by Lora Leigh
Hard muscles flexed beneath the golden flesh, rippled and made her hands itch with the need to touch them, to feel them working beneath her fingers, tensing and flexing in pleasure from her touch rather than in tension from whatever was now brewing in his mind.
He was thinking. Deliberating. Working something in his mind. That was what he did when he worked on the old piece of farm machinery.
His thick black hair hung low on his neck, a bit shaggier than he usually kept it, but giving him a sexy, dangerous look. The look of an unconquered male. Exactly what he was. A man who would be very hard to fool and even harder to get to reveal his secrets, if he didn't want to reveal them.
Keiley had no intention of forgetting the fact that her husband had been an undercover FBI agent before his resignation. How could she forget it? It was one of the reasons so much of the man she had married was a mystery to her. He knew how to keep his innermost secrets while still loving her with a depth that amazed her.
She had tried to tell herself that she knew everything she needed to about the man she had married. That of course there were, would be dark places inside him, that he had seen the worse of humanity in many cases, that it would always mark his soul.
But over the past three years, Keiley was beginning to wonder if Mac hadn't gone into a career where he was dealing with something he had already understood. Something that had given him a chance to fight back against the demons of the past. A past he could never bring back or change.
And this was what had drawn her to Mac so strongly. This was the reason why she hadn't drawn back from him despite the gossip that surrounded him and Jethro.
Like her, Mac knew what it was to hurt, but he hadn't closed himself off from the possibility of love. Unlike his friend, Mac embraced life and he embraced emotion. Like Keiley, he had just been waiting for the right person to embrace it fully.
A soft smile tugged at her lips at the thought of those first weeks. How wary she had been, so uncertain, trying to figure out why he wanted her when he could have dozens of women who would have eagerly allowed Jethro into their relationship.
Those women hadn't known him, though. Before the end of that first dinner date with him, Keiley had known parts of him that she knew other women never would. She knew that dominant sexuality of his wasn't a game, it was a part of him. She had sensed that from the first.
As their relationship had developed, she had worried that he couldn't let go of the ménages, though he had promised her, assured her, that it wasn't something he couldn't live without.
She knew now. He could live without it. He could love without it. What he had neglected to mention was that eventually, he would be denying not just a desire but a part of himself in letting it go. That was the undefined something about Mac that had nearly frightened her off then. And during those first months of their marriage, she had wondered why he had been so insistent on moving back to his hometown so soon. It was to take himself out of the area of temptation. Away from the Club, his friends, and Jethro.
Had he been hoping he wouldn't miss what he never saw?
Had she known this was coming?
That question had tormented her more often in the past year or two. Had she been drawn to Mac because he personified everything she had been too frightened to reach out for? A sexual and personal freedom that had been so restrained within her? Had she let Mac steal her heart because she knew he would challenge more than just her intellect?
She snorted in disgust. This was insane. She didn't want a ménage. She liked fantasizing about it. She enjoyed daydreaming about it. But the reality of it raised problems within her mind that she couldn't solve.
Not the gossip, but emotions and feelings she had no business contemplating. If Jethro ever came back into their lives, she knew she would be torn. Knew that the past infatuation she had felt for him would raise its ugly head and risk everything she had with the man who owned her soul.
She couldn't allow that.
But that didn't mean Mac could get away with not discussing this forever. The longer it remained between them like this, the worse it was going to get.
Sitting in her office, Keiley had a clear view of the back farmyard. The tall red barn with its white trim surrounded by white fences and greener-than-green grass. And moving outside the wide double doors of the barn was her husband. Working once again on a tractor that was older than dirt and a hell of a lot less useful.
He had new tractors, but he continually worked on that old one, tinkering with it when he was worried or thinking. He had been tinkering with it a lot lately. Much more than often.
She leaned against the window, narrowing her eyes against the sunlight spearing into the room, realizing that her husband was tinkering with that tractor rather than talking to her.
He used to talk to her.
He wasn't talking anymore, and she was getting tired of it.
Crossing her arms over her breasts, she tapped her ringers against her arm and glared at her husband. Three nights he had come in late, long after she had gone to sleep. And before that? Before that, sex had been hurried. Quickies. In the shower or afterward.
While he was in control. That was something she had markedly noticed. He had only touched her when he was in complete control of himself and his sexuality.
She wanted all of her husband. She especially wanted the parts of him that he thought he should hide from her.
His sexuality. Because his sexuality was tied into so much of who and what he was.
From the information she had about his investigative work, she knew that many of the cases he had worked had involved sexual crimes.
Sexual deviants were his specialty. Had that talent grown from an understanding of them before he came into the agency? Had his own sexuality been influenced by something more than an excessive sex drive?
The questions were driving her crazy. As were the suspicions and her fears that this would end up affecting her marriage in ways that it couldn't be repaired.
Inhaling deeply, Keiley straightened from the edge of the patio door and moved into the warmth of the summer afternoon, heading for the barn and her husband.
The workhands had the day off; Mac normally didn't work all day Sunday. By all appearances, he intended to work today on that old tractor, though.
