Testosterone and fury filled the air now. Jaci watched the metamorphosis as Cam and Chase stared back at each other, as animosity, anger, pain, and some kind of driving need to smash things seemed to pump up their bodies.
She had heard of the fights these two had as young men. It hadn’t been an unusual occurrence to see their faces bruised or to hear that they had fought each other, rather than others.
“Cam.” She touched his arm warningly, feeling the bunched muscles and vibrating fury.
He wasn’t angry with Chase, not really. He was angry with himself, with Davinda, and with the pride that was so much a part of him. The guilt and the pain had eaten at him for so many years, and now that it was out in the open, she could feel the fight burning between both men.
“Step away from him, Jaci,” Chase growled. “You don’t want to get between the two of us right now.”
“And I don’t want you fighting, either,” she snapped back at him. “Sit down and discuss this.”
Cam’s gaze swung toward her, disbelief and astonishment filling his expression.
“Discuss what?” he bit out. “The eavesdropping bastard can’t seem to keep his nose in his own business. I’m going to break it for him.”
He turned back to Chase, a hard, mocking smile on his face as his fists bunched at his side.
“You two are not going to fight.”
“The hell we’re not.” Cam lifted her and set her aside.
The smile on his face was tight, but something in his eyes caught hers. A lifting of the ice, a resolution. A part of him glorying at the chance to use his fists to pound out the rage inside him.
God, men were so dumb sometimes.
“Chase.” She turned to his brother desperately. “Now isn’t the time to fight. This is wrong.”
“No, this isn’t wrong,” he snarled. “Wrong was when he kept his yap shut and didn’t let me help him. Wrong was leaving me alone and shutting down that bond I needed at the time. Fuck him, Jaci. Wrong was when he ignored the fact that he had a fucking brother.” The last sentence was a war cry, as they rushed each other.
Fists, steel hard and filled with male rage, slammed. Chase’s head went back with Cam’s first blow; Cam stumbled back after a particularly brutal blow to his ribs.
And they were off and fighting. Bar stools slammed to the floor and slid across the hardwood floor as they wrestled each other onto the kitchen island and Jaci screamed as Chase’s next punch sent Cam to the floor.
Oh God, they were going to kill each other. Wide-eyed and shocked, she watched them fight as she reached to the table and grabbed the glass of whisky Cam had poured for her earlier.
She took it in one drink and wheezed in reaction. It caused her to miss several seconds of the blood and curses flying around the room.
“Bastard!” Chase cursed, after Cam managed to land another blow to his jaw. “I ought to kill you for that.”
“Yeah, for protecting you?” Cam’s voice was savage as he dodged a blow to his jaw, but he was a hair too slow to dodge the fist to his hard abdomen.
“Didn’t fucking need protecting.” Chase jumped at him and the fists were flying again.
Jaci winced and cried out, then she picked up the bottle of whisky and took Cam’s earlier example. She lifted it to her lips and drank straight from the bottle.
There had to be a way to stop this. They were going to kill each other. Cam had ripped the shirt off Chase’s back already, and his own was hanging in tatters. Both their lips were bleeding, and oh boy, were they going to have some bruises later.
When Chase’s fist connected with Cam’s face again, she’d had enough. This was ridiculous, she decided as the whisky began to warm her stomach and take the edge off the pure horror of watching these two fight.
There had to be a way of stopping it. Sometime before they killed each other, maybe?
But a little part of her that the liquor had released had to admit it was damned sexy, almost erotic, watching them fight. They were powerful, muscular. Sweat gleamed on broad chests and dampened chest hairs. Blood smeared their faces and their eyes were lit—with savage pleasure. They were enjoying the fight.
There was something they would enjoy just as much, though.
She took another drink of the whisky. Too much. She wheezed and choked as it went down, tears coming to her eyes as she fought to catch her breath.
Okay, that drink hurt. How the hell did Cam do that?
Chase managed to throw Cam into one of the hard steel beams centered around the room, and at that point she’d enough.
She slapped the whisky to the table and moved to the other side of the couch. The niggling idea moving through her head would never work if they couldn’t see her clearly.
She toed off her shoes first and pushed them to the side. She released the button to her slacks, then slid the zipper down, wincing again as Cam slammed his fist into Chase’s jaw, driving his brother’s head backward.
She was going to kill both of them.
She slid the jeans down her legs, then pulled off the stylish T-shirt she wore. She wore nothing now but the white, lacy panties and the flimsy bra she had put on that morning.
She was unclipping the bra, when a tense silence suddenly enveloped the room.
Jaci kept her smile hidden and her eyes on the little clip of the bra between her breasts. She released it slowly, then peeled the cups away from her breasts before dropping the silken lace to the floor.
She had their attention. It was complete, undivided, two sets of male eyes trained on her, devouring her. She ran her hands up her midriff, then cupped the mounds, her fingers running over her stiff nipples, before she lifted her head and stared back at them, allowing the lust, desire, and the pure love she felt for Cam to show on her face.
They were bruised and bloody—and jerking their boots off.
She lowered her hands, smoothing them over her flesh, down to the band of her panties, where she hooked her fingers beneath the elastic and lace and drew them slowly down her thighs.
