by Lora Leigh
"I'm sorry," he bit out, shaking his head at the feelings he couldn't make sense of. "I'm just trying to be as honest as I can with you. And I swear to God, that's more than any other woman has ever had."
"So I'm supposed to be thankful?" she retorted brutally, and he really didn't blame her for being pissed.
"You know, there's a difference between being curious about this lifestyle you've adopted for yourself, and allowing you and Chase to take over every part of me. I don't belong to you. Which means you'd better find control, because until we figure out where the hell this relationship is going, you won't be playing without it."
He almost grinned. "No glove, no love?" he snorted.
He caught the little twitch of her lips, the way her delicate nose flared to hold back the sudden spurt of amusement.
"If that's the way you want to look at it." She finally shrugged.
"I want you bare, Jaci," he told her softly. He wanted it with a desperation he could hardly control. It was primal. Overwhelming.
"And I want all of you, Cam." She turned her head, staring back at him with resolve. "Not just your body, not just your possession. I'm risking all I'm willing to risk with you at the moment." She needed him there. If nothing else she needed that.
Cam concentrated on the road as he fought himself. The past was like a broken mirror inside him, reflecting back at him in fractured memories.
The pain, the humiliation, the complete fury that he could be used so easily. The humiliation, he realized, had been the hardest part. How was he supposed to tell his brother, or the woman that held parts of his soul that he hadn't known he possessed, that he'd been a fucking whore for his aunt's aging, depraved friends?
It was sickening. But Davinda had been smart, she had known exactly how to hold him, how to force him into what she wanted him to do.
At fifteen he had been almost man-size. And so easy to work. Uncertain, lost without the parents that had spoiled and protected him and his twin, it had taken very little for his aunt to maneuver him. A little spiked soda and he had been nearly unconscious. Then came the pain. The photos. Her hole card against a young man whose sense of pride was so easily broken.
He would have done anything to keep Davinda from showing those pictures—from letting Chase or anyone else see them. And he had. He had done things that made his skin crawl, at the thought of them, until he found a way to break the bitch. Until he had what he needed to make certain she was gone—that he had the pictures, and that the inheritance she had been so certain she would get when he and Chase turned twenty-one never made it into her hands.
He wiped his hand over his face with a weariness he hadn't known in years. This was one of the reasons he had let her run seven years ago. They had been in their hometown and a part of him had been terrified those who had "bought" him, the few who were still alive, would talk.
He wanted to laugh at the thought now. He was sure a few of those old crones had had strokes from pure fear after Davinda was sent packing. They were afraid he was going to kill them, just as he had threatened he would.
And God help him, sometimes he almost believed he would have. He had nearly strangled the last one to death. Days before he turned eighteen. The malicious bitch had thought she was going to force him to spend the night with her. He would do it, or Davinda would show those pictures to his brother.
Before he'd realized what he was doing he'd had his hands around her throat, his fingers squeezing, and something inside him had gone stone-hard and icy cold. There had been no conscience, only a need to kill. It was a need he had barely walked away from that night. And he remembered it. He remembered that need with such strength that he had never allowed himself to spend the night in any woman's bed.
"Cam?" Jaci's voice drew him back from things he swore he wouldn't let himself dwell on. As he had told her earlier, regret changed nothing. Regretting the past and what it had created inside him was useless. But he'd lied to her, too, because the more time he spent with her, the more he regretted things he'd never believed he would.
Not the sharing. God, the sharing was pure, fucking pleasure, he couldn't help that. The thought of watching her, seeing her immersed in it, made him harder than hell.
But other things, other parts of himself. Those he regretted.
"Yeah?" he finally answered, realizing his voice was rougher than he liked, harder.
"How did the sharing start?"
He turned and stared back in her surprise. "What?"
"Sharing your women with your brother. How did it start?"
He smiled then. Because that memory was one of the better ones. Chase had thought his eighteen-year-old "virgin" brother needed to experience the birds and the bees. And Chase's then girlfriend, a pretty little coed from out of town, had been as wild as the wind, with a tempting little fantasy of doing it with twins.
"With a dare," he finally said, flashing her a smile, as that memory helped to bury the others. "Chase dared me."
"That doesn't explain why you keep doing it," she pointed out. "What does that have to do with . . ."
As they pulled into the garage beneath his and Chase's apartment he turned and stared back at her.
"Because he saved me that night," he finally answered her. "He saw the animal prowling inside me, the darkness and the inability to control whatever drove me. He saw it, and he showed me the outlet for it.
How do you explain why the grass is green or the sky is blue? Just because that's the color it is. The name given to it. It's the color it was created to be. Just as I'm the man I was born to be. No more. No less."
"Or the man something else made you?" she asked softly.
He shrugged then. "Who the hell knows, at this point, Jaci. But you can excuse it any way you want. It's damned powerful and pure fucking pleasure. And we both know it."
"All I know is that I want to own as much of you as you want to own of me." She surprised him with the answer, sent a shaft of pure lust shooting through his balls, and caused him to clench his hands around the steering wheel while she opened the door and stepped out of the car.
