Chapter 3

Her brother Caleb was waiting for them when they stepped into the kitchen from the attached garage of her house. The low light from the counter illuminated the large, country-style room with its wide work island, breakfast nook, and multitude of cabinets and windows.

She’d had the house completely remodeled after she’d bought it from her brother. She was an agent, with all the paranoid tendencies that went with it. Exterior walls were lead-lined, windows were bullet resistant, shades made to screw with infra-red and heat-detecting technology. The inside window shutters were merely added security.

The security system wasn’t just installed by her brother, it was created by him as well, right down to the footfall detector on the walk leading to the porch and on the porch itself.

“So far, there’s no sign of a sniper,” Caleb informed them as he carried a pot of coffee to the table as Whitt, one of his former Special Forces team members, collected cups. “Watchers are having problems watching the houses,” he grinned. “They don’t care much for the alligators that creep around the grounds at night.”

“Who needs security guards?” Summer murmured.

Caleb chuckled at the comment. Even in the low light, his eyes—nearly the same color as hers—gleamed in the near darkness. Short black hair, beard, and mustache. He looked like a pirate. He had been known to act like one on occasion too.

“We’ll go over everything I’ve pulled in since Falcon and Raeg showed up in the morning,” he promised. “Daddy’s expecting all three of you at the house before breakfast. He likes to chat on the front porch over coffee, and Momma likes Summer’s help in the kitchen.” He gave them all a warning look. “That’s you and Falcon as well, Raeg. You don’t want the major to come looking for you.”

Oh God.

That was going to be a disaster.

Her daddy would take one look at Falcon and Raeg, then give her one of those disappointed looks she hated so badly. And that was just the beginning.

Her daddy knew her, could read her like a book. That meant she was really in trouble.

“Daddy’s askin’ questions, Summer,” he warned her next. “Especially about the work you’ve been doing with Falcon and Raeg that had Dragovich coming after you. He was on the phone with Davis Allen when I left the house earlier.”

That was not a good thing. It was bad. It was so very bad, and she was just in so much trouble.

“Daddy will take a switch to me,” she groaned. “I am such dead meat, Caleb.”

She was aware of Raeg frowning at her and Falcon’s curiosity as they listened to the exchange.

“Eh, not this week,” her brother promised, highly amused. “His knees are acting up. Just run. Hell, you could outrun him in those four-inch heels you wear if you wanted to.”

Her momma would do it then.

“Breakfast, boys.” Caleb lifted his hand and headed for the garage door. “I’d get there early, Summer. Help Momma with breakfast. You know how she likes that. Then she might not chase you down for Daddy when he mentions that switch.”

He just wasn’t going to be nice to her tonight, was he?

“You’re bein’ ugly to me, Caleb,” she sighed, pretty much resigned. “And that is so not fair.”

Without answering the accusation, he shot her an amused grin before he disappeared into the garage. Seconds later a muted beep to her cellphone had a map flashing on screen of the yard, showing his and Whitt’s progress.

At least the security system worked.

Rising from her chair she stared at the cups still on the table and the coffee pot Caleb hadn’t returned to the maker, and held back a sigh. Collecting them, she quickly washed them in the sink, aware of both Raeg and Falcon as they moved through the house. They checked the security system as well as the footfall alarms on the wraparound porch and cement walk.

By the time they finished, she was getting her luggage, wondering why the hell Caleb always managed to forget his manners with her. He should have carried them right to her room himself. She was going to tell their momma on him first thing. Maybe she could be distracted from being put out with Summer by getting put out with her son instead?

Doubtful. But she could hope.

“Here.” Falcon grabbed the two suitcases she was struggling to haul from the Suburban. “We loaded them, dammit, did you think we wouldn’t unload them?”

The tone was completely irate and Falcon was hardly ever irate with her.

“Now you’re gettin’ ugly with me?” she asked as she grabbed her makeup bag and headed into the house. “Just what I need, you in a bad mood too.”

It always took a while to settle in when she arrived home, Summer remembered as she led the way to her upstairs suite. The transition was always a pain in the ass.

“Summer, do you always have to travel with half a dozen bags?” he asked, more amused than irritated as her brothers or even Raeg could get. But his expression was still a little tense.

“I try to travel light.” She shrugged, wandering to the balcony doors and unlocking them before stepping outside.

And there it was.

The fog was rolling in from the swamp, steamy and thick, coming in as floating tendrils, fingers of humid moisture reaching out and creeping across the backyard.

She could hear the gators, bellowing out an eerie sound into the night. In the distance, a big cat called out—panthers or even cougars were known to wander the Okefenokee.

When she was younger, her daddy had tracked a cougar that had killed one of his calves. He’d never caught it, but he’d come back with tales of monster alligators, panthers stalking him from the tops of the trees, and a fog so thick and heavy he swore it moved him through the swamps as if it had a will of its own, for miles at a time.

