The One

Lora Leigh

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Print books by Lora Leigh

Brenna’s love for Jase has grown from a crush to a soul-searing need, a painful hunger…and an unrequited ache, because the savagely sexy Texan doesn’t feel the same. A bequest and stipulation in his father’s will have hardened Jase, it seems. Now she must endure three months of living under his roof. Three torturous, tension-filled months and Brenna will have fulfilled the stipulation; will be free to attempt to regain the heart lost to Jase so long ago.

Since the age of eighteen, Jase has protected Brenna—from himself, as much as anyone else. Living with her proves too rousing even for his iron will. He’ll claim what’s his, take Brenna in ways he’d previously only dreamed, sink so deeply inside her luscious body he’ll never find his way out. And be damned if he’ll let her go.

A scorching Texas summer can’t compete with blazing lust as Brenna gives in, gives over, gives all that she is to Jase, to the only man she’s every loved…to the one.

Ellora’s Cave Publishing

www.ellorascave.com

The One

ISBN 9781419934414

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The One Copyright © 2011 Lora Leigh

Edited by Mary Moran

Cover art by Syneca

Electronic book publication June 2011

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The One

Lora Leigh

Prologue

Samuels Creek, Texas

Brenna Laine stood in the shadows of the birthday party, nursing a glass of champagne and watching the dance floor with a sense of envy.

The night was growing late. Enough so that the guests were inebriated sufficiently to be relaxed and feeling sexy.

The multitude of peach and white lights strung around the patio and gardens glistened over the couples on the dance floor. The tall lamp lights were turned down low; the music was slow and sensual. The air of sexual tension had begun growing throughout the night, drifting along the currents of music and weaving through the slowly swaying bodies.

Beyond, the water of the pool glistened with the lights, the gardens extending around it, drawing it in and making it a part of the natural landscaping as large, flat rocks and boulders extended up to the point where the water crashed into the pool below from the dining room.

The sound of the water, the sensual throb of the music and the heat of the night combined to create an atmosphere made for sex, sweat and earthy moans.

She watched them…well, more to the point, she watched a couple. The tall, muscular form of the male, so dark and inherently arrogant. Confidence oozed from every pore of his body, just as strength and power seemed to drift around him like an invisible aura.

The woman he held was as gorgeous as he was handsome.

Her raven-black hair was a little darker than her partner’s and fell to her nape, framing her face in a sleek, silky bob. Soft gray eyes stared up at her partner, and in her face, Brenna could see the intent to have him in her bed.

Her fingers clenched into fists, anger began to curl through her. She’d watched him for thirteen years. She’d loved him in one way or another since the day she had met him at the tender age of ten.

She’d dreamed of dancing in his arms, of being held against him, and every year she watched him dance with another woman. As the lights went low, the night began to age and the music began to whisper of sex and heat, she always stood in the same place and watched, year after year, as he danced with someone else.

Every year it became harder, every year it hurt more. And every year—

“When are you going to do something about this situation, Bren?” Aged and rasping, Poppa Jason questioned her as he moved behind her, the whisper of the electronic wheelchair silent beneath the sound of the music.

Turning, she resisted the urge to bite her lower lip in a gesture that would reveal the nervous energy beginning to plague her.

Every year it happened. Every year she watched the same scene, every year she was aware of the fact that the woman he danced with would also be the woman he slept with. And every year, the pain of it traveled deeper inside her heart.

“What are you talking about, Poppa Jason?” She tried to play dumb; she was usually pretty good at it.

Her stepfather wasn’t a man who was easy to fool though, and the fact that he had watched over her since she was ten years old gave him an edge on reading every emotion and every lie that crossed her expression.

The smile that curved his lips had no amusement to back it. His sun-weathered, aging face was lined with sadness though, and with somber knowledge.

“Ah now, baby girl, you know you can’t fool me that easily.” He shook his finger at her chidingly as his graying brows formed a deep vee. “I can see your heart breakin’ in your eyes, Bren.”

She lowered her head, turning it just enough to glimpse Jase, his son, a smile creasing his face at something the woman in his arms whispered in his ear.

She couldn’t stay here tonight. She couldn’t pace the floors, not here, as he fucked that bitch all night. And watching her smug smile the next morning would drive her to violence.

“Ah, Poppa Jason, it’s not that bad.” She sighed as she tucked a heavy strand of hair that fell over her shoulder behind her ear.

She couldn’t watch anymore.

The woman, Miriam Dallas, the personal assistant Jase had hired the year before, had been waging a seductive campaign to get him into her bed since the day she was hired.

Brenna could almost see her considering engagement rings and wedding gowns.

Her back teeth clenched in frustration at the thought.

“You’ve been in love with him forever,” Poppa Jason said knowingly. “You’re close to him, Bren, you have an edge the woman he’s dancing with doesn’t have. Miriam doesn’t stand a chance, sweetheart, if a chance is really what she wants.”

Brenna shrugged without commenting on Miriam. Poppa Jason was always making those oblique statements where Jase’s assistant was concerned.

“He sees me as his sister,” she finally said, regret tightening her chest. “No matter how hard I try to get him to see me as a woman.”

She wasn’t his sister. She had never seen him as a brother. Since she had been a teenager, he had held her all but mesmerized, filled her dreams and tormented her with a rapidly maturing arousal that was now a bitter, heated knot in her stomach.

“He knows you’re not his sister,” Poppa Jason informed her, his voice gentle. “Don’t fool yourself, girl. Get your ass out there on that dance floor and claim that boy. He’s not going to wait on you forever. Some men are stubborn and need more of a hint than others. And sometimes Jase is the most stubborn man I know.”

She had an insane urge to laugh. “The male does the hunting—”

“Don’t fool yourself,” he grunted again. “The female always does the hunting, girl. It’s simply that some females hunt out in the open.” He nodded to the woman Jase was dancing with. “And some women hunt with a more subtle grace.” His gaze came back to her. “Be careful, though, that you’re not too damned subtle.”

Subtle? If she dared get close to him at the moment, she would humiliate them both by begging for his touch. That would be her idea of subtle. And it would destroy her when he turned away, or worse yet, stared at her with pity.

“The rejection would kill me,” she said sadly. “I’m sorry, Poppa Jason, I can’t do it. And I can’t stay here tonight while he takes that woman to his bedroom. I’m going home.”

She hadn’t even gotten to give Jase his birthday present.

She’d tried to. She’d been in his office, ready to pull it from her purse, when Miriam had barged in. That present was still in the bag—only now it was in her bedroom rather than in his.