The tractor was his psychiatrist, she often mused. It had been his grandfather's. It hadn't actually worked since his grandfather's death twenty years before. But Mac still tinkered with it when he needed to
think. She wondered if he would work out the problems that had that frown brewing between his eyes by the time he managed to fix the tractor.
She knew he was aware of her approach as she followed the graveled path to the barn.
His bare shoulders were tense now, the sweat gleaming off them in the summer sun. He was a powerful male animal, and that was what she saw as she stopped at the front of the tractor and watched him silently.
"Lunch ready?" His voice was dark, brooding.
"Not yet. I wanted to see if you wanted to come up and talk to me while I fixed it."
He tensed further as he bent behind a large wheel and fiddled with something there.
"Why don't you just yell at me when it's ready?" he suggested. "I'm pretty busy here."
Oh yeah, she could see that. He was really busy getting his hands greasy as he picked and probed behind the tire.
"It's just sandwiches," she told him then. "Maybe a salad. A few minutes at the most."
He nodded. "Just yell when it's done."
"I don't think so."
He tensed further, stilling beneath her gaze before his head turned slowly and his gaze latched onto her with almost predatory awareness.
"Excuse me?" The inordinate politeness of his tone caused her heart rate to increase, the blood to surge stronger and hotter through her veins.
"You heard me, Mac. You can come up to the house with me while I fix lunch or you can do without
it. I wanted to spend some time with you. It's something you make certain we don't do lately. I'm tired of it."
Mac shifted, straightening with a graceful, dangerous flex of muscles that had her taking a step back. Suddenly her husband reminded her more of a wild animal preparing to jump. And he noticed her reaction. His lashes narrowed over his eyes as he pulled a discarded rag from the tractor seat and began to wipe his greasy hands.
Not that it helped a lot. And grease should never, at any time, be sexy, but the streaks of oil on his hands and up his arms and the few slashes across his chest were highly arousing.
Sexual tension was like a smothering blanket between them now. As though they had never touched, never been intimate, as though the power of the anticipation for it was suddenly as strong as it had been the day she met him.
"You're tired of it," he repeated softly. "Tired of what exactly, Keiley?"
Her lips dried with nervousness. Stroking her tongue over them, Keiley nearly caught her breath as Mac's gaze flicked to the action.
"You know what I'm talking about, Mac." Suddenly she could feel the amount of skin her clothing revealed. The fact that she wasn't wearing a bra. That she wasn't wearing panties.
"Poor Keiley." He tossed the rag back to the tractor seat and began advancing on her.
"Maybe you shouldn't have run away from me in the bedroom this morning."
"Don't turn this into sex, Mac," she ordered weakly.
Weak, because it was about sex. It was about the hunger that seemed to grow between them daily. About the need for his touch, his kiss, his very presence. And the need for the reality and the fantasy of his hunger.
"But it is about sex, Keiley," he murmured as he caught her hips, uncaring of the oil she was certain now marked the bare flesh.
He trapped her against the front of the tractor, the bulging erection beneath his jeans pressing against her stomach as her head fell back to stare up at him.
He was so tall, nearly a foot taller. At almost six four, Mac seemed to overwhelm everyone else. Especially her. She was only five-four, short, and fine-boned. She always felt alternately protected and undefended against his height and strength.
"It's not about sex." She tried to shake her head as his lips lowered to her neck. "I just wanted to talk."
"About sex." His lips grazed her neck, then his teeth scraped over it, causing her lashes to flutter as she fought to hold back a moan.
It had been like this from the first. He could seduce her with nothing but the threat of a kiss, the anticipation and thrill of just knowing his touch was coming.
And he was doing it now. She shuddered in his hold, feeling his hands against her hips, his fingers subtly massaging as his lips and tongue tasted her flesh.
They were outside, nothing but the tractor to shield their bodies as she felt one hand move, felt it began to slide beneath her shirt.
"We should go to the house," she gasped, he head tilting to the side as her eyes closed.
The nipping kisses to her neck were destructive. She was highly sensitive there.
Whenever Mac's lips moved over the tender flesh it weakened her, stole the strength from her legs, and left her fighting to just stand upright.
"Why?" His questioned shocked her.
"Anyone could see what you're doing."
"Just us here." His broad hand cupped her breast, his thumb stroked over her hard nipple.
"But we're outside."
"All alone. Take your shirt off for me, Kei." He leaned back, staring down at her with stormy eyes, with a hungry gaze.
Keiley stared back at him in surprise. Not that they hadn't had sex outside before. They had. By the pool. In the hot tub. But never like this. In the wide open, where her nakedness could be seen if by chance one of the workhands decided to show up.
"We have a bed." Her laughter was nervous.
The forbidden was always a draw for her. It always had been. It excited her, titillated her, made her feel alive when Mac drew it out of her. Undressing here, in broad daylight, was forbidden. Taking the chance of being seen, watched, as her husband caressed her body, was forbidden. And all the more arousing.
"Who needs a bed?" His head lowered, his gaze holding hers as he let his tongue stroke over her suddenly swollen lips. "Come on, Kei, be brave with me."
