“Now you’re sounding like a child.” He sighed.

“Why shouldn’t I?” she mocked him. “That’s how I’m treated. Treat me like an adult and see if I don’t try to act like one.”

ELEVEN

Nothing could possibly be easy, Piper thought as midnight rolled around before she was able to extricate herself from her mother, sisters, cousins, and various family members.

“Dawg couldn’t just keep his mouth shut?” she muttered as Jed escorted her into his room. “He could have kept all this to himself for a little while longer.”

“Dawg usually knows what he’s doing,” Jed assured her, locking the door behind them before turning and striding through the living area. “Stay here; I want to check out the bedroom again.”

Crossing her arms over her breasts, she watched as he disappeared into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

So Dawg usually knew what he was doing, did he?

“You are aware that Dawg is the one whom Tim accuses of constantly living by the seat of his pants, right?”

She didn’t quite catch Jed’s response, but it was something along the lines of, “That’s when Dawg is at his best.”

At his best, her ass.

It was when he was most dangerous.

She was still standing there glaring at the door when it opened and Jed walked through, his chest gloriously bare, his shirt conspicuously absent.

She didn’t need this right now.

Hell.

Tightening her thighs, Piper fought to hold back the ache beginning there. The swelling of her clit, the throb of her pussy. The fiery, desperate need to be filled by the hard thrust of his cock.

Dark blond hair fell over his brow, while the navy blue of his gaze seemed to deepen and gleam with heated hunger as he stared back at her.

“He didn’t have to tell the whole damned family,” she muttered, her mouth drying out as he paced closer.

“Would you want to know if one of your sisters were in danger?” he asked softly.

Dark, thick lashes lowered over the gleam in his eyes as predatory awareness filled them.

He knew she wanted him.

It wasn’t as though she could hide the hardness of her nipples as they pressed into the thin material of the blouse she wore. Or the heavy pulse of blood in her throat.

His gaze, heavy with latent lust and intent, flicked to the throbbing of the vein at the side of her neck, then back to the hard tips of her nipples.

Sensation raced over her flesh as heat built in her womb and fired a need she still had no idea how to handle. Hell, she didn’t even know how he managed to do this to her. What she did know was that resisting him wasn’t going to happen.

“You didn’t answer me, Piper.” He stopped just in front of her, his wide chest separated from the hard tips of her nipples by no more than a breath of space.

“What was the question again?” Oh, Lord, she was supposed to keep up with the conversation?

With him walking around with his broad naked chest? Oh, dear Lord, she didn’t think so.

“Would you want to know if your sisters were in danger?” he asked again.

“I remember the question.” She glared back at him, determined to bluff her way through having not heard it the first time. “That’s not the point, so why answer?”

A knowing smile curled his lips.

“Really?” Settling his hands on her hips, he brought her body flush against his.

Broad, fiercely erect, the length of his cock pressed against her belly behind the denim covering it.

“Really.” Trying not to appear too greedy to touch him, she let her fluttering fingers press against his chest.

“Beside the point, huh?” he asked.

Piper closed her eyes, hoping to find some measure of control against the hunger flooding her system.

“It really is.”

Closing her eyes didn’t help.

Oh, God, it only made it worse.

Jerking them open, she fought to catch her breath as his lips settled against the side of her neck for a heated kiss.

“Jed, what do you do to me?” she whispered, needing to know, to understand why she couldn’t deny the fire raging between them.

“The same thing you do to me, sweetheart, maybe?” His teeth raked against her neck as he finished the question, bringing a low, keening moan from her throat as she arched her neck.

“Do I make the world burn for you, too?”

Jed lifted his head, staring down at her, amazed by the question.

God, was that what he did for her? Did he make the world burn down around her? Because he swore that was exactly what it felt like to him as well.

It felt as though the world were burning down around him, and nothing mattered but the flames edging closer toward them.

“Baby, the world doesn’t even exist for me when I’m touching you.” Were those words really falling from his lips?

What the hell was she doing to him?

Moving his hands from her waist, he lowered them to the belt that cinched her waist loosely and released it. He dropped it to the floor, and his fingers moved to the buttons of her blouse.

Was that him actually fumbling with a button as his lips touched hers?

But, hell, her kiss was fire itself. It was the flame burning the world around him and searing him with pleasure. It was the fuel feeding it, and the only hope he had of surviving the effect on his senses.

Parting her lips further, tasting the teasing heat of her tongue against his, Jed had to force his fingers to work. To remove each button from the exquisite softness of the blouse she’d made with her own delicate fingers.

Fingers that were curling against his chest, blunt little nails rasping against his flesh as she dragged them to the jeans riding low at his hips.

Hell. She was tugging at his belt, releasing it, dragging it apart slowly as he deepened the kiss and drew in the rich essence of her feminine need.

The last button parted, the material separating and slowly drifting from her shoulders as he pushed it back from the rapid rise and fall of her breasts.

Soft, silken lace encased her breasts in a bra as light as air. Sliding the clip between her breasts open and pulling the fabric from the swollen weight of the firm curves, he was forced to pull his lips back from hers, to drag in air as the button of his jeans released.

