Rogue had never hit anyone deliberately. She was an admitted pacifist unless backed into a corner. She could feel the corner at her back now.

His fingers caught her wrist a second before she could make contact.

Zeke stared at her small fist, feeling that ravenous hunger burning through him. She was his weakness, and he couldn’t figure out why. She tempted the darkness. She tempted hungers he didn’t want to admit to.

Staring down at her, he locked her gaze with his, watching her, seeing the hurt and the anger that darkened her eyes.

“I shouldn’t have let you go the other day,” he admitted, fighting to tamp back needs he knew he should keep carefully hidden.

“Of course you should have.” Disdain and anger filled her voice. “That was the biggest favor you could have done me.”

He didn’t let her go as she tugged at her wrist. He should, he knew he should. He stared into her furious little face and saw the hurt she was trying to hide. Pain he had dealt her.

“Stop fighting me, Rogue.” He caught her other wrist as she slapped at his chest in her bid for freedom. “Settle down, we’ll talk about this.”

God, he needed her to settle down. Now, before he lost complete control.

“There’s something to talk about?” Her eyes narrowed on him, defiance shimmering in those violet eyes. “Sorry, Zeke, but I guess I just don’t have much left to say.”

She struggled against him again. It wasn’t a halfhearted struggle; the little minx was putting some serious effort into breaking his hold. The harder she fought against him, the more he tensed. He could feel that haze of lust burning at the edges of his vision. He hadn’t felt it in years, not since leaving L.A., not since he had begun denying those urges and refusing to allow himself lovers that knew how to push those buttons. But never had he had a woman as innocent, as unknowing as Rogue awaken that core of sexuality he possessed.

“Rogue, enough.” He heard his own voice deepen, felt his cock hardening painfully, throbbing beneath the confinement of his jeans as his balls drew up violently.

“Kiss off, Sheriff Mayes,” she snarled, lifting herself, glaring back at him, her eyes, those beautiful fey eyes watching him in anger and in hunger. He could see the hunger; he could sense it, feel it.

Before she could evade his move he had both her wrists in one hand, his other cupping her jaw. He was going to burn in hell for this and he knew it. He was helpless against it.

His control was so damned thin it was all he could do to hold on, but the dominance surging forward was another control. One he reveled in, one he knew he needed to fight even as he let it have hold.

Just for a second, he promised himself. Just for this moment. He wouldn’t let it go further. He’d keep from taking her, he’d keep himself from frightening her, from revealing all the dark acts he wanted to commit on that gorgeous little body.

“I’d rather kissyou .”

He held her arms behind her back, arching her closer, feeling her stomach cushion his cock as she writhed against him, stroking his arousal higher.

Damn, she needed to stay still. Just for a moment.

He held her jaw firmly, stared at her lips, felt her arching against him, and gave in to the need clawing at his mind and at his body.

Zeke knew kissing Rogue again was a damned bad idea. He had come to talk to her, to try to figure out a way to have her and to hold back that part of himself now slipping free.

There was no way to do it, he finally admitted to himself. As his lips covered hers, as he felt her gasp, tighten in his arms, he knew having her would mean breaking every damned rule he had lived his life by for years now.

Not having her wasn’t an option. Not when her kiss was like fuel to a fire. Not when touching her became as important as breathing. Not when the very act of possessing her mouth sent a surge of adrenaline racing through him.

Defiance raged in the air around him now. His tongue parted her lips, pressed forward, and felt her furious cry. But he also felt her need. She was shuddering in his arms despite her struggles, fighting not to capitulate, struggling not just against him but against the pleasure that he could have told her there was no way to resist.

This pleasure was addictive. Rogue’s kiss. Driven with challenge. Her teeth would have nipped at his tongue if he hadn’t controlled the graceful line of her jaw. Instead, her tongue pressed against his, fought against it, and he felt a surge of heat so blistering it burned away the remaining resistance he’d built against his need for it. He wanted her to fight. He wanted her to defy him. He wanted to tie her to his bed and spend hours fucking her into exhaustion. Until there was no defiance, until there was only pleasure.

No fear. No anger.

God, he had to rein back, just a little. She was a virgin. She had no idea what he could demand from her. He had to be gentle, he had to make sure she remembered this night with pleasure. The need for that was almost as sharp as the need for her touch. As sharp as the need to hear her screaming his name.

“Damn you,” she tried to scream as he lifted his lips and stared down at her swollen lips. “What are you trying to do to me, Zeke?”

“Taste you,” he murmured, those pouty lips holding his attention as he allowed his thumb to rake across the lower curve. “I’ve spent two days remembering the taste of your kiss, the feel of your lips against mine, then wrapped so snug around my cock. I didn’t get enough, Rogue. I need more.”

Another shudder raked through her body. The tremor was hard, telling. Her thighs relaxed against him despite the anger in her eyes and the refusal he could see hovering on her lips.

“Tell me to leave again and I won’t return,” he warned her harshly, his lips lowering again to brush hers as he spoke. “Anything is negotiable but that. Tell me to leave, and it will be over before it begins.”

