She heard him setting the alarm, then the lights flipped out and cold air was swirling beneath her skirt as he stepped outside.

“You’re crazy.” She throttled the yell that the accusation should have been. “Certifiable. Dammit, Alex, I have work to do.”

“Yes, you do,” he drawled, moving up the stairs. “You have a hell of a job ahead of you and it involves my hard dick. I’d rather take care of that in a bed if you don’t mind.”

Arousal should not have slammed inside her. She shouldn’t have just let him cart her around like a sack of potatoes because his dick was hard and he wanted a bed to fuck in.

But she did. Because she wanted him. She loved him. Because she wanted as many memories as she could build before she had to force herself to let him go.

“Here we go.” He set her on her feet at the door, then moved in front of her to unlock it and push it open.

It was silent as a tomb inside. He flipped the kitchen light on and moved inside, pulling her into the kitchen and closing the door before punching in the code for the security system.

Janey stayed in place as he pulled the handgun from the holster he wore behind his back and moved through the apartment.

He flipped lights on and off as he moved through each room, finally returning to the kitchen, his tall, broad body moving with a male grace and power that never failed to make her heart race.

“It’s clear?” she asked as he pushed the gun back into its holster.

“Clear.” His gaze flickered over her. “Those short skirts are killing me, you know. Knowing what you’re wearing under them. Smoky stockings and a black garter belt. It makes me hard, Janey.”

“Everything makes you hard.” She pulled the gray silk blouse from the band of her skirt and began unbuttoning it slowly.

“Everything about you makes me hard,” he agreed, his expression beginning to tighten as he loosened the reins on his arousal.

“Just me?” She leaned against the wall, watching him closely, knowing she was pushing, and in pushing would most likely end up with a broken heart.

She couldn’t just let things ride, could she? No, she had to have more. She had to push for an emotion she knew he didn’t feel.

“Just you,” he surprised her with his answer. “I haven’t wanted another woman since you came home, Janey.”

But was it enough?

She left her blouse unbuttoned as she moved her hand to the little clasp and zipper at the side of her skirt.

“Do you give me all of you?” she asked him softly, promising herself that she was not going to mention love.

His hands fisted at his side. “What do you want?”

“The one thing you want to give me the most,” she whispered.

“Do you know what that is, baby?” His voice roughened, lowered. “You don’t know what all of me can be.”

Janey licked her lips as she let the skirt slide over her hips and pool at her feet. His gaze flared, became thunderous, his cheekbones darkening as arousal tautened his features, making them sharper, more savage.

“Maybe I need to know all of you, Alex. You take all of me. You come inside me without protection, knowing what could come of it. You want more from me than you should ever have the chance to demand. Maybe I want to see what I’m getting in the bargain.”

As though something had flipped a switch in his expression, it became more intent, his eyes darkening.

His fingers uncurled, but he didn’t come closer. He didn’t move to her. He stared at her, his gaze tracking over her body, heating her, making her want more than he had ever given her. She wanted the parts of him that he held back, the parts he hid from her. She wanted as much of him as he demanded of her, but she would take this, for now.

“Janey, I can get nasty,” he warned her then. “Some things need to be worked into.”

Her lips curled knowingly. “You and the Mackay cousins were close growing up, weren’t you, Alex?”

“You know we were.”

“Did you join in their games?” Games where they took women together. The Mackay cousins had been known for sharing their lovers until they fell in love. “I won’t be shared.”

“I’d kill the man who tried to touch you now.” He moved to her, one hand cupping her neck, holding her in place. Did he know how that turned her on? Made her crazy for him?

“But you did it,” she murmured. “All those things they did.”

“What do you want, Janey?” His other hand tightened at her hip. “Tell me. I’ll give you what you want.”

“The wildest thing you ever imagined doing with me.” She wanted to be wild with him. “That’s what I want, Alex. The most wicked, sexual thing you ever thought of if you could get me in your bed. What would you do to me? How would you make me scream for you?”

“Don’t.” His hand tightened at her neck.

“What was it?” She turned her head, kissed his wrist, then nipped it, all the while watching him, trying to tempt him. “What could be wilder, Alex, than tying my hands behind my back and making me suck your dick?”

He jerked her hips closer. His head lowered. His lips, they were fuller, more kissable, sexier. She wanted him to kiss her like he was now. She sensed, knew, it would be hard, rough. All of him.

“Burying my dick in your ass would be wilder.” His hand slid into her hair, tangled in it. “Listening to you scream, beg, because you don’t know if it’s the most incredible pleasure in the world or the most

painful.” His lips touched hers. “Feeling you fuck yourself with your fingers while I slam my cock inside her ass, knowing you’re so gone with the pleasure, my touch, your needs, that nothing matters but feeling my cum bathe you there. Milking it out of my balls and making it yours.”

Oh God, she was supposed to breathe now? She stared up at him, panting, but still not drawing in enough air.

“You’re huge,” she whispered breathlessly. “It won’t fit.”

“Is that a dare, sweetheart?” Male challenge, male dominance, pure male hunger washed over his features. “Darlin’, you don’t make dares like that with the big boys. Because trust me, they take you up on it.”

