Текст книги "Nauti Temptress"

Автор книги: Lora Leigh

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Firm and reminding Eve far too much of the Mackays’ tones when they’d gotten tired of the bullshit, Samantha Bryce had the women moving within seconds.

Eve shook her head at the tottering group. She stood aside and watched them make their way to the exit as Samantha herded them along like children.

Poor Samantha and whoever her friend was. Getting those women to their respective homes wasn’t going to be done easily.

“You really should give it up and stop casting him those puppy-dog looks.”

Turning around slowly, Eve stared back at Sandi, wondering what she had done for karma to want to kick her ass tonight.

“Go away, Sandi,” she retorted wearily. She was really getting tired of this crap.

“If he wanted you, he wouldn’t be there with us,” Sandi stated then.

“Or he could just be waiting for me to get off work.” Eve turned back to the other woman, her smile deliberately challenging. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

She didn’t wait for Sandi to excuse her or not. Picking up her tray, she moved toward the bar.

“Brogan’s not white trash, Eve,” Sandi continued behind her.

“You should know, Sandi.” What the hell was it going to take to get rid of this woman?

“At least I didn’t sell myself to some rich pervert, like your mother did,” Sandi stated, disgust heavy in her voice as Eve started to step up from the main floor to the bar area.

Oh, that was it.

Eve swung around so fast, so furiously that Sandi nearly ran into her. The other woman had to back up quickly, nearly tipping and falling on the stilts she called shoes.

“What did you just say to me?” Eve demanded, the anger she had been fighting to keep a rein on all night breaking free.

“Oh, you heard me.” Sandi sneered as Eve glimpsed Brogan rising to his feet, his expression suspicious as his gaze locked on her and Sandi. “I might be white trash, but you and your family are nothing but low-class whores.”

“Like your opinion matters,” Eve mocked.

She wasn’t going to resort to violence. There were other ways to finish this, later. Clenching her teeth, she moved to turn away, determined to wait, to bide her time.

This wasn’t the place for a confrontation, even for her mother’s sake.

Sandi suddenly reached out, gripping her arm as Eve tried to walk away. Eve felt the other woman’s nails dig into her arm, breaking skin. A haze of fury rose in her mind, obliterating common sense. The dull ache throbbing at both temples was forgotten as the blood began to rush to her head, fueling the fury rising inside her.

“You might carry the Mackay name, but you’re still a no-name little bastard with a tramp for a mother. Brogan doesn’t need the likes of you, bitch. You’re not part of his world, and he has no desire to be part of yours.”

Eve jerked her arm back, feeling the raking talons of the other woman’s nails in a distant, hazy part of her consciousness.

Others were watching. She could feel their eyes, their judgment.

She wasn’t going to do this here. She hadn’t fought in years. She had promised her momma she wouldn’t fight unless she had no other choice.

“Get out of my way,” she rasped, the need to fight throbbing in her voice. “Or I promise you’ll regret it.”

“Gonna sic Dawg on me, are you?” Sandi laughed insultingly. “He’s so pussy-whipped now he can’t find his ass from a hole in the ground, let alone drag his fist out of his wife’s snatch. He can’t help you.”

Oh, God, the other woman was asking for it. She was begging for it.

Why, oh, why had she made that promise to her momma that she wouldn’t fight unless she had to? Was she crazy?

She thought she’d try one more time. “Dawg taught me to swat overblown barflies all by my lonesome. If you don’t stop fucking buzzing at me, then you’re going to find out exactly how he taught me to do it.”

As she saw Brogan and Dawg, followed by John, converging on them, she turned to move away again. God, when had Dawg gotten there?

Eve started to turn, Sandi’s arm went back, then flew forward, and she backhanded Eve with enough force to throw her into a customer’s back and nearly slam his head to the table.

Eve felt her lip split, but not with a sense of pain.

A haze of red descended over her vision as adrenaline crashed through her with a force she had never felt before. Before she could consider her actions, Eve turned, her fist jabbing into Sandi’s face.

Right between the eyes.

As the other woman went backward, Eve was on her. She followed her to the floor, her knee slamming into the other woman’s chest, holding her in place as she wrapped one hand around her throat and squeezed.

“Stay still, bitch!” she snarled when Sandi went to claw at her face.

