Ironically, it was Kelly who taught them that lesson. As a kid, keeping up with her had been practically impossible for just one of them. It took the three of them to keep her safe, to keep her happy as she grew up. Watching for the bullies who liked to pick on her because she was poor, because she was pretty as a picture and sweetly gentle. And they wanted to keep her that way.

She was also impetuous, defiant, and smart as a whip. There had been nothing sexual involved. She amused them, made them laugh, and challenged them to keep up with her with an innocent thirst for life and adventure that appealed to the teenagers. After her mother married Ray, she was then “family,” as well.

As she grew older, as they grew older, things had slowly shifted for all of them. Four years ago it had come to a head. She had just turned twenty, hotter than fireworks and as tempting as sin itself. The three of them had been a little too drunk, a little too wild that night. And she had been there.

“Make up your mind, Rowdy. You don’t put a claim on her, one of us is going to.” Natches’s eyes followed her as she laughed and danced beneath the brilliance of the full summer moon.

“She’s still too young.” He denied the need, as well as the challenge.

“Keeping the local boys off her ass is getting harder,” Dawg muttered. “I’m tired of bruising my knuckles on their thick skulls. Make up your mind. If you don’t intend to keep her, one of us will.”

Rowdy grimaced, finished his beer, then crumpled the can as he fought to hold onto his control. It was getting harder each time he came home, to stay the hell away from her.

“She’s too fucking young and the two of you know it,” he snapped. “She’s not ready for it.”

“She’s old enough to make the choice,” Natches drawled. “You’re going back to the Marines and that’s fine. But if she’s not willing to wait on you, then we aren’t either. Claim her man, or one of us will.”

She had been like a fire at midnight. He had to make her want to wait on him. He had to ensure her need for him. And he had done that. But in doing it, he had cemented his need for her.

As he held her in the darkness of the night, the soft warmth of her pressed into his chest, he knew her earlier protest was the key to her soul. The romance. She needed the romance, she deserved it, but God knew he had no idea how to make it romantic. He could give her pleasure. Enough pleasure to leave her screaming in orgasm, begging for more. But the heart of the woman needed more. A lesson Loren had taught them, but one they had forgotten over the years.

The women they had drawn to them hadn’t been ones to need the romance, or even want it.

For the first time in his life Rowdy felt helpless. Eliminating the threat to her was imperative. And he wasn’t going to lie to her. Not Kelly. She deserved more than that.

“You’re not asleep.” Her whisper was as soft as a breath.

“Neither are you.” He sighed, knowing her mind had been running as fast as his.

They hadn’t said much since that final question. She had drawn in a deep, hard breath, informed him she was going to sleep then curled into his arms, and turned out the lights. But she hadn’t gone to sleep anymore than he had.

“Why do you do it?” she finally asked. He didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. It was a question he had hoped she wouldn’t ask. Yet he had known she would.

He slid his hand from her hip to her stomach, feeling the muscles flutter beneath his palm.

“A man’s pleasure comes from his woman’s,” he whispered. “Because we learned how much better it can be for a woman when no part of her body is neglected. Because we learned as young men how much easier it is to protect what’s ours when we work together. Hell, Kelly, I could give you a thousand reasons and none of them would really make sense. Because it’s who we are, what we are.”

“Will it end?” He knew where she was going, what she would eventually ask.

“Only if you want it to. My needs aren’t more important than yours. It won’t be every time. It won’t be an either-or.”

She was silent for long moments. He closed his eyes, grimacing in painful awareness of the can of worms he had opened.

“And when they find the women they want for their own? What then?”

“It’s not an either-or,” he repeated. “I’ll do nothing you can’t live with, Kelly. Ever.”

“But you’ll want to.” Her voice lowered further. “If Dawg or Natches found a woman they wanted for their own, then you’d want to be a part of it, wouldn’t you, Rowdy?”

“I wouldn’t miss being a part of it, anymore than you would miss their touch after having had it.” There was no way to reassure her, and God knew he wanted to.

He felt her flinch against him.

“You would touch another woman?”

“I would never do anything that would jeopardize us.” That wasn’t acceptable. “Ever. Not at any time.”

As he stared into the darkness, he thought of her touch, her kiss. Could he touch another woman? At any time?

“So it would be my choice?”

“It would be your choice.”

“But you would still want to.” It wasn’t a question.

“I don’t know.” He couldn’t lie to her. He wouldn’t lie to her, even though he was terrified of losing her.

He caressed her abdomen as he held her, as silence filled the room once again.

“This might not work.” Her voice trembled with an awareness of what she might be looking at. “I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I could handle your need to do it.”

He sighed heavily into her hair, drawing her closer, knowing he could be risking both their hearts with the hungers that tormented him. It was the reason he had left four years before, the reason he couldn’t begin this relationship with anything less than the truth.

“I can live without it,” he told her softly. “I don’t know if I could live without you, Kelly. Not now. Not after the years I’ve spent needing you. I’ll give you everything I am, as much as you want. That’s all I can do.”

