Because it was his. He wasn’t even going to let himself think she was his, just her innocence. He wasn’t going there, he promised himself. He had never let himself get mired in the quicksand of false love, and he wasn’t going to let it happen now.

Janey was more grounded than her brothers or her cousins thought she was. More mature than any of them believed. He had seen that in her, felt it in her. Or he was just fooling himself and creating an excuse to allow himself into her bed.

For a second, just a second, he prayed she was strong enough to keep him out of it. Otherwise, he had a feeling he would end up destroying both of them.

Janey was waiting when Alex arrived that evening. She’d called Rogue and rescheduled their girls’ night out. She hadn’t given the other woman an explanation and Rogue hadn’t asked for one. Janey had been torn, though. She wanted that night out. She’d never been dancing. She had never gotten tipsy in her life.

She wanted to do both.

She wanted to sway to the music, laugh and have fun. She wanted to be female. Feminine. She wanted to wear makeup and that new skirt Rogue had talked her into buying.

This evening, she wore a pair of cotton running pants and a T-shirt. She hadn’t straightened her hair, so the loose curls feathered around her face, almost to her shoulders.

She’d had it cut immediately after coming out of the hospital months before. The long strands had hung nearly to her waist, and every time she felt the weight of it she’d been reminded of how often Dayle and Nadine had used her hair to drag her around.

Now it was shorter, easier to keep up with, and Janey actually liked the way it framed the almost narrow lines of her face.

She was twirling one of those curls around her finger as she sat on the couch going through bills for the restaurant and waiting on Alex. Yet when his firm knock sounded on the door, she jumped, startled.

She excused the reaction. In the two months she had lived there, she had rarely had anyone knock on her apartment door.

Standing, she moved to the door and looked out the privacy peephole to see him standing there. As if it would be anyone else. Opening the door, she stood aside as he walked in, a duffel on one shoulder, a hard, long, narrow case in the other.

Looking into the parking lot, she frowned when she didn’t see his truck.

“Where did you park?”

“I didn’t.” He moved through the apartment to the short hall, and directly to the spare bedroom, as Janey closed and locked the door.

“What do you mean you didn’t? Did you walk?” she questioned as she followed him.

“Zeke picked me up at the marina and drove me in. He’ll pick me up in the morning when he goes back on shift. It would be best if no one knew I was here with you.”

Janey froze in the hall as he spoke from the bedroom. She was surprised at the hard surge of hurt and betrayal that struck her at his words. Of course it would be better if no one knew he was here. He was considered one of Somerset’s favorite sons. He was in the Special Forces, part of the investigation that destroyed the homegrown terrorist group Dayle Mackay had been a part of. It just wouldn’t do for people to know he was living with a traitor’s daughter, would it?

She turned and moved back into the living room, to her place on the couch. She wished that damned cat would show back up. She would have had something to distract her from the sudden pain building inside her chest.

She punched the numbers into the adding machine for the next bill, wishing she could throw the damned thing at the wall instead.

It was best that people didn’t know he was staying there? Oh yeah, she could definitely understand that.

Why hadn’t she thought about that? She should have. When she was trying to put all those big, tough males in their places this morning, she should have considered more than her own pride. She should have considered Alex’s reputation.

“Clean sheets?” Alex stood in the doorway now, his tone cool, the typical remote Alex tone.

“Closet in the hall,” she told him, her voice low, just as cool. She knew the robot tone, too.

She hadn’t made up a bed for him. Somehow. She frowned. Had she actually considered that he would try to talk his way into her bed again? The aberration that was last night flitted through her head. His touch, his kiss, the hunger she had felt blazing within him. Obviously, he had reconsidered that moment of insane lust. She should have done the same. She should have never canceled her girls’ night out. She should have left him here doing his damned job and gone out and had fun.

She pushed the adding machine back on the coffee table and tossed the bills back in their pile before rising to her feet and pacing the living room. If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be here. She could have been in the restaurant doing her job properly or out having fun. She hated vegetating in this apartment as she had done in the apartment in California.

If she had known how worried he was about anyone knowing he was here, she would have done just that. Instead, she moved into the kitchen, pulled open the refrigerator door, and pulled her wine out.

One glass. That was all she allowed herself a day. Well, sometimes a glass and a half. Tonight, just one glass. She poured the pale liquid before shoving the cork back in the bottle and returning it to the refrigerator.

So much for changing the sheets on her bed. That was wasted effort.

She moved back to the couch and looked at the clock. Hell. It was barely six thirty in the evening. She had at least another eight hours before she went to bed herself.

“Are we having dinner?” he asked as he moved into the kitchen.

“If you’re fixing it.” She lifted her glass and sipped as she stared at the curtained window across from her. “Or ordering it. Whichever you want to do.”

She sure as hell wasn’t ordering it for him. And she bet her ass he wasn’t going to order anything. That would require actually letting someone know he was there.

He didn’t say another word.

