“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Why? For God’s sake it doesn’t concern or affect you, Jaci.”

She smiled, a sad, bittersweet smile that ripped at the fragments of his heart. A brutal reminder that she could affect him as no other woman could.

“But it does,” she said softly. “I love you, Cam. And I can’t understand or accept the things you want from me, not like this. Not without the truth between us.”

“And you’re being so honest with me? What about your honesty Jaci? You and Congressman Roberts?”

She shook her head. “Richard and Annalee have nothing to do with us. I need to stand on my own two feet, Cam, and that’s what I’m doing with them. It’s that simple. Whatever’s going on inside you does affect us, though. It affects us because you hold yourself back; there’s always something between us.”

“It doesn’t affect us, and there’s nothing between us but too many clothes.”

She stared back at him silently for long moments, forcing him to turn his head to look at her, to hold back the growl of rage at the pain in her eyes.

“You don’t even hold me, Cam,” she said then. “You leave me as fast as you can, and the closest you come to holding me is keeping my feet warm at night on that damned couch. Do you realize that? Do you realize that unless you’re fucking me, your arms aren’t around me? You hold yourself so distant from me that it hurts. And I allow it. Because leaving you now would hurt worse.”

“I hold you.” He knew he did. His arms were always aching to surround her, he was always forcing himself to hold back, to pull back, because he didn’t want to smother her with that need, with that overwhelming urge to pull her to him and never let her go. To shelter her. To protect her. To make certain nothing or no one could ever hurt her again.

“When do you hold me?” A sheen of moisture filled her eyes. “Other than during sex, Cam, when do you hold me?”

His head jerked in an instinctively negative movement. That wasn’t true. As bad as he wanted to hold her, as much as he ached to hold her—she was right. He hadn’t held her.

“Holding you is all I think about sometimes,” he admitted, his voice hoarse. “I hold back Jaci, because I don’t want to hold too hard. I don’t want to frighten you away before I even have you, sweetheart.”

He pushed his fingers through his hair and grimaced at the impossibility of what he was trying to do. The very thin line he was trying to walk.

He turned and moved back to the Jaguar, bracing his hands on the hood before turning back to her. She watched him, as she always did, those eyes breaking his heart, so filled with life, with a purity of spirit, that sometimes she terrified him.

“I love you, too.” He watched the shock that filled her face. “I’ve always loved you, Jaci. And I always let you go when you needed to, because I was always afraid of holding you too tight. If I held you too tight, if I wrapped myself around you the way I wanted to, then you might leave forever. And where would I be if you left forever?”

She took a step forward, then stopped. She stared back at him as a single tear slipped from her eyes, and he ached that he had caused it. He would have killed any other man that made her cry, but how did he punish himself for it?

“Why?” she whispered, her voice low and rough with emotion. “Why would you even think of it like that, Cam? I want to hold you, as often as I can. I want you wrapped around me however you can bear it as I sleep. I want every memory we can fill our lives with so that if you’re ever gone, if you ever walk away, or God forbid something should happen to you, then I’ll have something of you to hold onto.”

He tightened his jaw and turned away from her again. He remembered being a boy, so young, so determined to enjoy every memory he made. Then he remembered the destruction. His parents deaths, the father that had been so strong, so filled with laughter. His petite mother, always hugging and always loving. A woman far different from her sister. Davinda had nearly destroyed him. In a way, she had destroyed him.

He inhaled roughly and shook his head. Jaci didn’t need to know the horror of what he had endured. Neither did Chase. It was bad enough that he knew, that he remembered.

“I need time.” He turned back to her, steeling himself against the need to give her anything, everything she wanted.

“You’ve had seven years,” she stated.

“And if I need seven more?” He glared back at her now. He’d be damned if he was going to spill his shame to her. Enduring it had been bad enough. Going to Sheriff Bridges had torn a part of his soul free of his body. He would always, always remember the shame of telling the other man what had happened and why he needed to get that bitch away from him and Chase.

The sheriff, despite his attempts to get Cam to file charges, had seemed to understand that rage and shame, though. He had gotten the pictures, the negatives. He had made certain Davinda didn’t leave the house with anything but the clothes on her back, and he had made certain she left town. And he had used his connections to block every investigation Chase had attempted in the past years to find out what had happened to his brother.

Jaci’s lips parted, but then the pouty curves pursed in anger and she stared back at him with all the fire and passion he’d always loved about her.

“I can’t make you talk,” she snapped. “But I’ll be damned if I have to like your silence. And I’ll warn you right now, Cam, this macho bullshit you’re pulling, on not just me but your brother as well, is going to get really old.”

“Bullshit to you,” he growled back. “It’s not bullshit to me, Jaci. And trust me, what you want to know has nothing to do with what we have together.”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” she yelled back, that fury igniting inside her, and though he knew the response was completely incongruous to the situation, it made him as hard as hell. “It has everything to do with us, Cam. And everything to do with a relationship developing between us.”