“I have to go, Poppa Jason.” Leaning close, she kissed his forehead gently. “I love you, but I can’t stay here tonight. Not tonight.”

She would go crazy. She would end up barging into Jase’s room and tearing Miriam’s hair straight from her head. The witch had been conniving, manipulating, scheming and lying for a year now. From the looks of it, tonight Miriam may well end up exactly where she wanted to be.

Poppa Jason didn’t see it, Jase didn’t see it, and sometimes Brenna wondered if it was her jealousy rather than Miriam’s faults that had her seeing it. The fact was, she had never liked any woman Jase dated or slept with. She had found faults with each and every one, and had refused point-blank to be more than simply coldly polite to them.

Moving quickly along the edge of the room until she reach the ballroom doors that were only partially closed, Brenna slid through the opening and quickly headed for the stairs. There was very little that needed to be packed. She could be on the road within an hour, headed to the airport and back to her small apartment in New York where she was attending college.

Her stepfather had been taking care of her since her mother’s death just after Brenna turned sixteen. He hadn’t forced her to return to the father who didn’t want her or her mother’s family, who had only been interested in the money they would have received for taking care of her.

He’d let her stay at the ranch, he’d bought her car, her clothes and paid the bills on her college apartment as long as her grades were high.

He gave her a small monthly allowance, and he’d made her a part of the family.

She was family as far as he was concerned, and he told her that often, as though he was afraid she might forget it.

She might be family, but she wasn’t blood, she thought as she unlocked her bedroom door and stepped inside the cool comfort of her room.

Heavy lace cascaded from the wood canopy surrounding her bed, the soft, antique-ivory color lending an elegance to the queen-size bed that she often spent hours lying within, fantasizing about Jase.

It was a bedroom straight out of a romantic fantasy. The lace spilling from the wood canopy, the heavy silk and lace duvet covering the feather comforter had just a hint of dusky rose in the floral design scattered over it.

Thick, fluffy pillows were stacked at the headboard, more lace spilling from the sides of the pillow shams as she moved them to the bottom of her bed and lay down with a weary sigh.

She was tired. She’d spent the better part of two weeks preparing for Jase’s birthday party and doing everything possible to ensure Miriam didn’t stick her dirty little paws into the planning of it.

And Miriam had tried, more than once. Even worse, her ideas had actually had merit. That merit had forced Brenna to use the ideas rather than ignoring them as she had wanted to.

Reaching to the bedside table, she thumbed the switch on the small lamp, spilling a soft, dim light around the area.

The light caught the silver thread of the black evening gown she wore. More silk and lace, though the lace of her dress was more delicate, softer and amazingly feminine. She’d bought the dress with Jase in mind.

The silk slip beneath was like a cloud over her body, it made her feel feminine and sexy, while the four-inch heels would have placed her at just the right height to sway against him.

If he’d deigned to dance with her. Which he hadn’t.

When he’d chosen a dance partner, he’d chosen Miriam.

A soft knock at her door had her gaze jerking to the panel as it slowly eased open.

“Bren, baby girl, you okay?”

Her heart slammed into her throat, the muscles there tightening in sudden excitement as Jase stepped into the room.

His eyes were so dark they were nearly black. They were almost black even at the best of times. Almost as dark as his hair. Thick and heavy, straight and less than silky, the heavy strands fell over the collar of his evening jacket and framed the hair lines of his face, the sharp, high cheekbones, the thickly lashed dark, dark eyes.

She sat up slowly as he moved across the room, feeling suddenly deprived of oxygen, dazed as he moved to her and sat on the side of the bed.

“You okay, baby girl?” His voice was a low, rough rasp as he leaned toward her, his arm stretching across her body at her thighs as he repeated the endearment.

It was straight out of a fantasy. Jase walking into her room, moving to her, his arm stretching across her body. Except, in her fantasy, she didn’t sit up for him, instead, he came over her, his head lowering, his lips taking hers.

“Bren?” There was concern in his voice now.

“I’m fine.” She fought to breathe, feeling the heaviness in her chest as excitement began to surge through her body.

God, she wanted him. She ached for him. There was a heat that seemed as though it were singing her thighs, her clit and the inner muscles of her pussy as she felt the warmth of him surrounding her.

“Dad said you weren’t feeling well,” he said as he lifted his free hand to tuck that stubborn curl behind her ear where she preferred to keep it. “What’s wrong?”

She loved him.

She was dying without him.

She was aching for him so brutally that it felt as though her heart were being shredded.

“Happy birthday, Jase,” she whispered.

She couldn’t wait.

He would reject her. She knew he would, but she couldn’t hold back the need. She couldn’t hold back the hunger suddenly raging through her.

Her hand lifted to his neck as she pulled herself toward him.

He didn’t move.

Her gaze locked with his as she began shaking, trembling as much from fear as from need as she brushed her lips against his for that first heated caress. Fire and ice raced through her body at the rough, velvet feel of his lips as she stroked hers against them, sending a surge of such hunger racing through her that it was nearly unbearable.

A sharp cry parted her lips as his hands suddenly gripped her upper arms. At first, she thought he would jerk her away from him, that he would throw her back to the bed in rejection. She didn’t expect him to pause, his hands holding her, his lips moving against hers, parting hers.

She was suddenly more courageous than she had ever been. The hunger opened a door she hadn’t expected, and at the feel of their lips parting against one another, she let her tongue peek out to taste him. Just a little taste.

She’d been dying for this for so long. Just a taste, she’d told herself. She’d always said it would be enough. That she would make it enough, no matter how slight the caress.

Until he suddenly jerked her to him. Held her by her upper arms, her head tilting back on her neck from the force of the hunger that suddenly filled the kiss she had dreamed of. A kiss that shot a fury of electric pleasure tearing through her as his tongue pushed past her lips, stroked against hers, tasted her as she tasted him, and sparked a cascade of sensations that swamped her senses.

Heat and surging hunger. It was like a full rush of intensity tearing through every nerve ending of her body. Pleasure washed over her, around her. Surrounding her as his arms did, pulling her against the hard heat of his body as his lips slanted over hers. He pushed her to the bed, coming over her, his body blanketing hers as she pushed her arms beneath his jacket to hold on to him.

Her palms flattened against his back, feeling the shift of muscle, the warmth of his flesh. His lips and tongue raided hers, ravishing them with an uncontrolled need that sent hers burning further out of control.

