by Lora Leigh
His fingers tightened in her hair. A burning pleasure to add to the burning pleasure of his taste. His hard body flexed, one hand left her hair to lift her closer, the other forced her head back, and his lips swallowed her protesting moan, until the taste of his kiss sank into her senses. The feel of it washed through her mind. His lips were like rough velvet, heated and exciting. They rasped over hers, caressed and sent shards of hunger spiking inside her.
When she thought she could stand the gentle rubbing of his lips against hers no longer, that she would die from the need for more, deeper and harder, he gave it to her.
His hand clasped the back of her head as he pulled her to his lap, lifted her into his embrace, and devoured her. With lips, teeth, and tongue, he nipped, licked, then slanted his lips over hers and buried his kiss into her.
Sensations—pleasure, hunger, and need—whipped through her system, attacked nerve endings, drawing them too close to the skin, making them too sensitive. She could feel every breath of air against her flesh, every touch of his hands, every separate sensation of his kiss. His tongue stroking her, his lips moving over hers, his groan meeting the mewling whisper of desire that fell from her lips.
Her hands were in his hair, fisted in it, holding him to her. If she could just keep his lips on hers, hold back reality for just a little longer, then she could find a way to be strong again.
Because she was definitely weak right now. Lost in his touch, melting against his chest and arching closer to him. Nothing mattered but this. His kiss feeding the hunger inside her.
"God! Jaci!" He moved his lips from hers.
She was outraged that he had stopped. Desperate, blinding need filled her, overwhelmed her.
"Don't stop." She fisted her hands harder in his hair, dragging his lips back to hers. "Just for a few minutes. Let me feel you for just a few more minutes."
He muttered a male groan and he was kissing her again. Blissful kisses. Kisses that let her sink into that world of pleasure once again—a world where Cam's strong arms tightened around her, lifted her—where security enfolded her.
She was only distantly aware of her back meeting the couch and Cam looming over her. He was surrounding her. His powerful arms were sheltering her, his kisses dragging her past fear and distrust, and filling her with his hunger, his need.
She let her hands slide from his hair to his shoulders, pushing frantically at the shirt in her quest to touch his flesh.
His knee slid between her thighs, pressed into the sensitive flesh of her silk-covered pussy, and sent talons of desire digging into her womb.
"Slow down, Jaci." He forced his lips away from hers once more, trailed them over her jaw, and ignored her cry of loss. "Easy. Let me touch you, sweetheart."
Jaci arched toward his lips, her head turning as they slid to her neck, her hips lifting against the pressure of his thigh, as his teeth scraped down her neck.
"I love your taste," he groaned as he pulled at her shirt, baring the upper orbs of her breasts for his lips.
He feasted on the rapidly rising and falling mounds, his lips and tongue playing against them as she tried to get closer, tried to force his head lower.
"Sweet Jaci."
She didn't know where Chase was. She thought she felt him at the end of the couch behind her head, but she couldn't drag her senses away from Cam long enough to be certain.
Buttons released from the blouse as he pulled at the edges, popping them loose, and she didn't give a damn. He could shred the blouse if he wanted to.
He bared her bra, delicate creamy lace, to his gaze, and within seconds released the front clasp that held it secure, then lowered his head.
"Cam!" she cried out.
His lips covered the hard, sensitive peak of her nipple and drew it into his mouth. There, he sucked and laved the peak, his tongue flicked over it, his teeth rasped against it.
Liquid pleasure burned beneath her flesh, as her head thrashed against the cushions of the couch. She needed more of him. More of his touch.
"I can't breathe," she panted, yet she arched closer.
"Me neither." He groaned, moving to the other peak. "I don't give a damn."
Another cry tore from her lips as he took the other nipple into his mouth and gave it the same rough loving. He sucked on her with driven hunger. He laved the tip with his tongue, then caught it between his strong teeth, worried it with exciting roughness, then suckled it again until she was writhing beneath him.
Her skirt was past her thighs, pushed to her hips by hard calloused hands, as her blouse fanned out around her.
"I want all of you." He nipped at the curve of her breast. "I want it all now, Jaci."
God yes. She needed it all. She needed him until she felt as though she were unraveling at the seams with the strength of that need.
"Yes." She tried to drag his lips closer. "Don't stop. Not yet. Please Cam, not yet."
He was torn. Cam could feel every cell in his body screaming at him to take her. Nothing mattered but sinking inside her.
He glanced behind her to see Chase loosening his shirt, then his slacks. Sometimes, Chase just watched, and that was okay because Cam couldn't drag his attention off the woman in his arms, and he would be damned if he could pull back from so much as a moment of this pleasure. Right now, while she was in his arms, he needed to know he held her. Completely. All of her.
God, he didn't want to lose her again. And he knew he wouldn't be able to deny the need, eventually, to take her alone.
He wanted her just like this, in his arms. She arched against the knee he had planted between her thighs, rubbing herself against him like a needy little kitten. And for the moment they both ignored Chase.
He had to pull his lips back from her breast and grit his teeth against the hunger burning through him.
