“Hell if I know.” He pushed his fingers roughly through his hair. “Because honestly, I was thinking I was corrupting you, while I had my dick shoved up your ass.”

She stilled. Narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be a smart-ass, Alex.”

“You know what?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re right.”

“Yeah, I usually am,” she sneered. “What am I right about this time?”

“I don’t love you.”

She froze and stared back at him.

“Love is just a pale fucking word for what I feel. I’ve watched love die. I’ve watched couples drift apart

and love fade like a memory.” He shook his head. “I don’t love you, Janey. When I said you own me, I meant you own me. Heart. Soul. My hopes, dreams. My life. Because I’d die for you. What the hell more can I give you?”

Janey stared back at him. When he’d said he loved her, she’d realized the lie for what it was. There had been no feeling, no strength in the words. And there was now. There was the intensity in his voice that she had always associated with Alex and emotion. His emotions. His voice deepened, became rougher, when he let emotion slip free.

“Son of a bitch, I’m fourteen years older than you.” He sighed. “We see things different somehow.”

“Throw your age up to me again and I’ll spank you .” She told him fiercely. “Age has nothing to do with this.”

She could feel something building in her now, glowing within her, taking hold of her and heating her, warming her in places she hadn’t imagined would ever be warmed.

“I . . .” She swallowed tightly. “I really own you? All of you?”

“Janey, sweetheart,” he groaned, moved to her, framed her face with his hands, and stared down at her.

His expression was filled with emotion now. His eyes raged with it. “I could say I love you until hell freezes over, and I’ll never say it enough to make myself feel as though I’ve told you how I feel for you.

I’m a loner, baby. I always was, until you. No one has ever owned any part of me, until you. Janey, I live for you.”

He lived for her. He loved her past loving her. And she owned him. The tears fell again. Freely. She’d never been allowed to cry as a child or as an adult. But Alex had let her cry. He’d dried her tears at the funeral. He’d held her when she needed to be held. He’d let her be free, but she had always known his arms were right there, ready to curl within.

“I live for you,” she whispered, those tears running over his hands now. “Alex, I love you so much it eats me alive because I’ve been so scared. So scared of losing you. Of not having you in my bed ever again, or not having your touch.”

He pulled her to him. Right there, against his hair-roughened chest, his big hand covering the back of her head, making her feel sheltered, strong, and yeah, she was owned as well.

“I breathe for you, Janey.” He whispered the words against her forehead, then tipped her head back and breathed against her lips. “You own me.”

His lips covered hers, gently, tenderly, with hunger and with possessiveness, with all the emotions she had always dreamed of suddenly swirling between them.

They could have a baby later, if it happened. For now, she had Alex. And having Alex was everything her soul had despaired of ever knowing.

“You own me, too,” she whispered, staring back at him. “All of me, Alex. You have owned me for so long.”

His thumb smoothed over her cheek, wiped away the last tears.

“Are you going to talk to Natches now?” he asked, a hint of a smile at his lips. “Because we both know, Janey, you’re not leaving my side.”

“Ever,” she promised. “Oh, Alex. I’ll never leave your side.”

EPILOGUE

Four Days Later

Janey was waiting nervously in the office when she heard Natches pull into the back lot. Alex was upstairs overseeing the repair on the apartment; she suspected he might actually be helping. He’d come down earlier looking all sexy and sweaty and she hadn’t been able to take advantage of him. Dammit.

She hated her monthly cycle. She was definitely doing something about this.

But for now, she had a brother to deal with. A stubborn, possessive, sometimes too domineering brother.

And one she loved.

A hard knock sounded on the door before it pushed open and he strode into the office dressed in his motorcycle leathers and tugging off black gloves.

He was really too damned good-looking for his own good. Impossibly charming.

“What’s so important you had to e-mail that little order?” He frowned at her as he threw himself in the chair in front of her desk.

Janey leaned back in her own chair.

“I love you, Natches,” she said softly.

He stared at her for long moments. She could see the emotions in his eyes now, where in the past she had never been able to.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I love you, too, Janey.” He rubbed his hand over his cheek. “Where’s Alex?”

Like her, emotion still had the ability to make him slightly nervous. They’d been raised to hide everything; sometimes that wasn’t so easy.

“You and I have ground rules to settle. We don’t need Alex for that.” She leaned forward, picked up the legal agreement she’d had made, and pushed it toward him. “Sign it.”

He looked at the papers, then back to her.

“Was the ‘love you’ stuff to butter me up?” His lips quirked.

“No.” She shook her head. “It was a promise, Natches. We’re family. You’re all the family I have, and I don’t want to lose you. But I’m not butting heads with you over this restaurant any longer. And I’m not coming to you for permission for everything I need. Alex is my soul, and I love him more than I thought I’d ever love anyone besides you. But this restaurant has always been my dream. Not yours. Mine. I don’t want your part of it, but I will have control of it.”