Her breathing hitched. Shadows of indecision filled her eyes as she stared back at him.

“Don’t do this to me if you expect me to act like your other women in public, Zeke.

Pretending we’re not touching, that we’re nothing to each other. I can’t do that. I’m not some whore you’re buying and can just walk away from before the sun comes up.”

It would be so much easier if that were the case. But he already knew it wasn’t. He had known as he stared down at her two days ago, his erection filling her mouth. She had never gone down on a man before. She had never taken his release and she had never known the stinging rejection he’d dealt her moments later. Or the regret that dug into his guts like a knife each time he thought of how he must have hurt her.

He doubted she had ever faced a relationship with a man who demanded as much from a woman as he knew he could demand from her. So much that his first wife had refused to sleep with him for years.

“I don’t have relationships,” he told her. “I’ve not had a relationship since I returned here from L.A., Rogue, for a reason.”

“Gossip?” she sneered.

He smiled at that. “I never gave a damn what anyone thought. I cared more about making certain I never allowed myself to be caught in a loveless relationship or that no other woman ever paid for my sins as my wife did. If no one knew who I was fucking or thought I cared about who I was fucking, then they were safe.”

He watched her gaze flicker then, those beautiful violet eyes watching him intently as he held her hands against the wall.

“You’re involved in an investigation,” she whispered. “Joe and Jaime were mixed up in something, weren’t they?”

He couldn’t, he wouldn’t discuss this. Not here. Not yet. He shook his head instead. “I don’t know what they were involved in, Rogue. But being careful is a part of me.

Protecting you will always be a priority with me. You’ll have to accept that. There’s no other choice.”

She stared up at him, her eyes wide, lips parted. “I make my own choices.”

“I’m not an easy lover,” he told her softly then. “I’m not the type of the man that will watch his woman flirt and laugh with other men, that will allow other men to touch her with anything approaching intimacy, with any semblance of grace. You’re a young woman, Rogue. Sweet and flirty and filled with life.”

“And I know how to be a woman,” she informed him fiercely. “And I know the rules of the game, Zeke. You won’t own me any more than I expect to own you.”

Zeke felt his stomach flex, his muscles tightening at the look in her eyes. Frustration and heated anger filled her gaze. She was a woman ready to explode in his hands, and how he touched her, how he treated her would decide if she exploded in pleasure, or in rage.

“There will be no other men.” He leaned closer, letting her feel the determination, the arousal filling him. He couldn’t let her feel his hands shaking, he wouldn’t let her feel the adrenaline and need burning inside him. Touching her was like a shock of electricity that sang through his body, leaving every nerve on high alert.

“There are no other men now,” she argued back. “You can’t change who or what I am. I own a bar. I talk, I laugh, and I dance, and you won’t change that.”

And he had suspected that. Could he accept it? Could he get past the possessiveness that rose inside him like a sharp- toothed monster waiting to tear into any other man who even thought about touching her?

Zeke stared down at her, unwilling to delve too much into what he knew were deeply imbedded possessive traits. What was his belonged solely to him. He wasn’t a man that could or would share the woman he allowed fully into his life.

And to have Rogue, he would have to allow her fully into his life. There was no other answer. Some part of him, a part that clenched his chest and left him aching for her long into the night, warned him that fully in his life was exactly where he wanted her to be.

It was a problem he would have to tackle later. It was a worry that had gnawed at his mind far longer than he wanted to admit. It was one of the concerns that had held him back in the past years, that had kept him from taking what he knew he could convince Rogue to give him.

“I tried to stay away from you.” He had to taste her flesh. Zeke lowered his head, his lips pressing beneath her jaw, right there, where the flesh was so tender, where her pulse beat erratically.

He licked at the flesh, felt her shiver. His teeth raked over it, and he needed more. The taste of her was incredible. The sound of her breath catching, the feel of her melting in his arms was addictive.

God, he needed her. The need was like a fever devouring his insides. He ached for her.

Ached clear to his soul for something he didn’t even know how to name.

Drawing back, his hand framed her neck, not threateningly, possessively.

“You’ll belong to me.”

Rogue’s eyes widened, her heart raced. She had never seen this expression on a man’s face, in his eyes. Zeke was staring at her as though his look alone would brand her. The flesh was stretched tight over his cheekbones and lust made his eyes gleam with an intent that had her fighting to breathe.

She couldn’t let herself hope, but she couldn’t help but hope that she would mean more to him than his other lovers had. How could she let herself believe that? Wasn’t she the one who had sat and listened to several of those past lovers cry into their beers over him? Would she be next?

“You don’t mean that.” Rogue shook her head slowly, hearing it in his voice, seeing the possessiveness in his eyes.

“Do you think I don’t mean it, Rogue?”

A shiver raced down her spine as his hand caressed down her throat to her collarbone, and she shivered in reaction. A reaction that was both physical as well as emotional.

Fingers and palm flat, he touched her completely; not an inch of his palm didn’t touch her.

Swallowing tightly, she felt sensation wash over her. His voice stroking her senses, his hand on her flesh, sensitizing her, reminding her of the pleasure of his kiss, his touch.