Forbidden Pleasure (29 page)

His shoulder was bloody, a thick furrow slicing across the bicep.

"You okay?"

"Bastard winged me," Jethro cursed. "I was able to spot where the first shots came from, but after that I lost him."

"Get ready. We need to get in the house." Mac was tense, worry for Keiley obliterating everything else.

"I'll go first, then cover you." Jethro started to move when Mac gripped his shoulder and pulled him back.

"You're already hit. I'll go first."

"Like hell. The last thing Kei needs is a bloody husband. A bloody third is another damned thing."

He heard the shade of bitterness in his friend's voice but let him go, his eyes on the hill until Jethro made it across the patio.

With his weapon raised, Jethro covered Mac's quick sprint across the open portion of the patio before they both moved hastily into the house.

Mac closed the door, reset the alarm, then moved quickly to the bathroom door.

"Keiley?"

The knob turned. Mac stopped the opening of the door in time to keep her from seeing a bloody Jethro.

"Jethro's fine. Lock yourself back in while we check the house."

Her face was pale, her eyes dark in the paper-whiteness as she nodded quickly and hurriedly reclosed and locked the door.

"The alarm was off while we were outside. We check the house first."

Jethro nodded quickly, wiping a smear of blood over his forehead before moving in front of Mac. Blood stained the short sleeve of his shirt and had run along his arm. Jethro wiped his hand on his pants, smearing more blood, before they began canvassing the house.

Mac grimaced at the thought of Keiley seeing the wound or the mess it was making. It wasn't life-threatening, just damned messy, and sure to upset her.

"I'm getting tired of this bastard!" Jethro snapped as they finished the upstairs and began making their way back down. "He's pissing me off, Mac. He was after you. There's not a doubt."

"I came in early from checking the place," Mac murmured as he glimpsed Pappy lying in the foyer.

The dog had slid into the house between him and Jethro, so quickly and quietly that Mac had only distantly noticed the move.

"What happened out there?" he asked.

"I saw Pappy huddled under the trees. He didn't come when I called to him, so I went to see if he had been hurt. The shot caught me about middleways across the yard. By the time I found cover I was closer to the treeline and out of the line of sight than I was to the house."

"Rifle or handgun?"

"Handgun. I'm betting a rifle will be next."

Mac shook his head. "He would have used a rifle first time. He wants to keep the odds even."

"Hell of an observation," Jethro grunted as they entered the foyer and Mac moved quickly back to the bathroom.

"Fact. Based on the files of the victims. He kept his playing field even. It's a test. To win he has to play fair. You should have come back into the house before checking anything."

He caught Jethro's grimace. "She needed you worse than I did."

"She wasn't being shot at," Mac pointed out logically. "And there was no danger of her leaving because of a realization that hurts none of us. I could have dealt with that later."

Jethro caught his arm as he started to move through the foyer.

"You should have discussed this with me first," he snapped, his eyes narrowing angrily.

Mac grinned with an edge of mockery. "You already loved her, Jethro. You think I missed it before we left Virginia? Do you think I didn't hear it in your voice every time you got around to asking about her whenever you called?"

"I was handling it." Jethro's expression was tight now.

"Handling it so well you haven't shared a woman since we left town?"

"I was handling it." His voice lowered in warning. "I wasn't in love with her, Mac, until you began playing your little games."

Mac sighed at that. "Sometimes you have to go with your gut, Jethro, I keep trying to tell you that. You'll hit an investigation with both feet forward and your gut all but getting you killed. When it comes to women, you act like you're using a damned manual until you get them into the bed. You won't find love that way."

"I wasn't looking for love."

"No, you weren't. You'd already found it. Unfortunately, someone else beat you to her first."

"If I wanted her that bad I would have done something about it."

Mac shook his head. "You're a lousy liar, my friend."

"Stop bitching, Mac, you're starting to sound like someone's father," Jethro growled.

"As long as I don't sound like mine," he snarled, pausing once again at the bathroom door and tapping at it lightly. "It's safe, Keiley."

