Wicked Pleasures (11 page)

Stay the hell away from him. Run if she saw him. Run if she saw Chase. She was supposed to take responsibility for all this? When the hell had that happened? Somewhere, somehow, Cam had come under the illusion that she was a wimp, and she wasn't enjoying the consequences.

It was all the running she had done for the past seven years, she told herself. That little investigation he had done on her had evidently led him to believe she ran from her problems rather than deal with them. And hadn't Chase accused her of it as well? She was tired of it.

Jaci stalked into the Sinclair mansion, casting Cam a glare as he sat in the car watching her, his gaze stroking her even across the distance.

"I hate men," she muttered, before turning and coming face-to-face with a grinning Chase.

Charm oozed from him. Wicked, wild, amusement gleamed in his gaze and in his too handsome face, as he leaned against a door frame, watching her.

"Excuse me while I walk instead of run," she stated with completely false sweetness, her hand clutched around the handle of her briefcase in a death grip.

That was what she got for trying to figure out men, or these particular men. Warnings and dark rumblings, and a complete inability to give her a single straight answer.

Chase's brow lifted, though he didn't lose his smile. If she remembered Chase correctly, it took a lot to make him lose his smile.

"When have I ever wanted to see you run, pretty thing?" He straightened from the frame and dropped his arms from his chest, watching her with that ever-present amusement. "You look pretty as hell when you're pissed off at Cam, but I'd rather see a smile on your face."

"Bite me," she muttered.

White teeth flashed in a wolf's smile. "I thought I did that the other night."

The contrast between Cam and Chase would end up making her crazy. It was like dealing with the opposites of a coin. Night and day. Cam was dark, forbidding, the dominance that was so much a part of him flashing in his eyes and in his expression. Jaci had a feeling that when it came to Chase, a woman would be left reeling, when finally shown that dark, inner core that he kept hidden.

"It's a good thing I'm a reasonable, patient woman," she told him as she headed up the stairs. "Otherwise, I might have to kill both of you."

She heard his chuckle behind her before he moved away, and though his presence was gone, she could still feel the effect of him. Or was it the effect Cam had left her with?

Damn those two. She didn't need this in her life right now. Two men to deal with instead of one? Most women were lucky and just didn't know it. They only had to deal with one man at a time; but no, Jaci Wright just couldn't do it the easy way, could she? She had to go out and get herself tangled up with a man who thought he should be able to share everything, things about her that he should want to keep for himself.

Moving along the hallway, she turned the corner to the residential wing of the house and moved toward Courtney and Ian's suite. As she neared the door, it opened and a stranger stepped from inside.

Smiling, tall, seriously handsome, and as dark as sin. She'd seen his picture a thousand times in the gossip magazines, and had had the pleasure of meeting his sister the year before in London.

Khalid el Hamid Mustafa. The bastard son of a Middle Eastern prince.

As he turned from the door he came to a stop, his gaze going over her slowly, dark black eyes rich with wicked, carnal lights slid over her body before coming to a stop at her eyes.

"Ah, such beauty and fire." He smiled. A devastating curve to his lips, she was certain. Unfortunately, it left her cold and had little effect on the mesmerizing magic Cam had left pulsing inside her body.

Thick black hair was pulled back to the nape of his neck and tied there. It appeared long enough to fall well below his shoulders. He was dressed in dark gray slacks and a white silk shirt unbuttoned at the throat. His eyes gleamed with wicked, sinful charm, and with delights that a woman could only imagine.

Jaci paused several feet from him, her lips twitching as she saw the faint resemblance between him and the young woman she had grown so fond of last year.

"Mr. Mustafa," she greeted him, restraining her grin.

He blinked back at her in surprise. "Have we met? Funny, I would have thought I would remember meeting such exquisite beauty."

"I met your sister, Paige," she informed him. "She warned me to steer a wide path around you."

His expression flickered with fondness and amusement. "Brave women rarely take such warnings to heart," he told her, the faint foreign flavor of his voice as sexy as his eyes. And it pissed her off, because she should have been swooning at his feet, just as Paige had warned her not to do. Unfortunately, there wasn't a single swoon inside her, because he couldn't compare to Cam.

"Bravery doesn't necessarily entail sampling forbidden fruits, either," she warned him, amused by him, rather than offended or outraged.

"Paige enjoys warning all the beautiful women against me." He grinned again, his sensual lips curving back to flash strong, white teeth. "But I promise you, I am not in the least forbidden. You may sample me all you choose."

There was an irrepressible delight in his eyes, the look of a man who enjoyed the chase just as much as he enjoyed the capture.

