Then he was moving, thrusting harder, coming over her as Mac eased back, pulling her into his arms, feeling her nails biting into his flesh as he began to pump inside her.

Her legs wrapped around his waist, her hips arched, her pussy tightened—ah, God, she was so tight—and a second later he felt heaven. He felt her lock down on him, tiny muscles clenching and stroking his cock as he buried himself inside her over and over again. Felt the tight little channel pulse, clench, then explode around him.

He meant to pull out. He meant to hold back his own release to spill to the blankets, but she caught him off guard. Screaming his name, her arms tight around him, her hard nipples searing his chest as her pussy burned along the length of his cock.

Before he could catch himself, he was spilling inside her. Pumping hard and desperate as spurt after spurt of semen filled her willing flesh.

He gasped her name, pressed his lips to her neck, clenched his eyes tight, and prayed for a miracle. A miracle because he was falling in love with his best friend’s wife.

He was aware of Mac’s shattered groan at his side and knew his friend had found his own release. Jethro collapsed, barely managing to catch his weight with his elbows.

He had to force himself to stop whispering her name into her neck. Had to force himself to push his own fractured emotions deep beneath the now-shattered shield he had once erected around his heart.

He had to force himself to remember that he was just there for the fun. That was it. That was all. Just for the fun.

14

Keiley stared at the computer screen, the program pulled up, the code she was attempting to finalize, and gave a weary sigh before lowering her head and rubbing at her forehead.

She didn’t have a hope of keeping her mind on what she was doing. The events of the night before were playing before her mind. Like shadows on a dusky summer evening, whispering over the memory of her own pleasure, the excitement that tore through her, the shuddering ecstasy, the emotions—

This wasn’t happening.

Keiley clenched her fingers in her hair as she pressed her lips together, fighting through the confusion rising inside her.

None of it made sense. She was certain this wasn’t what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be fun, right? Mac didn’t intend for this to go on indefinitely. He didn’t intend for her to care for anyone other than him.

But she was beginning to care, and that wasn’t acceptable. It was a betrayal.

She shook her head, forcing herself back to the program, to the job she had been hired to do, rather than the mess her husband was making of her emotions.

As her head lifted her gaze was caught by Jethro’s laptop, its slender connection attaching it to her computer, running programs within programs and tracking and tracing any incoming messages or e-mails. Jethro had told her quite specifically to stay off-line and let the program do its work. They didn’t want the stalker actually engaging her in communication. They wanted to make certain there was no access to her. No way to track her. No way to harass her.

“Stay off the computer, Keiley.” Mac walked into the office for the fourth time in an hour, his voice firm as Keiley stared at the computer.

“I have work to do.” Saving her work, she shut the program down before staring at the minimized chat and relay programs she normally ran on a regular workday.

She was logged into two open forum conferences, though her message bar was set to away. Her private communication programs were open, as was another chat line. But Keiley wasn’t there. She was staring at her desktop instead in disgust.

“The Playboy gets his kicks out of terrorizing the wives of his victims,” Mac repeated.

“Don’t give him access and he’ll have to change his tactics, therefore making him easier to catch,” she finished in irritation. “I know that, Mac.”

She pushed away from the desk, straightened, and moved around the desk.

“I can’t just sit here and stare at an empty computer screen, and I can’t stand to work wondering what the hell is going on in my conferences.” She heard the anger in her tone even as she found herself unwilling to push it back further.

“Hey. It’s okay.” He caught her in his arms as she moved to pass him.

From behind, he wrapped her in the strength and warmth of his body, and she wished it were comforting her. She wished she could find some peace within the confusion twisting through her mind.

“Too much too fast,” she whispered brokenly, her hands latching onto his wrists as she leaned back into him, trying to absorb his strength, to hold onto it.

“I know.” He kissed the top of her head and held her safe.

But she had found that she could find the same feelings that she found with Mac in another man’s arms.

Keiley tensed at the thought, suddenly desperate to get away from him, desperate to clear her head of his scent and his warmth to make sense of the emotions she couldn’t seem to get a handle on.

“You don’t know, Mac.” Tearing from his arms, she lifted her hand in a halting motion, feeling him reach for her again, feeling her own weaknesses overwhelming her. “You don’t know what I’m feeling. And you don’t how frustrating this is. How could you? It’s not you that bastard is using as a tool to test you.”

“And you think watching him tear you apart doesn’t tear me apart?” His voice deepened, grew rougher. “You’re my wife, Keiley.”

“Am I?” She turned back to him, her breathing rough, the anger and the frustration boiling inside her. “Am I your wife or a toy you’ve grown tired of playing with, Mac? Personally, I’m starting to feel more and more like the toy.”

She watched his jaw flex, the way his eyes began to brew with the turbulence of emotions suddenly boiling beneath the surface.

“You were never a toy, Keiley,” he said. “And you can’t deny you found something you were looking for yourself when Jethro came to our bed. Don’t belittle us both by denying it.”

