The need to taste her had his mouth watering, the hunger obliterating everything else. His head lowered, lips parting, and when he captured one tight, swollen peak, he swore he could feel her losing control along with him.

* * *

Piper jerked at the sudden suction of his mouth against the overly sensitive tip of her breast. The sensation was so sharp, so brutally erotic that her hands rose quickly to his shoulders, her nails biting against his flesh.

She had to hold on.

Oh, God, it was so good.

She whipped her head against the comforter beneath her, her hips lifting against him, feeling the brush of the heavy width of his cock against her thighs—there were so many sensations. So much pleasure.

The tugging of his mouth around the tender bud of her breast was an agonizing pleasure. One hand cupped the curve of her flesh as the other moved slowly down her waist to the rounded curve of her thigh.

“Part your legs,” he ordered hoarsely as his lips moved to the opposite peak. “Ah, God, let me in, baby. Let me have you.”

She was really going to do this, wasn’t she?

There was no turning back; she could feel it.

After years of wondering why she’d been unable to take a lover, the mystery was now solved.

She hadn’t taken one because she’d needed Jed. She’d waited for him, ached for him—somehow she’d known he was out there; she’d known he’d come for her.

Her legs parted, urged by the powerful fingers at her thighs as his lips lowered and covered the other hardened tip of her nipple. Suckling it, he lapped at it with his tongue, then rasped it with his teeth.

Piper felt as though she were being devoured.

That thought was amended as his lips began a path down her torso. Hungry kisses, tasting licks set fire to her senses. Caresses stroked pure exquisite pleasure to her nerve endings and had her waiting in painful anticipation as he moved ever closer to her trembling thighs.

“You know what I want, baby.” He groaned as he found her belly button and felt her tremble in response. “I want all those sweet juices gathering at your pussy.”

Her breath caught and held in her chest as his lips moved farther, kissed, stroked, licked.

A breath of air brushed over the bare flesh of her pussy, the dew-slick folds sensitizing further at the thought of the coming caress.

She couldn’t help but watch.

His gaze caught hers for long, erotic moments before his eyes dropped, drawing her eyes to the swollen folds.

His lips parting, Jed’s head lowered, his tongue reaching out for her, then burying in the slick, swollen flesh of her pussy.

“Oh, God. Jed.” Her hands slid into his hair, gripped and held on tight as her upper body jerked upward in response.

Spreading her knees farther, Piper dug her feet into the bed and lifted her hips, pressing closer, muted, hoarse cries leaving her throat as his tongue began a sensual, delicious dance in the plump, slick flesh he’d found.

He pushed his hands beneath her hips to lift her closer, and Piper lost the strength to hold her shoulders and head from the bed. Falling back, she strained against the pleasure, eyes closed, reaching for the brilliance of the supernova of fiery heat she could feel building in her pussy.

Wicked and erotic, his tongue lapped at the juices spilling from her vagina before easing up, licking and stroking, pushing her further, deeper into the maelstrom gathering inside her. Rasping, probing, the devilish instrument of torturous ecstasy began licking around her straining clit, testing the swollen tenderness, inciting it to a desperate ache that had her crying out for release.

When his lips covered the distended little bundle of nerves, Piper felt the shock of it explode through her system. Shuddering, her hips jerking against his hold, against the sucking heat, she felt her senses begin dissolving in a release of such pure ecstasy that she swore she could feel herself flying.

Drawn tight, arching to him, racked by primal internal shudders of a climax that shocked her to her woman’s core, she fought to cry, to scream out the pleasure, only to find enough air to give a low, ragged moan.

And still it wasn’t enough.

For all the strength and power of the climax gripping her, still, that building ache in her pussy drove her to reach for more. To beg for more.

Her eyes jerked open as he pulled himself to his knees.

Eyes wide, Piper’s gaze focused on the thick, engorged crest of his cock. He quickly pulled the condom from the side table, tore it open, then rolled the protective sheath over himself, before he came over her once again.

“Jed . . . ?” She could feel the trepidation building inside her.

“I have you, Piper.” She was only barely aware of the words whispered at her ear as he buried his lips in her neck. “It’s okay, baby; I have you.”

Everything inside her stilled then.

The feel of the hard, thickened crest of his penis pressing into the quivering entrance of her vagina held her poised on a rack of desperate need and building fear.

“Jed. Jed, I haven’t—” A groan tore through her as the throbbing width of his cock breached the clenched opening of her pussy.

“I know, sweetheart.” His head lifted. “Look at me, Piper. Let me see you.”

She forced her eyes open, watching his eyes as he stared down at her, the blue so dark it now appeared black.

“Hold on to me.” He groaned as her hands clenched in the comforter. “Hold on to me, sweetheart.”

Lifting her hands, she gripped his upper arms, stared into his eyes, and felt him advance further before pulling back.

“Wait.” The protest was instinctive.

“Shhh, I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, his lips lowering to hers. “Just hold on to me. Just for a second.”

The muscles of his hips bunched, the head of his cock throbbed inside her, and a second later a hard, heavy thrust had the iron-hard length powering through the shield of an innocence she knew she’d saved for him.