She turned to him then, her soft gray eyes dark in the dim light of the room as he stared into the shadowed expanse of her face.

“The first time…”

He closed his eyes. “However you want it.”

Bonding came in so many ways. He would have had Dawg and Natches there, but he wouldn’t push her. He couldn’t push her. Not now.

“You want them there.”

His eyes flew open at the soft statement.

“I want them there,” he affirmed, knowing her safety demanded nothing less. He ignored the possessiveness raging inside him. “Kelly, I want everything for you, and I know that’s hard to understand. The first time, it’s special for a woman. It begins a bonding with her lover, one that never really dies. It’s why I’ve never taken a virgin, never fooled with a woman who didn’t know the score, until you.”

He felt the shiver that raced over her, the little tremor of fear, or response, he wasn’t certain.

“You want me to have that, with them?” The uncertainty in her voice, the edge of hurt broke his heart.

“Kelly, listen to me.” He framed the side of her face with his hand, his thumb smoothing over her cheek. “I’m not going to do a damned thing that’s going to hurt you or make you uncomfortable. Baby, it won’t be good for me, or for Dawg and Natches, if it isn’t something you want with everything inside you. This is your choice. The perception of it isn’t.”

“But you want it,” she said fiercely.

“Don’t make excuses.” He could feel it in her then, the need to have the choice taken from her, to be seduced. “I’m not making them and I won’t let you. Think about it, Kelly. Decide what you want, what you need. I’m not a kid, and you’ve known me too long to be able to fool yourself about me. You’ve known, you wanted to sugarcoat it, pretend it wasn’t real, but you knew. Now decide what you want, because I won’t make that decision for you. Not now, not ever. I love you, baby, but I can’t love you enough for both of us.”

He felt her then, her fingers moving against his chest, leaving a path of fire in their wake as they smoothed over his chest.

“Can you do anything without your cousins?” she asked. “Or do you need their help all the time, Rowdy? Maybe you’re the one making excuses.”

Damn. Her fingers were at his abdomen now, her nails raking over his flesh, tracing the skin above the waistband of his sweatpants.

Impetuous. Defiant. An adventure. That was Kelly.

His hand trapped hers, holding it still against him, his eyes narrowing on her in the darkness.

“Anywhere but here,” he growled. “Now go to sleep, minx. I’ll be damned if I’ll have our parents hearing us in here screwing our brains out. I’m right fond of keeping my private parts intact if it’s all the same to you.”

She chuckled, flipped around, then horror of all horrors, because his control was edging toward nonexistence, that curvy little ass tucked into his hips, cushioning the raging fullness of his cock. Son of a bitch.

“Good night, Rowdy.” Her husky little purr nearly had him coming in his pants. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll see what you can actually do without your cousins around to approve of it.”

A grin tilted his lips. Oh, he’d show her all right, in ways she could never imagine.

ELEVEN

Kelly stared at the bed as she came from the shower the next morning. It was perfectly made, the flowered comforter smoothed out, the pillows neatly stacked at the headboard. And lying at the bottom of the mattress was clothing she hadn’t worn since the attack.

The low-rise jeans were patched and faded, and she new exactly how low they were. The waistband barely reached her hipbones, with the snap in the front dipping lower nearly an inch.

The white vest-style summer shirt rose above her navel, and would reveal the belly ring that lay glittering on top of the shirt. The brilliant green emerald twinkled and gleamed beneath a shaft of sunlight coming in from the window. She had chosen that particular gem because of its resemblance to Rowdy’s eyes.

Kelly drew in a deep breath before turning her head to stare at Rowdy where he sat in the recliner. Leaning forward, his arms resting on his knees, he watched her silently, emotion swirling in his gaze. Compassion, understanding, determination.

She stepped closer to the bed, turning back to stare at the clothes. She had been too scared to wear them before, terrified that how she dressed had somehow caused the attack.

She was still scared, but as she stood there, she realized that the terror that had often filled her before Rowdy’s return wasn’t there now. Just as he had protected her from those bullies years before, she knew he would protect her now.

She cleared her throat before speaking.

“You’re certain you can catch him? That he’s watching me? Waiting?” She picked up the belly ring, staring down at it intently.

“I’m certain, Kelly.” His voice was dark, deep, confident.

“Do you know who it is?” She knew Rowdy, and his cousins. And she knew Dawg and Natches had been investigating the attack since it happened.

“Not yet. But we will. He’s not sane enough to hide for long.”

Could she be a woman again, rather than a child hiding? Kelly admitted, if only silently, that the woman had been protesting the baggy clothes and the lack of adventure for a year now. She was ready to return, just as the psychologist had warned her she would be.

She nodded slowly. “I need to go to town today. To the spa.” The intimate waxing had been put off too long.

Tension began to sizzle in the room. She knew he would know what it meant. Rowdy was an expert on a woman’s body and all the various procedures they used to tempt a man.