“I waited because I didn’t believe it was fair to drag you into my world,” he explained, his voice heavy as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Why now? Because I couldn’t stand it any longer, Eve. I’ve wanted you since that first day, and waiting simply wasn’t any option any longer.”
His answer only made her next question harder. Twisting her fingers together in her lap, she watched his eyes as she asked, “How do you know Chatham Doogan, and why did you show up at the restaurant last night?”
“Fuck, we couldn’t start with the easy questions first, could we?” He grimaced before his eyes narrowed on her. “I’m going to be honest with you, Eve, but I’m telling you now: No one—not your brother, your sisters, or your mother—can know about this. It goes no further, no matter what.”
“It won’t go any further,” she promised. She knew his answers weren’t going to be easy to hear, though.
“Chatham Bromleah Doogan the third.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “He’s my boss, sort of. He’s the operations director for the regional office of the Federal Protective Service. It’s a division of Homeland Security that deals with the protection and security of federal buildings, employees, assets, and possessions. And if you tell anyone what I’m telling you today, then Doogan is going to jump on it like a dog on a bone and drag your brother and cousins into something I don’t think they want to be a part of.”
Eve stared back at him, expecting him to declare, “April Fools’,” despite the fact that it was already June. If not that, then, “psych,” or, “joke,” or some declaration to indicate that he certainly wasn’t serious. But the longer she stared at him, the more she knew it wasn’t coming. The more sense it made.
“You’re not a traitor then?” she finally asked. “You haven’t been stealing government files left and right or attempting to weaken the pillars of society?”
A bitter smile pulled at his lips. “I don’t know about the pillars of society, but sorry, baby, the thieving is pretty much true. For the past two and a half years I’ve been a thieving son of a bitch.”
Her hands were shaking. As Eve stared at her hands in her lap she realized they were trembling like leaves in a storm.
“Why?” she asked, keeping her gaze on her hands, wondering whether she could will them to be still.
“It’s part of the investigation FPS is conducting to catch the thieves actually stealing government files from independent analysts who were contracted to study them,” he explained.
Okay, so he was pretending to be a thieving son of a bitch, she thought as her gaze lifted to him again. That was the easy part. There was much more than this going on; Chatham’s presence at the boat dock proved that.
“Before you ask this next question be damned sure you want the answer,” he warned her as her lips parted.
“How do you know what I’m going to ask?” Her voice was faint, cautious.
She could feel things she didn’t understand. Feelings and suspicions she wasn’t certain were hers.
“The hell if I know, but I can tell,” he growled in annoyance.
“So tell me.” No. She really didn’t want to know. She needed to know, but she didn’t want to. The truth truly could hurt.
Brogan’s jaw clenched savagely. “You want to know why Doogan asked you to dinner and why I came back and dragged you out of there. That’s what you’re ready to ask.”
She wasn’t exactly ready, but . . .
She stared at him in shock before turning away for long moments. How had he known? The same way she knew he didn’t want to tell her? The way she knew he’d never intended for her to ever have the opportunity to ask even the questions she was asking?
She turned back to him and nodded slowly.
“Doogan asked you to dinner to force me to do exactly what I did,” he revealed. “Donny heard him invite you to dinner, heard the location and your answer. The bastard let me get three hours out of town before he was good enough to tell me. And I came back for you, by God, because you’re mine! And that’s besides the fact that I’ve never fucking cared for Doogan’s poaching tendencies. Coming back for you was a hell of a lot easier than trying to get out of a murder charge.”
Eve could feel her insides shaking now as well. She was trembling from the inside out, shaking with the desperate need to deny what he was telling her.
“That doesn’t make sense, Brogan,” she whispered. “How could I be of any use to Homeland Security or to Chatham?”
“Not so much you as your brother and cousins. Doogan wants the Mackays to solve this for him, without his asking. If he has to ask and they solve it, then he owes them major. They solve it because you’re possibly in danger or your lover endangers you, then it’s just a freebie and he doesn’t owe them a damned thing.”
There had to be more, though. She could feel it, sense he was holding back. But if she didn’t ask the right question, then he wouldn’t tell her. But she knew it wasn’t just a case of pulling her brother and cousins into some conniving bastard’s operation.
Staring back at him, she whispered, “Is everyone in Homeland Security manipulating bastards with nothing better to do than scheme and interfere in innocent people’s lives?”
Brogan shook his head. “Timothy and Doogan are freaks of nature best avoided.”
“So Chatham Doogan asked me out knowing you would return once you found out about it and then make me your lover?” she asked dubiously. “How could he be so certain it would work?”
“Because he’s a freak of nature,” he repeated. “Men like that can calculate the odds and then find ways to turn the situation to their favor. That’s what Doogan is best at.”
“All of this just so Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches would help solve a case for him?”
Brogan nodded.
“How are they supposed to accomplish something you’ve not yet managed?” she bit out, her fingers forming fists as offended anger began to surge through her senses.
Brogan’s lips tilted in a smile, more rueful than mocking. “They know this county and the people in it,” he told her. “Even more, they know which rocks to turn over and the heads to knock together to get the answers they need.”
