Текст книги "Nauti Temptress"
Автор книги: Lora Leigh
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
He brushed a kiss against her ear, moved lower until his lips caressed beneath her jaw, smoothing against skin so sensitive that the feel of his kiss sent tiny explosions of heightened pleasure rushing through her body.
“Brogan . . . please . . .” But what she was begging for even she couldn’t say for certain.
Was she begging for release?
Was she begging for more of his touch?
At this point—
His head lifted, his nose rubbing against hers in a gesture that smacked so heavily of affection that Eve was lost.
It wasn’t love, but no one . . . no one had ever stared down at her with such hunger in his eyes, such gentleness in his smile, and touched her with such easy affection.
The woman she was couldn’t help but reach out for him as the sensualist, normally so well hidden inside her, came out to play, to luxuriate in the added warmth of affection.
When his head tilted, his lips slanting over hers, she had no choice but to accept the deep, stinging kisses and hungry licks. The hunger that raged inside her wasn’t for sex. It wasn’t just to relieve the lust that burned inside her.
Burning need raged through her body. Equal parts sexual and emotional: the need for touch, for warmth, for that hidden quality that couldn’t be faked or practiced overwhelmed her control.
Emotion.
If not love, then affection.
If not forever, then the hope that forever might happen.
Loosening her grip on the towel, Eve slid her hands to his shoulders then behind his neck. One hand slid into the warmth of his hair while the other held tight to his shoulders.
Weakness assailed her, stealing the strength from her knees, sapping the memory of her promise and the will to deny him.
“Eve. Ah, baby,” he growled against her lips a second before he lifted her to him.
His hips jerked into hers, the heavy ridge of his erection pressing firmly against the intimate mound between her thighs. The feel of the towel loosening from between her breasts brought only a second’s thought before it was pushed away.
She would remember why she wasn’t supposed to let him touch her when the cold light of day burned away the sensual illusions he was weaving around her.
For now—for this moment and this man—she needed just a little time, just a night to prove to herself that when morning did come, she would still be the woman she was now.
Brogan’s kisses became deeper, more drugging, filling her with such a sense of overriding hunger that nothing mattered but his touch and touching him.
Her hands slid to his broad chest, her fingers shaking, clenching in the material of his shirt. Sensual, sexual intoxication dragged her deeper into the chaotic needs rising inside her, refusing to allow her to think or to control the hunger raging through her.
The feel of Brogan’s hand sliding along the naked skin of her hip, caressing its way higher until it rested just beneath her breast, was like pouring an accelerant on the fires already raging out of control inside her.
Her fingers unclenched, trembling; she was desperate to touch him. Struggling with the buttons of his shirt, her hips shifted against his, the ache between her thighs building.
The heavy erection pressing against her had her body reacting with feminine demand, with a need to feel him hot and naked against her, taking her, driving into her with the power and fierce heat she could feel throbbing beneath his jeans.
As the last button slipped free, she pushed at the material, forcing it over his shoulders and whimpering beneath his kiss when the garment would go no farther.
A second later his hands cupped her rear and then turned and strode the few feet to the bed. His kiss never paused; the hunger raging through it never dimmed. When her back met the mattress his head lifted, forcing her eyes to open, her hands to tighten around his neck to bring him back to her.
He wasn’t leaving her, as she had feared.
His lips traveled instead to her jawline, then beneath it, moving down the column of her neck as it arched back, an agony of pleasure attacking her senses as his teeth raked against her flesh. His tongue licked and stroked, playing with her nerve endings and sending sensations racing through them. His lips kissed, took fiery tastes of her skin at intervals, and moved lower with each kiss as she arched to him.
Chaos clashed with the pleasure rising through her system as need burned through her senses. Lying naked beneath him, Eve was aware of every point of contact as the material of his jeans brushed against her thighs and hips. The rasp of chest hair brushed across her nipples, sensitizing them further.
His hand was at her hip, holding her still as she tried to move beneath him; she was desperate for some point of contact against the swollen, aching bud of her clit.
A whimper escaped her as her nails bit into his shoulders, the feel of his knee suddenly pressing between hers and driving the hard muscle of his thigh against her pussy dragged a startled cry from her lips.
