Authors: Lora Leigh
He pulled back, pressed in, harder, deeper.
She dug her nails into his shoulders and shuddered. Tremors were racing through her, she could feel her orgasm, just there, so close, almost enough.
"Make me burn."
His head shook again.
"Make me scream, Cam. I dare you."
Chase jerked beneath her, driving his cock deeper, retreating precious inches and impaling her with a swift, hard stroke. The pleasure made her vision glaze, her lips part in suspended pleasure.
Cam lost it then. He saw the haze of ecstasy wash over her face as Chase lost patience and began fucking her. Short, tight strokes in her ass that tightened her pussy further. And the extremity of the pleasure on her face broke the last threads of control Cam possessed.
His hands tightened on her hips and he surged inside her. Quick hard strokes, pumping into her as an agony of pleasure clenched around his cock. He could feel her juices weeping around his cock, slickening his way even as the tender muscles tightened around him.
He buried it to the hilt, again and again. Each desperate lunge inside her shot pleasure to the base of his skull until he wondered if he could survive it. He'd had her once today, and still he was fucking her as though it were the first time. Moving furiously between her thighs, shafting hard and deep and feeling her melt around him as her orgasm began to shatter her.
And it took him. He heard his shout, heard Chase's, and felt the violent, overpowering pleasure of his release spurting inside her, possessing her, marking her. Belonging to her.
Sweet mercy, he was dying inside her. Coming until he was certain the top of his head had exploded along with the seed erupting from his cock. And still he was thrusting, fucking, pouring into her and losing parts of himself to her.
He was lost to her. It was only a matter of time and he knew it. Only a matter of time before she knew everything, every secret, every shame. And he would hold onto her for as long as he could. Because only this, only Jaci, mattered.
The next evening, Jaci packed her bags at the hotel and waited for Cam and Chase to pick her up to move her into their apartment. She had put off the move to give herself time to think, to get her own priorities straight. She wasn't denying what Cam meant to her any longer or how much she wanted what he wanted, but even after a night and nearly a full day of fruitless soul searching, she still couldn't decide if the risk was worth the memories she would build, if things didn't work out.
And the situation with the Robertses wasn't even close to being resolved. They hadn't contacted her or Moriah, and Jaci was beginning to wonder if that was another plan she was going to watch disintegrate around her. Because she sure hadn't managed to work things out where Cam was concerned.
As she placed her bags next to the doorway, she heard the security lock disengage. Cam had the extra key. The door swung open and he stepped inside, his expression still and satisfied.
Courtney had been surprised to learn she was moving in with Cam and Chase. According to her, they had never invited a woman to stay with them, not even for a weekend. And when Jaci had tried to pin Cam down to a time frame, he refused to discuss it.
"Is this everything?" He picked up one of the suitcases and several dress bags, before handing them to Chase, then collected the other two bags and several more dress bags for himself.
Jaci picked up her purse, a travel bag, and her notebook case, and gave one last look around the sitting room.
"That's it."
"Hell, you don't travel light, do you sweetheart?" Chase grinned as she followed them into the hallway.
"For a several-month stay?" She rolled her eyes. "I like clean clothes, Chase, and the convenience of wearing more than a few outfits. Courtney told me to plan for six months. If the designs for the mansion are accepted, then she wants me to begin on the house as well."
And it appeared she might be picking up a bit more work in the Alexandria area. She'd had several calls from potential clients that she had met at the Brockheim Ball. She was hoping to meet with them soon and discuss details. She wouldn't mind staying around for a while, she thought. Whether things worked out with Cam or not, she had a few friends here. It would be a good place to settle down for a while, perhaps to build enough of a client base to make her dream of her own studio a reality.
They entered the elevator with Cam strangely silent. The ride down to the parking garage was over quickly, and within minutes they were storing her luggage in the back of the Jaguar and Chase's jeep.
Perhaps it was best that she didn't give herself more time to consider this move, she thought. With the weekend beginning, it would give her time to settle into the apartment, perhaps to settle in with Cam. To try to make sense of the fascination he had always been for her.
Always.
"Regretting?" he asked as he closed the door behind him and started the motor.
"I rarely do things that I think I'll regret," she told him as she smoothed her hands down her jean-clad thighs. "Maybe you're the one who's regretting?"
"I learned not to regret what I can't change." He slid the car into gear and drove from the underground garage.
"You're luckier than the rest of us mortals, then," she said.
He shifted the gears, his thigh bunching as he used the clutch, the muscles of his lower arm flexing and tightening as he moved the gearshift. Damn, why did watching him shift gears always make her hot?
"How am I luckier?" he finally asked. "I would have assumed I was smarter. I learned a long time ago how useless regret can be."
There was darkness in his tone, not anger, but a dark realization that made her realize the hunger was growing inside him.
She looked at his face, seeing the hard angles, the tightening of his jaw, and felt that same restraint inside her he had talked about the day before begin to unravel further.
It was as though the wickedness she could see building inside him called to a once-hidden, wicked core inside her. She wanted to get wild with him. Right here, right now. She wanted to be wicked, wet, and seductive, and she wanted to see him lost inside her. Just as he had been the day before on the balcony.
"How long has it been since you've had sex without a condom?" Suspicion was tearing through her, because she knew Cam. She knew his control.
"Until you, I've never forgotten." The tightly leashed hunger throbbed in his voice.
Was this what she really wanted? Jaci stared at him, realizing the anger that pulsed just beneath the surface.
"What about when you and Chase share your women? Are you as particular then, Cam?"
He glanced at her, his pupils flaring, the green of his eyes darkening. "I've always been more particular, until now. With you, I won't be."
Jaci's lips parted in surprise, in shock. "Have you lost your mind?"
"I'm warning you." He stared straight ahead now. "I've never taken a woman without a condom, Jaci. I've never claimed another woman. I'm claiming you."
"And if I hadn't been protected?" she snapped back.
He gave her a mocking look. "I ran the investigation on you, sweetheart. I know better."
Well, that took care of that. "And this is all your decision? I don't think so, Cam." She shook her head furiously. "What the hell gives you the right to think you can make that choice for me?"
"The fact that I lost my fucking mind with you," he stated, obviously not pleased with the fact. "For God's sake, do you think I didn't realize then what the hell was going on? I don't have any control with you alone, Jaci. There's not a chance in hell I'll have any, once things get wilder."
Once things got wilder. Once he and Chase started touching her again, once they were taking her again.
He didn't like admitting it, he didn't like the loss of control. Cam shifted gears with a brutal flick of his wrist, grimacing at the grinding, before pulling back and breathing in roughly.
"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.