Courtney shook her head at that. “Cam won’t wait on that, Jaci.”

She finished her wine and sat the glass on the table before turning back to her friend. “He doesn’t have a choice.”

And to that, Courtney smiled. A slow, amused, sympathetic smile. “I think you’re going to learn, my friend, that it’s you who won’t have a choice. Once a club member has chosen his woman, they rarely go back on that vow. Ian knows of only one, in the entire history of the club, to do so, and I promise you, he’s regretting it each second of his life. Cam won’t wait. And I don’t think you want him to.”

Her friend’s eyes twinkled. “And some men do have some interesting ways of making certain that the word ‘no’ never passes a lady’s lips again.”

She was not going to ask. She was not going to ask. She didn’t want to know what those ways were, or why Courtney looked so deliciously lost in thought over them.

“How did I know this job was going to make me insane?” She leaned forward, lifted her glass from the table, and held it out to Courtney once again. A refill. Just a little bit more false courage. “Anytime you’re near, everything goes crazy.”

“I know.” Courtney smiled with smug satisfaction. “That’s why I’m so much fun to be around.”

“We might need another bottle after that comment.”

Courtney laughed softly. “So, you’ll be at the party tonight?” she asked, pouring Jaci another small measure of the fruity wine.

At that question, Jaci smiled. This time, it was her smile that caused concern to flicker in Courtney’s eyes.

“I’ll be there,” she drawled.

“With Cam?”

“Only if he arrives at the same time I do.” She toasted her friend with her glass. “And I wouldn’t bet on that happening, Courtney. I really wouldn’t.”

She may have no choice but to attend the party, but Cam was going to find out that she didn’t do orders very well at all. If he had claimed her, well, he could just learn what claiming her very well meant.

One of her greatest fears was being overwhelmed by his dominance and his sexuality. She had always feared she couldn’t stand up to him, couldn’t deny him. She was going to have to prove to herself and to him that she could. And she was going to have it do it at the same time that she was battling her nemesis.

Damn, why hadn’t she just called Cam to begin with five years ago and let him wipe the floor with Roberts and have it done with? At that time, Cam might have restrained himself to beating the hell out of the other man, rather than killing him.

But she was afraid, very afraid, that after all this time, after all they had done to attempt to destroy her, Cam just might kill him after all.

Getting a woman’s body and getting her heart are two different things. And gaining her trust is another problem entirely.

Cam wasn’t exactly inept when it came to women, but for years, gaining their trust hadn’t been one of his primary concerns. At least, no more than it had taken to get into their beds. That was an entirely different sort of trust, and he knew it.

And he didn’t have Jaci’s complete trust.

It was a startling realization, the knowledge that the woman he had claimed as his own didn’t trust him enough to allow him to protect her.

He snorted at the thought of that one as he pulled the Harley into the underground garage of the converted warehouse he and Chase had bought just after accepting Ian Sinclair’s offer five years before.

Two stories, cavernous and open; he and his brother had worked in their spare time for years, turning it into a livable space. The open rooms, tall windows, and spaciousness appealed to his need for freedom. After the ambush in Afghanistan, Cam had needed space, room to roam and to heal, after the military had returned him to the states.

Even worse than the need for space at that time had been the need for touch. It was then that he learned how finicky women could be. He and Chase had always appealed to women; it had been a shock to look in the mirror and realize the damage that had been done to his body, but even more surprising had been others’ reactions to it. Everything from fascination to complete disgust. And he’d found, just because a woman wanted to live on the wild side for a little bit, it didn’t mean that she had to appreciate the body that pulled her into the dark excesses that inhabited that side of her sexuality.

Yet, Jaci had touched him gently, with sorrow. And as she had, the need to take her without Chase had risen inside him.

His body tightened at the memory of that, as he moved quickly up the stairs to the first level of the “house.” There, he strode first to the fridge and the cold beer waiting inside, twisted off the cap, flipped it into the garbage, then tilted the beer to his lips.

A long, cold drink later, he leaned against the counter and stared around the open room. There was an enclosed bathroom, shower, and Jacuzzi garden tub on the other side of the huge room. One side of the wall was thick, shadowed glass.

There was the kitchen and work island where he stood, just inside the doorway, then the room spread out into a living area, with sectional couches, thickly cushioned chairs, and a wide-screen television. There was a pool table and several old pinball machines behind that. Then, enclosed by filmy screens, was Cam’s bedroom.

The king-size bed and matching unfinished furniture filled that corner of the room.

Upstairs was the weight room, home office, and Chase’s bedroom and bath, as well as a kitchenette. As Chase had explained, sometimes a man just wanted a sandwich without trudging down the stairs.

And sometimes he needed his women alone. Sometimes he craved taking Jaci alone.

Chase didn’t suffer from the darkness as often as Cam did. Sometimes Cam wondered if his twin couldn’t live happily without ever sharing another woman.

Hell, Cam knew he could live without it. He did. Often. But sometimes, the memories crowded inside him, tore at him, and the need became a wrenching, brutal hunger that only increased the longer he ignored it.

Chase understood that hunger. He may not understand how Cam had come by it, but he knew the hunger.

