He smiled at the thought, anticipation building inside him. She had thrown out the challenge, now he’d take her up on it. In his way. With all his secrets intact. Because he didn’t know if he could survive the revelation of those secrets.

14

Chase stood inside the kitchen, staring out at the parking area, watching as his brother pushed his fingers through his hair, shook his head, and moved into the house.

“What happened to you, Cam?” he asked softly, knowing it would do no good to ask his brother that question. He had been asking that question since the first night Cam had disappeared from their bedroom, just after he turned fifteen.

They had been big for their ages, well developed, almost men, physically, but lost, uncertain, even for their ages. The death of their parents the year before had shaken them. The arrival of the Bitch from Hell, their mother’s older sister, Davinda, had nearly destroyed them.

whatever had happened had revolved around her.

Some nights, it was never predictable; Chase would wake up and go to check on his brother, and Cam would just be gone. Davinda never seemed to have answers to where he was, but she always knew. Chase had seen it in her eyes, she always knew. And as each year passed, the boy that was his brother had changed. The day they turned eighteen, Cam disappeared from school and showed up at the local sheriff’s department. Chase never knew what he had told Sheriff Bridges, but that evening the sheriff arrived, took the Bitch into another room, and then waited silently in the hall while she packed and left their lives forever.

He had gone through her luggage before she left. Through her purse. He had made certain she left with nothing but her belongings. When she had left, he clapped Cam on the shoulder, muttered an apology, and left.

Cam had never told Chase what happened. Four months later, he joined the military and just left. Ten years later, he had been captured, then nearly killed during an ambush that had occurred after he and his team escaped their captors. The man that had returned five years ago had changed, to the point that Chase sometimes wondered who Cam even was.

The only times he even felt as though his brother were alive inside were the times they shared their lovers. Cam was different then. That stony, dark control loosened, and the hunger inside him was given freedom, to a small degree.

Well, it used to be a small degree. Since Jaci had walked back into their lives, Chase had come closer than he ever had to learning what had changed the boy so severely that it had created the man Cam had become.

With Jaci, the hunger was closer to the surface, and for the first time since they were fifteen, Chase had begun to glimpse his brother’s nightmares.

They’d done that a lot when they were boys—sensed each others nightmares. Not their dreams or fantasies, or even their fears, just their nightmares. And the nightmares Chase had begun sensing was sending chills down his spine.

God help Davinda Morris, because if she was still alive, Chase knew he would have to seek her out and kill her himself. whatever she had done to Cam had come close to destroying him. And now it was coming close to destroying Cam’s last chance with Jaci.

Chase had known, even seven years before, that Jaci was Cam’s weakness. He had felt it each time Cam had seen Jaci, talked to her, heard her laughter.

It wasn’t a sexual or even an emotional knowledge. Just a sense that the darkness inside his brother had eased, and it had eased because of Jaci.

As he stood there, staring into the gloomy, rain-swept morning, he wondered if his brother would ever release the hold he had on his secrets, because he had a feeling he saw something in Jaci that Cam refused to see. She would never allow what Cam needed for the sake of pleasure alone. For Jaci, it would always be emotional, and it would always be tied to Cam and her trust in him. Without that trust, she would never allow it.

“Have you tried checking into your aunt’s past?” Ian stepped into the room, his voice quiet. He knew Chase and Cam well enough, had seen Cam in the throes of that darkness, to know what was going on.

It was a problem that plagued both of them.

“Only about every year.” Chase sighed. “He’s not talking, and evidently I’m not looking in the right places.”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall beside the wide, tall window that stared out into the covered parking area.

“I’ve investigated the sex clubs, both above- and underground. I’ve had every sexual predator known at the time investigated. I’ve had investigators working on Davinda’s past as well her friends’. Nothing. No records, no hints of abuse. I’m missing something, Ian. I just can’t figure out what.”

He’d figured it was sexual abuse years before, but in the years since his brother had joined the military, and after, he’d never found proof of it.

Ian moved across the room and pulled a chair from the table. Lights were out, the room was shadowed, lit occasionally with the hard, jagged flashes of lightning.

Straddling the chair, Ian stared back as Chase turned to watch him.

“If she walks away from him, I’ll lose my brother forever,” he said. “It’s been coming for more than a year. That much I can feel. He’ll leave, join a private paramilitary group, and the next thing I know, I’ll be burying him. He was talking about it last year. Hints here and there.” He shrugged. “The military nearly destroyed what was left of his compassion. The killing. Seeing the hell nations can visit on each other.” He shook his head as he breathed out wearily. “He’s cold inside, Ian. Almost pure ice.”

“A man can’t hinge his survival on a woman, Chase,” Ian said compassionately. “I think you’re wrong about him. He’s stronger than that.”

“He’s too fucking strong.” Chase rubbed at his chin wearily. “That’s the problem. Too controlled. Too secretive. Too determined to make certain I don’t blame myself for whatever happened to him. What makes him think that hiding it changes anything? I still blame myself.”

He was the oldest by minutes only, but it was his job to protect his brother.