"I think I'll pass." She declined his very charming offer with a wide smile. "As lovely as the offer sounds, I'm really pretty busy these days, and I'd hate to be unable to give you all the attention I'm certain you deserve."

He laughed at that, then tilted his head and watched her for a long, assessing moment.

"You must be the lovely interior designer, Ms. Wright, that Courtney has been telling me so much about. She said you had a beautiful, fearsome wit. I see she was correct."

"I don't know how fearsome it is, but it's wit anyway." She extended her hand. "It's been interesting to meet you. Though I'll have to be certain to tell Paige you no longer ravish women at first sight."

His hand enfolded hers before he pulled her to him. Off balance, she landed against his chest to find herself the recipient of a quick, laughing kiss to the corner of her lips, before she was carefully set away from him.

"There, my reputation is now once again intact; you may inform Paige you were ravished after all."

"You are a rogue." She laughed.

"He's also endangered if he doesn't take his fucking hands off you."

Jaci whirled around, shock, anger, a mix of emotions bombarding her head at the sight of Cam standing at the entrance to the hall, his expression savage, eyes narrowed and dangerous.

Behind him, Chase was watching curiously, his gaze more interested than angry. Cam, on the other hand, was way past angry.

He strode down the hall just as the door to Courtney and Ian's suite opened and Ian stepped outside.

The tension tightened around her, trapped between the four men, aware of Courtney watching from the doorway, all eyes on her.

Suddenly she decided she'd rather face the Robertses on a bad day than the mess she could feel brewing in the hallway.

"Courtney, tell me you have coffee." She turned to her friend desperately.

Courtney took one look at Cam as he stopped behind Jaci, lifted her brows and drawled. "Jaci, I can go you one better. I have whisky. And from the looks of things out here, we're probably going to need it."

She stepped outside the door, snagged Jaci's wrist, and pulled her inside before slamming the door behind her.

Both women leaned their backs against the panel and blew out hard breaths.

"Life getting interesting?" Courtney asked her as Jaci stared straight ahead into the elegantly appointed sitting room.

"Oh yeah." She nodded, feeling the trembling in her legs, the heat in her lower stomach. "Is it like this around here very often?"

"Not since Ian and I were sniping and snarling through our courtship," Courtney responded, before turning to stare at her.

Jaci could feel her friend's look and grimaced at the question she knew was coming.

"You know," Courtney finally drawled, "Cameron Falladay is positively delicious when he's being possessive."

Delicious wasn't the word she would use to describe him. But there was no doubt those few seconds had been filled with such heightened lust that it left Jaci shaking.

"He's going to drive me to drink," she muttered.

"No doubt, he probably will," Courtney agreed.

They both listened expectantly, but could hear little more than the murmur of voices outside.

"Ian will referee," Courtney promised, but there wasn't a lot of conviction in her voice.

Jaci turned to her slowly, turning her wrath from Cam to the other woman. "I blame you for this," she stated. "You didn't even warn me they were here."

To which Courtney grinned. "I didn't, did I? I'll have Ian spank me for that later. But admit it, Jaci, your life was horribly boring. You aren't bored any longer."

She was beginning to wonder, though, if bored wouldn't be better.

Cam slammed the door to his office with a vicious flick of his wrist and grinded his teeth in fury.

Five minutes. She had been out of his sight five fucking minutes, and what had happened? There was that bastard Khalid, his hands on her, his lips on her.

His fists clenched, the need to punch something nearly overriding his self-control. The need to punch that half-Middle-Eastern son of a bitch touching his woman was what crazed him.

"You hit the wall again, and Ian's going to make us pay for the repairs ourselves," Chase warned him as Cam felt his fingers curling into a fist.

He'd already put a hole in the wall once this year. The day after the final report on Jaci was compiled, and he'd had time to think about it, time to let the fury stew inside him.

"Get out of here, Chase." He could not deal with his twin's amused condescension today. He'd end up hitting Chase, and the problem with Chase was that he invariably hit back. They hadn't had a brawl in years, and his ribs were thanking him for it.

"Come on, Cam, she's a beautiful, vibrant woman. Every man she meets is going to wonder if she's as hot in bed as she looks, and a few are going to try to find out. Nothin' you can do about it."

His fingers curled into a fist again. Fury pumped in him; he was hot, blistering with jealousy. He had never been jealous over another woman. He had never ached to punch any man that dared to so much as look at anyone but Jaci.

She had no idea how possessive he was over her. She had no clue how the thought of her with other men had tortured him over the years. And God forbid he should ever meet up with an old lover, because Cam wasn't certain if he could hold onto his control if he did.

"Come on, Cam, Khalid's flirty with all the women, you know that. The son of a bitch lives and breathes his playboy lifestyle just to piss his daddy off. You can't take him seriously."