Her juices trickled from her vagina, saturating the folds beyond and spilling a heated layer of slick warmth along her clitoris as she rubbed herself against his thigh. The stimulation against the bundle of nerves sent shards of sharpened sensation exploding to her womb. The driving need for more—more touch, more sensation—rose inside her with a burning force.
Heat brushed against the curves of her breasts; the rasp of his beard rubbing against the tender skin sent her hands searching between their bodies and finding his belt.
She wanted him naked. She wanted bare skin meeting bare skin from breast to ankle.
His lips brushed against the outer curve of her breast, kissed it in passing, then eased higher, his tongue probing, licking, searching—
“Oh, God. Oh, God. Brogan.” She gasped, arching to him as his lips surrounded the tight, violently sensitive peak and sucked it into the heated depths of his mouth.
Liquid flames surrounded it.
The heated stroke of his tongue against the nerve endings gathered there sent pure ecstasy racing to her womb, her clit, exploding inside them and driving the need tearing through her higher.
Eve tore his belt loose. Her fingers tugged at the metal buttons of his jeans. Pulling and tugging, she struggled with them until they were free, pushing aside the material before freezing in shock. A harsh moan escaped her as her hands found the long, broad length of his cock as it rose between his thighs. The flared crest was slightly damp, the shaft throbbing, pounding with the blood racing through the heavy veins just beneath the silken flesh that stretched tight over the iron strength.
There were too many sensations.
She felt a roughened heat against her nipple as he sucked at first one delicate tip, then the other. With thumb and forefinger he gripped the other peak, tugging and milking it with his fingers as electric forks of sensation slapped at her clit with each stroke.
She fought to breathe. She fought to understand the force of the sensations whipping out of control and blazing through her senses, and couldn’t seem to do it.
As his hand moved from her breast and slid down her waist, over her abdomen, then tucked between her thighs as his knee eased back, Eve knew she was doomed.
Right here in this bed on this sultry summer night, she lost herself.
And she wasn’t entirely certain she would be able to find herself once the pleasure was over.
SIX
Eve never imagined pleasure could be this extreme.
She’d never before had her control stripped by a kiss or a little heavy petting.
She’d never lost herself to the point that a man had actually managed to get his hands between her thighs, or to the point that she was so wet, so wild, that nothing mattered but Brogan’s touch. She’d been waiting for this. For a pleasure so extreme she couldn’t deny it or the man giving it to her. Until Brogan, that hadn’t happened.
His fingers slipped through the thick layer of juices that gathered between the folds of her pussy. As they slid through the narrow slit, he parted the inner lips, his thumb pressing against her clitoris as he rubbed the clenched entrance with his fingers.
Lifting closer, desperate for his touch, aching for more, Eve whimpered at the heat flooding her senses and the driving hunger spurring it. She parted her thighs further, her hips shifting, arching to him, the feel of his mouth devouring her nipple as his thumb pressed against her aching clit dragging a low, harsh cry from her throat.
Suckling, licking, rasping the hardened peak of her breast, Brogan began to ease the tips of two fingers inside her. The feel of the entrance parting, stretching, her juices flowing to meet his touch suspended her breath for precious seconds.
Her fingers clenched in his hair as a gasp burst from her lips. It was all she could do to keep from screaming with the pleasure.
Sinking, falling deeper into the rapture surrounding her, Eve gave herself to the drowning sensations. So much so that when the sharp knock against her patio door exploded through the room, she wasn’t entirely certain what it was, or where it was coming from at first.
Brogan’s head jerked up and turned to the doors as Eve stared back at him, dazed.
The knock came again.
“Eve, are you awake?” Dawg called out. “I know you are; the light’s on, sweetie. Come on; I just want to talk to you for a minute.”
The sound of her brother’s voice was like cold water suddenly surrounding her body.
Oh, God, what had she done?
Staring up at Brogan, she was suddenly horrified. The thought that she was betraying Dawg, betraying every belief he had in loyalty to one’s country and defending their freedom, rushed through her.
If he found Brogan here he would never forgive her.
If he had been disappointed in her before, how much more would he be now?
“Come on, Eve; just talk to me for a minute,” he called out again as Brogan moved back from her, his jaw clenching, his blue-gray eyes flickering with frustration.