There was something different about him. She couldn't put her finger on it, couldn't make sense of it as his hands began to draw her t-shirt up her body.
"Come on, let me touch those pretty nipples with my lips while the sun heats your breasts. Wouldn't you like that, Kei?"
His voice was a velvet rasp. It was goading. Challenging. Primitive. That was the difference. He had never shown this side of himself to her in this way before. As though her invasion earlier into that dark, silent core of him had tempted the monster he had warned her not to awaken.
It exhilarated her.
Keiley pulled back, gripped the hem of her t-shirt, and pulled it slowly over her head before dropping it to the ground.
Mac's response was surprising. For a moment, blank surprise filled his expression; then it darkened once again, turned savagely carnal. His lips appeared fuller, his eyes darker, his cheekbones more pronounced. He looked dominant. Forceful.
"Beautiful." Calloused, heated palms cupped her breasts, lifting them to his lips as his head lowered.
Excitement surged through her like a tidal wave, ripping her from the moorings of self-control and thrusting her forcefully into the shadowed lusts she felt whipping around her.
Mac was always tender with her when he made love to her. But this wasn't lovemaking. It was a possession. She could feel it as his teeth scraped over her nipple.
Then his lips covered it, drawing it into his mouth as he began to suck it with a heated, forceful suction.
Her shorts were loosening as her hands speared into his hair to hold him closer. Mac cupped her breast with one hand and disposed of her shorts with the other, leaving her naked beneath the heat of the sun. Leaving her open to the sudden powerful surge of hunger that tore through her.
She had never been so brave. Had never felt the need and the hunger as she felt them tearing through her now. There was too much pleasure, too much passion. It was whipping through her mind, sinking into her pores, and tearing her loose from the moorings of control that she thought she possessed.
Pleasure was her reward, though. A pleasure that Mac was only now showing her. A pleasure that came from freeing the wildness inside her rather than controlling it.
There was no control here.
She jerked, shuddered, as his head lifted from her nipple only to have his lips cover hers as he lifted her against his chest. The hair-roughened contours rasped over her tender nipples, sending a cry into the kiss as his tongue tempted hers to spar with him.
Lightning. Electricity. Surging, destructive pinpoints of explosions detonated along her nerve endings as her flesh became hypersensitive. As the need suddenly began to grow and nothing he did seemed to be enough.
Keiley knew her husband's hands were rougher than normal as he lifted her against her.
Knew that his kiss would leave her lips swollen long after he finished, but she didn't care.
She needed it. Needed the rough nips, the hard clench of his hands at her rear. She needed this part of him and hadn't even realized it until she felt it. Until he unleashed it on her.
"Are you wet, Kei?" He suddenly tore his lips from hers, moving them over her jaw, her cheek, until he was nipping at her ear. "Are you ready for me?"
Ready? She could feel the juices flowing, dampening her, preparing her for so much more.
"Let's see how wet you are, darlin'."
She expected his fingers to skim between her legs. Expected his fingers to probe into the hidden folds. She didn't expect his lips to begin burning a path down her neck, over her breast, where he paused to lick, to suck, to nip at the hardened peak with a force that had her arching i
nto his arms, her cries filling the summer afternoon as she tightened her thighs to still the ache beginning to burn there.
Sensation was lashing through her. The tug of his lips at her breasts speared to her clit, to her vagina. Spasms were flexing inside her, forcefully reminding her of the pleasure to be had when he took her.
He didn't stay at her breasts long enough. Even as her fingers clenched in his hair to pull him back, he was moving lower, his
tongue skimming over her upper stomach, then her abdomen, as he knelt before her.
"Mac—someone could see us," she panted.
She stared down at him, shaking as he gripped her thighs.
"Part your legs for me, Kei. Now." His tone brooked no refusal. The forceful rasp of hunger in his voice had her whimpering even as her thighs parted.
The eroticism of the moment was searing her. She was suddenly seeing a part of Mac that she had only glimpsed in the past three years. The dark, dominant hungers that he kept carefully banked. And she loved it. Loved it so much that she could feel the sudden flow of her juices spilling from her body.
"Sweet and wet," he growled as his gaze dropped to the curl-shrouded flesh between her thighs. "You know, Kei, if this sweet pussy were waxed, you could feel even the breeze whispering over your clit, caressing your flesh. Wouldn't that feel good?"
He blew across her clit, the sensation of even that small caress drawing her to her toes as she fought for something to hold onto. A way to strengthen her legs.
One hand grasped hold of the fender of the tractor, the other reaching up and gripping the small handhold that opened the casing to the motor.
"Beautiful," he whispered. "I think I'm ready for lunch now, Keiley. But we don't have to go to the house for me to eat it."
Her cry shattered through the barnyard as his hand lifted her leg and his head lowered to the saturated flesh between her thighs.
He consumed her. Lips, thrusting, licking tongue, his suckling mouth. He devoured her over and over again as she clung helplessly to the machinery behind her and angled her hips to give him better access.