There she stood, his T-shirt hanging nearly to her knees, her damp hair mussed and feathering around her face and shoulders, naked vulnerability shining in her eyes. And she needed more than he could give. He knew she needed more than he could give, but he couldn’t let her go, could no longer risk her finding it somewhere else.
“You’ve had seven years to find someone else,” he told her. “I left you alone. I didn’t come looking for you when the need to do just that ate me alive, Jaci. I gave you seven years to find a man that would deserve you, and you didn’t. Now you’re here, and I won’t let you go. If it means destroying what’s left of me, I won’t let you walk away.”
“And if it means destroying what’s left of me?” she asked then, her lips trembling as her eyes looked too wide, too filled with sorrow for her pale face.
He cupped his hand around her neck, lifting her face to his. The pain in her eyes nearly broke him. He couldn’t let her know the truth of him, he couldn’t let that rage and bitterness spill onto her. God help him, hurting her more just might destroy him.
“I don’t want to let you go,” he repeated, realizing that if she decided to walk, he could do no more to stop her than he had seven years ago. “I’ve missed you, Jaci. I’ve ached for you. We deserve to see where it could go.”
“And if I grow to care for Chase the way I care for you? What then? I wait and watch as he goes to another woman? Isn’t that just asking for more pain?”
Cam shook his head at that. He knew better. “It won’t happen. This is for the pleasure, for both of us. Chase cares for you as a friend, the same as you’ll always care for him. But nothing, no other man, is going to fill you like I do.”
It had to be that way, because he knew no other woman could fill him as Jaci did. Despite the short time she had been here, she was filling parts of him that he didn’t know had been empty, that had just been waiting for her.
“I need more,” she whispered as his head lowered, as his lips touched hers, caressed hers. “This isn’t going to work the way you need it to.”
“We could try.” He laid his forehead against hers and stared into her eyes, pushing the pain back.
Jaci closed her eyes and sighed. She was going to do this. Move in with Cam and Chase. She wasn’t walking away from Cam again. It had hurt too much the first time, and it had haunted her too damned long.
She was smart enough to realize that some things, no matter how hard you fought them, were meant to be. This feeling, this need that bound them, was too strong, and she was tired of fighting it. Tired of fighting herself over it.
His lips caressed hers, his thick lashes sweeping down as he closed his incredible eyes.
“Let us love you,” he said. He nipped at her lips, a little pleasure-pain that reminded her of the darkness she had glimpsed in his eyes earlier. “Let me have you.”
Her hands slid from his T-shirt-clad chest to his shoulders, then to the damp hair that lay along his neck.
“You’ll destroy me,” she said sighing.
“I’ll love you.”
And her heart raced. It felt as though a minidetonation had been sent off inside it, flooding her with emotion, sending it pulsing through her veins as her breath caught with the intensity of it.
Oh God, how she needed him to love her. But she was terribly afraid it was the physical, rather than the emotional, that Cam was associating with the word.
Whichever it was, she wasn’t strong enough to resist him.
Her arms tightened around his neck as his lips caressed hers, patient now; deep, possessive kisses that had her lifting to her tiptoes and straining against him.
Until they heard the front door slam closed, and Jaci knew who it was. She could feel Chase’s gaze traveling over her bare legs as Cam drew back. He stared down at her, and she saw the hunger that only spiked hers.
Damn him. He made her ache for it, made her remember what it was like, and she wanted to cry with the knowledge that as much pleasure as they both gained from it, as much as they were both aroused by it, it was still a way to distance himself from her.
“This is what you want?” she asked softly.
He stared down at her, his gaze searching, darkening, filling with arousal. “I need it almost as much as I need you.”
She wondered if he needed it to allow himself to have her. Whichever the case, it was the pleasure, a freedom, a certainty she could be as wild, as tempestuous as she wanted to be, and he would know nothing but pleasure. She would know nothing but pleasure.
As she turned to him, Chase saw the vixen she was and wondered if Cam had a clue how easily she was turning his life upside down. He was there because of what she was doing to Cam. Because he could only feel that psychic twin bond kicking in when Cam’s strict control was being tested by this woman.
And he came, even though he knew he shouldn’t. If he stayed away, Cam would break faster, that control would fall, and Chase would know the secrets his brother hid. But there was a part of him that knew that now, this time, was the wrong time for that. If he forced Cam into it, he would never forgive himself, and Cam wouldn’t forgive him.
“The two of you amaze me,” Jaci told them with a very female smile of knowledge and amusement. “So arrogant and stubborn. So secretive and certain of yourselves.”
She cast Cam a look from beneath her lashes, and Chase felt his own body tighten. It was a very seductive weapon she was wielding in this little skirmish, and he could feel it. He glanced at Cam and saw the knowing quirk at his brothers lips as he removed his shirt, still watching Jaci.
“And you can fix that for us?” Chase was the one to ask her as he pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it to the floor.
“I intend to fix it for one of you at least.” She flicked Chase another look, then slowly, sensually, gripped the hem of the shirt she wore and pulled it over her head.
Luscious, sweet. Creamy skin, full high breasts, and nipples that stood out in demand as she moved toward him.
He glanced at Cam, saw his brother watching her as he undressed, desire and hunger heightening his expression as she moved for Chase.