He rubbed at the scars on his chest. The slashing scars weren’t just from the bullets or the knife used during the attack. There were scars he had gained from the three days he’d spent as a prisoner of the small band of terrorists that had captured him and his team.

That agony was a joke, compared to other memories, though. Physical pain was a hell of a lot easier to forget than the broken memories of the three years of living hell after his parents had died and his aunt had been left to care for them.

His fingers tightened around the bottle as he restrained the urge to hurl it across the room. Hell, he’d just have to clean it up. And he’d long since grown tired of cleaning up the messes his rage had induced.

He relaxed his fingers slowly, inhaled deeply, and forced himself to remember the fresh, clean smell of Jaci’s body, rather than the smell of fucking rose perfume, stale sex, and liquor.

He finished off the beer, breathed in roughly, then strode to the cordless phone at the center island. Jerking the phone from the base, he made a quick call to the exclusive boutique several streets from the hotel.

Speaking to the owner, he gave her his request—Jaci’s size and coloring—and authorized the credit card transaction. Mrs. Lisette Miles, the owner of the boutique, was ecstatic with the sale, and more than happy to make certain the purchase was delivered to Ms. Wright at her hotel.

With that accomplished, he allowed a small, tight smile to touch his lips and moved quickly to the shower. Tonight he would try to seduce her into trusting him. Gaining her trust couldn’t be that damned hard. Hell, she knew him, knew he would kill for her, knew he would do whatever it took to protect her. God help anyone who tried to hurt her, because he’d make certain they paid for it.

He’d stayed out of her life for seven years because he’d known she wasn’t ready for him. Known he wasn’t ready for her. She would come to him when she was ready. That was what he’d told himself over the years. He’d made certain her parents knew where he was, made certain he knew where she was working at any given time, and that she could find him if she needed him.

He wasn’t a stalker. He wasn’t obsessed. He just knew who his heart belonged to, just as he’d realized he may never have what he needed from her. The hardest part was the fear that he couldn’t be what she needed. A part of him realized that, accepted it. He might never be the man she needed, but he couldn’t walk away from her now.

He could have lived without her; he was living without her—until she arrived here, in his territory. She had come to him.

He shed his clothes and stepped beneath the shower, his teeth clenching as he fought back the dominance that raged inside him.

He had been living fine without her, but he was going to live better with her, and starting tonight she would learn that.

She was going to fight him, he could feel it, and it was more exhilarating than he could describe. She would challenge him, she would meet him head-on and make him work for what he wanted.

When was the last time he’d had to work for a damned thing, other than to get the information he dug up during the investigations he and Chase dove into? Sometimes that was work; but women had never been work. If one wasn’t interested, then he could find another that was. No big deal, because none of them was Jaci.

Now, it was Jaci.

He washed his hair quickly before soaping his body, grimacing as he soaped and rinsed the thick length of his cock and thought of Jaci. A hard-on always made him think of Jaci.

Her life had been one of loneliness, he knew that from the investigative report. Her lovers were evidently few and far between, because he couldn’t find them. She didn’t make friends easily, and those friends she had made were intensely loyal.

A woman as fiery, beautiful, and passionate as Jaci needed more than a few long-distance friends, though. She needed a man. A lover she couldn’t walk all over, one that would challenge her, make her blood hot. One that could take all that restless, burning passion inside her and return it to her tenfold.

He was the man to not just tame it, but to sate it. To make her burn over and over again, and to put out the flames with his touch, his kiss. His possession.

Ian was right. Jaci wasn’t going to give him everything without more from him. He had hoped she would, had expected her to. He should have known better. Seven years wasn’t going to weaken a woman who had been strong even at twenty-one. Strong enough to walk away from something he knew she had wanted down to the soles of her feet.

She was adventurous. She was a woman that would never belong to a weak man. And Cam was anything but weak.

Hell, he had more ghosts inside him than a haunted castle, and he knew damned good and well there were parts of him that might never be whole again. That would be the battle. Getting her to trust him, to belong to him, while keeping his secrets to himself.

Because those secrets could destroy him.

The secrets had nothing to do with seduction, though. They had nothing to do with making Jaci his.

Anticipation burned inside him at the thought of her and the seduction to come. He had never had to put himself out to seduce, but Jaci was definitely worthy of the effort. She was worth everything, even his own compulsion to never give a woman his release without a condom.

In his entire sexual life, he had never, not once, taken a woman without a condom. Evidently, Jaci had been just as careful, just as picky. And pickiness wasn’t the end of it. It was more than picky, and he knew it. She had taken him, a part of her did trust him, he realized. She would have never allowed him to take her without protection if she didn’t. So it wasn’t just an issue of trust. Which meant he had to figure out exactly what that issue was.

11

Jaci restrained her smile as she entered the Brockheim mansion. She had redesigned a vacation cabin for the Brockheims in Aspen two years before. The Brockheims had decided to leave the job to Jaci alone, rather than oversee it. Margaret Brockheim had worried about having her husband there at the time, after hearing the rumors of Jaci’s home-wrecking tendencies. Their daughter, Moriah, had been at the cabin, unknown to her parents, as Jaci worked.