"What if I told you you already owned me?" he asked her.
She turned back with a sad little smile. "I'd call you a liar," she said. "I don't have enough of you, Cam.
And that might be what breaks this little almost-relationship we have going on here. Because the day will come when what little I have won't be enough. What will you do then?"
"Everything I can to change your mind," he told her, aware of the arrogance that was reflected in his tone.
She could think he was arrogant until hell froze over, but he wasn't going to lose her. Whatever it took, he'd do it. He just couldn't tell her. He wouldn't be able to bear the disgust he would see in her eyes if he did.
He loved her. He wasn't fighting it, he had no idea if what he saw in her eyes was really love or just his own wishful thinking. Hell, he'd loved her seven years ago. It had nearly destroyed him when she turned away from what he was, without so much as considering the needs that drove him. But he had understood. He had let her go. And the hunger for her had only grown.
And Cam knew, it wasn't going to go away.
Chase watched as Cam and Jaci got silently out of the Jaguar. He could feel the tension as he neared them, Jaci's luggage in his hands, and watched as Cam pulled her bags from the back of the car.
For years he had fought to feel something through that twin bond they had once shared so long ago.
Chase remembered when he stopped feeling it. When he started feeling as though the brother he had known since conception had died. Until they had learned Jaci was arriving at the mansion, that lack of a bond had only gotten worse over the years.
Now he wished he could make sense of what he did feel. Cam's guard was dropping; whatever he had done to block his nightmares and the echoes of emotions that went along with that twin bond was weakening.
He could thank Jaci for that, and he knew i
t. As he watched his brother escort her up the staircase to the lower floor of the converted warehouse, he knew that Cam's feelings for Jaci had started it.
Cam had always had a soft spot for Jaci, even before he had started desiring her. She had been a precocious snot-nosed little kid that trailed after Cam every time she saw him.
Come to think of it, Jaci had started trailing after him about the time Cam had started drawing away from everyone else. Just after he turned fifteen. With her big eyes and her wide smile, she had bounced around Cam every time she saw him. And she had known him even when he was with Chase; Jaci had always been able to tell them apart.
"I can't believe I'm doing this." Jaci was laughing at Cam as they entered the lower apartment. "You are aware aren't you, that bringing me here is like giving an artist a blank canvas, or a writer a blank journal?"
"I told you, do what you want with it." Cam's voice was patient and sincere, surprising Chase. Nothing he had done over the years had ever convinced Cam to put up so much as a picture. Anything Chase had gotten for Cam's apartment always ended up back in his own apartment, slipped back in there by Cam while he wasn't looking.
He shook his head as he moved through the large open room to the screened-off bedroom, and put Jaci's luggage on Cam's bed.
If she thought the apartment was sterile, he could only imagine what she thought of the bedroom. Cam didn't even have a fucking blanket on the bed. There was a sheet and a few pillows thrown on the headboard. Chase knew for a fact his brother slept on the couch with nothing but a light throw blanket for warmth.
The large sectional couch had been bought with sleeping in mind, Cam had told him once. For some reason, his brother hated beds. Another of those anomalies that had begun in his teens.
Jaci stared around the bedroom. The bed was plain. The wood chest and dresser plainer still. There was a closet at the side, open and empty.
She felt like crying. There was nothing in Cam's apartment that proclaimed it as his. And here, in the bedroom, the one room that most people marked as their own more than any other, it was more sterile than the rest of the apartment.
"You can do whatever to it." Cam cleared his throat behind her, staring around the screened-off room and seeing what she saw. Starkness. Brutal emptiness.
Hell, he should have at least bought a comforter for the bed, for appearance's, sake if nothing else.
"You can even do the frills and stuff." He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at her stiff back.
He glanced at Chase. His brother shook his head and turned on his heel, walking from the partitioned room. Son of a bitch. He grit his teeth and held back the ire building inside him. So he didn't like bedrooms. So the hell what?
"Hell, it's not that big a deal," he finally snapped. "I don't like beds, why would I care about the fucking bedroom?"
"You're right." She swung around to face him, a bright smile curling her lips, though her eyes were shadowed. "It's not that big a deal. Like I said, a blank canvas. I have a free hand through the whole place, right?"
"The whole place." He shrugged easily.
"You're paying for it," she told him as she picked up the first of the dress bags and moved to the open walk-in closet. "I hear Ian pays you a killer wage, so you should be able to afford it."
Of course he could. He didn't have many vices. The Jaguar was his biggest expense. They'd bought the warehouse cheap, using money from the sale of the house in Oklahoma and some savings they had. He didn't care about the damned money, either.
"I'll make sure you have a credit card," he promised.
It might be nice. She would probably pick out rugs and stuff. Frilly bedroom stuff. Maybe stuff some flowers in vases and put them somewhere. He could handle that. It was a woman thing. Women liked their frilly stuff.
She was here, that was what mattered. That was all that mattered. He could handle anything else.
18
Cam stood in the kitchen, his hands braced on the bar, his head lowered as he fought the need to go to Jaci. He could hear the whisper of her movements through the cavernous apartment. He could smell her.