Jerking his shirt from the floor, he tossed the towel to her bed and hurriedly moved to the door connecting the bedroom to the sitting area.
Jumping from the bed, Eve grabbed her robe from the tall dressing screen on the other side of her bed and quickly pulled it on, tying it as she rushed to the patio door.
She opened the door just enough to face him, glaring at him, uncertain whether it was Dawg or herself she was suddenly angry with.
“Don’t you ever sleep, Dawg?” she questioned him, hearing the roughness in her voice, feeling the heat that still flushed her body, and terrified he’d realize what she had been doing.
The look in his eyes sent guilt tearing through her.
He looked as miserable as she had felt at the bar. His celadon eyes were a shade darker, still such a light color it was hard to tell whether they were green or a very light blue or gray in the dim light of the room.
A heavy frown pulled at his brow as he reached back, rubbed at his neck, and sighed wearily.
“I couldn’t go home without checking on you,” he admitted. “I had to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine, Dawg,” she said with a sigh, her chest tightening with such regret and pain that the ache actually tugged at her heart. “But isn’t it a little late for a married man such as yourself to be running the roads?”
A heavy expulsion of breath met her question. “Some things can only be done at night, it seems.” He grinned back at her. “But this couldn’t wait.”
“Well, as you can see, I’m fine.”
He shook his head, ran the fingers of one hand through his hair, then propped both hands at his hips before sliding them into the back pockets of his jeans.
Damn, her brother was nervous. She had never seen Dawg nervous.
“You know,” he finally said roughly, “I was damned proud of you tonight at the bar. You kept your head and didn’t let Sandi goad you with her insults. But once she struck, you took care of things damned well, Eve. I worry, you know.”
He looked away from her for a second, clearly not finished.
“Why?” she asked anyway.
“I worry about you and your sisters,” he admitted. “That somehow you’ll get hurt, seriously hurt, because I might not be where you need me. Or because someone decided to go on a rampage wherever you are. Knowing you have the ability to defend yourself makes me breathe a little easier. I’ll sleep a little better.”
God, he was serious.
The surge of thankfulness that he even thought about her while she wasn’t in his sight rushed through her. It was almost as strong as the guilt tearing her apart now that Brogan was no longer touching her.
“Dawg, I try to be careful,” she promised him. “And I know Piper, Lyrica, and Zoey do as well. You, Rowdy, and Natches have taught us to fight and how to use our heads. The rest of it is up to us. You can’t watch us twenty-four/seven.”
He nodded slowly, looked away again for long moments, then turned back to her.
He cleared his throat. “About Brogan—”
“No.” Eve gave her head a hard shake as her hand clenched on the side of the door. “I can’t talk about Brogan, Dawg. Please.”
This was tearing her apart. It was destroying her as nothing ever had. As nothing ever could. Guilt at her deception, at the knowledge that Brogan was standing just on the other side of the door between her bedroom and the sitting room, dug into her heart. It was like a lance piercing her soul, the knowledge that she was breaking her word to the only person who had ever given a damn about her besides her mother and sisters.
* * *
Dawg knew guilt when he saw it. Just as he knew the agony of thinking, believing something that should have been his never would be.
The day Christa had told him she had lost their baby when she had been little more than a teenager, that summer she had run from Somerset. He’d felt it then. Felt his soul being sliced in two with a jagged blade.
That was the pain he saw in Eve’s eyes now as nervous guilt darkened them.
How could he tell her he hadn’t meant for her to believe she was betraying him with Brogan without effectively giving her permission or the go-ahead to have a man he knew would endanger her?
She would become a weakness to Brogan as well. A man doing what Dawg suspected Brogan was doing couldn’t afford such a thing. A woman like Eve could break a man’s soul when she was harmed because of his job or something he was doing. But even more, it would destroy Dawg and ensure that he killed Brogan himself.
“You know, Eve,” he finally said, “I’ve always been proud of you, and I’ve always been proud to call you my sister.”
She stared back at him, the pain in her expression only intensifying as she looked away from him, blinking.
“You’ll always be my sister, Eve,” he tried again, knowing he was failing.
“Thank you, Dawg,” she whispered, nodding as she stared back at him. “That means more to me than you know.”
He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. Maybe he should have brought Christa with him.
