Chase was leaning against the side of his own car, watching with a smile as Cam exited the Jaguar.
“What’s that smug-assed smile for?” Cam grunted. It was a familiar smile, one that assured him that somewhere, somehow, Cam had managed to amuse him.
Chase shook his head. “I wonder about you sometimes, bro. How can you manage to completely fuck up the deal of a lifetime?”
Cam stopped at the hood of his own car and stared back at his brother.
“What did I fuck up this time?” He almost smiled. As far as Chase was concerned, he was invariably fucking up. That big-brother complex was always in effect.
“Ian just called. He says Courtney is laughing her ass off, after an early morning call from Jaci. Seems someone slipped out five minutes after an orgasm that evidently registered on the Richter scale.” Chase was obviously having trouble controlling his amusement. “Ian’s rolling, too, by the way. He could barely tell me what he heard for all his laughter. What the hell did you do? Leave right after I did?”
“I’m glad you’re so fucking amused,” Cam snapped, moving from the car and heading to the house. He and Jaci were going to have to have a talk about what she discussed with Courtney. Everything Courtney knew, Ian managed to find out. Of course, it worked in reverse, and that part sucked, too.
“Cam, man, you don’t run off after registering on the Richter scale. Don’t you know better than that? I thought you’d at least stay when I left.”
Cam clenched his teeth and tried to shake off the anger he could feel building inside him. There was silence behind him as he moved toward the back entrance.
“When are you going to tell me what happened, Cam?”
Chase’s question drew him to a stop. It wasn’t the first time his brother had asked him that question. It wouldn’t be the last time.
“Nothing happened.” It was his standard answer.
He didn’t get the standard response. Before he could anticipate Chase’s move, his brother had swung him around to face him, his anger clear on his face now.
There was no amusement, no laughter lurking in his brother’s eyes. For the first time since they were boys, Cam could feel his brother’s rage directed toward him.
“How stupid do you think I am?” Chase bit out. “Do you think I haven’t always known that something happened? Even when we were boys, I knew it. Tell me what the hell it was.”
“Nothing happened, Chase.” He was lying through his teeth, just as he always had.
Chase was the oldest twin; he had always felt responsible for Cam, always tried to look out for him.
His brother would never forgive himself if he knew. Even then, all those years ago, it would have destroyed Chase even worse than it had Cam.
Chase’s eyes glared into his, his expression furious, his dark face twisted into lines of pain.
“I hate it when you lie to me. I hate it even worse to see you screwing up your fucking life with the only woman that ever meant a damned thing to you. Is it worth losing her, Cam?”
“I won’t lose her.” No matter what, he would hold onto Jaci. No matter what it took. She didn’t have to know the truth.
Chase pushed away from him, dragging the fingers of one hand through his hair as he all but snarled. “Damn you, Cam. What the hell are you doing to yourself?”
Cam could feel the threads of that twin psychic bond tugging between them. He could feel his brother’s frustration, his worry, just as he knew Chase couldn’t feel those darker emotions that Cam made certain stayed carefully buried.
He had learned over the years, when the darkness was like a bitter acid eating into his soul, he could share a lover with Chase, his or his brother’s, and he could release that darkness and still stay grounded. It was the reason he had left Jaci so quickly. He could feel that darkness rising inside him, that need eating at his guts, and he knew he had to get away from her. From the need to give her everything. To explain. To belong.
“Stop worrying, Chase.” He shrugged his shoulders, knowing that wasn’t enough, knowing it did nothing to ease his brother’s concern.
“Yeah, that’s what you said when you joined the fucking military,” Chase snapped. “Eighteen years old. You couldn’t even wait two years, could you Cam? You had to go. What the hell did you get for it? A medical discharge and a thanks, but sorry, we can’t pay you for your sacrifice?”
“The military didn’t do this to me, Chase,” Cam bit out.
“No, it just made it worse,” Chase retorted. “Cam, listen to me man, you’re fucking up with Jaci. Just like you did in Oklahoma. If you can’t tell me what happened, then you damned well better tell her. Because I’m telling you, she’s going to walk away again.”
“She’s not walking away.” He would stop her. He didn’t have to tell her the truth. He could hold her without it. He would make certain of it.
“If she walks away, that’s it,” Chase informed him, his voice tight and hard. “Do you understand that, Cam? If you push her away like you’ve pushed me away, and anyone else that could have cared for you, then I’ve had enough. If you can’t trust me enough with the truth, then fuck it. What the hell are we even brothers for?”
“Blackmail, Chase?” Cam crossed his arms over his chest and glowered back at Chase.
“Fuck you, Cam.” Chase’s expression was tight, frustrated. Cam could see the conflict raging inside him—hell, he could feel it, and there was no way to help it.
“Chase, bro, you’re blowing this all out of proportion,” he told him lightly. “Jaci’s going to be fine.”
“You left her within minutes of taking her last night. Hell, I had barely left,” he snapped. “Trust me, she’s not fine. And, by God, neither am I. I’m sick of this. You can’t even trust her enough to sleep with her. You don’t trust me enough to tell me what the fucking problem is, but you expect both of us to just accept it.”
