Timothy stepped back from the kitchen doorway, turned, and slipped through the dining room, his hands shoved into his slacks as a frown pulled at his brow.

He’d heard it all. Dawg had told him most of it at the reunion, then called later that night to tell him the rest. Neither he nor Dawg had been certain how Eve would deal with it, though. Whether she was strong enough to truly love and understand a man such as Brogan.

She was too strong for him, Timothy decided.

Hell, Eve was too good for the likes of Brogan Campbell and his damaged heart.

He’d give the boy a chance, though. Mercedes would ask that of him; he knew her well enough to know that. And there was nothing he could deny his Mercedes.

* * *

Showered and lying back on her bed, naked and relaxed for the first time since leaving Brogan at the cabin, Eve realized how desperately she had missed him.

Most of it had been her fault, she admitted. She’d kept herself away from the house and away from him until she’d heard he’d left town. Even Dawg didn’t know when he would return, and she was hesitant to ask Timothy.

Timothy was as protective over her and her sisters as she imagined he would have been over the daughter he had lost so long ago. Fortunately, she hadn’t had to rouse his suspicions; nor had she had to tempt that protective side of him.

Lying in the bed now, drifting in and out of a peaceful dreamscape, she found her memories turning to the pleasure she’d found in Brogan’s arms.

Those heated, completely destructive kisses. The way he touched her, as though he knew from one touch to the next exactly what she needed. The way he could make what should be painful, exquisitely pleasurable. A mix of pleasure and pain that she might be becoming addicted to.

As her body began to heat, to pulse with the memories, she found her hands straying to her body, stroking down her side, across her abdomen. One hand caressed her breasts—along the rounded curve, cupping one, her thumb sliding over the nipple as her breathing began to accelerate.

Pausing, her eyes opening on a frustrated groan, Eve moved from the bed and collected the dildo she’d bought for herself a few years before and had never used properly. After meeting Brogan, she had been determined that if he ever took her, then there would be no mistake that he was her first. That she had saved herself for him.

That veil of innocence was gone now. It had been given to the only man she knew would ever hold her heart as fully as Brogan held it.

The warmth beginning to rise in the tender tissue and delicate muscles of her pussy tormented her now. Her nipples and breasts ached, her body tingled for touch, and she was certain bringing herself to release would be better than nothing.

She had the memory of his touch, knew it as freshly as if he had just taken her the day before.

Lying back on the bed, Eve resumed touching, stroking. In her mind he was with her, drawing the breathless little moans from her lips and filling her with a hunger she couldn’t control.

Her own touch wasn’t nearly as heated and knowing. It wasn’t as instinctively experienced. But it was enough. Enough to build the need and the pleasure until she was able to slip the vibrating dildo inside the snug channel with a desperate moan.

She ached for him.

She needed him.

But if she had to, she’d live without him. Now all she had to do was convince her body of that.

* * *

The compensation package the Mackays wanted wasn’t easy to acquire. When it came right down to it, Brogan had to threaten Doogan with his father, and apprising the director of his actions, if he didn’t get it.

Nearly three days after leaving for D.C., Brogan drove back into Somerset after midnight and headed straight to the inn.

He’d missed Eve.

Admitting it hadn’t been easy. He’d lost two nights’ sleep, jacked off more than he wanted to, and found he didn’t get aroused in the slightest when he visited what had once been his favorite watering hole for drinks with his father.

He wasn’t a one-night-stand sort of person, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get aroused when obvious interest was shown. Until now. Until all he could think about was Eve and the feeling he’d had as he came inside her. That feeling that he could sense part of her soul that he had no right knowing. Parts of her heart that he knew no other man had ever felt, had ever gotten close to.

Pulling into the parking area and cutting the Harley’s motor, he breathed out a sigh of relief before slipping off his helmet and hanging it over the handlebars of the cycle. Looking toward the side of the house, he could see the faintest sliver of light beneath Eve’s curtains, and his cock came to instant attention.

For the briefest, briefest moment, a sense of knowledge shot to awareness inside him and his entire body tightened.

Son of a bitch, he knew what was going on, but he was damned if he wanted to admit to it. Not yet, at any rate. There was no way in hell he could have such a connection to a woman. That he could feel her, that he could imagine exactly what she was doing and know to the depths of his soul that he was right.

Blowing out a hard breath, he moved to the porch, making his way quickly along the wraparound porch and moving past the door to his own suite, toward Eve’s instead.

He didn’t bother knocking.

Sliding the key he’d lifted from her room and had copied before he left, he quickly, quietly unlocked the patio door and stepped inside.

“Fuck me,” he groaned roughly, his eyes widening, his breath stopping in his chest at the sight that met his eyes. “I swear to God, if you move, I’m going to die.”

She didn’t move.

Knees bent and lifted, her pretty delicate feet planted against the mattress, emerald eyes slitted and burning with lust, she slid the dildo free of her gripping little pussy until nothing but the head remained, then pushed it in slowly.

So fucking slowly he swore he held his breath waiting for it to stop. Her hips lifted, her breath catching as the toy delved deeper inside her until her lashes fluttered when she could take no more.

Closing the door carefully, locking it without taking his eyes from her, Brogan moved one hand to the buttons of his shirt and quickly released them.