“I’m really tired, Dawg.” Those were tears in her voice.
He sharpened his gaze on her face, catching the glitter of moisture in her eyes, and cursed himself. He could kick himself if he could reach his own ass, he thought. Son of a bitch, what was he doing to her? Was this the kind of father he was going to be?
His sisters were practice, he’d always said. Lately, all he’d done was make them cry.
“I don’t want to see you hurt, Eve,” he tried again. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he laid them on her shoulders, forcing her to stare back at him. “Sometimes, just because our instincts might be right about the person, they’re not always right about whether or not we can trust our hearts to them, you know?”
“Please, Dawg.” She stepped back from him slowly. “Go home to your wife and daughter. Get some sleep. I’m all tucked into bed, safe and sound. No one’s going to hurt me tonight.”
No, she didn’t understand.
He breathed out in irritation and self-disgust.
Yeah, this was a job for Christa.
“I’ll do that.” He sighed. “Get some sleep, Eve.”
“Good night, Dawg.”
Stepping back, she closed the door, and a second later the sliver of light at the side of the heavy curtains covering the glass blinked out.
Dawg shook his head, paused, then turned on his heel and forced himself to walk to the main porch entrance where he’d parked.
Once he reached the steps, he paused.
Eyes narrowed, he looked around slowly.
Something wasn’t right. . . .
* * *
Brogan stepped back into the room, finding Eve as she stood by the patio doors. Her head was lowered, the midnight black silk of her hair falling around her face as he watched her shoulders tremble for a second.
He could shoot Dawg.
The son of a bitch just didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.
“I can’t keep doing this.” Eve shook her head as she lifted it before moving across the room to where he stood.
Walking past him, she jerked the door open and stalked into the other room of her suite before turning to face him.
“Afraid he’ll be watching for me?” he asked, unable to keep the mockery out of his voice.
“He’s suspicious.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t want him to know I broke my promise to him, Brogan. Until I decide what’s more important, how my brother feels or what you want from me, then I can’t keep doing this.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he frowned down at her. “Have you asked me what I want from you, Eve?” Hell, no, she hadn’t. But she didn’t have a problem making decisions about what he wanted from her without his input, it seemed.
“I’m not ready to know,” she admitted, and that only pissed him off further. “But I do know that Dawg has never asked me or my sisters and mother for anything. Not a damned thing, Brogan, for taking us in and securing our lives and our futures. Everything we have and everything we are, we owe to him. And all he’s ever asked is that I stay away from you until you can prove you’re not the man his contacts say you are.”
There, it was all out in the open now.
His jaw clenched in anger as he glared back at her, wondering whether she believed the rumors or believed in herself and her instincts.
“And what kind of man do his contacts report I am?” he asked carefully.
“That you’ve betrayed your country,” she whispered, her expression so filled with hunger, need, and pain that she tempted him to paddle her ass and show her what she could believe in.
“Do you think I betrayed my country?”
It wouldn’t matter about the reports or what she believed. He was going to have her. Tonight had proven to him that without his protection right now, certain people would consider her fair game simply because it was known he was interested. Donny and Sandi had made the first strike, but Brogan knew his interest in her was well known. If the men he was searching for suspected he was a government agent, then it could be much worse.
Even more important, he had to get this operation behind them so he could find the time and the space he needed to figure out what she was to him as well.
“It doesn’t matter what I think, Brogan,” she whispered. “It’s what Dawg thinks he knows.”
“And you always obey your brother?” He knew he wasn’t being fair to her, but by God, she was his. She was going to have to make a choice, and she was going to have to make it soon.
“It’s not that simple.”
“I’m making it that simple,” he growled as she turned and jerked the bedroom door open.
“That doesn’t mean I’ll follow along,” she retorted, the emerald of her eyes lighting with an inner flame that only made his dick harder. Only made him want her beneath him more.
He wasn’t going to argue this with her five minutes after her brother had left. No doubt Dawg had already suspected he was there, and he’d said just what he’d known he needed to. His object was to keep Eve from sleeping with Brogan, and tonight he’d achieved his objective.
“We’ll discuss this. Soon,” he warned her, stomping to the patio door.
Eve stared up at him, seeing the promise in his eyes and almost shivering at the latent dominance and pure demand in his look.
