More Than A Man

by

Carolyn Faulkner

Chapter 1

Warm, friendly blue eyes collided brilliantly with cold, steely gray ones, and Jessica Bates felt her heart drop uncomfortably into the pit of her stomach as her usual sunny smile froze in place. Instantly, she dropped her gaze to the more neutral territory of the table in front of her as he sauntered slowly closer, paying her no more attention than the wallpaper, which was her goal. She could barely catch her breath as it was, when the painful pulsing increased with every heavy, thudding footstep he took, forcing her to close her eyes and struggle to control the familiar flood of unwieldy emotion. It took everything in her not to begin hyperventilating as he walked past and the feelings crashed over her in a blinding, overwhelming wave.

Only this tsunami was startlingly different. Yes, the usual incapacitating fear of the unknown was there, as clear and uncomplicated as always. This man would change her life, irreversibly. She knew it without a shred of doubt. But this premonition caught her off guard by the sheer force of its aching sexuality. As the man, a complete stranger to her, walked by, her nipples peaked painfully, her pupils dilated, and she felt a hot dampness wet her panties as the area between her legs swelled and throbbed, blatantly readying itself for his possession. Jessica came perilously close to a sexual peak and he hadn’t so much as acknowledged her existence.

The rampant attraction was difficult, but could be dealt with by applying a stringent control to her wayward libido. But there was no hope for the fact that her bottom was tingling as if stung by a thousand bees. Although she had a good idea what that meant, Jessica refused to explore the thought any further.

Sometimes the flashes of clairvoyance caught her entirely unaware, and this was one of those times. They were wholly undependable in their regularity, but always completely on the mark in content, always the harbingers of emotional upheaval headed her way – good or bad, but never indifferent. Her insight never concerned itself with the practicalities of life – she was at the mercy of an unscrupulous used car salesman just like everyone else in the world. Unless, she supposed with a wry smile, the salesman threatened bodily harm to her or hers, or unless she would end up in love with him.

Perish the thought, she smiled to herself weakly, leaning her head back in a futile effort to stave off the raging headache that always followed her premonitions. Jess breathed as deeply as her clenched chest would allow, trying desperately to relax though the startling force of her rawly sensual response frightened her witless. She knew she had a strongly sexual side, but had guarded it very, very carefully, never truly allowing it free reign in her life. Deep down, though, she knew. This man wasn’t going to allow her to retain that control, and that idea frightened her more than anything else she’d ever foreseen.

“More coffee?” the friendly waitress interrupted her attempts at composure, hefting a full pot of the brew in one hand.

Jessie opened one eye and nodded, despite the fact that the caffeine would only compound her racing pulse. She needed the fix, badly.

“You all right?”

“Fine,” Jessica squeaked out as the mountain of a man who was the cause of her predicament strolled by again on his way out, a bag of take-out in his huge hand. The waitress nearly filled her mug to overflowing as she turned to stare avidly after him. As soon as the door closed, Jessica recovered to almost normal, reaching for her coffee before the puddle of drool from the younger woman’s tongue reached it.

“Who is that?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“J.D.,” the reverent voice made his name a prayer.

“J.D. What?”

“Hamilton.” That caught her attention and she turned to stare at Jessica as if she had three heads. “You don’t know him?”

Jess’s curiosity was piqued when she realized that she’d almost been struck dead by someone of importance in this little cow town. She shook her head.

The waitress, whose nametag read Kendra, practically squealed with delight. “Ooooh, isn’t he just the sexiest man in the world!”

Jessica’s eyebrow rose, but she politely made no comment, not wanting to deflate the younger girl’s dreams. Sexy just didn’t cover the stranger – it was much too weak a word, as far as she was concerned. Dominant, powerful, unyielding – now those were words her fertile writer’s mind had conjured on first impression. Granted, it was one helluva first impression.

“He’s got a ranch just outside of town. The biggest spread in the area. They say he’s worth millions, but he sure doesn’t live like it. His brother’s name is Kevin and he lives there with him – their parents are dead – and – “ She looked carefully to her right and her left in the empty diner, then leaned a little forward to say in a whisper “ – they say he’s a stallion with women. Absolutely insatiable and biiiig – “ Kendra’s hands measured an unlikely length between them.

“Kendra!” came a screech from the kitchen. “Stop chatting with the customers and get back to work!”

The young girl didn’t look very chastised, but did wander back towards the kitchen, snapping gum all the way.

Well, Jessica thought, taking a sip of her coffee, it was nice to at least know the name of the man who was going to change her life in some strange, upsetting way. That was more than she got sometimes. When, where, how or why, she never knew.

But, she did know, somehow, that it was him. He was the man who would take her virginity.

James David Hamilton put the brown paper bag containing his lunch down on the eat-in kitchen table before he got drool on it. He hadn’t indulged in the luxury of a real lunch in so long he’d forgotten that not all food came in a can or a box. His movements were swift and economical as he grabbed a paper plate from the cupboard and the last clean fork from the silverware drawer, sitting down to enjoy a veritable feast of an enormous hot turkey sandwich drenched in gravy with crisp, hot steak fries on the side.

The ketchup never quite made it into the fridge anymore, residing instead in the middle of the cluttered kitchen table, but that made it just that much more convenient, as far as he was concerned. As he dug into his first full-fledged meal in over a month, the kitchen door opened and his little brother entered with a sigh to stop cold in his tracks.

“Is that a Hazel hot turkey?” he accused, sprinting forward to snatch a fry.

“Mumph,” J.D. replied, his mouth crammed so impolitely full his mother would have had a coronary on the spot if she’d seen the way he was devouring his food. But that didn’t keep him from smacking his brother’s hand smartly when it came back for seconds. “Go get your own,” he snarled, only a little more articulately, hoarding the food around him like a stray dog.

Kevin looked affronted as he slumped into a chair next to his brother. “That’s the thanks I get for working my butt off?” he complained.

J.D. stopped in mid-bite, his gaze latching onto the younger man like a physical grip. “D’we get it?”

Kevin’s grin was all the answer he needed – for now – and J.D. grudgingly pushed half of the sandwich over to him. “I guess you’ve earned it, after all.”

“Damn straight,” Kevin agreed heartily. Not too proud to accept J.D.’s charity, he eagerly took an oversized bite of his own.

When they were both sated – well, almost – they wandered into the living room and James made him spill his guts about his successful business trip where he had been able to purchase the purebred bull they’d coveted. Only when he was sure he had gotten every last detail did J.D. let up on his relentless questioning. Too much time in the military had made him an excellent interrogator. Among other things, he thought darkly.

Kevin took a deep breath and looked around him, seeing the piles of papers, stale ends of hurried, half-eaten meals, the occasional pizza box, and various and sundry pieces of clothing strewn around the room. It was a theme that had carried through the house as soon as their mother had died – she had been the staunch, singular barrier between the two men and their natural slovenliness. Now, looking at it after having spent several weeks in a clean, bright hotel room, his nose wrinkled. Had the house always smelled like this?

“We need a maid,” he declared.

J.D. snorted loudly and flicked on the satellite TV, which was one of the few luxuries they had agreed a year and a half ago to retain, deferring everything else to the care and upkeep of the ranch, which was just beginning to function close to the black for the first time in decades. Their father had been a wonderful, loving man, and he had adored the ranch and passed that love on to his two sons proudly. But a businessman, he was not. “Did we win the lottery and no one told me?”

Kevin frowned. “I’m not talking about someone in a black uniform with a white apron,” although both men were thinking that they would never turn a young woman in that outfit down for more than a maid’s job, but they kept it to themselves. “We should get someone to come in once a week or so, just to give the house a once over. It’s gotten really bad around here, J.D.”

An uncommunicative grunt was the only response, and Kevin wisely let it drop.

That evening, though, when J.D. was stepping over the piles of clean and unclean laundry that littered the floor of the master bedroom, his brother’s suggestion popped insistently into his mind, making him frown fiercely. What the hell would they do with a maid? His perpetually horny mind immediately supplied him with several prurient suggestions, which he dismissed out of habit and got under the covers, only to notice a less-than-fresh scent wafting from the sheets to his nose. How long had it been since he’d changed the sheets? J.D. decided he really didn’t want to think back that far. But he knew the condition of the house would have given his mother a conniption fit – there was at least a half an inch of dust on everything, dishes and utensils were piled in the sink until they practically walked into the dishwasher themselves . . .

Hmmmmmm. Not a maid, he decided immediately, but a housekeeper might be nice, like Kev had suggested. Someone to come in and do the woman’s work that they had long since ignored in favor of long hours and quick meals. Someone who cooked like his mom used to would be a nice bonus.

Then the frown reappeared and his bleak eyes opened in the complete darkness as his body stiffened uncomfortably. Someone old. Fifties or sixties, at least. Someone round and motherly, with gray hair and wrinkles.

That would be the only way she’d be safe from him, he worried.

The next morning, Kevin’s jaw dropped to the floor when his brother suggested he look for a housekeeper/cook to come to the house at least once a week, depending on price. But he was more than up to the task. The problem came with the fact that the jobless rate in their area was nearly nil, and they weren’t willing to pay much, regardless. Their ad went largely unanswered, and the few women who had applied either expected more than they were willing to pay or – upon seeing the extent of the mess they would end up cleaning - weren’t willing to take on the job for any price. And J.D.’s silent, taciturn demeanor hadn’t helped while they were interviewing the prospective candidates, either. He tended to make people feel uncomfortable even when he wasn’t trying, which was why his existence had become more and more hermitlike as he grew older. Women in particular seemed to possess an innate fear of him, except those that were trying to get into his pants and discover if the rumor was true about the extent of his endowments. It was something that pained J.D., and he generally avoided contact with the female of the species because he hated to see the frightened doe look that inevitably entered their eyes when they saw him. Worse than that, he hated to see them licking their lips and staring at his crotch speculatively. Hell, even that strange woman in the diner yesterday had looked at him like he might jump her and spread her legs right there on the table infront of the lunchtime crowd. And though he had felt Kendra’s puppy dog eyes on him the whole time he was in Hazel’s, he knew she was one of the ones who was dying to know first hand how the stallion performed. He never intended to satisfy her curiosity.

Emma Cudahy, the second to the last candidate, had left as soon as she saw the condition of the kitchen, without even bothering to talk to them. Kevin ran a hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration, but J.D. remained motionless in his chair. “I have one more interview tomorrow at nine, and, if she’s breathing and willing to take it, I’m going to give her the job.”

His jaw clenched. “We’ve gone without a housekeeper this long, we’ll live if we don’t get one. I won’t be able to be here – I have that meeting in town tomorrow. Don’t offer it if she’s less than fifty,” J.D. warned.

Kevin grimaced but kept quiet. J.D. never explained himself, but Kevin knew there was something in his past that made him very wary of becoming involved with a woman. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever seeing his brother with a girl on his arm. J.D. had joined the Army young and become a part of the Special Forces, putting in ten years and coming back a complete stranger to his family, in more ways than were immediately apparent. He had always had a slow burning, black temper, but now Kevin could literally see him struggling to keep it under control occasionally when one of the hands challenged him or responded disrespectfully. And there was more, much more than that.

J.D. was a big man, broad shouldered and heavily muscled. He had always been strong, but now he was amazingly, unnaturally strong. Just after he’d come back, Kevin had been pinned under a tractor and James had saved him, single-handedly lifting the heavy machine off his brother so that he could pull him out from under it. Kevin had seen him break a fence post in two in a fit of temper that had frankly scared the wits out of him, although he had never seen James turn that massive strength on anyone or anything. Not that there was anything anyone could do about it if he chose to act out that way.

That brute physical power, combined with elite military training in every form of mortal combat the military could dream up, had made J.D. into a well-honed fighting machine, and, although it had been over ten years since he’d left, he still kept himself combat ready, as if he expected some unknown enemy to charge over the hill at the house at any given moment. He slept only a few hours a night; Kevin often found him up reading or watching television well past midnight. What little sleep he did get was interrupted by disturbing nightmares which often made him scream the house down before he was able to wrestle control back from whatever demons haunted him. At first, the family had tried to help him, but J.D. had turned one of those steely hard looks on them, and they had decided it was better to let him deal with it in his own way, however painful it was to know that he was struggling with something so terrible within his own mind.

Jess slammed the door of her ancient Datsun, shading her eyes with her hand as she struggled to get a good look at the place while trudging towards the front door. It was a good sized ranch-style house, all on one level. Jessica loved houses and could remember the layout of nearly every home she’d ever entered. Eventually, she promised herself, she’d own one of her own. But not quite yet.

And she was on a real, live ranch. She’d read tons of romance novels that were set on ranches, but this was the first time she’d set foot on one. Jess wanted to see and hear as much as she could, and, even if she didn’t get the job, she hoped to at least wrangle a tour from the gentleman that interviewed her.

A tall, sandy haired man answered the doorbell with a big smile, holding the door open for her politely. “You must be Jessica.”

She nodded, moving past him and into an absolute disaster of a kitchen.

Although Kevin knew J.D. would want him to reject her out of hand because she was probably no more than thirty, if that, he was getting a little desperate. He wanted a good meal at the end of the day, and dammit, he wanted to live in a house that didn’t resemble a junkyard. Kevin watched her face closely for signs of disgust, but saw none. She turned completely around, taking in the atrocious mess without wrinkling her nose or looking disgusted, which was no mean feat in itself, then followed him into the living room. He excavated an end of the couch and seated her there, then took the chair diagonally across from her.

“I’m Kevin Hamilton. It’s nice to meet you,” he held out his hand, and she shook it firmly. “Thanks for coming all the way out here.”

At the mention of his last name, Jessica paused for a moment, blinking owlishly, trying to recall something important about that name but not succeeding. Then she sank back against the couch, completely relaxed. “Oh, I’m glad to. I haven’t been in town long, and I was dying to see a working ranch.”

“Great – we certainly are that.” The interview went fabulously – which came down to the fact that she hadn’t run screaming from the idea of cleaning this place up and taking on the enormous job of picking up after two self-confessed slobs. Now came the sticky wicket. “Well, I guess I should tell you what we’re paying – thirty dollars a day.” He had braced himself for a rejection that never came.

Instead, he was surprised when she got up and crossed the room, then, biting her lip, turned back to him intently. “I have a counter offer and an explanation.”

His eyebrow rose. “Go on.”

She started to pace a little, as much as was possible around the junk on the floor. “I’m a writer, and I came to Texas to learn as much as I could about a working cattle ranch. That’s where I want to set my story.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t the slightest idea where this was leading.

“Well, I’d be willing to forfeit any salary if you’d be willing to give me room and board.”

Kevin’s face was blank. “Room and board?”

Jessica could barely contain her excitement. “Yeah. Let me live here. I’ll cook and clean, and once I get this place back into shape neither of those things will take me all day. I’ll have time to write in between and at night.”

“Oh.” Warning bells and alarm sirens were going off in his head, but the idea had such appeal he found himself agreeing with her. There would be someone here all the time to do the mundane stuff – kind of like his Mom, only younger and more attractive. There would be no more fights about who was going to have to do the mountains of dishes, or the laundry. It would be done. Clean sheets, warm food, and feminine companionship, all in one pretty little package. Kevin found the idea entirely irresistible, and before he knew it, he was agreeing to her proposal.

When she stopped on her way out the door to go and collect her things from Addy’s rooming house and turned to say in a warning tone, “I have to confess something before I come back, though.”

His heart thunked to the pit of his stomach and he had to swallow the drool that had collected in his mouth at the thought of eating a real meal tonight. Was she a serial murderer? A devil worshiper? A thief? Kevin rapidly dismissed all of those thoughts as something she was not likely to confess to him. “What?” He tried not to let the word convey his eagerness.

“I do have a dog that comes with me. She’s at a friend’s now, but I’d like to go and pick her up and have her stay with me here, if that’s ok.”

Hell, she could bring an elephant as far as he was concerned, and he told her as much. Kevin waved goodbye to her as she left to collect her stuff. He couldn’t believe she’d agreed to take the job! Now if he could just get rid of J.D. permanently before she returned . . .

Chapter 2

Kevin’s elation lasted all of about thirty seconds, until he faced the fact that J.D. was not going to be at all happy, then his jaw set. He could be at least as stubborn as his annoyingly overbearing brother. He had given his word. Shaken on it, even. J.D.’s sense of honor was bone deep, and it was about the only think Kevin could think of to cling to when his brother exploded infront of him several hours later upon hearing the news.

“She’s how old?” James rarely yelled. With his size, he didn’t need to. His voice had dropped several octaves to a frighteningly deep whisper.

Kevin saw a massive fist clench in frustration, but met his older brother’s eyes without flinching – probably one of the few people alive in the world that could or would do that. “She’s twenty-nine.”

“And what part about hiring someone older did you have a problem comprehending, Kevin?” It was their father’s voice that escaped from J.D.’s mouth at times like this, making the both of them uncomfortable. “Fire her. As soon as she gets here,” he commanded, jamming a battered Stetson down onto his head on his way out the door, not doubting for a minute that Kevin would do as he said. James was used to being obeyed. Leading men into life-threatening situations would do that for you. He issued the orders, and Kevin or a hand or their lawyer or whoever carried them out. And that was the way J.D. liked it.

He was out the door before he could hear Kevin’s quiet, “No.”

When Jessie returned, Kevin explained exactly what had happened between his brother and himself, not wanting her to be blindsided by J.D. when he ordered her out of the house as soon as he saw her. Surprisingly, she seemed to take it all in stride, but then she had yet to meet J.D. The room Kevin showed her to was at least twice the size of the one she had had at Addy’s, and she realized she’d have room for some of the stuff she’d put into storage; that is if she was allowed to stay.

Since it was so early in the day, she just threw what she had into her room and set about cleaning up as much as possible. She stripped all the beds, including her own, and started a large load of wash, what she was sure would be only the first of many. There were plenty of laundry baskets in the mud/laundry room, so as a hint to each of the men she put an empty basket on the floor in each of their closets, as well as her own. Jess wasn’t hoping for miracles, but if they could just get the clothes into the same vicinity as the basket, she’d be happy. While the machine was running, she put as much as she could into the dishwasher and started that, too, then went to work on the house room by room, starting with the kitchen.

First things first, she took out some hamburger to thaw that looked only slightly younger than King Tut, but she figured it would suffice. There was a big jar of spaghetti sauce in the cupboard and just enough pasta, she hoped. Another intrepid exploration of the freezer produced a loaf of sandwich bread that would suffice in a pinch for garlic bread, although she preferred to use French bread when possible.