To reinforce the order, Eve tightened her hold on the other woman’s neck, her fingers digging into Sandi’s windpipe and not letting up until she dropped her hands.

“Insult my mother, my sisters, my brother, or my cousins again—touch me again, bitch, and I’ll break your fucking nose. Then I’ll damned well ensure those lovely dentures you have screwed into your head require major surgery to repair. Are we clear?”

She could feel the crowd around them.

She could hear them.

Distantly.

She could hear Dawg and Brogan yelling at her. They were cursing, trying to get through the crowd to her, just as the bouncers were.

She was finished with the little piece of trash, though.

Jumping back in a smooth, well-practiced move she still worked at often, Eve landed on her feet just as Dawg and Brogan broke through the crowd across from her.

Her gaze met her brother’s—was that disappointment she saw in his eyes? No doubt it was. This was no way to ensure her reputation, her sisters’ and her mother’s, or his.

Adrenaline was still coursing through her veins, the urge, the hunger to fight flooding her system in such excess that when her gaze locked with Brogan’s, it was all she could do not to grab him and stake her claim immediately.

Yet she couldn’t.

Tremors were shaking her from the inside out. It wasn’t right. She had waited all her life for this, for the knowledge that there was a man out there who could ignite these fires inside her, and now she couldn’t have him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking between the two men.

She didn’t even know which of them she was apologizing to: Dawg, for wanting the one man he couldn’t tolerate knowing she was with, or Brogan, the only man her blood raced for, her clit throbbed for.

Or perhaps it was for herself, because she knew it wasn’t the promise she had made Dawg that she was going to end up breaking.

It was the promise she had made to herself.

The promise that at no time would she ever show her brother—the man who had given to her and her family so unselfishly—the least amount of disrespect.

Because she knew the chance of her finding herself in Brogan’s bed was growing by the day.

* * *

What was he doing to his sister?

The agony burning in her eyes, the color of Natches’s and similar to the emotions reflected in their cousin’s gaze during those horrendous years he and Rowdy had been certain he would turn up dead, radiated in her gaze. Her face was stark white, blood staining her lip and cheek, the upper curve of one breast, and across her arm.

As she turned and raced from the crowd staring at her in shock, she made the turn around the bar and disappeared into the back rooms, Dawg blew out a hard breath.

Then he turned on Brogan, stopping the other man when he would have followed her by stepping in front of him.

“You’ve done enough,” he rasped, seeing in Brogan’s gaze the same swirling emotions, needs, and hungers that he had seen in Eve’s. Like Eve’s emerald green, the blue-gray color shifted with emotion and fury and a need Dawg knew went soul-deep. He knew because it was the same lashing emotions that had burned in his eyes when he’d thought he would lose his Christa.

“She needs me.” The certainty in the other man’s voice only sent rage crashing through him.

“She doesn’t need you,” Dawg retorted furiously. “She doesn’t need a traitor, Campbell. She needs a man with honor. Not one willing to trade his soul and his country for a dollar.”

It had taken Dawg months to accept that Brogan Campbell was the man described in the reports he’d had pulled up on him. Months of investigation and reaching out to contacts in the highest and lowest levels of the covert world.

Because he’d actually liked him.

Because he remembered the boy Brogan had been when he’d lived in Somerset so many years before, before he joined the Marines, and hadn’t wanted to believe the fires that burned in him had turned so dark.

“You don’t know me, Mackay.” Brogan was all but nose-to-nose with him. “You don’t know who I am, what I am, or where my honor lies, and don’t fucking pretend to.”

He pushed past Dawg, stalking toward the bar before one of the other two men staying at the Mackay Inn stepped in front of him. Jedediah Booker spoke hurriedly, his voice too low for Dawg to catch the words.

Brogan tensed, a curse slipping from his lips before he turned back toward Dawg, then strode past him and headed for the bar’s exit.

Now, what the hell was that all about?

When Dawg would have left himself, Donny along with Eve’s tormentor, Sandi, began to move past him as well.

Dawg stepped into their path.

He knew these two. Donny and Sandi were usually not much trouble. The girl had always had a mouth on her, but never one so vicious as to cause anyone to attack her. And never had he seen Sandi deliberately go after another woman as she had Eve.