Watching it now, the thick threads reaching closer to the house, she could well imagine such a thing happening.

“Now that is eerie as hell,” Falcon whispered as his arms slid around her, pulling her closer to his obviously aroused body.

Summer let her head settle against the chest behind her, her hands resting against his linked ones where they came together low on her stomach.

It took everything she had to control her breathing, to fight back the heat that rose inside her whenever he touched her like this, whenever he let her feel how much he wanted her. But it also calmed her whenever he held her. No matter how upset she was or how worried, when he pulled her against him, Summer could almost feel herself drawing on his strength and his power. Sometimes, those qualities seemed inexhaustible in Falcon.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Soon, it will surround the house like a blanket, ghostly white, that little bit of moon giving it a glow that sends chills up the spine if you’re not used to it. And those fingers of fog will seem to be probing at the seams of the door, the windows, as though hungry to reach the inside and consume it as well.”

She was used to it, and still, she’d been known to give a little shiver.

Aunjenue would actually sit out on her balcony sometimes when it came through as though soaking up the moisture, enjoying the tendrils that wrapped around her. Summer avoided them. Not that she was scared of them, or spooked by them, but the curious-like threads of moisture always seemed far too sentient to her for comfort.

“You’ve missed being home,” he murmured. “I was seeing it in you before we took that job with Davis Allen.”

She had missed home. Learning her dearest friend in the world was in danger had been far more important though. Home was always waiting, but Alyssa might not be if she didn’t get there in time.

She’d gotten there in time, but that job had gone to hell so fast she still had trouble acclimating herself to the consequences.

“I always miss home,” she revealed, something no one but Alyssa had known before now. “When I’m away for too long, I begin to feel off balance. The person you’ve always known isn’t who I am, Falcon,” she revealed sadly. “This is where I’m me. This is where all my hopes and dreams began and where I hope to live to an old old age. This is where I took my first breath and it’s where I want to draw my last breath.”

“Think I don’t know that the woman that flits and flirts around DC isn’t really you?” he questioned her softly. “Do you think I don’t know the sweetness that exists beneath the woman you show the world?”

Perhaps he did. Falcon always saw deeper, probed at the layers of a person until he could reach the inner parts. Not because he was nosy or because he felt they were being secretive as Raeg did. He did it because he genuinely cared about people. He wanted to know who they were and what they were.

“Maybe you do,” she sighed, watching the fog come closer. “I hated leaving you though. As bad as I wanted to be home, I want you to know that. I hated walking away from you.”

And Raeg. Though she left that unsaid. Falcon would know, just as he’d known she wasn’t the person she showed the world.

“You didn’t come straight home.” He rested his chin against the top of her head, meeting her gaze in the reflection of the glass door. “Why not?”

Why hadn’t she?

It had been six months, and there had been times she’d ached to find her own bed, to hear her momma’s laughter, her daddy’s booming voice, in person rather than on the phone.

She’d needed to heal first though, she’d thought. She hadn’t been able to shed the person she was in DC as easily as she had in the past, because the wounds that had been left in her soul had seemed to fuse that part of her to the woman she was inside. She couldn’t face her family like that. She wasn’t herself. Just as she never showed the inner woman to the world, she never allowed the agent she was while in the world to return home with her, where her dreams and laughter awaited her.

“I was too ragged,” she finally answered honestly. “If I had come home then, Momma and Daddy would have worried and Caleb would have headed straight to Arlington to demand even more answers from you. I couldn’t be me, yet. And I didn’t want them to see or to know who I was away from them.” Her eyes closed as his head bent further, his lips brushing over her bare shoulder.

“I would have avoided him just as I always do,” he promised her, the light Spanish accent he still carried washing over her senses. “I would have protected your secrets if I could have, Summer. Caleb knew them though. When we arrived here to warn him of Dragovich and see if he knew where you were hiding, he already had all the answers. I warned you long ago he no doubt knew exactly what you were doing.”

Yeah, that sounded like Caleb. He’d ask questions even when he knew the answers. That was just his way. And she should have known he was aware of what she was doing. He was too nosy. There had just been no indication of it, so she’d hoped he’d accepted her explanations.

Her eyes closed as Falcon’s lips moved closer to the sensitive column of her neck. In the next heartbeat she forced herself to step away from him and turn back to the bedroom, only to come to a stop.

Raeg stood leaning against the wall, just on the other side of the bed, his expression shadowed but not enough to hide the lust she could see in his face.

For once, there was no sense of anger or judgment coming from him. As though he were simply enjoying the sight of her and Falcon, of hearing them talk, their voices low. Could he find pleasure in that? Was that part of what caused these two men to share something so intimate as the women they both desired?

“Falcon knows where the guest rooms are,” she told him, uncertain now what to say, or what to do. “There’s one on each side of this suite, and they’re comfortable.”

“From the looks of things, Falcon doesn’t need a guest room,” he pointed out, though without a sense of jealousy or even his normal insulting, snide attitude.

