“So fucking tight. Like a living vise clamped around my dick,” Brogan growled as her gaze jerked up to his.

His eyes were a cloudy gray now, his face savagely hewn and pulled into lines of agonizing pleasure. Perspiration dotted his forehead, but a bead slid slowly down his neck. The muscles of his chest tightened, the exertion of holding back reflected plainly on his face.

Her gaze fell to her thighs again. Eve watched as he eased back, dragging the engorged crest from the spasming entrance of her pussy.

Throbbing, slick from her juices, the dark crest gleamed beneath the candlelight for a second, until he was pressing into her again, entering the flexing entrance and working into the snug muscles.

Eve’s breath caught, the fiery heat blooming in the delicate tissue he slowly forced to part, stretching them until she was certain she could take no more. Until he pulled back and pressed inside again, stretching her further.

“Fuck, baby . . . Eve, it’s so fucking good.” He groaned, taking more of her, giving her more of himself.

With each inward stroke he filled her further, burying himself deeper and deeper inside the fierce clasp of her inner muscles.

“Brogan. More.” She gasped. “Please, please, more.”

More sensation. More pleasure. Enough sensation to send her hurtling into release again.

The incredible pleasure bordered on pain, crossed the line only to ease back before building again. Each thrust was a stroke of pure, lancing sensation. Agony and ecstasy burned and flamed and kept her poised on such a brink of incredible rapture that she began to fear flying from the peak.

Each stroke buried him to the depths of her sex, the thrusts gaining in pace until the sound of their flesh slapping together filled her senses. She was so sensitive she swore she could feel the air brushing across it, the flickering warmth of the candles like a lick of flames.

Her internal muscles stretched around the impaling flesh, nerve endings so sensitive, so responsive that each thrust only pushed her higher.

She was screaming, yet only barely aware of it.

She was begging, terrified of the coming onslaught, desperate to weaken her release when it came. She could feel it building to a critical point. The sensations were flaming higher inside her as her pussy clamped on his cock. With each forward thrust he began fucking her harder, shafting inside her faster as he surged over her. His head lowered to her breasts, his lips covering a nipple and sucking it inside, tipping her over the edge.

Eve felt the explosions tear through her senses. The force and fury of her release flung her so high, so deep into ecstasy Eve swore she felt her soul open and merge. . . .

Felt it embraced and sheltered . . .

* * *

Brogan felt Eve’s release as her pussy clamped down on his shuttling dick. Her eyes were open, her lips parted on a silent cry as he was taken unaware.

It happened so fast. It hit him with such force, with such impact, there was no saving either of them.

He knew the second it slipped his control and began blazing through him. The moment he realized the condom he wore had split, the latex folding back from the head of his cock. For the first time in his life he felt the full sensation of the lush, silken depths of his lover’s pussy. He felt the heat of her slick cream as it surrounded his engorged cock head.

For the first time in his life he lost that last measure of control.

Eve exploded with the initial stroke of his bare cock. Her internal muscles rippled and stroked the wildly throbbing crest, then clamped down on it like an internal fist, milking it until his release began spurting furiously into her fiery depths.

A shattered groan tore from his chest as complete rapture drove spikes of ecstasy through his soul.

He had no idea what happened or how. As his release began spurting inside, the muscles of her pussy clamping and rippling over his dick, Brogan lifted his head, staring into her pleasure-dazed eyes, and he felt her. . . .

The ecstasy and the fear—the uncertainty and the—

God, no, he swore he could feel her heart, step into her soul. He could feel an emotion he couldn’t allow himself to acknowledge as he buried his head at her shoulder and felt the last of his seed spurting inside her.

It had to be an aberration. Shock at the realization that he was spilling into her unprotected. That he was risking not just their lives, but possibly one more innocent than he could ever imagine.

Yet the thought of that hadn’t been enough for him to pull free of the grip she had on him. It wasn’t enough to hold back his release, or the need to give her all of himself once the condom ruptured. Nothing on the face of the earth could have held him back once he felt the unprotected depths of her pussy and the rich heat surrounding his bare cock.

And nothing could change the fact that he had given in to the urge to do just that.

As the last pulses of her waning orgasm caressed his cock, Brogan fought just to catch his breath. Beneath him, Eve was motionless, her own breathing hard, her heart racing in her breast beneath him as he forced himself to ease from her.

A shudder raced up his spine at the incredible pleasure of her snug grip as he pulled free of her. The overly sensitive head of his cock pulsed at the silky stroke of her slick inner muscles that had the shaft throbbing in renewed interest before he managed to pull free.

Hell, his knees were weak.

As he stood before her, his lips kicked up in a grin at the sight of her legs as they sprawled off the bed, her feet resting against the floor.

Picking her up, he laid her fully on the bed, brushed the tangled length of her hair back from her face, and wondered what the hell they were going to do now.

It was bad enough that he’d allowed her to be pulled into something that could possibly risk her safety. But now he’d done something she could find even more unforgivable. Something he didn’t know whether he could even forgive himself for.

Yet he also knew he would do it again if he could.