With dinner planned, she filled several garbage bags with the debris from the kitchen and the living room, then threw open a few windows to air things out while she was working. Impulsively, she bolted down to her room and grabbed her boom box, throwing in a CD she’d burned of her favorite songs to sing to while straightening up. The coat closet held an ancient vacuum that had seen better days, but it worked and that was all Jess required at this point. Once she found the floor in the living room, she vacuumed it to within an inch of its life, discovering a very nice maroon Aubusson carpet that had been hidden by old newspapers and pizza boxes. There was some of that carpet sprinkle stuff to help cover various and sundry odors whose origins she didn’t really want to consider, and she used it liberally all over. The kitchen floor got the same treatment, and then was mopped repeatedly – three times in all, until the water in the bucket came up clear. By that time, the wash was ready to go into the dryer, and the dishwasher was ready to be emptied and refilled.

Kevin had said not to expect them for lunch, which was good since she would have been knee-deep in housework at that point, but he had told her he would try to be the first one back so that he could be there to argue with his brother. As it was, J.D. beat him, bursting in the door with a face like a thundercloud and being deliberately intimidating.

He was a little startled that the woman his brother had hired was the same one who had practically skittered away from him at the diner, but then he recovered and remembered he didn’t want her here, regardless of the wonderful smells coming from the kitchen. She was singing, badly, along with “Mambo No. 5” as she stirred something on the stove.

J.D. hadn’t said anything, but she must’ve heard the door slam shut because she turned, blanching suddenly pure white before recovering to give him a warm smile, which he stubbornly refused to return. She surprised him further by turning down the volume on the boom box and walking towards him with her hand extended. “Hi. I’m Jessica Bates. It’s nice to meet you.” It was interesting to shake hands with the man she knew she would end up surrendering to intimately. He was even bigger close up, and although he intimidated the hell out of her, she was not going to let him see that. Jessica could have smacked herself upside the head for not having made the connection before this, but it was a little late now. It would play out the way it played out.

Out of long ingrained habit, J.D. shook her hand, albeit with exaggerated gentleness. Jess gave no sign that she recognized him, or that he in the least intimidated her, instead she calmly returned to dinner preparations, humming along softly to the music. Neither a frightened doe nor a crotch-gazer. Hmmmmm. “You look tired. Can I get you something to drink?”

Hell, no, he didn’t want something to drink when he couldn’t even think with her near. It was bad with some women, but it seemed a million times worse with her for some reason. Every nerve ending he possessed was on full alert. His heightened and finely tuned senses picked up the enticing softness of her perfume, and the wonderful underlying warmth of womanly smell. Jessica was not pretty in the classical sense, but she was pleasant looking, with a nice, well-rounded figure, clear, expressive eyes and a ready smile. But she was so much smaller than he was – maybe five foot four to his six-three. She aroused every sexual instinct the government had inadvertently activated in him and every protective instinct he had carefully retained and nurtured. His groin swelled almost unbearably and he growled, “No,” before escaping to his bedroom.

When their mother was alive, a shower after work had been mandatory before coming to the dinner table, and J.D. supposed he should show Ms. Bates at least that much courtesy. But then he decided he wasn’t going to change for someone who wasn’t going to be here longer than this evening. He noticed the empty laundry basket in his closet, and the lack of clothing piles on the floor, as well as the fact that his bed had been made and the room smelled like it had had a good dose of fresh air.

Dinner that night was strained, especially after J.D. made his appearance looking like he had just walked in from the range, whereas Kevin had obviously showered and put on clean clothes, fresh from the dryer. They sat around the table like what they were – three strangers, but Jessica and Kevin kept up a light conversation, exchanging the usual personal information. Jess told him – and thus J.D. heard by default – that she was the youngest of five children, and an unrepentant spoiled brat. She confessed it with such complete lack of concern that Kevin laughed, which made J.D. clench his jaw just that much tighter. There were three girls and two boys in the family, and the majority of them had made their homes near where she had grown up, which was Eastern Tennessee.

“I’m the wanderer,” she took a swallow of soda. “My father is sure I’m going to get myself into trouble since I don’t have a steady job, but I want to give my writing a chance. He made me promise that if I haven’t sold anything by the time I’m thirty-two that I’ll come back home and get married, like I should. Or at the very least, move somewhere closer to where he and my brothers can keep a weather eye on me.”

“Sounds like you have a great family,” Kevin commented, glad that she was carrying more than her share of the conversation because he was busy shoveling as politely as possible as much food into his mouth as he could.

J.D. snagged the last piece of garlic bread just as Kevin was reaching for it and he started to whimper, making Jessie laugh. She got up and rescued the second pan of it from the oven, plopping a piece down on Kevin’s plate.

They ate every scrap of food she’d made, then J.D. sat back in his chair and crossed a big, dirty, booted foot over his knee, pinning her with an intimidating look. She remained annoyingly unintimidated, impishly raising her water glass in salute to him from across table. He ruthlessly suppressed the unusual urge to return that warm smile in favor of an out and out glare. Kevin looked from one to the other and put down his fork, realizing the battle had been joined without him and not wanting to be an innocent bystander.

Jessie pre-empted the both of them by fearlessly meeting J.D.’s eyes and stating, “You don’t want me here.”

“No, I don’t,” his reply was softer than he wanted, but he was finding despite himself that he disliked the idea of hurting her feelings. Tender impulses were unusual for him, and they threw him off balance.

“But you advertised for a housekeeper and a cook. I’m both.”

“You’re too damn young,” he ground out.

It was Jessie’s turn to look startled. “Young? Young is eighteen.”

“Young is what I say it is,” James’ tone dared her to challenge him.

Jess shrugged. “Ok. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

J.D. sighed wearily. Dammit, she wasn’t making this easy on him.

“Wasn’t dinner fabulous, though, J.D.?” Kevin piped up hopefully.

The older man nodded, tapping his fingers impatiently on the tabletop, as if he wanted this scene to be over and done with already.

“The house is darn near immaculate, there are clean clothes folded in my drawers instead of piled on the floor, and I, for one, vote that she stays.” Kevin was an easy-going type of person, and he didn’t challenge his brother on a whim, but he was not a wimp.

Before James could say anything, Jessie got up and began clearing the table, stating calmly, “Well, I can tell you that I’m not going to stay unless you both want me to. I won’t be the cause of strife between you two. I’m sure you’ll eventually find someone who’ll suit you both.”

Kevin frowned and J.D. glared while she cleaned up around them, but neither of them moved a muscle as coffee appeared before each of them, along with homemade brownie sundaes. Although they each tucked into the desserts with equal gusto, when she cleared those dishes away, Kevin made an emphatic statement.

“She stays.”

Without missing a beat or raising his voice, J.D. growled back, “She goes.”

Jessie surprised the both of them by her melodic peal of laughter. “Jeez, you two are certainly brothers. You sound exactly like Thom and Ethan. Stubborn is born and bred into every bone in their bodies, too.”

James snorted, thinking to himself that his feelings toward her were anything but fraternal, but he said nothing, merely watching her as she cleaned up the rest of the dinner dishes, then joined them back at the table.

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me stay here overnight, Mr. Hamilton. I gave up my room at Addy’s in anticipation of staying here, and I don’t fancy getting filled with buckshot by knocking on her door at night.” This time J.D. did smile; everyone in town knew that Adelaide Simon was a full-fledged alarmist who slept with a loaded gun under her pillow. It was a wonder she hadn’t killed herself accidentally with the thing long ago. Seeing his smile, something painful and tight contracted in Jessie’s heart. She knew instinctively that he did it all too rarely, and it was nice that he could respond to her in that way. He held himself so aloof . . . she wondered why.

Kevin butted in. “Of course you’re going to stay – “

But Jess stopped him by quietly placing her hand on his arm for a second. “No. Your brother has the right to have whomever he wants in his home.”

“It’s my home, too.”

That stuck in J.D.’s craw. His brother was right. Jessie fit the bill wonderfully, and he was the only obstacle to them hiring the only person who seemed to have met most of their qualifications. And the house did look a thousand times better. If only he could be sure of himself . . . If only, if only. Inwardly, he raged against what had been done to him, even though he had consented at the time, not realizing the full extent of the modifications he would be subject to. Now he didn’t quite trust himself. He had killed all too easily with his awesome strength, and had become frighteningly adept at it. Every care had been given to training him in a thousand different ways of inflicting pain and death on a human. No one had taught him how to temper that strength, and one innocent female had paid for it with her life. That had been the beginning of the end for him. It had been his own, personal holocaust. Never again, he had sworn. Never again.

Since that time, he had kept himself away from women in general, only occasionally travelling on business to a city large enough where he could indulge his personal preferences with someone who was well paid to tolerate his idiosyncrasies. Even then, the first time, he had nearly been rendered incapable for fear of accidentally hurting her.

If he ever did find a woman with whom he could have a physical relationship, it would have to be someone who had as strong a sexual urge as he had now. One of the other side affects of the modifications the military had subjected him to was that his libido, which had never been low in the first place, was now quite predominant in his personality. It was only because he had been able to develop a rigid self-control, along with his personal sense of honor that would never allow him to force himself on an unwilling woman, that he hadn’t ended up like more than three quarters of the men who had undergone the treatments with him – in a civilian or military jail, gone crazy, or dead from suicide.

Unable to answer in a way that they both wanted him to, J.D. rose and went into his study, seemingly the only room in the house left untouched by her presence, and closed the door with a quiet click.

The next morning, both brothers were pleasantly surprised when fresh, hot coffee, scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns, as well as a wonderful nutmeg muffin with cinnamon sugar on the top greeted them.

Now he felt even guiltier. “You didn’t have to do this,” J.D. said automatically, digging into a pile of fluffy eggs just the same.

Jessie seemed to float around the kitchen in the white eyelet housecoat she was wearing. Her hair was mussed and sleep was still in her eyes, but both men thought she looked gorgeous. J.D. especially, until he clamped down on himself ruthlessly. She would be gone by the time he got back in tonight. There was no hope for anything more. None.

She filled both of their cups with coffee again, then Kevin asked, “Aren’t you eating?”

“At this hour of the morning? Not likely, honey.” Her truly horrified tone and comically wrinkled face drew smiles from the both of them.

“Not a morning person, are you?” Kevin inquired, grinning at her like an idiot.

Jessie held a hand to her heart as if swearing an oath. “I am of the firm belief that five o’clock comes but once a day – in the afternoon. You guys are just lucky I can cook in my sleep.”

Kevin finished up and threw his napkin on the table. “Well, I guess there’s no hope for it.” He faced Jessie and took her hand; kissing the back of it and bowing low. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I think you would have been a fabulous addition to the household.”

Jessie lifted the skirt of her robe delicately between her thumb and middle finger, feigning a curtsey badly. “Thank you, kind sir. I appreciate that you considered me for the job.”

With a speaking glare at his brother, Kevin marched out the door.

“More coffee?” she asked J.D. without looking at him.

“No, thanks.”

Jess bustled about, cleaning up as much as she could around him. “I’ll be leaving this morning, around ten, when I’ve had a chance to repack my things and get them into my car. Should I lock the door behind me? Kevin didn’t give me a key . . . “

For some reason, everything she was saying, the idea that she would be packing and going somewhere where he couldn’t see her, was annoying him to no end.

“Where’ll you go?” he asked, unable to stop himself from the inquiry.

“Back to Addy’s. She’ll probably still have my room open.”

“Hmmm. I’ll be back in around nine thirty, then, to carry things for you.”

Jess preferred he didn’t return. He disturbed her, in the most elemental of ways. It appeared her insight had been wrong, but then, there was a first time for everything. “That’s not necessary – “

J.D. rose to literally tower over her and growl, “I said, I’ll be back here at nine thirty. You don’t need to hurt yourself carrying heavy suitcases out to your car.”

She couldn’t resist the impish impulse to salute him, saying snappily, “Yes, Sir.”

There was that smile again. It was coming more frequently, and she was glad to be the cause of it. “Brat,” he threw over his shoulder on the way out the door.

“Bully,” he heard her bellow back with a chuckle. Well, he thought as he strode to the barn, the woman had guts, you had to give her that.

It was about nine-fifteen when he rode up on his big sorrel stallion, catching her as she tried valiantly to cram a huge suitcase into the tiny trunk of her junker car. J.D. dismounted quickly and dropped the reins, knowing Chieftain wouldn’t wander further than the barn. As usual, when he was around her his genitals lead the way. They were even less controllable with her than with most women. The only thing he could think about was how much he wanted to bury himself in her warm, sweet wetness . . . after he’d given her a good spanking for being bratty, of course.

His jaw set, James shouldered her out of the way, resisting the impulse to swat her jean covered behind for disobeying him. “Didn’t I tell you to wait until I got here so that you didn’t have to do this yourself?”

Jessica folded her arms over her chest, pursing her lips with frustration at the way he just horned in and took over like it was his God-given right. “Excuse me, but aren’t you declining the opportunity to boss me around, big man?” she asked in a voice that fairly dripped with sarcasm.

His big body stilled ominously, and she watched with a mixture of unbearable excitement and just a tinge of fear at the look he gave her. “You’d better watch your tone, Missy, or you’ll may just get what you’re pushin’ for.”

She snorted behind him, but wasn’t smart enough to shut up. “You’re a bully, J.D. Hamilton.”

“And you’re a sassy little brat, Jessica Bates. I guess your father didn’t spank you enough when you were young . . . “

Jessie leaned against the rear of the car and snorted indelicately. “I got spanked plenty when I was younger, thank you. By my father, my mother, and my older brothers!”

James couldn’t prevent a big grin from spreading over his face. “Well, you must’ve deserved it, then, huh?”

A deep frown creasing her face, Jessica replied wryly, “You know, you don’t smile nearly enough, but smiling at me getting my fanny tanned is way outta line, buster.”

Man, this was the millionth time he wanted to beat his own head in for allowing them to experiment on him. If he’d been a normal average guy, all of this flirting and talking about spanking might have lead somewhere. He’d never have had to turn her away; in fact he would have done everything in his power to keep her here. In his head, he’d already blistered her bottom and was busy “making it up” to her.

But, again, he was doing the noble thing. Making sure he wouldn’t hurt her in any way. Denying even the faint possibility of having what he wanted most - feminine companionship, a teasing sense of humor . . . a potential mate.

It had been a long time since he’d indulged himself in anything, relaxed his guard a little and just enjoyed life. He had seen too much. Sometimes he didn’t feel quite human anymore.

He’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted her to stay at the ranch. Even though he would never be able to get truly close to her in the way he would like, she had gotten to him in such a short time that he would be willing to put up with a permanent case of blue balls if it meant that he could enjoy her sweet, womanly presence for even the shortest amount of time.

Jessie was getting behind the wheel of her car when he grabbed her upper arm suddenly, then drew back as if he’d been burned. “I was thinking,” he began slowly, having suddenly wondered if she might turn him down. “Do you suppose we could do this on kind of a trial basis?”

Her broad smile was his answer. “A week?” she stepped out of the car and a little closer to him, and he took a casual but noticeable step back.

“I was thinking more of a month. Then we’ll revisit it.”

“Done!” Jessie held out her hand to shake his, and it was the quickest, wimpiest handshake in history. He acted as if he thought he’d get girlie cooties if he touched her. But his eyes were completely wild around her, following her as avidly as a wolf stalking prey. He was already sauntering toward the house with her bags when she said, “Thank you. I’ll try to keep out of your way. You’ll hardly know I’m here!” she shouted after him, not sure that he could hear her.

James was already regretting his gonad-inspired impulse, and laughed low at her promise that he wouldn’t realize she was in his house. Right. He came to full, painful attention just smelling the floral scent that clung to her. The brush of her arm against his when she had poured him coffee this morning was enough to make his loins throb until all he could think about was laying her naked beneath him on the kitchen table . . .

But he’d done it, and he wasn’t going to go back on his word.

She’d looked so damned happy when he said she could stay, even if it was only on a trial basis.

He tromped out of the house and mounted his horse.

This was a bad, bad, bad idea . . .

Then why was he so blasted glad she would still be under his roof?

Chapter 3

She was nearly as good as her word, and if he had been a normal man it might have been enough. Kevin had been absolutely ecstatic that she was staying, even on a trial basis. But she kept as much to herself as possible – making breakfast for them in the morning, but not eating with them, instead she returned to bed for another couple of hours of sleep. J.D. found that he liked the idea of her sleeping under his roof, although he admittedly would have preferred that she lay warm and soft in his own bed . . . Jessie finally got the housework under control, and once the house was no longer a sty to clean, keeping it that way wasn’t that hard to do. She spent a lot of her time at her computer, writing alone in her room.

Whether Jessie was infront of his eyes or merely trailing an enticing perfume everywhere she went, J.D. wanted her until he literally ached with it. The harder he became, the nastier he got – downright surly. It seemed like he was looking for any excuse to yell at her, since he couldn’t see himself doing what he wanted – to pull her tight up against his chest and feel the softness of her breasts pressed flat to him as he took her mouth with his. Lurid thoughts about what he longed to do to that sweet, soft body kept him up at night, in more ways than one.

It was exactly a month later, after an especially nasty exchange between the two of them about the fact that dinner had been late that Jessie knocked on the door to J.D.’s study. It was late evening, and Kevin had already gone to bed. It was the first time since they’d hired her that dinner hadn’t been on the table when they came in, and that was only because she’d gone in to town to get some mozzarella for the casserole she was making.

“Come.”

He didn’t need to look up to know who had come into his sanctuary; every finely honed sense he owned was immediately primed and ready. Jessie didn’t come very far into the room and she left the door open just a little. J.D. noticed both of these small hints at her mood, as well as the telltale nervousness of her stance - her hands were clasped behind her like she was standing at ease. It wasn’t at all like her to be so jittery around him; she was one of the few people in his life who didn’t react that way to him. His jaw twitched with a burning anger directed solely at himself. He had been downright hostile to her this afternoon when he found out dinner wasn’t ready yet, and, to her immense credit, despite ample provocation, she had responded with neither tears nor harsh words of her own. J.D. remembered how she had drawn in on herself, as if shielding herself from his anger. Jess had explained in a calm, quiet voice why things were running late, and had apologized sincerely but without being obsequious.

James thought for a split second that he had seen a thin sheen of tears cloud those clear blue eyes, but in the next blink it was gone, if it had ever been there in the first place. He had watched closely as she straightened her back and crossed to the fridge, pulling out a plate of summer sausage and cheese arranged prettily with crackers piled in the center. She put it on the end of counter, saying quietly, “Why don’t you start on these, and dinner will be in about a half an hour.” Without another word or glance in his direction, she turned away from him to finish fixing dinner.

