Jaci ignored the nerves in her stomach, let a smile touch her lips as she accepted a glass of champagne from the waiter and lifted it in a subtle toast to the other woman.

Then she turned back to Cam, deliberately assuring Annalee how little her anger meant.

Oh yes, she just needed to push her a little bit further.

12

“Would you like to tell me what the hell you were up to at the Brockheim party?”

Cam all but slammed the hotel room door closed hours later, as Jaci tossed her clutch onto the table just inside the room and turned to face both him and Chase.

Chase had been eerily silent during the drive from the party, his expression dark and closed, his eyes watching, tracking both Jaci and Cam’s expressions constantly. He’d made Cam feel like a fucking bug under a microscope.

Until Cam looked at Jaci. When he did, he could see the defiance in her expression, but there was something more in her face that almost terrified him. As though the veil of calm indifference that had been there before had been stripped away by some unknown force. She faced him now, none of the shadows that had once hid her from him in place.

“I wasn’t up to anything.” She spread her arms out from her body, drawing attention to those luscious curves.

Cam gave her what she was after. He let his gaze flicker over that dark red dress, but he watched those incredible eyes from the corner of his, just as he knew Chase was watching her, lusting for her. That defiance only fueled the desire. The desire was in turn fueled by the knowledge that she was his. His, by God, and she would not continue in whatever was up between her and the Robertses.

“You’re up to something, all right,” he grunted as he shrugged his jacket from his shoulders and moved into the sitting room, aware of Chase crossing his arms over his chest and watching both of them carefully.

She watched them both warily. He could see her thinking, calculating her odds of blowing off his suspicions.

“You challenged Annalee at that party, Jaci. I’m not a fool. I saw that look you gave her.”

And he wasn’t the only one. Brian Zimmer had seen it, and he had been concerned. As one of the club’s legal advisors, Brian had been keeping up with the investigation into the Robertses’ vendetta against Jaci, as well as the reports that were still coming in on Jaci herself.

She had met a lot of people over the years; there had to have been someone she had revealed the truth to. A friend, a lover they hadn’t yet found, someone she had talked to in a moment of weakness.

It wasn’t Courtney, which surprised Cam. Jaci was closer to Courtney than she had been to her girlhood friends in Oklahoma.

“Annalee was trying to have me thrown out of the party.” She kicked her shoes off, revealing the smoky silk hose that covered her toes. “I was merely acknowledging the fact that I had won this round, nothing more. Margaret and Harold Brockheim weren’t about to throw me out. It wouldn’t be acceptable, after inviting me to begin with.”

That was true enough. “Didn’t you do some designs for them a few years back?” Chase asked.

She smiled. “A cabin in Colorado. They weren’t there. I don’t think Margaret trusted me around her husband. I’m a home-wrecker, remember?”

Cam’s teeth ground together at the mocking retort. Damn her, he didn’t need a reminder of the damage the Robertses had tried to cause her. He was ready to kill them, as it was.

“You’re pushing me. I’ve never in my life killed a man without reason, Jaci, but if I keep seeing the damage Richard Roberts and his wife have done to you, then I might break that little rule.”

An edge of panic flared in her eyes, causing him to watch her suspiciously. Why the hell would she care if his wrath fell on Richard Roberts?

“Annalee is a bitch. That’s no reason to kill Richard. Besides, neither of them is worth the effort or the cost of a bullet.” And before you start threatening others, consider how you affect me everytime you leave me in my bed, alone.”

His eyes narrowed as she turned and moved farther away from him, the silk of her gown rustling against the silk that covered her legs. “That bed doesn’t define us,” he bit out.

“It will soon.” The silk of her stocking rasped against her gown as she turned.

He had ordered smoky thigh-highs. Silk. Smoke and fire was the image he had in his mind, and that was the image that met his eyes when he saw her at the party. Jaci was pure stubborn. He knew it. Chase knew it. And Cam was determined to find a way around it.

Cam had to forcibly restrain himself from following after her, from pushing her against the wall, and thrusting as hard and deep inside her as possible. He had wanted her, until it was like a fire in his balls; but seeing her tonight, seeing the confidence and determination in her eyes when he glimpsed her across the ballroom, the challenge she had silently thrown to Annalee and given him as well, it was as though he had always sensed the woman he was seeing now. The hunger that tore at his guts was nearly painful in its intensity. He looked at Chase and acknowledged the fact she might be strong enough to defy him entirely.

This was the woman he had always sensed inside her. The woman that could walk away from him.

He glanced at Chase again, seeing the lust, the obvious anticipation. His brother would fight or fuck, whichever Cam chose in this battle he and Jaci seemed to be waging now. It was going to have to be the latter, because he’d be damned if he could think with this need clawing at his insides.

He swallowed tightly, his fingers going to the buttons of his shirt as he watched her nimble little fingers grip the tab of the zipper at her lower back.

The snug material parted, revealing the silken line of the thong he had bought for her.

He felt his mouth go dry, then water, as she turned to him, gave her shoulders a little shrug, and let the dress slip down her body until it pooled at her feet.

He tore the shirt from his shoulders even as he moved, striding across the room and jerking her into his arms. He heard her gasp as his lips covered hers, and he barely restrained his own primal growl.

