“It’s Lyrica.” She swallowed tightly. “Hell, you have my number . . .” Her voice broke as she fought back a sob. “Can you call me back, Natches? I really need to talk to you.”

She disconnected the call.

She couldn’t call Dawg. If she did, she would start crying the second he heard the pain in her voice and softly asked, “Hey there, baby sister, tell me what hurts.”

Dropping the phone into her bag, she stared around the bedroom. She had to pack her clothes. She’d just recently unpacked them when Graham had suggested there was plenty of room in his closet and dresser. Her hands had actually trembled as she’d put her things away, thinking of his claim that no other woman had shared this space with him.

Gathering her strength when all she wanted to do was rage, to run from the house and escape Graham and the pain building inside her, she bent and dragged her suitcase from beneath the bed where he’d stored it.

A shadow of something attached to the bed frame had her frowning and lifting the white dust ruffle to investigate further. The handgun attached to the metal rail surprised her. There was another on the other side of the bed.

Pulling back slowly, she straightened, then lifted the leather bag to the mattress and opened it quickly. She was turning for the closet when Graham stepped into the room.

His gaze went instantly to the luggage, the anger in his gaze darkening as he snapped the door closed behind him.

“You promised me twenty-four hours,” he reminded her, the low rasp of his voice sending a surge of awareness, of sensual trepidation up her spine.

Not fear. He’d never hurt her. But this was a part of Graham she had no experience with. A side of him she had never seen before. The dark, wicked eroticism on his face, the sexual knowledge that gleamed in his eyes and her own awareness that he wouldn’t hesitate to use it to hold her there.

And when everything was over, when she was no longer his preferred flavor, what then?

“A promise based on the assumption that staying here would hurt less than walking out,” she informed him as that thought slashed through her heart.

“Staying here would hurt less than being dead?” A sharp bark of laughter escaped his lips. “Excuse me for disagreeing, sweetheart, but I think the process of getting dead might hurt worse.”

Would it really? Graham could destroy the part of her that loved, that believed in love. Would death hurt more than losing what she sensed could have been between them? Or would have been between them if he had been willing to share his own heart.

“Natches or Dawg will be more than happy to pick me up. Once I’m with them, I’ll be safe. They’ll make certain of it,” she informed him, stalking to the dresser to remove the items there despite the prickling of her skin as he watched her.

“Take a single item out of that dresser, Lyrica, and the considerate lover I’m really trying to be will evaporate. Is that what you really want?”

Considerate lover? Well, by god, wouldn’t he have to be a lover first? Evidently, they’d just had sex, nothing more. That wasn’t her definition of a lover.

“What I want isn’t an option,” she snapped, turning and bracing her hands on her hips as she faced him again. “And staying here is no longer an option, either.”

His lips tightened further, the muscles at his jaw clenching as he folded his arms in a move that only increased the appearance of width in his already broad chest.

“Because you learned I had a past lover?” he said mockingly. “I’ve had many.”

No kidding. So many in the past year that she had nearly lost count herself. But it wasn’t the quantity that hurt as damned much as the knowledge of the one she hadn’t known about.

“A lover that mattered,” she cried out furiously, painfully. “One that you regret so desperately that you’re taking me to your bed because I look like her?”

It was killing her. The thought of it was so demoralizing, so painful she could barely breathe for it.

“Go to hell, Graham. The least you could have done was told me. You could have let me know you’d lost the woman you loved . . .”

He was on her before she could attempt to evade him. Pulling her to him, lifting her from the floor, and tossing her to the bed with the utmost gentleness and the utmost dominance.

Rolling to her back, she sat up quickly, one hand braced on the mattress, the other brushing her hair back from her face as she stared back at him.

“You think I’m taking you to my bed because you look like Betts?” he snarled, already jerking his boots off. “Oh, hell no, baby. I took her to my bed because she looked like you. Because I couldn’t think for the need to fuck you, couldn’t sleep for dreaming about it or get through the day without fantasizing about it. Because the hunger tearing me apart blinded me to such an extent that I didn’t even know when I was being betrayed.”

Fury whipped over his expression and in his eyes, filled his voice, and left Lyrica staring back at him in shock.

Whipping the T-shirt over his head, his hands went instantly to his belt and the metal button securing the band of his jeans. In only a few seconds he was shedding the denim, the heavy, engorged length of his cock standing out from his body fiercely. The fingers of one hand wrapped around the shaft, stroking it slowly as his eyes narrowed on her.

“Spread your legs,” he ordered, his voice a deep, lust-filled rasp that sent weakening need flooding her further.

She shook her head, though not in denial of the order, more in denial of the revelation that she’d torn from him.

“We need to talk . . .”

“Oh, baby, we’ve talked enough. Now spread your legs.”

She shook her head again.

“Want to test me, pretty girl?” he whispered, stepping closer to the bed. “Spread your legs. I’m going to eat my fill of that sweet pussy and see just how crazy I can make both of us while I’m doing it. And you’re going to just lay that pretty little body right back there and enjoy every minute of it. And maybe, just maybe, by the time I’m finished fucking us both into oblivion I’ll have a handle on whatever the hell it is that you do to me.”

What she did to him? What did she do to him that made him so angry?

“This won’t solve anything,” she argued desperately, though even she was aware of the fact that she wasn’t trying to escape him. “You know it won’t.”

“Sure it will.” One knee rested on the edge of the mattress. “You’ll be so fucking tired when your deadline rolls around that you won’t be able to consider leaving, let alone actually packing or walking out my door. Now, spread your legs, or I’m going to spread them for you. And when I do, I’m ripping any panties you’re wearing right off your body, and before I finish, I’ll spank that pretty bare pussy of yours until you know better than to lie on that bed and argue with me.”

A spasm of clenching pleasure gripped her womb, sending a rush of heated, slick warmth to spill from her sex. It was all she could do to keep from moaning at the very thought of it.

“Oh, you like the thought of that.” Satisfaction and lust gleamed in his eyes and darkened the savage lines of his face. “Let’s see how much you like the application of it.”

“Oh.” A gasp of surprise parted her lips as he reached out, gripping her legs and pushing them back before spreading them wide enough to make room for his body.

As he slid between her knees, he gripped her wrists, pulling them from the bed and pressing her torso back.

Just that quick, just that easy, he had her spread out before him, and before she could process the thought, he ripped her panties from her hips.

“Damn you, Graham,” she exclaimed in outrage, managing to angle her upper body upright. “That was a matching set.”

The fine material of the skirt was pushed back to her hips, the folds between her thighs bare but for the heavy layer of slick, glistening moisture that coated the inner seam of her intimate lips.