As her nails dug into his back in pleasure, she felt his hand at her knee, gripping the skirt of her dress, dragging it up, pushing it to her thighs as his fingers found the dampened fabric of her panties and pushed beneath them.

It was like a storm of hunger. It raged between them, through them.

Her legs parted for him, a cry tearing from her throat as his fingers stroked over the swollen folds of her pussy, finding her juices and the sensitized intimate flesh.

A growl echoed from his throat as his lips jerked back from hers. They smoothed over her jawline, down her neck as he licked and nipped at her flesh. Between her thighs, his fingers stroked, caressed, found her clit and rubbed around the tight, tortured bud as her hips jerked upward to him.

“Jase. Oh God, yes. Please yes.” She writhed beneath him as the sensations gathered around her. One was still surging across her senses when more came, then more, until there were so many layers of pleasure she had no desire to escape. No desire to resist the chains that formed around her heart and bound her to him in emotions that would prove to be unbreakable, even if her heart wasn’t.

When he moved, it wasn’t to take her though. It wasn’t to strip his clothes and move between her thighs. It wasn’t to possess her completely.

Before she could process what he was doing, he had jumped from the bed and stared down at her in shock, his eyes black with lust and inner fury, his fists clenched at his sides for a moment before he raked them through his tousled hair.

“Jase?” She whispered his name, suddenly aware of exactly what the movement meant.

He was finished. He had no intention of taking her. Somehow, she had a feeling, he’d never meant for that kiss to turn into what it had. And he wasn’t just shocked, he was horrified. Repulsed.

“God, Bren, I’m sorry.”

She was going to cry. She could see the regret on his face, see it filling his eyes as she slowly sat up and pushed the skirt of her dress over her thighs. She watched the movement, unwilling to watch his expression or the myriad emotions that had nothing to do with wanting her or loving her.

“I was drinking—” He seemed to halt, to pause.

Bren shook her head desperately. Please, God, no excuses. She couldn’t bear to hear them.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” he finally stated, his voice, which had been so rough, so sexually hungry moments before, was now icy and emotionless. “It won’t happen again.”

“Of course it won’t,” she whispered as she pushed herself from the bed.

Her body felt heavy. She hurt from head to toe, an encore of agony racing through her soul.

“Bren, I didn’t mean to do that.”

“But I did.”

She looked up in time to see the ice suddenly melt and his expression transform to shock once again. “What did you say?”

“I said, I did mean for it to happen,” she admitted, her voice thick with the tears she refused to shed. “I’m tired of being on the outside looking in, Jase. I’m sick to death of watching you disappear into your bedroom with another woman, whoever your favorite of the month is. And I’m tired of eating my heart out for a man who never sees me.”

If he looked shocked before, he looked poleaxed now. He simply stared at her, his expression slowly becoming icy once again.

“You’re my sister,” he stated with chilly resolve.

It felt as though he had shoved a dagger into her chest, straight to her heart, then twisted it savagely.

She had to fight back her tears, had to fight back the loss of the one dream she’d had for far too many years.

“No,” she whispered. “I’m not your sister. But I’ll make certain I don’t trouble you again.”

She didn’t bother changing from the evening gown. Moving to the bag at the end of her bed, she reached in and lifted out the gaily wrapped present before turning back to him. She placed it carefully on the bed between them.

“Happy birthday, Jase.” She rushed from the bedroom, anger and pain churning inside her.

She had wanted to hand him the present personally, but now she didn’t dare. He would have probably thrown it back in her face.

She’d worked a part-time job for months for that present, saving every penny she could of her allowance to put with it. To buy him one of the few presents she knew he wouldn’t buy for himself.

She left the house, determined to place enough time and enough distance between them to get past the hurt.

If that were possible.

A part of her knew it wasn’t going to happen though.

She loved him. And loving Jase was the biggest mistake of her life.

As the door closed behind her, Jase stepped to the top of the stairs, holding the gift in one hand while the fingers of the other fisted in a dark, brutal emotion he couldn’t name.

A ring. She’d bought him the silver and turquoise band fashioned by one of his favorite artists. An original, to never be made again and personally signed. It had been gone when Jase had returned several weeks ago to buy it, and now he knew why.

Opening his hand, he stared down at the ring and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now?

Chapter One

One Year Later

Brenna stood silently, alone in the hanger of the small, private landing strip. The pilot had been taciturn and too quiet on the flight from New York. He’d insisted he’d been hired to fly her outside the small Texas town of Samuels Creek, not to entertain her during the flight.

He had to be a close friend of her stepbrother Jase, she thought. Her and Jase’s relationship hadn’t been the best in the past nine months, she had to admit. And there were too many people who were aware of that fact. Somehow—and she knew it hadn’t been her or Jase, though she was the one accused of it—word had leaked of the reason for the conflict between them.

Those who knew the terms of Poppa Jason’s will hadn’t been at all pleased. Even those who knew her felt she should have released the portion of the sizeable ranch her stepfather had left her and simply faded from Jase’s life.

It wasn’t something she could do—even if she wanted to. There were times she wished she could. There had been times she might have even done so if it were possible. There were terms of the will that Jase and his friends were unaware of though. Terms that even Brenna wasn’t completely clear on.

The one thing she was clear on, though, was that the man who had protected her, loved her and cared for her after her mother’s death, had made one request of her. He’d asked one favor, and she couldn’t find it within herself to refuse him, despite her confusion over it. That under no circumstances, no matter Jase’s anger or possibly his hatred, could she turn back if she agreed.

Her part of the stipulation was a gag order that she was prohibited from telling Jase about any part of the will he was unaware of. Terms the lawyer, a personal friend of her stepfather’s, had assured her he would see were upheld for the same reason she had agreed to it. Because they both had loved Poppa Jason.

There were repercussions if Brenna told Jase the terms of the will as well, but even those repercussions hadn’t mattered as much as the fact that she couldn’t repay Poppa Jason by saying no. The will stated she would not only lose her portion of the ranch, which wasn’t so bad, but it would then be sold rather than given back to Jase. And added to that were the stipulations that if Brenna did tell, then the college tuition, apartment expenses and the car Poppa Jason had bought her just before his death would all be repossessed.

She could have handled that, but she couldn’t bear the thought of Jase losing the ranch. It would kill him, she knew it would.

She couldn’t sign the ranch over to him for a period of one full year either. And before she could sign it over, she had to stay at the ranch, in the main house with Jase, for a period of three months. That meant no overnight shopping trips, no overnight parties. It meant she had to live with Jase. Under the same roof. Facing his ire and possibly even his hatred every single day of those three months.

