by Lora Leigh
“Janey, please …” Chaya began to protest.
“It’s his apartment. It’s in his name.” She shrugged. “It’s not a problem. I’ll also be posting ads this week for a manager for the restaurant. I’m thinking about going back to college.”
Strangely, Natches looked back at Alex. Alex stiffened, his eyes narrowing.
“Sudden decision, isn’t it?” Alex asked.
“Not really.” Janey shrugged. “I need a break …”
“Bullshit.”
Alex’s voice was carefully controlled, his gaze flat and hard.
She sipped at her wine again, her gaze locked with his.
“I’ll find another manager before I go, but I’ll be leaving within a few weeks.”
Ray, Maria, Rowdy, Kelly, Dawg, and Crista rose from their seats as Alex’s jaw tensed and Faisal watched the Mackays worriedly.
“Yeah, time for us to leave.” Dawg stretched and wrapped his arm around his wife before heading for the door. The others followed. Chaya and Natches stayed in place.
“Come here and give us a hug, Janey,” Dawg commanded.
“I, too, will leave.” Faisal watched Natches in concern. “But I do not like the thought of Janey leaving this town, Natches.”
Janey hugged Dawg as she listened to Natches and Faisal talking. She hugged Ray and took his kiss on the cheek, and Maria’s. Kelly’s hug was tight and hard, and Rowdy kissed her hair with a whispered “Nice try.”
Crista smiled and hugged her, then Dawg wrapped her in his arms, lifted her against him, and almost made a tear fall with his muttered “Don’t leave us. We love ya, ya know?”
“I know, Dawg,” she whispered back. “College calls, though.”
He chuckled at that. “You wish.”
Faisal stood before her then, his dark face and gleaming black eyes concerned. “I would not enjoy losing the aunt I have come to admire as I admire you,” he told her.
“You’re a hell of a nephew, Faisal,” she assured him with a quick smile. “Get back home. I’m sure you have classes tomorrow.”
She closed the door behind him, then moved back to her wine.
“I’ll go pack my bag.” She finished her wine. “I’ll call a cab from the bedroom.”
Chaya stood from Natches’s lap and curled into the corner of the couch as Natches lifted his head and stared back at Janey.
“Running away again?”
“Shut up, Natches,” Alex said calmly. “Take your wife and go home.”
Natches turned and gave him a long, level look. Alex missed it; his gaze didn’t leave Janey’s.
“Hell.” Natches pushed himself from the chair and looked at Chaya. “You ready, honey?”
“Not really,” Chaya said calmly. “I don’t like how the two of you are railroading her. I think I’ll stick around and play referee.”
“Thank you, Chaya.” Janey smiled tightly. “But I know how to fight my own battles when someone’s not holding the threat of a gun to my brother’s head.”
Natches tightened, the reference hard to miss. Yeah, Dayle had made certain she understood exactly what stepping out of line meant.
“You should have told me he was threatening you with me,” he growled.
She shrugged. “My bad.”
“Your bad?” He blinked back at her, anger glittering in his eyes. “What the hell is up with you?”
“Me.” She stared back at him, her lips firm, her gaze steady as she breathed heavily. “I’m tired of this, Natches. This isn’t my home. No matter how much I want it to be, it’s not going to happen. Now’s a damned good time to accept that.”
“Hell, Natches,” Alex drawled. “I finally met a Mackay that knows how to quit. Now, here’s one for the record books. Congratulations.”
His gaze never wavered from her.
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” she retorted coolly. “You can leave, too, by the way. I don’t think your services are required anymore.”
“My services?” His brows arched. “Well now, ain’t that too bad. But we can discuss that little particular after your brother leaves.” His gaze moved to Natches then. “Or not. All according to how pissed off he wants to get tonight, I guess.”
Chaya rose from the couch. “Yes, time for us to leave, honey.” She caught Natches’s hand as he glowered at Alex. “Now, Natches.”
“We’re going to discuss this,” he warned Alex.
