He’d trust her with them, but he’d never tell her some secrets. The secrets that were far too dangerous to her safety should she know them.

Because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that to save her, he’d betray each and every one of those secrets, and he knew she’d do the same for him.

“I’m an agent for the United States Federal Protective Service,” he told her. “We’re tasked with protecting and investigating any threats to the possessions of the United States government and, in some instances, government employees. You knew I was an agent.” She nodded her head slowly. “What did Eve tell you happened last summer?”

“That several former members of the Freedom League believed Dawg had something Chandler Mackay had stolen years ago, and they kidnapped her to attempt to make him turn it over.”

Jed nodded. That was the story they had come up with, not that the majority of it wasn’t true. It was. It just wasn’t the full explanation; neither did it include Eve’s fiancé’s part in the situation, or Jed’s and Elijah’s.

“Those members were stealing confidential files from military and government offices to locate a cache of gold Chandler hid years ago. They believed Dawg would know where it was stashed.”

Dawg probably did know where it was stashed, Piper thought. Hell, he probably had it hidden himself once he found it.

She knew he’d taken to keeping the things Chandler had stashed away as he found them, out of pure spitefulness toward the government, once he’d learned how Piper, her mother, and her sisters were treated after Homeland Security had found them.

“I guess telling me the truth means you intend to stick around for a while?” she asked, trying to hold on to the charade she’d played since meeting him.

That unspoken lie that what he did or where he went wouldn’t matter to her.

Uncurling his arm from beneath his head, he slid his hand behind her neck and pulled her to him.

“What do you think, Piper?” he growled against her lips. “Do you think there’s a chance in hell that I’ll ever let you go now?”

He didn’t give her a chance to answer him. The teasing brush of his lips turned serious, burned through any objections she might have, and left her too hungry, her body too heated to deny him.

Possessiveness rang in his tone, gleamed in the midnight blue of his eyes, and filled the power and dominant strength of his kiss.

Did she think he would let her go now?

Not for a while, perhaps.

Not until the hunger began to dim. Not until the flame of lust began to cool. And wasn’t that the way of it?

The questions, the uncertainties and insecurities of the emotions raging through her became suppressed by a pleasure she couldn’t deny.

A pleasure she didn’t want to deny.

His lips rubbed against hers, his tongue licking at hers, tasting her and allowing her to taste him in turn.

The wild, erotic flavor of his kiss was one she was certain she would never be fully prepared for. The heat and wonder, the incredible pleasure and full, chaotic sensory overload were unlike anything she had ever known before his touch.

She’d waited for this since she’d first realized how sensual a male’s touch could be, or how pleasurable a kiss could be. She’d waited for this kiss.

She’d waited for Jed.

Easing back, Jed slid kisses from her lips to her jaw as his arms wrapped around her, pulling her closer to his aroused body.

Heat surrounded her. Flames licked over her nerve endings and pierced her pussy with a force that had the tender muscles clenching violently.

The feel of her juices easing along the sensitive portal, and the fierce ache in her clit as it built rapidly, pulled a low, desperate moan from her lips.

She needed him. She ached for him.

Smoothing her hands along his shoulders to the heavy strength of his biceps, Piper held on tight as she felt herself being lowered to her back. Anticipation began to build, along with pleasure and the driving need for more.

Always for more.

Surely the day would come when the instantaneous need for his possession would ease. When he would touch her and she would at least have a moment to think, to consider, before her hunger for him overrode any other consideration.

At the moment, she couldn’t imagine it happening, though.

His lips slid along her neck, and she felt the rasp of his beard, the feel of his hand stroking against her stomach, moving higher, cupping her breast. Each sensation built in pleasure and in heat until Piper was moaning beneath him, her hips lifting, pressing the mound of her pussy against the hard muscle of his thigh as he came over her.

“I get drunk on you, Piper,” he muttered against her breast, his lips brushing against the tight, sensitive peak of her breast a second before his tongue rasped over it with erotic hunger.

“Please, Jed,” she whispered, desperate. “Don’t wait.”

She wanted him now. Foreplay could come later.

He moved closer, his legs parting hers as his head lifted from her breast.

Piper forced her eyes open.

She wanted to watch, wanted to see him take her.

She was on the verge of begging when the world suddenly upended.

One second she was lying beneath Jed, anticipation tearing through her senses.

In the next second it felt as though she were flying through the air before she landed against Jed’s hard body, only to be rolled quickly to the floor.

Everything happened so fast. Too fast.

Wide-eyed, shocked, she let her gaze follow his hand as he reached beneath her bed, jerked out a lethal black handgun, then leveled it over the top of the bed with steely-eyed intent.

As she rolled to her stomach to push herself from the floor, she heard the lazy, less-than-amused drawl.

“Jed, do you have a fucking death wish?”

Dawg didn’t sound pissed, but he didn’t sound approving either. It was a dangerous tone of voice that assured all those listening that his mood could swing either way.

He was ready to talk, and in true “Dawg” style, he was barging right in.