She kicked them off as boots thumped to the floor and their hands went to the snaps of their jeans.
Blood smeared their faces. Cam had a cut on his shoulder, Chase’s chest was smeared with blood. They looked like warriors—like bad boys looking for trouble; and the effects of that fight had her blood pumping and hunger pouring through her veins.
Conquerors. They could consider this fight a draw, and to the victor goes—well, Jaci. Two victors and the fantasy of a lifetime.
“Would you like to shower first?”
Cam stalked toward her.
“Hmm. Maybe not.” Breathing was becoming difficult.
They weren’t focused on beating the hell out of each other anymore, they were now focused on her. All that testosterone and need for action swirled in the air around her and left her panting at the knowledge of what could be coming. She could see it in Cam’s eyes, this wouldn’t be a ménage. In Chase’s eyes, she saw the knowledge of that, as he began to move to the stairs. And perhaps there was even a tinge of regret mixed with relief.
“I can’t believe you did that.” Cam wasn’t thinking now, she could feel it. Testosterone filled the air, lust oozed from his pores, as he jerked her into his arms and, rather than moving for the couch, headed for the bedroom.
When he tossed her to the bed, she didn’t have time to bounce before he was tearing his clothes off. Within seconds he was covering her, pushing her legs apart, and filling her.
Alone. Staring into her eyes, the bleak shadows that had once filled his gaze had eased, and now, desperate hunger filled his eyes. Emotion. Satisfaction and lust.
“I love you,” she whispered, framing his face with her hands and staring up at him as she felt his cock flex inside her. “With everything I am, Cameron Falladay, I love you.”
He grimaced, and when he would have buried his head against her shoulder, she pushed him back.
“Watch me,” she almost sobbed, “like I watch you. Every second, every emotion. Just like this Cam. Just us.”
“Just us,” he groaned, moving against her slowly, his cock easing out, then working inside her—filling her, stretching her, taking more than just the lust that rose between them.
“You’re always a part of me,” she moaned, staring into his eyes, feeling that emotion storming through him, seeing it as his expression tightened, his eyes darkened.
“You’ve always been a part of me,” he told her then, his strokes increasing, pleasure blooming, tightening, taking them higher now, than they had gone before.
The wicked eroticism of the ménages was nice, but this, this deep intensity, the feel of him touching her, hands stroking her . . . his head lowered, his lips engulfing hers, his gaze slumberous, heavy-lidded, as he held hers. This was what it was meant to be. This was what she needed.
Each stroke became harder, faster, until he lifted her legs, pushed them back, and drove into her. And still he watched her. And she held onto him.
“I love you.” His face contorted as she felt herself tightening, felt her release nearing. “Always, Jaci. Always fucking loved you.”
Harder, deeper, flying inside her, until Jaci felt not just the physical eruptions of release tear through her, but the emotional. As though their souls had merged. As though they had been drawn inside each other even more firmly than before.
Cam drove into her repeatedly, groaning her name, repeating it like a talisman, until, with one last, hard stroke, he buried full length into the gripping depths of her body and filled her with himself. His seed shot inside her, but his eyes never left hers, and she saw the brief moistening of his gaze, the emotion that ripped through them.
In his arms, she would always be safe. But in hers, so would he be.
And when it was over, when the last shudders echoed through her, he didn’t move from the bed, he didn’t leave her to go to the couch. He pulled her into his arms, tugged the blanket around them, and, exhausted, he held her until his eyes closed, hers closed, and they slept together.
28
Cam was asleep in the bed, curled around her, his heavy breathing at her ear, his heart beating against her back. The sun was just peeking through the shades pulled over the tall, wide window behind the bed. Spears of light washed over the room. And Cam had slept with her.
She turned her head slowly to stare at him. In sleep, his features were more relaxed, but still tough and hard.
Smiling, she eased from the bed, holding back a wince at the soreness between her thighs. He hadn’t taken her just once through the night, but several times. As she paused at the side of the bed, she turned back to stare at him, love welling inside her, dampening her eyes, and it had her thanking God that she had found him again.
He was arrogant and demanding, dominant and so certain of his own decisions that she was sure there would be times he would make her completely insane.
But he was hers.
Pulling on her robe, she belted it tight, determined not to awaken him. If there was one thing she knew, it was that Cam didn’t always sleep well. There wasn’t a chance she was waking him up.
Moving quietly from the bedroom, she went to the bathroom, showered and brushed her teeth in record time, then, pulling one of Cam’s T-shirts from the walk-in closet, she padded back into the main room.
She was almost to the kitchen island when she saw Chase. He was sitting on the couch silently, dressed only in jeans, his head bent, his hands covering his face.
His shoulders were scratched, his hair mussed, and he looked like a man ready to break from the weight on his shoulders.
She moved silently around the couch, her gaze catching on the whisky that still sat on the table, directly in front of Chase.
His hands lowered from his face and he stared at the bottle as well.
“He’s not drank straight whisky since he was eighteen years old,” Chase said. “And I’ve not had a brother since he was fifteen.”
Jaci eased herself down on the end of the couch.