His hand slid from her breast down her belly and over the skirt that had bunched at her hips—over it, to her lower stomach, and beneath the lacy elastic band of her panties.
He lifted his head and stared down at her, swallowing tightly as he fought to remember that he was not going to take her without making her realize she belonged to him.
Her face was wild with pleasure. Wild with it. Aubum hair surrounded flushed features. Her eyes had darkened until the green was mossy, the flecks of brown and blue like a hidden fire within it.
"Touch me." She whispered the words as he edged his thigh back just enough to side his fingers into paradise.
He felt perspiration bead along his body as her nails bit into his shoulders and her head tilted back with a surfeit of pleasure. Her thighs parted farther, allowing his fingers greater ease into the dewdampened folds of flesh between her thighs.
Sweet flesh, tender, it parted for him, the heated moisture of her response spilling to his fingertips. He eased lower, fighting to hold onto his control, until he couldn't help himself. He could not hold back the need. He pierced her with a single finger, amazed at how snug, how tight her heated pussy was for him, and then worked deeper inside her.
She arched against him, the muscles clenching on his finger, surrounding it with slick, heated syrup and satiny flesh. He pumped into her, watching her take him, the pretty pink flesh and auburn curls parting, wet, welcoming.
Hell, she was hot. Hot and writhing in his arms, reaching up for the fragile penetration, as her cries begged for more. And he was no less desperate. His cock was rigid beneath his pants, fully engorged, and aching for the tight clasp of her pussy.
"Cam." Her voice was rich, husky. "Oh God."
A surge of white-hot lust had one of his hands lowering to the belt cinching his waist, while the other, loath to leave the creamy heat of her body, continued to caress and cajole more of her sweet syrup from her.
He wasn't going to be able to hold onto his control this time. It would be rougher than he had wanted.
Harder. And fuck making her face anything except his possession. He had been born for this moment.
> Born to burn in the fire she ignited inside him.
She stretched beneath him, her arms reaching above her, hands gripping the armrest behind her head as she thrust against him. His finger slid deeper, retreated. Pierced her as her hips lowered, slid nearly free as she lifted.
With her body, with each sensuous movement, she was taking him into her, riding his finger with such voluptuous pleasure that his cock threatened to explode before he ever entered her with it.
He tore the belt buckle free, slid his finger from her, despite her husky, protesting cry, and was working to release his erection, when the shrill demand of his cell phone filled the room.
"No." Jaci reached for him, her eyes burning into his with the same need tearing through him. "Don't answer it."
It rang again, the imperious summons causing him to snarl with impatience as he jerked it from the holder on the band of his pants.
"What?"
Jaci watched the grimace that pulled at Cam's expression. Blood thundered through her body, the blistering need burned her from the inside out. But the reprieve was a lucky one, she realized suddenly.
She had lost her mind. She had to have. The careful control she had adapted over the years, the firm rein she had placed on her sensuality and her need to be held had slipped with Cam.
It had slipped with the most dangerous man she could have imagined. He wouldn't reveal her secrets, he wouldn't betray her—but he could destroy her.
She moved to pull her body from his, ignoring the tightening of his hand on her hip, pushing away his hold, as he watched her with that hawklike stare.
She rose quickly from the couch, ignoring both men now, pulling her shirt around her and straightening her skirt as she rushed to the bedroom. She closed and locked the door carefully behind her.
Her shirt was ruined. Buttons were missing, there was a tear at the shoulders. She ripped it from her body and tossed it across the room before pulling a soft, comfortable pullover from her closet, along with a pair of jeans.
As she finished dressing, there was a soft knock at the bedroom door.
"Don't make me break the lock, Jaci," Cam warned her.
Don't make him break the lock. He was so arrogant, so self-assured. So certain of himself that it oozed from every pore of his body and made her want to scream in outrage, because she couldn't find that confidence—couldn't seem to fake even a quarter of that self-assurance whenever he was around.
She turned the lock and jerked the door open.
Standing before them, it was all she could do to rein in the shiver that would have trembled through her body at the look Cam gave her. The way his gaze slid over her body, the mocking quirk to his kiss-swollen lips.
Did her lips look like that? Reddened and swollen and hungry?
"We need to go back to the office," he told her. "I'll see you in the morning."
One hand cupped her neck, his hold dominant, daring her to pull away as his head lowered and he delivered a quick, hard kiss to her lips.
"What was that for?" She jerked back, but only after he released her.
"That was one of those little good-bye kisses lovers share," he said sensually. "Surely you recognized it?"
She would have had to have a lover first. "We're not lovers," she told him through gritted teeth.
At that he smiled. A slow, sexy curve of his lips, rife with promise. "Of course we are, sweetheart. I told you, you can't go back now. The only question in this relationship is when we'll go forward."
"There is no going forward." She had made a grave tactical error with him, and she knew it. He had taken control from the first moment, and he wasn't letting it go. "I've decided enough is enough. It's more than obvious I can't handle you, let alone both of you." She waved her hand toward the silent, amused Chase.
Amusement glittered in his eyes. "You already have."
