Текст книги "Nauti Temptress"
Автор книги: Lora Leigh
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Her celadon eyes were surrounded by a wealth of long, heavy black lashes, he noticed. She was a beauty already, and keeping the wild hearts and even wilder men away from her for the rest of her life wouldn’t be easy, Rowdy thought in resignation.
And there was no doubt she was a Mackay.
If he had seen any of the four girls on the street at any time, he would have known he was looking at the daughter of a Mackay. The dark looks were simply unmistakable.
As Rowdy pushed the phone back into the holster at his side, the door to the office was pushed inward and three concerned, though borderline furious Mackay wives were moving into the room.
Kelly, whose gentle features had matured in the past five years since her daughter’s birth, though she still looked far too young for her husband Rowdy’s experienced features.
Chaya, Natches’s wife, whose brows were drawn into a frown, her brown eyes going between Eve, Piper, Lyrica, and Zoey in suspicion before dropping to Mercedes Mackay.
But Dawg’s wife, Christa, was stark pale, so white-faced Dawg moved for her instantly.
“No, no, no, no.” He shook his head desperately as her eyes began to fill with tears. “Oh, hell, no, baby. Sisters. They’re my sisters, not my kids. I swear. Sisters, Christa.”
Her gaze moved to him slowly, reluctantly. She frowned deeply, though her face was still stark white as she slowly shook her head.
“This is all Timothy’s fault.” He glared at Timothy before pointing his finger at the not-so-fat little bastard as Timothy stared back at him in confusion.
“What’s my fault?” Timothy glared back at him, obviously offended by the accusation.
The four girls and their mother were staring at him as though he had dropped into the room from outer space, while Rowdy and Natches simply watched him warily.
Christa swallowed tightly. “I don’t think they’re your daughters,” she whispered.
“Then what’s wrong?” he demanded. “You’re as white as a damned sheet.”
She shook her head and turned back to the four girls again. “Oh, my God, Dawg, what did Chandler Mackay do? They could be, your twins,” she whispered. “As though they were cloned from you.”
“Oh, God, just shoot me now,” Zoey spat in disgust.
“Momma, I don’t think I can ever forgive you.” Eve sighed.
“At least it’s him we looked cloned from and not one of the other two,” Lyrica said with a grunt. “That would have sucked.”
“It still sucks,” Piper assured her younger sister.
“Brats,” Rowdy murmured, though there was no heat in his tone; he actually seemed rather amused.
“Brats? Try bitches.” Natches grunted, his gaze carefully shuttered, though Dawg could detect the amusement. “And that little one works at it, too.”
“But not very hard.” Zoey slid him an arch, cool look. “If I had, trust me, you’d know it.”
The girl’s comment had Kelly’s, Christa’s, and Chaya’s gazes moving then to Timothy. Then they shifted instantly to the woman stretched out on the couch.
Hell, Dawg thought, this woman didn’t look old enough to be the mother of the four obvious hellions staring back at the Mackay wives.
“Natches, sweetheart, what’s Cranston doing here?” Chaya, one of Cranston’s former agents, stepped to her husband and let him pull her close to his side.
As she did so, Kelly stepped to Rowdy, while Christa moved to Dawg’s side and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek. It was the look on his face, Rowdy thought, that look of blank devastation in his gaze that had Christa bestowing a kiss to assure him there was nothing for him to worry about.
“It would appear we’ve added to the family,” Natches told his wife softly. “Meet Dawg’s sisters. I’m certain they’ll introduce themselves as soon as Doc gets here to check out their mother.”
Timothy wiped Mercedes’s face again. Rowdy could have sworn the leprechaun’s hand was shaking.
“What did you do, Mercedes?” he asked her gently. “Didn’t you rest last night?”
Mercedes’s lush lips almost tilted into a smile. “What do you think, Tim?” she asked, forcing her eyes open.
Tim?
No one, but no one, had ever been allowed to call Timothy Cranston “Tim.”
“I think you were up all night pacing and worrying.” He sighed. “I told you there was nothing to worry about.”
“Is there not?” she asked him sorrowfully. “Chandler’s son is suddenly besieged by four young females he knew nothing of, and a sick mother to boot? Ah, Tim, do you not know human nature far better than this?”
“I know the Mackays far better than this,” he assured her, praying he was right. “And the Mackays do not turn their backs on family.”
The look he slid them assured the Mackays that they’d better not start now.
