She felt suspended within a cloud of purely sensual flames. The licking heat burned around her, inside her. It pulsed and throbbed as fingers of electric static struck over her flesh, clenched at her pussy.

When he’d pushed her to the brink of sanity, when the need for release was like sensual talons raking through her senses and her orgasm was like a wave cresting within her, he stopped once again.

“Damn you!” she cried out as his fingers eased back, the callused tips releasing that highly responsive spot they’d found inside her feminine flesh.

Then he kissed her.

His lips settled against her intimate folds and delivered a series of heated kisses. Fierce and heated, his tongue took quick, intimate swipes against the saturated flesh, her juices lying thick and slick upon her flesh.

Greedy, hungry kisses. Suckling, a heavy male groan rasped from his throat as his tongue swiped against her entrance.

Caressing hands stroked her inner thighs, then behind her knees. Lifting her legs, pushing them back, he opened her further to him, revealing the feminine flesh hidden between the folds and allowing his lips and tongue free rein.

In one hard, striking thrust his tongue sank inside the snug muscles of her cunt, flickering there, licking, drawing more of her moisture free to his carnal kiss.

Wild, wicked waves of pleasure crashed over her senses. Drowning, immersed in the electric pleasure whipping over her, Lyrica fought for something to hold on to. Her fists clenched in the blankets. Straining against the pleasure, desperate to fly over the sharp edge, she felt suspended upon the ecstasy building just beyond.

“Graham. Please. Oh god, please, I can’t bear it.” She was whimpering, desperation clawing at her body, tightening it as his caresses moved back to her clit.

His tongue circled with lashing tastes, preparing it for his lips to surround it, to suckle it inside the moist, fiery heat of his mouth.

Two fingers impaled the tightly clenched tissue of her pussy, pushing in, assaulting the tender flesh with waves of burning pleasure. Waves that rolled across, traveled through, and seared the sensitive nerve endings there before surging over her body with increasing heat.

His tongue lashed at her clit, and his mouth suckled the tender bud as his fingers found that place again.

“There!” Her strangled scream came as her feet pressed into the mattress again, her hips lifting to him then stilling, locked into place where the extremity of the sensations was at its height. “There. Oh god. Graham. Let me come. Please, please let me come.”

The caresses inside her shifted, the pressure increasing, the rubbing strokes moving faster, sensation massing, tightening, whipping around her with blinding force as the feeling of electric static intensified. It shot through her body, centered in her womb, infused the sucking heat at her clit, and threw her suddenly, powerfully, into a supernova.

As her release was tearing through her body, she was aware of him moving, quickly positioning himself between her thighs and thrusting, working the heavy width of his erection inside intimate muscles clenched tight, flexing and spasming in rapture.

The impalement pushed the pleasure higher.

The first rush of release rocked through her, then began tossing her higher, each wave of incredible pleasure throwing her from peak to peak in tumbling rolls, giving her no respite from the intensity of it.

His lips surrounded one tightened nipple with hungry demand. His hips moved, the hard length of his cock powering into her with fierce, driving strokes.

Her orgasm exploded around her again, with devastating results. Her senses disintegrated with waves of blinding ecstasy that tore past any shield she may have had against the man who caused it. Tore past, filled her, warmed her where she’d been unaware she was cold, and became a part of her.

A part of her Lyrica knew she would never be free of.

When it was over, she found herself collapsed on the bed, Graham breathing heavily as he lay over her, his heart racing against her breasts. His lips were at her neck, his muscled body as damp with perspiration as hers.

Pleasure like that should never exist, she thought with sudden, blinding knowledge. No woman should ever have her heart, body, and mind so ensnared by a man that walking away from him meant walking away from a pleasure she feared part of her would wither away without.

The whisper of his voice at her ear was nearly drowned out by the racing beat of her heart as it echoed in her ears. She felt his lips moving against her neck, felt the raging regret that filled his voice.

“I’m so sorry.” The words were a brush of sound, barely heard, so quiet that at first she thought she must have imagined the words.

“I’m so sorry.” He whispered them again as his hard body settled and relaxed against hers.

Sorry.

He was so sorry.

Because he knew he was going to break her heart?

Why else would he be sorry, but to sense, to know, that in those moments when the pleasure had been at its height that her soul had opened to him as well.

He owned all of her, and he knew it.

And he regretted it.

Because he knew when it was all over, she would just be one of his past flavors. One he’d grown tired of.

SEVENTEEN

Natches and Dawg Mackay were waiting on him when he entered the kitchen a short time later. Sitting at the kitchen table with Elijah, steaming cups of coffee in front of them, they looked as comfortable as they would in their own homes.

Damned Mackays.

Territorial bastards in their own space, they could be just as arrogant in another’s, he knew.

“Elijah, when did you start allowing the riffraff in without permission?” He glowered at the agent who was hanging his head in resignation where he sat at the side of the table.

“Hell if I know.” Elijah sighed. “Probably about the same time I realized they could be more dangerous than Doogan. He just gets me shot at. Mackays would actually shoot me.”

“So will I.” Graham poured coffee for himself, lifted the cup to his lips, and sipped while staring back at the Mackays coolly. “What’s happened that you felt the need to visit?”

No alert had come through and his security hadn’t picked anything up. They were probably there simply to aggravate the crap out of him.

“Lyrica called earlier,” Natches told him quietly, the color of his eyes identical to Lyrica’s. “She sounded upset and asked me to call her back. She even said please.”

“She always says please. She’s polite like that,” Graham pointed out while inwardly cursing.

Dammit, he should have anticipated that she would call her family and ask one of them to come for her.

“So why did she call?” Natches asked, strangely less confrontational than Graham expected him to be.

“I guess you’ll have to ask her.” He wasn’t about to get into explanations where that mess was concerned.

“She found out about Betts Laren, didn’t she?” It was Dawg who broached the subject as he sat back in his chair, his pale green eyes narrowed on Graham. “You can’t take solid advice, can you, boy?”

Evidently, Natches had finally broken and told Dawg what he knew about that final mission Graham had taken in Afghanistan.

Graham set the coffee cup on the counter carefully before turning back and facing the two Mackays warily.

“That’s a subject Lyrica and I will discuss when I find the time and place I deem appropriate,” he informed them both. “Until then, I’d prefer not to talk about it. That way she can’t walk into a conversation that will only confuse and hurt her without explanations. Explanations I’d like to make in my own time.” He cast Elijah a pointed look as the other man’s expression tightened in regret.