Her lips parted to argue, to inform him that they’d discuss it when she was ready, when a sudden, horrified scream pierced the house.
The layout of the house put the kitchen directly across from her and Brogan, on the other side of the house. There were two halls leading from the kitchen to each wing. The shortest distance to the kitchen was the narrow hall just outside Brogan’s room that opened directly into the kitchen.
Before the scream was silenced, she and Brogan both were running.
He made damned sure she didn’t get ahead of him as they turned into the hall, knowing there would be no room for her to do so once they reached the narrow passageway, she noticed.
They had no more turned into the hall than another scream shattered the silence of the night, and the sounds of her sisters yelling through the house could be heard.
Terror pierced Eve’s mind as they shot into the kitchen and raced for the open back door. She was terrified of what they would find, knowing her mother was not a woman who frightened easily.
As they pushed out the door to the back porch, Eve came to a hard, sudden stop.
Her eyes widened, horror filling her as she felt her stomach pitch at the sight.
The back part of the wooden porch that surrounded the house was covered in blood, entrails, and body parts of the dozen or more fat rabbits her mother bred and used for the dinner table.
As with the chickens in the chicken house that provided eggs and meat, the turkeys and occasional duck her mother raised, and the deer she convinced Dawg to take her hunting for each year, Mercedes Mackay was known for her fresh meats, like venison during holidays and special occasions.
The rabbits represented five years’ work with only a few of the plump animals actually making it to the dinner table.
Mercedes and Eve had raised the four babies she’d bought, and from there began breeding them. Now they were gone in the most horrific manner that Eve could have imagined.
She didn’t always agree with her mother’s entirely pragmatic approach to food. Mercedes had learned to appreciate more than store-bought meats as a child. And growing up, Eve and her sisters had often been more than grateful for her mother’s ability to prepare wild game. Though Eve herself found she much preferred buying her meat from the grocer rather than raising it herself.
Now, staring at the porch, seeing the blood and mutilated carcasses of the animals that had been penned close to the house to ensure that no predators attacked them, Eve well understood why her mother was screaming.
Mercedes had been screaming for Timothy and her daughters, terrified that if someone had been brazen enough to come onto her porch and do something so horrific, then her family could be in danger as well.
Timothy and, surprisingly, Dawg had made it to the back porch ahead of Brogan and Eve. Behind her, she could hear her sisters’ gasps, then the silence that filled the room.
“Why would anyone do this?” Her mother was furious.
Turning on Timothy as he held her to him, his gaze hard, cold as he stared at the carnage, Mercedes demanded an answer. “Timothy, why would they do this?”
Timothy could only shake his head before his gaze turned to Dawg, then Brogan.
Brogan had separated himself from the other two men. Enough distance was left between them that Eve had the feeling that he was ensuring that no one could ever mistake him and the other two men for friends.
Who would care?
“Are they pets?” Brogan asked her, his voice low.
Eve shook her head. “We get a lot of hunters as guests. She breeds them for when they stay.”
The hunters often swore they came more for Mercedes’s preparation of the wild meat than they did for the hunting.
The look in Brogan’s eyes was so hard, so frigid, Eve actually shivered.
Casually, Brogan leaned against the side of the house, pulled a pack of the slim cigars he smoked from his shirt pocket, and lit one up.
“I guess you don’t know anything about this, right, Brogan?” Dawg snarled as his head swung around.
Several other guests had moved out to the porch, following Mercedes’s screams.
It was almost dawn, and most people were asleep, but the guests on Eve’s side of the house had obviously been awake.
The two single men, Jed Booker and Eli Grant, stood at the other end of the porch, their eyes on the bloody destruction spread out before them.
“I want everyone to stay as far back as possible,” Timothy ordered as he led Mercedes into the house.
Eve slid to the other side of the door as he did so, turning to go in.
Her mother was immediately surrounded by Piper, Lyrica, and Zoey as they led her to the other side of the kitchen and began preparing coffee. Their move allowed her to ensure that she heard whatever the men decided to discuss.
Eve could feel the tension in the air.
Unless they were standing exactly where Eve was, no one could have seen the looks that passed between Timothy, Dawg, and Brogan. But Eve saw them.