The lawyer had assured her that Poppa Jason had others watching to ensure the will was enforced, as well. That Jason Samuels the fourth had made certain she couldn’t deceive his wishes or the lawyer hired to enforce them.

That had been the information she had been given before the formal reading of the will where Jase had learned that Brenna supposedly inherited forty percent of the ranch, property and holdings that he’d worked his entire life to inherit.

Brenna had been forced to sit silently as the man she adored since childhood stared at her as though she were a traitor. Dark, icy eyes had glittered with anger, and that look hadn’t changed in the nine months since the will had been read. Every time she had seen him, he’d acted as though she didn’t exist, except for that look of dislike.

He had acted as though those few, so-precious-to-her minutes hadn’t existed the night of his birthday. That memory was still relived every night in her dreams, every day in her memories. The feel of his kiss, his touch, the exquisite ecstasy she had found when she had climaxed for the first time in his arms. What had happened seconds later, she tried desperately not to think about.

Staring around the hanger again, she sighed morosely.

There wasn’t even a chair for her to sit on. Not that she should have expected one. The hanger and the landing strip belonged to a friend of Jase’s. A corporate CEO, Ron Harold, who owned a lake house close to the Arrow S ranch Jase’s family had owned for generations.

They had probably taken the chair out of the hanger, or hidden it, just for her arrival.

Her bags sat at the wide, open entrance, the sunlight pouring through, baking the leather and her. The summer sun beat into the hanger with a fierce, blazing heat that only this time of the year brought. July wasn’t exactly the kindest month of the season in Texas.

Perspiration gathered and dampened her skin as she waited, the heels she wore had her ankles aching as she moved back to her bags, pushed one to its side and sat down. At least the heavy luggage had its uses sometimes, other than simply being large enough to carry the majority of what she needed for this trip.

Three months. Did she really think she could bear Jase’s hatred for three long months? Long enough to ensure she could sign over the ranch and just be finished with it? To be finished with the only family she’d ever had and the man she loved?

Perhaps she could have secretly told him about the will and gained his cooperation until the deadline ended, but he just pissed her off. It wasn’t fair that he treated her as though she were a stranger, an interloper simply because his father had him convinced that he had cared enough about his stepdaughter to leave her a small portion of the ranch to ensure her security.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so small.

Forty percent was a rather large portion, but it wasn’t as though it were forty percent of the profit whenever she wanted it.

She didn’t actually receive anything from that forty percent except her college tuition and the allowance Poppa Jason had set aside for her when she first began college.

She couldn’t collect a penny until she was thirty and showed that she could support herself. Only then could she draw yet another allowance. At no time was that percentage an actual money amount, because of the operating capital needed to run the ranch and the fact that Poppa Jason would have never actually given away any part of the property.

What the forty percent would eventually amount to was no more than a basic security net. The language of the final will, which only the lawyer and Brenna seemed to be aware of, was that in four years’ time, another reading of the final will would take place that would make everything much clearer to both Jason as well as to Brenna.

That final will, as the lawyer explained, laid out the reasons why Poppa Jason had set up his wishes as he had and would then attempt to rectify whatever problems the original will had caused between Brenna and Jase.

She had a feeling there was no rectifying anything in four years or forty. Brenna had destroyed that relationship months before Poppa Jason had died. She had destroyed it so effectively that the few times she had returned to the ranch, Jase had ensured he was rarely around.

She had lived at the ranch since her mother married Poppa Jason, fourteen years before. A week before their sixth anniversary, her mother, Lillian, had died in a car accident when a drunk driver had crossed the median and crashed headlong into her little sports car while she had been in Houston.

Her mother was buried on the Arrow S ranch. Her marker was placed in a manner that allowed Jason Samuels the fourth to rest between what he called his two favorite women. Jase’s mother and Brenna’s.

The love of his youth, and the love of his old age, he’d once said.

And Brenna, he had always claimed, was the daughter he’d never had. He had taken care of her, spoiled her, laughed with her. He taught her the Samuels’ history from the first Jason Samuels, nearly two hundred years before, who had married a Cheyenne princess to ensure peace with the Native Americans, to his father who had married an English lord’s daughter, whose inheritance ensured the prosperity of the ranch.

Generations of Samuels’ men had worked the ranch, the land and the law to ensure the Arrow S remained a private, thriving business. A business with fingers that reached into so many different pies Brenna often wondered how Jase kept up with it all.

Breathing out wearily, she pulled her cell phone from her pack and once again called Jase’s number. She’d already called several times, after the pilot had deposited her there.

It went straight to voice mail once again, which meant his phone was turned off. Jase rarely turned his phone off.

“I know you’re still angry with me,” she said quietly. “But I’ve been here for hours, Jase, and it’s really hot. Please have someone pick me up.”

Disconnecting the call, she stared out of the building to the sun-baked expanse of ground and the landing strip beyond. Heat rose in waves from the asphalt and cracked the dirt around it. It encased the land like an oven, sucking the moisture from it and leaving nothing but dust in its wake.

The noonday sun was kicking in, and she knew the temperature would only rise. This summer had been the hottest on record for nearly a century, and it was just her luck that she was stuck beneath a tin roof in a metal building, for God only knew how long.

And she was tired of burning alive.

High heels came off.

Flipping the suitcase over to open it, she drew a pair of cutoffs and a camisole from inside.

The landing strip was deserted so she didn’t bother trying to find privacy to change. Stripping the skirt and silky, sleeveless blouse off, she dropped them into the opened luggage before removing her bra and redressing.

The cutoffs and tank were a hell of a lot cooler, and the strappy sandals were flat and a damn sight more comfortable.

Chapter Two

Pulling the phone from her purse again long minutes later, Brenna breathed out a heavy breath as she made another call. This was her last chance to get a ride to the ranch. If Stacey wasn’t answering her phone, then she was screwed.

“Bren, where are you?” Her best friend from grade school answered the phone, voice feminine and filled with laughter. “I didn’t think you were coming in until tomorrow.”

“Neither did I.” She grimaced. “But the pilot called last night and informed me he was leaving early. I could leave with him or arrange for other transportation.”

Not that she would have minded flying in commercially, but she knew Jase hated the drive from the ranch to Houston. He had been the one to arrange for the private flight, and now he’d left her stranded.

“Now doesn’t that just sound like our friendly, less-than-social Noah,” Stacey laughed over the pilot’s renowned grumpiness. He was her uncle’s employee, so she well knew how temperamental he could be. “So, how did Jase greet you?”