“Uh-huh. Add it to the rest of the subjects you’ve warned me we’re going to discuss. I’m sure I’ll get around to it later.”
Janey watched, forcing back the trembling in her hands, feeling it settle in her stomach as her brother and sister-in-law left. Slowly. Natches was angry, but for once he was reining that anger in. That didn’t bode well for her. Alex didn’t move from where he leaned against the wall. His head tilted, his gaze growing curious as the door closed, and he reached out and slid the locks home.
“I asked you to leave as well,” she told him, keeping her voice low, the quiver out of it.
“You sure did.” He nodded his head slowly.
“Then why are you still standing here?”
“Because my dick’s still hard,” he answered her. “You made some pretty heavy promises tonight, Janey.” He straightened slowly. “We’ll see to those first. Then we’ll discuss that insanity you just spouted about going back to California.”
A shiver raced up her spine as he took a step toward her.
“I changed my mind about the supposed promises.” She tried to sneer. “Sorry, Alex. Go find blondie; I’m sure she’ll take care of that hard-on for you.”
He smiled. And that smile sent a nervous reaction shuddering through her so hard that this time, her hands did tremble. Her pussy quivered. Her clit became so hard, so sensitive, she swore the rasp of her panties was going to cause her to come as the reaction punched into her womb.
He looked wild. Sexy. Dangerous.
“Doesn’t work that way,” he growled. “Oh, baby, not even in your wildest dreams does it work that way.”
His arm snaked around her waist, jerked her to him. His hand cupped her neck, holding her in place. “Now I’ll just show you exactly how it does work.”
TEN
Alex couldn’t explain, even to himself, why the hell the thought of her leaving, running, affected him like it did. It made him crazy, made him wild. Made him determined to show her exactly why she wasn’t walking away from Somerset, or from him.
He’d warned her he was hard, warned her he wouldn’t be an easy lover, yet when his lips came down on hers, he found himself pulling back, holding back, more eager for the heat and seductive pleasure than the wild, hard clash of pure lust.
There was something about her small, fragile body that made him feel bigger, stronger than he was. Something about the strength of her hunger that filled him with a sense of awareness, of the primitive possessiveness that he had been fighting for years.
Janey was different. There was something so special, so intrinsically unique, about her, that he knew she would never recede into the back of his memories as every other woman had.
Janey would always demand his attention. Without design, without even trying; if she was near, she would always enchant his senses.
A terrifying thought for a man who had ensured that no woman ever chained his soul. If he had enough sense left inside him to think.
The moment his lips touched hers, there was no thought. There was nothing but Janey. Her lips opening beneath his, wild and hungry as her arms curled around his neck and she all but climbed his body in her attempt to get closer.
He clasped her neck, feeling its fragility beneath his palm. He could feel her pulse pounding in the side of her neck, and beneath his fingers he could feel the tension building at the back of the slender column.
Her shy little tongue touched his, then licked, sucking his tongue into her mouth. She moaned as his lips slanted over hers.
She was as untamed as the wind. He had felt it in her,
sensed it in her, even before he saw her dancing at that damned bar. Before he felt her body swaying, moving against his, and saw the exquisite joy she found in the dance.
Now he’d show her a different dance.
“You think it’s so easy to walk away,” he murmured against her lips. “Get up in the morning and walk away from this. I dare you.”
He deepened the kiss, leaning her into the wall as he lifted her, forcing her legs around his waist and pressing his cock between her thighs as he braced her against the wall.
One hand held her neck, the other her ass. His fingertips caressed and stroked as his tongue commanded her lips, her mouth. Deep, wicked kisses. Kisses that seared his soul even as those desperate moans echoing in her throat became more imperative.
Her hands were at the back of his head, trying to hold him to her. Sharp little nails pierced his scalp, adding to the sensations. He could feel the dominance, the hardcore sexuality inside him rising to the fore. But it didn’t overwhelm the kiss. Something else, a heavy vein of gentleness, a need for tenderness, tempered yet heated him further.