Lips tightening, Piper jerked the sheet Jed had dragged off the bed as they rolled, and wrapped it quickly around her naked body. Peeking over the side of the bed, she growled back at her brother.

“Why are you sneaking into my bedroom?”

Dawg’s brow lifted. “Little sister, I wasn’t sneaking. Your door was unlocked.”

“The hell it was.” Struggling with the sheet with one hand to keep it around her, Piper used the other to push her hair back from her face as she glared at Dawg.

She was all too aware of Jed moving to his feet, completely at ease with his nudity and not the least bit ashamed as he collected his clothes. Dawg’s expression tightened, his mood shifting toward that dangerous mark.

“Don’t call me a liar, Piper,” Dawg warned her then. “I said the door was unlocked. Trust me; it was unlocked.”

“I locked that door earlier, Dawg,” she told him, suddenly aware that something simply wasn’t right where his entrance was concerned. “I remember securing it. And neither Jed nor myself has gone out of it since.”

Dawg’s gaze narrowed. “I wasn’t exactly quiet when I pulled in and called out to Mercedes to tell her I was coming around to your room.” His gaze swung to Jed as he laid his shirt across the table before securing the belt on his jeans. “I guess there’s not a chance in hell you heard anything?”

Jed cleared his throat. As he glanced at her, Piper felt her face flushing heatedly.

She knew exactly why they hadn’t heard anything.

“Figures.” Dawg grunted, drawing Piper’s attention back to him. “You’re certain the door was locked?”

Tipping her head to the side, she stared back at him with mocking disbelief. “Really, Dawg?”

They both knew she was certain. Piper was the one often found checking all the doors and windows in the middle of the night, to be certain no one could slip into the suite.

Lifting his hand, he pushed his fingers through his hair in agitation before staring back at her, his celadon gaze filled with concern. “Piper, please God, tell me what’s going on before someone does more than bruise your face.”

She knew that door had been locked, which meant someone had unlocked it at a time when they would have believed she was otherwise occupied.

They were there looking for something.

She just had no idea who or what they were searching for.

TEN

Staring into her brother’s face and seeing the fear and worry for her reflected in his gaze, Piper was forced to admit that her suspicions regarding the attack couldn’t be ignored any longer. There wasn’t so much as a sliver of a chance that the attack in New York had been random, and she knew it.

It hadn’t been an accident that her room was the one a burglar had targeted. She hadn’t been randomly picked out of a crowd and then followed to her room. She wasn’t just a faceless nobody someone had decided to torment.

And the nightmares . . .

Those vague, shadowy horrorscapes she drifted into once she fell asleep couldn’t be ignored either. Just as the unlocked door couldn’t be overlooked. Someone was desperate enough to get to her that they had picked the lock on her patio doors in broad daylight.

Breaking contact with Dawg’s fierce look, she glanced at Jed, and knew he had reached the end of his patience as well. If she didn’t tell her brother now, then he would.

“As you know, I slipped out of town last week.” She sighed in resignation as she stared back at her brother once again. “A friend drove me to Louisville, where I caught a train to New York City to meet with someone interested in my designs. I was getting ready to leave to come home when I asked the front desk to send up a bellhop to help with my luggage. I had bought lots of materials at the fabric stores.” She waved her hand toward her worktable. “It wasn’t the bellhop who arrived. When I opened the door, I got a faceful of fist, and if it hadn’t been for the kids in the adjoining room, the damage would have been much worse.”

Dawg sat down slowly in the chair beside him before wiping his hands carefully over his face.

“I need to get dressed.” She breathed out roughly. “You can question me when I get back.”

Gathering her clothes, she strode quickly to the bathroom and snapped the door closed behind her before leaning against it and dragging in a ragged, fear-filled breath.

She knew she had locked that door.

She remembered locking it, just as she remembered Jed checking those locks when he’d risen from the bed after they had caught their breath.

What if she had been alone and Dawg hadn’t shown up?

What if she had been attacked again? Or one of her sisters, or her mother?

God, what had she managed to draw back to Somerset and her family?

* * *

Dawg stared at the closed bathroom door before turning his gaze on Jed.

The other man was playing with one of the little glass gems Piper was so fond of. She’d bought a shitload of stuff, evidently, while she had been in Manhattan. Enough that she’d not wanted to carry it all herself to the cab.

She had instead opened her door to some bastard pretending to be a bellhop.

“What do you know, Jed?” he finally questioned the other man.

Listening to Jed’s account of the night the kid had called him, and his arrival at the hospital, Dawg had to admit that his gratitude toward the other man was overwhelming.

There was no doubt in his mind that Piper would not have called him or one of their cousins. She was so wary of their protective tendencies, and so certain, according to Jed, that the attack had been random, that she would have never watched her back.

Fortunately, Jed had been watching it for her.

“Did you suspect she would be followed?” Dawg asked when he finished.

“If I had suspected it, she would have called you long before now,” Jed informed him.