“Is Doc on his way, then?” Christa asked Dawg as his hand tightened on her hip, his need to draw her closer evident.
“Half hour, his nurse said.”
“Twenty minutes then.” She nodded.
Dawg watched the young woman; hell, she had four grown daughters and she was younger than he was. He watched her, watched her daughters, and in their eyes he saw pure, raw fear.
“Cranston, what do the doctors who have suggested a specialist say could be wrong with her?” Dawg asked; the low rasp of the tone wasn’t lost on the former agent.
Cranston swallowed tightly, the action at first almost unnoticed. But the slight flinch of his facial muscles wasn’t missed by Dawg.
“They think she could have an advanced form of chemical poisoning that’s slowly weakening her lungs. One of the jobs she had was at an industrial chemical processing plant that’s since been shut down for its unsafe working conditions.” Clearing his throat of obvious emotion, he lifted his gaze to Dawg’s, and no one missed the plea in his eyes. “The treatments she needs are expensive—”
“Timothy, no.” Pride was evident in Mercedes’s weak voice as she laid her hand on his arm. “Let’s not talk of this. Let the girls and their brother talk.”
“Mercedes, I won’t let you lie here and suffer,” he snarled, his voice hoarse and filled with emotion. “Not anymore.”
Timothy Cranston was in love.
Dawg lifted his gaze from Cranston, only to realize the four girls were watching him suspiciously, fearfully. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t expect him to turn them away.
“Doc’s here,” Christa stated as a vehicle pulled up in front of the door. “He’s early. He must have already left the office.”
Dawg nodded. “Let’s get your mother taken care of,” he told the girls. “Once we have her checked out, we’ll talk.” His gaze dropped to Cranston’s again before lifting back to the girls. “But have no doubt: You’re family. And we stick by family.”
“One of you killed your cousin,” the eldest stated. “I heard one of the agents talking about it after we arrived at Tim’s. Is that how you take care of family?”
She might have resembled Dawg enough to be his kid, but it was Natches’s emerald eyes she stared at him from.
“Eve.” Her mother gasped, obviously shocked by her daughter’s rudeness.
Dawg just gave Eve a mocking smile as his hand tightened at Christa’s hip once again. “Only those who betray us and have a gun trained on the someone we love,” he assured her. “Then, Eve, trust me, it didn’t matter who he was then; Johnny was dead.”
Eve’s nostrils flared before she finally relaxed enough to simply nod her head.
“Mackays don’t betray one another.” Cranston tore his gaze from their mother long enough to stare back at each girl with a glint of steel in his eyes. “Remember that, girls. You stand for who you are, what you are, and for family. That’s what your mother’s taught you, and that’s what you live by.”
“Only if you stand for us first,” Lyrica spoke up warily.
Dawg nodded. “Understandable. And we’ll show you our good faith.” He glanced to Natches and Rowdy. Each of his cousins nodded in turn. “We’ll take care of you and your mother, because you’re family, and that’s what families do. Whatever treatments your mother needs, whatever care, she’ll have it. Just as you’ll return to school and do your part.”
“In return for what?” the other girl asked suspiciously.
“In return for being part of the family,” Dawg growled back at her. “I just told you that. Loyalty begins somewhere, and I’ll make that first step. From here on out it’s up to you. But betray us or yourselves, hurt us, yourselves, or another of the family, and you’ll risk all of it. Come to us, talk to us, and we’ll help you the best way we can. But you don’t lie to us, you don’t cheat us, and you don’t dare betray one of us.”
What the hell was he supposed to do with four sisters?
Each girl nodded before the door opened, heralding the doctor and his nurse. Within an hour an ambulance arrived and, with Cranston riding with her, whisked Mercedes Mackay to the hospital and left four clearly suspicious, frightened, and exhausted young women in his keeping.
And Dawg would soon learn, along with Rowdy and Natches, just what they might have to face in another decade or so.
With their own daughters.
ONE
It was after two in the morning before Eve Mackay stepped into her bedroom and closed the door behind her quietly. Staring around the small suite, it was damned hard to believe how her life had changed in five short years. From destitution to security. From paralyzing fear of what the future would bring, to looking forward to each day as it arrived.
From losing the meager roof over their heads to partial ownership in the business her mother now owned.
Luckily, her room was on the more private side of the large house her mother had turned into Mackay’s Bed-and-breakfast Inn. The two-story sprawling farmhouse had been completely renovated and redecorated with the private residence on the second floor, the eight guest suites, large chef’s kitchen, and open television and game room on the main floor.