God, he was burning for her. His balls were on fire, his cock harder than it had ever been. If he didn’t get her to a bed then, he was going to end up fucking her against the wall.
He moved, stumbled a bit, trying to kiss her and get them to her bedroom at the same time. He wasn’t about to let her go yet. To release those lush, pouty lips that moved beneath his, suckled at his tongue and moaned with such earthy pleasure.
Damn her. She was twisting him in so many different directions he didn’t know what the hell to do with the feelings he could feel breaking free inside him.
He’d never known this rich, desperate tenderness for any other woman. Tenderness mixed with a lust so overwhelming he wondered if he would survive it.
Laying her back on her wide bed, Alex rose over her, holding her hips to him as he settled against her, both hands clasping her head as he moved his lips from hers to her jaw, then her neck.
He could feel the mark she’d left on him burning against his skin. Her mark. A brand. He’d never allowed another woman to mark him. The primal wash of lust he’d felt when she had done it, though, nearly had his cock pumping his seed into his jeans. And it created a hunger. A hunger to mark her just as effectively. To brand her. To leave his stamp of ownership on her.
Her neck arched and tilted to the side as he felt her breathing become harder, rougher. His lips slid over her neck, moved to the juncture of her neck and shoulder, where he knew she was most sensitive. He licked the spot, kissed it, then opened his lips over it and drew the tender skin into his mouth as he bit down on her.
She jerked against him as though electrified. Her hips arched into his, grinding against his cock, writhing beneath him. She was like a living flame in his arms now, and he was desperate for more.
Pulling back, he felt his teeth clench at the sight of the mark on her pale neck. It was deeper, the small bite darker, than he had intended. The fierce male pride that surged through him shocked him.
He stared down at her dazed face and wondered if this was what she had felt when she had seen her brand on him. This primal, overwhelming need to possess. For a man who had gone through life swearing to never possess anything that could be taken from him, it was a frightening feeling.
“I marked you back.” His voice was fierce, triumphant.
“You marked me long ago and just didn’t know it.”
Alex felt his abdomen clench at the declaration. If possible, he swore his dick thickened.
“You’re dangerous, baby.” He smiled down at her, hoping to take off the edge of near-obsessive hunger rising inside him as he levered up and forced himself to unbutton his shirt and shrug it from his shoulders rather than rip it off.
What the hell was wrong with him? He could be buried inside her now, pumping into that tight, hot little pussy and he was holding back instead.
It was that damned tenderness he couldn’t seem to push aside. He wanted her aware of him, so ready for him that when he took her, the pain would be minimal. The thought of hurting her sent shards of tension radiating through his mind.
“I love your body.” Her sigh was followed by the tentative touch of her fingers against his flexing abs. “So strong and hard. I wish I could wrap you around me.”
Christ. Her eyes. Those light green eyes stared up at him, wistful and filled with something that went deeper than hunger. It made him want to wrap around her, to become her personal shield, her blanket, her fucking life.
He was losing his mind to her.
He watched her, forcing himself to stay still as she pulled at his belt.
For a moment, regret flickered in her gaze as she pulled the belt free, and he knew what was going through her mind. She thought she was going to leave. Thought she was going to leave him. Oh, poor little Janey. She had another thing coming.
“Take your shirt off first.” He stilled her hands when she would have released his jeans. “I want to watch you take it off.”
She paused, blinked up at him, and her eyes darkened with a hint of self-consciousness. But she did it. She reached for the hem of her shirt and slowly lifted it. Her softly rounded belly was revealed, her breasts, then she was tossing it from her head.
And Alex was still staring at her breasts. They were perfect breasts. Not large, just right. Swollen little mounds topped with pretty cotton-candy pink nipples that were stiff, hard.
“I want to suck your nipples until you come from it,” he growled, and a flush worked over her breasts and up her neck. He couldn’t tear his eyes away long enough to see her flushed face. Yet.
He loved her nipples. His mouth watered to taste them, to draw them in, play with the hard little tips with his tongue.