Stacey was the only person in the world who knew what happened the night of Jase’s party. And Brenna wouldn’t have told her but for the fact that she’d been unable to get a flight to New York that night and Stacey’s apartment was only miles from the airport in Houston. If Stacey wasn’t at the apartment, Brenna knew where the key was, so she’d been assured of having a place to stay. Her friend had been there though, and after a bottle of wine and very little encouragement, Brenna had spilled her guts.

“By not showing up,” she sighed.

There was a moment of silence. “What do you mean?” her friend finally asked carefully, as though she suspected but couldn’t quite believe.

“Stacey, I’m stuck at your uncle’s hanger and Jase isn’t answering his phone. It’s going straight to voicemail. Is there any way you can pick me up?”

“You’re kidding me?” Outrage filled her voice. “Noah wouldn’t ever be so nasty as that, Bren.”

“I don’t know if it was Noah or if it’s Jase,” she stated. “Perhaps Noah wasn’t aware no one would be here. All I know is it’s hotter than hell, there’s no place to get out of the sun and I’m getting really tired, Stacey. I’ve been here for hours already and there’s not even a bottle of water in this hell hole to make it bearable.”

There was a moment of silence, heavy with Stacey’s concern and anger.

Like Stacey, Brenna found it hard to believe Noah would be so nasty, but somewhere, somehow, someone had arranged this, and she didn’t appreciate it.

“I’ll take care of it,” Stacey finally promised firmly. “Hang on and we’ll have you home and lounging by the pool in no time.”

The call disconnected, leaving Brenna to shake her head at her friend’s habit of simply clipping the phone closed.

Stacey refused to talk and drive, even Bluetooth enabled wasn’t enough to convince her to do it. She swore if she tried to talk she’d end up wrecking simply because she didn’t know how to coordinate properly.

She was one of the smartest women Brenna knew, but Stacey had a bad habit of paying too much attention to the conversation and not enough to what was going on around her.

At least her friend was fairly close, she thought. A half-hour at the most and she would be in the cool comfort of one of Stacey’s uncle’s vehicles and heading to the ranch.

How she had managed to keep Stacey as a friend in the past nine months, she hadn’t figured out. James Mayer, Stacy’s uncle, refused to speak to her unless absolutely necessary. He and Stacey had argued often over her friendship with Brenna. He considered Brenna a gold-digging little whore, as she heard it.

Not that his opinion mattered or that she had ever wanted the ranch. She was doing as Poppa Jason wanted her to do. The only thing he had ever asked in all the years he had cared for her and kept her life happy and secure.

The letter he had left her with his will had assured her he was only trying to protect Jase. She would be helping him look out for Jase’s future, he’d promised her. Personally, she thought Jase looked out for his future fine. He had ensured he had no heart, no weakness. It was hard to hurt a man who protected himself to that extent.

It didn’t stop her feelings from being hurt that Jase hadn’t been waiting for her though. The appearance that he was deliberately leaving her to sit and rot pissed her off further. She didn’t much care for the fact he was treating her so brutishly after all the years he had protected her. After all the years she had loved him.

He’d sent her straight back to New York and to college after the reading of the will. Her visits back, coinciding with the demands of the will, hadn’t been well received. He hadn’t left, but he’d glared at her continually, as though she had been caught stealing the silver or something.

Every two months she was required to spend at least one week at the ranch in addition to the three months, if she decided to sign the ranch over to Jase.

It was playing hell with her school schedule. It wasn’t allowing for the job she had hoped to take that summer, and it was beginning to wear on her nerves. She’d had to take a heavier class load to accommodate that last week, and the past six weeks had been even longer to allow for the three-month stay Poppa Jason had demanded in order to relinquish the ranch at the one-year anniversary of his death.

Three more months and she could simply turn the ranch over to Jase, she promised herself. Then, perhaps, she could get on with her own life. It was evident Jase didn’t want her in his.

That knowledge tormented her in the darkest parts of the night, and it hurt. The pain of knowing he wanted nothing more to do with her was destroying her. The least he could have done was simply ignore the weakness she had displayed that night. He hadn’t had to turn against her completely. It wasn’t as though she had forced him to break marriage vows or anything.

The sound of a vehicle racing toward the hanger had her standing, pushing the luggage into position and gathering the two extra bags that went with it. She was standing in front of them, waiting, when the vehicle came into view.

Her heart began racing at the sight of the black SUV that sped around the front of the hanger and came to a hard stop. The wheels only barely kept from screaming. The back door flew open, and as the driver stepped from the front, Jase jumped from the back, an irritable scowl on his face.

“Stacey called you?” She glared back at him, suddenly angry and feeling very betrayed by her friend.

“She called the house, which you could have done,” he informed her as the driver collected her luggage.

Standing in front of her, his hands propped on his muscled hips, a brooding glare shaping his expression, the dark brown, nearly black of his eyes framed by thick, heavy black lashes almost melted her.

Melted her heart, melted her body, definitely melted her thighs. They began to feel weak and her clit throbbed with an awakening sensation of arousal. He looked savage. Savagely handsome, savagely sexy, dominant and powerful.

Dammit, she hated it when that happened.

She hadn’t expected Jase when she’d made the decision to call Stacey, hence the reason for removing the bra. Now her nipples were standing tight and hard, pressing against the snug, soft cotton of her camisole.

And that melting thing? Her pussy was melting. She was suddenly slick and wet, the rush of liquid heat sensitizing her more than she had been to begin with.

“I did call the main house when the plane first landed and you didn’t answer,” she told him, her jaw tightening at the effort to push the words past her lips and her attention past her arousal. “No one answered.”

A frown vee’d the hard line of his forehead. “I’ll find out why,” he promised her as he turned back to the SUV. “Let’s go, I don’t have all day.”

She followed behind him, accepting his help into the vehicle before scooting across the wide seat to the other side as he also moved in.

“How long have you been waiting?” he asked as the slammed the door closed.

Brenna stared at the dark window between the driver and passenger areas. “Since about seven thirty this morning when Noah dropped me off.”

“Noah wasn’t supposed to leave New York until tomorrow morning.” His voice was more a growl now. “How the hell do you manage to get into these situations, Brenna?”

He sounded as though he thought it was her fault she was left stranded in the middle of nowhere, waiting on him to pick her up.

