How long had it been?

Frowning, she watched, kneading the hard biceps in front of her face with subtle strokes of her fingertips while the muscle flexed beneath her touch.

“My eighteenth birthday,” she finally answered. “Tom and Jason Keye caught me just outside Dallas, heading to meet with Gunny. They were going to rape me before carrying out their orders. They laughed and called me a crybaby. I realized Gunny had been right, tears didn’t help.”

Seconds later they were dead before Kenni realized the sounds she’d heard were Gunny’s rifle.

“Tom and Jason,” he murmured softly, but the tension in his voice was an indication of the fury he was burying for the moment. “We heard they’d moved to California.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, though the acknowledgment was a bit absent.

It had taken a minute for her to realize she was naked, and all that separated her from the heavy erection beneath her rear was the towel she’d had wrapped around her earlier. Because Jazz was naked as well.

He’d showered. Damp hair and shower-fresh flesh caressed her senses as his fingers trailed from the side of her head to her neck. Tilting her head up, Kenni stared into the somber, darkening depths of his sapphire eyes.

How would she be able to bear it when her time with him was over? When he was no longer touching her, when the chance to be touched by him was over?

She hadn’t known how much she needed him until he’d pushed his way into her life and gave a damn that it appeared she might be in trouble because the identity she was using was false.

“I told myself for years I couldn’t have felt for you what I knew I felt that summer,” she whispered painfully. “That sixteen was too young to know what love was, and it wasn’t as if you’d even brushed my lips with yours let alone actually kissed me. But every time I considered a lover, or the possibility of leaving America entirely to escape, you stood in my way, Jazz. The thought of never seeing you again was so abhorrent I couldn’t consider it.”

Those long, inky-black lashes lowered over the brilliant blue of his eyes as his expression softened into lines of pure male sexual hunger.

Beneath her hand his chest rose and fell harder, his breathing speeding up, just as his heartbeat did. Cupping her cheek with his hand, he slid his thumb sensually over her lower lip.

“Hell, I built your fucking house, Kenni,” he growled, not so much angry as perhaps exasperated. “Not to mention that friggin’ gazebo with a bed in it like you wanted. And not a single damned woman has shared either with me. I think that pretty much proves I was damned serious.”

As he’d said earlier, he was serious then. That didn’t mean he was nearly as serious now. But Kenni had realized she didn’t really care which club she had to join, she wanted more of Jazz. Desperately. Now.

She closed her eyes, barely holding back a moan when the fingers buried in her hair tugged her head to the side. His lips settled just beneath her ear, against the line of her jaw. The flesh there sizzled with pleasure as sensitive nerve endings caught the sensation and sent it racing across her body.

Involuntary shivers ran up her spine while a breathless moan escaped her lips. God, she ached for him, needed him. It wasn’t just the pleasure, it was the sense of finally being where she was supposed to be, if only for a little while.

She should be resisting this need, pulling back, reminding herself of the danger, something other than closing her eyes and reveling in the sensations. Because God knew, she would pay for this later. For every second of pleasure he gave her, Kenni had no doubt the pain would be worse in the not-too-distant future.

His teeth scraped against her neck, his tongue following as it flickered over her already sensitized flesh. It was like wildfire exploded through her senses, drenching her in the most incredible warmth.

“Like that, do you?” he muttered, his voice thicker, grating with hunger. “I love that little sound you make as your breath catches, but let’s see if I can do something to warrant a moan. Just a little one, if you can. If I deserve it.”

As he spoke, his head moved lower to the bend of her neck. There his teeth gripped the flesh for just a second, raked over it, then burned a path to the rise of her breasts as the arm behind her levered her back. As he licked over the hard tip of her nipple with slow, hungry strokes, each rasping caress sent forked trails of blistering sensation straight to her womb.

Moaning, arching into his hold, she tried to press closer, to feel more.

She needed to feel more.

Then his lips were on hers. Slanting over them, his tongue pressing between them as he began to sip from her kiss, to feed her the heady pleasure of his hunger as spiraling need stripped her to nothing but sensation.

And Jazz made damned certain there was plenty of sensation.

His lips moved over hers, rubbing against them, slipping between them, branding her with the hunger she could feel in each hungry kiss.

His fingers found the hard point of her nipple, gripped it, rolling it between his fingers and exerting exquisite pressure against the nerve-ridden flesh.

Sensation erupted in the hard tip, flashed through her body, clashing in her lower stomach.

Kenni was only barely aware of her hips moving. Each jagged burst of sensation erupting through her, obliterating more of the common sense she knew she was supposed to have. It was there, somewhere, just waiting for Jazz to let it come out and let her see the folly of her actions. It had to be.

Until then, she wanted to sink into the white-hot pleasure. She wanted to live within the heat wrapped around her, she wanted to burn in his touch.

She wanted to touch. If he would just release her wrists.

A cry, muted and hoarse, tore from her throat to fill their kiss as his fingers gripped her nipple again, tugged, pressed, and had flames searing a path to her womb.

Oh God, she needed. She needed Jazz …

*   *   *

His need for her, the overriding hunger and overwhelming drive to possess every part of her, was only growing stronger. Not by the day, by the minute. By every shattered look of longing, every pain-ridden gleam of love he glimpsed in her eyes when she looked at him, and every soft, whispered sigh of desire whenever he touched her.

Everything about her—her scent, the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, shy smiles and hungry looks—only made him want to tie her tighter to him.

She was destroying him and she didn’t even know it.

Trailing his lips from hers to caress the line of her jaw again, Jazz had to force himself not to turn her to him, to slide beneath her slender thighs and have her ride him as he stared into those beautiful dark-emerald eyes.

“Jazz, wait … please.” Breathless, rough with desire, her voice had a groan tearing from his chest.

Wait?

She had to be joking.

Lifting his head enough to stare into her flushed, sensual features, he knew the wait was going be very short indeed.

“I want to touch you now,” she whispered, staring up at him with such somber need that she broke his heart. “I want to give you pleasure, too.”

There wasn’t a chance he could bear it. She would have him insane in minutes. But her hunger for it filled her face, her eyes. She needed, for whatever reason, to steal the last vestige of sanity he possessed.

“Good God,” he whispered as she slid from his lap. “And here I thought I’d have some control this time.”

“Control is highly overrated.” Rolling to her side she stared down at him, her expression heavy with feminine need.

“I’m not entirely certain this is one of those situations,” he told her, though he was definitely curious over what she had planned.

No doubt she had every intention of driving him crazy.