Jaci stared back at him in disbelief, and she had to admit to the temptation rushing through her at the amused passion, the arrogance in his eyes.
"You couldn't handle it seven years ago. You were too young then, and I knew it. You're not too young to understand it now, Jaci."
"No. Now, I'm old enough to know a disaster walking when I see it," she said, her voice scathing. "And that's what you and Chase are to any woman's heart, Cameron Falladay. A disaster walking."
He chuckled, the deep rumble of amusement stroking across her senses, despite her determination to remain resolute.
He leaned closer, and rather than retreating, she felt frozen before him, staring back at him, mesmerized by the fire in those light green eyes.
"So much pleasure," he whispered. "Remember how good it was last night, Jaci. How hot and sweet, and so good you thought you were going to die from it."
She could feel the sizzle in her womb, the need for that pleasure further dampening the flesh between her thighs. Dangerous. The potential for destruction was rising daily.
"You have to leave, remember?" She forced herself back from him, but she couldn't force back the images raging through her mind, or the fire it built low in her belly.
Just the thought of last night. The thought of being wanton, sexual, of taking all the pleasure she had ever dreamed of and knowing she was safe within it, was a temptation she found hard to deny, now that she had experienced it.
"We'll see," he murmured, stepping back to return to the living room.
"You'll see," she informed him, rather pleased by the strength in her voice. She didn't sound as though she were ready to submit and lay prone before the Falladay brothers, as they covered her in nothing but lust.
He smiled at her declaration. That sexy smile. The way his slightly fuller lower lip tempted her to taste it, and the way his eyes encouraged her to be bad, was a potent combination.
"I'll see you in the morning." He turned on his heel and headed for the door. "I'll pick you up on my way into the office and take you home tomorrow evening. If you need anything or need to go into town at any time, Chase or I will take you."
"Why?" Stunned, she followed after him. "I can rent a car." She would rent a car. She didn't need to spend any more time with the Falladay twins than she absolutely had to. That was a recipe guaranteed to wear away at her resistance.
"Why rent a car? I pass by here daily on my way into Ian's home office. The hotel charges an outrageous price for parking, and it would be inconvenient."
"Then I'll get a cab."
He was silent for long moments, just watching her, those eyes piercing inside her.
"Don't push me," he finally said softly. "I'm walking away now because I understand that pushing you too fast right now isn't a good idea. But I won't give up the few chances I'll have to get to know you again. And I won't let you throw them away."
"You would have to invest yourself first, Cam, and we both know you can't do that," she accused, hearing the roughness in her own voice, the fear in it.
She was weak, too weak to spend any more time in his company than she absolutely had to.
"However you want to see it." Powerful shoulders lifted in a careless shrug. "But you don't want to fight me too hard right now. My self-control isn't at its best when you're around. It never has been. And if push comes to shove, we both know, the lust is going to win. So let's not tempt that beast today."
For a second, the savagery of his determination held her speechless. And it wasn't fear that caused it. It was the incredible need to do just as he had warned her not to. To tempt the lust raging in his expression.
"I'll see you at nine in the morning." His fingers grazed her cheek, the incredible gentleness in that touch at odds with the battle she saw raging in his eyes. Because he wanted to tempt it as well. He wanted to push it and see how hot they would both burn, and she knew it.
Unfortunately, the fallout was going to be destructive.
Before she could argue, he unlocked the door and jerked it open, and as she stood there watching, he and Chase left the suite,
closing the door behind them and blocking the sight of the worst temptation she had ever known in her life.
Cameron Falladay had the power to make her forget who she was and the lessons she had learned over the years. That was dangerous. He was dangerous to her heart and to her soul, and she had to force herself to remember that.
Image
Nine o'clock the next morning came way too soon, as far as Jaci was concerned. The night before had been spent tossing and turning, visions of Cam and Chase moving through her dreams. Both twins filled with hunger, touching her, easing her into an embrace that sent fear roiling through her—because behind them, she could sense Richard and Annalee watching, waiting.
Not that she gave a damn what the two knew, she told herself repeatedly after she awoke. Unfortunately for them, a promiscuous reputation wouldn't destroy her career. It could hamper it mildly at this point, because she was finally establishing herself. She didn't give a damn about gossip; she had learned early not to. But they were a threat.
She could feel it in her dreams. They were waiting, watching, determined to destroy her. She had no idea how a relationship with Cam and Chase could affect the congressman and his wife. According to Courtney, Ian detested the congressman, though he had a mildly friendly relationship with Richard's father-in-law, the senator.
Dreams were just that, she finally told herself, as she put the last touches to her makeup and hair before finishing the last cup of coffee from the pot she had ordered from room service along with her breakfast.
At nine o'clock on the dot a knock sounded on the door to her hotel suite.
She breathed in quickly, ran her fingers through her loose hair, pushed it back from her face, then strode to the door and checked to be certain it was Cam before opening it.
She had dressed in a slim black skirt that ended just above her knees. The black tailored suit conformed to her figure and gave her a strictly business look that was slightly softened by a silky knit dove gray pullover she wore with it.