Cursing himself as fifty kinds of a heel, he had grabbed a handful of the hors d’ouvres and stomped into his study, aching deeply with both the need to offer comfort and the fear of where that might lead.

Now here she was, trying to look everywhere in the room but at him. J.D. sighed and got up to lean against the front of his big desk, his eyes devouring her like a starving man at a smorgasbord. “It -,” Jessie began, but nothing came out. She cleared her throat and tried again, fidgeting with her fingers and twisting the lacy gold pinky ring she favored. “It’s been one month.”

For a long moment, J.D. drew a blank, then her point struck home. It was the end of her trial period. She was obviously waiting for him to ask her to leave, especially after this evening’s fiasco. Nothing could have been further from his mind. If he let her go, his brother would find a way to kill him, he was sure. But much more than that; she had become something of a fixture in their lives, Kevin’s more than his, of course, because she had certainly taken her vow to heart that he would barely know she was there. He had decided that he liked clean clothes and hot, homemade dinners – even the leftovers she forced them to eat on the weekends, which she claimed as her days off. No, she very carefully stayed out of his way. He knew Jessie stayed up even later than he did some nights because the light was on in her room and he could hear her clacking away at the keyboard when he walked down the hall to his own lonely room.

Dinners were the only time they really saw each other, and while they were both heaven and hell for him, he wouldn’t give them up for anything. She and Kevin carried the majority of the conversation about everything under the sun, laughing and teasing like best friends who had known each other forever. He would sit alone in his study sometimes and hear them bantering back and forth as they cleaned up the kitchen together. Jealousy ripped violently through him on the frequent occasions when he saw her grin at his brother openly, although she didn’t let him escape unscathed from the warmth of her personality and sense of humor, either. She was always teasing him about how staid and conservative he was, how old fashioned and chauvinistic he tended to be. His taciturn tendencies and irascible personality didn’t usually phase her; instead she would joke about his grumpiness, inviting him to laugh at himself.

But he had unintentionally made her wary of him this evening with his tirade, and he was going to do the only gentlemanly thing and apologize to her about it, although he could certainly never reveal that the true cause of his tantrum had been that when he entered the kitchen, she had been bending over, presenting him with a perfectly rounded, fleshy bottom in the optimum position for the use he preferred. J.D. was sick of constant arousal that was never fulfilled, and had had enough, letting the source of that irritation have it with both barrels.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier.” He had no problem making the apology. If he was wrong about something, then he was wrong. He was man enough to acknowledge the fault, although it admittedly didn’t happen that often.

Jessie felt traitorous tears begin to fill her eyes and blinked them back hastily. Though she had somehow known deep down that he would never hurt her, the ferocity of his anger had been startling, and had made her just the tiniest bit uneasy around him for the first time. And there he was, a walking wet dream, bulging arms folded over a truly impressive chest. Her mouth went dry and she swallowed hard, her gaze skittering away from him to the books on the wall, looking anywhere but at him. She shrugged, trying for a casual tone she didn’t quite feel. “No, you were right to expect that dinner would be on time. That’s what you pay me for.”

J.D. winced. What they paid her for what she did was an embarrassment to him, and besides, she was more than a paid employee, regardless, even after such a short time. “Still, I shouldn’t have been so – “

“Loud? Vociferous? – “ her sense of humor came to the rescue.

He grimaced comically, which broadened her smile. He liked making her smile like that. “I was going to say ‘aggressive’.”

Jessie snorted indelicately, but said nothing.

“Excuse me?” he prompted, a bushy eyebrow slanted upwards, wanting to know the cause of her derision.

Feeling a bit more comfortable, she let sarcasm drip from every word. “J.D., you being unaggressive would be acting entirely against type.”

He was inordinately interested in her opinion of him. “Sit,” he commanded, and though she stuck her tongue out at him, she obeyed, taking a seat at the end of the big overstuffed leather couch as far away from his favorite chair as she could get. “You think I’m aggressive?” he leaned forward in the old recliner.

Another snort. “Do you remember what happened with Sammy?”

Sammy was her dog. Rather, had been her dog. Thom had given her to Jess as a means of protection when she first moved out. That had backfired, but nonetheless they were darn near inseparable. She had brought him back to the ranch in the first week she was there. Sammy was part Doberman, part Rottweiler, and all cream puff. There wasn’t an aggressive bone in her body. In fact, Kevin and J.D. were home the afternoon she brought Sammy into the house for the first time, and the first thing she did was go right over to J.D. and present her belly, as if it had been a rehearsed event. From that point on, Jessie might as well have said she didn’t have a dog. Sammy was slavishly devoted to J.D., even though Jess was the one who walked her, fed her, and pottied her.

The dog’s defection annoyed her to no end. “You’re Alpha through and through.”

Her innocent comment made his head snap up. J.D. caught her gaze with his. Did she know something, anything about what he was? “What do you mean?” he asked, trying to be casual.

“You’re an Alpha-male. Pack leader. I’ve been deposed,” she added dramatically, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead with a theatrical sigh. “I was the Alpha-female, but you outrank me in the pack. Sammy is no leader, and she’ll follow whoever around her is the strongest.” Jessie’s mouth wrinkled distastefully. “That’s definitely you.”

James relaxed fractionally. Her assessment of the situation was exactly correct, concerns that she might know anything about the former Alpha Unit were assuaged. “So?”

Jessie sighed exasperatedly. “So I don’t like being replaced in my dog’s affections! I might as well not exist when you’re around as far as she’s concerned! And you’re bossy and autocratic and chauvinistic and pushy . . . " Surprisingly, he was not objecting to any of her characterizations. An eyebrow rose to her hairline. “Stop me when you think I’ve said something wrong – “

“You’ve been here a month; you know what I’m like,” he growled unrepentantly.

“Yeah. I know. Sheesh, I might as well not have left my family – you’re just like my brothers and my father. Always telling me what to do – “

He had come home one day and found her sitting calmly at the top of a ladder in the living room, industriously washing the walls near the nine-foot ceiling. J.D. hadn’t even taken the time to think, instead following his first instinct, sweeping her off the ladder with a thick, strong arm around her middle. He had deposited her on her own two feet, even though his second most prominent instinct was to take the little brat over his lap. “You shouldn’t be on a ladder,” he’d scowled fiercely down at her.

Jessie hadn’t backed down. In fact, she was furious right back at him. “Bullshit.”

“Watch your language, young lady,” the warning flew out of his mouth before he had a chance to consider it.

She grimaced, but kept a civil tongue. Somehow, this man managed to channel her father and her brothers unerringly. “Why shouldn’t I be on a ladder? Because I’m a woman?” she shot back at him, standing on tiptoe and deliberately trying to get in his face.

His broad grin threw her completely off. Because I want you to be my woman, and I protect what’s mine, he thought quietly. Instead, he was reveling in the fact that she had confronted him without a shred of hesitation. He liked that. Here, perhaps, was a true potential mate. Maybe.

“Because I said so,” he’d replied without a hint of sarcasm. “And because if I find you up there again, I’ll take you over my knee.”

Dumbstruck, Jessie wondered what he knew about her; how he knew that the idea of being spanked was guaranteed to turn her on like nothing else. She managed to cover her surprise admirably, though. Of course he didn’t know anything about her “special preferences”, although, wouldn’t it be something if he ever actually fulfilled one of those teasing threats . . .

J.D. had gotten his way and extracted a promise from her that she wouldn’t get up on a ladder while they were gone. All he could see in his mind was coming home to her lying in a crumpled heap on the floor . . . He shook the image from his head and had looked around, noticing that the heavy furniture had all been moved away from the walls so that she could wash them. He procured a second promise from her right then and there that she wouldn’t try to move any more heavy furniture. “What the hell are we here for?”

“Certainly not your sparkling personality, J.D., “ she’d thrown over her shoulder. The old chauvinist had gotten his way, of course. As usual.

He was busy nodding his head with her list of his personality flaws. “Damn straight. No need for you to be on a ladder, especially with no one else in the house if you fell. And I don’t want you trying to lift a couch that’s three times your weight when Kevin or I could do it for you.”

“Well, maybe then I’m too delicate to lift the five pound bags of flour I use to make coffee cake and cookies and bread . . . “

“Brat.”

“Bully.”

J.D. sighed. Despite his constant arousal, he was just about as content as he had been in years, maybe since he’d been forcibly “adapted”. Jessie was just what he had needed. A woman who could hold her own with him, who wasn’t afraid to challenge him, who made him laugh. Hell, she even provoked him deliberately on the rare occasions they were in the kitchen together, constantly putting herself bodily in his way as she did with Kevin, poking a sharp little elbow into his ribs hard, then apologizing with patently false sincerity.

The first time she did this, he hadn’t quite known how to take it, until he looked down at her and saw that she was having a hard time not bursting out laughing.

“It’s not going to be so funny if I stick my elbow into your ribs, young lady. It’ll knock a lightweight like you into next week,” he warned in his best no-nonsense tone, though he liked it that she felt comfortable enough with him to tease him like this. She certainly had no fear of him physically. In fact, she didn’t really seem to see either of them as male, per se, but rather as eunuchs. He wasn’t thrilled with that at all.

She looked up at him doubtfully. “This is me, scared,” she reported in a bland tone, leaning nonchalantly against the counter directly infront of the cupboard he was trying to get into.

Not about to be undone, J.D. merely picked her up and deposited her in the middle of the kitchen floor. Jessie frowned as he turned his back to her and got what he needed from the cupboard. “Hey, no fair removing a competitor from the field of battle!” she whined, knowing there was no way in the world she could do the same to him.

He merely grinned. “I fight dirty, little girl.”

“In other words, you cheat.” Men had been picking up their teeth for a week after even hinting something like that to him.

But his grin merely became more smug, if a touch evil. “I win,” he stated, sauntering away down the hall towards his den.

J.D. shook himself out of his reverie. “So did you come here to tell me you’re leaving?”

“No, I came here to ask you if you wanted me to leave.” She met his eyes squarely for the first time since this afternoon, and he melted inside but stiffened outside, becoming completely engorged in one full swell. Like the Grinch, his heart – as well as other parts of him – grew three sizes at once, making it hard for him to breath.

J.D. rose quickly, trying to hide the all-to prominent evidence of his arousal by sitting behind his desk. Every part of him literally ached to go over there and lift her into his arms – he wanted to feel the weight of her as he carried her into his bedroom and placed her beneath him on the big bed. His hands itched to learn the softness of her skin, to caress her breasts and use his callused fingertips to roll and pinch her nipples . . .

Realizing that the bent of his thoughts was not helping him any, he gruffly turned back to the work he had been doing before she came in until the phone rang. “I think we should give it another month,” he stated, picking up the phone with a gruff, “Hamilton.”

Puzzled at his abrupt change of demeanor, Jessie stood and walked out the door, half listening to the conversation he was having with whoever it was on the phone. At first it sounded like he’d just heard from a long lost friend, but quickly turned somber.

“Hey, B! It’s good to hear from you . . . You all right?”

Shaking her head, she mulled over what had happened until she fell asleep a half-hour later with no more answers than she’d had before.

J.D.’s avid gaze had followed her out the door hungrily, but he didn’t think of her again until he got into bed that night and replayed the scene, adding a very different ending that left them both sated and asleep in each others arms.

Chapter 4

Things remained very much the same for the next several weeks. Kevin was able to take some time and show Jessie the workings of the ranch, and she incorporated a lot of the information she’d gleaned from him into her story. She had taken to spending some afternoons outside, wandering around trying just to absorb the feeling of the place. She had no idea how long she’d be here, and wanted to pack in as much of it as she could while the wintry weather permitted.

Kevin had gone on another buying trip, and things with J.D. were just as they had always been – terse. Jessie sensed how controlled he was around her. He treated her as if she was a piece of furniture that could cook. Beyond breakfast, lunch, or dinner, whether or not she was there was a matter of no consequence to him. It irked her. Kevin would be gone at least another few days, if not a week or more, and she had to deal with the ugly stepbrother. The thought of brawny J.D. as a wicked stepsister in an ugly, frumpy gown gave her the first laugh she’d had since Kevin’s departure.

She wandered into an empty pasture, close to a ramshackle old barn that looked like it would collapse if she touched it. Both Kevin and J.D. had warned her in no uncertain terms to stay away from it because it might do just that, but Jessie had no interest in seeing the inside, especially when she remembered what J.D. had promised to do to her if he found out she had disobeyed him. The man was a true, natural dominant, and he spoke like he knew exactly what she would expect as a submissive.

She was enjoying the walk enormously. Sometimes it was just nice to get out, even if she was freezing her bippy off in the cool, winter air.

A patch of black moved in the dead grass, and she jumped about fifteen feet, worried that it was a snake. Instead, it turned out to be a scrawny little stray mama cat trying to pounce on a meal. Jessie called to it, and the cat lifted her head, but as soon as Jess took a step towards her, it lit off for the barn.

“No, you idiot cat, don’t go in there!” she yelled. For several long minutes, Jess stood outside the door to the decrepit building biting her lip, trying to entice the cat back out, but she had no luck. She could hear a chorus of higher pitched meows, and she knew that Mama Cat had a litter of little ones in a potentially dangerous building.

Not one to stand around when her mind was bent on rescue, she used all of her strength just to open one of the doors and peek her head in. She’d just go in long enough to grab the kitties and get out, she promised herself, having no particular interest in being killed by an old barn. It was very dark inside, so she stood still to let her eyes become accustomed, all the while wishing for a flashlight and praying that the strays were not squirreled away in the rickety loft.

Jess didn’t know it, but someone saw her enter the building. J.D. had been keeping a weather eye on her since Kevin wasn’t around to do it, and he saw her deliberately disobey him and go into the barn. What the reasoning was behind the action, he didn’t care. He spurred Chieftain into a full gallop as his vision blurred red with anger.

“Jessie!”

Startled by the fierce anger in his tone, Jess turned from where she had been crouching next to the nest of cats in the back corner of the barn. She had just barely succeeded in gathering all of the babies and mama into an old blanket she’d found and as she took her first step back towards J.D. and the door, her foot landed on a soft floorboard and she sank knee deep through the rotted wood.

At her startled cry, J.D.’s heart lodged firmly in his throat. He ripped the old door off its hinges and ran into the barn, following the sound of her voice unerringly. James stopped several feet away then dropped to his belly, as if she had fallen through ice rather than wood. There was no telling how steady the floor was.

But there she was, in all of her naughty glory, sitting on her bottom with her left leg buried in the floor up to her shapely knee, and what did she say to him? “Here. Take the cats.”

J.D. didn’t know whether to yell or laugh. So that was why she had gone into the building. Well, it certainly wasn’t reason enough to get her out of a good, sound spanking. And he was just the man to deliver it. “Screw the blasted felines, honey. I’m more worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” she lied, trying not to think about how mad he had to be at her. “I’m stuck, but I’m fine.”

J.D. drew a breath, suppressing a smile, despite his anger. “You’re in a lot more trouble than just being stuck, young lady, and you damn well know it.” As he spoke he crawled towards her on his belly,

The first thing he did when he reached her was a quick medical assessment - the ABC’s of first aid. When he graduated to a cursory check for broken bones, he refused to react to the wonderful feel of her beneath his hands, but rather kept his mind on the matter at hand. “Let’s see if we can get you out of here in one piece.”

“And the kitties,” she prompted unfailingly.

The look he gave her told her she shouldn’t be pushing her luck, but then he sighed. “And the kitties.”

Eventually, he decided to pull back some of the floorboards, but only enough to allow her to reclaim her foot. Jessie watched closely as he ripped up the wood, seeing the muscles bunch and flow beneath his t-shirt nearly made her mouth water, until she realized that very little of what he was removing was truly rotted wood. The man was breaking two-by-fours right and left like they were toothpicks!

When her foot was freed, he checked it, too, but luckily there was nothing wrong with it. He made her crawl ahead of him, so that he could watch her, carrying the kittens in his own hands. J.D. didn’t allow her to stand up until they were at the door, and then only long enough to sweep her into his arms, babies and all, settling the lot infront of him on Chieftain.

He set her down in the kitchen, with a stern command. “Stay!” The kittens and mother cat were deposited in the downstairs bathroom for the time being. J.D.’s first concern was to satisfy himself that she was ok. Then he’d spank the daylights out of her. He pushed her ahead of him up the stairs, occasionally allowing himself to swat her behind, as if the spanks he wanted to give her were leaking out and his hands had a mind of their own. Jessie yelped with each sharp connection between his callused palm and her tender posterior, but she found that covering her bottom with her hands was entirely ineffectual, especially when he caught her wrists at the small of her back and used them to guide her down the hall to his own bathroom, all the while delivering those blistering swats to her completely defenseless backside.

Once in his room, Jess pulled away – knowing ruefully that if he hadn’t wanted to let her go, she wouldn’t have been able to get away – saying, “Stop that!” like a petulant child. J.D., however, was having none of her sass.

“Take off your pants,” he ordered, putting his hands on his hips and regarding her like the recalcitrant child she was acting.

“Excuse me?” Jessie was mortified when a blush stained her cheeks hotly.

With that look on his face, all it took from him was one small step toward her.

“I’m doing it; I’m doing it!” she said petulantly, never taking her eyes off of him. James looked so imposing, so threatening. She didn’t want to take off her pants; it would make her even more vulnerable to him than she already was, and that was dangerous.

J.D. was pissed. More pissed than he’d been in a long time, but there was no way he wasn’t going to punish her for this. She’d been told, by himself and by Kevin, not to go into that old barn. Had she listened? No. So now she was going to pay the price. And, Heaven help him, he was going to let himself collect it from her pretty little hide.

She was undressing with extreme reluctance, and that little hint of fear was back in her eyes. He didn’t like to see it there, especially knowing that he was the cause. But he supposed she knew she was in trouble, and had a good idea what to expect the result would be. Seeing her standing there in just a frilly pair of lacy white undies and a sweater made him swallow hard. J.D. sat down quickly on the bed, not wanting her to feel threatened by the enormous erection that strained against his pants, as usual. His voice was gruffer than he intended when he said, “Come over here.”

Jess obeyed automatically but slowly until she stood directly infront of where he sat, feeling small and overwhelmed by his size, even with him seated. J.D. took her small hands in his huge ones, noting with a grimace the scrapes and scratches on her delicate flesh. His hands felt their way up her arms to her shoulders, then down her sides, reassuring himself again that she was not seriously hurt. “Did you hit your head?” he asked softly as his roughly competent hands cupped her hips and pressed gently, testing her pelvis then running down her legs.

