Armed with cleaning supplies, clean sheets, pillowcases, and towels, she made her way from the rooms on the opposite wing from her own and worked her way around to the side she shared with Brogan, Elijah Grant, and Jedediah Booker.

Her plan was to finish in her room and sneak in a nap. Her evening was free, and she intended to keep it that way. She’d worked two weeks straight without a day off, and she was determined to make certain she had a break.

When she reached Brogan’s room, nerves began to attack her normally calm demeanor.

Her hands were shaking as she unlocked the door and slowly stepped inside. The butterflies were beating at her stomach while her pussy decided it was a fine time to go from aching to all-out clenching in need.

And all it had taken was stepping into his suite.

She was pathetic.

Carrying the clean bedclothes to his bedroom, she was happy to see he wasn’t a slob. There wasn’t so much as a stray hair in the bathroom.

The same for the sitting area of the small suite. All it really required was a quick run across the floors with a vacuum and dusting the furniture before she returned to the bedroom to make the bed.

She had every intention of making the bed quickly, too.

Pulling the first pillow from the neatly straightened blanket, Eve stared at it for long seconds before slowly pulling it to her and burying her face against the ultrasoft cotton of the pillowcase covering it.

His scent was there: a clean, midnight scent that forcibly pulled the memory of his touch to the forefront of her mind.

Once again she could feel the heavy weight of his body against her own, his lips traveling down her neck, moving steadily closer to her hard, aching nipples.

She hadn’t slept worth anything since that night. She tossed and turned, aching for him, and too wary of his warning of what would happen if he heard her masturbating again to risk it.

It was so tempting, though. The need for release was like a hunger she couldn’t assuage. She couldn’t forget it, and even if she could masturbate, she wouldn’t be able to satisfy it.

Been there, done that, she thought wearily. She couldn’t allow herself to take Brogan as a lover.

She had to get over it. This hunger for him was going to make her crazy.

Getting over it would be easier said than done, though.

For the first time in nearly eight months she had finally accepted one of the numerous invitations to dinner that she received. While picking up her check from the bar the night before, one of John and Sierra’s friends had come into town from Boston and stopped by.

Before the evening was over he had invited her to have dinner with him that night, and with a sense of desperation she had accepted.

Chatham Bromleah Doogan III, tall, dark haired, and dark eyed. He had a steady, confident aura about him, and John and Sierra both really liked him.

She was thankful that Brogan had left with the motorcycle touring group he was a part of that afternoon and wasn’t due back until sometime in the hours before dawn.

The group went most weekends sightseeing on the bikes. A group of over a dozen couples, riding their motorcycles along the scenic mountain highways and byways of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio.

Plenty of time, she thought to herself, to have dinner with Chatham, or Doogan as he’d told her to call him, and to figure out whether she truly was ruined for another man.

Not that she intended to do more than have dinner, because she didn’t. But there was always the chance her body would see the error of aching for Brogan and decide to ache for someone else instead.

It was a long shot, she admitted, but worth trying.

Tossing Brogan’s pillow to the bed, she quickly stripped the blankets while laying the pillowcases carefully aside before making the bed. Gathering the bedclothes together, she moved first to her own room and tossed the pillowcases to her bed, then took the bedclothes to the laundry room at the end of the hall.

Throwing the blankets in the wash, she moved back to her own room, locked the doors, then placed the pillowcases on her own pillows before returning to the shower.

Since walking from the shower to find Brogan in her room, it seemed she now expected him to be there each time she stepped into her bedroom.

Disappointment assailed her when she realized he wasn’t. Even though she had known even before she entered the room that he wasn’t there, still, the regret ached inside her.

The motorcycle touring club Brogan had been leading for the past year had been used to taking weekly trips several times a summer. They toured the States on their motorcycles, often riding to scenic, out-of-the-way areas, where civilization still hadn’t marred nature’s beauty. This last summer, they’d stuck closer to Pulaski County, though. Their trips usually lasted no more than twelve to sixteen hours between leaving then returning.

Oh, civilization was creeping closer by the day, she admitted, even in Pulaski County.

Removing the towel she’d wrapped around her and climbing onto her bed for a nap, she was surprised she fell asleep as quickly as she did.

A deep, luckily dreamless sleep.

No dreams of Brogan and sex, or the dream that often visited her of watching him, aching for him, only to see him leave with one of the local women she’d known him to see in the past.

Today, though, there was only peaceful sleep.

Something she hadn’t had in far longer than she could remember.

* * *

Brogan pulled into the rest stop, parking the Harley in front of the concession building as Eli and Jed pulled in to one side of him.

The two other agents, despite renting suites at the bed-and-breakfast, were only rarely seen in his presence. The only time they spoke or even came in contact with one another was during the rides the touring club made.

Luckily, there were fewer rides this summer than there had been in summers past. After the former “president” was arrested for drug possession, it was learned that the club’s riding account was at nearly zero. They would be making a lot shorter trips until the monthly membership fees added enough for them to resume their normal summer schedule.

Dismounting the bike and hanging his helmet on the handlebars, Brogan watched as the rest of the group pulled in. Behind Eli and Jed, Poppa Bear and his wife pulled in, sharing a cycle the size of a small car. Their daughter rode her own Harley next to them and managed to make many of the trips her parents went on.

Behind them, surprisingly, rode and Donny and Sandi. They had been unusually quiet since their ordeal. Donny hadn’t gotten into any fights, and Sandi hadn’t instigated any. They were up each other’s asses like Siamese twins, impossible to separate. The one time Brogan had heard one of the club members comment on the change, Donny had replied only that he was getting too damned old to be fighting and carousing all damned night long.

The number Brogan had programmed into his phone hadn’t yet been called either. He’d hoped the happy couple would be eager to get some useful information, just in case. Not that he’d really kill either of them in cold blood, but he was fine with the fact that they believed he would.

“Brogan, I have to admit, you know some damned fine scenery,” Poppa Bear boomed as he helped his slender wife from the back of their cycle. “It’s nice to finally see something besides the interstates we were seeing when your predecessor was running things.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it, Poppa Bear.” He inclined his head in acknowledgment.

“When are you gonna invite that little Mackay girl to join us?” the Santa-looking Poppa Bear questioned him with a suggestive wink. “There’s nothing like having your gal sittin’ behind ya.”

Hooking his thumbs into his belt, Brogan grinned back at him. “Hell, her brother might shoot me.”