A wide porch wrapped around the house, allowing guests easy access to the balcony doors into their rooms when the main entrance was locked after midnight.
Eve had taken the smallest guest room at the back of the house for herself, rather than one of the bedrooms in the upstairs residence, as her sisters had done. She’d needed the privacy, whereas her sisters had still needed the closeness the upstairs rooms provided to their mother.
Now she was thankful for it. Arriving home after two in the morning and going through the main residence would be guaranteed to alert her mother, and her mother’s lover, that she’d arrived home.
Living upstairs would have enabled her mother to keep tabs on her, too, and as much as she loved her mother, she had no wish for that.
Opening her eyes and drawing in a deep breath, Eve reached back and rubbed the tense muscles of her neck before moving to the bathroom and a hot shower.
Releasing the heavy weight of her long, straight black hair and massaging at her scalp with her fingertips, she wondered why she had gotten none of the curls that her younger sisters had in abundance. Zoey’s hair fell to her waist in soft corkscrew curls that Eve used to threaten to cut off out of pure jealousy.
No matter how hard she’d tried, Eve had rarely been able to get her hair to take curl for more than a few hours. A few days at the most only after a trip to the salon when she had a chemical wave put in it.
It hadn’t been worth it.
She’d learned to live without the curl her other sisters had in varying amounts. Piper’s hair was wavy. It fell to her shoulders, thick and heavy as it framed her aristocratic features and gave her exotic sea green eyes a lush shimmer.
Lyrica kept her hair to a length that fell just below her shoulder blades. The deeper waves in her hair bounced and gleamed with a blue-black sheen that went perfectly with her summer green gaze.
Zoey’s hair fell below her waist, clear to her hips in those long, corkscrew curls that were impossibly soft and silky and made other women want to kill for them. Her hair was just as exotic as her eyes, which were the same celadon as their brother Dawg’s, that pale, ethereal color that always drew second and third looks.
Eve’s hair was more like Natches’s: straight and thick. It was impossible for her to do much in the way of styling it. She pinned it up, put it in a ponytail as she had tonight, or just left it long to the middle of her shoulders.
Her eyes were the same emerald green as Natches’s, but her looks, like her sisters’, were closer to Dawg’s.
Big, bold, and as familiar in Pulaski County, Kentucky, as the mountains themselves, Dawg and his cousins—her cousins—Rowdy and Natches had been all that had saved her and her family at a time when they’d been certain life as they’d known it was over.
It had been, she guessed, but Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches had made it better. They’d taken her, her sisters, and her mother under their wings and gave them a life.
Her mother was given the house that had once been taken away from Dawg by the cousin that had betrayed his country and his family and had nearly killed Dawg’s wife, Christa. The same cousin Eve had heard agents accusing Natches of having killed. After Johnny Grace’s death the property had reverted back to Dawg, and had been sitting empty for nearly three years before Eve and her family showed up.
He’d had the renovations done under her mother’s direction, agreeing to allow her to sign a promissory loan for the amount it had taken to renovate it. Mercedes Mackay had then opened the bed-and-breakfast she’d always dreamed of having.
Her sisters were in college, and Eve had graduated from the local technical college with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
As she stepped from the shower, wrapped her hair in a towel, and quickly dried off, she grimaced at the paleness of her skin.
It was June; by now she usually had a nice golden tan over her body, and instead of coming in at two in the morning from a job, she’d been sneaking in after a night of carousing herself.
When had the fun and good times started leaving a bad taste in her mouth? she wondered as she brushed her teeth.
She’d been in Somerset for five years now, and the past three years the nightlife she had once sworn by had quickly become boring, with a heavy air of immaturity.
Quickly applying a moisturizing facial cream, she then lotioned her body and spritzed a toasted-vanilla body spray over herself.
It was a lot of work to go through just to go to bed, but after eight hours at the bar where she worked, Walker’s Run, and waiting on tables in the outside smokers’ patio, she smelled of old tobacco smoke, the sweaty bodies that had brushed against her, sawdust, and the greasy food she’d served.
She couldn’t bear the thought of going to bed smelling like the bar.
