“The second level has an exit by the main road.” He didn’t sound as though he were pleased. “If we’re lucky, we might get you past whichever Mackay comes looking for you.”
“Why bother?” She rolled her eyes as she made him work at dragging her up the stairs. “He knows I’m here. If he asks me about it, I won’t lie to him.”
“You make things far too interesting sometimes.” He didn’t sound as though he approved.
She approved of the way part of his hair was pulled back from the sides of his face and banded with a leather tie at the back of his head. He looked tough. Dangerous and tough. The bad boy personified.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell him you dragged me out for him. He might wonder why you cared. Hell, I wonder why you care.”
At that, he came to an abrupt stop.
He turned to stare back at her and she watched a battle rage in his eyes and wondered just what the hell it was he was fighting himself over. She’d seen that look in her brother’s eyes before. Watched him as he confronted his sisters and fought to try to protect them while still maintaining their love for him.
Like Dawg, Graham was an incredibly strong man with a sense of decency and a code of honor that likely only he understood, but that everyone else could definitely depend upon.
Whatever the battle was about, she watched as he finally made up his mind. Turning along another hall, he dragged her to the nearest room, opened the door, and pushed her inside ahead of him.
Shadows surrounded her, but there was enough light falling through the floor-to-ceiling windows to identify the room as a sort of living area. A television, couch, sofa, and two recliners took up the center of the room, while antiques appeared to occupy the space along the walls.
“What the hell are you doing here, Lyrica? I can’t believe you’d actually show up at a party like this,” he growled, following as she crossed the room to one of the huge, uncovered windows that looked out on the lake.
She watched his expression in the glass, her heart tripping at the hunger in his face, in his dark gaze. He was watching her as though he was dying for her.
“And what kind of party is it?” she asked. Barely admitted anger that he hadn’t visited, hadn’t checked up on her, ignited inside her.
She was crazy. She should have never allowed him to drag her up here.
“A free-for-all fuck night,” he threw back to her. “You know what kind of parties Collier has.”
“He’s as much of a head case as you are.” She curled her lips angrily. “Tell me, do you share your bimbos or just your taste for bimbos?”
“Don’t push me, Lyrica. You should remember what happens when I get too damned hungry for you,” he reminded her, his voice harsh. “Why are you here?”
She turned to him slowly, aware that his arms bracketed her, his palms flat against the windows as she stared up at him.
“I’m here for my free-for-all fuck night,” she said sweetly. “I wanted to try the bimbo role out before I actually accepted the position.”
Something flared in his eyes. Heat and hunger, anger, and male demand. And for a second, she wondered exactly what she’d managed to free inside the man whose control always seemed so tightly held, so intent.
—
Graham was being pushed too far, too close to the limit of his control. The hunger that raged through him was wearing at the determination to keep his hands off her. Watching her sitting there with Sam Bryce, the other woman watching Lyrica with the same interest and hunger men watched her with, had been too much for him.
Sam was a friend, a damned good friend, but if she touched Lyrica then she’d become an enemy he could never forgive, just as any man would.
Lyrica was his.
That thought shocked him. She was stronger than he was. Strong enough to say no, to stay away. And even knowing he should do the same, still he couldn’t quite shake the hunger raging through him.
The need for her only grew daily, dreams of her haunted his nights, and he swore his cock had been hard since the day he met her. Definitely harder since her far too short stay at his home.
“Lyrica, you shouldn’t be out like this, honey.” He sighed, trying like hell to keep from actually touching her. “You should be more careful right now and you know it.”
Shadows haunted her eyes at his statement, raged in the emerald depths, along with a vulnerable need that sank tender claws inside his chest.
She shook her head once. “They weren’t after me. The investigation . . .”
“Lyrica, don’t,” he whispered. “You know there was more to that, just as I do.”
“No. If there was, Dawg would have—”
“Put a tail on you just like he did?” He sighed. “Even I’ve seen your bodyguard, sweetheart. Dawg knows better. He simply can’t prove it.”
“Or maybe you just can’t accept the truth,” she said accusingly as she lifted her hands from her sides to push against his chest. Not that he moved, despite the strength she put behind her insistence that he do just that. “Sorry, Graham, I’m not so interested in being bimbo number twelve. Try me next time, why don’t ya?”
“Damn you! You’re so stubborn you’d walk into a bullet before you’d give in, wouldn’t you, Lyrica?”
Jerking her against him, one hand at her hip, the other in her hair, tugging her head back, he glared down at her, knowing he was destroying himself just as he’d destroy her innocence.
“I’m stubborn? Oh hell no, you have me so beat. At least I can admit when I want something. Just because it’s the worst thing I could want doesn’t mean I’m not honest enough to admit to wanting it.” She just couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t understand how ragged his control was. “Damn you, Graham. Damn you for making me want what we both know I can’t have.”
The pain that filled her emerald eyes struck at his chest, at the guilt he couldn’t seem to shed, no matter how he tried.
“Do you really believe I think you’re anything like any other woman I’ve had in my bed?” he rasped, the sound of his own voice almost shocking him. “You know better than that. Damn you, Lyrica, I’ve never led you to believe such a thing.”
