by Lora Leigh
"I'm protected," Keiley said breathlessly. "I won't get pregnant."
His hips jerked, driving full-length inside her as he felt agonizing, clenching pleasure tighten his balls and rip up his spine.
"Ah, fuck!" he groaned.
He was doomed. Dead man walking.
He shook his head, fighting against the incredible power of the pleasure rocking him to his soul.
"It's like being inside a dream, isn't it?" Mac rasped softly. "A wicked dream so hot, so searing, that you know if you wake up you're going to die."
Jethro's hands tightened on her thighs as he fought to breathe through the rippling, clenching pleasure racing from his cock to his chest.
Beneath him, Keiley was arching, screaming his name, her juices heating her pussy until he swore they would both combust from the pleasure of it.
As good as it was, as shaken as he was, he couldn't stay still. He jerked back, impaled her again, watching as the plump folds of her pussy parted, then closed around his cock, feeling the viselike grip of her inner muscles stroking over him.
Then he was moving, thrusting harder, coming over her as Mac eased back, pulling her into his arms, feeling her nails biting into his flesh as he began to pump inside her.
Her legs wrapped around his waist, her hips arched, her pussy tightened—ah, God, she was so tight—and a second later he felt heaven. He felt her lock down on him, tiny muscles clenching and stroking his cock as he buried himself inside her over and over again. Felt the tight little channel pulse, clench, then explode around him.
He meant to pull out. He meant to hold back his own release to spill to the blankets, but she caught him off guard. Screaming his name, her arms tight around him, her hard nipples searing his chest as her pussy burned along the length of his cock.
Before he could catch himself, he was spilling inside her. Pumping hard and desperate as spurt after spurt of semen filled her willing flesh.
He gasped her name, pressed his lips to her neck, clenched his eyes tight, and prayed for a miracle. A miracle because he was falling in love with his best friend's wife.
He was aware of Mac's shattered groan at his side and knew his friend had found his own release. Jethro collapsed, barely managing to catch his weight with his elbows.
He had to force himself to stop whispering her name into her neck. Had to force himself to push his own fractured emotions deep beneath the now-shattered shield he had once erected around his heart.
He had to force himself to remember that he was just there for the fun. That was it.
That was all. Just for the fun.
Chapter 14
Keiley stared at the computer screen, the program pulled up, the code she was attempting to finalize, and gave a weary sigh before lowering her head and rubbing at her forehead.
She didn't have a hope of keeping her mind on what she was doing. The events of the night before were playing before her mind. Like shadows on a dusky summer evening, whispering over the memory of her own pleasure, the excitement that tore through her, the shuddering ecstasy, the emotions—
This wasn't happening.
Keiley clenched her fingers in her hair as she pressed her lips together, fighting through the confusion rising inside her.
None of it made sense. She was certain this wasn't what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be fun, right? Mac didn't intend for this to go on indefinitely. He didn't intend for her to care for anyone other than him.
But she was beginning to care, and that wasn't acceptable. It was a betrayal.
She shook her head, forcing herself back to the program, to the job she had been hired to do, rather than the mess her husband was making of her emotions.
As her head lifted her gaze was caught by Jethro's laptop, its slender connection attaching it to her computer, running programs within programs and tracking and tracing any incoming messages or e-mails. Jethro had told her quite specifically to stay off-line and let the program do its work. They didn't want the stalker actually engaging her in communication. They wanted to make certain there was no access to her. No way to track her. No way to harass her.
"Stay off the computer, Keiley." Mac walked into the office for the fourth time in an hour, his voice firm as Keiley stared at the computer.
"I have work to do." Saving her work, she shut the program down before staring at the minimized chat and relay programs she normally ran on a regular workday.
She was logged into two open forum conferences, though her message bar was set to away. Her private communication programs were open, as was another chat line. But Keiley wasn't there. She was staring at her desktop instead in disgust.
"The Playboy gets his kicks out of terrorizing the wives of his victims," Mac repeated.
"Don't give him access and he'll have to change his tactics, therefore making him easier to catch," she finished in irritation. "I know that, Mac."
She pushed away from the desk, straightened, and moved around the desk.
"I can't just sit here and stare at an empty computer screen, and I can't stand to work wondering what the hell is going on in my conferences." She heard the anger in her tone even as she found herself unwilling to push it back further.
"Hey. It's okay." He caught her in his arms as she moved to pass him.
From behind, he wrapped her in the strength and warmth of his body, and she wished it were comforting her. She wished she could find some peace within the confusion twisting through her mind.
"Too much too fast," she whispered brokenly, her hands latching onto his wrists as she leaned back into him, trying to absorb his strength, to hold onto it.
"I know." He kissed the top of her head and held her safe.
But she had found that she could find the same feelings that she found with Mac in another man's arms.
Keiley tensed at the thought, suddenly desperate to get away from him, desperate to clear her head of his scent and his warmth to make sense of the emotions she couldn't seem to get a handle on.