“Well, he called last night and said there was a change of plans.” Turning her head, she stared back at him angrily. “I’ve been calling your cell phone since then, and you’ve refused to answer. If you would stop ignoring my calls, then perhaps I wouldn’t get into these situations, now would I, Jase.”

“I wasn’t ignoring your calls,” he informed her, his voice growing tighter by the second. “I didn’t get them.”

She stared at him silently for a long second, wondering what she was supposed to say to that.

“Do you still have your cell phone?” she asked him.

His frown darkened. “Yes.” It was a tight, hard sound.

“And it still works?”

“Miriam has been answering my calls today while I was in meetings,” he finally admitted. “She didn’t mention you calling or having missed your calls.”

Miriam Dallas, his personal assistant.

Slinky, sexy, black-haired Miriam.

Brenna pursed her lips and nodded silently as she turned her head and stared out the window, watching the scenery pass by.

“I’ll ask her about the calls.” There was a vein of defensiveness in his voice.

Brenna shrugged as though it didn’t matter, but it did. She’d sat there at the hanger for hours calling him. It had taken Stacey to get through, to get him here. Miriam didn’t dare ignore Stacey’s calls. She lived too close and saw Jase too often for that to work. Besides, Miriam also knew Stacey well. If she hadn’t answered, then the other girl would have been at the ranch raising hell over being ignored.

What confused Brenna was why Miriam thought Brenna wouldn’t call Stacey? She and Stacey had been friends since they were ten. How had she thought it would work to attempt to keep Jase from knowing she was in?

No doubt, Miriam would have a completely logical explanation though, she always did. She was a master manipulator and she always seemed to get away with whatever game she was playing at the time.

It amazed her Jase didn’t see through the other woman. Instead, he defended Miriam every chance he had.

“If you called…”

“There is no ‘if’, Jase,” she shot back, her arms crossing over her breasts. “I did call. And whoever had your phone will know I called. According to you, that someone is Miriam.”

“You’ve never liked Miriam—”

“Oh, give me a break,” she retorted, turning to him angrily. “Miriam can’t stand me and we both know it. Don’t play games with me, Jase.”

His lips tightened, his dark eyes narrowing on her. “I know no such thing,” he stated coolly. “She claims differently.”

“Then by all means, believe Miriam over me.” The pain was almost more than she could stand. “You’ve known her practically all her life, haven’t you, Jase? You all but helped raise her.” Pain filled her voice. “She followed you around like a damned puppy and idolized you all her life, didn’t she, Jase? Oh hell yes, believe her, someone you’ve known for only two years. Believe her, Jase, because I’m sure you can tell when she’s lying, can’t you?”

Miriam Dallas had only worked for Jase for the past two years. It had been Brenna who had loved him, Brenna who had never been able to lie to him, and Brenna who had withstood the disgust and hatred of almost everyone they knew for the past nine months because of what his father had requested of her. To help protect him from whatever Poppa Jason thought he needed protection from.

Brenna had to fight the tears. She had to turn away from him. She had to cover her lips to keep from sobbing, but nothing could stop the single tear that trailed down her face.

“You’ve changed,” he said quietly. “You’re not the girl you used to be.”

“You’re right,” she whispered, her lips trembling, the ache in her heart too deep, too desperate to deny as she turned back to him. “I grew up, didn’t I, Jase? I went from that little girl to the woman who idolized you, and that’s what scares the shit out of you. That’s why you want to hate me so bad that you latched on to the first available excuse, isn’t it? Because God forbid that someone should actually expect you to care for them as well.” A sob, uncontrolled and tearing at her chest, tore from her. “Now wouldn’t that just be too uncalled for?”

She turned away again. Eyes closed, she pretended to stare out the window, to watch the landscape roll back. To try to contain all the pent-up anger and pain that seemed determined to escape now that there seemed to be an outlet.

She could barely breathe. She felt as though she were smothering. She hurt. She hurt from the inside out. The pain had been building inside her for nine months, lashing at her until it was a burning ache that never extinguished.

He was the man she measured every other man against.

He was the reason she was still a virgin.

And none of it would matter any longer. She had three months and she could leave. Three months, and he would be out of her life forever.

Chapter Three

Was he really going to let her stay in her room and cry alone?

In all the years Brenna had lived on the Arrow S, he had never allowed her to cry alone. From the moment his father had brought the delicate, strawberry-blonde child and her quiet mother to the ranch, Jase had been unable to still the protective instinct that had grown inside him.

He had been eighteen at the time. He hadn’t wanted a mother or a sibling. His father had told him point-blank Brenna wasn’t his sister. She was the daughter of the woman his father had married, nothing more. All he needed Jase to do was make sure no one on the ranch or anywhere else ever harmed her. Man or woman.

That had made much more sense to him.

Now, staring up the stairs outside his office, he placed one foot on the bottom step and started up.

“Jase, those faxes you were waiting for have come in and that buyer in Dallas is on the phone if you still want to talk to him. I believe I may have convinced him that bull is well worth the additional thousands you’re asking for.”

There was an edge of triumph in Miriam’s voice, and Jase grimaced.

He’d asked an outrageous amount for that damn bull because he didn’t want to sell him. Neither, though, did he want to piss off the buyer. Let him think Jase didn’t want to sell, and he would move the moon and stars in his attempt to convince Jase to do just that.

Hell, he could have sworn Miriam had understood the situation.

He turned slowly and stared down at her silently for long moments.

Raven-hued, her short, silky hair was cut into an attractive “choppy” look. With wide blue eyes and creamy skin, she was a beautiful woman. She was also a friend, which made the situation that had developed between him and Brenna over the past two years that much harder to understand.

“Why didn’t you tell me Brenna was calling earlier?”

He didn’t ask if Brenna had called. He knew she had called.

As she said in the car, he had known her most of her life. He knew how she lied, how she evaded, and he knew how to catch her in the fine art of feminine wiles. She’d been flirting with him since she was ten, and for the past several years, every time he saw her, his dick got hard.

On the other hand, there was no desire for Miriam, and he knew for a fact she had never acted as though she thought any more of him than she did any of her other friends.

She stared back at him in affected surprise. And she didn’t fool him in the least.

“Let me warn you now, lying to me could cost you this job.” Looking for a new assistant wasn’t something he wanted to deal with at the moment and losing a friend was never a preferred option. But he wouldn’t tolerate lies either. This wasn’t the reason he had hired her and she knew it. She was here not to lie to him, but to effectively ensure he managed to keep his dick in his pants.

The lush, reddened lips thinned as he watched the calculated gleam that flashed in her gaze.