The door opened slowly. Her eyes went quickly over Mac, then turned to Jethro. She swayed, any color she could have possessed leeching from her face as she stared at the blood.

"It's just a flesh wound." Jethro started in surprise at the horror that washed over her.

"It's okay."

"Just a flesh wound?" she snapped, lifting her gaze to meet his. "For God's sake!

You're bleeding all over my house. At least try to act concerned."

Keiley stood in front of Jethro as he sat at the kitchen table, the first aid supplies laid out on the table as she cleaned the wound on his arm.

"You need to go to the doctor," she said fiercely. "You need stitches."

He was as stubborn as Mac. He had refused to go to the hospital or to allow her to call the paramedics.

"Slap a bandage on it and stop fussing over it," he had ordered uncomfortably, as though her concern made him edgy.

And it probably was. He kept shifting in his seat worse than a kid eager to get back outside and play. Or a grown man determined to rejoin a fight.

"You're not Superman."

"I'm not bleeding to death, either."

She looked in his face then, her lips trembling at the tenderness of his expression, the gentle light in his blue eyes as he reached up and cupped her cheek.

"You and Mac are driving me insane, you know," she informed him, attempting to chastise him for his recklessness. "I'm not a doctor or a nurse, and patching up grown men who should have enough sense to see one makes me irritable."

"I wouldn't want to make you irritable," he assured her, his voice filled with a hesitant gentleness.

Jethro didn't have the first clue about how to handle the emotions that were raging between them. Not that Keiley claimed to know how to handle it herself, but Jethro's attempts to get a handle on them were endearing. And, unfortunately, only made her own seem stronger.

If his expression of male confusion and wariness was anything to go by, he was still struggling to hold them back, despite Mac's awareness of them. And that made her wonder how he would eventually handle the other emotions that could end up cropping into this relationship Mac had orchestrated. Especially the emotions she knew Mac would have a hard time dealing with.

"Are you a jealous man?" she finally asked, feeling her fears of the future edging into her voice.

"I would kill any man but Mac who dared to touch you." He sighed, his thumb touching her lips as they trembled again. "He was wrong, though, when he said I was half in love with you before he won your heart. I wasn't. I already loved you fully, Kei."

"Don't say that." She tried to keep her voice firm, her emotions under control. "The two of you ask too much of a woman."

"Yeah. We do," he finally agreed, his gaze hooded, intense. She had always felt that Jethro, like Mac, saw too deep into her soul.

Mac was sneakier than Jethro, though. He hid that dangerous part of himself behind layers of control and charming smiles. A person could sense the danger lurking beneath his quiet exterior, but as with all illusions it eased beneath the carefully controlled facade he presented.

Jethro, on the other hand, had never pretended to be anything other than exactly what he was. Dangerous to anyone who dared get in his way, an emotional risk to any woman who dared love him.

Until now.

Now, the cool purpose that had once been in his brilliant blue eyes was gone. In its place she could see the charisma he kept hidden, the emotions he tried to deny even to himself.

She breathed in shakily before applying a coat of antibiotic salve to his arm and wrapping the gauze over a wide folded bandage. The white of the gauze glared against the sun-darkened flesh of his arm while the muscle beneath flexed experimentally.

"Stay still," she ordered quietly. "You'll start bleeding again."

"Who cares?" His other arm came around her hips, pulling her close as he suddenly buried his head against her breasts.

Surprised, Keiley gripped his shoulders, staring down at the coarse black hair that fell down the back of his neck.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, his voice muffled by the cloth of her dress.

"About what?"

"About this." He pulled her forward, dragging her leg over his thighs and forcing her to straddle him as he lifted his head.

"This" was the straining erection beneath his jeans and the hunger in his gaze.

"You can't love me," she whispered. "You and Mac, you were too good as friends, as agents working together. That's all it is."

"I saw you first, Kei. Remember? The parties you were invited to the week you met Mac. I made sure you were there. I knew you. I wanted you."

