*   *   *

He hadn’t realized how furious he was, how enraged it made him to know the hell she’d suffered without him to protect her.

“You turned your back on me and on your brothers.” Lowering his head he snarled down at her, seeing the pain as it transformed her face but unable to lie to her, or himself, that it was acceptable. “I grieved, Kenni. I built your home believing you would never see it, that you’d never know just how fucking serious I was about you. And all that time you didn’t even fucking care enough to let me know you were alive.”

“I didn’t know because you didn’t tell me, Jazz,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, filled with pain. “You treated me like a child barely out of diapers that summer. How was I supposed to know?”

“The same way I knew you belonged to me. Then.” Releasing her, he stepped back. Pushing his fingers through his hair, he had to forcibly rein in the need to demand she acknowledge emotions even he couldn’t make sense of. “That was then.” His jaw clenched furiously. “A long fucking time ago, Kenni. It was a damned fantasy, because the young woman I was falling in love with that summer didn’t exist anywhere but in my imagination evidently.”

When she didn’t say anything he turned back to her, his chest tightening at her pale features and the pain reflected in her face.

She didn’t cry. Tears didn’t fill her eyes. She just stared up at him with such misery, such agonized, dawning knowledge in those hazel eyes, that for a second guilt flayed his conscience. Then his anger returned.

Hazel eyes. God, he hated that color. That wasn’t her eye color any more than Annie Mayes was her name. And he hated it. He hated the color and he hated the lie it represented.

“What do you want?” she whispered then. “What do you want me to say, Jazz? I can’t take it back, and I don’t know that I would even if it were possible. I couldn’t risk you…”

She couldn’t risk him? By God, he was going to show her risk.

“Take those contacts out today.” First things first. “Before you do anything else get those damned things out of your eyes. They offend me.”

Confusion flashed across her expression. “They offend you?”

“They offend me, Kenni,” he growled. “I don’t want to see Annie Mayes when I stare back at you or while I’m fucking you. Get rid of them or you’ll wish you had.”

It was all he could do to keep his hands off her, to keep from taking her right there where they stood. God he wanted her—needed her. He was on fire for the touch of her.

“You know I can’t…”

“Annie Mayes doesn’t exist here,” he snapped before she could finish. “No more lying, Kenni. I won’t let you keep pretending you didn’t make the choice to hide from everyone who loved you. Everyone who would have helped you long before now. Keep lying to your brothers if you have to, but you will not lie to me any longer.”

Kenni had only a heartbeat’s warning before his lips came over hers with a hunger and dominant determination she wouldn’t have expected. Powerful, experienced, they moved against hers, parting them and tasting her with his tongue. Like a fire pouring through her senses, he burned away any thought of protest before it had a chance to be born.

Pleasure raced past the agony torturing her, gathering force and swirling through her senses until nothing else mattered. Until only his touch filled her reality, only his hunger sustained her.

Gripping his shoulders, Kenni lifted closer to him. Had it only been the night before that he had first taken her? How had she survived without his touch since? How had she survived without him, period?

Her nails bit into his hard flesh, tested its strength as his callused palm gripped her hip, his fingers flexing against her touch-starved flesh. How had she lived without this? Without the hunger that poured over her whenever he touched her?

“Damn, you’re like a drug I can’t get enough of.” His voice rasped with anger and lust as his lips moved to her neck, his fingers caressing from her hip to the side of her breast, trailing waves of fiery pleasure in their path. “I don’t want to get enough of.”

His lips settled at her shoulder, his breathing nearly as hard as hers. She felt his withdrawal, though. Before he ever lifted his head and stared down at her with aching regret.

Brushing his thumb beneath her eye, he trailed it to her lips then slowly eased away from her.

“I have some calls to make,” he breathed out heavily, tension pouring from him in invisible waves. “The next time I see you, Kenni, it better be you I see. Neither of us wants to deal with the fallout if it’s not.”

*   *   *

Did he really think the fallout scared her? Seriously, what was the worst he could do? What was the worst he would do? Tell her brothers on her?

He wouldn’t, not because of the contacts.

So why was she standing in the bathroom after her shower that evening and staring into the dark-emerald color of her own eyes.

She hadn’t paid attention to her eye color in years. She always wore colored contacts; the natural color was far too incriminating. Maddox green it was called, because the color ran so strong in the Maddox male line that the children were invariably born with it.

Her brothers’ children would no doubt be born with that gemlike eye color, whereas hers, if she lived long enough to have any, likely wouldn’t.

The thought of a child instantly brought to mind the image of an infant, innocent wonder filling brilliant-blue eyes. A thick cap of pitch-black hair, strong features, and the promise of a charming rascal to come. Or feminine features, with a hint of mischief gleaming in the sapphire depths.

Jazz’s child would be marked with the gift of mesmerizing charm and amused wonder, no matter the mother who gave it birth. But should she give him a child, Maddox blood mixed with Lancing Irish traits?

Her heart melted at the very thought of the strong, stubborn, laughing children they could have had. If she and her mother had returned that summer.

He would have been waiting for her. To court her, he’d said. The quaint, old-fashioned term would have been amusing in other circumstances. But it hadn’t been amusing when Jazz had told her he’d wanted to court her.

He hadn’t said he wanted to fuck her or tie her to him, or any of the other phrases that would have denoted simple lust as she would have expected.

He’d wanted to court her. Take her for a drive. Call on her.

The ache that wounded her heart at the thought of what she’d lost went far deeper than she’d imagined it could. Past her soul, past the very depths of her woman’s spirit and beyond. She felt forever injured at the knowledge of what her life could have been.

Because he’d loved her.

He hadn’t seen it in those terms.

He said he hadn’t wanted to chance some dumb ass stealing her from him if he waited.

He would have courted her until she was eighteen, then they would have married. And she would have been a virgin on her wedding night.

The look on his face when he told her about the visit to her father had assured her of that. Pop would have made that clear. He’d have insisted on it. Jazz had been twenty-three—too old, Pop would have thought, for his innocent daughter. But something Jazz had said or done that day had convinced him to give his permission for the courtship. To take the chance that a young man as wild as Jazz would have kept his word.

Only one thing could have tipped the scales in Jazz’s favor. Pop would have had to be convinced Jazz loved her. Otherwise, he would have barred Jazz from her until she was twenty-one at the youngest, and her brothers would have made the rule stick.

A shudder tore through her. Even after all these years she couldn’t imagine her father or brothers attempting to hurt her, either.

They ruled the Kin. They gave the orders and they were highly possessive of that ability. They would never countenance even the suggestion that another do so.