“God!” Her hand capped over her lips as she stared back at Mac, horrified.

“I have him in me,” he said softly. “That filthy bastard’s blood runs through my veins. After Mom died, I left. I left him alone. And I swore I’d let him die alone. I went to college on a scholarship. Being away from him, I didn’t have to hide girlfriends. I was free. Or so I thought.”

His first lover had been a tall, slender blonde. She had been a sexual adventurer and filled with life. And the first time Mac had seen her talking to another man he had terrified himself. The words had been hovering on his lips, the insults in his mind, the destructive paranoia blazing through his conscienceness.

“A friend of mine saw it,” he said softly. “He was a few years older than I was, and he knew something about the darkness that inhabits men’s souls. And he introduced me to my first ménage.”

He leaned back in his chair, staring around the kitchen. After his father’s death he had had the place completely renovated. It looked nothing like the dark, squalid home he had lived in as a child.

He could still feel his mother, though. When his father wasn’t around, she would laugh. She played games with him as a child and talked to him as a teenager. Her gentle voice still filled his dreams sometimes. Her tears filled his nightmares.

“How did it evolve to this?” She waved her hand to encompass the situation they were in now.

“Jethro.” A mocking smile twisted his lips. “I met him at the Law Enforcement Academy. We applied to the FBI the same day. He was like this other side of me. The darkness I kept hidden showed on his face. The softness he kept hidden, I knew how to give my women.” He shrugged tightly. “It just evolved. When you and I married, I thought it would go away. I thought I could force it away.”

He stared back at her forcefully then. “I haven’t let you see or know what raged inside me because I love you, Kei. I love you more than any man has a right to love a woman.”

“Mac.” She swallowed tightly. “The past is no excuse—”

“The past isn’t why I do it now.” He shook his head. “It’s not some kind of damned crutch, Kei. And it’s not just a handy excuse. That’s what started it. That’s how it evolved. When we married I left it, and I learned some things about myself. I learned that I missed it. I learned that I can’t watch your pleasure and give it to you at the same time. I learned that I need the balance I had left back in Virginia. My psyche was warped before I ever shared the first woman, and age only intensified it. You have all I am now. It’s up to you whether you can live with it.”

“You’re asking me to love another man.” Her voice was filled with helpless confusion. “This isn’t just sex you want, Mac. Think about this. If I ever have children, you’ll never know if they’re yours. Our children would endure the gossip and the talk Mac, what you’re asking is impossible.”

“Is it? Or do you just want to think it is? How we deal with it is what matters. How you want to deal with it. I can live without it, but I won’t deny I want it. I want you to share not just your body, I want you to share your heart.”

“Why? Damn you, you haven’t given me a reason why.”

“Because he’s as lost as I was before you loved me. Because he’s the only fucking brother I’ve ever had. Damn it, Keiley, because it brings us all three of us pleasure and it by God completes us and you know it.”

Mac came to his feet, fighting the surge of frustration eating through his soul. He inhaled roughly.

“I’ve lived a violent life. I’ve made enemies. I’ve been undercover so many times, for such long periods of time, that sometimes I wondered who I was. Jethro was always there. He was always a reminder. And he’s here now, protecting you when I can’t. Covering my back and yours. You’re not losing anything if you accept this, you’ll only gain, Keiley. You’ll be loved until the walls are bursting at the seams with emotion. Loved and sated, completely. Think about that. Think about it, and then let me know if you really want to lose it.”

“It’s not a good enough reason,” she cried out.

“It’s the only fucking reason I have, Keiley,” he yelled back. “I need you. I love you until it burns through my soul, but son of a bitch, I love you even more when I see you with him.”

“Why? Why?” she screamed.

“God damn it, I don’t know why,” he snarled back, raging, an inner fury she had never seen in him before burning through his eyes, his expression. A pain, a blistering agony that Keiley felt ripping through her soul. Because she had never known it existed.

18

“Do you know what I see when I see him taking you?” He advanced on her, his larger body taut, tight with tension with a sudden lust she had never glimpsed in him before.

He backed her into the counter, his arms bracketing her, his chest raking her breasts through the dress she wore as his breath sawed in and out of his lungs. The eroticism of the position stroked along her senses like invisible fire.

“I see perfection,” he growled. “I see his hands touching you. And I don’t see a whore. I see beauty. I see life. I see you giving into the most perfect passion ever created. And I get to watch it. I see a woman so filled with passion and love that she gives herself to it. I see love, Keiley.”

His head lowered, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a grimace of remembered pleasure as his eyes darkened and gleamed with it. Remembrance marked his expression. But it also marked her arousal. It was burning through her, reminding her of the fantasies she had allowed to build over the years and the hunger Mac was brewing in her now.

“Mac—”

“Deny that the nights it takes me all night to sate the arousal inside you, you don’t wish for more.” Knowledge tightened his expression. “I see your eyes then, baby. I see the need. I see the fires burning inside you. Don’t tell me you haven’t craved it.”

She wanted to whimper and only barely managed to hold it back. Sometimes she knew he saw too much, knew him too well.