“And you think they haven’t gotten tired of waiting and are doing it anyway?” she asked in disbelief. “Brogan, this is their home, and they wouldn’t let this go on without helping if they knew about it.”
He shook his head, his arms dropping from his chest.
“No, Eve, I don’t think that’s what they’re doing,” he said acerbically. “There’s doing what’s required because the director of operations of the Federal Protective Service threatened to imprison you if you stuck your nose in another agency operation. Then there’s active determination to finish the job before something happens to the baby sister you swore you would protect. The first kind of man steps in only when asked to. The second doesn’t wait to be asked.”
And Dawg wouldn’t wait to be asked if he thought Eve, Piper, Lyrica, or Zoey were in danger.
“And you think Dawg won’t figure it out?” she questioned him harshly. “For God’s sake, Brogan, I promised him I would stay away from you. That I wouldn’t take as a lover the only man he couldn’t bear to see me with. Trust me; Dawg will question me. He’ll want to know why I broke my promise when I’ve never done it before.”
What had she done to betray her brother?
Disbelief crashed through her system as the reality of it, of the fact that she had done the one thing Dawg, her brother, had asked her not to do. The only thing he had ever asked her not to do.
“He should have never made you promise to stay away from me.” His brow arched, mockery gleaming in his eyes, but Eve could feel the thread of anger emanating from him.
“You’re a suspected traitor, Brogan,” she reminded him.
“Living in the same house as a former Homeland Security special agent,” he reminded her. “Don’t fool yourself, sweet pea. Dawg Mackay knows a traitor when he’s in the presence of
one. Just as he knows an agent when one’s around.”
Eve stared back at him, hurting, her heart aching so fiercely she reached up to rub at her chest, trying to ease the burning tightness.
He was right. Dawg would have known Brogan was no traitor, so why would he deceive her? Make her believe he suspected Brogan of being exactly that?
“Maybe it’s because everyone else believes you’re one?” she questioned him, her voice rough. “Or maybe it’s because he suspected what your boss is capable of doing.”
Still, Dawg had led her to believe he, too, suspected Brogan of treason, or acting against his country. And because he had believed it, Eve had questioned her own instincts where Brogan was concerned.
“Tell me, Eve, when you made that promise, did you intend to keep it?” The look in his eyes warned her he wasn’t happy she had given in to Dawg’s demand.
Had she intended to keep it?
Eve had never lied to herself, but she realized she had lied to her brother.
“My head did,” she finally whispered. “But my heart wasn’t so certain.”
Staring up at him, Eve realized that even when Dawg had asked for her promise, she had known it was unfair. Just as she had known it would be impossible for her to keep.
Rising to her feet, she had every intention of returning to the lake house, gathering her things together, and leaving. There were too many emotions swirling inside her. Too many that she could sense were coming from Brogan, and too many of her own that she didn’t understand.
Then there was the hunger.
Through the conversation, each question and answer, there had been an unspoken hunger building, growing between them: needs she didn’t understand, hungers that raged and built until she was certain she wasn’t sensing just her own, but his as well.
“Where are you going?” he demanded as she moved past him.
“I have to leave, Brogan.” Staring up at him, she felt torn, so torn she couldn’t make sense of it. “I need time to think.”
“Time to think about what?” he demanded, his hands catching her hips and pulling her into him. “About us? Or about keeping a promise you should have never made to begin with?”
“Maybe I need to think about the fact that I really don’t like being controlled,” she burst out. “Not by my brother, your boss, or you.”
She faced him, her chin lifting proudly as she tried—hell, she fought—to ignore the needs raging through her.
Hard and erect, his cock pressed into her stomach.
She was wet, slick, and hot, the weeping heat spilling to the bare folds of her pussy and dampening her panties.
“And I already warned you that was something you should have already considered. It’s too damned late to think you can just walk away, Eve,” he warned her.
“I can do whatever I want to do,” she informed him defiantly.
“Then maybe I need to remind you why you don’t want to,” he stated, his tone rasping, assuring her that the thought of her leaving was one Brogan was refusing to entertain.
“Why?” she cried out, the uncertainties assailing her driving home the fact that maybe she really didn’t know the man she had allowed herself to sleep with the night before.
No, she hadn’t known him, something protested inside her, but she knew him now. She could stare into his face, into his eyes, and she could see him now. She could see the man staring down at her and recognize the emotions swirling beneath the chilly surface of his gaze.
What she sensed there had her body instantly priming for sex. Her clit swelled; her pussy began heating, the slick dampness preparing her vagina for his invasion. She could feel the fierce determination swirling in the depths of his gaze reaching out to her. And being able to read him so well now was a little freaky.
“I can fucking feel you.” He grimaced, his blue-gray eyes darkening, flashing with frustration. “It’s like you’re slapping me with your hurt feelings and uncertainty. Stop it!”