“Falcon is not nearly that lucky,” his brother grunted, pausing to kiss the top of her head before walking across the room. “Just sometimes, when I’m a very good boy, she allows me to pet her a little.” He shot her a teasing smile over his shoulder before turning back to his brother.

Raeg still held her gaze, his dark eyes probing, intense. If he said something nasty to her, she simply didn’t know if she could handle it.

His gaze moved over her, and Summer felt her breasts swell further, her nipples aching, her sex melting. And how futile was the arousal rushing through her, flooding her body and her senses? Falcon would never take her without Raeg, and Raeg despised her. Oh, he became aroused by her occasionally, but actually touching her was something he wanted nothing to do with. He’d made that plain over the years.

“Good night, Summer,” he told her softly, nodding his head before straightening and leaving the room ahead of Falcon.

“He hates me,” she whispered as Falcon paused, then turned back to her. “Why?”

His expression softened, his pale blue eyes, normally cool even when he wasn’t, darkened with those shadows she’d always glimpsed in both him as well as his brother.

“He doesn’t hate you.” There was a heaviness to his voice that left her confused, aching to know the origin of his pain so she could soothe it.

“I think he does.” She used to hope he didn’t, had tried to tell herself he didn’t. But now? Now, she just didn’t know.

Falcon shook his head. “And I know he does not. What he does feel though, we may all have to work through eventually.” His gaze touched hers. “And that may be far more dangerous to us than we ever imagined Dragovich being.”

With that, he left her bedroom, leaving her to stand in the darkness alone as the fog reached her balcony doors, spreading over them, easing against each crack and crevice, searching for an entrance that didn’t exist.

That was how she felt sometimes, as though searching for an entrance into the hearts of two men who wanted her, but were determined to keep her from being a presence in their lives.

What had Raeg once told her? He’d join her and Falcon, if she wanted to give into his brother’s seduction, for a night or two. But she wasn’t the type of woman he’d ever give his heart to.

And how that had hurt.

It still hurt. She was certain she’d spent a week crying into her pillow whenever she was supposed to be sleeping. He’d stripped her bare with those words. And even though it had been years since he’d given her the warning, she’d never forgotten it. Just as she’d never forgotten Falcon’s warning that he and Raeg did share their lovers, and that should one of them ever marry, then she could count on the fact that it would be both of them the wife would be sharing her bed with.

And she wasn’t in the running for a wife. Raeg had made that one clear right from the get-go.

So what the hell was her problem?

She’d known him since she was sixteen, two years before he ever went to work for the senator, and they’d been fighting for just as long. He’d snipe at her and just get as mean as a feral cat. She’d scratch back, then they’d stay at each other’s throats whenever possible.

Putting away the last of her clothes, she snagged a nightie and matching robe before heading to the shower. By the time she crawled into bed, she gave a weary sigh at the knowledge that life was about to get crazy again.

Tomorrow was just going to be hell, and there was no help for it. This was what she got for waiting a year to come home, and when she did return, bringing Falcon and Raeg with her. Hell, this was what she got for giving a damn if Falcon and Raeg were with her. If they meant nothing to her, then her daddy would just give them a few warnings about playing with his little girl’s heart and leave it at that.

But her daddy knew her, just as her momma did, and they knew what Raeg or Falcon would never guess. They meant far more to her than just friends. Far more than she should have allowed them to mean to her. And if she wasn’t very, very careful, she’d end up loving them.

She almost thought another bullet in her shoulder would be preferable. She was damned sure it wouldn’t hurt near as long.

And it would destroy all her plans too.

She was tired of aching for two men she couldn’t have, and she was tired to being so alone, of ignoring the dreams that had slowly grown inside her during the long nights she’d spent with no one to lie beside her.

The dream of returning to Georgia, of having a family of her own, babies of her own. If she was ever going to let go of the fantasy she knew she couldn’t have, then she was going to have to start looking at what she could have. She could have a husband and babies. One husband would be far less complicated than two men sharing that role, now wouldn’t they? And she could live with caring for a man instead of giving him all of her. She could make do with that, because she knew she couldn’t have the two men she longed for. It wasn’t settling for second best when there was absolutely no chance at first choice. Right?

Lifting the remote next to the bed, Summer turned on the television and sat crossed-legged on the bed with her brush. As the late-night world-events anchor discussed yet another DC scandal, she pulled her hair over her shoulder and began brushing the heavy mass.

If she tried to sleep without braiding her hair, she’d probably be strangled in her sleep.

Just as she began brushing, she was surprised by a low knock on the door a second before it swung slowly open.

Falcon had showered as well. His hair was still damp, the elastic band of the loose, gray pants he wore rested low on his hips, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

But he was carrying a brush identical to the one in her hand.