Brogan might be giving the impression of distance, but the look they shared assured Eve that they were all three on the same wavelength at the moment.
“Campbell, you and the other guests should return to your rooms,” Timothy ordered.
“Looks like a fox ignored the henhouse and went for the rabbits instead,” Jed commented as he scratched at his chest through the jersey jacket he wore.
Jeans and a jersey jacket wasn’t exactly summer attire, she thought.
He’d pushed the sleeves to his elbows and put his hands in the pockets as he leaned against the corner of the house and stifled a yawn.
Eli didn’t say a word, just continued to watch out of hazel eyes that seemed darker in the low light. Finally he gave a slow nod toward the three men before turning and heading back down the hall.
A moment later, Jed yawned again. “I’m going to get ready for work,” he finally stated. “By the time I get back to bed it’s going to be time for breakfast.” He paused, his sharp gaze turning on Eve. “We still having breakfast?”
She almost grinned. She would have, if her imagination and her fear weren’t in overdrive.
“Knowing Mom, I’ll say yes.” She nodded.
“See you then.” He turned and disappeared, leaving Eve alone with Timothy, Dawg, and Brogan.
“This wasn’t a fox,” Eve stated, keeping her voice low as she stared at each man in turn before pausing as she caught Brogan’s eye. “Was it?”
Brogan shrugged, but she could see a warning in his eyes, in his expression, as he watched her.
“Whatever it was, it won’t be back tonight,” Dawg growled. “I’ll get Natches later today and get some security cameras up out here. That way we catch the fox doing this and put it out of its misery.” His voice hardened.
“You’re not calling Alex?” Eve demanded, speaking of Somerset’s chief of police and one of Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches’s best friends.
“Killing a rabbit isn’t a crime, Eve.” Dawg sighed. “And if it was a fox—and they are prone to indiscriminately kill—then how is Alex going to help?”
This was no fox kill. Eve had seen a fox go after chickens and kill them, and she had never seen carnage like this. There was that warning in Brogan’s gaze, though, as well as Dawg’s. A warning to watch what she said.
“Go inside, Eve.” Brogan’s voice was so low, the tone so dark, that she found herself doing just that.
Casting them all a look filled with irritation, she stepped into the kitchen with her mother and sisters, gritting her teeth as she closed the door carefully behind her.
“Why are you still here?” Dawg demanded, not bothering to lower his tone or attempt to hide what he was saying as he looked up from where he was crouched on bent knees to study the porch.
“I’m nosy.” Brogan didn’t bother to lower his voice either. “It’s not every day I get to see a fox’s kill, you know.”
Dawg snorted at the comment.
“They’re watching you.” This time Dawg’s voice carried no farther than Brogan’s and Timothy’s ears.
Lifting the cigar to his lips to hide his reply from anyone watching now, Brogan stated, “Yeah, they are.”
“Retaliation?” Dawg questioned.
Would Donny and Sandi go to these lengths?
“I’ll find out,” Brogan promised.
And he would.
If Donny and Sandi were behind this—and he didn’t doubt in the least that they could be—then it wouldn’t happen again. He’d show the two and anyone else what would happen if Eve was struck at again.
They were testing him; he could feel it.
Doogan had warned him when Eve’s name had first come up that there could initially be problems. There were those who would do anything to keep her brother from getting involved in their business. That was one of the things that made Eve so important to the operation at this point. The second and even more important reason was the report that someone had information that could clear this case up, and only Eve could convince them to come out of hiding.
The minute the rumors had started that Brogan was interested in her, the report had hit Doogan’s desk. A confidential informant had contacted Doogan claiming that the thefts of military files were linked to something far bigger than DHS realized, and there was information that someone had answers besides the thieves. Someone that might be convinced to come forward if he thought Eve Mackay was in danger.
A year of investigation and still they hadn’t figured out which of Eve’s friends could possibly know about the thefts, let alone know why the files were being stolen.
“What are you going to do?” Dawg murmured, as he seemed to still be studying the death spread across the porch.
Timothy was still silent, but the calculating rage that burned in his eyes assured Brogan that his silence didn’t bode well for whoever was behind the bloody mess Mercedes had walked out to.
“Go hunting,” Brogan answered just as quietly. “For fox.”