Mackay’s Fine Dining, previously Mackay’s Restaurant and Cafe, the restaurant Natches’s sister Janey owned, wasn’t as bad, but it still called for a shower. Maybe she’d go work for Dawg at the lumber store for a while. Natches would readily let her work at the garage as well, but Eve wasn’t ready for the oil baths she had experienced the few times she’d worked there. His redneck mechanics thought it was funny to find ways to upend the pails of old oil in ways that left her covered in the nasty sludge. And though Natches always fired the responsible party when they could be identified, after the first firing, Eve was always careful to ensure no one was identified.
She had just been there temporarily because she liked working on cars. It wasn’t a job she needed to feed her family and she wasn’t going to be responsible for having a man with a family fired because he was offended by a “girl,” as they called her, doing their job.
Pulling on one of the summer-thin camisole-and-shorts pajamas she preferred, Eve moved to the balcony doors she’d slipped through earlier and opened one side quietly. The bed-and-breakfast had a full house for the next few weeks, though several of the rooms had been rented for more than two years now by three guests who often gave their free time to Mercedes to do odd jobs around the inn. Her mother greatly reduced the amount of their stay in return, and one to two days a week the three men took care of repairs needed in and outside the inn as well as yard work.
The one beside her was one of them.
Stepping outside, she moved to the oval wicker chair hanging from beneath the second floor wraparound balcony, with its thick, fluffy cushions and curled into it with a weary sigh.
She was exhausted, but she’d never go to sleep easily if she went to bed now.
Why couldn’t she be one of those people that dropped right off to sleep? Instead, she spent far too long staring up at the ceiling or with her eyes closed, fighting for peace. Or far too many sensations raced through her body, demanding satisfaction, as they were tonight.
As they had been since the first hour on the job that night, when Brogan Campbell had walked into the bar.
It was that arrogant swagger that made him so tempting. Or maybe it was that slightly tilted curve to his lips. As though he saw beneath the facades of those he talked to and was amused by the deceptions they practiced.
It sure couldn’t be that red-gold hair with all the sunlit and burnished brown highlights it held that framed his hard-hewn face and tempted her to touch it to see if it was as warm as it looked. And it couldn’t be the arrogance in those icy gray-blue eyes, or the subtle darkening that always affected them whenever she caught his gaze.
Whatever it was, the second he’d entered the bar that night she’d known it.
She’d known it and responded to him.
Her breasts had swelled, her nipples becoming hard and peaked as her skin seemed to sensitize. She became so aware of the sensitive folds between her thighs that she felt them dampening, felt the slick juices as they made their way along the tender tissue of her vagina to ease out along the lips beyond.
She had become so horny so fast she’d almost dropped the tray of drinks she’d been carrying.
That was the effect Brogan had on her. And knowing he was sleeping in the suite next to hers didn’t help matters, because she knew—knew beyond a shadow of a doubt—that he wanted her as well.
That was the reason she was working the job that would bring her home at the latest possible hour and work her the hardest. Unfortunately it wasn’t working her hard enough, evidently.
“Eve. Hey, Eve, you there?”
Eve glanced up at the bottom of the balcony at the sound of her sister Lyrica’s voice hissing from above.
“You’re supposed to be asleep, Lyrica.” She grinned, keeping her voice soft as she answered her.
“Oh, great, that was you I heard drive up.” Her sister’s loud whisper was followed by the sight of a slender foot bracing on the outside of the balcony railing.
A second later the other foot joined it; then her sister was reaching for the thick post next to her and shimmying down it like a pro. Hell, she was a pro. All three of Eve’s sisters were. They’d learned early how to slip from the house and make the most of a perfectly good summer night.
They hadn’t fooled their mother, though. It never failed that their brother, Dawg, or one of their cousins, Rowdy or Natches, or one of their friends would find them after an hour or so and escort them home. They were never out long enough to get into trouble, but always long enough to satisfy the thrill of escaping for a while.
Lyrica dropped from the lower balcony railing, barefoot, dressed as Eve was in a pair of shorty pajama bottoms and a snug camisole.
Her long black hair was twisted into a braid behind her as she leaned back against the rail she had just jumped from, her hands gripping the vinyl-covered railing.
“Aren’t you supposed to be helping Mom with breakfast in the morning?” she asked her sister.
“Well, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.” Lyrica tucked a stray strand of black hair behind her ear as she shifted on her feet and smiled back at Eve brightly. “I was hoping I could get you to cover for me.”
Eve’s brow lifted in doubtful surprise. “Did you even notice what time I came in tonight, or what time it is now?”