Keiley shook her head. She did remember those parties, and she remembered seeing him. Remembered those blue eyes following her, the feeling of feminine awareness, the knowledge that he was more than she could ever handle.

She had no idea how right she had been.

"I knew Mac would love you, too." His hands gripped her hips, jerking her closer, pressing his cock deeper into the cradle of her thighs. "I knew he would make you love him. I knew he would love you. I thought." He paused, staring back at her as he grimaced tightly. "I thought, a month or two, and he would invite me in. When the invitation didn't come, I went on. Because I couldn't risk hurting you. Or Mac."

"Why would you do that, Jethro? Why would you give him what you wanted?"

These two men confused her. There wasn't even a hint of sexual frustration toward each other. All their sexual heat was centered on her alone. There was no feeling that bisexual urges tormented them, no feeling that they wanted or loved anything but her.

Yet they knew each other so well.

"One of these days, I'll tell you a story." He laid his forehead against hers, his gaze darkening painfully. "A story about a boy without a home, without a family. About a kid tossed out like so much garbage and then shuffled through a system as cold and unfeeling as the streets. Then I'll tell you about how a man, one with his own shadows, befriended that boy when he became a man. They had a lot of adventures together. But then man saw the woman he was going to love and he knew he could never love that woman without scaring the hell out of her. Without sharing her. Without pushing her too soon, too fast, because of his hungers.

"I know you love Mac heart and soul. But I know you care about me. In time, I think, you could love me, Kei. And I would die for that love."

"Love is possessive, Jethro," she said desperately. "If I let this continue, I couldn't share you. The day would come when you found someone you could really love. What happens to me then? If I love you just as deeply, just as possessively, as I love Mac?"

His hands tightened on her hips as his expression turned feral with hunger. "You could love me like that, Kei?" He asked, his voice guttural. "Could you love me like that?"

"What do you two think you are doing to me?" she cried, struggling from his lap. "One of you should be jealous."

"Why? Mac wouldn't have invited me here if there were a chance that he would regret your loving me. Both of us, Kei, we grew up alone, shadowed by the actions of others.

We found a connection as friends, a bonding as we shared our lovers. I know the man he is, and he knows the man I am. It has nothing to do with sexual feelings for each other and everything to do with needing something more out of a relationship than other people do. Of knowing each other so well that there was never a chance that we would love separate women."

And strangely, that made sense.

"Mac's controlled. He thinks before he acts. He never makes a move without knowing the consequences," he continued. "He knew what he was doing."

She closed her eyes and let her head rest on his shoulder, hiding the tear that fell from her eyes as her arms tightened around his neck.

If one of them, just one of them, had acted jealous of her, if one of them had seemed hesitant about this relationship, she could have denied both of them.

But they were two parts of a whole. Separate, yet complete when they were together.

When they were with her. And she felt complete. That edge of darker eroticism that she had known rode inside her was sated with it.

"I could love you, so easily, just as intensely as I love Mac."

She felt him tighten to the breaking point, his arms contracting around her back.

"But be certain of this, Jethro." Her eyes opened, snared instantly by Mac's gaze as he stood in the doorway. "Be very certain this is what the two of you want. Because heartbreak isn't something I deal with well."

Mac's lips tilted, his head inclining in acceptance as Jethro buried his head against her neck, a shudder racing through him.

"Copter's coming in," Mac said then. "The director was in Raleigh and he came in with the two agents we requested."

"Hell," Jethro breathed against her neck, bestowing a kiss so gentle there that it brought tears to her eyes. "Come on, sweetness. It looks like I'm not going to get what I need right now."

He lifted her easily from his lap, setting her back before dragging himself to his feet.

His face was pale, his eyes standing out like gems behind his dark lashes.

"You need to rest at least, Jethro," she sighed. "That was a pretty bad wound. It needs stitches."

"I don't like stitches." He shook his head as he lifted his weapon from the table and tucked it in the back of his jeans.