“Your nipples make me sweat,” he told her roughly. “I want to suck them so bad it burns me alive.”
As he watched, those hard tips seemed to flush further. Rising over her, he licked at first one, then the other as he toed his boots off and kicked them over the side of the bed.
He tore at the snap and zipper of his jeans, working them off as he sucked at each hard little point. She was going wild beneath him. Her arms hugged his head, trying to push all of her breast into his mouth. Incredible. She was making him crazy with the taste, with each little cry that fell past her lips.
When he was naked, he tugged at her cotton pants, pulling her panties with them. He wanted her naked, wanted her bare. He wanted to cover her, wrap around her. God help him, he wanted to fulfill that need he heard in her voice for security, for safety. For pleasure.
Janey watched Alex’s face. Pleasure came in surprising ways, she had found. Not just the touch of his hands, or his mouth, but the look in his eyes, the tight, hungry grimace that pulled at his lips.
When she stroked his shoulders, his lashes would lift. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked her nipples, but each caress she gave him, each new touch, brought him pleasure as well. Brought her pleasure.
It was so good. The sensations traveling from the hard tips of her breasts to her womb were sizzling. His mouth covered her nipple, his tongue rasped it until she was writhing beneath him, crying out his name in a need so vicious she didn’t think she could bear it.
She felt as though she were burning up. That the heat in the apartment was too high. That some internal thermostat had stopped working.
“Fuck, your nipples are good, baby,” he drawled, his voice rough, sexy, as his dark gray eyes stared up at her. “Hard and sweet.”
As he spoke, one hand smoothed down her side to her hip.
“Almost as sweet as your pussy was in that truck tonight.”
A shocking surge of pleasure clenched her womb, and he grinned with wicked, naughty intent.
“Are you wet, Janey?”
Was she wet?
“What do you think?” she cried out. “Alex, you’re killing me.”
She lost her breath as one finger, just one, slid through her cleft, gathering her
juices and running around her clit.
“Ah yeah, sweet honey,” he whispered. “You’re so wet, Janey.” His finger ran down the cleft and circled the entrance to her vagina as his lashes dipped over his eyes. “So tight.”
His finger pressed inside. Janey gripped his biceps, felt them tensing beneath her and felt more of her juices meeting his penetration. Oh, it was so good. So much better than her own fingers. His calloused fingertip rasped just inside the opening, stroking her internal muscles as she clenched around it.
Janey turned her head, lips parted, pressing to that heavy muscle in his upper arm as he stroked her, stretched her. She was only barely aware of biting into the tough skin, drawing it into her mouth.
Oh, she was so going to mark him again. Because it was mark him or scream.
She screamed anyway seconds later as he added a finger, stretched her, pressing inside her and stroking her to insanity.
“You’re fucking tight, Janey. Do you know what this is going to feel like around my dick?” His voice was harsh, agonized. “You’re going to make me crazy once I get inside you, baby. Once this sweet pussy is gripping me, rippling around my cock like you’re rippling around my fingers.”
Her hips arched as she tried to drive the penetration deeper. She needed deeper, needed more of this exquisite, burning sensation. She could feel the small, tight thrusts through her entire body. Each lash of pleasure whipped through her veins, burned her deeper, hotter.
“Ah, sweet baby.” His head lowered, his lips roved over her breasts. He kissed, licked. He sucked at the mounds. Hard enough that she could feel it in her womb. Gentle enough that there was no fear, no pain. There was just Alex touching her. Touching her as he never had, as she had never believed he would.
“Janey.” His voice thickened, became rougher. “Baby. If I don’t fuck you, I’m going to come on your bed.” He licked at her nipples again and his fingers pressed in farther, rotating and sending a flash of burning pleasure tearing through her.
Then another. Another. His fingers were sliding deeper, taking her, working inside her with slow, controlled twists of his wrist. Janey moved her thighs farther apart, her feet braced on the bed as she tried to thrust into each penetration. Tried to take more than he was allowing her.