“No.”

She was beginning to shake, whether from reaction to the fall or to him, he didn’t know. His fingers pressed around her left knee and she flinched, almost falling until she grabbed onto his broad shoulders. “Turn around.” She complied. There was a big old angry bruise just beginning to form at the back of her left knee, and it was just the slightest bit swollen in comparison to the right. J.D. turned her back around gently to face him then sat her next to him on the bed. “I’ll get you some ice in a minute for that knee. You should probably keep it up for a while, and take some aspirin.”

“Ok.”

“Jessie?”

“Yes?”

“What would your brothers or your father have done if you deliberately disobeyed them?”

She didn’t want to answer that question. Nope. Not gonna.

J.D. turned to her, but she refused to look at him until he physically held her chin with her fingers and forced the issue. “Answer me.”

“I just wanted to save the kittens. I didn’t go into the building on a whim, you know. I don’t have a death wish.”

“You can’t save every animal in need of saving, Jessica, especially not at considerable risk to yourself,” J.D. warned. “Answer my question.”

Damn him for having a one-track mind! “They’d be angry.”

J.D. took a deep breath and did what he’d wanted to do since his heart began to beat him to death when he saw her disappear into that building – he gave a gentle tug of her wrist and she fell over his lap. Her panties were down around her ankles before she had time to react, and his broad palm connected with her rounded white bottom with a satisfying smack that was music to J.D.’s ears.

With every other woman that he’d disciplined – they were very few and very far between and very well paid for it - he’d felt constrained. It was play-acting, and he was too damned concerned about not accidentally going to far and really hurting them. With Jessie, the action and the emotions behind the punishment were real. He had made a rule for her to follow, and she had broken it. This was the consequence.

She had never seemed particularly afraid of him, and he had gotten used to having her around. J.D. felt much less concerned than he ever had that his unusual strength might have dire consequences. Jessie’d helped him have a little more confidence in his ability to temper his abilities and desires, except perhaps this particular desire to impress on her the importance of obeying his rules. He did not intend to stop this spanking until she was well and truly aware of just how displeased he was at her disobedience. Hopefully she would think twice about being naughty in the future, but somehow he doubted it.

Jessie couldn’t believe how much his spanking hurt. True, it had been a long while since she’d earned a spanking, and, though she’d never admit it in a thousand years, she supposed she’d earned this one. It irked her, however, that he was the one administering it. Somehow, it just wasn’t right. There was no emotional connection between them, and that made the spanking somehow almost gratuitous. Her father and her brothers had loved her and had been rightfully looking out for her well being. But J.D. was merely her employer. An employer who didn’t like her and didn’t want to be around her. Where was the emotional investment in that?

Her butt was too much on fire for her to dwell on the particulars. Right now, she was just trying not to be too much of a baby at his ham-handed punishment. Dear God, he’d only just begun and she wanted to scream her head off with each loud splat of his big paw against her poor butt. He was holding her outside arm at the wrist against the small of her back, and one of his heavy legs was draped over both of hers, so there was no way she would miss out on each and every exquisitely painful second of his tender attentions.

J.D. was fairly methodical in his spanking. He strove for a nice, even fire-engine red not only on her enticingly curved little bottom, but also at the tops of her thighs. He could see the angry pattern of the imprint of his hand in pink and red, concentrated largely at her “sweet-spot” – the place where bottom met thigh, and was calculated to make her think of these moments every time she sat down for the next few days.

When he finally stopped, he did not immediately release her. Jessie had long since given up fighting his hold, but was lying limply over his leg, literally bawling. Although J.D. felt absolutely no remorse for his actions, he did sympathize with Jessie’s position, having been in it himself many a time when his strict mother or father decided they’d had enough of his wild behavior.

After allowing her a few minutes to compose herself, J.D. said calmly, “When I make a rule, I expect it to be obeyed. You are never to put yourself in that kind of danger again. If I hadn’t seen you go into that barn after those damn cats, there’s no telling when you’d’ve been found.”

All Jessie wanted out of life was to disappear from sight. She had never felt so totally humiliated – not to mention punished – in all her years. To her intense discomfort, J.D. then went and did the exact opposite of what she wanted him to do – he lifted her in his strong arms with all the gentleness of a mother and carried her into her own room, where he wiped away her tears and tucked her into bed. Jessie had been nursing a strong anger towards him for his high-handedness at taking her over his knee as if he had the right to. But then he had to go and do something sweet like that, even kissing her on the forehead and telling her not to worry about dinner, that he’d forage for himself amongst the leftovers.

Despite the pain in her bottom and her knee, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep almost immediately.

Chapter 5

When she woke, it was to a feeling of complete weightlessness.

“Put your arms around my neck, sweetie,” a gravelly voice above her commanded, and she obeyed sleepily, not totally awake. She must’ve imagined that he leaned his rough cheek against the top of her head as she cuddled closer against his reassuringly big, solid body.

At attention as usual, J.D. smiled wryly as she lay trustingly in his arms and promptly went back to sleep. He was getting used to being uncomfortably aroused around her. He sat the both of them down carefully infront of the fire in the den, settling his precious cargo comfortably on top of his broad chest, belly to belly with her head tucked just beneath his chin. The radio was playing softly with occasional interruptions regarding the severe weather, and he spent the next hour or so merely holding her, occasionally stroking her back or playing with the curling ends of her hair.

God, he wanted her! But he was discovering that even this satisfied some hitherto unknown need – just being close to a woman. J.D. had no doubt that it was because Jessie had become special to him. He deeply regretting having to spank her, but would never regret having done it. It was the right thing to do, and he would do it again if she misbehaved in the future. The fact that he was able to give her a very thorough, undoubtedly painful spanking without ever having lost control of himself or his strength made him feel on top of the world. When he looked down at her, he saw everything he’d been denied in his life wrapped up in one small, womanly package. He wanted her, and he would have her, without feeling guilty or being unable to be himself for fear of accidentally hurting her.

A slow, sensual stretch was the first clue that she might be waking up. James smacked a kiss on the top of her head loudly, then felt her stiffen as she realized where she was. His hands rubbed gently up and down her back, easily preventing her from moving off him, but still hypnotically soothing. Before either of them had the chance to think about it, he tipped her head back and kissed her, pressing firm, moist lips over hers. Startled, she stilled, like a fawn sensing a hunter. He kept stroking her back, keeping the kiss as undemanding as possible until she relaxed some.

Jessie moved away from him, searching his eyes. Surprise was written all over her face. “What am I doing here?” She stretched again, rubbing unconsciously against the already prominent bulge in his pants.

“Kissing me.”

To his immense satisfaction, she didn’t try to get up, instead burying her face against his neck as she collapsed back on top of him. “Why am I down here?”

“Snow. Power’s out. This room is the only room we heat with the generator.”

Suddenly, her head jerked up. “What happened to the cats?”

J.D.’s mouth slanted downwards wryly. “I wouldn’t think you’d care what happened to those mangy felines when all they got you was a good spanking.”

He knew he shouldn’t have mentioned it as soon as the blasted words were out of his mouth. He could feel her go all stiff on him and snort a little, then she moved off to the side, landing unceremoniously on her sore bottom and taking all that marvelous warmth with her. Jessie blushed when she couldn’t prevent a small yelp that escaped her upon the connection of her tender nether parts with the hard floor, but she studiously avoided looking at him, afraid he might be grinning at her discomfort. Instead, J.D. was concerned. “Is it your knee?”

“No, it’s not my knee,” she snapped back, the blush getting even more fevered.

“Oh.” J.D. had never really had to deal with the after-effects of his discipline, but he said what was on his mind. “Good.”

Jessie, who was bending down to pull on a pair of sweat pants, reached over and smacked him hard on the arm. J.D. merely smiled, glad that she still felt comfortable enough with him to do that. “Where are they?” she repeated, glaring at him like a petulant little girl.

J.D. pointed to a dark, quiet corner of the room where he’d arranged a nice little whelping box for the mama, who was suckling three busy little kittens on top of an old shearling coat he no longer wore. He’d taken her away from the babies just long enough to give her a dinner of people tuna and milk, which she’d mowed her way through like a stevedore, then put everyone together in a cozy box in the warm room, well away from foot traffic.

Jessie was amazed that he’d gone to all that trouble when she knew he truly didn’t care one direction or another about them, and said as much. J.D. merely shrugged, not willing to admit that he’d done it because he knew the cats were important to her. “Well, I’m glad they’re safe.” She stood and walked to the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” came a sharp inquiry from behind her.

“To my room,” she sniffed.

He knew if he insisted she stay with him, she would refuse just because he was laying down the law and she was a stubborn woman, perfectly willing to freeze to death up in her room just to spite him. So all he said was, “Come back down when you get cold.”

And she did, not twenty minutes later, her feet and fingers frozen. J.D. threw the blanket he had been using off, in silent invitation to join him. Jessie turned her back on him as if he’d never made the gesture, preferring instead to warm herself by standing directly infront of the fire for a moment.

Once she’d curled in a corner of the big overstuffed couch behind where he sat on the floor, they were quiet for a long time together, and that was another thing that J.D. liked about Jessie. She didn’t need to be entertained. She’d brought several books down and delved into those, while he rifled through some paperwork, not really accomplishing much because of her distracting presence. His exceptional hearing picked up her unusual breathing pattern sooner than any other man would have been able to – she was sitting there shivering, the brat! And he knew she’d stay there till hell froze over, rather than join him where she belonged. So he removed her choice in the matter by reaching up and pulling her down onto him, spreading his legs to accommodate hers between them and arranging her much as she had been while she slept contentedly on his chest.

“What are you doing?” she asked, pouting prettily up at him from where she was curled on his chest like a contented kitten.

“Putting you in your place,” he answered in all honesty.

But this was different from before. Much different. They were both wide-awake and achingly aware of each other. She was still shivering in his arms, and though he was likely to broil, he arranged the down comforter he’d stolen from his bed over the two of them, draping it over her and tucking it in as much as possible. He exuded heat like a furnace and knew that body heat would warm her faster than anything else. The problem was that she was also warming him faster than anything else. There was no way that any red-blooded American woman would mistake the ridge in his sweat pants for anything other than what it was. But she didn’t seem to be particularly concerned, and J.D. wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. He wanted her to see him as a man. As a mate. As her only mate.

He had almost come to believe that anything was possible with her.

Uncomfortably aware of his arousal, she said in a small voice, “Perhaps I should get up . . . “ Jessie tried to move one of her legs over his and climb off him, but his heavy leg blocked her move.

J.D.’s arms tightened around her gently. “No, stay with me. Let me keep you warm.”

Jess thought for a moment, looking up at him from beneath dense black lashes. He was full and hard against the inside of her leg, but she wasn’t at all concerned that he would force himself on her. And, surprisingly, J.D. was extremely comfortable to sleep on, although she had never felt quite so aware of the strength and size of a man, as if every nerve ending she owned was on full alert, but still felt completely safe and secure. It was as if her body recognized him – even if her mind didn’t – and knew he would do her no harm. Well, except spanking.

Suddenly, within the surrounding warmth of his arms and legs, it was all just too much to think about. J.D. felt the exact moment when she surrendered and stopped fighting what was probably an innate sense of self-preservation. Physically trusting a man that she didn’t know all that well, who was at least twice her size, was not something any woman would do easily, and he recognized that fact. But he considered it a personal triumph when her whole body went limp against his as she found a comfortable sleeping position, tucked her forehead against the side of his neck and promptly went to sleep.

J.D. took a deep, deep breath, his lungs expanding and moving the delicate woman cuddled against him. She smelled and felt wonderful, and it was worth the incessant ache in his groin to have her in his arms like this. Jessie’s innocent trust in him was beginning to make him trust in himself. He would tear his own arm off before he’d let anyone hurt her, including himself, spankings not included.

It took him much, much longer to find that marvelous oblivion, but the heat from the fire proved stronger than the heat that blazed from within him. He finally did fall asleep, one hand buried possessively in her hair, cradling her fragile skull, and the fingers of the other tucked under the waistbands of her pants and panties, lying on the beginning swell of the tender bottom he had so recently blistered as if he owned it.

J.D. was the last to fall asleep but the first to awaken to the rough texture of cat tongue as Mama Kitty industriously washed the short bristles of his morning beard. “Scat, cat,” he shooed her away with a hoarse whisper, not wanting to move himself or his lady. In the night they had changed positions completely, so that he now lay atop her, his legs parting hers naturally, his morning erection demanding release against the very flesh that would yield the ultimate pleasure, albeit that flesh was covered by several layers of clothing.

It was somewhat chilly as the fire had gone out during the night, but he was loath to leave her to rebuild it. Instead he indulged himself by stroking a possessive finger down her cheek, then slowly bunching up the sweater she was wearing, over her belly to where he would have been able to see the color of her bra, if she’d been wearing one. What he got was an eyeful of perfectly creamy flesh and a saucy pink nipple, already erect in the cool air.

“What do you think you’re doing, Peeping Tom?” Jessie inquired, not quite managing to sound outraged.

His smile was rakish and definitely dangerous. “Enjoying the view.”

When she moved to pull the sweater down, blushing furiously, he kept his hands around her ribcage, thwarting her attempt at modesty.

“J.D.!” she squealed, squirming a little, enough to make him take advantage and consolidate his position by pressing himself against her vulnerable privates, leaving no doubt as to his intentions. Her second “J.D.!” went up by at least an octave as she renewed her struggles to pull the sweater down.

“Yes, Miss Bates?” he whispered, loving the feel of her beneath him and being comfortable enough with himself and with her to tease and play, despite the fact that all he truly wanted to do was claim her in the most elemental of ways.

Jessie’s breathing was heavy, and it was not from his weight. J.D. pushed the sweater under her armpits, completely exposing her full, round breasts to his devouring gaze. He watched avidly as the tender nipples grew even more turgid, whether from the temperature of the room or her own desires, he didn’t know, but he followed his own instinct to warm them by taking a fleshy bud into his hot, wet mouth and suckling strongly.

J.D. was amazed that the deep moan that was ripped from Jessica had come from her at all until she began to try to dislodge him in earnest. She soon tired of trying to lift a man as large as himself. He merely hung on, never letting go of his precious captive; tongue worrying the tender bud busily.

“Please get off me, J.D.,” she asked breathlessly.

“Am I hurting you?” in his best innocent voice. He moved to take most of his weight on his arms beside her, leaving their lower bodies in intimate contact.

A huffy sigh, but no response other than her heavy breathing.

His left hand began to wander down her side. “Or are you just enjoying this a little too much for comfort?” The errant hand slid under the waistband of her panties and sweatpants, aiming unerringly for her most feminine of spots.

Jessica began to writhe and buck again in an equally unsuccessful attempt to dislodge him or deter him from his target. No such luck. Only when he boldly held her most private place in his hand did she still. J.D. watched her chest rising and falling like a bellows, her pupils dilated, pulse beating rapidly in her neck. He moved only his long, thick middle finger, delving gently between those warm, soft folds. Her hand shot down to pull ineffectually at his wrist, but despite her best efforts, the work-roughened pad of his finger found her pleasure button as if he’d caressed her that way a thousand times before.

One flick made her draw in such a big breath he thought she was going to faint with it. “Oh, dear God,” she sighed prayerfully.

Deliberately, he moved down a little to collect some of her dew and spread it back over her most sensitive flesh. To his relief, his fingertip was literally drenched with her honey. She wanted him!

Two more flicks wrenched a groan from her lips; her hips levering off the floor and tightening her grip on his wrist. Gently, J.D. pried her fingers away to bring her arm up above her head, anchoring it there by lacing his fingers with hers – that act in itself becoming an intimate act of possession. He was half laying on her other arm, so she was effectively bound until he decided to release her. To allow himself more access to her body, he slid a little to the right, but not enough that it would be easy for her to dislodge him if she should try.

Three flicks and she sucked in another large breath, swallowing hard, her head moving restlessly back and forth as he conquered her body with frightening ease, bending his head to raze an impudent nipple with the sharp edges of his teeth, then soothe the tiny pain with wet lips and tongue.

Jessie moaned loud and low, a sound she barely recognized as her own. “J.D., please.” That was about as coherent as she could get at the moment. Her breathing became much more labored as he worried both her clit and her nipple mercilessly.

“Please what, sweetie? Please make you come?”

“Oooooooohhhhhh!” was all she could get out. Her body was one big throbbing nerve as J.D. ruthlessly built an intolerable ache that was threatening to rip her apart. She could barely see straight as he teased her mercilessly.

His sharp teeth nipped her earlobe as he whispered sensual promises in her ear. “That’s just what I intend to do, baby. Make you come.”

“Mmmmmmmmm, ahhhhhhhhhhh, God, please, no, J.D.!” There was nothing Jessie could do to resist the tidal wave of passion that swamped her as he claimed her lips, plundering her mouth with his tongue and relentlessly torturing her little pleasure button.

One more foray with that relentless finger to gather just a little more of her honey, then back to slip effortlessly over and over that aching bud. J.D. watched her closely as she was caught in the web of passionate response he’d woven, unable to control herself, writhing to the tune he called with his lips and fingers. God, she was gorgeous! Her unguarded responses on top of the sight of her beautiful body made him feel like he was going to explode right along with her.

His mouth recaptured the lonesome bud of her nipple, flicking it as mercilessly as his finger tormented her clitty. Jessie’s hips moved more and more restlessly as she moaned beneath him, nearing her peak at his slow, torturous insistence.

When she could tolerate the ache no longer, Jessie couldn’t keep from crying out. “J.D.!” as her body began convulsing uncontrollably. He stayed with her, moving that restless digit over and over her clenching flesh, milking every last drop of pleasure from her ultra-sensitized flesh until she collapsed beneath him.

J.D. gently removed the rest of their clothing while she lay practically comatose, the only thought on his mind to get as close to her as possible. He had to get inside that lovely body or die trying. Just as she regained her sensibilities and looked down between their bodies, James positioned himself at the entrance to her body. Her eyes became huge as saucers. Kendra hadn’t been exaggerating - he was much better endowed than the usual man. Jess pressed her fingertips into the dark forest of hair over his heavy chest muscles tentatively, and met his eyes. He saw the vulnerability there, realizing that she needed reassurance from him. The disparity in their sizes and the possible potential for harm to any woman he subjected himself to almost had him paralyzed with fear for so long . . . He saw some of that fear reflected in her beseeching eyes.

“Shhh, baby, it’ll be alright,” he said with more confidence than he felt.