“If that’s true, then you can tell me about the Robertses,” he demanded. “You can tell me where you got that fucking whip scar from.”

Her smile was pure sarcasm. “You’re repeating yourself, Cam.”

“Fine, then let’s repeat this.”

The argument, the anger, the pure lust she inspired inside him rolled through him like a tidal wave. He had never felt so hot, so in need of one woman’s touch.

Before she could move to evade him, his arm went around her waist and a second later he was laying her over the hood of the Jaguar and bending over her.

God, she was meant to be touched, to be taken with lusty hunger as she took in return. And she was taking. Her hands latched on to his neck, jerked his head to her, and before he could evade her or take her kiss, her teeth nipped, rather hard, at his lower lip.

Cam jerked back, his eyes narrowing on her, his lips pulling back as he fought to breathe through the lust and tasted blood.

“You bit me, Jaci.” Blood was suddenly thundering through his veins, filling his cock until he was certain the hard length was going to rip through his jeans.

“Let me kiss it better.” Her voice was witchy, husky, threaded with anger and arousal as her fingers threaded through his hair, and she pulled him back to her. “Unless you’re scared.”

He kicked her legs ruthlessly apart as his lips slanted over hers. Lowering himself against her, he pressed his cock into the notch of her thighs and ground himself against her, feeling her heat even through the layers of clothing between them.

“I’m going to take you. Here. Now.” He pulled back, ignoring her hands in his hair long enough to jerk her shirt over her breasts. “Let me take it off, or I tear it from you.”

The blood rushing through his veins was like lava, burning him, searing his nerve endings as she narrowed her eyes and her expression became seductive, challenging. And she pulled his lips to her again.

He was barely aware of ripping the delicate cloth. He had no idea how many shreds were left of it, all he knew was that the light cotton no longer covered her, no longer hid her body from him.

He didn’t ask the same question of the delicate lace of her bra. He pushed the cups beneath her swollen breasts and palmed the heated flesh. His fingers plucked at her nipples. Sweet, tight little nipples that puckered and hardened further for him as his lips consumed hers.

He was on fire for her, there was no doubt. Hell, he had always been on fire for her. There had always been something about Jaci that defied his determination to remain cold and aloof.

She could break through his defenses like no other woman, leaving him burning and wanting. As he was burning now.

He tore at the fastening and zipper to her jeans, loosening them before pushing his hand beneath the material and finding the sweet, soft silk and wet heat between her thighs.

This is where he longed to be. He needed to be inside her. He needed to lose himself inside her, because it was the only place he had ever been that the tormented memories didn’t consume him.

Jaci fought for the same touch, the kiss, the overwhelming pleasure as she felt his fingers spear inside the depths of her body. Two fingers worked inside her, pumped inside her vagina, and left her gasping, reeling from the pleasure as she arched in his arms.

She struggled to loosen his pants, tearing at them, shoving at them until she could grip the thick, hard length of his cock in her hand.

He was hot, throbbing and thick. The heavy veins throbbed against her palm and she could feel the silky dampness at the tip.

“Get these fucking pants off.” He pulled back, jerking at her jeans, almost tearing them from her as she pushed her sandals off her feet.

He managed to roll her onto her stomach, his lips curving into a tight, hard grimace of painful lust as she bent over the hood, one hand reaching back for him, gripping his hip and trying to pull him to her.

There was no danger of being seen in the garage, but the wickedness of the act, the sheer desperation of the man behind her, beat through her senses and heightened her pleasure.

God she wanted this. Wanted him so deep inside her that she could never forget what it felt like to be taken by him. She wanted him devouring her, wanted him possessing her. She wanted all that powerful, dark passion centered around her, inside her.

Beneath her the heated warmth of the car hood caressed her nipples; behind her, the thick, heated press of his cock head probed against her.

Jaci caught her breath and arched back to him with a cry. His hard chest pressed her against the car as his legs pressed hers farther apart, and a second later one hard, fierce thrust sent him spearing into the hungry depths of her body.

He stilled once he was lodged inside her. Hard hands held her in place as he controlled her movements and his teeth raked over her bare shoulder.

She was only barely aware of the fact that, somehow, he had managed to don a condom. Where he had fought the control to do that she couldn’t imagine because she could feel the uncontrolled need raging around them.

“You’re tight and hot around me,” he groaned against her neck. “Being inside you is like being burned alive by pleasure.”

Her nails raked against the hood of the car as she fought for something to hold onto. He moved behind her, grinding against her, stroking her internally as a ragged cry left her lips.

There was no pleasure that could compare to this. Nothing, Jaci knew, that could fill her, physically and emotionally, as Cam filled her.

“I’m holding you now.” His arms came beneath her, his hands cupped her sensitive breasts, his fingers gripping her nipples and sending arrows of sensation shooting to her womb. “Here’s how I want to hold you, Jaci. So close to me, so tight, you’re a part of me.”

She turned her head until her cheek lay against the hood of the car, panting for breath and fighting to hold on to a semblance of sanity as her body shook beneath him.