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“Are you?” Jed asked.
It was a simple question. No mockery, no sarcasm, nothing offensive, but Piper could feel the guilt growing inside her.
“You don’t understand what he’s like, Jed,” she burst out, pushing her fingers through her hair in frustration as she turned and stomped to the other side of the room before turning back. “This is how he gets you. He knows how to work every damned one of us. ”
“Does he, Piper?” he asked her quietly. “Or is he just struggling with his inability to protect four girls he loves nearly as much as he does his own daughter? Four girls whose abandonment and hardships as children torment him?”
She shook her head fiercely. “That wasn’t his fault. ”
“Fault doesn’t matter, Piper,” he said calmly, moving to her, making her all too aware of the sudden sensitivity of her body whenever he was around.
His voice was steady, every movement deliberate, but his eyes were like deep pools of sexual heat. His gaze licked over her as his hands curved against her bare shoulders. They slid down along her arms, then back up, the rasp of the calluses against her softer flesh so erotic she was forced to bite back a moan.
“What does matter, Jed?” she asked, unable to break her gaze from his. “Should I give in to him as Eve tried to do, and refuse to end up in your bed? Should I promise not to live or have a life so Dawg can sleep at night?”
Tears filled her eyes at the thought. “Don’t you think I’ve learned how I have to handle him by now? If I don’t defy him, then I won’t have a chance at having a life myself. ”
“And there are those times you could defy him and lose your life, Piper. ”
“Then he has to learn to talk to us. ” Frustrated anger hoarsened her voice as it tore through her emotions. “Why do we have to automatically give in and bury our heads against life or risk dying? Jed, I can’t do that. If I’m in danger then I have to know, and I have to know why. Just as you would. ”
His gaze flickered and she knew he understood that.
“If I go to Dawg, then he’ll see it as a weakness; don’t you understand that? I’ll be giving in and he’ll take full advantage of it. Not out of cruelty. ” She held her hand up to delay whatever argument she could see brewing in his expression. “Not out of manipulation. That’s his instinct,” she argued. “Just as it’s yours. ”
It was the way they were, the type of men they were. If Dawg didn’t come to her first, seeking answers, then he wouldn’t be in a frame of mind to discuss what had happened to her while she was away. He would dictate her security instead and try to lock her so far out of sight she would have a hard time finding herself, let alone anyone else finding her.
“You forget: I came for you. ” His head lowered as he voiced the reminder, his lips brushing against her ear and causing her eyes to close at the pleasure of the touch. “No questions, no demands. I came for you, Piper, and I’m the one forced to field questions from your friends and family. If I have to take Rowdy or Natches Mackay’s fist for you, because I keep refusing to answer their questions, then you are going to owe me. Big-time. ”
The words were a breath of warning against her neck as Piper felt her knees weaken.
Lifting her hands from where they hung at her sides, she tentatively gripped his upper arms, feeling the play of his biceps beneath her fingers.
“They won’t hit you. ” She knew her brother and her cousins. They were hard men, but they weren’t unfair.
“Perhaps I should have a taste now. ” His lips brushed against her jaw. “Show me what I’m going to take that punch for, Piper. ”
Her head turned; her lips parted.
She’d dreamed of his kiss since that first one six weeks before. Each day, each time he spoke to her, teased her, silently rebuked her, had built the need for it.
She needed his kiss.
She needed his touch.
Her lips accepted his, parted, and Piper found herself dragged into a chaotic storm of pure heat.
Pleasure raced across her flesh like ribbons of electric sensation. From her lips to the tip of her toes and back to the crown of her head, his lips against hers created a reaction she couldn’t have expected.
She should have expected. She’d felt it before. But how was she to know that the first time hadn’t been just a fluke? She had never predicted the intensity of the pleasure to repeat itself or—incredibly—to begin building higher, stronger.
Faster.
* * *
Jed barely controlled the gut-deep groan of instant, overwhelming hunger.
Son of a bitch, it couldn’t be this good. There was no way this unusual depth of pleasure was real.