Her lips parted to protest. It hadn’t been a dare. It was a statement. But as they parted, his lips slanted over hers, took them in a deep, tongue-thrusting kiss that had her going to her tiptoes, desperate to get closer.

Janey slid her hands up his arms, to his powerful biceps. She loved the heavy muscles there. The way they flexed and rippled with the control he exerted over himself. The way he fought to make certain he didn’t hurt her.

She wanted his control in ashes. The way hers stayed around him. She couldn’t deny him. She knew, each time he pumped his seed inside her, that he wanted her to carry his child. It wasn’t love. It couldn’t substitute for love, so why did it affect her as it did? She couldn’t deny him. She ached for the feel of it.

Ached to feel him inside her, spilling the liquid heat of his lust, giving her a part of himself he had never given another woman.

He was building silken threads around her soul, and she couldn’t stop it. She knew only one way to combat it. To build them around him as well. And each time Alex lost himself inside her, she swore she felt the threads twining around him.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.” He swung her up in his arms. As though she weighed nothing.

As though she were delicate, as though he liked holding her.

“I’m asking for you.” She licked his neck, caught a bit of flesh between her teeth, and sucked it into her mouth playfully.

She loved marking him, but she needed to mark him elsewhere, where it couldn’t be seen. Where only they knew it was there. A brand he would feel, but one others could only guess at.

He entered the bedroom, closing the door behind them, because Fat Cat was in the apartment. Evidently Alex had let him in earlier and fed him.

A second later he laid her on the bed, drawing back from her as she stretched beneath his gaze, feeling her breasts swell, her nipples hardening further as he stared down at her.

“We’re going to leave the garter belt and stockings on,” he told her.

She bent her leg, trailed her fingers over her bare stomach to the low band of her panties, and watched as he all but tore his shirt off. Her hand slid beneath her panties as he jerked at his belt, her fingers dipping into the hot, liquid cleft and pulling back.

Slick, shining with her juices, she lifted her fingertips to her lips and licked over them.

“You little tease,” he growled, but she knew Alex liked this. He loved it.

Janey smiled and ran her fingers down her neck before lifting and sliding the blouse over her shoulders as he jerked his jeans off.

His cock was iron hard. The thick crest was dark, flushed with blood, a bead of pre-cum pearling at the tip, making her mouth water.

He turned to her nightstand, and she watched in surprise as he withdrew a small tube of lubricating gel.

“Prepared, were you?” she asked, surprised at the husky, sexual tease in her voice.

“It has other uses,” he assured her. “Tonight, though, we’re going to use a lot of it.”

She expected him to turn her over and just take her. She didn’t expect him to rise over her, for his lips to slant across her and his kiss to become wild, primal. It was more than foreplay; it was a psychological branding, this kiss.

Her arms wrapped around his neck as she felt the straps of her bra lower over her arms. His hands, they were so strong, so broad, long-fingered, and calloused. Male hands. A man’s hands. Hands that knew

where and how to stroke.

The front clasp of the garment loosened and he drew it away from her. Where he tossed it, she didn’t know and she didn’t care.

“Alex.” She whispered his name as his lips slid from hers to her neck. Teeth raked, tongue licked. “What you do to me . . .” She arched closer.

“What I want to do to you is probably illegal in every state of the union.” He bit her shoulder, then licked the little wound. “I want every part of you, Janey.”

She breathed through the sob that wanted to work from her chest. Every part of her? Did he want the heart that already belonged to him? The soul that opened up for him?

“Damn, I love your nipples.” His tongue stroked over them. “So hard and sweet.” He sucked one into his mouth, licked it with his rough velvet tongue and had her toes curling as he suckled her with heated hunger.

He touched her, stroked her, drew on her, as though starved for the taste of her in his mouth. He drew the tip between his teeth, stroked it with his tongue, and she swore she nearly came from the excitement of it. Then he was sucking the hard tip again, sending flares of sensation racing to her pussy as his fingers stroked her thighs, parted them, and trailed to the swollen band of her panties before pulling back again.

“That’s so good,” she cried out. “I love my nipples in your mouth, Alex. I feel it all the way to my clit.”

He jerked against her, groaned low and deep before he pulled her hands from his shoulders and drew back.

“Play with them,” he ordered her roughly. “Let me watch you play with your nipples while I eat your pussy, Janey. I need the taste of you in my mouth. All that sweet syrup, sliding over my tongue.”

A hard spasm gripped her muscles, jerking her up to him as pleasure shot through her system. Her fingers moved to her nipples, grabbing them, rolling them as he tugged her panties over her thighs and down her legs.

As he’d threatened, he left her garter belt and stockings on. His fingers played with the elastic garters.

His lips kissed above the frilly, lacy bands.

“All I can think about, knowing what you’re wearing under those skirts, is how sexy you look just like this.” He pushed her legs apart, lifted her knees until her thighs were spread wide, her pussy open to him.“All I can think about is getting my lips in this sweet, hot flesh.”