“Whatever.” She rose to her feet and moved to the phone. “Burgers or pizza?”

His expression was stoic, dark. He watched her, like she’d seen Fat Cat watch a mouse once.

Pondering. Considering. Was it really worth his time?

“How ’bout both?”

She nodded and picked up the phone. She ordered enough food for her brother and her cousins to share. She’d done that before. They’d just assume Natches and the others were going to be there tonight.

There. His nice, pristine reputation was still intact. And she felt as though something had shattered inside her.

“Janey.” He caught her arm as she moved past him, pulling her to a stop. “What’s wrong?”

“What would be wrong?” She blinked back at him with false innocence. “My big, bad-assed brother and cousins decided I needed a watchdog, and I was stupid enough to agree to let you stay. Hell, I thought you’d at least protest.”

“Why would I do that?” he asked quietly. “I don’t want to see you hurt. Those letters are serious, Janey.

Someone wants to hurt you.”

“Someone wants to hurt my feelings and run me out of town,” she argued, fighting to keep her tone placid. “You’re the one that ran to Natches and the others like a damned spy.”

“So I’m the one being punished?” He stroked her arm as he released her, running the backs of his fingers down it, and nothing more.

He stepped back. As though he remembered he shouldn’t touch her.

“Yeah. Something like that.” She moved away from him.

She made it as far as the couch.

“How long did they give you for the food?” he asked.

“Forty minutes.” She shrugged, sliding back into her seat and reaching for her wine.

“Enough time.”

Her head jerked up at the sound of his voice. He was stalking toward the couch. He’d shed his jacket; the dark T-shirt stretched across powerful shoulders and biceps. His jeans were snug, clearly revealing the erection she had refused to check for earlier.

“For what?” Her voice was weak, breathless.

She was a fool. She should put her foot down right now, let him know she wasn’t going to be a toy for him any more than she would be for anyone else.

But then he knelt in front of her. Slowly, his hands cupped over her knees and drew her thighs apart, wide enough for him to slide between them.

“Don’t do this.” Her hands moved to his shoulders, but she wasn’t pushing him away.

What he did to her should be illegal. He made her weak, made her unwilling to fight.

“I don’t think I can help it, Janey.” He slid his hands up her thighs, the heat of his palms burning her through the cotton pants she wore. “I didn’t sleep worth shit last night.”

That made two of them. But this wasn’t going to help either of them sleep at night, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to help her keep her heart shielded against him.

“You were too busy plotting to sleep,” she accused him. “You didn’t have to tell Natches about those letters.”

“Yeah, I did.” His gray eyes were darker, his lashes surrounding them like a heavy shadow. “I won’t let you be hurt.”

Janey pressed back into the couch cushions behind her. She could smell him, and she needed to escape the dark, heated scent.

“Take your shirt off for me, Janey,” he whispered. “Let me see you. Just a little bit.”

Her nipples peaked harder than they were before.

She licked her lips, her breathing becoming rougher, harder, as his gaze latched on to that action.

“I dare you,” he challenged her. “Come on, Janey. Tease me. I give you permission.”

“Tease you?” she repeated. “I have a feeling it would be like a lamb teasing a wolf, Alex. We’ve already established the fact that you can make me respond.”

“Make you respond?” His thumbs rotated inside her thighs. “Do I force you to respond, Janey?”

“Don’t play word games with me,” she protested, hating this response to him, hating herself for being so weak.

His lips quirked. She loved his lips when he did that. The wide, sensually full shape of them made her hungry to taste them. Made her desperate to feel them.

“Can I take your T-shirt off, then?” He leaned closer, his lips touching her jaw as Janey felt her lashes flutter at the warmth of the caress. “I’d do it slow and easy. Give you time to protest. I’d unwrap you like the prettiest present.”

She felt his fingers move beneath the hem of her shirt, lift it. She shook, felt herself trembling as the material cleared her stomach, then eased over her breasts.

Memories, stark and brutal, clashed with the need rising, sharp and hot, inside her.

“You’re so pretty, Janey.” His voice was like a sigh, breaking through the fear that would have risen inside her. “I’ve wanted to tell you for years how pretty you were, and I knew better. I knew I had no business wanting you, thinking about you.”

Her arms lifted as he drew the shirt over her head and dropped it to the couch beside her.

She was breathing hard and fast now, her breasts rising and falling, framed by the white lace of the demi bra she wore. Her nipples were hard, sensitive, pressing into the thin cups as he stared at her, his expression tight, his lips parted as his own breathing roughened.

“It should be a sin for a woman as pretty as you to be a virgin,” he told her. “You should have been loved slow and easy. Taken all night long. Licked from the sweet curves of your lips to the tips of your

toes.”

She was enthralled. His hands pressed against her sides, moved up until they paused just beneath the swollen curves of her breasts.

Janey watched him carefully. Her breasts were tender, sensitive. They had been ever since Nadine had bruised them. The bruising had been deep, but the mental scars had gone deeper.