“Yeah, you came in at two thirty and it’s now ten after three.” She waved the time away. “Come on, Eve; it’s really important. I know you won’t get much sleep—”
“Try no sleep,” Eve reminded her. “What would be the point of going to sleep if I just have to get up again in less than two hours?”
“I know; that will so suck.” Lyrica pouted as she brushed another strand of hair back and shifted on her bare feet again. “So you’ll do it for me?”
“I didn’t say that.” Eve laughed. “I said what would be the point of going to sleep if I were to do that? And I have to be back at the bar at six tomorrow evening. I’m closing with Matteo, so I’ll be even later getting home. I’ll need some sleep.”
“Come on, Eve; you can get to bed before noon, and that will easily give you five hours’ sleep.”
“And I easily need eight,” Eve pointed out. “What’s so important on a Saturday that you can’t help Mom and Piper with breakfast?”
Lyrica blew out a heavy breath, her head tilting to the side as she gazed down at the boards of the porch. A second later, her gaze lifted as she stared back at Eve. And Eve knew that look. Her younger sister was considering the best way to work her oldest sister to get what she wanted.
“Tell me why,” Eve bargained. “Otherwise I’m going to bed. Like I said, I have to help Matteo close the bar, and I need my sleep if this isn’t important.”
“Maybe it’s just important to me.” Lyrica shrugged. “I was invited to go with some friends to Louisville for a spa day.”
Her expression became animated, her voice filling with excitement. “Massages, a mani and a pedi, and being spoiled and rubbed and oiled for hours and hours.” Lyrica was all but jumping in anticipation. “Please, Eve, pretty please cover for me. I can’t just slip off and leave Momma a hand short. Piper would kill me if I did that.”
Because then Piper would have the majority of the work in the kitchen as their mother fixed coffee, set the long dining room table, and made fresh-squeezed orange juice and the fruit bowls for the guests who came down early to catch the news, read the paper, or just socialize as they checked e-mail before breakfast.
Piper would get together the individual orders that were turned in the night before, prepare all the ingredients as well as the plates and silverware. She would have to do all the cooking and carry all the food out as well if her mother didn’t finish early to help her. And normally it was impossible to finish one job early to help someone else with another when all the rooms were rented out. Lyrica wasn’t even lucky enough that most of the rooms only held a single guest. With the exception of the three long term guests, it was couples.
Eve’s suite didn’t count. It was a smaller suite. The other side was a pantry connected to the kitchen and the large laundry room with two heavy-duty stacking washers and dryers that were used by guests as well as their mother to wash the bedcoverings in.
“So I’m supposed to give up eight hours of sleep so you can go have a girls’ day?” she asked.
“Come on, Eve. The invitation came from Kyleene Brock. I’ve been trying to make friends with her for months now.”
Eve rolled her eyes. “No, you’ve been trying to get close to her brother for months now,” she retorted.
“Same thing.” Lyrica waved the protest away. “If I have to back out because of breakfast, then it’s going to be just horrible.”
“Just horrible, huh?” Eve tucked her feet up in the chair and knew she was just making her sister wait before giving in to her. Because she knew she was going to do it.
Lyrica had had a crush on Graham Brock for years. She’d been plotting just as long to get into that inner circle of friends Kyleene was so careful before making.
As one of the larger land owners in the area, and one of the few influential bachelors since the Mackay cousins’ marriages, Graham was well sought after. Because of his popularity, Kyleene was extremely careful of the friends she made.
“Come on, Eve, please,” her sister asked again, this time quietly, and with much more restraint. “Kyleene has invited all of us back to the house for a late lunch after we’re finished at the spa, and Graham is home on leave.”
Graham was serving his second tour in the Middle East, and Eve knew her sister had been watching for him to come home for months.
“Fine,” Eve agreed impatiently. “I’ll do it. But you owe me big-time, Lyrica.”
“Oh, my God, Eve, thank you so much.” Lyrica jumped across the short distance, reached into the chair, and wrapped her arms around Eve’s neck tightly. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Drawing back, Lyrica threw her fist into the air in a silent victory shout before gripping the porch post and pulling herself up the railing again.
“You can use my door to get to the stairs, Lyrica.” Eve laughed quietly. “You don’t have to risk life and limb climbing like a damned monkey.”
“Where’s the fun in that? Love you, Eve.” Her sister blew her a swift kiss before her gaze swung to the side of Eve’s patio door. “Morning, Mr. Campbell, I hope we didn’t wake you.”
Eve tensed with a silent groan of frustration.