“We were busy, Jase,” she told him. “I was going to tell you, but when I came looking for you, you had already left.” She gave a delicate shrug of her slender shoulders beneath the sleeveless blouse she’d paired with an above-the-knee black skirt and four inch heels.

“I’ll no longer need you to monitor the calls coming to my cell phone during my meeting. I’ll simply let voice mail take the ones I believe can wait,” he told her. “And tell the buyer the bull has already been promised to a buyer who wishes to remain anonymous.”

A frown jerked between her brows. “Jase, I busted my ass to sell that bull for you.”

“No, you flirted and teased until you got the price, knowing full well the reason I had overpriced him was to hold on to him for a while. What I’d like to know is why you’re so damned determined to sell that bull for me.”

“Perhaps I wanted to do my job?” He could see her jaw flexing, the obvious control she was exerting over her tongue. “The only reason you’re holding on to it is because Brenna bought it for you, not because it holds any value.”

Brenna had bought the stubborn, mean-assed brute eight years before after Jase had admired it as a calf. She’d completely charmed the owner, a New Mexico rancher no one had charmed in decades, and bought the black calf for next to nothing. That bull had become the cornerstone of his herd, with his breeding prices rising by the year until Jase had retired him in the past year. He wasn’t just a profitable asset, he was also a gift from the girl Brenna had been. The girl who had been convinced Jase could do no wrong.

Hell no, he wasn’t selling him, and he would be damned if he would allow Miriam to manipulate him into it for whatever reason she had come up with. Like Brenna, her actions were beginning to confuse the hell out of him. “Go home for the day, Miriam,” he ordered her. “Better yet, for the next two days. Give careful thought to how you want to continue our business relationship. Because let me assure you, I will not tolerate anyone interfering in my relationship with Brenna in that manner. Not anyone. Not at any time.”

“I see.” Her lips pursed, though with anger or disapproval he wasn’t certain. “And what of the opinion that she’s out to use your sibling relationship to steal this ranch from you? Maybe I was simply trying to help you let go of that past, Jase, so you can get on with your future.”

A bark of mocking laughter left his lips. “Steal it? Son of a bitch, Dad gave her forty percent of it. She doesn’t have to steal shit, Miriam. And the next time you question my relationship with her or my decisions, then I promise you, you won’t be sticking around here to regret it.”

He didn’t give her a chance to retort.

Turning on his heel, he moved up the stairs, making his decision in that instant. He wasn’t leaving Brenna to cry alone, because she was right, he’d known her long enough to know her clear to the bone.

He’d thought he knew Miriam almost that well. He’d known her in college. She’d been married to one of his best friends who had managed to lose his life overseas.

Miriam he could live without, though. Brenna was another story. No matter how angry he was with her, there was no way he could live without her presence in his life. Moving toward the closed bedroom door across from his suite, he turned the knob and pushed it open, expecting to find a sobbing Brenna.

What he found brought him to a full, hard stop.

She had been crying. Her eyes were still swollen, her face cleaned of makeup and pale.

Until he pushed into her room.

She flushed.

From the edge of the towel wrapped around her breasts to her hair.

She sat on the bed, one slender foot propped on the mattress as she held a bottle of nail polish, obviously preparing to paint those delicate little toes as she sniffed back more tears.

The more Brenna was hurt inside, the more she primped on the outside. As though the very act of pampering herself with unusual attention comforted her. It was a damn good thing, because he and his father had often been at a loss as to how to comfort a young girl’s tears.

This wasn’t a young girl sitting on the bed though.

This was a woman. The woman who haunted his fantasies.

The woman who made his dick spike hard and confused the hell out of him.

And she was naked beneath the towel.

The edge fell away from her thigh, revealing the soft, creamy flesh. As she stared at him, her breasts began to move heavily beneath the material, and he knew her nipples were hard.

As they had been when he’d picked her up.

Dressed in cutoff denim shorts, one of those thin, skinny-strapped tops she wore and strappy sandals. Flesh tanned a golden brown, that mass of fiery, sunny blonde hair cascading around her shoulders in a riot of heavy waves. She had become instantly aroused when he got out of the vehicle.

Her nipples had gone hard immediately.

Her thighs had tightened.

She’d been wet. He’d known she was wet. Wet and wild and so very ready to fuck.

He pushed the bedroom door closed before locking it, almost without noticing, as she stared back at him, her chocolate-brown eyes wide and filled with arousal.

The sight of her feminine hunger had an effect on him that he had never quite known how to combat. For the past several years, since the day she had turned eighteen, it was as though a part of him had awakened that had been asleep before.

He moved toward her.

Dazed and so fucking hungry for the taste of her he could barely stand it.

All he could think about was the night of his birthday. Finding her stretched out on her bed in that evening gown, her eyes so dark and mysterious, her nipples as hard as little pebbles beneath the material.

And he’d wanted to taste them. He wanted them in his mouth, against his tongue, ready to devour as he sucked them.

What the hell was he doing?

Moving to her, he could feel that hunger surging through him, tearing aside the thin veil of his control as he let it have its way. Just for a moment, he swore to himself. Just a little taste of her, maybe then he could survive.

He took the nail polish from her hand and very carefully set it on the nightstand.

Then he came over her.

Watching her, his gaze locked with hers as she lay back against the pillows, her expression transforming with sensual drowsiness as he pulled the tucked edges of the towel apart.

The material fell away from her breasts.

Full, firm, her nipples a soft, sweet pink, tight and hard and lifting to him.

“Ah hell,” he groaned. “You’re going to make me crazy, Bren. My dick is so damned hard it’s all I can do to breathe. All I can think about is fucking you. Sinking so deep inside you that I don’t know where you end and I begin.”

“What’s stopping you?” she whispered.

What was stopping him?

He’d waited too long. He’d wanted her too much.

This was the reason why he tried to keep her away from the ranch and away from him, even before his father had died.

His head lowered, the hunger to taste her lips exploding through him with a force he didn’t want to resist. One he had no intentions of resisting.

Kissing her was like sinking into fire. Pleasure whipped through his senses as a muttered little moan slipped from her throat and she seemed to melt beneath him.

Delicate hands slid over his chest to the buttons of his shirt, a bit clumsy, slow enough to drive him crazy for the touch of her hands against his flesh. But the buttons gave way beneath her fingers. The material parted as she began pushing it from his shoulders.

He shrugged the material off, dropping it carelessly over the side of the bed. All the while, his lips were on hers, the erotic, sensual melding of lips and tongue infusing his blood with pure lust.