If it happened again, if he once more found himself bare inside her that second before release, then he would give in to it. Because the pleasure had been astounding; the sensations, the intimacy of it had been more than he had ever imagined it would be.

Pulling back, he strode to the bathroom and quickly cleaned and dried the proof of their release from his flesh before wetting a clean cloth and grabbing a fresh towel. Returning to the bed he had to grin at the sight of her as she slept. Sated, exhausted, she’d given in to the weariness and slipped into sleep. He cleaned her gently, easing the cloth between her legs, then through the soft folds of her pussy before he quickly finished with her thighs.

Drying the dampness from her, he pulled the comforter and sheet over her body before collapsing in the large chair by the bed. Staring at her, watching her sleep, he couldn’t help but wonder at this new joke fate seemed to be playing on him.

He had a woman whose qualities were exactly those he’d once told friends he dreamed of finding in a woman: innocence, honor, humor, and strength. She knew how to find amusement in herself as well as the world around her, but she also knew compassion. She’d saved herself far longer than he had ever imagined a woman of such beauty could have, and she had given herself completely to him.

Because she loved him.

The thought smacked him like a blow to the head and rattled his senses.

That was what he had felt as he stared into her dazed eyes, feeling her release spill along the bare crest of his cock.

She believed she loved him, he amended. She couldn’t truly love him, because she didn’t truly know him.

And once she did?

He sighed at the thought. Once she did, would she still believe she loved him?

He highly doubted it.

TWELVE

Brogan stood next to the water, watching as bass jumped and frolicked playfully in the first morning light. It wasn’t the bass that held his attention, though, any more than it was the beauty of the fog rising from the water and twisting around the trees growing along the bank. It was the unfamiliar emotions twisting and churning in his chest that held his attention.

He was thirty-four years old; there shouldn’t be emotions he hadn’t felt before, but these feelings were completely alien to him.

The possessiveness he knew and he understood. He wasn’t a man who appreciated or practiced casual sex. One-night stands had never been his thing. It had always been his intention to develop a relationship with Eve. It had just been his intention to complete this operation first.

He’d never meant to drag her into whatever the hell was going on in the Lake Cumberland area. And it had never, ever been his intention to risk the creation of a child.

Rubbing at the back of his neck, he paced at the edge of the lake, the sound of the water lapping at the bank joining the soft, early morning symphony as the memory of spilling his release inside Eve tormented his mind.

It had happened only one other time in his life, when he had been much younger. The condom hadn’t ripped with such force, and he hadn’t known the pleasure of finding his release as his bare cock sank inside the heated depths of his lover’s pussy.

Rather, the small tear at the tip of the condom had allowed a small amount of his release free.

Brogan hadn’t been ready to be a parent, but he’d accepted the responsibility of it. The day his fiancée had taken the home pregnancy test four weeks later, his heart had melted at the thought of their child when he’d seen the positive result.

They hadn’t discussed it. She had never mentioned not wanting the child, but neither had she mentioned plans to abort the baby. Until he’d returned home from the law enforcement academy after officially being offered a position in the Department of Homeland Security.

He’d bought a teddy bear for the child, and had made plans to build a house on a piece of property outside his hometown. When he’d stepped in the door of the apartment Candy met him with a happy squeal as she threw herself in his arms. Pulling back, she’d looked at the teddy bear that had fallen at his feet and laughed. She wasn’t ready for a child to blow her figure out of shape, and she definitely wasn’t ready to settle down to the ties of motherhood.

And Brogan had never forgiven her.

The moment the admission of the abortion had slipped past her lips, he was finished with her. He had felt grief wrap around his heart, felt the guilt and shame of it sear his soul. Their child had been innocent of its creation, and she hadn’t been able to give nine months of her life to giving it birth?

He would have taken the child and raised it himself. Hell, he would have paid her to have the baby.

He’d broken their engagement immediately. As she cried, screamed, pretended confusion, and then raged in fury that it was her choice, he had packed.

The child hadn’t just been hers; that baby had been his, too. It should have never been just her choice. He should have had a choice as well. Their child should have had a choice, he had raged at her as he left her life and never looked back.

What would Eve do? he wondered. Would she kill their child or would she shelter it? Could he take the chance that she would at least discuss the options with him?

He was torn, and holding the knowledge of what had happened the night before bothered him more as he thought of it. He’d raged at Candy for not giving him a choice in their child’s birth, yet here he was, holding the truth of a possible conception from Eve, fearing the same result. What he was doing was no better than what Candy had done. He was refusing to give her a choice.

As the internal debate raged inside him, the muffled sound of a boat’s motor moving closer to the cabin reached him. The narrow water lane leading to the hidden cabin wasn’t one that could be accidentally taken. The safeguards set at the entrance of the tributary, the warnings placed farther up it, combined with strategically placed cables stretching across several points, the metal signs attached to them warning boaters back. It normally turned innocent curiosity seekers back.

Whoever his visitors were, they weren’t there by accident. Pulling his weapon from where he’d tucked it at the small of his back, Brogan stepped behind the huge oak growing close to the water. From here, he could identify any threat and make his way back to the cabin before the boat could reach the beach. He would have time to pull Eve out if he had to, and to ensure her protection.