“Not hardly, Ms. Mackay,” he drawled. The spicy sweet scent of his cigar reached her nostrils and had her body reacting to the sensual smell.
She pretended to hate the scent of it, but during those times when she forced herself to be honest, Eve admitted, to herself anyway, that the evocative scent would always be associated with wanting this man.
“Night, sis,” Lyrica whispered again before gripping the post and hauling herself up as she used her feet to push herself the short distance to allow her to grab hold of the railing overhead and pull herself up.
“That girl’s related to apes, or she’s missing a hell of a career in the circus.” Brogan chuckled as she disappeared over the upper balcony railing.
“Probably a little of both,” Eve agreed, swallowing nervously as he moved to the railing in front of her, where Lyrica had stood moments before.
“She knew you’d agree,” he drawled, clenching the slim cigar between his teeth for a moment before removing it and holding it negligently between his thumb and forefinger as he tapped the ash from the tip.
“She probably did.”
“Graham Brock’s too old for her.” He frowned at the sound of the door closing above. “If he even deigned to notice her, he’d break her heart and grind it in the dust without realizing it.”
Eve sighed heavily. “You can’t convince her of that.”
For a moment, she thought he’d say something more before he brought the cigar to his lips and muttered something that sounded strangely like, “Someone needs to talk to him ’bout that.”
“Let it alone,” Eve warned him. “If everyone keeps padding her falls she’ll never learn how to handle the bruises.”
Eve watched him carefully, as if he were a wild animal that could attack at any moment.
Or maybe one she wished would attack?
She kept that amusing thought to herself as she crossed her arms over her breasts and prayed he couldn’t see her hardened nipples beneath the thin camisole.
He made her ache so badly. Just looking at him, seeing the danger and the steel hardness inside him, all she wanted to do was touch him and feel it for herself.
With Brogan standing across from her, his six-foot-four frame wasn’t overly wide or muscle-bound. He had that natural muscled look, iron hard and powerful without being overblown.
The dark shirt he wore was unbuttoned several inches past the collar. The long sleeves were rolled to his elbows, the hem tucked into jeans that fit his thighs perfectly. A leather belt cinched his tight hips, the fit of the shirt hinting at the powerful abs beneath.
A male animal.
That was the thought that drifted through her mind every time she saw him.
“I tried to catch up with you while you were on break at the bar earlier,” he stated, his voice quiet, the early morning silence of the land around them lending itself to discreet whispers rather than a normal tone of voice that would carry through the night.
“Why?” Tucking the damp strands of hair falling over her face behind her ear, Eve stared up at him curiously. “Did you need something?”
“A dance.” His lips quirked into a smile as he lifted the cigar and drew in the fragrant smoke before exhaling, all the while watching her between narrowed, red-gold lashes.
“Oh, I can’t dance with customers.” She stood abruptly. “It’s getting late now; I have to go.”
She turned to rush back into her room, then froze, completely still, like prey suddenly aware of the predator lounging lazily just behind it.
His fingers were curved around her lower arm, not really gripping or holding her in place, but the knowledge that he could was clear.
Eve turned her head, glanced at the hand on her arm, then lifted her gaze to his.
He was once again amused. His lips were tilted to the side just a bit. That knowing look on his face had her wondering exactly what it was he knew, and was amused by.
“Why do you keep running from me, Eve?” He moved closer, his head bent, his lips settling at her ear as he asked the question. “Every time I think I can get close enough to touch, you jump and run like a scared little rabbit.”
Her skin was tingling where he was touching her. Sensitivity radiated from his touch, spreading through her body and making her nipples, her clit, throb in protest. Why should he be touching her arm, when the rest of her body hurt to be touched?
“Maybe I have the same instincts for when danger is near,” she suggested with attempted lightness. “I don’t have time for dangerous men.”
He chuckled at that, and the sound sent a rush of sensation washing down her spine.
She couldn’t calm her breathing. It was deep and heavy, rougher than before as her breasts lifted and fell with a quicker rhythm. And no doubt from his position he could see her nipples pressing—
His hand caressed up her arm, the calloused palm and fingertips making direct contact and stimulating already too-sensitive nerve endings.
“I have to go,” she whispered breathlessly.
Something warm and incredibly soft rasped against the top of her shoulder then.
Eve trembled at the realization that it was his beard. He was stroking the skin of her upper shoulder with nothing but the closely cropped growth of his facial hair.