Without speaking, he strode to the side of the bed as Summer scooted to the middle of the mattress and sat cross-legged while he settled in behind her. A heartbeat later, pleasure began singing through her body. The stroke of the brush through her hair, the caressing tug against her scalp, and the rhythmic, steady movements erased every tension, fear, and wariness.

She’d always found this incredibly sensual. Falcon brushed her hair with an enjoyment that always surprised her, but never failed to please her.

He was one of the reasons she refused to cut her hair, not some vain pleasure she found in it. Falcon seemed to love it. The very mention of cutting her hair was enough to have panic gleaming in his pale blue eyes.

“Had you actually cut this beautiful hair, I believe I might have spanked you with your own brush,” he sighed, causing a smile to tug at her lips.

She actually believed him too.

“You should have known better,” she murmured as he laid the brush aside and began to slowly pull her long strands into an intricate braid that he left loose enough that it wouldn’t leave her head aching from the pressure, but would keep the long strands from tangling or from strangling her.

“You owe me for making me believe you had done something so cruel to me as to cut this beautiful hair.” The humor in his voice was always contagious.

And maybe he was right. She had known that if he had actually believed she had cut her hair, he would be furious. Maybe even hurt.

“Okay, I owe you,” she agreed, the feel of his fingers working her hair, pulling her into a drowsy, sensual haze.

As good as he was making her feel by just braiding her hair, she thought how good it would feel to be touched by him, to have his fingers stroking over her body, touching her. To be allowed to touch him.

“Hmm, what should I demand as payment?” he asked, his voice just a little rough, the dark sound a pleasure on its own.

“Whatever you want,” she murmured, her senses drugged with the sensations.

She could feel him binding the end of the braid with the elastic band, and wanted to moan in regret. She wasn’t ready for it to end. Not yet.

“I’ve missed this.” His hands caressed her bare shoulders, the slightly calloused warmth of his palms sensitizing the nerve endings beneath her flesh. “Sitting with you, braiding your hair, feeling you against me.”

He never stopped at just braiding her hair. Maybe that was why she had missed it herself. Falcon liked touching her, and she so loved the feel of his hands on her, stroking and caressing her.

“Raeg says you’re addicted,” she said, reminding him of the accusation Raeg had made the previous year.

“Such jealousy he harbors,” he chuckled, the sound of it gentle, filled with the affection she knew he felt for her. “We feel sorry for him, don’t we?”

“He would probably disagree with you.” Her head lowered as his fingers began rubbing against the top of her spine, sending waves of exquisite pleasure rolling through her.

Oh yes, she had missed this. The calloused pads of his thumbs working the muscles beneath, firmly massaging her neck, draining the tension right out of her. It sent another type of tension invading her, but even that she looked forward to. Those sensations intensified the pleasure of his touch, heated her, and reaffirmed the fact that she was indeed a woman. A woman who ached for a touch denied her far too often.

“I bet he wouldn’t,” he whispered, his warm breath caressing her ear. “Raeg may fool you with his attitude, but he doesn’t fool me, sweetheart. If he could be right here, right now, touching you like this, feeling you soft and sweet, he would be as addicted as I.”

Her breath caught as his lips brushed against the shell of her ear, pulling her deeper into the sensuality building inside her senses.

She was just weak enough, she thought hazily, just needy enough actually, to sit there like a crazy woman and let her body burn for him. She could feel her breasts swelling, her nipples becoming so sensitive, so needy for his touch as her sex melted and wept for touch as well, that there was no hiding her need for him.

“How is he fooling me then?” She bent her head to the side in an invitation for him to continue those little brushes of his lips a little lower.

“How does he keep you at arm’s length?” It was the edge of his teeth that rasped against the sensitive skin of her neck rather than his lips, and the sensation had her fighting to hold back a moan.

“What are you up to, Falcon?” she sighed, aware of the slow, steady seduction of her senses and that he was touching her far differently than he normally did, allowing himself to go much further in his caresses.

“Besides seducing you?” The edge of amusement in his tone should have pissed her off; instead, she felt herself softening further against him.

It wasn’t a good idea and she knew it. Both of them were approaching that point of no return, and she couldn’t seem to make herself care.

“Get on with it then,” she demanded on a sigh, knowing she had slipped far too deeply into the spell he was weaving around her senses.

A dark chuckle met the demand, and rather than doing as she suggested, he slid from the bed and stared down at her, his gaze filled with a carnal hunger that had her heart racing.

Yes, she was in too deep, but she suddenly wondered exactly how deep she was allowing herself to be drawn into this sensual web she could feel restraining her, holding back common sense or any desire to consider what she was about to do. And she was going to do it. She couldn’t even consider denying the pleasure she could sense he’d give her.

Dark lashes lowered over pale blue eyes, the intense sexuality and dominance in his expression stole her breath for a moment. Normally veiled, the dominant, strong-willed man he usually kept hidden wasn’t hiding anymore. He was right there, and the sight of it sent a wave of weakness rushing through her.