“I think you’d cut your own dick off before you’d ever let any woman mean anything to you, Graham,” she retorted angrily. “Especially me.”
The sound of the explicit words falling from her lips had that organ swelling impossibly harder, throbbing furiously.
Lowering his head slowly he watched the slumberous arousal that began to transform her face, erasing the anger as her lips parted. But god, he didn’t dare take what she offered. If he kissed her, the battle would be lost.
Only sheer, desperate will kept him from taking those pretty, parted lips. Moving to her ear instead, he nuzzled the sensitive flesh just beneath the lobe, inhaling the scent of her as his body tightened further.
“So innocent,” he whispered, his free hand gripping her hip and pulling her closer to the fiercely engorged length of his arousal as it throbbed behind the zipper of his jeans. “Too innocent.”
Sharp little nails dug into the thin cotton of his shirt to prick at the flesh of his sides as she drew in a hard, desperate breath.
“You don’t know that,” she said roughly.
“I’ve had my tongue up that sweet pussy, baby. I know you’re a virgin.” As he spoke, Graham turned her quickly, moving her until he was pressing her against the wall.
The shadows of the room he’d pulled her into surrounded them, locking them into an intimate swirl of heat, hunger, and music pulsing from the rooms below them.
—
“I told you I was a virgin, asshole,” she snapped, though the hunger raging through her made her voice far too soft, too needy.
“You didn’t have to tell me,” he admitted softly. “I knew. It was what was in your voice when you told me, Lyrica. All the dreams of happily ever after and prince charming. I’m no prince charming and happily ever after doesn’t happen, baby. But t
hat doesn’t mean we can’t mean something to each other. That we can’t steal at least the edge of the fairy tale.”
The edge of the fairy tale?
She wanted it all. The handsome prince, the castle in the air . . .
No, she wanted the fairy tale where Graham loved her just as deeply, just as fiercely as she loved him.
—
Her voice was dazed, her body melting against him, melting for him.
How much was she melting? he wondered, the craven demands sweeping through his senses as lust, barely controlled, raged through his body in waves of desperation.
“Dawg will kill me.” He nipped at her lobe, lifting her against him until he could push one heavy thigh between hers.
The thin material of her panties beneath the light chiffon of her dress and the denim of his jeans were no barrier between him and the sweet heat of her intimate flesh.
“Graham.” The soft exclamation of need filled the air around him and clawed at the fragile threads holding his hunger under control.
Barely in control.
“I could eat you up right here.” He flexed his knee against the sensitive pad of her sex, grinding gently, working against the tender bundle of nerve endings hiding there. “I could spread you out and make you scream for me, Lyrica. Until you realize how hungry I am. Until you realize nothing can prepare you for an animal. One far too hungry and far too desperate for every perverted desire one man could have for a woman.”
He knew himself too well. Knew too well the fantasies that he jacked off to where this woman was concerned.
She shivered in his grip, a little moan leaving her lips as they pressed to the hard flesh between the opened edges of his shirt.
The little straps of her dress gave way to his lips as they moved along her shoulder. They slid aside, fell down the rounded slope of her upper arm, and left all that lush flesh completely free of obstacles.
“What you want isn’t what scares me. I’m not a child.” It was the fact that it was all he wanted from her that broke her heart.
Her fingers were pulling at the shirt, dragging it from where he’d tucked it beneath the band of his jeans, anyway. The need to touch him, to feel the heat of his body, an impulse she couldn’t deny herself.
“You’re a baby,” he groaned. “I should be shot.”
But that didn’t keep him from caressing the smooth, exposed flesh of her upper back with one hand or from gripping the curve of her ass as he moved her against his thigh.
“Oh god, Graham, please,” she whispered as she breathed out, the plea that filled the sound nearly breaking the chains holding his determination not to take her in this damned place.
He knew what she ached for.
He knew what she hungered for.
What he was dying for.
First.
The kiss their lips ached for.
Those pretty lips beneath his parted, surprise tightening her against him, perhaps a hint of shock . . .
Because he wouldn’t be able to take her kiss any more easily than he’d be able to take her innocence.
“Get away from me, Lyrica,” he groaned even as he lifted her, parted her thighs, and drove the hard wedge of his cock into the vee. “God, get away from me before I destroy us both.”
Guiding her knees up to grip his hips, he slid his palms up her thighs to cup each curve of her rounded ass and hold her in place as he thrust against her.
“Get away from you?” she gasped as his lips moved along her neck to the rise of her breasts as they lifted above the rounded cups of her dress. “I’ve tried. I swear, I tried so hard . . . And all I’ve wanted is to be right here again.”
Every muscle in his body tightened at the admission. His hips jerked, grinding against the intimate flesh between her thighs. He was so desperate for her now that he couldn’t imagine not having her, not taking her.
Now.
Dawg would kill him. He’d already sent Graham the message that fooling with his little sister was a dangerous endeavor when he’d learned Graham was still looking into the attack on her.
And Graham tried, not because of the threat, but because of Lyrica. Because she was too sweet, too innocent for him.
But he’d already tasted her, more than once. He had the hunger for more buried so deep in his senses that he couldn’t rid himself of it.