Sitting in the chair next to the bed, he pulled his ankle boots from his feet, then stood and shrugged the shirt from his shoulders. He was breathing heavily as his hands went to the metal buttons of his jeans, released them, then quickly shed the jeans. Still watching her, fighting to remember how to breathe, he wrapped the fingers of one hand around his cock and watched her, mesmerized.

He stroked the hardened flesh from base to tip, a groan working from his chest as he watched the artificial dick pull free of her clenched inner muscles. It glistened with her juices as they clung to the latex form. The realistic design with its flared head and bulging veins was a poor substitute for what she wanted, though.

Desperate for her, his knees weak, Brogan moved to the bed, his jaw clenching as he watched her fuck herself with the dildo, watched the need burning in her eyes. Stepping to the side of the bed, he moved onto it carefully, kneeling on the mattress at her head as his gaze narrowed on the tube of lubrication next to her.

“Ah, baby,” he whispered, watching as her tongue flicked over her lips. “Keep fucking yourself with that toy dick.” Moving closer, he pressed his cock to her lips, watching in anticipation as they parted and her hot little tongue licked out to taste the head of his dick.

Her hand faltered, the dildo pausing in its strokes. Brogan slowly sank the head of his cock past her lips as her tongue rubbed against the sensitive underside and a breathy moan vibrated against his cock.

“Beautiful, beautiful Eve,” he moaned, reaching for the lube as she wrapped her fingers around the shaft of his dick and began working her mouth and tongue over the head as though she were starved for the taste of him.

That was okay, though; he knew what to do for her. He knew how to make her feel damned good. He knew exactly what to do to ensure that, once she came to her senses, those senses would be so infused with him that she wouldn’t have a chance at convincing herself to deny him.

“Ahh, sweet Eve,” he crooned, pushing the dildo slowly into her accepting body. “Let’s see what we can do to take care of you.”

With the dildo lodged in her pussy, the bare, saturated folds parted and gripping it snugly, Brogan carefully coated his fingers with the gel from the tube he’d found at her side. Spreading her legs firmly, he reached beneath the toy and found the tight, clenched entrance to her rear.

Sensual, lush, his Eve gave all of herself to him. Rather than stilling or freezing in shock at his touch there again, she lifted her hips, her thighs spreading as she surrendered the brave sensuality and erotic depths of the woman she was.

Clenching his teeth, reining back the need to satisfy his hunger like an animal desperate to fuck, he forced himself to be patient.

With one fingertip he began working the intimate little entrance open a little at a time. Using the lubricating gel as well as her juices as they wept from her pussy, Brogan prepared the entrance, then applied layer after layer of the cool gel as he worked his finger inside her.

The delicate bud of her clit swelled until it peeked above the folds around it. Her juices wept from her pussy, spilling along the folds, dampening her thighs and sliding slowly to the tight entrance of her ass as Brogan worked it open.

Her mouth worked on his cock, sucking and laving it; she drew on it with heated pulls of her lips as he felt her become lost to the hunger sweeping through her.

Little moans vibrated against the head of his dick, her desperation, her need to be fucked reflected in the deepening moans as he fucked his finger inside her ass.

As she began to take one finger easily, Brogan added another. Pressing inside her, he had to forcibly restrain himself, to do calculations in his head long enough to keep from giving in to the clawing, raking need to come—to end the erotic torture gripping his cock and balls.

Lifting himself until he was staring down at her, watching as he fucked her mouth with shallow strokes, Brogan knew there was no hell he could survive without her—without this.

He’d run out of time, though. If he didn’t pull back, it was all going to be over for a while. If he was going to take her as he was dying to do, better to do it in the first round. He wouldn’t last as long this first time, not after spending more than a week away from her, craving her.

Holding his breath at the sensual agony, he pulled back from her.

“What are you doing?” Moving to sit up before him, to capture his cock in her hands once again, Eve found herself flipped to her stomach instead as Brogan slid between her thighs, keeping her from closing them to hold the dildo inside her.

Pleasure streaked through her as he gripped the base of the fake cock and slid it back slowly before working it inside her once again. He repeated the move, sending forks of fiery sensation to attack the internal nerve endings and draw a ragged cry from her lips.

“Does it feel as good as I do?” he whispered behind her, his lips pressing against her spine, between her shoulder blades as she drew in a hard breath beneath him. “Tell me, baby, does this little dick feel as good as my nice thick one? Does it stretch your pussy as wide, make you as wild for the next thrust as I do?”

“No,” she cried out breathlessly, her hips lifting, thighs spreading as she arched.

Fuck, yeah, that was what he wanted.

The lubricated anal entrance glistened with a mix of the slick gel and her juices as she lifted to him.

He slid the fingers of his free hand along the narrow cleft that separated her rear cheeks. Finding the clenched opening again, he watched, his dick clenching and throbbing as he pressed the tips of two fingers against the opening. Easing them slowly against the puckered, nerve-ridden entrance, he watched as the delicate muscles slowly parted, accepted the tips of his fingers; then he felt the inner muscles draw his fingers inside.

Eve was suspended on the edge of pure electric sensation and racing shocks of burning pleasure. The feel of his fingers easing inside her rear as the toy vibrated gently inside her pussy was filling her with such pleasure she felt tortured by it.