His nagging gonads overrode his common sense as he pressed just the head of his penis against her opening, then surged forward, past the inconsequential scrap of flesh that protected her against invaders. It felt so good to be encased in all that wet warmth he nearly lost it right there, but instead anger coursed through him, distracting him a little. J.D. rose up on one elbow and looked down at her accusingly. “You’re a virgin.”

Jessie’s eyes were closed, and two tears leaked out the sides. There had been a sharp, burning pain at his invasion, and now she was trying to come to grips with the solid length inside her. “I was,” she breathed hoarsely.

J.D. bent his head, pressing his forehead to her heart. “I’m sorry.”

Two softly sensual hands made their way up his flanks to his smooth back, then broad shoulders. “I’m not,” she stated softly, but emphatically, not quite succeeding in wrapping his impressive breadth in her arms, but making an admirable attempt.

Her unexpected touch made his hips buck involuntarily, as his head jerked up to catch her eyes. “You’re not?” his voice was gravelly, as he was unable to stop the inexorable rhythm of his body on hers.

Jessie sucked in a breath as he stretched and filled her completely, touching her womb easily with each incredibly strong stroke. “No. Make love to me,” she whispered, gently nipping his earlobe.

It was all the encouragement he needed. J.D. hadn’t been so completely out of control since before he’d changed, but Jessie met him thrust for thrust, holding him gently despite his ferocity. Slender legs locked around him, high up on his waist, giving him deeper, fuller access to her luscious body.

Her innocent, teasing touches drove him crazy, but when she reared up a little and boldly clamped her sharp little teeth over his nipple, it was the end for him. He came with a long, low growl that gave Jessie goosebumps and made Sammy growl in response.

J.D. collapsed on top of her, his face buried in her neck, breathing loudly in her ear. Jessie’s eyes teared unexpectantly. Despite the intimacy of what they had just shared, her innate instinct for self-preservation rose to the forefront several moments too late, and Jess knew she dare not allow herself to revel in his arms as she longed to do. She had never felt safer than when he took her in his arms. But he was not free to be the man she needed, that was more than crystal clear. Rather than throw herself into a relationship with him that would end in nothing but pain, Jessie instead withdrew, physically and emotionally from the source of her ultimate joy – him. Somehow she knew that this was not a good beginning for them. She already half-loved him, but he was all tied up within himself about something, and Jessie knew without a doubt that whatever it was didn’t bode well for the two of them.

Chapter 6

It was Jessie who made the first move in the aftermath of their passion, saying, “Would you move off me a little, please, you’re heavy and I’m having a hard time breathing.”

Startled by her carefully neutral voice in the darkness, J.D. moved reluctantly to her left, and Jessie all but sprinted out from beneath him, standing to snap on the battery light that had somehow gotten turned off. Her clothes were scattered where he’d thrown them as he’d disrobed her in the heat of the moment, and she scurried to retrieve them, presenting J.D. with a wonderful view of a still reddened bottom, then a thoughtful, almost somberly beautiful face. She hobbled a little as she walked to the sofa and began putting her things back on.

“Did I hurt you?” the loaded question was asked so softly that she couldn’t meet his eyes or he was likely to see the tears filling hers.

The truth was, that, no, he hadn’t hurt her. But it seemed that was likely what he would do in the end. The little clairvoyant elves in her head had been right; he had taken her virginity. But why couldn’t she have known beforehand that it was going to be all muddled up like this? “No, you didn’t hurt me,” she answered too quickly, too quietly, unable to meet his sharp gaze.

“Then why don’t you come back here with me where it’s warm,” where you belong, he longed to finish. Jessie stole a peek at his face, and he was wearing his “no nonsense” expression, meaning he may have phrased it as a question, but it was really a command. His dark eyes were hooded, dimpled chin angled down stubbornly. She could sense the tenseness in his body from where she stood, as if he would fight her if she defied him.

Only half dressed, Jessie grabbed the remainder of her clothing and ran from him like a coward, throwing disjointedly over her shoulder something to the effect of, “Gotta use the bathroom.” She was too raw, her feelings too exposed, her heart laid bare for him to trample on, if inadvertently. She had to get away from him, collect herself, and gird her loins. It was no secret what he wanted to do with her loins, again. So soon . . .

James was both surprised and concerned. Stark naked and entirely unconcerned about it, he stalked her to the hall bathroom and pounded hard on the door. “Jessie? You come out here right now. I want to see you.”

“I’m fine, J.D.” She did sound better than she had when she left the den.

But he was not going to be deterred. “Then come out here and prove it.”

“Why don’t you come in here? The door’s unlocked – not that you couldn’t break it down if you wanted to.”

It was that reference to what she’d seen him do this afternoon while he was getting her foot unstuck that stopped him in his tracks as he advanced into the bathroom. Suddenly unsure of himself and getting angrier by the minute at the both of them, he growled, “You were limping. Are you ok?”

“For the twenty-fifth time, yes, I’m fine.”

His eyes narrowed, tone dangerously low in warning. “Don’t give me any of your sass, woman. I won’t hesitate to tan your hide for the second time today if I think you need it.” Somehow, nude and obviously aroused, he appeared even more threatening than usual.

Huge, haunting eyes raised to his as she bit her lip in momentary uncertainty, then he watched her carefully collect an aura of dignity around herself like she was drawing a cloak closed. “My knee hurts a little. I thought I’d go into the kitchen and get some ice.”

J.D. backed down warily. “I’ll get it. You go sit on the couch and put it up.”

From that point until he left early that morning, he was as solicitous and neutered as a nursemaid, making sure that she was comfortable on the couch – warm enough, had enough aspirin, keeping ice or a bag of frozen veggies on her knee constantly. It was ten a.m. before the lights suddenly came up, but by that time, she was alone. Ranch work waited for no one and nothing. He’d left after gruffly making sure one last time that she was ok. By that time, he’d wanted to get away from her, and it seemed to him that she had wanted to get away from him from the moment it was over.

It was nearing dinnertime now. He knew that the power had been on for most of the day, and that he should be heading in to dinner. But things had happened too fast, and he didn’t know what to make of his own or her behavior. He was, above all things, grateful to her and happy to know that he could function as a man and as a disciplinarian without the ever present fear that he might step over that fine line the mutations had drawn for him between animal lust and violence.

But he still wanted her, unbelievably a thousand times moreso than before he had had her. Violently, totally, completely. Now he knew what it was like to feel her turn to liquid fire in his arms, to sink himself into her hot, welcoming flesh. He wanted to be at her morning, noon, and night, anytime, any place, any way he could. Was that normal or a result of the mega-doses of testosterone he’d been subjected to? He didn’t know. And it ate at him just as fiercely as his lust for her.

And she had left him afterwards – both physically and mentally. That puzzled him. Even most of the women he’d had to pay for liked a little cuddle afterwards, an intimate closeness that acknowledged the previous passion. She had gotten up and started dressing like she expected to find fifty dollars on her dresser for her time. J.D. snorted, jerking Chieftain’s reins up short. Hell, he’d pay a million times that if he could just have her beneath him again, but he had missed the intimacy of holding her in the afterglow, indulging himself in unhurriedly teasing touches while she curled against his side.

By some sort of mutual unspoken treaty, the interlude was never addressed by either of them, although it ate each of their hearts out in a different way. Jessie was terribly sad that they had had such a wonderful beginning, but she knew it was not likely to be a pretty ending. Being in his arms had been heaven, and it was what she longed for during the cold, lonely nights that followed. But she knew that he was somehow not truly free to love her; she only wished she’d known that before they’d made love. So she retreated in self-preservation, getting solace from the story she had created and could control. At least her hero and heroine would find happily ever after by the end of the book – guaranteed. Jess wished someone could give her that kind of guarantee in real life.

J.D. would have given his left nut to crack the wall of ice she’d erected, turning the situation over and over in his mind until his head hurt from thinking about it. At least fifty times a day he resolved to confront her and have it out, hoping that it would end up in the sweet oblivion of her arms, but not quite trusting either of them enough to go through with it. He wondered if he’d hurt her and she was just too stubborn to admit it. He tortured himself night and day because he wasn’t absolutely sure she’d had no pain from him. He even second guessed spanking her, although he always arrived at the fact that she had deserved it, and he wouldn’t back away from doing exactly the same thing again. Maybe he’d been too aggressive, too raw, not sensitive enough to her needs, too big, too . . . too . . . too . . .

It wasn’t at all like him to question himself like this, and he resented it, which, in turn, made him resent her and the icy reserve she unfailingly presented to him. How could she just pretend they’d never come together so wildly in the very den they sat in days and weeks later?

Invariably, he would shake his head and wonder how anyone could ever understand a woman. Well, he thought contrarily, if she could ignore it, so could he. It was killing him slowly by inches, but he’d do it rather than going crawling to her like his genitals wanted.

Kevin arrived home to find his brother and their housekeeper – a woman whom he was rapidly coming to consider a close friend – weren’t on speaking terms, not that they had ever been the best of buddies. J.D. continued to pretend that fairies cleaned and cooked, and Jessie treated him with the calm, impersonal courtesy Kevin had come to expect. But there was more to it than that. The way J.D. looked at her when he thought no one else would notice was so starkly emotional that it was embarrassing to see. Jessie was losing weight she could ill afford to lose, and keeping to herself even more than before, making lots of excuses not to join them for dinner. He wondered what had happened in his absence, but didn’t dare ask either one of them.

Jessie didn’t ask J.D. whether or not she could stay after the second month. She figured if he truly didn’t want her here, he could let her know. Otherwise, she spent as much time as she could with Kevin and the ranch hands, absorbing what they told her during the day and using it in her “great American romance novel” during the evening, typing away into the wee hours of the morning. The more time she spent smiling and laughing with his brother, the more sullen and surly J.D. got.

It was one of those nights when she was on a roll and the words were just flowing out of her fingers without having to think about it. She heard J.D. clomp loudly down the hall past her door, not even slowing down as she half-wished, half-feared he would but stomping into his own bedroom. She heard and felt the door slam shut, and couldn’t help but imagine what he’d look like as he got undressed and into bed.

Jessie knew that he slept in the nude – she’d washed Kevin’s pajamas, but there were never any for J.D. She imagined herself already warm and sleepy in their big bed, awake only enough when he came in to enjoy the show. James would try to be as quiet as possible while removing his boots and socks, then slowly unbuttoning his denim shirt as his eyes met hers and he realized she was awake.

He’d bring his gorgeous, half-naked body over to her side of the bed and lean over her with a husky, “Darlin’, you shouldn’t be awake this late,” as he kissed her warmly. He would be hers truly, then, and she would feel comfortable enough to slide her hand into the opening of his shirt to stroke the fine fur covering the firm plates of muscle.

“I wanted to be awake when you came up,” she would say in a sleepy-little-girl voice.

J.D. would move away then, taking his warmth with him as he issued a slight warning that made a fissure of fear-pleasure run down her spine, to settle at the sensitive globes of her oft-warmed bottom. “That’s why I set a bedtime for you, Honey. You’re always staying up too late and getting up to early, running your health down. I won’t have you getting sick, little girl.”

She would turn onto her back to watch him finish undressing – unbuttoning and pulling his shirt and undershirt off that magnificent chest at the same time, then shucking his jeans and briefs down those tree-trunk legs in much the same way. Unselfconsciously nude, he would pin her with that dominant he-man gaze of his, and ask in a soft, firm voice, “Do I need to warm your little fanny to teach you that I don’t want you up until all hours of the night waiting for me?”

She would squirm under that look, no doubt recalling the many times he had done just that to bring his recalcitrant woman into line, reinforcing a rule and teaching her a painful lesson by roasting her bottom good. “No, Sir,” she would reply with just the right touch of meekness – enough to get her out of the potential spanking but not enough to make him suspicious of her sincerity.

“Good girl. Now go back to sleep, love. I’m gonna take a shower, and I want you to be asleep when I get into bed.” He would turn and walk towards the connecting bathroom then, giving her a view to remember of his round, chiseled butt.

Her cheeky sense of humor would get her into trouble then. “What are you going to do, wake me up and ask me if I’m asleep when you finally get here?”

“Jessica Lynn Hamilton,” that raspy warning tone would send her into shivers as he would turn and announce, “your sassy tongue has just gotten you a morning spanking, young lady. Care to try for a paddling to go along with it?”

“No, Sir.” The meekness would not be an act this time. The paddle wielded by his strong hands would have her screaming from the first stroke.

“Then go to sleep like you were told to do several hours ago, before I change my mind about tomorrow morning and give you what you deserve tonight.” With that promise, he would disappear into their bathroom, and she would obediently fall off to sleep until he came to bed, naked and slightly damp, smelling of shampoo and soap and sandalwood powder, to gather her in against him, fitting her smaller frame into the curve of his big body and wrapping her tightly in his arms, safe and sound and loved –

“AAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHHHH!”

Jessie was jolted unceremoniously out of her fantasy by the sound of someone screaming. And it sounded like J.D. She threw on a light robe and ran out into the hall to find Kevin already there, staring sleepily at J.D.’s door.

“AAAHHHH – AUUUUGGGHH!” Another scream came from behind the door, but Kevin merely turned away back towards his own room.

“Aren’t you going to go in there and see what’s the problem?” Jessie prompted, appalled that he would be so callus.

His hand on the doorknob, Kevin yawned. “I know what the problem is: J.D.’s having a nightmare. He gets them occasionally, although he hasn’t had one for a while.”

Agitated at the thought that he was facing whatever it was alone in the dark, she said, “Well, aren’t you going to go in there and wake him up or something?”

“No. It’s kind of like someone who has an epileptic seizure. He doesn’t like to even acknowledge that he has them, much less have anyone make a fuss about it.”

Jessie could understand that, but she had to know he was ok. She bit her lip and opened the door.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Kevin singsonged behind her, but then he closed his door. They were both adults, and he doubted they would kill each other. Hopefully, he thought philosophically as he climbed under his own warm covers, they would fuck and get it over with, instead.

The room was pitch black, and Jess gave herself a minute before she moved to let her eyes adjust a bit, then she walked quietly across the room with much more confidence than she felt. She could see him lying on the far side of his bed, the sheets tangled around his waist as his body moved restlessly. As Jessie reached his side, James jackknifed up and screamed with all the considerable power in his lungs. She didn’t know what else to do other than to throw herself at him and hold on for dear life.

He was tense as a bowstring, his hands gripping the sheets and nearly shredding them before her eyes. “J.D.” she said in a calm, soothing tone. “J.D., it’s me, Jessie. You’re having a nightmare. Wake up.”

The scream stopped abruptly, as if he had latched onto the sound of her voice. Jess put her arms around him as best she could and instinctively began to rock them both while stroking his back and arms, feeling rivulets of sweat pouring off his body. Slowly, very slowly, he began to relax. She continued to talk to him in a quiet tone, just telling him over and over that he was safe and it was okay to wake up. Suddenly, his body went limp against her. She didn’t have the strength to hold him up, so they ended up falling backwards, J.D. landing heavily on top of her.

Her gown and robe were trapped beneath him along with two-thirds of her body, and the big behemoth didn’t show any signs of waking. In fact, he was beginning to snore. Carefully, Jessie placed her palm over his cheek.

It was wet. The rest of his face was cool, and she knew the moisture was not sweat. He had been crying and screaming. Jessie’s heart contracted painfully at the idea that he had been enduring this torment – whatever it was – all by himself. She shuddered to think what had happened originally to make him scream like that in the night.

“James,” she had mean to say it calmly but lowly, but the painful clenching of her heart had worked its way to her throat and it barely registered as a whisper.

But he started awake all at once, automatically rolling over on top of her and pressing a beefy forearm against her windpipe, practically cutting off her air supply. “What?!”

“It’s me, Jessie. You were having a nightmare,” she barely got out before he released his death grip.

“I was?” He rolled away and rubbed a hand over his eyes. Christ, she’d just been trying to help him and he’d practically choked her to death!

Feeling somewhat bereft and silly lying there in his bed like she belonged there, she answered, “Yes, you were screaming bloody murder and I just wanted to make sure you were ok. Would you like some water?”

“Yeah.” Any excuse to get her away from him. He hadn’t had a nightmare in a very long time; making love with her must’ve stirred up a lot of old feelings, good and bad. But he always felt very raw and out of control afterwards, which is why he had told his family to stay away from him until the next morning when he could present himself in a more civil manner. Then his guardian angel woke him out of a sound sleep and he did what came naturally to him after so many years of training, even when there’s a soft, round body lying beneath him – prepare to kill whoever it is that woke him before they kill him.

Jessie reappeared at his side much too quickly for him to collect himself, looking like a vision out of one of his wet dreams in her lacy white gown and robe. He drank the whole glass while staring boldly at the ill-concealed swell of her breasts beneath the flimsy cotton material, but the water couldn’t quench the terrible thirst that burned him. He knew how those firm, round globes felt in his hands . . .

The only thing that could quench that fire was a long drink of the woman he reached for reflexively, bent on relieving the interminable ache she created in him.

Jess found herself beneath him once again; her gown hiked up around her hips before she knew it. There was no underwear to protect her from the almost violent surge of his hips as he drove himself into her with no preamble. Jessie tried to relax, knowing that it would take a few seconds for the elasticity of her body to catch up with his considerable size, but her muscles clenched tightly in protest at the invasion.

J.D., having accomplished the only goal he’d had since she’d slipped out from under him during the power outage almost two and a half months ago, was strangely content once he was buried within her sweet warmth to the hilt. It was only then that he noticed her uneven breathing and soft moans, as if she was in pain. Lifting himself a little away from her, he turned on the bedside lamp, catching a wince before she had a chance to cover it up. “I’m hurting you,” he stated with a concerned look, beginning to withdraw from her slowly, so as not to compound her pain, although he was certain it was going to kill him to do it.

Jessie put a tentative hand on the small of his back and he stopped instantly, searching her tear stained face. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, feeling newly initiated muscles carefully stretching to accommodate him, learning how to accept his unfamiliar presence inside her. J.D.’s weight and her relaxation naturally made him sink deeper into that tight glove until he completely seated inside her.

J.D. thought he’d lose control and spill himself into her instantaneously; she was clamped so tight and wet around him, he was ready to explode. But he couldn’t forget how she’d looked when he’d first turned the light on – shocked, pained, a little frightened. This was probably not where she’d intended to end up when she came into his room to comfort him after hearing him scream the walls down in the middle of the night. He found he could no more deny himself the sweet solace of her body than he could stop breathing.

Her voice was shaky. “I – I just needed a little time – “

His hand stroked the baby-fine hair away from her face almost reverently. “And some preparation, too.” J.D. could have kicked himself for taking her this way, and he was amazed and grateful that she wasn’t fighting to get away from him. “I’m sorry. I just wanted you so badly – “ His lips savored hers. “I wouldn’t hurt you for the world,” he whispered truthfully.