“You looking to make enemies, Donny?” he asked the other man carefully as he glanced at Sandi, disgust welling inside him at the memory of what this woman had pushed his sister into.

“You know I’m not, Dawg.” Donny sighed, shaking his head in regret. “This was just a misunderstanding, man.”

“I see her around my sister again and you’ll pay for it,” Dawg informed him. “And you know I can do it, Donny. That is, if I can beat Natches to it.”

Donny definitely looked worried now, while Sandi paled fearfully.

Natches’s name was synonymous with the bogeyman since the day he had been forced to kill his own cousin Johnny Grace nearly eight years before.

“I told you, I don’t want Mackays for enemies,” Donny repeated as he pulled at the loose neckline of his T-shirt as though it were choking him.

Sneering at the two in disgust, Dawg pushed past them and moved to the bar, intending on following Eve. Instead, he was brought to a stop as John stepped from behind the bar before he could reach it.

“Sierra’s talking to her,” John told him, his voice low. “I’ll make sure she gets home tonight. Sometimes, as my wife says, a woman just needs another woman to talk to.”

There was no loosening the muscles at the back of his neck, but Dawg tried. Reaching around to rub at his nape in frustration, he blew out a hard breath.

“Call me if she needs me,” he finally said in irritation before shaking his head helplessly. “Hell, John. How do you survive hurting a sister?”

Because he had hurt her, and he knew it. By making her swear to go against her own instincts and stay away from Brogan, he had a feeling he’d hurt her more than he suspected.

“You let them forgive you and you go on.” John finally smiled back at him in compassion. “That’s all you really can do.”

Clapping him on the shoulder, John turned and went back behind the bar to give the bartenders a hand.

Let her forgive him?

He turned and headed to the exit. He would love to let her forgive him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so certain he deserved it.

FIVE

John’s wife, Sierra, was striding furiously through the hall leading to the bar as Eve pushed through it, intent on collecting her purse and leaving. Sierra must have left the bar while she was at the table with the bachelorettes.

Before Sandi had made a fool of her.

Eve didn’t want to cry. She hated crying. But as Sierra stopped several feet ahead of her and stared back at her in disbelief, she could feel her throat tightening with the hated dampness.

“I’m sorry, Sierra,” she whispered, pushing her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she blinked quickly to hold the moisture back. “I’m just getting my purse. I promise not to try to return.”

She knew the rules.

As she had stared into Dawg’s eyes after jumping back from where she’d held Sandi to the floor, shame had surged through her.

She hadn’t thought about the rules on fighting then. Not until she’d seen Sierra and the fury glittering in her brown eyes.

Shame burned like a cinder in her chest.

When there was a fight anywhere on bar property, then both fighters were banned. The rule made sense. She really could have walked away, but once Sandi had dared to not just insult her mother, but to also use that sissy-bitch move and backhand her, it had been over with.

Besides, jealousy had been eating her alive.

Sandi had been able to sit next to Brogan. To laugh with him. To talk to him without censure, while Eve was restrained by a promise she couldn’t break.

“Don’t you dare apologize to me, Eve Mackay,” Sierra demanded furiously.

The tears fell.

Sierra was a friend, and now she wasn’t going to forgive her.

“The fighting rule only applies when I say it does,” Sierra continued, moving to her quickly, surprising—actually shocking—Eve as she wrapped her arms around her. “And that rule does not apply to employees whom little bitches like that decide to torment all night.”

“What?” Eve shook her head as Sierra drew back, her hands still gripping Eve’s shoulders and staring into her face in concern. “I don’t have to leave?”

“As if,” Sierra said gently, shaking her head. “Eve, that rule rarely applies to employees anyway. Once you get a couple of hundred bodies in one place, drinking and deciding they’re more deserving than others, the first person customers take their attitude out on is the waitresses. That’s why we have bouncers, and that’s why we provide the girls with self-defense classes if they ask for them. Besides, I saw that bitch and her boyfriend watching you, obviously plotting each jibe before it was made.”

Eve sniffed, blinking again as she finally forced back the tears.

“I should have ignored her. Or just gone home.”

“Come on; we need a glass of wine,” Sierra decided as she turned and headed back up the hall. “And you need an ice pack for your cheek. The bitch must have been wearing a ring, because you have a hell of a scratch across it.”