She met him hunger for hunger, need for need. Her lips parted, her tongue mingled with his. Slender, silken fingers dove into his hair and pulled, jerking free the dark band that held it back.

His hands were on her ass, gripping the rounded globes and lifting her to him. Long legs wrapped around his hips, the heated folds of her pussy heated his cock, even through the layers of clothing, as he stumbled backward from the pleasure. He kept her in his grip, held her lips with his, and caught himself with his shoulder against the wall.

“Dammit, don’t fall,” Chase growled. Somehow his brother had actually managed to get in front of them.

Shit. Control. Where the hell was his control? He was going to spank that pretty ass for being so daring. He was going to teach her to follow his lead. But hell, he’d have to release her lips to do that. He’d have to unwrap those gorgeous legs from around his waist, and he just wasn’t willing to do that.

He could barely stand to pull his lips away long enough to taste her jaw, her neck, as he struggled to get to the bedroom. He was not going to take her on the fucking couch.

Then she moved. Her legs tightened around his waist, shifted, heat raked across his dick, and he found himself flat on his ass on the couch.

Okay, he could do this here.

He gripped her ass, moved her against his cock, and ran his lips over the upper swells of her breasts. She tasted like the finest sugar, sweet and lickable. Fucking addictive.

When she lifted against him, her legs drawing from behind his back to kneel astride him, her sweet nipples were just below his lips.

Berry ripe. They were tight and hard, tempting him to taste, to savor. How the hell was a man supposed to resist that temptation? A temptation he had denied himself for—how long now?

More than seven years. Long before she had turned twenty-one. He had noticed her when she was a sweet, tender sixteen, and he had known she was going to be his. He hadn’t been more than twenty-one or twenty-two himself. He’d been a man for years by then. A soldier moving into the Special Forces. He’d thought he knew what he wanted, thought he knew what life was.

How damned wrong he had been.

This was what life was all about. This woman in his arms, this fire burning inside him, unlike any fire he had ever known in his life.

“In the bed,” he groaned, though he couldn’t resist those nipples. He licked them, sucked them into his mouth, and made no move to leave the couch.

Behind her, Chase turned her head to the side and lowered his lips to hers as Cam devoured her breasts. They were going to take her. Right here. Right now. They would still that defiant fire raging inside her, then attempt to reason the truth out of her. Maybe.

She was a fire burning through him, and he knew he was lost. This time. This time was going to be hard and fast, he knew it, knew there was no fighting it. He had waited too long this time. This time . . . this time, they’d take her on the damned couch.

He lifted her and bore her back onto the couch as Chase released her, watching as she stretched out beneath Cam, her witchy eyes glittering with passion, with lust, her face flushed with it, her breasts swollen, rising and falling with her quick, hard breaths. Beside the couch, Chase was undressing quickly, his expression a mask of desire and interest, as he watched the battle raging between Cam and Jaci.

Cam tore at his belt, the fastening of his slacks.

He rose long enough, just enough to shed his slacks and underwear and to notice that Chase had done the same, then, kneeling by the couch, he spread Jaci’s legs, spread them wide, and ran his fingers over the damp silk, the wet silk that covered the soft swell of her pussy.

He was going to take her hard and deep. But first he was going to taste her one more time. He was going to grow drunk on the passion that flowed from her, from the sweetness and wild tang of her lust.

Jaci stared down her body, seeing the sheen of perspiration over her breasts, her stomach, on Cam’s forehead as he touched the panel of silk that covered the aching flesh of her sex.

Where had she gotten the sheer bravado that had overtaken her when she entered the hotel room with Cam and Chase, the wild domination and lust clearly apparent in their gazes? It was as though her common sense had decided to go on vacation and leave only her hormones to guard the bastions of self-preservation. And they weren’t the best guards. Hell no, they were jumping up and down, burning inside her veins and begging for more.

“I used to dream of this,” she whispered. That seductive siren’s voice couldn’t be hers. “With nothing but a vibrator or my own fingers for pleasure, I thought of this.”

Lassitude swept over her, a weakening sexual intensity that melted inside her pussy, prepared her, and left her shaking in need.

Her breath caught as his gaze lifted to hers. Green fire blazed in his eyes, lust and male force, sending a surge of trepidation tripping through her.

“You’re not dreaming now,” he assured her.

His fingers gripped the band of the thong and pulled. Just that easily, the thin silk was torn from her body, to be dropped carelessly to the floor.

Jaci arched involuntarily, a cry leaving her throat as he pressed her legs farther apart and his head lowered to the dark auburn curls below.

“You ripped my panties,” she breathed out roughly.

“You still have the stockings.” His hands smoothed down the silk encasing her legs, as his breath whispered over her damp curls—just as Chase knelt beside the couch, the touch of his lips against her bare shoulder causing her to gasp in pleasure. The sheer sexiness, the eroticism of the moment, was enough to make any woman breathless.

In a burst of courage, hormones, or sheer insanity, she let the fingers of one hand trail from between her breasts to the top of her mound. And they watched. Cam’s eyes seemed to glow.

“Touch yourself,” he whispered, his voice like black velvet. “Show me how you dreamed of me, sweetheart.”