"You don't know, Mac." Tearing from his arms, she lifted her hand in a halting motion, feeling him reach for her again, feeling her own weaknesses overwhelming her. "You don't know what I'm feeling. And you don't how frustrating this is. How could you? It's not you that bastard is using as a tool to test you."
"And you think watching him tear you apart doesn't tear me apart?" His voice deepened, grew rougher. "You're my wife, Keiley."
"Am I?" She turned back to him, her breathing rough, the anger and the frustration boiling inside her. "Am I your wife or a toy you've grown tired of playing with, Mac?
Personally, I'm starting to feel more and more like the toy."
She watched his jaw flex, the way his eyes began to brew with the turbulence of emotions suddenly boiling beneath the surface.
"You were never a toy, Keiley," he said. "And you can't deny you found something you were looking for yourself when Jethro came to our bed. Don't belittle us both by denying it."
She wanted to lie. She wanted to scream out a denial in his face and strike out at him for the emotions she could no longer make sense of. She wanted to make him pay for the turmoil in her heart, and in her head.
He chuckled then, lighting a fuse to the anger raging inside her, the arrogance in his expression, the knowing sensuality and certainty in his eyes setting a blaze inside her head that threatened to turn into a conflagration of fury.
"Keiley, it's okay," his voice gentled. "You've sat in here by yourself, thinking about it, remembering it, knowing you can't escape it, and I know you're scared." His jaw clenched as his expression softened. "Nothing's changed."
"That's not true!" Her voice began to rise.
"What's changed then?" he asked. "Tell me how it's different, Kei. I'll make it better."
"Everything!" she cried. "This—this is too much, Mac."
"What's too much, Kei? The emotion? The need? Finding out that there's more to us than you imagined? You always k
new that. If you hadn't, you wouldn't have been pushing when you began to realize you weren't getting all of me," he told her fiercely.
His eyes. If they had been angry, if he had been angry, she could have fought. But she couldn't fight his gentleness or the truth that he made her acknowledge. That it was more than she imagined. More pleasure, more hunger, more emotion than she ever wanted to lose.
"Look at you," he said then. "Your eyes are nearly green with the heat inside you. You make me so damned hard I can barely breathe when you try to fight what I know we both want."
He moved forward. Keiley retreated.
She wanted to beg him to stop, she wanted to beg him to take her. She wanted to scream in frustration and whimper in arousal.
"Stop, Mac." She stopped. Holding her ground as he paused in front of her, his head tilting toward her, watching her with a small quirk to his lips, almost a smile, full of knowledge.
This part was the Mac that held her soul. Gentle loving. It was being brought back to her that she had sensed the depth of his sexuality during the beginning of their relationship, had sensed the secrets he held back from her. And she had ignored them.
She had pushed aside her own wariness and let him hide from her. She was at fault as much as he was, yet acceptance wasn't as easy for her.
It wasn't Mac she was having problems accepting, though, and she knew it. It was herself. It was realizing that this wasn't going to be a game. It wasn't just an interesting episode in their lives. It was going to change them all.
"Look at your face," he said, his voice soft. "Do you have any idea what it does to me to see that battle raging in your eyes? To watch you learning yourself, Keiley?"
"Learning myself? I'm not learning myself, Mac, I'm destroying myself."
She turned and left the room, left him before she revealed more than she wanted to, more than either of them could handle.
In running from Mac, she ran headlong into Jethro, though. Dressed in snug jeans and no shirt, barefoot and leaning against the kitchen counter with a cup of fresh coffee, his gaze searching as he watched her, then flicked behind to Mac.
"Everything okay?"
He couldn't just keep his mouth shut, could he?
"Everything's fine."
Or it would be if her breasts weren't swollen and sensitive, if her sex weren't heated and slick with the warmth of the hungers raging through her. If she could just get the image and the memory of him kneeling between her thighs, entering her, stretching her, and burning inside her womb as he thrust inside her.
If she could forget that she had felt his semen filling her, rocking her higher, and pushing her own orgasm past endurable limits.
"Everything's fine, Jethro." Mac lent his own voice to the assurance, which only pissed her off further.
She continued through the kitchen and headed briskly for the doorway. She had to get away from them. Escape. She had to escape before she humiliated herself. Before she begged them to take her.
She couldn't live like this, she told herself as she rushed for the stairway. She couldn't feel torn between her husband and another man. She couldn't have her emotions destroying her like this, because as God was her witness, she would end up destroying them all.
"No, Keiley." Mac caught her at the first step. "Don't run from this, baby."
His hold was gentle, pulling her into his thighs and off her feet as escape was so close within her grasp.
"Mac, please—," she whispered, realizing that he was heavily aroused.
She could feel it. Smell it. She was weakened by it.
"No!" She couldn't. Not again. She couldn't let the insidious emotions creeping inside her take room. And they would. One more instance of her husband allowing another man to take her and she would lose the battle she could feel beginning inside her.
"Just no?" he whispered at her ear, his voice and his hold so gentle it sapped her strength.
She could feel him behind her, thick and hard, pressing against her buttocks as his lips caressed her neck with heated demand.
Her eyes closed as the need began to overwhelm her. Feeling Mac lift her, cradling her in his arms as he moved up the stairs.