Jessie’s mouth twisted wryly. “And that spanking was . . . “

“Well deserved,” he growled, cupping her cheek with his palm.

“Painful,” she supplied.

Warm, wet lips kissed her hairline, then the tip of her nose, then finally, deeply, her lips. “It was meant to be. I mean I would never want to hurt you sexually, and you know it.” Experimentally, he rocked against her a little, a huge, evil grin spreading over his face when she arched her back and moaned uncontrollably. “Mmmmmm, I like that.”

Determined to make her want him as much as he wanted her, J.D. began a campaign of intimate torture, using all of his special skills to interpret the responses she consciously or unconsciously supplied. Every catch of her breath, every time she swallowed hard, every half-gasp, half-moan was music to his ears. He spent a long time merely playing with her breasts, feeling her heartbeat increase each time he rolled a pink, peaked nipple, squeezing just enough to make her arch into his hands, silently begging for more. Each tight bud felt his fingertips and mouth until she was literally shivering with sensation, writhing beneath him rhythmically, inadvertently teasing him almost to the point of release by the restless movements of her hips.

His fingers journeyed to the juncture between their bodies, insistently parting the folds of her most private place to worry her pleasure button. That nearly brought her off the bed, and he laughed. “Ahhh, someone likes to have her little clitty stroked,” he breathed, until Jessie reached up and yanked his mouth down to hers, kissing him almost violently. But he would not be deterred. A rough, thick middle finger worried that fleshy spot mercilessly as he kept her captive beneath him.

“Damn you, J.D. – I want to come!” she moaned as his hand wandered up to her belly button, then back down, teasing her, deliberately making her wait for the ultimate release.

“And you will. When I allow you to,” he stated, secretly reveling in the strength of her responses to him.

A retaliatory gleam entered Jessie’s eyes, but he was too busy suckling at those wonderful raspberry nipples to notice until she gathered herself and clamped her inner muscles around his thick length tightly.

In automatic response to the agonizing pleasure of having his entire member squeezed within her warm wetness, his hips flexed. “Oh, Christ!” he groaned And then there was no stopping either of them. She bucked up against him, meeting his powerful thrusts with her own, matching him stroke for pounding stroke, demanding as much from him as he took from her. Jessie found her release before he did, screaming it out loudly until he caught her mouth with his, fucking it with his tongue as violently as he was fucking her sweet pussy.

When he came, J.D. literally roared with it, emptying himself into her so completely he felt like he’d spilled his soul to her, then collapsing on top of her in complete, utter exhaustion. Jessie, who could barely move herself, struggled beneath his considerable weight, just trying to get him to move to one side a little so that she could breathe.

J.D. mistakenly thought that she wanted to get up and leave him as she had before, and he stifled that possibility by ruthlessly trapped her arms to her sides in a smooth, practiced movement that had her immobilized in the blink of an eye. “You’re not going anywhere, Jessica Lynn,” he stated in no uncertain terms. There was no way he was going to let her go again. If he had to, he’d chain her to his side, or better yet, to the bed, with a chain only long enough to reach the stove.

Jessie pursed her lips, wheezing sarcastically, “Except to the hospital for oxygen if you don’t get off me, you big oaf!” J.D. immediately rolled to her right, just enough so that she could breath again. He wasn’t taking any unnecessary chances now that he had her back in his arms. She was his and it was about time she learned that lesson, one way or the other.

Chapter 7

J.D. wrapped his steely strong arms around her, pulling her back against him spoon fashion, cupping her round bottom in the cradle of his hips and legs. Jessie struggled a bit, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by his power and size, but although he allowed her enough room to be comfortable within her sinewy bonds, she knew there would be no chance of escaping him this time. She could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck, stirring the short strands of hair each time he exhaled. One thick arm created a hard, hairy pillow, while the other lay deliberately between her breasts, cupping one with surprising delicacy in his broad palm. Jess heard him sigh. "Now you’re where you belong," he growled possessively into her ear.

Nothing he could have said would have startled her more, and she snorted in surprise. "Bull. You can’t stand me, James David Hamilton. You’ve made that painfully clear ever since I got here. You don’t like women."

J.D. deliberately moved his perpetually hard cock against her vulnerable bottom. "Does this feel like I don’t like women or that I can’t stand you?"

"I never said you were gay. You would just prefer not to have a woman around, and I think you would particularly prefer not to have me around."

He heard the undertone of hurt in that statement. Jessie wasn’t used to being disliked on sight. Her warm, open personality, sense of humor and fun generally attracted people to her. And he’d made it known in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing to do with her from the start. J.D. pulled her over so that he could cuddle her against his chest. He didn’t quite know what to say, other than to tell her the secret he’d held so deep inside himself he wasn’t sure he could dig it out now that he wanted to.

But the intimacy of what they’d shared conspired against him, seducing with quiet darkness as surely as the solace and comfort of having his woman in his arms. When he spoke, his voice cracked as if he hadn’t used it in years. "I was trying to keep from hurting you."

Jessie sensed the importance of what he was saying to her and lay still. "Why would you hurt me?"

J.D. tensed. "Unintentionally. You might have noticed that I’m a little stronger than the usual man."

"Yes."

She heard him inhale deeply. "It’s not a natural strength." Jessie said nothing, letting him tell her whatever it was in his own good time. "When I was in the military, they . . . experimented on a bunch of us. Gave us chemicals and hormones and other stuff meant to increase our natural aggressive tendencies. They were trying to create a team of super-soldiers." He snorted, unable to stop himself from tensing all over as the memories flooded him with a relentless fury. "We responded just like they thought we would – got bigger and stronger and faster than any other men on Earth. They trained us in every conceivable form of combat and damn near succeeded in turning the lot of us into perfect killing machines." J.D. was silent for a long moment. "But they didn’t think about the mental and emotional consequences of their little attempt at playing God. Some of us – " his voice broke, and he swallowed hard before beginning again. "Some of us became so uncontrollably violent they had to be put down like rabid dogs. They encouraged us to be violent and taught us a hundred different ways to kill . . . But they never bothered to show us how to live in a society where we would never quite be human again."

Jessie lay quiet during his speech; her only movements designed to offer what comfort she could; she stroked his chest gently, soothingly, and cuddled closer against him. "You hurt someone unintentionally," she said, knowing with sudden insight that she was right.

J.D. nodded his head, still lost in the memories. "Yeah. A woman. She was so beautiful and small, like you."

The last thing Jessie wanted to hear about was another woman while she was lying in his arms, but she knew it was important that he get this out. "What was her name?"

"Mylee," he breathed, covering his eyes with his spare arm as if he could block out the painful image of her broken body. "We were – intimate. I was making love to her when the – " He stopped himself. There were still things she didn’t need to know about his former life. "When I was ambushed by . . . let’s just call them the bad guys. I was just trying to get her out of the way, but I guess I was a little too pumped when I pushed her out of the line of fire." J.D. swallowed the cold lump in his throat as he relived those terrible memories. "She cracked her head open against a table. She must’ve lost her balance when I pushed her . . . By the time I got to her, she was dead."

Jessie could feel all those tortured emotions he’d kept bottled up inside him. He was stiff with them, brittle and hard from years of denying them, then finally living a tormented existence carrying the guilt locked deep inside. "Shhhh," she soothed, moving up a little to cradle his head to her breast.

It was his undoing. All of the pain and loss and anger and fear finally overwhelmed him within the soft confines of this woman’s arms. J.D. let go, bawling like a child while she rocked and stroked him, murmuring soft nothings and gently rubbing his back.

When the emotional storm passed, he was completely lost. In all those years he’d never cried until now, until Jessie arrived and cheerfully undid all the walls he had carefully constructed around himself – sexual, emotional, and physical. No one alive - who wasn’t of the Alpha Unit himself - knew the whole of his story. Now that she knew everything, what must she think of him? He had confessed to being a killer, in more ways than one. J.D. wouldn’t have been surprised if she fled in disgust.

As if she was thinking along the same lines as he was, she pressed her lips to his forehead and said irreverently, "Now that you’ve told me all these government secrets, do you have to kill me?"

Amazingly, he found she could still make him smile. James lifted his head from her breast and cupped her cheek in his palm. "That’s what I worried about. That’s why I avoided women like the plague."

Jessie met his eyes. "Well, you’ve obviously learned how to control your baser instincts – "

"Except around you," he supplied with a lopsided grin.

"Have you ever inadvertently hurt anyone else?"

J.D. had to think. He’d decked a couple of hands and put them in the hospital with one punch – one for beating a horse, one for saying the wrong thing to his mother . . . He shook his head.

"Not even Kevin?"

He snorted. Not that there wasn’t sufficient provocation provided cheerfully by his little brother at least a million times a day . . . "No."

"And you’ve never hurt me, either," she stated firmly, then reflexively reached back to rub her bottom. "Well, yes, you have."

"That was wholly intentional."

Jessie frowned comically. "I realize that." She rolled away from him and onto her side, bringing her top leg up to find a comfortable position. "But you still didn’t do me any permanent damage. And you certainly won’t be spanking me again."

J.D. made a grab for her automatically, but she merely curled up on the other side of the bed sleepily, and he followed her, fitting himself intimately to her enticing curves and valleys. "Ohhhhhhh, yes I will. Whenever I think you’ve gotten too big for your britches, or when you deliberately disobey me – "

"I didn’t – I had to – the kittens – " she sputtered, trying to turn in his arms, but he wouldn’t let her.

Instead he captured a full ripe breast in each hand, gently squeezing and rolling each nipple as he placed kisses up and down her vulnerable neck, enjoying her long, low moan of pleasure and the way she squirmed and arched against the sensual torture of his hands. "As long as you live under my roof, I’ll discipline you when I feel it’s necessary."

"Yes, Dad."

J.D. growled against her ear, pressing his rock hard erection against the crevice of her bottom. "In case you haven’t noticed, my feelings for you are distinctly not paternal." As if in demonstration of that fact, a hand wandered boldly between her legs, finding her pleasure button and worrying it mercilessly.

"Ahhh, J.D., I can’t think when you do that!"

He smiled, but continued the slow, sweet rubbing. "And this is a bad thing? Exactly how is that supposed to be distinguishable from the rest of the time?"

Truly, Jessie could barely form a coherent thought as he continued to pinch and pull her nipples with aggravating gentleness. But his playful barbs deserved swift retaliation, so she sank her teeth into his arm and bit down, eliciting a satisfying yelp from the big man behind her as he snatched his arm away to examine the damage.

"Yeow! You bit me, you little brat!" he couldn’t quite believe it, but the rounded muscle of his right arm bore the evidence of her dental work, and probably would for several days.

Body still humming from his touch, Jessie allowed herself a satisfied smile as she curled into a fetal position, her back to him. That would teach the big oaf to insult her. She expected to hear a long diatribe or at least a whiny lecture from him – men were such babies - but when several moments passed in complete silence, she began to worry. She bit her lip, trying to decide whether she wanted to risk a look back at him, then her curiosity got the better of her and she turned her head just enough to see the most evilly sensuous look she’d ever seen on a man. Her heart formed a huge lump in her throat while the area between her legs swelled and throbbed in anticipation of his form of retribution.

The softness of his voice was deadly. "Woman, you are going to have to pay for that."

It was late in the morning before she awoke again and indulged in a full-body stretch, still naked in his big bed, the scent of their lovemaking heavy in the air. He had been as good as his word, taking payment in full from her lovely body while she writhed and moaned and begged for release. Jessie drew a deep breath and yawned. He may be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he had been nothing but gentle with her . . . deliberately, torturously gentle at satisfying her, entirely unwilling to let her do anything to relieve the painful ache he carefully created within her, then riding her to completion withbarely controlled, powerful strokes that rocked the foundations of both their worlds. But never once had he hurt her.

That time he drew their sensuality out for her, long and thoroughly, then cuddled her against him afterwards and commanded she go to sleep, which she promptly had. The next time she woke, it was to an insistent tugging on her already peaked nipple. She had opened one eye just long enough to see that it was only about five-thirty, then tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but he had already caught her in his arms, arranging her on top of him. Jessie stirred only enough to snuggle her face against his chest, then settled back down to doze.

J.D.’s amused chuckle rumbled like thunder beneath her ear as he whispered softly, "Okay, Miss Sleepyhead, I’ll do all the work." Then he pressed her hips down slightly, hissing long and low when his hardness slid home inside her as if they had never been separated.

His size still made her catch her breath, even half awake and totally relaxed as she was, he rasped and stretched her tender tissues with each rhythmic invasion. Jessie’s living bed began to move sensuously beneath her but she was so replete and sleepy she took him up on his offer and simply lay there, enjoying the feel of him inside her. His fingers had found her nipples puckered tightly in aching anticipation of his touch, and he rolled them in just the way he knew she loved, pulling slightly, making her moan with each milking tug. When she would have sat up to do roughly the same thing to him, he murmured, "Uh-uh" and refused to let go of those tender tips, effectively pinning her to his body while pumping himself slowly into her, using the weight of her own body to effectively trap her to him.

Jessie blushed when she remembered how he had had her begging him each time he took her, but she was so responsive to him it was like she would explode every time he reached for her. Eventually, his mouth had claimed hers as he held her immobile and had his way with her, making her scream into his mouth at her final release, then returning the compliment himself a few minutes later.

It was near noon that day before they saw each other again. J.D. came in and stomped snow off his boots, giving her a heated, searching look when she turned away from the cake she was making just long enough to glance her eyes off of his. It was too new, too raw. She wanted time and distance, like they had had before. Nothing had changed in regards to their relationship, or the distinct lack thereof.

But J.D. was not about to allow her to avoid him, to wall herself off like before. He couldn’t quite believe it, but she was still here even after he’d spilled his guts last night, and he wanted her more now than he ever had. Despite the hard physical labor he’d been performing, he’d spent the morning achingly hard. He never came in for lunch, but decided he absolutely had to see her, preferably have her on the kitchen table, the floor, the couch, he didn’t much care where.

"I don’t have anything for lunch . . . " she said tentatively, backing away as he advanced towards her, a feral gleam in his eye. She knew he had but one thought on his mind, and she was right. Jessie felt the kitchen wall at her back as he reached for her, swinging her into his arms and stalking down the hall to deposit her on his bed. A little peeved at having been man-handled that way, she sat up on her elbows, warning petulantly, "If you think you can come in here and – " His mouth stifled anything else she was going to say as his hands made short work of their clothes.

"I want you," he said gutturally; barely able to stand the ache he felt whenever he wasn’t inside her. "And you want me." J.D. bore her back onto the mattress, his fingers delving boldly into the soft folds between her legs.

"I don’t want – " Jessie stopped there, knowing he could feel the evidence to the contrary that her own body was providing him.

A bushy black eyebrow rose. "You don’t want what, Jessica?" A thick, strong finger invaded her with exquisite tenderness, making her hips rise to welcome the intruder.

She was lost in the sensual web he created around them, in a place where all that mattered was that he kept touching her, kissing her, fucking her. When it was done, as before, there had been sex words and heated phrases and moans and screams of pleasure, but no evidence of love. Not one word, even of bare-bones affection.

His face was buried in her neck as she swallowed the tears down. James levered himself off her, saying, "I’ve gotta get back to work."

Taking refuge in the mundane task of dressing, she voiced a concern. "Kevin – "

He pinned her with a gaze, for the first time seeing the sadness in her eyes, but he didn’t know what to do about it. "Kevin is a big boy. He knows what’s going on, and he’s glad we’re not fighting any more."

She stared intently at the buttons of her blouse while fastening them. "Ah. Ok." J.D. had already started for the door when she said, "There was a call for you at around ten. Someone named Dane. He didn’t want to leave a message or a number. Said you’d know it already."

"I do." J.D. walked slowly down the hall, tucking his shirt into his jeans as he went.

Jessie didn’t feel she had the right to ask the question, so she didn’t, throwing herself back into dinner preparations with a vengeance as if he had already left. But J.D. stood there for a long moment, considering her closely before elaborating. "Dane Mathison. He was part of the Alpha Unit, too. He was my beta, my second-in-command. He’s out of it now, like me, but he does some – uh, freelance work." The only sign that she’d heard what he said was the slow shaking of her head. "He wants me to do some stuff for him, maybe join up again."

Her heart stopped beating within her, but she managed a neutral tone, "Maybe you should."

"It would bring in some real money, and it’s not that dangerous." Dammit, why wouldn’t she look at him?

"Sounds like a good idea, then."

"Yeah," he settled a disreputable gray Stetson onto his head and tromped out into the yard angrily.

Dinner that night was uneasy at best, everyone feeling his or her way with the new situation being what it was. Jessie was sure Kevin considered her to be a slut, and J.D. was insanely jealous of every tentative smile she gave his brother. Kevin was hoping fervently that they’d work it out and get married. He was terrified to say anything that might rock the boat one way or the other.

When it was over, they all went their separate ways – Kevin had a date with a girl in town, J.D. disappeared into his den, and Jess went upstairs to her room to write, although mostly what she did was stare at a blank white screen. It was very late when she wandered downstairs, not sure whether J.D. was still up or not. She didn’t bother to turn on any lights, all she wanted was to get a glass of cold water then get up to bed.

Jessie wasn’t paying attention to where she was putting her feet, and she stepped squarely on MammaKit, who screamed at least as loudly as she did and made four long tracks with her back feet in the top of Jessie’s foot. "Goddamn sonofabitch!" she screamed, hopping on one leg.

J.D. came running, half expecting to see the house was on fire or something at least that dramatic. Instead he saw Jessie hobbling around the kitchen on one foot, the other sporting some nasty scratches. "What happened?" he asked, coming towards her.

"I stepped on the fucking cat!" she cried. "I hope she’s all right."

He couldn’t keep the grin from spreading over his face. That was pure Jessie. Swear at the cat then beat herself up about something the blasted cat probably caused herself. But if there was one thing he hated, it was vulgarity. Maybe he was old fashioned, but he especially hated to hear it coming out of the mouth of a woman. Jessie rarely swore or even got angry, so he supposed he could forgive it just this once. "C’mere." He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and pulled her foot up onto his knee. "She scratched you up pretty bad. Why don’t we go put some antiseptic on it?"

Jessie jerked her foot out of his hands petulantly. "I’ll do it myself, thank you." She limped over to the fridge, where she kept a gallon jug of water for the men and started to pour herself a glass.

"Well?" he said when she’d finished drinking.

