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It might be nice. She would probably pick out rugs and stuff. Frilly bedroom stuff. Maybe stuff some flowers in vases and put them somewhere. He could handle that. It was a woman thing. Women liked their frilly stuff.
She was here, that was what mattered. That was all that mattered. He could handle anything else.
18
Cam stood in the kitchen, his hands braced on the bar, his head lowered as he fought the need to go to Jaci. He could hear the whisper of her movements through the cavernous apartment. He could smell her. He could almost feel her warmth. And he needed it.
He lifted his head and glanced at Chase where he stood by the balcony doors, staring out into the heavy covering of trees that separated the building from the street.
They could go to her, take her now. Make her scream with pleasure. And that was what he needed to do. Chase was as highly sexed as Cameron; having her now would be pure fucking pleasure.
Except, the sudden need for something more was building inside him like a dark, shadowed wave. It was rife with emotion. It was dangerous. He knew how fucking dangerous it was, because being with Jaci, alone, would open parts of him he hadn’t allowed free for twenty years.
That was the reason for sharing her. The need to hold back the emotions that clawed at him, the needs that filled him like demons that refused to rest. He had forced back every emotion he could find within himself for too many years. Jaci threatened that.
And now, an unfamiliar hunger threatened the distance he needed between them. A clawing, desperate need to claim her, to mark her, to show her she was his. He shared her body, her pleasure, because it was so fucking good, so damned hot that he knew letting it go entirely might never happen.
But the moment she stepped into his apartment, as his woman, something had snapped free inside him and he couldn’t rein it in.
As he watched Chase, his brother turned to him, his expression somber, thoughtful.
“I’m going upstairs,” he suddenly announced.
Cam tensed, hunger tightening through him.
“For how long?” The question slipped free, and Cam grimaced at how revealing it was.
Chase’s lips quirked knowingly. “For as long as I need to, Cam,” he said, moving through the living room to the stairs. “For as long as I need to. ”
Cameron stood still, silent, watching until Chase disappeared up the staircase and the upper door closed softly. He breathed in harshly. It was slipping. His careful control over the twin bond they had once shared. Losing control of that was dangerous. Because sometimes, Cam had nightmares, and in those nightmares the past tortured him. It was nightmares he and Chase had once been able to share so easily.
He didn’t have to sleep with Jaci to take her alone, he reminded himself. If he slept on the couch, then he didn’t normally awake to the nightmares. As long as he didn’t sleep in a bed, he didn’t dream of his fingers wrapped around an aged neck as murder filled his soul.
If he didn’t sleep with Jaci, then there was no risk. She wouldn’t know, and Chase wouldn’t know.
And he could take her, take the woman his heart claimed as he needed to take her. And that was exactly what he was going to do. He pushed away from the counter and headed through the apartment. To the woman. To his woman.
It didn’t take Jaci long to store her clothes in the empty closet, dresser, and chest. There was even plenty of room to spare. None of Cam’s clothes were present. The bedroom was as bare as the rest of the apartment, perhaps more so.
There wasn’t even a blanket, there were no cases on the pillows, there was just a sheet, white, no frills, and rather cheap.
The bed was just a metal frame. Could any one bedroom be more sterile than this one? Could any one man’s life be more sterile than Cam’s?
She stored the suitcases in the top of the closet, then turned and rubbed her hands together slowly. This wasn’t what she came here for, exactly. At least not yet. She had intended to tackle Cam later, but now would work, too. She had planned this for a while, she knew what to do, she knew how to do it. She would just have to divert Cam a little bit until she neutralized the Robertses. Once she finished with that, then she could concentrate on making Cam’s life a little less sterile.
As she moved out of the closet, she came face-to-face with him. More accurately, with his bare chest. Broad and muscular, so horribly scarred, a representation of the scars that were inside his soul as well.
“I need you. ”
Yes, she could see he needed. She could see the hunger in his eyes, the darkness. She saw things she didn’t want to admit to, and suspected worse. What had happened to him when he was in the military? What horrible things had they done to him?
She reached up and touched the scars on his chest, her fingertips trailing over the raised ridges as she lifted her eyes to his.
That darkness she had always sensed within him was growing. A sexual core perhaps. A hunger and a need that was darker, deeper, than any she had glimpsed inside him before.
“Alone,” she whispered, seeing, feeling, that need for more.
His hand cupped her neck, his fingers curling around it, strong and broad, heated.