She’d been so long without a lover that she could barely remember what it felt like to be taken, to have her flesh penetrated and stretched with sensual pleasure. The dominance and lust in his expression assured her that once he took her though, she’d never forget what it felt like.

If Falcon took her, he’d do far more than simply part her responsive inner flesh. He’d make her burn, take her to a place no other lover ever had, and she knew it.

The muscles of her vagina clenched, rippling in a silent demand for the erotic pain she knew his possession would give her. It was something she’d never considered before, something she’d never ached for before. But the proof of his erection tenting those pants assured her that that was exactly what he was going to give her. He’d do far more than fill her, he’d give her an edge of pleasure she’d only suspected existed.

“Why tonight?” she asked, her fingers clenching in the blankets beneath her as his gaze went over her. “Why wait ’til now, Falcon?”

Why ambush her without warning? Why wait until they were in her home, in her bed, in a place where he’d haunt her for the rest of her life?

His gaze moved to her breasts, her heavier breathing rough, lifting her breasts against her gown and rasping her tender nipples against it. The quick, hard breaths had his expression turning positively carnal.

“I actually thought I’d just braid your hair,” he replied, his voice deeper. “That I’d be satisfied with just touching you for a moment, then I could return to my own bed once again, just as I always have before.”

She couldn’t breathe. She had no idea how to handle Falcon like this. She’d never seen him like this. He wasn’t teasing and subtly asking permission. He was confident, powerful and aroused, and he wasn’t asking anymore.

“Why?” She could barely push the word past her lips.

He didn’t even bother to try to hide the tenting of his pants as his cock pointed toward her, long and thick, holding her attention despite that inner voice screaming at her to run.

Oh yes, he was going to give her more than she’d ever had before and she wasn’t certain how she’d survive once it was over, once he and Raeg left her life forever.

He was suddenly far more than she was certain she could handle, and not just physically.

“I dream of all that long, pretty hair,” he told her. “Of holding it back and watching those pretty, pouty lips parting for my cock. That’s why I braid it so loosely. That way, I’ll be able to thread my fingers in it and show you how the slightest, firm little tugs against it could increase your pleasure if I ever managed to convince you to let me fuck those pretty lips.”

Lust slammed into her senses, not simply arousal. Pure. White hot. It struck her womb with a force that stole her breath.

“I love brushing your hair because the feel of it is a memory I can pull up as I jack off thinking about it.” His voice was hoarse now, guttural. The sound combined with the explicit words drugged her senses so fast, so deep, she was dazed. “Imagining the feel of your lips, your hot little mouth wrapped around the head of my cock, moaning and sucking me, your face dazed with the hunger to taste me.”

Her breathing was harsh now, labored, as she slid to the edge of the bed and reached out, pulling at the elastic band of his pants and easing them over the hard shaft before Falcon discarded them completely. After stepping from the pants he wrapped the fingers of one hand around the base of the broad shaft, tightening on it as a drop of creamy moisture eased past the tiny slit on top the crest.

The dark, flared head pulsed. Thick, ropey veins throbbed along the shaft, and Summer knew the fight was over. She’d lost the battle to keep her heart from being shattered, if they survived Dragovich.

“Take the gown off,” he demanded.

It wasn’t a request, and acknowledging that had her reacting instinctively. Lifting herself enough to pull the material over her hips, she gripped the hem and pulled it over her head before dropping it to the floor next to the bed.

His gaze dropped to her breasts, lashes shielding his eyes though his breathing was deeper now, heavier.

“Lie back across the bed, Belle.” The demand was softly voiced.

Demand, or request? She couldn’t differentiate, but the sound of it had her fighting back a whimper, fighting just to breathe as she moved to the center and stretched across it, pulling the braid out of the way instinctively.

“No fight?” he asked, his knee pressing into the bed as he lifted himself to her, coming down beside her.

“Do you want me to fight?” She watched warily as he gripped her wrists and pulled them over her head, staring down at her breasts as he did so.

“I want you to let me give you exactly what I know you need.” His head lowered, his lips brushing over hers, their gazes locking.

His hand tightened at her hip, the other slid into loosely weaved strands of hair, gripping them with erotic pressure. The wicked tug and subtle restraint had her stilling, shock surging through her as some inner core of feminine submission sent a wave of pure bliss shuddering through her senses.

The contradictory, completely unfamiliar sensations left her reeling, uncertain whether to orgasm or panic, and as she stared back at Falcon, she knew, knew, somehow, that she’d given him exactly what he’d wanted, but hadn’t been certain he’d find.

She wasn’t entirely certain that was a good thing.

* * *

There it was.

The steel core of sexual dominance Falcon had always hid from her rushed forward when she stilled beneath him and those violet eyes darkened, flaring with the unconscious sexual submission that only a strong, otherwise dominant woman could possess when beneath a lover she sensed could harness and control all that wild hunger inside her.