"Well, what?" Jessie turned to face him, just spoiling for a fight with the idiot.

He sighed with exaggerated patience he wasn’t feeling. "Are you going to put some antiseptic and a band aid on your foot or wait until it rots off from gangrene?"

"I thought you heard better than most people? Do you need hearing aids, or what? I fucking said I’d take care of it myself!"

J.D. took hold of his temper with both hands, but it was the very tail end of it. Most of it was already unfurled. "I don’t want to hear you use that word in this house again, Jessica. In fact, I don’t want to hear your or anyone else using that kind of language in my home. Now get upstairs and take care of your foot."

Feeling very bold for some reason, Jessie strode right up to where he was sitting. "I’ll use any fucking kind of language I want to, James David," she whispered, bending down to get right in his face.

Quick as a snake, his hand clamped around her wrist and tugged, pulling her over his lap. Before she knew what was happening, both of her wrists were anchored at the small of her back, and he was pulling her nightgown up over her bottom, and her lacy panties found their familiar home around her knees. "You’ve been acting like a spoiled brat since you came down here, Jessica Lynn Bates, and I’m not going to put up with it any longer. What I am going to do is blister your bottom good so that you’ll think twice next time before you give me any of your sass."

And he proceeded to do exactly that, his huge palm cracking down on her soft white bottom mercilessly as she wiggled and screamed and cried and promised to behave better.

"I know you’re going to be a good girl in the future, sweetheart, because every time you start to get mouthy with me again you’ll remember this is what you’ll get if you don’t straighten up right quick."

Jessica was beside herself with the fire he was setting in her buns. The damned man could turn her to putty one way or the other with his blasted hands, and he seemed hell bent on making this spanking as painful as possible, whereas he was usually trying to give her as much pleasure as possible. It seemed she reacted in extremis to him one way or the other and Jessie knew she much preferred the other.

"I’m sorry, J.D.!" she screamed. "Pleeeeaaaaaassssse stoooop! I – I can’t sssstand it!"

But he was adamant. "If you’re going to be bratty, Jessica Lynn, you’re pretty little bottom is going to pay the price." J.D. didn’t miss a beat as he spanked out a terrible tattoo on her tender nates, turning them a faint pink, then rosy red, and finally an angry magenta before he slowed somewhat, then stopped.

Jessie thought he was finished and struggled to get off his lap. But J.D was merely reaching for a wooden spoon from the nearby utensil basket. Jess knew how much wooden spoon spankings hurt; it had been her mother’s favorite implement to use on a naughty child. She renewed her struggles in earnest, but to absolutely no avail. He was going to use that terrible thing on her, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She heard him sigh. "Jessica Lynn, if you hadn’t pushed me tonight, you wouldn’t be here over my lap getting a whuppin’, now would you?"

"N-no, Sir," she cried, barely able to catch her breath for sobbing.

"Now, I won’t hold for you using bad language in this house, is that understood?"

Jessie nodded, "Yes, S-sir," she whispered.

"And I will not tolerate a bratty attitude from you, either."

"N-no, Sir. I’m sorry."

J.D. smacked the bowl of the spoon smartly down on her already mottled and swollen flesh. "I intend to make sure you are sorry, little girl."

And he did.

J.D. wielded that spoon relentlessly, mercilessly against her vulnerable bottom, striking every last centimeter of flesh there and down the sensitive backs of her legs. Jessie screamed from the first stroke to the last, unable to form a coherent thought through the waves of pain even enough to beg for a reprieve, finally unable to even scream while he made one last circuit of her tenderized skin. That innocuous kitchen instrument in his hands made her mother’s thorough spankings look like love pats.

When he was finished, he held her in place for several long moments with his big palm covering almost all of her swollen bottom, reinforcing the lesson silently. He set the rules and she obeyed them, or this was the result she faced, each and every time, without fail and without mercy. He helped her stand, then said calmly, "Go see to your foot, then get into bed and go to sleep."

There was no way she’d be comfortable writing for at least two or three days, maybe even a week, so there was no sense in not doing as he ordered. She hobbled slowly back down the hall.

"And Jessie?" his voice stopped her but she didn’t look back.

"Yes?" she croaked.

"My bed, not yours." He saw her start at that pronouncement, and wondered if she expected him to hurt her in bed tonight because he’d punished her. Nothing could be further from the truth, but then she’d learn that. Everything in him longed to pick her up and cuddle her to him. It had been a severe paddling, and he wanted to hold her and tell her that . . . that what?

He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but it wouldn’t be right. She’d never mentioned love, and, very carefully, very consciously, neither had he. Loving him was a dead end street. Supermen had a very short life span, something about how the chemicals and hormones sped up their metabolism. He would never be able to father children, either, and she deserved a whole, normal man she wouldn’t have to worry would drop dead on her in the prime of his life.

But, dammit, he wished it could be him.

J.D. stood there staring down the hall after her – longing for her till he ached, regretting the stupid decision he’d made in his youth, dreading losing her until all those emotions settled like a boulder in the pit of his stomach.

Where could they go from here?

Chapter 8

Jessie and J.D. carried on their relationship much as they had before, except for the explosive hours between the sheets. J.D.’s concerns about needing more sex than a woman would be interested in were put to rest by Jessie’s unfailing response. He was relentlessly at her morning, noon, and night, not wanting to leave her in the morning and often coming home midday for a nooner. When Kevin was gone on the occasional business trip, they often skipped dinner in favor of a late night snack, choosing instead to kiss and cuddle in the living room or - occasionally, not even making it out of the kitchen.

He took her on the dining room table, spreading her out like a smorgasbord with his eager mouth suckling determinedly at the juncture of her thighs, much to her early embarrassment and later delight. They christened the sofa in the living room, the desk in his den, and the tack room in the barn. J.D. couldn’t get enough of her. She responded equally as loudly whether he took her fast and hard, pounding ruthlessly into her with little or no preliminaries, or teased her for hours before granting her completion.

But it was more than that. She made him feel whole again, and almost human. He liked looking up from the mountains of paperwork he was often buried under to see her hunched over her laptop, tapping away at that novel she never seemed to finish. They both loved to watch the History channel, and it was usually on in the background while they worked. Jessie took care of him, too, and it was a novel thing for him. He was usually the caretaker, but she got him coffee and baked things that she knew he liked. She fussed when he got a cut or scrape, insisting on cleaning and bandaging it herself. J.D. found himself wishing Kevin would go on more business trips because he liked playing Ward Cleaver to her June, however artificial it was.

No mention was made of tomorrow or happily ever after, as if they were both afraid to confront it and thereby upset the apple cart of today’s fragile happiness.

For her part, Jessie was drowning in a sea of sensuality. All he had to do was look at her and her pussy contracted almost painfully with remembered pleasure. She both loved and hated the fact that he spanked her, and she knew he would never hesitate to do it at any time, it also made her feel very secure and cared for, if not quite loved. It was unbearably sexy and humiliating and terribly painful. One of those times when she should have been more careful about what she wished for . . . And, except for those two times, he was otherwise exquisitely gentle with her.

For a man who didn’t give a whit one way or another about animals, he had become the kittens’ favorite person. Their box ended up in his study one day, and never moved out of it. They climbed all over him; he was forever extracting a mewling ball of fluff from down his shirt, or in his hair. Jess had read somewhere that it was a smart thing to give a man a dog or a cat and see how he treated it; that was a good indicator of how he would treat anyone or anything that was dependent on him. She had come to the determination that J.D., for all his enhanced testosterone, intimidating demeanor and size, and his bristling maleness, was a cream puff.

Those kittens had the run of the house, owned more toys than most children – and had a human “father” who kept buying them more – and all it would take was a tiny, distressed “mew” from one of them to get him to settle it gently into the crook of his arm. One time, Jessie came into the study to get a disk she’d left, and he was asleep in his big office chair, one kitten on each arm and another curled on his broad shoulder against his neck.

But there was absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who called the shots. Both the men and Kevin looked to J.D. for direction and his strength of confidence and character made him a strong but fair boss who didn’t tolerate shenanigans, from the ranch hands or the housekeeper – although he never bent a hand over his knee.

One afternoon they were both in his study, and J.D.’s computer died. Wouldn’t boot to anything, even DOS. He had to admit it didn’t owe him anything. It was so old it was barely above a legal pad and a pen. But now he couldn’t get his quarterly reports ready for the taxman.

Jessie came to the rescue and offered her laptop, even hooking it up for him before she left to do some shopping in town. Several hours later, she returned with bags full of dreaded socks and underwear, things she could never seem to get enough of. J.D. was still hole up in the study. She frowned, then put her stuff away in what had become their room. J.D. had become sick of her spending even enough time away from him to get changed in the morning and evenings, and had moved everything of hers into his room with a warning look in his eye, as if daring her to make something of it. She had wisely kept her mouth shut.

“J.D.,” she said as she walked into the study, “I’m back.”

The look on his face stopped her in her tracks, making her want to back up several steps closer to the door. “Get your little fanny over here, Jessica Lynn.”

What the hell had she done? She wondered. How could she have gotten him angry when she wasn’t even in the house?

His voice so low it was frightening when she hesitated. “Don’t make me repeat myself,” he warned, holding his hand out to her.

Swallowing hard, Jessie did as she was told and came to stand beside him behind the desk. J.D. patted his lap, and she sat down on it, still wondering what the hell had gotten him into such a mood. He didn’t say anything, merely staring at her computer screen. And when she turned to do the same thing, everything became clear.

Jessica had always been intrigued by spanking, and was very Internet savvy. She subscribed to several newsgroups about that particular interest, some of which specialized in pictures. One of the programs she had on her computer allowed her to store those pictures and replay them as a slide show. J.D. was watching a slide show of those pictures, and she could feel how excited he was by it. The program stopped when it had run randomly through all of the pictures in the file, and J.D. looked down at Jessie as if she were a naughty little girl caught with a Playgirl under her bed.

“Would you care to explain this?”

“What would you like me to say? I’m over 18.”

J.D. shifted uncomfortably beneath her. When he’d found this file, he’d been absolutely floored. He couldn’t believe that spanking turned her on as well. He’d tormented himself about having spanked her those two times, worrying that she would see it as abuse rather than correction. And here she was, downloading pictures of women whose bottoms looked a lot like hers when he got through with her. “What are these pictures doing on your computer?”

Jessie lay her head on his shoulder and put her fingers between the buttons of his shirt to touch the warm, hair roughened flesh of his chest. “Sometimes I –“ she bit her lip. “I look at them,” she whispered.

J.D. kissed the tip of her nose. “Why didn’t you tell me, Jessie-girl?”

Jess buried her face against the side of his neck, cheeks flaming. “I dunno.”

But he wasn’t going to let her avoid this, and caught her chin with his fingers to make her look at him. “You like it when I spank you, though, don’t you? That’s what these pictures tell me.”

“No,” she said petulantly. “I don’t like it. It hurts.”

“It’s supposed to hurt, Jessica. But it’s a good hurt, isn’t it?” he coaxed.

Jessie pouted her lips prettily, saying nothing incriminating until she absolutely had to.

The arm around her back nudged her. “Don’t you lie to me, Jessica Lynn, or I’ll make your bottom look worse than any of the women in these pictures,” he threatened.

And she knew from personal experience that he never made idle threats. “Yes,” she whispered, almost in tears.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I like it when you spank me.”

J.D. relented and gathered her close, kissing the top of her head. “Good. I was worried about spanking you, and I probably did it less than I should have. But now that I know, you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

Jessie’s eyes widened at the thought that he was going to punish her more regularly. She knew her bottom was likely to be very sore, very frequently, and it was a safe, comforting, sexy knowledge.

What was neither a safe nor a comforting knowledge was the fact that J.D.’s friend Dane was calling with alarming regularity. Jessie always left J.D. alone when a call came through. She couldn’t bear the thought of overhearing him plan to leave and go risk his life in a foreign country. She couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving, period, although she knew he didn’t love her, and she was not free to confess her deep love for him.

So, she decided to be pro-active, not wanting to be the one left behind. Without him, there would be no reason to be here at all. The novel was just about finished, and she thought she probably had a publisher who wanted it, so Jessie forced herself to think about a plot she might want to explore next. Skydiving had always been an interest to her, and she thought she might investigate that by learning how, then incorporate that into a story.

Saying her plans aloud at the dinner table made them more real, and certainly got a real reaction out of the two men infront of her.

Kevin was appalled. “Skydiving? Are you out of your mind?” he yelled.

J.D.’s hand stopped on its way to the mashed potato bowl as he glared at her then continued on after he uttered one implacable word. “No.” And he considered that to be the end of it. He didn’t like to think of her leaving at all, and he would deal with that only when he absolutely had to. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to learn to skydive. Not his woman.

“Yeah, skydiving. There are a lot of places in California, some in Colorado and Florida . . . I haven’t decided which one I want to go to yet.”

Kevin cleared his throat and, with one look at J.D.’s thundercloud face, decided to change the subject. “So you’re done with your story?”

“I’m working on the last chapter, and I’ll probably be done and out of your hair within the next couple of weeks.”

J.D.’s jaw ticked dangerously as he ate. If she thought he was just going to let her go and wish her well, she had another think coming.

“We’ll miss you. You’ve become a fixture around here. I’ve gotten spoiled!” he laughed, wondering why his big brother was sitting there like a bump on a log while his lover was announcing her imminent departure. Or maybe he already knew and was okay with it. But somehow Kevin doubted that. J.D. never did share well with others. He kept what was his close at hand, and Jessie was most definitely his.

Kevin rose and cleared his plate. “Well, I’m off to see Amy. Night everyone. Don’t bother to wait up.”

Jessie grinned. “Don’t worry. Say hi to Amy for me.” She got up and began to clear the table, marveling at how well J.D. was taking the news. Well, that, if nothing else, showed her that she was the only one in this relationship whose emotions were engaged.

J.D. said nothing more about her announcement until they were in bed that night and he had exhausted her thoroughly. Just as she was about to drift to sleep, his arms contracted tightly around her. “I won’t let you go, Jessica.”

She was instantly awake. “This is one matter you don’t have any say in, J.D.”

Her calm, emotionless response made him absolutely furious. “How can you say that? Whose arms do you sleep in every night? Who makes love to you five or six times a day? Is it someone else who bothers to take you over his lap and spank the living daylights out of you for your own good?”

Who has never used one endearment? Who has never said one word about love or even like to me? Who has never shown me in any way that I was anything other than a convenient sexual outlet for him? She asked in her head. “We’re not married. We’re not engaged. Hell,” she snorted derisively, “we’ve never even been on a date. We’re just two people who sleep together, that’s all.”

J.D. was appalled that that was all she felt towards him, all she thought he felt towards her. For now, he let it drop but his determination to keep her with him didn’t lessen one iota. Jessie rolled away from him and tried to go to sleep, but he could hear the uneven breathing that signaled her silent tears, and each one of them tore at his insides. She couldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t live through it.

From that point on, every time he saw her furiously typing away, he was reminded that, as far as she was concerned, their time together was severely limited. A couple of weeks, she’d said. It was like a death sentence to J.D. He felt totally paralyzed, unable to do anything of consequence to stop her from leaving and taking his heart with her.

To add to his frustration, Dane called frequently not only to try to entice him back into the fold, or at least into Dane’s very exclusive fold, but rather to let him know that the Unit might well be paying him a visit. And that was never, ever a good thing.

J.D. lay beside his woman in the cool quietness before dawn. Kevin was off travelling and they had the house to themselves. Since her impromptu announcement, their lovemaking had taken on an urgent edge. J.D. used every trick he knew and then invented some new ones in a desperate attempt to bind her to him with bonds of the flesh. She didn’t seem to be falling for it, and he became more and more concerned that any day now she’d be saying good bye and wishing them well, shaking his hand perfunctorily as if he had meant no more to her than a casual acquaintance.

He wouldn’t allow it. Just couldn’t. He could no more imagine life without her now than he could have imagined life with her before her arrival. But how was he going to get her to stay? J.D. smiled wryly to himself. That old idea of chaining her to the bed was looking better and better by the day . . . And he supposed kidnapping her would be a fairly easy thing to do . . . Hmmmmm. That idea had merit.

Suddenly, every nerve he owned tingled. He could hear cars, at least three of them, coming down the driveway, and he had no illusions as to whom would have planned a pre-dawn attack. The Unit had arrived, and they weren’t even trying to be subtle about it.

J.D. woke Jessie hurriedly, herding her into an inner bathroom where she was likely to be safest. “What the hell is going on?” she asked sleepily as he stuffed the cats and Sammy into the small room with her.

He caught her eyes fleetingly, then looked away. “Someone is coming. I want you to stay here. Don’t move!” he threw over his shoulder, closing the door behind him.

Jessie sank onto the toilet cover. She could see how effortlessly the predator in him took over. The look he’d given her was not quite human; he all but had his teeth bared in defense of his home. Curious, she looked out the small bathroom window to see three dark-colored, carefully non-descript sedans pull up to the front of the house. J.D. was there on the porch to meet them head on, a pump shotgun cradled as casually in his arms as if he held a kitten there instead.

The window was cracked slightly, and if she strained, she was able to hear what was said.

Several men got out of the car, and J.D. took aim. The biggest of the group put his hands up to signal that he was unarmed, and J.D. resumed his former position of feigned relaxation. “We just want to talk to you, J.D.”

“So talk,” his tone was uninviting.

The man shrugged and smiled. “Well, out in the open is hardly conducive – “

J.D. cut him off impatiently. “Say your piece and git, Wetherby. I’m not inclined to conversation unless I use this shotgun.” He patted the gun as if it was a lover.

The blonde man looked uncomfortable, as if he didn’t quite trust J.D. not to use it just for spite. “We’d like you to come back. Your terms all the way.”

The man on the porch snorted doubtfully. “Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Then git.”

Wetherby hesitated, as if he didn’t want to believe that J.D. was turning him down cold. “But – “

Apparently James had reached the small extent of his patience, and he pointed the gun with deadly accuracy at the other man’s heart, causing all of the other men to level their weapons at him. Jessie’s throat closed convulsively in fear. She didn’t think of the consequences as she ran out of the bathroom and out onto the porch to throw herself infront of him, blocking his body with hers, and ruining his clear shot.

“Don’t you dare aim a gun at this man!” she screamed, tears running down her face.

His damned woman had the ability to infuriate him like no other person on Earth, and here she was, disobeying one of the most important rules he would probably lay down to her, putting herself in real danger to save him. “Jessica Lynn, get back in the house, now!” he ordered, pulling her none too gently behind him then re-sighting Wetherby’s useless heart.