“Fantasy.” She swallowed tightly before licking her lips to ease the nervous dryness. “Fantasy shouldn’t count.”

“Fantasy always counts, Keiley,” he crooned, his smile slow and heated. “You’re fantasies mean everything. Anything you want. Everything you need. It all matters to me, darlin’. Don’t you know that? Your fantasies.” His lips smoothed over her brow. “Every hunger.” His voice deepened. “Every dream.”

A tremor raced up her spine as she drew in a hard, deep breath.

“He’s taking what’s yours,” she whispered, feeling the heaviness in her breasts, between her thighs, at the memory of Jethro taking her, at the feel of Mac against her.

Mac shook his head slowly. “I don’t possess you. I don’t want to take from you, Keiley. I want to give to you. I want to give you enough pleasure to wipe every preconceived notion of passion out of your head. And I want to watch it. When I fuck you, I’m sucked in. Sucked into that sweet hot pussy. Sucked into your kiss. Sucked into your heart. I can’t see or feel anything but the explosions of sensation in front of my eyes. But when he touches you, when he takes you, I can see. And I can see it turns you on. It makes you burn. You love it. Admit you love it.”

His lips were hot, rasping with such pleasure that it sent shudders racing through her as he stroked them over her jaw. Soft kisses, black velvet rasping over sensitive flesh.

“I love it,” she panted, breathless as one hand dropped from the counter to her thigh. “But it’s not natural.”

“Says who?” His lips brushed down her cheek, his voice guttural, savage. “Does it feel natural, Keiley? Does it feel like he should have been here all long, loving you with me? Keeping you warm from one end to the other? Keeping you sated, held?”

It did, and that terrified her.

“Someone’s going to get hurt,” she whimpered. “I don’t want any of us to get hurt. I don’t want to be hurt.”

The thought of the gossip, the rumors, of everyone knowing a part of her intimate life, was worrisome. It wasn’t panicking her, though, and it should have. She should be half hysterical at the thought of people whispering about her sex life. About acts that were considered beyond the norm. Beyond respectable.

But she wasn’t. What was more frightening, the fact that she wasn’t frightened? Or the implications of that lack of fear? The implications of the fact that she was already half convinced?

“We’ll keep it quiet,” he promised roughly, dragging the skirt of her dress up her thighs.

Breathing was becoming difficult. The feel of the material sliding up her legs, of his palms caressing the flesh it revealed, was too much for her weakened defenses. They were collapsing, shattering, and drawing her into a world rich with the promise of more of the incredible pleasure she had known to this point.

She shook her head weakly. “It won’t work like that.”

She knew she needed to argue. She needed to convince him, but she couldn’t find the words to convince him. She couldn’t find the will.

“All you have to do is enjoy it,” he crooned, his lips caressing her ear as her head fell back, weakening desire flooding her body. “All you have to do is let us love you. No pressure, baby. No expectations. Let me take care of the logistics. I’m good at that. Remember?”

She gasped as he lifted her, placing her on the counter before his hands gripped her panties and pulled them from her legs.

The silk slid slowly from her body, pulled away by the experienced, knowing touch of the man leading her into the promise of things she would have never imagined she would feel.

“Mac.”

He reached over, flipped off the stove, then knelt in front of her.

It was wicked. It was so damned sexy. It sent the blood racing through her veins with fiery pleasure.

Kneeling before her, he parted her thighs further, his fingers feathering over the wet curls that shielded the folds so aching for his touch.

“I watched him eating this sweet pussy,” he crooned as he spread her legs. “I watched you creaming for him, and all I could think was how beautiful you were. Watching you makes me crave the taste of you, the feel of you, even more. It makes the desire sharper, the hunger deeper. When I finally get to taste you—” His tongue dragged through the silky, drenched slit between her thighs as she cried out his name. “All I can think about is how perfect you were as we held you between us. All I can think about is how sweet and pure you taste.”

“Mac, this is depraved,” she whimpered, then gasped as he delivered a hot, sucking little kiss to her clit.

It wasn’t a lick or a stroke. It was a kiss. He was kissing her clit, sucking it into his mouth for a quick lick before releasing it, and starting all over again.

They were explosive, heated kisses. They tore restraint from her mind and left her lost in her attempt to find an objection to what she knew was coming in this new relationship.

Instead, she leaned back, bent her knee until one foot rested on the counter, the other over her husband’s broad shoulder as she watched his lips and tongue caress her slick, juicy flesh.

He drew back, flicked his tongue over her swollen bud, then leaned back for another kiss. His palms splayed on the inside of her thighs, holding her apart for caresses that were burning through her soul.

“I love your lips on me,” she whispered with a mewling little whimper as his tongue circled her aching clit. “Your tongue.”

His black hair caressed her inner thighs, the stubble on his cheeks smoothed over her flesh, his hands pressed her thighs wider, allowing her a better view of his caresses.

A view of his tongue slowly circling her straining clit, flickering over it, kissing it, her juices clinging to his lips like silky threads.