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” Panic, it was there in her eyes, in her voice.

“Should we continue to play games instead?” he asked, tugging at her hair once again. “Go back to pretending we are not dying for exactly what burns between us at this moment?”

Sweet Summer.

Confusion filled her pretty eyes. She did not even know what she wanted so desperately, why no other man had ever given her what she’d known he and Raeg could give her. And it was exactly what he needed himself to sate the greedy lust that always rose whenever he was around her.

If he gave her time to think about this first, then her fears would pull her back. And that he simply could not allow.

Before she could make another protest, his lips covered hers. Slanting over the soft curves, Falcon took the taste of her with greedy hunger as her arms wrapped around his neck, her body arching to him.

Catching her wrists, he drew them over her head, holding them with one hand and cursing his brother’s stubbornness. Had Raeg been there he would have restrained her, held her arms above her head and helped Falcon to give her a pleasure she could only know with both of them. A pleasure he couldn’t give her alone.

It would take both of them to fully sate this woman’s hungers. He had always known this.

She arched against him, moaning into his kiss, her tongue dueling against his, challenging for control. Taking her alone would be more pleasure than he’d known in his life. But how much better could it be?

Pulling back, he stared down at her, taking in her flushed features, her passion-drugged gaze, the arch of her swollen, flushed breasts and cherry red nipples.

“Do you wish he was here as well?” he asked, grimacing in hunger at the thought as he cupped the silken weight of her breast. “That both of us touched you?”

For a moment something so hungry and tormented flashed in her gaze before it was gone.

“Does it matter?” she whispered, her voice filled with need. “He’s not here.”

Her nipples darkened, became harder at the thought of it though.

“If he was,” he told her, “we would hold you between us and both sweet nipples would know the hunger we have for them.”

His head lowered, his lips covering one hard peak, teeth raking it, then his lips closing on it as he sucked the tempting morsel into his mouth.

The low strangled cry was not quite enough to draw Raeg’s attention. But it would be, Falcon swore. Very soon, it would be.

Keeping her arms stretched above her, he sucked, nibbled, teased her nipples. Suckling kisses were given to the tight little buds, each caress drawing her deeper into the hunger building between them, loosening her restraint and her fears of being overheard.

Control was always the issue for Falcon when taking a woman alone, especially one he knew would begin instinctively fighting the need for pleasures she had never imagined hungering for. Restraining her kept her focused on her own pleasure rather than pleasuring him. She had no choice but to let her senses fill with each sensation.

Gripping the tender nipple between his teeth and exerting just enough pressure to create that pleasure-pain that shocked the senses, he licked over it, adding to the sensations before he released it and sucked it firmly. The taste of her skin, the hardness of the little bud against his tongue, the throb of reaction a little pulse in the tip, making him hungrier for her.

He’d known she’d respond to that edge of sensation between pleasure and pain. That place where a woman’s sensuality became far too curious and her inhibitions surged free.

Summer’s moans went from strangled to unrestrained. Her head tossed against the bed, her body shuddered, perspiration slickening her flesh as he alternated his caresses, soothing, fierce, sucking hard and tight against the sensitive flesh, then licking it, easing it before making it burn again. From one nipple to the other, he tormented each in turn, wondering how much more she would have loved it had Raeg been there to concentrate on one breast as he had the other.

Soon, her cries echoed around him, and still Raeg was not there.

Regret and disbelief that his brother could be so stubborn filled him. Summer wasn’t the only one who would fight what she knew would complete her. Even Raeg, it seemed, was determined to wage that battle.

* * *

It was her cries.

Stepping from the bathroom into his bedroom, a towel around his hips, Raeg felt his dick go rock-hard instantly at the sound of them.

Iron. Spike. Hard.

Hungry, desperate cries. The faintest sound of them, hoarse and resonating with such pleasure it couldn’t be contained, hit his senses like a sledgehammer. It was a sound he thought he’d never hear, from a woman he’d tried to convince himself he couldn’t have.

He knew that sound, knew the edge of confusion, of dazed uncertainty that filled each cry. He knew, and he was helpless against it. It was a sound that had filled his fantasies, his darkest dreams, and filled every hungry desire he had for Summer.

Leaving the bedroom, Raeg walked to Summer’s room, the open door an invitation he couldn’t resist. Didn’t resist. He then stepped into his greatest fantasy.

Summer, spread on the bed, her wrists captured in one of Falcon’s hands, the hard tip of a breast being sucked firmly as Falcon drew her slowly into a pleasure she couldn’t know was coming.

“Now,” she demanded, breathless, that edge of desperation in her tone an assurance that the need Falcon had struck a match to, she was going to instinctively fight it. Raeg could hear it in her cries, her plea that his brother take her now. She would fight each level of pleasure she would be drawn into, and that struggle would only intensify his and Falcon’s pleasure in taking her.