"He touches her again, and I'll take his hand off," he snarled, whirling around to face the amusement in his brother's eyes.

But he didn't see amusement. He saw the same darkness in his brother that rode his own soul. They were like mirror images of each other in so many ways.

"God, this is a mess," he bit out, turning away again.

Why do you do it, Cam? A man as possessive as you would never share your lover without a reason.
Jaci's question ripped through his mind with the force of a dull blade, tearing at his conscience. And still, he hadn't been able to explain. He hadn't been able to put into words that overwhelming, dark need that continually drove him and his brother.

The men of the Sinclair men's club all had varied reasons why they shared. Some for pleasure, some for excitement, some for protection of themselves or others. Some simply because they enjoyed it.

For Cam and Chase, why they shared was mired in so many different, impossible reasons. The bond of twins, of knowing each other's strengths, each other's weaknesses; of understanding the pleasure they could give—and the pleasure they received from it.

They could take women to places together that they couldn't take them alone. Give them a pleasure that drove them to the point where they couldn't find the breath to scream, and could only beg for more.

Cam could hold back, glory in the power of the pleasure they drew from a woman. Watch her eyes glaze over, feel more than his own pleasure. He could feel her pleasure. And he could maintain his distance, he could maintain his control and the ability to hold back the pain. And the nightmares.

And he wanted that pleasure for Jaci, often. He wanted her dazed, wet, and shaking between them, twisting in the midst of a hunger so intense she didn't know who she was, or where she was, only that she needed more. Just as she had the other night. The addictive need to have her like that again was growing, building in his gut, until he wondered how long he could maintain his control.

He
needed
to give her that. It crawled beneath his flesh, drove talons of agonizing arousal through his testicles, and made his cock harder than it had ever been in his life.

"You're going to have to explain things to her," Chase said behind him. "You won't hold her heart if you don't give her yours in return, man."

He shook his head. "How do you explain the impossible, Chase? Hell, sometimes even I can't explain it to myself."

He took his lovers alone often. He didn't require Chase's presence all the time, but sometimes, sometimes the darkness of the sexual needs inside him demanded it. As though there were a core inside himself, livid with a hunger, a need that became sated only in certain ways. And with Jaci, he didn't dare take her alone. There would be no chance of maintaining even a semblance of distance from her otherwise.

"It would help her understand," Chase said. "You can't hide from her and expect her to give you everything. Hell, it's bad enough that you hide from me."

"Explaining it wouldn't help." He clenched his hands, fought to work through the surging fury. "It's like a drug now. You know it as well as I do. Seeing the pleasure, feeling it." He shook his head at the hopelessness of it.

"So, you're going to lose her to the likes of Khalid instead?" Chase drawled. "Smart, Cam."

"I'll talk to Khalid." He breathed in roughly. "He'll stay away from her."

He was aware of the disbelief in Chase's expression. "Are we talking about the same Khalid?" his brother asked. "The same one undressing her with his eyes in the hallway, Cam?"

"Don't push this, Chase," he growled.

Chase held his hands up placatingly. "Fine. I'm out of it. Just consider the I-told-you-sos said when you find out he's moved in for the kill."

"She's too smart to fall for him." Cam shook his head. He had to believe that.

"She's alone," Chase said then, his voice soft, warning. "Remember that, Cam. She's alone and losing the same man for the second time for the same reason. She's been alone for a very long time now. She's not going to stay alone."

No, and she had every right not to have to be alone.

Cam shook his head, fighting his desires, fighting himself. She deserved the love she thought so highly of. Monogamous, possessive, pure love. She didn't deserve the exact opposite of the ideal that she prized so highly.

"You know, Cam, I'm not in love with her," Chase said then. "I won't love her, not like you do."

Cam rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling a relief so intense it was almost weakness. He could share her body with Chase, but the thought of sharing her emotions, her heart, the tender touches and the smoky looks . . .

"Cam, is it worth losing her?"

He paced across the room, his hand dropping from his neck as he moved to the window and stared into the bright morning sunlight.

Seven years. He'd waited, fantasized. He'd dreamt of her.

"I'll figure something out." And he would. Right now, he was allowing them both the distance they needed, but it wouldn't last much longer.

"Evidently, you warned her to run when she saw either of us coming," Chase said. "Why do that? Why not show her the man you are, rather than demanding she give into you without understanding what makes you like that? Damn, bro, you expect a lot from a woman, don't you?"

"From her?" he whispered, watching through the tall windows as Courtney and Jaci moved into the gardens between the two wings of the house. "From her, I expect it all. And I think that terrifies both of us."