“He’s not a boy anymore, and neither are you,” Ian told him. “And Jaci’s not his savior. If the ice is starting to crack, then it would have anyway. And I think it has. Cam was restless before Courtney mentioned her name. He needed the sharing more often, he brooded more often. I think Jaci being here will only push him into it faster.”

“If he’ll let her,” Chase said uncertainly. “What if he doesn’t?”

“Then there’s no way you can fix it,” Ian pointed out. “He’s a man, Chase, not a boy. You can’t make him do anything he refuses to do. All we can do is be here if he needs to discuss it. But my guess is, you might never know. Some things a man just can’t share with another man, even his brother. But maybe, if Jaci has to have answers to accept him, then maybe he’ll tell her. Maybe he can heal with her. That’s all we can ask for.”

To that, Chase shook his head. There wasn’t much else he could say.

“Sometimes a man takes too much responsibility on his shoulders, Chase.” Ian stood up before continuing. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and watched Chase somberly. “I think you and Cam both do that way too often. Give him a chance to work this out.” He smiled then. “He might be better at it than you want to give him credit for.”

“He’s my brother. I’m supposed to worry.” Chase grunted. “Secretive bastard.”

“Uh-huh, I guess that’s why you told him why you need the sharing as well.” Ian asked.

Chase frowned, a sudden suspicion drawing him tight.

“What are you talking about?”

Ian chuckled. “Seems Cam’s not the only one with secrets, Chase. And maybe he senses that as well.”

With that, Ian turned and moved from the room, leaving Chase with his thoughts and his worries.

What could have happened to his brother? There was no evidence of sexual abuse that he could find. The pedophiles in their area at the time had had no knowledge of Cam, outside the fact that they had seen him around town.

Chase frowned at that. He knew, knew in his soul, it was sexual abuse, but the parameters of abuse he knew of weren’t exactly right. They were off. Just a little something that wasn’t right about it.

And in all these years he had never figured out what that little something was, and he had a feeling he might not ever know. But, as he’d told Ian, it didn’t stop the guilt. Something had nearly destroyed his brother, and Chase hadn’t been able to stop it. It was a guilt he would carry for the rest of his life.

“What the hell happened, Cam?” He breathed out again. “Son of a bitch, what did she do to you?”

Chase wasn’t going to let it go, and Cam knew it. A part of him had always known that his brother at least suspected part of what happened; but hell, even his brother couldn’t have guessed the truth. The truth was so fucking twisted, so incredibly depraved, that sometimes he wondered at the truth of it himself.

Shaking his head hours later, he ignored Chase’s grumblings from behind about the lightning and the shitty Internet reception. The rain always seemed to affect both the satellite and cable reception. Neither were perfected yet, even with Ian’s top-notch, ex-government computer expert on board. Storm-laden days still had the reception lagging, until it was slow enough to make a saint curse.

Slow enough to leave a man time to think, and Cam was thinking in overdrive. Courtney and Jaci were in the club section of the mansion, under Ian’s supervision. Jaci needed sketches, measurements, a feel of the rooms, she had told Ian.

Cam’s hands itched to feel her again. He’d like to hide her in one of those rooms, strip those damned jeans off her ass, and bend her over—take her, as he gripped the rounded curves of her rear.

He shook his head and punched in the search command again before sitting back in his chair and waiting. He lifted his gaze to the security monitors lined up over his desk.

Security was wired into his and Chase’s office, as well as Ian’s and the central security room, to allow for multiple-room surveillance. Ian believed in backup.

As he watched the main room, the double doors opened and Ian stepped inside, followed by Courtney and Jaci. Courtney, as always, was like a little kid at Christmas, every chance she got to enter the club.

She moved immediately to the table where Khalid was finishing his breakfast. He’d spent the night in one of the club’s suites, rather than return to the penthouse where his family was visiting.

His smile was easy, familiar, as Courtney chatted away. While Khalid had been Ian’s third, he had often been subject to many of Courtney’s practical jokes and shenanigans. And he seemed to love every minute of it. Other men might have been jealous, but Ian knew what others only saw: Courtney’s complete devotion to her husband.

She was prone to flirt, but lightly. She teased, but only with those she knew were less likely to take her seriously; and she was shamelessly aware of her own power over the opposite sex. But it was a power she never used, except in the most playful of ways. And it was a power she forgot entirely, whenever it came to her husband. The love Courtney felt for Ian lit every part of her.

As Courtney and Khalid joked, Cam watched as Ian indicated the security cameras, which were cleverly hidden along the walls, behind decorative smoked glass.

They turned a few moments later, and a silent whistle pursed his lips at the sight of Jaci’s shapely ass.

A second later, he was on his feet, stalking from the office and heading for the club, indignation and anger burning through him. He had caught the looks of the few members in the renovated ballroom. Sons of bitches were all staring at her ass like it was only a matter of time before they would have license to touch.

Wasn’t going to happen. Damn their sorry-assed hides, if the need ever arose for a third other than Chase, he could bet it wasn’t going to be any of the three devouring the sight of Jaci’s backside right now. He doubted he’d be able to let them breathe the same air she breathed, without anger burning inside him for months.