And he knew Falcon. His brother would struggle against the demands, but his hunger and hers would make it difficult to pull her into that dark edge where she’d begin craving sensations one lover alone would find difficult to harness.

As he watched, Falcon’s free hand moved slowly over her thigh, the silken, slick bare flesh between her thighs drawing his touch. He couldn’t resist it, not alone, not without a reminder that it wasn’t quite the time for a deeper, more intimate touch yet.

“Falcon.” Raeg spoke firmly just before his brother found the sweet, heavy juices spilling from her. “It’s too soon.”

Summer shuddered. Raeg saw the hard, rippling response to the carnality and nearing orgasm that nearly exploded inside her at the sound of his reminder.

His brother released the hard, reddened nipple, his blue eyes several shades darker with the needs he was fighting.

“Do you require a third?” Raeg asked, desperate to touch Summer, aching for it. Every muscle in his body was strung tight, tension radiating through him as his hunger burned hotter than he could ever remember feeling it burn.

“A third?” Falcon snapped, his voice darker, deeper with the struggle to hold back his lusts. “I don’t need a damned third, I need an equal.”

A commitment to Summer, to her pleasure, to the woman and the needs waiting for them to unlock inside her. An integral part of the relationship, free to take her with or without his brother. She would be as much his as she was Falcon’s. And the thought of that was like a heady drug rushing through his senses.

“Very well,” he agreed, barely hesitating. “An equal.”

The second he acknowledged it he felt a shift inside him, a knowledge he simply couldn’t face at that moment. Later, he decided. He’d consider it later, when his mind wasn’t clouded with his needs as well as Summer’s.

Moving around the bed as Falcon shifted position and moved behind her head, Raeg met her violet gaze with a slow smile.

“Is she going to fight it?” he asked his brother as he dropped the towel from his hips and watched the haze of sensuality intensify in her expression.

“Every step of the way,” Falcon assured him, the obvious satisfaction in the knowledge echoing in his voice.

Still holding Summer’s gaze, he let his hand slide up the inside of her thigh. Reaching the saturated flesh between her thighs, he let a single finger slide through the heavy juices. Finding her clit, Raeg exerted just the slightest pressure, nearly pushing her into release, and held it there.

He had every iota of her attention now.

“One word will stop this,” he told her. “One word only. When you say it, we’ll both walk away. Understand?”

Defiance flashed in her eyes.

Glancing up at Falcon, he watched as his brother’s lips quirked. He had caught the look as well.

“All you must say is no, love,” Falcon assured her. “If you are frightened, if anything causes you pain, then you tell us. But when you say no, this ends. It will mean you do not desire what we hunger for. What we know you hunger for. That your fears are greater than your need.”

* * *

Just “no.”

They wouldn’t hurt her. She knew they would never hurt her. Not physically. There were worse ways they could hurt her though.

“I believe she understands,” Raeg stated softly, lifting his finger from her clit and causing sensation to streak through the tender knot of nerves.

Her hips lifted with an involuntary cry, a tremor racing through her as she fought to find the wave and let it carry her into release.

“She’s far too close,” Falcon’s voice was strained, as strained as she knew her own would be if she attempted to speak.

“No, she’s fine,” Raeg assured him, kneeling between her thighs and watching her closely, the heavy length of his cock throbbing imperatively. “Aren’t you, sweetheart?”

There was a challenge in his gaze, a dare that said she couldn’t possible take whatever they decided to dish out. And why the hell she was going to let them dish it out, she wasn’t certain.

“You’re a tease,” she accused him.

“Think that’s all?” he asked her, a dark, heavy eroticism filling his expression. “Shall we see?”

That was all he could do, she told herself. Tease her. The tugging of her hair was good, that bit of heat mixing with the pleasure had been shocking for a second, but it was gone now.

His gaze moved across her slowly, leisurely.

“What’s your greatest fantasy?” he asked then, pushing her legs further apart. “When it’s dark and you’re alone with only your fingers for pleasure, what do you fantasize about?”

What did she fantasize about?

“Both of you,” she whispered. She didn’t have to lie about that—they already knew she wanted them.

“Separately? Together?”

What did he want?

“Together.” She frowned up at him, breath catching as Falcon bent to her, his tongue licking over her nipple as he knelt next to her.

Her gaze moved to his cock as he laid on his side, stretching to his lower stomach, so hard, throbbing.

“Together,” she repeated, fighting to breathe.

She’d touch him, but he still held her wrists, restraining her, keeping her from reaching out to him.

She jerked in reaction as Raeg’s teeth scraped over her thigh, far too close to the sensitive, needy flesh of her sex.

“Together how?” His voice was lower now, a gentle croon, nothing threatening, nothing to distract from the desire to taste the hard length of cock just beyond her reach.

“However you want me,” she moaned, licking her lips. “Every way.”

“Falcon.” Raeg’s tone firmed. “Put her on her knees.”

On her knees?