But she refused to do what she was told for the second time, stepping infront of him and shaking her finger at the bemused agents. “You men should be ashamed of yourselves. This man has already given more of himself for this country than thousands of men ever have or ever will. He’s given his time and energy, his very body and soul when it was asked of him. You should all get down on your knees and thank God that he and men like him were willing to make such a tremendous sacrifice. Yet here you are, daring to ask more of him, belittling what he’s already done in the name of patriotism. What will be enough, gentlemen? His last gasping breath? His last ounce of blood? Would that satisfy you? I think not.

“Go back to where you came from. Mr. Hamilton gave at the office.”

Several of the men chuckled quietly, admiring her gumption.

Wetherby talked past her to J.D. “She yours?”

J.D. merely nodded, keeping his gun trained perfectly.

“Lucky man,” Wetherby admitted, tipping his hat at the obviously furious little woman in quick salute. Then he got into his car as the others followed suit, and they all left with as little fanfare as they had arrived. When it was over, J.D. went inside and put the weapon back into its case while Jessie stood exactly where she was, shuddering in reaction to the shock she felt. The only movement she made was to bury her face in her hands, trying to calm her runaway breathing.

Suddenly, strong arms lifted her off the ground, and she pressed her face against J.D.’s neck where it belonged as he brought her back into their bedroom, tenderly tucking her into bed then crawling in beside her to pull her into his hard embrace. She was shaking so badly the bed was shaking, too, and all he could do was hold her and rock her until she settled down.

He was astounded at what she had done for him, how she had stood up for him infront of six armed men. It was a profoundly stupid stunt, but it was the most humbling thing he’d ever witnessed. She’d put herself in harms way without an instant’s hesitation; protecting him although she knew he needed the least protection of anybody in the world. But that hadn’t stopped her.

J.D. stroked her tearstained face, beginning to shake with anger at how she had disobeyed him and deliberately put herself in the line of fire. She was damned lucky she hadn’t been shot accidentally. The mere hint that she could have been seriously hurt or killed defending him made him insanely angry, until a stray thought knocked him on his butt.

He loved her. Come hell or high water, long life or short, whatever fate threw their way, he wanted her by his side to face it. Or maybe more appropriately, since she couldn’t seem to do as she was told, over his lap more often than not. He loved her, and there was no way he would lose her now.

Chapter 9

Although she richly deserved it, he couldn’t punish her right away for her disobedience, not quite trusting himself to do it dispassionately when he was so furious. So he contented himself with staking his claim on a sexual level for the next couple of days, wringing orgasm after orgasm out of her before allowing her to drift, completely sated, off to sleep while he schemed and planned and worked the ranch with a stupid, silly grin on his face.

But he never forgot her negligent act, and Jessie got the spanking and lecture of a lifetime within the next few days, bent over his desk and held in place by his strong hands as he strapped her soft flesh repeatedly with his thick leather belt after having warmed her bottom thoroughly with his hand. Over and over the same swollen flesh, up and down her rounded butt and thighs until he tired and she had nearly passed out. Then he turned her over and ruthlessly drove into her wet, welcoming sheath, taking her solely for himself for the first and only time. He had imprinted his stamp of ownership on her bottom with the belt from his own jeans. Now he possessed her body in the most ultimately intimate manner a man could have a woman, and he gloried in it, flooding her with his semen again and again all the while grasping those sore, hot cheeks to reinforce his point.

Jessie was wary of J.D., not because he had disciplined her so severely, but rather because he seemed to always be watching her with a devilish gleam in his eye. She had finally finished the book and sent it off to the publishers, feeling like a mother sending her baby to the first day of kindergarten when she handed it to the postal worker in the office downtown. J.D. had driven her there just so she could do that, and he held her afterwards when she cried in his arms for no reason she could put into words.

He surprised her then by taking her out to dinner at Hazel’s, where he ordered a hot turkey sandwich and fries, predictably, and she ordered a big honking burger. They sat in a booth where Jessie could see all the curious female eyes that slid sneakily to check out J.D., but he seemed oblivious to everyone and everything but her. She beamed at the attention.

Perhaps her tears were because that was the end of her need to be on the ranch. Endings always saddened her, but she tried to put some starch in her backbone and gamely set up her next trip. She’d settled on a skydiving school in eastern Tennessee because she had a hankering to see her family, and booked a flight without telling either of the men. Jessica didn’t want any long drawn out goodbye scenes; it would just kill her. So one bright Monday morning J.D. and Kevin were surprised to see her fully dressed at breakfast.

“Wow,” Kevin commented lazily. “You can get up with us chickens!”

J.D. looked at her closely, but she couldn’t hold his gaze. “I have to get up early today. I’m leaving.”

Kevin’s jaw dropped, and he got instantly to his feet. “But you –“ he turned to J.D. who was calmly buttering a piece of homemade toast. “But he – Aren’t you two -”

Jessie answered him softly. “No, we’re not.” Then she threw her arms around Kevin, who had become and important friend. “I’m going to miss you so much! I’ll leave my email address on your bureau.”

J.D. tolerated his brother’s hands on his woman because he knew they were just that – friends. Besides, he’d just end up paying for any dental work, so why bother?

“I’m going to miss you, too, Miss Jessie. You take care, hear?” Kevin hugged her back tightly, then donned his hat and left, giving J.D. a lingering, searching look before closing the door.

His silence was deafening, but Jessie continued to clean up around him. It was almost like a replay of their first morning, when he hadn’t wanted her to stay at all. Finally, he took his last sip of coffee and got up to leave. J.D. stooped down to kiss her cheek, saying laconically, “I expect you to be here when I get back with dinner on the table.”

Just like him, the damned chauvinist! She thought. Aloud, Jessie said quietly, “I won’t be here, J.D. It’s time I moved on.”

He didn’t get mad, didn’t yell, merely issuing a soft warning as he walked out the door without a backwards glance, “You don’t want to make me have to come and get you, little girl.”

She was gone. J.D. couldn’t quite believe that she’d done it, but it seemed every trace of her presence was gone from the house. There was a dinner in the crockpot, bless her heart, and a lot of food in the freezer so that they weren’t likely to starve, but, God, he missed her sweet presence, the sound of her voice even when she nagged at him to take his boots off before coming into the living room or to stop distracting her by touching her there. His clothes had the run of the closet like they hadn’t since he’d moved her into his room. There were no perfume bottles on the dresser next to his, and he knew he’d get no sleep tonight without Jessie’s sweet body to cuddle up against.

So he spent the night drunker than a skunk, missing her terribly and cursing her name when he woke up the next morning with the mother of all hangovers. Kevin was entirely unsympathetic, unable to believe that his macho brother had blithely let his woman get away from him. So much for testosterone.

“What the hell are you sitting there for, man? Go get her!”

If it hadn’t been for this atrocious hangover, J.D. might’ve laughed at his little brother giving him advice about women. But all he could do was raise an eyelid slowly to reveal a horridly bloodshot eye. “I’m working on it,” was all he would say.

But he was. One thing he knew Jessie hadn’t counted on was his connections. Within a few hours, he knew exactly when she had arrived in Tennessee, who had met her at the airport and the address and unlisted phone number for her parents and most of her immediate family members. He knew her appointment at the sky diving school wasn’t until the end of the week, and that her book had been accepted by the publisher she’d sent it to. He even knew how much her advance would be, when she got it.

When Kevin looked back at the ranch near lunchtime, the truck was gone, and he knew J.D. had gone after her. About damned time!

Tired and cranky, with a splitting headache, J.D. was in no mood for games when he punched the doorbell to Jessie’s parents’ house. The woman who answered the door was a smaller, older version of Jessie with gray hair but the same melodic voice. “May I help you?”

“I need to see Jessie,” he stated bluntly, looking like he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Angelina Bates stepped aside against her better judgement and let the disheveled man into her foyer.

“Who’s at the door, Ma?” Thom asked, wandering through the room only to stop short in his tracks and fix a deadly glare on the man in the rumpled raincoat. It had to be him. Jessie’s description was scrupulously detailed. “Ethan!” he yelled, and another sandy haired man joined him, leveling another threatening gaze at the stranger.

It was a standoff. None of the three men was going to move. By some unwritten law they had each silently thrown down the gauntlet. J.D. took the measure of each her brothers – they were not small men by any stretch of the imagination; each stood at least six foot one, if not more. They were broad in the chest and heavily muscled elsewhere. He had no doubt that the Bates brothers were a force to be reckoned with in defense of their little sister.

But she was no longer their concern. She was his to protect and worry over, to love and discipline, and he had come to collect her. James didn’t care if he had to fight the whole blasted family. Jessie was coming home with him.

“Where did everybody – “ Jessie was talking and walking at the same time, not looking where she was going until she practically ran into her brothers, then followed their line of sight to J.D., who stood dripping rain on her mother’s hardwood floors.

All three of them reached for her at once, but Thom and Ethan were closer, pulling her behind them protectively, not taking their eyes off of J.D. for one second. He hadn’t been trying that hard or he would have already had her halfway back to Texas by now, despite her brothers. But he wouldn’t risk hurting them unless he absolutely had to; knowing it would upset Jessie.

“Cut it out, you two!” Jessie fended them off and waltzed around them with years of practice, until another country was heard from.

“What the devil –“ her father joined the ranks of the staredown, putting himself infront of his boys and yanking Jessie non-too-gently behind him just like his sons had. The brothers then yanked her behind them. Jessie thought wryly that her arm was going to come out of its socket any time now.

J.D. nearly smiled. They were an intimidating bunch when their backs were up, but then so was their little girl, he knew. Any other time, he might have been truly amused, but he was too ornery and too hurt to be anything but purely angry.

“I came to bring you back,” he said, knowing full well it was exactly the wrong thing to say to a pack of men bent on protecting one of their own. But she wasn’t theirs any longer. She was his, and he meant to have her.

Calvin Bates stepped forward without a moment’s hesitation and got in his face just like his daughter would. “You are not welcome here, young – “

Jessie squeezed herself between her father and J.D., facing her father down bravely. “Daddy, I’ll handle this. You and everybody else,” she glared purposefully at her brothers, who didn’t look at all inclined to take her direction, “go back in and eat dinner. I’ll join you later.”

“No you won’t. You’ll on your way back to Texas with me,” J.D. stated calmly, watching the rise it got out of everyone with restrained interest.

“J.D., shut up and follow me,” Jessie led the way into her father’s study, then addressed the men who were still milling about in the foyer, as if they wanted to be ready to rescue her at the slightest peep. “You all go back in and finish dinner. Go on now,” she shoed them away like children, then followed J.D. in and closed the door behind her. “Why are you here, J.D.?” she sighed. She’d dreaded just this kind of scene with him. Now here he was.

“I told you why. I’ve come to take you back with me,” he repeated stubbornly.

A sad smile slanted across her face. “I’m sure you’ll find someone else to have sex with. Maybe you should give Kendra a shot. She’s very eager to find out if the rumors about your prowess are true.”

J.D. took a step towards her, his hand up to touch her face gently with his knuckles. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

Deftly, Jessie ducked under his hand. “What we had you can find anytime you have fifty dollars in your pocket.”

Lightening quick, he grabbed her, pulling her tightly against him. “That’s not true.”

She chuckled humorlessly. “Of course it is. We fucked good. That was about the extent of our ‘relationship’. Neither one of us ever used an endearment, or made promises of undying love. Hell, you barely tolerated me, for Heaven’s sake.” Jessie tried to twist out of his embrace, but he merely tightened his arms carefully until she couldn’t move.

J.D. closed his eyes for a second and felt the truth of her words hitting him like a ton of bricks. He hadn’t shown her any affection that hadn’t had to do with satisfying his or her baser needs. It wasn’t something he was used to doing, but that was no excuse. “I’m sorry. You’re right. But I do love you,” he whispered, pulling her that much closer and pinning her gaze with his. “Jessica Lynn Bates, will you marry me?” he whispered, producing a small diamond ring in an antique yellow gold setting that had been his mother’s.

Jessie backed away from him, her hand over her mouth in disbelief. “No. Don’t do this to me, J.D. After all we’ve been through, you finally profess your love and propose all in the same breath? No.”

She could see his jaw twitching as he put the ring back. He finally found a woman he loved, who was his true match, his soulmate, and proposed for the first time only to have it practically throw back in his face. “Is that your answer?”

“My answer is no. I won’t marry you.”

He did not accept defeat. Not gracefully, not at all. But he knew when to beat a strategic retreat. J.D. walked to the door, then stopped and turned to her with his hand on the doorknob. “Do you love me?” he asked rawly, his heart barely beating while he waited for her response.

Two huge tears rolled down her cheeks. “Yes, dammit, I do.”

Elation slammed into him like a freight train. She loved him. He smiled evilly, saying, “I’ll be back,” with just the slightest hint of Austrian accent, and swept out of the house.

When Jessie appeared at the dinner table, she was inundated with questions until her father told her brothers to back off and let her eat. Later, climbing into her old childhood bed after a thorough interrogation, Jessie pondered what he meant with his bad imitation of Arnold, then she shrugged and went on to more interesting things, such as the fact that he loved her. She couldn’t quite believe that he’d bothered to come all this way to get her, either.

Jessie half expected to see him at the breakfast table the next morning, but she was wrong. She’d called and rescheduled her first skydiving lesson for this morning. Jess knew he was dead set against her doing this, and if he was in the area, he might try to stop her, just like her brothers were trying to talk her out of it. But they stopped short where J.D. would have just been getting started.

She had already left for the school when he rang the doorbell. Thom and Ethan presented a united front against him.

“I want to see Jessie,” he demanded, back straight, muscles tense, ready for a fight.

The brothers responded tersely, in kind. “She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

Ethan seemed to be itching to say something, then Thom nodded imperceptibly. Their concern for their sister overrode their common sense, but if he could stop her from going up there and risking her pretty little neck, more power to him. They hoped she had found someone who knew how to handle her, and neither of them had any doubts as to how exactly it was that he did that.

J.D. practically broke the sound barrier getting to the school at the airport, but managed to burst into the training room while they were still being briefed. Without a second’s hesitation, he stalked over to Jessie and gathered her into his arms, walking silently back out to deposit her in his rental car with a hurried warning. “Don’t you move, young lady,” in case she decided to get cute and jump out of the car once he’d put her in it. He wouldn’t put it past her. Nope, not his woman. She had a mind of her own, and it often got her bottom into a helluva lot of trouble.

He didn’t drive far, just down to the end of the runways where a lot of plane spotters were grouped, binoculars in hand. J.D. cut off the engine and turned to her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I loved you sooner. Honestly, I didn’t realize it until just recently, and then you were hell bent on leaving me – “

“Which I did, but apparently to no avail,” she commented sarcastically.

“But you loved me, too, and didn’t say a word. Why?”

Jessie rounded on him. “And have you throw it back in my face? Or pity me for it? Or list the innumerable reasons why I shouldn’t? Or worst of all, to hear nothing in return.” Her voice almost broke, but she steadied it with seething anger. “How quickly you forget the fact that I was only in your house temporarily, and then only due to your incredible forbearance. I was a woman; the scourge of the Earth, as far as you were concerned.”

“You’re right. I didn’t want you there at first. Then you began to grow on me. I loved and hated having you around. I wanted you beneath me from the first moment I saw you. I still want you continuously. Perpetually erect men are notoriously ornery, sweetheart, and there ain’t a shower cold enough to even begin to touch the way I want you.” Throwing all caution to the wind, he pulled her against him, cupping a breast in his hand boldly and kissing her like they were in their own bedroom instead of steaming up a rental car’s windows.

As always, she responded to him as she would with her last, dying breath. “It’s just sex,” she cried, but he kissed away each tear because she was breaking his heart.

“Yes, it’s sex, but it’s also you taking care of me and me taking care of you. It’s sharing an office and liking Star Trek reruns. It’s you taking the time to worry over my cuts and bruises, and me disciplining you when you need it. It’s us, and we’re very right together.”

Jessie’s head dropped to his chest as she sobbed.

“I’m not going to let you get away, Jessica Lynn. I’ve waited much too long for you to bully your way into my life,” he whispered lovingly, then ruined it by adding staunchly, “And I’m sure as hell not going to allow you to skydive, under any circumstances. Your brothers are right – you need a keeper, and I’m it.” J.D. cuddled her for a few more minutes, then drove them back to the airport and hustled her onto a flight back to Texas.

When they finally arrived home and Kevin had the chance to whoop and holler that he had brought Jessie back to them, J.D. pulled her into his study and had her call her family so that they wouldn’t worry.

“Yes, Daddy, I’m fine,” she said reassuringly. “Yes, you’re all invited out here if there’s a wedding.”

“When there’s a wedding,” he growled against her ear, unwilling to simply settle for living with her.

“Tell Thom and Ethan he wouldn’t let me skydive.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and told him, “They said to tell you you’re hired as my keeper.”

“Damn straight,” he replied arrogantly.

Then she held the phone out to him. “Daddy wants to talk to you.”

J.D. took the phone, but kept her anchored tightly to his side with one strong arm. “Yes, Mr. Bates. Yes, Sir, I am. Yes, Sir, I will. I intend to do just that, Sir. Thank you. I’ll work on that, Sir. Thank you. Goodbye, Sir.”

Jessie squirmed in his hold a little. “Gee, you sure can tell you were in the military. ‘yessir’, ‘nosir’, ‘anything you say, sir’,” she imitated him badly.

J.D. looked down his nose at her. “I happened to be in complete agreement with what your father was saying, and I have a deep respect your father.” He took his seat behind his desk and arranged her on his lap comfortably. “He raised you without killing you until I could take over, didn’t he?” Jessie smacked his shoulder. “Besides, he agrees with me that you need a firm hand.”

Jess rolled her eyes, but worried a little at J.D.’s thoughtful look.

“Yes,” he said, cupping her bottom deliberately in his big hand. “I think you’ll be needing the guidance of my firm hand on your naughty little bottom in the very near future.”

Jessie tried to get a foot on the floor and make a quick getaway, but he anticipated her move and effortlessly turned her over his knees.

After baring her bottom to the slow methodical slap of his hand, J.D. began the lecture. “Let’s start with skydiving school and work down from there, shall we? I don’t think you’re going to be sitting comfortably any time soon, my love.”

J.D. proceeded to make Jessie scream and cry and beg him to stop, despite the fact that she loved that he cared about her enough to do this. He was autocratic and arrogant and infuriating and pushy, and powerfully strong and sexy and, cripes, did he have a hard hand . . . He was definitely much more than a man, and he was all hers.

The end.

twenty-three.