“Has a woman ever had it so good?” she asked as she laid her hand against Chase’s bare chest.
The warmth of her palm sliding down his chest, along his tight abs, had his stomach tightening in response as he toed his shoes from his feet and finished shucking his slacks after pulling out the condom he had tucked in them. Damn, he was hard. Cam wasn’t in any better shape if his expression was anything to go by.
Tormented need, nightmares. The shadows of it raced across Chase’s mind a second before he felt the wild, wet heat of Jaci’s mouth surround the head of his cock.
“Hell!” One hand clenched in her hair as he held on to the foil package in his other hand with a desperate grip.
Cameron removed a tube of lubricating jelly from the table by the couch and moved back to them, his eyes on Jaci’s, upturned little ass. He leaned back against the kitchen counter, somehow knowing this experience would be different from the others. It was in Cam’s face, in his eyes, as he stared at his lover’s pert backside.
Chase ground his teeth together as her mouth sucked him, drew on him, creating a friction against the sensitive head that had his balls drawing tight. He tightened his fingers in her hair, tugged her head, forced her to lower and raise her mouth as he fucked those sweet lips.
“You know what he’s going to do,” he growled. “You let him off too easy, Jaci.”
“Shut the fuck up, Chase.” Cam’s voice was hard, harsh with arousal, his gaze bright as his hand smoothed over her rear, his hand large, dark against Jaci’s creamy flesh.
Chase felt her hand cup his balls, her tongue stroking over the sensitive underside of his cock as the heated, erotic sensations began to race up his spine. He let the rest of it slide, because damn if it didn’t feel good. And here, in this, he could forget his own demons.
Then the pleasure was gone. Chase opened his eyes, watching as Jaci slid from between them, a teasing smile on her lips as she watched them, backing her way into the living room.
They followed, drawn by the hunger clawing at them. For Cameron, drawn by the witchy, earthy sensuality that filled her eyes. She accepted his needs, his desires. He could see it in her face, in her expression, feel it in the heat of her body as he touched her.
Nearing her, he stopped as she placed her hand against his chest.
“Not yet.” Flirty, seductive, her lashes swept over her eyes as Chase came closer.
“Like hell,” Cam growled.
“Like hell,” she whispered back. “Watch. You want to see the pleasure, Cam. Watch the pleasure I can give him.”
“He gives you pleasure.” He was straining, dominance and hunger vying inside him.
“This will give me pleasure,” she teased him in return before turning to Chase.
Cam watched, enjoying the daring he could see in her eyes, recognizing her need, just this once, to control some part of the love play he demanded from her. He let his lips quirk as she glanced back at him while pushing Chase to the couch.
“She’s not exactly submitting, Cam,” Chase pointed out, amusement threading through the arousal in his voice.
“Not yet,” Cam murmured, watching as Jaci reached out, snagged the tube of lubricating jelly from his hand, and turned back to the lover that watched her with heated lust. Just lust. There was no emotion. Her heart was his, but her body . . . oh, the pleasure he knew she gained from this particular freedom.
He watched as she went down on Chase again, pulling the head of his cock back into her mouth as she laid the tube beside her. She worked her hands over the thick shaft, stroking and pumping as Chase’s hips lifted to her. His hands buried in her hair, his head tipped back in pleasure. And Jaci’s expression became suffused with her own just. Her freedom.
As she bent over his brother, Cameron moved to her. His hand smoothed over her rear, reached between her thighs, and cupped the hot, wet folds. Her clit was swollen, throbbing against the tip of his finger as he circled it.
She jerked, the dampness between her thighs growing as she moaned around Chase’s erection. Cam eased closer, bent, his lips moving over the rounded globes of her ass as he slid the tube of lubricating jelling from the couch and opened it slowly.
Drawing back, he grimaced in sensual hunger. He parted the curves of her ass, glimpsed the tiny entrance and felt his chest tighten as the hunger tightened his muscles and sped up his heart.
He watched as he prepared her, as aroused now as he had been earlier in the rain. Lubricating his fingers he began to work one inside her, taking the entrance easily before pulling back and adding a second finger, a third. He watched the penetration, his cock so hard, so desperate to feel the heat of her that he was close to losing his grip on that last thread of control he possessed.
Pulling his fingers back, he moved to take her, only to stop.
“No.” Jaci lifted her head and stared back at him.
Cam paused, his chest rising and falling harshly, black hair falling over his face, the hint of a shadow of beard darkening his savage features.
“How I want it,” she whispered.
He grimaced. She watched his jaw bunch as she moved, took the lubrication and squeezed a thick amount into the palm of her hand. Still watching Cam, she stroked her palm down and around Chase’s cock. She could feel Chase tighten, the tension in the air around them almost feverish with lust now.
This was what he wanted? She could take her pleasure in it, return it, and enjoy the hell out of it. But he was going to watch her do it. He wasn’t hiding from her. He would not take her from behind while his defenses were lower than they ever had been.
“Jaci. That’s not as easy as you think it is,” he told her as she turned, straddling Chase’s hips as he sheathed his erection in a condom, her back to him, one hand holding herself steady on the back of the couch as she lowered herself to it.
