot glance at her, Jack finally explained, “When a woman looks for sale, a man checks his wallet before looking twice. Available and willing just makes a man hot. Available and willing for him alone makes a man boil with need. Right now, I’m hard as hell.”

The night began closing around them finally, dark and absolute. Morgan swallowed. The way Jack looked at her through the inky closeness of the truck’s cab gave her pause. And if she was honest, made her wet. Did he realize that she’d never dressed this provocatively for any man, for any reason, before?

“If you were my woman,” he went on, his voice a sandpaper whisper, “you’d appear elegant in public. But in private…” He smiled, a flash of white teeth, illuminated by the moonlight drifting into the shadowed truck; it was a smile that promised satisfaction. “In private, I’d dress you in less than you’re wearing now. Much less. Without those useless lace panties you’re wearing.”

Morgan could barely catch her next breath. She didn’t want to dress like this. It had to look cheap and easy.

Yet she could not deny it also made her feel aware of her body, of her feminine power. Sexy and wanted and desired. How was that possible?

“You’re awfully direct.”

“I’m honest,” he admitted. “What’s the point of lying?”

“Oh, I don’t know. To be polite.”

Jack simply snorted.

“And these panties aren’t useless. They cover the essentials.”

“Exactly. Why would I want those covered?”

She gaped. “I’m not about to flash everyone in the first good breeze that comes along.”

“But if you were mine, what’s under that skirt would be mine, not yours, to show or conceal as I saw fit.”

His words burned her with shock—and terrible, unmistakable desire. She gasped.

“Shocked, cher? That’s what submission is all about. Surrendering control utterly to someone else. Your privacy, your body, your pleasure.”

He said nothing for long minutes, and Morgan lost herself in imagining. Would a dominant man really insist his partner show any—or all—of her body to anyone of his choosing? Anywhere? At any time? She squirmed in her seat at the thought. It was disturbing and exploitative. But some little part of her found his words reluctantly provocative. Forbidden. God, she’d gone insane.

But curiosity followed close behind. That, she allowed free rein. She was interviewing him about this very subject, after all. Journalistic integrity and all that.

“What you’re saying…it sounds selfish and mean-spirited, to expose someone without regard for their feelings.”

“It might look that way on the surface.”

“What do you mean, on the surface?”

“Like I told you online, one of the jobs of a good dominant is to see inside the soul of his submissive and grant her every pleasure she desires. Many submissives aren’t aware of their most secret desires.” He turned to face her, his chocolate eyes piercing, direct. “Or find them shameful, so they refuse to admit to them.”

He was talking to her. About her. With a hot glance, he made that clear. Her breathing shallowed, her heart beat accelerated. She couldn’t ignore the fact that her stomach—and her nipples—went achy and tight.

“And you force a woman to engage in acts you believe she secretly desires, even though she may not want to acknowledge them.”

“She has to accept them to find true satisfaction. My role is to help her.”

“What’s in it for you? I mean, if you’re always trying to read her mind and persuade her to do new, unusual things…?”

“New things that make her so hot, she’s giving me total control and is begging me to fuck her however and wherever I want. I’m sure you see the obvious benefits.”

Yeah, hard to miss that point. Was it possible to be so aroused that she would beg in such a way? A mental picture of Jack tying her down, feeling her up, as she writhed under his hand exploded across her brain. A blast of heat sizzled her belly…and lower. God knew his aggressive touch earlier today had flooded her with arousal so fast, she’d nearly been dizzy with it. And his kiss had obliterated most thoughts of fear and hesitation, the crowd, and her stalker.