"You promised," she whispered into his neck.
"To love you, protect you," he murmured. "Do you really want me to let you go, Kei?"
He gently laid her on the bed seconds later, but as her frantic gaze moved over his shoulder, she didn't see Jethro. She didn't see the dark visage of the man whose eyes haunted her with shadows.
At least she knew some of Mac's demons. Parts of the brutality of his past. She had lived long enough in Scotland Neck that what Mac hadn't told her, others had.
She knew his pain. She knew his need for comfort when the demons rose within him.
Jethro's struck her deeper, harder, for the very fact that she knew so little about him.
"What are we doing to our marriage, Mac?" But she wasn't moving, she wasn't attempting to escape. Instead, she watched in rapt attention as he quickly undressed.
"Making it deeper, Kei, stronger," he whispered sensually, suddenly stilling and staring back at her silently as she gripped the hem of her shirt and jerked it over her head.
She needed him. She needed her husband. She needed to know that the desire was just as sharp—no, sharper, hotter—than it had been with Jethro. She needed to know she wasn't losing the dreams she had woven around them, that she wasn't losing the man she loved.
As he watched her, she felt the hunger rise inside her, hotter, stronger. She scooted to the edge of the bed, her legs draping over it as her fingers went to the snap and zipper of her shorts.
"You're falling behind, Mac," she breathed out imperatively as she glanced at the erection straining beneath the fly of his jeans.
She was skimming the shorts down her legs and dropping to her knees in front of him as he tore the belt loose. Brushing his fingers aside with frantic need, she tugged at the metal clasp, then eased the zipper down.
The material smoothed down his legs along with his underwear, leaving the thick, heavy length of his cock to her avid gaze.
"Just us," she pleaded, filling both hands with the heated length of male flesh as her tongue licked over the dark, heavily flushed crest while she stared up at him.
His gaze moved over his face as his fingers threaded through her hair.
"We're the only two here," he assured her before his fingers slid through her hair. A grimace controlled his face as she allowed nothing but her tongue to touch the engorged head of his cock.
She stared back at him, fighting to hold onto her control as his fingertips touched her cheek gently.
"Just us," she said desperately as she lifted her head.
"Yes. Just us."
Keiley stared back at him desperately as her mouth covered his cock head once again, filling her mouth with his flesh. She should have been nervous, frightened. She should have come to her feet and told him to jack off instead. But she couldn't. She couldn't because she needed this just as much as he did.
Leaning back, she licked her lips slowly before trailing her fingers over the upper mounds of her breasts, then glanced over the tight, hard nipples as he stared down at her.
"Like this?" she whispered breathlessly needing to tease, to tempt.
This she liked. Her fingers surrounded her hard nipples, adding a heavy pressure, caressing them with enough strength to redden the hard tips.
His eyes dilated as she breathed in roughly. He slid his hand into her hair before wrapping the fingers of his other hand around the base of his erection.
She knew what was coming, felt it burn through her nipples as she tweaked them erotically, felt it clench in her womb and spill slick heat between her thighs.
"Which way do you prefer?" His voice was husky. Wild.
"This." Her fingers tightened on her nipples until it felt like teeth were nipping the tight buds, causing her lips to part helplessly with pleasure.
A move Mac took full advantage of. With his gaze still on her trapped nipples, the head of his cock sank into her mouth.
Keiley moaned as she heard Mac's guttural growl. Her lips closed on the head of his erection and sucked with delicate greed as she pinched and caressed her own nipples.
She stared up at Mac, watching his expression tighten, the hard, hungry grimace on his face as he held her in place and pulled back, removing his cock from her possession.
She licked her lips, pursed them, and blew over the damp head.
And she watched the control he was relying on so heavily break. But it didn't break in any way that she had expected. She expected him to fall upon her in desperate need. To spread her thighs and fuck her like the conqueror she could see glittering in his eyes.
When Mac's control broke, though, it revealed more than a conquering sex god. It revealed the man who knew how to love.
He pulled her quickly to her feet, his hand once again shackling her wrists behind her back, his head lowering, his lips covering one hard, exquisitely sensitized nipple.
He didn't just suck it into his mouth. His teeth scraped, nipped, his tongue swirled and licked as he held her before him. Each caress was diabolically laid, performed and practiced with sensual precision. His free hand, calloused fingertips flat against her flesh, smoothed down her abdomen and tucked between her thighs.
Before Keiley could catch her breath or gather herself for the coming thrust, two of Mac's fingers began to work slowly, gently, inside the wet, hot depths of her core.
"You like that," he groaned, his head lifting as she arched in his arms.
"Yes." She writhed on his fingers. "Oh God, yes."
"My fingers fucking inside you, caressing you." His words followed suit, his fingertips curling, caressing with devastating results while he held her practically immobile with his hard body and restraining hand.
Rapid-fire bursts of pleasure exploding inside her body as Mac bent her over his arm, his lips lowering to play with her nipples again as his fingers moved inside her, stroking deep, caressing her, burning through her mind.