Eve lifted the back of her hand to her cheek, then pulled it back to see the smear of blood across it. She couldn’t even feel it.

Following Sierra to the office in the back of the building, she sat down on the comfortable leather couch as Sierra went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine.

It took her a moment to pull the cork and pour two glasses. Once she did she handed Eve one before taking a seat in the chair across from her, her expression worried as she stared at Eve’s face.

“Are you sure you don’t want some ice?” she asked, sitting forward in the chair and crossing a leg over the opposite knee to prop her arm on it.

“No.” Eve shook her head before sipping at the cold wine. “I’ll be fine.”

“You surprised me.” Sierra grinned. “When I saw how they were taunting you I told Kota to send you back here before I left the bar. I didn’t think you’d do anything about it, and I didn’t want you having to deal with that viperous bitch while you were helping me and John out of a hard spot. She attacked before Kota could tell you. I cheered when I saw you go after her on the security monitor.”

“I should have just escaped back here.” Eve sighed. “I promised Momma when we moved here that I would stop fighting. All of us did. We were wild as hell before moving here. At least one of us managed to get into a fistfight just about every day.”

Life hadn’t been easy before Dawg had taken them in.

“There’s only so much you can take.” Sierra shrugged. “Besides, she was too jealous to let it go. You’ve managed to snag a man just about every woman in four counties has been after for years. Congratulations, by the way.”

“I haven’t captured anyone,” Eve denied.

Only in her dreams, in her deepest fantasies.

“The hell you haven’t,” Sierra said in disbelief. “Eve, that man can’t take his eyes off you. Surely you can see that?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want him.” Eve set her glass on the table before covering her face with her hands for long moments.

Her cheek throbbed. She could feel her busted lip now, the bruise where the inner flesh had been knocked into her teeth.

Her heart was still racing, the adrenaline that had pumped into her system still searching for release.

“God, this situation is going to give me a migraine.” She sighed, lowering her hands and staring back at Sierra miserably. “It’s impossible, Sierra. For whatever reason, Brogan is the one man Dawg can’t abide, and I understand why he feels the way he feels. I just can’t believe Brogan would betray anyone, though, let alone his country.”

Sierra frowned back at her. “Brogan? A traitor?” She shook her head slowly. “I’ve heard the rumors, of course, but that’s just not Brogan.”

“Exactly.” Eve flipped her hand out, palm up, before using both hands to rub at her face in frustration. Lowering them again, she picked up the glass of wine, then set it back down. She had to drive home, and the wine would go straight to her head.

“So how do you intend to fight the fact that both of you want each other like crazy?” Sierra asked. “He watches you like a starving man watches dinner.”

“I promised Dawg I would stay away from him,” she told Sierra miserably, her throat tightening with emotion again. “He’s never asked me for anything, Sierra, until now. And he asked me to stay away from Brogan.”

“I’m sorry, Eve,” she whispered sympathetically. “But really, Dawg had no right to ask that of you.”

Eve shook her head. “He told us when we first came here that all he asked was that we never betray ourselves or our family. As far as he’s concerned, Brogan has betrayed his country, and to believe in him, to be with him, means I’m tarred with the same brush. To Dawg, that’s betraying not just myself, but my family, my friends, and the nation. And to Dawg, that’s the worst thing I could do.”

It had all been said lovingly, of course. And Dawg had hated saying it to her; she had seen that. But that was how he felt.

“But you don’t believe he betrayed his country,” Sierra stated.

Eve shook her head. “No, I don’t. I can’t believe he would do anything so vile, Sierra. He’s arrogant, proud as hell, and so damned stubborn he probably makes people want to shoot him. But I can’t see him betraying his country.”

“And you’re in love with him,” Sierra said softly. “Aren’t you?”

Eve sighed wearily. “I don’t know. I know I can’t stand the thought of denying myself something I want this badly. But I also know that if that’s the problem, then he’ll break my heart. There’s no doubt in my mind he will. And in turn, I’ll break my brother’s heart.”

Brogan might not mean to. He may hate it, but it wouldn’t stop it from happening.

“Do you think you can keep that promise, then?” Sierra asked her.

Eve gave a bitter laugh. “Dawg saved us, Sierra. And I hate myself. I hate myself until I’m sick to my stomach with the fact that the one thing he asked of me seems to be the very thing I can’t give him. And he deserves so much more.”