“Stop it?” Shooting him a withering look, she propped her hands on her hips in vexation. “Fine, Brogan, I’ll stop slapping you with the fact that everyone around me seems to be using me, for some reason, and you can stop slapping me with all that arrogance and distrust I can feel rushing from you.” She started to turn away before turning back to him. “And while you’re at it, stop fucking me in your mind. It was bad enough before, when all I had to worry about was changing my panties because of my own dirty thoughts, but yours are just plain depraved.” Her arms crossed beneath her breasts as she stared back at him, incensed.
His gaze became shuttered, brooding as she watched him, her heart racing with anger and excitement.
“You’ve never felt this before either, have you?” That certainty was as clear as the knowledge that the arousal hardening his body was only burning hotter inside him by the minute.
“Felt what?” Guarded, cautious, he watched her almost impassively.
“Forget it.” Shaking her head, she refused to allow herself to be drawn into an argument he would only find ways to refute. “Just mark it down to my overactive imagination. But remember, Brogan, you’re the one who told me to stop slapping you with my emotions first. I was keeping my mouth shut about it.”
That was what she sensed, felt. As though a part of her had opened up to him, making her completely empathic when it came to him.
And, it seemed, him to her.
“Chatham Doogan spoke to me first at the bar,” she gritted out between clenched teeth, determined to steer the conversation well away from what they were feeling. “John Walker introduced him as an old friend of his and Sierra’s.”
“Sierra’s a distant cousin,” he admitted grudgingly.
“He asked me to dinner; I accepted. Why did the two of you pretend you didn’t know each other at the restaurant?”
“Because it was the wrong place and time for explanations.” His tone was clipped as the curve of his jaw tightened into unyielding lines.
Complete denial filled his expression and his gaze, but that did nothing to change what she could feel—or what she could sense, perhaps.
She wasn’t certain what it was. Staring back at him, she could feel his anger, his sudden distrust, but also his arousal. And that was building by the second.
“I’m ready to go home, Brogan. . . .”
“No, you’re not. You’re as damned ready to fuck as I am.” Dripping with carnality, his voice roughened, lowering insinuatingly. “What do you want, Eve? My tongue filling your tight little pussy again? My cock fucking your mouth until you can taste my release?” As he spoke, his sharp, almost insulting tone became hoarse, heated.
And he was right; she wanted that and more.
Warily, she watched as he moved closer, his head tilting as he stared down at her, his gaze becoming dark, stormy as it glittered almost feverishly.
“And you want it here,” he stated provocatively. “Don’t you, Eve? Right here within this grotto, spread out on that bench.” His head lowered, his lips brushing at her ear. “You want my tongue and my cock so deep inside your pussy that you can’t bear any more. But you want more than that, don’t you?” he whispered then, surprise and rapacious anticipation growling in his voice. “You want it to hurt just that little bit again. You liked it, didn’t you? Fuck, no.” His breathing was heavy, harsh. “You loved it.”
“Stop.” She couldn’t fight this battle. She didn’t have the experience or the knowledge to combat what he was sensing.
“Do you know what I would love to do to you?” His hand lifted, the calloused tips of his fingers running up her arm. “I’d love to turn you over on your stomach, prop that pretty rounded ass up to me, and spank it until it flushes cherry red. Until your pussy is so wet your thighs are damp with your cream. And when you’re begging, so desperate to be fucked that nothing else matters, I want to watch my dick stretch your ass, watch as that tiny, tiny little entrance blooms around my cock and sucks it inside.”
She couldn’t breathe.<
br />
Eroticism rushed through her, weakening her knees and accelerating her breathing as he gripped her hip with his other hand while the fingers stroking her arm slid to the curve of her rear.
Cupping the rounded flesh of her rear cheeks beneath the soft chiffon of her skirt, he clenched the rounded flesh, pulling at it, igniting a tiny burst of heated sensation in her anus.
“I could make that hurt so good, Eve. You won’t know if it’s agony or ecstasy. All you’ll know is that you want more. That you have to have more.”
She was shaking in his arms, trembling as his hand moved between them, obviously loosening his belt, then his jeans.
“Brogan.” Protest or pleasure?
She had no idea what she was feeling or how she should react. She had no idea how to handle the wicked, carnal animal Brogan was unleashing on her.
Or the one he was unleashing in her.
“I can’t take your ass here.” Grudging regret filled his voice. “Unfortunately, the lube and toys are all back at the house, baby. But I can give you part of what you want.”
His jeans parted and a second later she could feel him stroking the hard, heated length of his cock as her nails curled against the shirt covering his wide chest.
“Why . . . why are you doing this . . . ?” Why was he using his ability to sense only her sexual needs and not the rest of her? The sexuality, the hunger for him, was rooted in something much deeper than lust.
“Because I’m just as hungry to do it as you are to have it done,” he admitted, his tone ragged. “And I’m going to do it, Eve. Just like you’re going to suck my dick, right here. Right now.”
His gaze was narrowed as her gaze jerked to his in sudden nervous awareness.
“Go to your knees,” he demanded, though his tone gentled at the last second. “Show me how badly you want to come for me, sweetheart. Show me how badly you want me to come in your hot little mouth.”
Sensation erupted in her womb, spasming through it as his gaze suddenly gleamed with avid hunger and awareness.