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by Lora Leigh
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?
&nb
sp; 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.