“Because I’m damned tired of chasing after you, Eve Mackay,” he growled before delivering a heated little nip against her shoulder. “I’m tired of watching you avoid me, of always being one step behind you and never close enough to touch. Maybe you should have stood still for a second at some point so I could have prepared you.”

Prepared her for that electrical current that zigzagged through her body and struck at areas so sensitive that the heightened sensations were bordering on pain.

“Maybe I’ve been avoiding you for a reason,” she suggested breathlessly.

“Avoiding me while you stare at me with all that heat and need for my touch in your eyes?” he asked, his lips moving against the side of her neck as she tilted her head to allow him access to the oversensitive nerve endings she possessed there.

And there seemed to be a lot of them.

His arm tightened around her waist, pulling her closer against him. She felt his hips at her lower back, the heavy wedge of his erection unmistakable.

What the hell was she doing?

Lifting her arm and curving it around the back of his neck to hold his lips at that supersensitive spot his beard was brushing against, Eve’s lashes fluttered in pleasure.

“Like oil and fire,” he said in a groan. “That’s what it’s going to be like, Eve. Once it starts, we’re going to burn down the night.”

“I don’t have fire insurance on my heart, Brogan,” she whispered, forcing herself to protest what she knew would happen. “This is a really bad idea. Burning down the night can’t be good.”

“Oh, sweetheart, burning down the night is the best.” His hand flattened against her waist as he pushed beneath the camisole, his calloused palm rasping over the rapidly rising area of her upper stomach as she fought to breathe.

She quivered at the feel of his broad palm, long, strong fingers. They stroked up, lifted, then cupped the underside of one swollen breast.

“For over two years I’ve watched those little nipples harden every time I’ve come around you,” he revealed. “I’ve tortured myself wondering if the honey was dripping along your pussy. Every time I see you leave that spa in town I wondered if you had your pussy waxed. If it was all bare, or if you left just a few curls for me to play with. I’ve wondered, Eve, how the hell I was going to keep my head when I finally got close enough to touch you.”

She was shaking.

Eve could feel herself trembling like a schoolgirl finally getting that first kiss from the guy she’d daydreamed about all year. But it wasn’t the captain of the basketball team or the football team, or the most popular guy.

It was that guy from the wrong side of the tracks, and she had fantasized that she was the pampered princess who had no idea how to handle him, how to tame him, but was desperate to try.

The problem was, she was, in reality, also the one from the wrong side of the tracks, as well as the wrong side of the blanket. She wasn’t pampered or spoiled, and he was far too dangerous.

His thumb raked over her nipple, suddenly shocking her with the burning pleasure that lanced from the sensitive peak to the swollen, saturated bud of her clitoris.

Her vagina clenched.

Her juices were spilling along the sensitive channel, slicking the bare lips, because yes, she did wax. The dampness gathered and built, preparing her for his touch, for his possession.

And she couldn’t stop it.

She couldn’t stop him.

He began turning her in his arms, eroticism filling the night, the scent of dark cherry and spice from the cigar he had been smoking wrapping around her senses. One hand slid into her hair, clenched in the damp strands, while the other wrapped around her back and dragged her to him.

She stared up at him, watching the usually icy gray-blue gaze darken and flame and swirl with heat as her lips parted.

In that second, just as she was certain she was going to feel his lips against hers, feel the kiss she’d ached for, dreamed of, fantasized about, the harsh, strident buzz of his cell phone suddenly shocked her back into awareness.

Eve jerked away from him, her breathing harsh, staring at him in disbelief as something dangerous, something dark and sensual flashed across his expression a second before that tilted smile curled one side of his lips.

“Run, little lamb,” he whispered. “Hurry and escape before the big, bad wolf gobbles you up.”

She turned and did just that.

Rushing into her room and quickly closing and locking the door, she glimpsed the light of his cell phone suddenly flaring on as he answered the call, casting his expression in sharp relief.

A chill raced over her body.

As he stared at her, as the glare of the phone’s light revealed the shadows and contours of his expression, a flash of pure trepidation rushed through her senses. In his face, in his eyes, she saw hard, certain determination.

He had let her get away this time.

He had let her get away each time he’d been close in the past two and a half years.

The next time . . .

She wouldn’t be nearly so lucky—the next time.

TWO

It was so hot in the room, she was dying.

Or was she so hot she was dying?

Eve tried turning the AC down, hoping the additional cold air would help cool her body, but she wasn’t quite lucky enough for that to help.

This was killing her.

What the hell had she done to deserve this? To want a man, to ache for him until it felt like her body was on fire, and to know—know to the tips of her toenails—that allowing herself to have him would only end badly.

There were some men a woman just knew weren’t good for her. Brogan Campbell had the potential to be just such a man.

It was there in that cynicism that wasn’t quite hidden. The mockery that lingered at the edge of every smile she’d ever seen on his lips.

He watched the world as though he knew all its cruel, bitter secrets and merciless games. He knew them, practiced them, used them.

Not that he was a deliberately cruel person, she didn’t think.

Oh, hell, no, she was taking that damned thought back. Only a cruel, merciless, coldhearted, soulless man could have done to a woman what he had done to her outside.

Fists clenched in the blankets, she fought the need to relieve a little of the tension. Just marginally. Just enough that she could survive the aching burn in the depths of her pussy.

She’d never wanted a man like this. What the hell was up with it?

All he had to do was be in the room to make her crazy to have him touch her, and now it was just going to be a hundred times worse. As far as she was concerned, she simply didn’t deserve the torture.

She was aware of her fingers loosening, releasing the blankets beneath her and moving to her lower stomach. Aware of it, but helpless to stop it.

She had to get up in less than an hour, dress, and fix breakfast for a dozen guests who took the “breakfast” part of “bed-and-breakfast” very damned seriously. And that didn’t count the occasional friend of her mother’s who stopped by. When she entered the kitchen there could be more orders waiting than the ones Piper and her mother collected from the guests’ doors each morning.

Mercedes Mackay didn’t run the typical bed-and-breakfast. Along with the regular breakfast fare, guests could choose how their eggs were prepared or if they wanted no eggs at all. They could request toast over biscuits, grits over gravy. Each plate was prepared individually and brought out rather than all the food laid out on the table or a buffet set up.

Breathing out roughly, she let her fingers push beneath the thin camisole top she wore. Her other hand pushed beneath her shorts.