A second later she was being rolled to her stomach, Raeg’s hands gripping her hips, pulling her to her knees as Falcon released her wrists to allow her to hold her position.

“Give her what she’s so hungry for,” Raeg told his brother then. “Fuck her mouth. I’ll see how much of a tease she can take on that pretty pussy.”

Falcon’s fingers gripped her hair, surprising her, holding her in place as the head of his cock pressed to her lips, pushed past them, and filled her mouth with the taste of iron-hard male heat.

At the same time, Raeg’s head pushed between her thighs, his body stretched out beneath her, both hands reaching up to cup her rear and draw her hips to him.

Raeg’s tongue licked through the sensitive wet folds of her pussy at the same time his hand landed on the curve of her rear in a heated caress.

Heated. Fiery heat snapped through her senses as his tongue circled her clit.

She tried to jerk back from Falcon, tried to make sense of what she’d just felt whipping through her senses. But before she could process that need, Falcon’s hands clenched in her hair, the head of his cock filling her mouth again.

The moan that slipped past her throat was part cry, part whimper.

In the next breath, it was a strangled scream.

Raeg’s tongue pushed inside her, thrusting hard past the clenched entrance to her pussy as his hand landed on the curve of her ass again, that blooming heat attacking her senses, mixing with the pleasure and sending shudders tearing through her.

And it didn’t stop. Each lick, each thrust of his tongue was another heavy caress to her rear. Always in a different place. Some landing heavier than others, all of them tearing past a reserve she hadn’t known she possessed and opening a hunger inside her she couldn’t have imagined.

Slowly, too slowly, the heated pleasure intensified, the burn building to a pleasure-pain she hadn’t imagined existed. Her hips writhed, pushed to his too playful tongue, only to still as the caress landed harder, chastising her for trying to take her pleasure before he was willing to give it to her.

All the while Falcon’s fingers tightened and released her hair close to the scalp, his cock shuttling between her lips, working past them in slow, measured thrusts that gave her just enough time to believe she’d soon taste his release only to take it from her once again.

Already dazed, desperate for them, Summer felt the need for that mix of pleasure and pain begin rising. It built in a part of her sexuality that she’d never imagined existed until now, then spread through her senses like a tidal wave.

Each surge of pleasure from his tongue, his sucking lips, was followed by his heated caresses. Caresses that soon weren’t enough, the heat dimming, the needs for more only growing.

And she needed that harder caress.

Damn him, why wouldn’t he just go ahead and spank her? Just give it to her? If the heavy caresses were this good, what would a spanking actually do for her?

His hand landed harder then and dazed satisfaction began over-taking her. Between each burning caress his fingers would stroke and caress the curves of her ass, part them, and send flares of sensation streaking through her anal opening.

As the pleasure-pain began to burn, to build, she sucked Falcon’s cock, working her mouth over the engorged head, sucking and tonguing it, desperate for the taste of his release.

She had never had a man spill between her lips.

The slow measured thrusts between her lips moved deeper, pulling a strangled cry from her as the engorged crest flexed and throbbed against her tongue.

“Raeg, I can’t last much longer,’ Falcon groaned. “Her mouth is so sweet. So sweet and hot.”

Raeg’s tongue speared inside her, retreated, circled her clit again. The heated, heavy caresses to her rear came closer together, and each time his hand landed, the pleasure-pain of it filled her senses, drugging them further, pushing her closer to her own release.

“Your ass blushes so pretty,” Falcon groaned. “Dark pink, clenching with each little slap…”

She cried out around his cock, needing, aching …

“I want to fuck your mouth just like this, Summer. Fuck it slow and easy while you scream around it, and I will watch him work his cock up that sweet, tight ass…”

Raeg’s lips surrounded her clit, his tongue swiped over it. His hand landed with such erotic, wicked heat …

Ecstasy exploded through her.

Her mouth tightened on Falcon’s cock, her tongue undulating just beneath the head. Orgasmic explosions ripped through her senses, jerked through her body, and sent her hurtling into chaos.

No more than a heartbeat later, Falcon’s hands tightened further in her hair, amplifying the pleasure before she felt the first, rapid pulse of semen fill her mouth, shocking her senses.

That first taste, and she wanted more. Each rapid taste of male heat, slightly salty, reminiscent of a Georgia thunderstorm. It filled her taste buds and added to the explosions tearing through her.

And with each, hard detonation of pleasure rocking, Raeg’s lips and tongue were there to catch, to taste, the release of her juices spilling from her.

It was never-ending, only to end far too soon.

Falcon’s still-erect cock pulled from her lips, his voice soothing, deep, as Raeg eased from between her thighs. His lips and tongue were no longer tormenting her, driving her deeper into that climactic storm.

Collapsing to the bed, the sweetest lassitude swept through Summer. Stealing over her, dragging her into a quiet, dark place where nothing existed but the warm peace she’d been craving.

Finally …