His lips caught her cry at the shock of the entrance.

Holding the kiss, he pulled back, then pushed inside again, burying deeper as pleasure and pain began to build with equal intensity.

Lifting her legs to get closer to each heavy thrust, Piper gave herself to him, knowing that from this moment on, she no longer completely belonged to herself.

Each hard thrust inside the clenched depths of her pussy pushed inside her with increasing strength, faster, to an edge of a fiery abyss she was both terrified of and reaching for.

Pleasure radiated through her body, stoked by each piercing impalement of his cock inside her, stretching her, burning the sensitive depths with the heavy heat of his possession.

Moving over her, stroking inside her with quick, deep thrusts of the steel-hard, heated flesh, Jed pushed her harder, faster. Her hands clenched on his arms as the flared crest parted her flesh and drove to the depths of her before quickly retreating, then stroking over flesh so sensitive that the pleasure was agonizing with each stroke.

Each thrust was harder, faster. Each was hotter, more demanding, until that abyss reached out for her, the flames exploding around her and tearing through her senses with such blinding ecstasy that she knew she would never be the same.

Harsh, quaking shudders of sensation attacked her body. Unprepared for their strength, for the sheer destruction of her senses, Piper could only do as he’d told her: She held on tight.

She gasped, crying out his name as her body clenched and shuddered beneath him, her pussy tightening around his shuttling cock until he thrust in hard and deep and gave himself to his own pleasure.

She hadn’t imagined it could be like this. She’d never conceived of such pleasure, of such deep, overwhelming waves of pure ecstasy streaking through her, possessing her.

She wouldn’t have believed that in one moment of rapture her soul would open and her heart would give itself totally, completely, to a man as fierce, as hard, and yet as gentle as Jedediah Booker.

NINE

Eve had told her that once Brogan had touched her, once she had learned what real pleasure, real intimacy were, then she’d been caught.

Hook, line, and sinker, sister. Eve had grinned unrepentantly the day Piper had berated her for moving from the inn and leaving her, Lyrica, and Zoey—well, mostly her and Lyrica—to face the fallout.

The fallout being Tim, Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches becoming so damned protective that Piper, Lyrica, and even Zoey—the most spoiled of the sisters—were feeling the bite of the males’ overprotectiveness.

Lying in Jed’s arms that afternoon, Piper wondered what she was getting herself into this time, and just how it would affect not just her, but also her unattached sisters.

“Stop thinkin’,” Jed drawled, and for just a second there was a hint of the Texas upbringing he’d once told her he’d had.

“You’re starting to sound like a cowboy.” Turning against his chest, she propped herself up and stared at him from where she lay against his shoulder.

Jed grunted lazily. “Yeah, it creeps out now and again.”

“This is the first time I’ve actually heard it,” she pointed out. “I was starting to wonder if you’d lied to me about being born in Texas.”

That Texas drawl was unmistakable. And she’d never heard it pass his lips.

So why now?

She was almost glowing at the possibility that perhaps sexual satisfaction and male contentment had managed to relax him enough that he’d lost a moment’s control over something it seemed he’d deliberately suppressed.

“I don’t lie to you.” The simple statement had her stomach tightening in a feeling akin to, but not exactly, the panic attacks of the past.

This wasn’t panic. It was terrified anticipation, petrified hope. It was something it shouldn’t be; that was for damned sure.

“You’ve never lied to me?” Forcing the disbelief into her voice wasn’t easy.

It was almost impossible simply because she wanted so desperately to believe him. Wanted to believe him, and she was too scared to allow herself to do so.

“I’ve never lied to you, Piper. And I never will.”

Was he lying to her? He had to be lying to her.

“I won’t lie to you,” he continued. “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t questions I can’t answer. If I can make the commitment not to deceive you, then I expect you to make one not to ask the questions you know would be off-limits.”

Could she ask for more than that?

She didn’t know whether she could, or whether she should, but she knew she had to.

Sitting up, she tucked the sheet around her breasts and stared down at him silently for long moments. With one forearm lifted and tucked beneath his head, his dark navy blue eyes so intent and serious, with long strands of dark blond, gold, and tawny hair falling over his forehead, he resembled the men he employed on the construction job that she knew he used as a cover. Rugged and hard, lean and naturally muscled.

“How am I supposed to know what questions are off-limits?” Tilting her head to the side, she watched him curiously now, wondering whether this was how Eve and Brogan made their relationship work. Did they have an understanding that there were parts of his life and what he did that she couldn’t question?

Could she live with that? Really?

She loved Jed. She’d known that for a while now.

But did she love him enough to abide by such a rule?

“I think you’ll know which questions those are.” His gaze dropped to her breasts as they rose over the edge of the sheet.

“I think that if those are the rules, Jed, then I have to know who and what you are. If that information is off-limits, then you may as well climb that cute ass right out of my bed before one of us gets pissed off.”

* * *

God help him, but he loved her.

Jed stared up at Piper Mackay and knew she owned parts of his heart and soul that he hadn’t even known existed. There was no denying that they belonged to her, either, because as he watched her, he knew he’d trust her with every secret he had inside his soul.