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.

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 muscular, 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.

“I knew that was a thong.”

She stood still as he began moving around her, gripping his cock with the fingers of one hand, massaging the engorged crest slowly.

“How did you know?” She swallowed tightly as she felt his free hand cup the rounded curve of one cheek.

“Those jeans were nice and snug.” He rubbed at the underside of her ass before his fingers moved beneath the thin band between the cheeks. “There were no panty lines.”

“Oh.” She was breathing roughly, her flesh so sensitized now that she swore she could feel the brush of air from the cooling unit against her, and the feel of Cam’s breath on the back of her neck. It was so sensual, so intense, she could feel her body heating, preparing, growing wet and wild for him.

“How did this happen?”

She froze as his fingers caressed a scar of her own. She knew what it looked like, what it was. A perfect curve over her hip, thin and deep.

“Does it matter?” She trembled beneath his fingers, then shook as he knelt behind her. “What are you doing?”

“You kissed my scars, didn’t you?”

“Oh, Lord. Cam.” His lips feathered over the mark, then his tongue.

“Someone took a whip to you, Jaci.” His hands framed her hips, his fingers tightening on them. “You really want to tell me who did this.”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Are you telling me this isn’t a whip mark?” His teeth raked over it.

She shook her head as she tried to draw air into her lungs. “I’m telling you it doesn’t matter.”

She nearly collapsed to the floor as she felt his teeth rake across it. The pleasure was simply destructive. It shouldn’t have been. It should have killed desire, the thought of that mark, the thought of how she had received it. But it wasn’t the scar or the memories that weakened her. It was his touch, the shadows in his voice, the growling, primal pitch of his tone.

“I need more than a few gentle touches tonight.” He laid his cheek against her hip, still kneeling, his hands holding her as she fought the tremors racing through her.

“What do you need?”

“I need to make you scream, Jaci.”

“I always scream with you.” Her voice was trembling now. She could feel an intensity in him, that driving heat and blazing need that he kept so carefully banked.

“But there are other ways to scream, sweetheart.” He rose, his hand caressing her rear once again.

A second later a light, burning slap streaked across her rear.

“Cam!” She jerked forward, a soft cry leaving her lips as that heat moved from her rear to her clit.

How strange was that? It shouldn’t have been erotic. It shouldn’t have been tinged with heat and with pleasure.

“That’s a nice start.” His voice was harder, bolder. More dominant.

“What are you doing?”

“Letting you get to know me.” His lips pressed against her shoulder.

“Really?” She breathed out roughly. “Why do I have a feeling this might not be something either of us are ready for Cam?”

His chuckle was a rough, dark sound against her neck a second before his teeth scraped there.

“There’s pleasure. Pleasure that’s soft, gentle, erotic.” He petted her ass again. A less-than-gentle caress that had her breath catching, a whisper of a moan leaving her throat.

“Then,” he continued, “there’s pleasure that burns. That rides a line so close to pain that the senses open, nerve endings blaze with sensation, and when you come”—the slap at her ass was harder, hotter, and sent pulses of heated pleasure burning into her pussy—“When you come, Jaci, you’re begging for the orgasm. Screaming for it. So desperate for that little death that you’re pleading for more and more, until you come so hard, so deep, you swear you’ve died.”

His hand curled around her neck again, turning her head to him as his lips touched hers.

“Tonight, you’re going to swear you’ve died in my arms.”

There was something in his gaze that captured her. Something so primitive, so fierce it stole her breath.

“No means no,” he told her. “If you say no, I’ll stop whatever makes you uncomfortable. But be certain, Jaci, that it makes you uncomfortable. Make certain it’s not just fear of the unknown that makes you turn it away. Because if you say no, we don’t revisit that again. I won’t ask it of you again.”

He pushed her to the bed, moving beside her as she stretched out on her stomach, that fear of the unknown already rising inside her.

“Why are we doing this now?” she whispered.

“Because it’s the only alternative to the sharing that I have.” He bent over her, his lips caressing the shell of her ear as his hand traveled down her back. “Because I’m burning inside, Jaci. Burning to hear you scream for me, to watch your eyes glaze over and your body shudder. Because it’s a hunger I can’t control.”

“What are you going to do?”

His hand slid over her ass again, then lifted.

“Everything.”

His hand landed on her ass again, a gentle slap, slightly more than a tap or a heavy pet.

Jaci jerked, her hips arching as she drew in a harsh breath.

“It burns a little more each time.” His hand landed again, but added to the burn was the feel of his lips and teeth at her shoulder, in a caress whose pleasure seemed amplified by that slight burn at her rear.