He had to taste her again.
Tangling the fingers of one hand in the back of her long black hair, he dragged her head back again as her fingers gripped his biceps. Nails dug into his flesh as her lips parted, the emerald fire of her gaze gleaming back at him.
His favorite color.
Lyrica emeralds. Staring into her eyes, he swore he could feel something in his chest tightening, burning as though trying to dig its way out. Some feeling, some emotion tied so closely to the hunger he felt for her that he knew he should be pushing it back . . . Then the door to the living area opened slowly.
Graham froze.
The silhouette standing in the entrance, the broad, tense power and aura of determined male protectiveness, was all too familiar.
“Graham.” His voice low, harsh with disapproval, Natches remained at the doorway. For the moment. “Let her go.”
“Natches, don’t . . .” The desperation, the pain in Lyrica’s voice tore at Graham’s heart.
“Shush, Lyrica,” Graham commanded her, his voice firm. “I knew better. We both know I did. This should have never happened.”
Her gaze swung back to him, anger filling her eyes as outrage flashed across her face.
“Damn you, Graham,” she spat out furiously. “Damn all of you.”
Before he could guess her intent, her fingers were clenched in his hair, her lips on his, the heat, hunger, and fury in the press of her lips doing nothing to hide her innocence, or her pain.
It did nothing to aid his self-control.
The taste of cherry heat . . .
A hint of beer . . .
A fiery arousal burning out of control, desperate, filled with fantasies, with uncontrolled need and a woman’s fury.
And he wanted more.
He wanted all of her.
His tongue parted his lips as he tasted her, felt hers meeting it, dueling with it as he wrapped both arms around her, no longer caring who the hell watched.
“Lyrica, Dawg will be here in about two minutes flat,” Natches snapped. “Do you really want him to have to see this?”
The cry that tore from her lips shattered Graham.
“When Dawg shows up, I won’t let her run, Graham. She can watch the two of you argue over her presence at a fucking orgy with a man he calls a friend.”
Graham jerked his head back, broke the possession of her lips, and quickly released her as he forced himself to step back.
He almost reached for her again as she swayed before him, her gaze filled with betrayal gleaming in those emerald eyes.
The first tear fell as she stiffened, pushed past him, and all but ran from the room. Moving past her cousin, she disappeared from sight, her fury the last sight he had of her.
Natches stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“Rowdy’s waiting in the hall for her,” he told Graham, amusement edging his voice.
Graham watched as Natches advanced into the shadows of the room until he was standing no more than five feet from him. Tense, prepared for a possible fight ahead, Graham watched the other man carefully.
“I don’t want the warning or the fight,” Graham growled. “But I won’t back down from it, either.”
Natches grinned as his deep green eyes, so like Lyrica’s, gleamed with mockery.
“There are easier ways to die, Graham,” Natches informed him. “You’re too hard for her. Too damaged. She deserves a man without the baggage you carry.”
But what if Lyrica eased that hardness? What if she stilled the nightmares when nothing or no one had been able to?
That thought had disgust filling him. Easing the horror o
f his life, of his past, wasn’t her responsibility. It was his nightmare to carry, not hers to ease.
Natches pushed his fingers wearily through his hair as Graham continued to glare back at him.
“What if that were your sister, Graham, with me?”
“I’d kill you,” Graham assured him. “You’re married and old enough to be her father.”
“Graham . . .” The mocking chastisement was obvious as Natches crossed his arms over his chest in an obvious effort to contain his fists.
“Do you think I haven’t already considered all this?” Graham snapped out, running his fingers through his hair and turning away to pace to the wide bank of windows along the wall.
Looking down, he stared out at the darkened lake, his mind in turmoil as he fought against the need to follow after Lyrica rather than remain there with her asshole cousin.
“You’ll break her, Graham,” Natches stated then. “She doesn’t deserve it and it will only add to your nightmares.”
He knew that, too.
“I have no desire to hurt her.” He turned slowly to face one of the most dangerous men he knew. “But I won’t see her hurt, either. We both know that report is bullshit. By god, I was there for her when no one else was. I saved her ass, and I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by while some son of a bitch finishes the job.”
Before he could anticipate the move, Natches’s fist flew out with what felt like a cement two-by-four plowing into the side of his face. Graham stumbled back, only barely managing to keep from landing flat on his ass.
“Just a taste of what’s coming,” Natches snapped. “Because Dawg hits a hell of a lot harder. And don’t doubt we have her ass covered. Well enough to know how often you follow her, how long you hang around outside her apartment, and just how many questions you’re asking. Back the fuck off. She doesn’t need you.”
Graham narrowed his eyes on the other man, fury pumping hot and strong through his system as he felt ice begin to spread through him. Natches had been a hell of a sniper, but he wasn’t the only hunter the Marines had created. And he wasn’t nearly as desperate as Graham was becoming.
“That one was free, Mackay,” he rasped, his voice harsh, the need to hit back swirling through him. “For Lyrica, only because I know she likes that pretty face of yours.” Her most handsome cousin, she called the other man fondly. “The next time that fist goes rabid on me, though, I hope you know how to duck. Fast.”