She wanted to lie. She wanted to scream out a denial in his face and strike out at him for the emotions she could no longer make sense of. She wanted to make him pay for the turmoil in her heart, and in her head.

He chuckled then, lighting a fuse to the anger raging inside her, the arrogance in his expression, the knowing sensuality and certainty in his eyes setting a blaze inside her head that threatened to turn into a conflagration of fury.

“Keiley, it’s okay,” his voice gentled. “You’ve sat in here by yourself, thinking about it, remembering it, knowing you can’t escape it, and I know you’re scared.” His jaw clenched as his expression softened. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Thats not true!” Her voice began to rise.

“What’s changed then?” he asked. “Tell me how it’s different, Kei. I’ll make it better.”

“Everything!” she cried. “This—this is too much, Mac.”

“What’s too much, Kei? The emotion? The need? Finding out that there’s more to us than you imagined? You always knew that. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been pushing when you began to realize you weren’t getting all of me,” he told her fiercely.

His eyes. If they had been angry, if he had been angry, she could have fought. But she couldn’t fight his gentleness or the truth that he made her acknowledge. That it was more than she imagined. More pleasure, more hunger, more emotion than she ever wanted to lose.

“Look at you,” he said then. “Your eyes are nearly green with the heat inside you. You make me so damned hard I can barely breathe when you try to fight what I know we both want.”

He moved forward. Keiley retreated.

She wanted to beg him to stop, she wanted to beg him to take her. She wanted to scream in frustration and whimper in arousal.

“Stop, Mac.” She stopped. Holding her ground as he paused in front of her, his head tilting toward her, watching her with a small quirk to his lips, almost a smile, full of knowledge.

This part was the Mac that held her soul. Gentle loving. It was being brought back to her that she had sensed the depth of his sexuality during the beginning of their relationship, had sensed the secrets he held back from her. And she had ignored them. She had pushed aside her own wariness and let him hide from her. She was at fault as much as he was, yet acceptance wasn’t as easy for her.

It wasn’t Mac she was having problems accepting, though, and she knew it. It was herself. It was realizing that this wasn’t going to be a game. It wasn’t just an interesting episode in their lives. It was going to change them all.

“Look at your face,” he said, his voice soft. “Do you have any idea what it does to me to see that battle raging in your eyes? To watch you learning yourself, Keiley?”

“Learning myself? I’m not learning myself, Mac, I’m destroying myself.”

She turned and left the room, left him before she revealed more than she wanted to, more than either of them could handle.

In running from Mac, she ran headlong into Jethro, though. Dressed in snug jeans and no shirt, barefoot and leaning against the kitchen counter with a cup of fresh coffee, his gaze searching as he watched her, then flicked behind to Mac.

“Everything okay?”

He couldn’t just keep his mouth shut, could he?

“Everything’s fine.”

Or it would be if her breasts weren’t swollen and sensitive, if her sex weren’t heated and slick with the warmth of the hungers raging through her. If she could just get the image and the memory of him kneeling between her thighs, entering her, stretching her, and burning inside her womb as he thrust inside her.

If she could forget that she had felt his semen filling her, rocking her higher, and pushing her own orgasm past endurable limits.

“Everything’s fine, Jethro.” Mac lent his own voice to the assurance, which only pissed her off further.

She continued through the kitchen and headed briskly for the doorway. She had to get away from them. Escape. She had to escape before she humiliated herself. Before she begged them to take her.

She couldn’t live like this, she told herself as she rushed for the stairway. She couldn’t feel torn between her husband and another man. She couldn’t have her emotions destroying her like this, because as God was her witness, she would end up destroying them all.

“No, Keiley.” Mac caught her at the first step. “Don’t run from this, baby.”

His hold was gentle, pulling her into his thighs and off her feet as escape was so close within her grasp.

“Mac, please—,” she whispered, realizing that he was heavily aroused.

She could feel it. Smell it. She was weakened by it.

“No!” She couldn’t. Not again. She couldn’t let the insidious emotions creeping inside her take room. And they would. One more instance of her husband allowing another man to take her and she would lose the battle she could feel beginning inside her.

“Just no?” he whispered at her ear, his voice and his hold so gentle it sapped her strength.

She could feel him behind her, thick and hard, pressing against her buttocks as his lips caressed her neck with heated demand.

Her eyes closed as the need began to overwhelm her. Feeling Mac lift her, cradling her in his arms as he moved up the stairs.

“You promised,” she whispered into his neck.

“To love you, protect you,” he murmured. “Do you really want me to let you go, Kei?”

He gently laid her on the bed seconds later, but as her frantic gaze moved over his shoulder, she didn’t see Jethro. She didn’t see the dark visage of the man whose eyes haunted her with shadows.

At least she knew some of Mac’s demons. Parts of the brutality of his past. She had lived long enough in Scotland Neck that what Mac hadn’t told her, others had.

She knew his pain. She knew his need for comfort when the demons rose within him. Jethro’s struck her deeper, harder, for the very fact that she knew so little about him.