He could almost feel her warmth. And he needed it.
He lifted his head and glanced at Chase where he stood by the balcony doors, staring out into the heavy covering of trees that separated the building from the street.
They could go to her, take her now. Make her scream with pleasure. And that was what he needed to do.
Chase was as highly sexed as Cameron; having her now would be pure fucking pleasure.
Except, the sudden need for something more was building inside him like a dark, shadowed wave. It was rife with emotion. It was dangerous. He knew how fucking dangerous it was, because being with Jaci, alone, would open parts of him he hadn't allowed free for twenty years.
That was the reason for sharing her. The need to hold back the emotions that clawed at him, the needs that filled him like demons that refused to rest. He had forced back every emotion he could find within himself for too many years. Jaci threatened that.
And now, an unfamiliar hunger threatened the distance he needed between them. A clawing, desperate need to claim her, to mark her, to show her she was his. He shared her body, her pleasure, because it was so fucking good, so damned hot that he knew letting it go entirely might never happen.
But the moment she stepped into his apartment, as his woman, something had snapped free inside him and he couldn't rein it in.
As he watched Chase, his brother turned to him, his expression somber, thoughtful.
"I'm going upstairs," he suddenly announced.
Cam tensed, hunger tightening through him.
"For how long?" The question slipped free, and Cam grimaced at how revealing it was.
Chase's lips quirked knowingly. "For as long as I need to, Cam," he said, moving through the living room to the stairs. "For as long as I need to."
Cameron stood still, silent, watching until Chase disappeared up the staircase and the upper door closed softly. He breathed in harshly. It was slipping. His careful control over the twin bond they had once shared. Losing control of that was dangerous. Because sometimes, Cam had nightmares, and in those nightmares the past tortured him. It was nightmares he and Chase had once been able to share so easily.
He didn't have to sleep with Jaci to take her alone, he reminded himself. If he slept on the couch, then he didn't normally awake to the nightmares. As long as he didn't sleep in a bed, he didn't dream of his fingers wrapped around an aged neck as murder filled his soul.
If he didn't sleep with Jaci, then there was no risk. She wouldn't know, and Chase wouldn't know.
And he could take her, take the woman his heart claimed as he needed to take her. And that was exactly what he was going to do. He pushed away from the counter and headed through the apartment. To the woman. To his woman.
Image
It didn't take Jaci long to store her clothes in the empty closet, dresser, and chest. There was even plenty of room to spare. None of Cam's clothes were present. The bedroom was as bare as the rest of the apartment, perhaps more so.
There wasn't even a blanket, there were no cases on the pillows, there was just a sheet, white, no frills, and rather cheap.
The bed was just a metal frame. Could any one bedroom be more sterile than this one? Could any one man's life be more sterile than Cam's?
She stored the suitcases in the top of the closet, then turned and rubbed her hands together slowly. This wasn't what she came here for, exactly. At least not yet. She had intended to tackle Cam later, but now would work, too. She had planned this for a while, she knew what to do, she knew how to do it. She would just have to divert Cam a little bit until she neutralized the Robertses. Once she finished with that, then she could concentrate on making Cam's life a little less sterile.
As she moved out of the closet, she came face-to-face with him. More accurately, with his bare chest.
Broad and mus
cular, so horribly scarred, a representation of the scars that were inside his soul as well.
"I need you."
Yes, she could see he needed. She could see the hunger in his eyes, the darkness. She saw things she didn't want to admit to, and suspected worse. What had happened to him when he was in the military?
What horrible things had they done to him?
She reached up and touched the scars on his chest, her fingertips trailing over the raised ridges as she lifted her eyes to his.
That darkness she had always sensed within him was growing. A sexual core perhaps. A hunger and a need that was darker, deeper, than any she had glimpsed inside him before.
"Alone," she whispered, seeing, feeling, that need for more.
His hand cupped her neck, his fingers curling around it, strong and broad, heated.
His head lowered, his strong teeth catching her lower lip, pulling at it as his tongue rasped against it.
"Just us here." His voice was dark, dangerous.
"Where—"
He laid his fingers against her lips as he pulled back.
"He's not here. He can hear nothing upstairs. I promise."
"What would he hear?" she asked as he moved back, catching her hand and drawing her to the bed.
"Take off your clothes, Jaci."
She stood beside the bare bed, staring back at him as his hands moved to his belt.
He wore only his pants, dark jeans that molded his thighs and cupped the erection raging beneath them.
He loosened the belt, then tugged at the metal snap.
"You're wasting time," he told her quietly.
Yes, she was.
She gripped the hem of her shirt, and the soft, dusky rose material slid over her head and fell to the floor.
Her hands went to her jeans as she toed off the sandals she wore.
"Leave the panties on," he told her, as her fingers hooked in the thin elastic band beneath the jeans and she moved to slide them from her hips.
She left the panties on. The jeans cleared her hips and pushed slowly down her legs, while he removed his own—until he was naked, and she stood before him in nothing but a red silk thong.