* * *

Dawg hadn’t meant to eavesdrop.

He’d been in the parking lot when Timothy had come around the side of the bar and called him back, bringing him through the side entrance to meet with him and John. What the hell Timothy was doing there, he hadn’t yet figured out.

He’d heard Eve’s voice as they passed the partially closed door, and stopped just to make sure she was okay.

Now, as he heard the pain in her voice, aching regret filled his chest, he felt like a traitor himself. Hell, he hadn’t meant to hurt her, or to make her feel as though she had disappointed him.

He rubbed at the back of his neck again as he turned and followed Timothy up the hall to John Walker’s office. Once Timothy closed the door behind him, Dawg leaned against it, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared at the former—he was doubting the resignation story now—Homeland Security special agent and the supposedly unassuming bar manager.

There was too much going on here, he thought.

Suddenly Timothy was lurking in the back offices of Walker’s Run, no doubt because that was one of the only two rooms in the lower levels where the security cameras could be viewed.

When Timothy had texted earlier to meet him there, Dawg had assumed they were meeting in the actual bar, not hiding in the back. And that made sense only if Timothy was conducting an operation.

“What are you up to, you little fucker?” Dawg growled.

Timothy grinned at the insult as though it were a compliment.

Little bastard.

At least he didn’t look like a reject from the CIA anymore. His clothes were actually pressed, his hair combed. And he did smile more now than he had before Mercedes and the girls came into his life. Though Dawg admitted that the thought of Timothy Cranston with then svelte, model-beautiful Mercedes Mackay was just freaky.

“Why do I always have to be up to something?” Timothy asked.

“The last time I asked you that question you called me a suspicious little bastard who needed to go home and get fucked so I wouldn’t be so paranoid,” Dawg pointed out thoughtfully.

Timothy grimaced good-naturedly.

“Do I have to ask again, or send you home to your girlfriend minus some very important equipment?”

Timothy chuckled at that. “You are too paranoid, Dawg. Even your cousins tell you that.”

They did.

“That doesn’t mean you’re not up to something,” he pointed out. “Now, tell me what Brogan Campbell has to do with whatever the hell you’re up to, and how do I keep him away from my sister?”

Timothy sighed, then leaned forward, clasping his hands on the desk in front of him.

“Dawg, do you really think it’s possible for your sister to be interested in a traitor? Doesn’t that go against the Mackay DNA or something?”

“Are you saying he’s not a traitor?”

Timothy’s eyes widened innocently.

“Innocent” and “Timothy” in the same sentence was damned terrifying.

“How the hell would I know,” Timothy protested. “I just thought that, knowing Eve’s intuition about people is pretty damned good, it seems funny she could be fooled by a man betraying his country, that’s all.”

“That’s all, huh?”

Timothy nodded with apparent honesty. “That’s all.” He held his hands out in a gesture of sincerity.

Sincerity and Timothy?

Had he just entered the fucking Twilight Zone?

“You’re pulling an op again and you’re allowing Eve to be dragged straight into the middle of it. Now tell me what the fuck is going on,” Dawg demanded.

“You’re asking the same questions I am, Dawg,” Timothy admitted. “Who Brogan Campbell really is, and what the hell is going on. What I am fairly certain of, based on the fact that he’s lived in the same house I do for the past two and a half years, is that he’s no traitor. And I’m fairly certain he’s not going to wait much longer before Eve’s little heart is torn in two between you and the only man I’ve seen her interested in since she came here.”

Dawg straightened from his position against the door, stalked to the desk, and flattened his hands on the top of it as he leaned forward. “He will get her killed, Timothy. How do you think your lover, her mother, will feel when she finds out you let her walk smack into the middle of this and didn’t tell me what the hell is going on?”

Timothy shrugged. “If I knew what was going on, I would of course tell her first. That’s her daughter, and Mercedes has an amazing capacity to not just love her children, but also to accept the choices they make.”

“Even if one of those choices gets them killed?” Dawg growled.

“That’s what we’re for.” Timothy sighed then. “To keep that from happening.” His smile was tinged with acceptance and resignation. “Isn’t that what loving them is all about, Dawg? Letting them find out who they are, and doing all we can to protect them as they do?”

“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?”