He looked around the office somberly before meeting her eyes again. “I hate this fucking place,” he finally said. “I prayed you’d hate it.”

She sighed at that. “It’s not Dayle’s place any longer, Natches. It’s mine. As far as I’m concerned, Ray has always been the father we should have had. He’s a Mackay, and he wears his name with pride. I won’t do anything less.”

He slapped his gloves against his hands and stared at the papers. “Burn the place,” he whispered. “Start fresh.”

“Why?”

He looked back up at her, his gaze heavy, filled with sadness. “Neither of us would ever have to remember him again if it were gone.”

She shook her head. “He made us who we are. And, Natches, we’re damned fine people.” She smiled through her tears. “We’re good people. Chaya and Alex wouldn’t love us if we weren’t. And we wouldn’t have survived otherwise.”

He sighed heavily. “Stubborn,” he muttered.

“A trait we share.” She pushed the papers to him. “Give me control, Natches. Let’s show Dayle what he missed out on. Mackay’s will be the finest restaurant in the state, and one day, no one will even remember who he was.”

He pulled the papers to him and signed them, then pushed them back and stood up. “I promised Alex I’d help him upstairs,” he stated. “Dawg and Rowdy will be here in a minute to help, too.”

Janey stared at the papers, then back at Natches. “You didn’t read them. You should.”

He shrugged. “They just say you have control, right?”

She nodded slowly.

“I trust you, Janey.” He stared back at her, and that trust was in his expression, in his eyes. “I always trusted you.”

“Always?” she whispered. Even when Dayle was beating the hell out of him because she had done something wrong?

He moved around the desk, bending until he was hunkered beside her chair. “Always. Even when you

were a black-haired, squalling, red-faced brat pissed off with the world. When you were a toddler just realizing what kind of monster sired us, and a young girl trying to be so good so Dayle wouldn’t erupt.

Janey. I always loved you. You were always my sister. And you were always right here.”

He lifted her hand and placed it on his chest. Over his heart. She placed her other hand atop his. “I always loved you, Natches.”

He nodded and rose to his feet. “I owe you, though,” he promised her.

“For what?” She stared back at him bemused.

“For hoping I have a daughter.” His grin was rueful, but filled with laughter. “Chaya keeps throwing out hints. I bet I end up with a black-haired, green-eyed, wild-assed girl I don’t have a hope in hell of keeping up with.”

“You should only be so lucky.” She laughed.

At that, he grinned, then nodded. “Yeah. I should only be so lucky. But she might change her mind when I’m running all the boys off.”

“She’ll love you. You’ll be a good dad, Natches.”

“You’re damned right I will be.” He nodded, determination filling his face now. “Now, you be good.

Make us money or I’m burning the place down.”

But he grinned as he stepped through the door. And Janey sighed deeply. She ached from head to toe; she hated her cycle, but Alex had promised her a back rub.

She put the papers to the side. She didn’t need them. The lawyer didn’t need them. It was the gesture that mattered to her, because she and Natches both knew the papers weren’t legal. Not really. Because she hadn’t signed them herself.

Fuck it. She stuck them in the shredder and listened to them grind away. Hell, she enjoyed the fights with her brother, just as she enjoyed her confrontations with her lover.

Speaking of her lover . . . She stepped from the office into the dining room, where Rogue was directing the staff like a general, dressed in leather, long red gold curls spilling around her back.

“Faisal, you’re too damned good to be hiding in the kitchen.” Rogue was arguing with Natches’s adopted son. “I need your ass out here helping me oversee everything if we’re going to pull off that four-day-a-week lunch crowd.”

Faisal crossed his arms over his chest, a scowl on his face, and for a moment, just a moment, Janey could see the incredible influence her brother had on the young man.

“You are like a despot,” Faisal accused her, his black gaze flickering over her expression with a hint of anger. “You order. Order. Order. I don’t like your orders, Rogue. You do not ask.”

“But, honey, if I ask, you tell me no,” she drawled before her expression firmed. “So I’m telling you. You are officially my assistant. Get used to it.”

Faisal turned to Janey furiously, his black eyes snapping. “You do something with her. I like the kitchen.”

“You hate the kitchen,” Rogue snapped as she turned to Janey. “Tell him he hates the kitchen, Janey.”

“I’m leaving.” Janey laughed. “You two can fight this one out on your own.”

Rogue’s eyes narrowed as her lips twitched.

“Go.” Rogue waved her away. “We’re good.”

And they were. She smiled. Yeah, things were going to work out just fine. And Alex had promised her a back rub. She’d steal him from the carpenters and Cranston just long enough. And her smile grew brighter. Long enough to touch him, taste him, and get that back rub. Then he could go play sweaty male games with her brother and cousins.

First, he had fiancé things to take care of.

The diamond on her finger winked. The promise he had made to her filled her heart. Yeah, he owned her. And she owned him. And what was more, she realized as she left the office, she did deserve him.