His self-control was going to hell in a handbasket.

“Come here, baby.” Swinging her up into his arms, he strode quickly through the sitting room to the bedroom door.

Opening it and pushing through, he moved to the bed he’d turned back when he’d entered the room earlier to check the doors. Laying her against the cool white sheets, he moved his hands to her delicate legs, where the skirt she wore had fallen back above her knees.

The midcalf length of the full skirt shouldn’t have been so damned sexy, but it had tormented him all day with the knowledge that it covered flesh softer than the material over it.

Stroking his hand down one leg to her fragile feet, he removed the sandals covering one before moving to the next.

“Beautiful.” Running his hands back up the inside of her legs, he parted them gently, watching as the paisley print of the skirt fell back to her thighs. “Do you know how hard it was to keep from dragging you to this bedroom today? To keep from pushing my hands beneath this skirt to find all the sweet, hot flesh beneath?”

Piper arched beneath him, watching through lashes that refused to open fully, fighting to breathe through the incredible pleasure pouring through her.

Pushing his hands beneath the skirt, he curled his fingers beneath the elastic of the low-rise bikini underwear she wore and began pulling them down with exquisite slowness.

“Jed, you’re teasing me,” she accused him, her body tortured with the need for his possession.

“I’m teasing me.” Hot, rich lust echoed in his voice, filled the dark sound with wicked hunger as he pulled her panties free and tossed them to the floor.

Pulling back, he rose quickly beside the bed, and before she could do more than draw a sharp breath, he’d shed the denim and snug boxer underwear containing the fierce width of his straining erection.

Heavy veins throbbed forcefully along the shaft as he came to her, while the wide crest, flushed and dark with lust, gleamed with a layer of precome.

Rather than pushing her legs immediately apart and coming into her, as she’d expected, he lowered himself carefully over her. Rough with an overnight shadow of a beard, his cheek brushed against the side of her breast.

“So pretty,” he whispered as her hands gripped his shoulders, her legs parting to encase the muscular strength of his thighs.

Arching to him, Piper bit back a demanding moan. She needed to feel his lips against her breasts. Needed to feel the heavy draw of his mouth and the flick of his wicked tongue.

“You’re going to make me beg, aren’t you?” she demanded, a moan slipping into her voice as his lips brushed against the tight, sensitive point.

“Never.”

She would have, if he would just—

“Oh, God! Oh, Jed. Yes. Please.” Her hands lifted to his head, her fingers fisting in his hair as she strained against him, arching into the heated possession of his mouth as it wrapped around the sensitive peak of her breast.

The tender bud of her nipple throbbed in agonizing pleasure as he drew on it. Fierce, pleasure-sharp spikes of sensation raced to her clit and the depths of her vagina as the feel of silken warmth eased from the clenched portal.

Drawing on the tender flesh, he flicked his tongue against it with lashing warmth. Pleasure struck repeatedly at her womb, clenching her pussy and pounding through her clit with exquisite sensation.

“Oh, God, Jed, it’s so good.” She arched closer, desperate to feel his touch between her thighs. Piper’s senses became focused on nothing else but each fiery, rapturous tug of his lips and each suckling motion of his hot mouth as his fingers eased slowly, teasingly up her thigh.

“Jed, please.” Begging was so not beneath her as his fingers brushed against the silken folds of her pussy.

He parted the intimate lips, his touch too slow, almost taunting as she arched and ached for more.

The pad of his finger rubbed against the clenched entrance; he ignored the desperate motion of her hips as she fought to force his finger inside her.

“Greedy, baby,” he whispered, the tips of two fingers now rubbing against the entrance to her pussy.

“Greedy?” She panted. “More like tormented. You’re tormenting me, Jed.”

“I’m loving you.” The words were whispered against her midriff as his lips moved lower and one hand pushed her skirt higher. “I’m loving you, Piper.”

Before she could counter his declaration, his lips lowered and covered the straining, tortured bud of her clitoris.

“Oh, God, yes.” Twisting against the sudden grip he had on her hips, Piper’s hips jerked in reaction. “Jed. Oh, Jed, yes, please.”

Lavish licks surrounded the straining bundle of nerves as Piper cried out, pleading, begging, desperate for release now.

Nudging at the little bud, licking at it, suckling it into the heat of his mouth, he pushed her toward an abyss of ecstasy that threatened her sanity.

As he stroked and laved the sensitive bundle of nerve endings, the fingertips stroking at her entrance began to slip inside, stretching her flesh and opening the little portal. Swift, heated flares of sensation raged through her flesh, striking at her womb, at her clit, and stealing her breath.

The feel of his fingers pressing inside her, separating the tender tissue and caressing hidden nerve endings, had muted cries escaping her throat as she fought for release.

She didn’t want to wait.

She’d waited long enough.

She’d waited twenty-four years for this man, for this pleasure, and waiting one second longer for her release seemed entirely uncalled-for.

“Jed, please.” Her fingers kneaded his scalp as her hips lifted, her thighs spreading wider as his fingers fucked slow and easy inside her. “Please don’t make me wait.”