“To accept me.” The words tore from him.
Cam didn’t know who was surprised the most. Chase by the demand, or himself because of the vehemence of it.
“Son of a bitch, do you have to have explanations for every damned thing?” Cam cursed. “What the hell is bothering you so bad? That I didn’t stay with her last night? Or that you don’t know every fucking area of my life? Do I question you when you don’t share a woman with me? Do I harass and interrogate you when you don’t stay all night with one?”
“I’m not the bastard sleeping on the couch after bringing a woman home, either,” Chase argued furiously, “but I am the one that can feel whatever it is inside you eating you alive. And whatever it is, Cam, it’s going to drive her away. Trust me when I tell you that. If you don’t tell her why you need to share her, why that hunger is tearing you apart, then she’s going to tell you to get fucked.”
“No, actually, she’ll tell him he can do without being fucked. At least, by me.”
They both swung around. Shock tore through Cam at the sight of Jaci, hip cocked, her arm braced in the open doorway, her expression unwavering.
Cam inhaled slowly, locked his teeth together, and fought the burning hunger inside him. He could see her, dazed, screaming in pleasure, trapped between him and Chase, burning with them as he loosed the gnawing intensity tearing through him.
“Shit, Cam,” Chase muttered.
There was enough of that twin bond so that Chase could feel the echo of that need. Cam was amazed the ground wasn’t shaking with the vibrations of the hunger. And, son of a bitch, the possessiveness.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” Cam shook his head.
Didn’t it just figure? Any other time he would have brushed Chase’s demands aside, rather than arguing over them. The one time he let his brother draw him into this argument, Jaci just had to show up.
Dressed in those snug jeans, in that T-shirt that revealed glimpses of her lower stomach between the hem of the shirt and the band of her jeans. The clothes were comfortable, wild, wicked. They weren’t the business clothes she had been wearing, that was for damned sure. He was going to kill Courtney for demanding Jaci wear jeans. It should be illegal for her to wear jeans, dammit.
“I forgot my case in the car.” She ambled from the doorway, smooth feminine grace and outrage emphasized with each step, as she moved past him. “I’m glad I did. So, tell us Cam, exactly why was it so important that you walk out on me last night?”
“I left you a note.”
He hit the unlock on his auto key chain as she gripped the door latch, allowing her to open the door.
“Of course you did,” she drawled sweetly, dangerously.
She bent to retrieve the case and he felt a fine film of perspiration coat his forehead at the sight of her rounded, taut little ass lifting, before she straightened, case in hand, and slammed the door closed.
She turned to them, and he knew what she saw: him and Chase both watching, their damned tongues hanging out in lust.
“Answers would be nice, Cam,” she told him as she moved away, unhurried—that walk sexy as hell and causing his mouth to water at the remembered taste of her flesh.
“Yeah, answers would be really nice,” Chase muttered.
“You two are barking up the wrong tree.” He snorted with the casual denial he should have used earlier. “The only problem I have is a hard-on and a sexual twist. No big deal.”
Jaci and Chase both snorted at that one.
“Let me know when you’re ready to talk.” She stopped and glanced at them both over her shoulder. “Maybe then I’d be ready to discuss your sexual twists and my own little abnormal desires. You never know what we all might learn that we haven’t already.”
With that, she turned and moved back into the house, closing the door behind her and disappearing out of sight. And Cam found his back slammed against the side of Ian’s Hummer, his brother in his face.
Lust and irritation flared in his brother’s eyes. “You better start talking,” he grated. “Because you know what she just did?”
Oh yeah, he knew, and his dick was hard as stone. It didn’t matter how many times he had her. She could still do this to him.
“She just dared us, Cam. And I don’t know about you, but the thought of ‘abnormal desires’ dancing through her mind is going to drive me fucking crazy. Now, fix it.”
With that, Chase, too, stalked away, leaving Cam to stare at the door, his lips quirking into a little smile of disbelief. He’d be damned if she didn’t stoke that burn inside him higher and hotter.
The need to have her again was already rising inside him. That dark hunger, that need to push her, as well as himself, was brewing inside him like a shadowed, furious blaze. He could feel it building, the need to let loose, to let all that hunger free that he kept tightly restrained, tearing at his control.
God, what a mess. He’d latched onto that crutch when he and Chase had first experimented with sharing a woman. That darkness in his soul, the brewing bitterness, was eased in seeing the pleasure, being able to watch as the woman received pleasure, in building it, in pushing his own boundaries, as well as hers. And in the distance sharing afforded him.
What it came down to, though, was that the very core of that need was hidden in the twisted, demented evil of the woman who had raised them.
They weren’t even sexual desires. Not really. He had known that even then. But the horrifying years he had spent in silence had created something inside him that he couldn’t explain, and the only time he could release it was in the heated, wild ménages he had grown to depend upon.
As thunder and lightening crashed in the skies above, Cam swore he felt it crashing inside his soul, because Chase was right: She had dared them both, challenged them, made an offer he had no choice but to refuse. He wouldn’t weigh down his brother’s soul with the truth, and he sure as hell wouldn’t burden Jaci’s with it. He’d just have to convince her to reveal those “abnormal” desires.
