Tight. So fucking tight.

Like a silken vise tightening and rippling around his erection, her internal muscles milked the entire length of his shaft.

Jazz’s hands tightened on her hips, the fragile hold he had on his control completely disintegrating.

“Jazz! Yes. Oh God, yes!”

All sense of reality disappeared as he felt her unravel, the pulsing ripples of her inner flesh milking his cock until he exploded with complete rapture.

Quick, heavy thrusts.

Rapture tightened in his testicles, taut bands of pleasure so extreme Jazz knew that holding back his release wasn’t happening.

He was dying.

His cock was so engorged, pounding with a furious need to come, that perspiration poured from him with the battle to hold back.

To feel her—

Stroking inside her, thrusting hard, heavy—her pussy gripped, milked his shaft. Tightened further with each contraction of her orgasm.

Tighter than ever—so fucking hot—

His release took him by surprise.

As her pussy rippled around him, gripping him like a vise, it was like a direct switch to his balls.

The first hard pulse of release tore a shattered groan from his lips. Arching, pushing deeper inside her with each furious ejaculation spurred ecstatic waves of sensation to tear through him. In some distant part of his soul, Jazz knew his fate was sealed. This woman was his. And there was no debt too great if it meant ensuring her safety and their future together.

CHAPTER 12

What had she allowed to happen?

How had she come to a place where the very thought of being without Jazz was almost more than she could bear?

All because of some damned fluke that sent Cord checking to be certain of the background she was using. Since when did he begin running teachers’ backgrounds? Things like that he left to men like Slade and several others in the county with federal ties.

Hell, how could she have stopped her brother from checking deeper into Annie Mayes’s background? She couldn’t have. No matter what she’d done or the contacts she might have formed, there was no stopping Cord’s instincts. They were phenomenal.

And he was nosy.

He just couldn’t keep his nose out of her business, could he? He’d always been such a damned busybody, making her crazy by snitching on her with Momma and Poppy when she least expected it. He’d even told Poppy how she was watching Jazz that summer, after telling her she had to stay away from him.

Stay away from Jazz?

The very thought had been inconceivable. It was all she could do not to beg Jazz to kiss her, to show her why she was so mesmerized by him. But she hadn’t told Cord that. She’d known better, because he would have immediately had Momma and Poppy send her to a convent or something.

Momma wouldn’t have allowed it, though. Her mother would have been concerned, perhaps, but she would have also been terribly amused by her sons. Their protectiveness was something she’d warned Kenni she may as well get used to, because they would always feel it was their privilege to watch after her.

But they hadn’t watched after her.

That summer was the first in years that her brothers didn’t accompany her and her mother to New York. There had been some job they’d had to complete. One that couldn’t wait for any reason as far as Poppy had been concerned.

She pushed the memories back. She didn’t want to remember the flames and the blood.

Leaning against the open balcony door the next morning as a cool breeze whispered past her, she remembered telling her mother how she felt about Jazz on the drive to New York that summer.

That was part of the shopping tradition. Every summer they went to New York for three or four days. On the drive there her mother would always ask her about whatever boys she was interested in. That summer, though, Kenni hadn’t dated; nor had she spent much time on the phone with any of the young men who called her. For that reason her mother had asked her who’d managed to steal her heart.

Once a year, Kenni could tell her mother anything. The rule was, what happened in New York, what was said in New York, stayed in New York. Momma never told Poppy her secrets, and her brothers never learned of them. What Kenni confided stayed just between her and her mother.

God, she missed her momma.

Kenni had never had to worry about her place in her mother’s life; she had known Sierra Maddox loved nothing in the world as much as she loved her husband and children. But her relationship with her daughter had been special. They were girls together. They shopped and laughed and Kenni knew she could tell her anything.

She’d had no one to talk to since her mother’s death. There had been no one to dry her tears when she’d cried, no one to soothe her when the pain of being hunted had torn her soul to pieces.

Gunny had kept her alive, though a few times it had been close.

He hadn’t been good with tears. If he saw even a hint of them he’d disappear until the danger of them was gone. He could handle her silence, he could handle her staring off into space, steeped in her agony, as long as she didn’t cry.

So she’d learned not to cry. Having him disappear for hours on end had terrified her. She’d always been scared he wouldn’t come back for her.

Then he hadn’t come back for her.

She hadn’t even cried then, she thought, frowning absently as she rubbed at the chill racing over her arms. He was supposed to be meeting with someone who had information on the Kin. No big deal. He’d sent her to pick up the car he’d arranged to buy from some dirty, shifty-eyed old guy on a back street.

When he hadn’t arrived at their prearranged meeting place, she’d gone looking for him.

Swallowing tightly she pushed the memory of what she’d found away. She couldn’t deal with it right now, either. Right now she had to gather her courage and her strength to slip away from Jazz.

She had no car, no decent shoes, and getting away from him was going to be next to impossible, but she had to go. She had to get out of Loudoun, preferably alive, and figure out what she was going to do.

And where she was going to hide.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t think of anyplace else to hide. Without her contacts hiding would be much harder as well. She’d taken them out as Jazz had asked, then they had completely disappeared from the bedside table where she’d put the small case.

The rest of her contacts were at the rental house, hidden with her laptop. Contacts, alternative ID, and a little cash. She might need them. If Jazz caught her running they wouldn’t do her a damned bit of good, though.

Drawing in a deep breath, she left the comforting silence of the bedroom and headed downstairs to the kitchen instead. Entering the brightly lit room, she wished she’d stayed in the bedroom.

Stepping past the doorway she was suddenly pinned by half a dozen gazes, and all staring at her eyes.

Kate and Lara, along with Jessie, Slade, Zack, and Jazz, watched her from where they sat around the large kitchen table. Steaming cups of coffee sat in front of them, plates of doughnuts and croissants beside their coffee cups, as tension thickened in the room.

“Geez, and I thought Jazz’s eyes were bright,” Lara muttered. “You’re right, Jessie, there’s no mistaking who she is.”

Just fucking great.

Slicing Jazz a condemning look, she wondered if he even had the good grace to realize the risk he was making her take.

“Coffee?” Jazz asked, his expression completely innocent, as though he hadn’t forced her to remove the color-dimming contacts. Rising from his chair he moved to the coffeepot, grabbed a cup from beside it, and filled it quickly.

That didn’t keep the others from staring at her.

“Morning, Jessie, Slade, Zack,” she greeted, ignoring the comment on her eyes. “Slade, I thought you were keeping Jessie away for a while?”