Reaching down, he jerked at the snap and zipper of his jeans, desperate to get out of the material, to release the stiff, heavy flesh of his cock.

It took too long to release the material, to toe his boots from his feet and work them off. As he pushed the jeans over his hips, his lips were moving down her neck, tasting her freshly showered flesh. The scent of peaches and cream filled his senses. Heated and fragrant, her skin was like silk, responsive and sensitive to each touch.

She moved beneath him, writhing, her hands on his shoulders, holding him to her as her neck arched and she moaned against him.

Chapter Four

Jase had known it was coming to this. A part of him had admitted it six years before, but he had fought it. He’d fought it because he knew Brenna would never be a casual fuck.

But there was too much between them too. There was his father’s deceptions. Her possible lies. And none of it mattered in that moment.

Nothing mattered now but touching her, tasting her. Taking her.

Brenna felt the sensations quaking through her, shuddering through every nerve of her body and turning every cell into an erogenous zone.

She moaned as his lips moved along her neck. The feel of the heavy, hardened length of his cock cushioned against her lower stomach was heated and iron hard. She wanted it inside her. She needed him inside her. She needed to feel him pressing into her, stretching her, burning her in ways she had never been able to do for herself.

She was still a virgin. But the years of aching and needing him had built to the point there were nights that only in releasing that tension, that pressure, had she survived the insanity of her need.

Masturbation had been her only recourse.

She’d been determined that as long as Jase was unmarried then there was a chance.

She had saved herself for him. She wanted him to be her first.

He’d been her first kiss. She wanted him to be her first touch, her first lover, her first everything.

His lips moved over her nipples, dragging a sharp cry from her lips.

Tight, hard, her nipples flamed with pleasure as his lips surrounded one, his fingers gripped the other. His tongue lashed at the tender bud, his teeth rasping over it before he sucked it deeper inside.

Hungry, sensual tugs of heated flames surrounded first one peak then the other. He didn’t give her a chance to catch her breath or to save her sanity.

As he sucked at her breasts, flayed her nipples with his tongue, one hand moved to her thighs, pressing between them to find the saturated curls covering her pussy.

Sensitized and swollen with need, the flesh there jerked with the lightest brush of his fingers. Her thighs parted farther, inviting him to touch her deeper.

Sliding between the folds of flesh, his calloused fingertips caressed the silken flesh.

“Jase, please—”

Her hips jerked upward, and his lips eased from her nipple and began caressing down her body. Licking, kissing, nipping at the sensitive flesh, he made his way to where his fingers played with delicate, erotic precision.

She was burning from the inside out.

Brenna was certain she couldn’t bear it any longer.

As he pushed her legs back, holding her open with his palms flat against her inner thighs, Brenna was certain there was no way she could survive the pleasure.

She would shatter.

She could feel it.

It was blazing through her nerve endings, striking at her womb, her clit, the clenching muscles of her pussy where the need for his touch was so much more fierce.

“Yes, please, Jase, yes,” she moaned, lifting to him as his tongue raked through the narrow slit and circled the swollen bud of her clit.

Hunger exploded through her. Her womb tightened, flexing beneath her abdomen as a cry fell from her lips and her hands jerked to his head, burying in the over-long strands of his thick, black hair.

“Jase, it’s so good.” She couldn’t seem to stop, to hold back her need to vocalize the pleasure. “Oh God, it’s so good. So hot.”

His tongue circled her clit again, causing it to throb, to tighten further and to send a pulsing ache straight to the depths of her womb.

She could feel her juices spilling from her cunt, trickling from the clenched opening to further slicken the folds of her pussy. The moisture trailed from there to her thighs and lower, dampening and lubricating flesh so sensitive she swore she could feel the wash of the AC as it drifted through the room.

She could definitely feel his breath. The touch of his tongue licking her flesh, running around her clit then flickering down, teasing, tormenting until he reach the narrow entrance that ached with a desperation she had no idea how to handle.

Then she cried out his name, jerking upward as his tongue shoved inside that aching entrance.

“Oh God, Jase, yes!” she cried out. “Fuck me. Fuck me like that. Oh God, I’ve dreamed of it, Jase. Dreamed of your tongue there, fucking me so good.”

And it was so good.

So good she was certain she couldn’t survive it.

Pushing her legs higher, he tongue-fucked her with a hunger she hadn’t expected. His tongue shoving inside her pussy, licking the sensitive, nerve-laden walls of her cunt as she arched to the strokes, crying out at the sheer, burning pleasure.

She writhed beneath him, needing to be closer, to feel him deeper, harder, hotter.

She wanted his cock inside her, but the feel of his tongue was so good, so erotic she couldn’t resist that either.

“Jase.” She was on the verge of screaming. She could feel it rising in her chest as the pleasure rose inside her body and threatened to consume her.

She felt herself poised on the edge of a release unlike anything she could have given herself. Brenna whimpered in agony, clutching at his hair as he pulled back.

His tongue was suddenly gone. No longer spearing into her cunt. He was no longer licking, probing, destroying her senses with each hungry lick.

Instead, he was dragging himself up her body, his cock tucking between the slick folds of her pussy as he paused, staring down at her, his eyes black with hunger.

“I wasn’t going to do this.” His jaw was tight as he obviously fought the need. “God, Brenna, I just wanted a taste.”

As he spoke, he used his hand to caress her clit with the engorged crest of his cock. “I wasn’t going to do this. I didn’t bring a condom. I sure as hell don’t want to use one with you.”

He had protected her for most of her life; she couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t protect her now, with or without a condom.

“Jase, don’t torture me,” she whispered as she stared up at him, fighting to breathe, to survive the incredible sensations tearing through her.

She hadn’t imagined it was possible to die of pleasure, but she was beginning to wonder if that wasn’t exactly what she was racing into. Death by ecstasy.

“Torture you? Only if making you come until you’re screaming from it is torture.”

Well, it was, in a way. Or at least, she had always thought it would be with him. The sweetest torture, the most perfect pleasure.

She had known a year ago what he was capable of doing to her. She had realized just how hungry he could make her when he had brought her to release the night of his party. And she’d fantasized, dreamed and hungered for more.

For this. For all of him.

“Now, baby,” he growled, lifting, placing several inches between his upper body and hers. “Watch, Bren. Come on, baby, watch me fuck you. Watch my cock sink inside that tight little pussy.”

Didn’t he know? Had he realized she was a virgin?

She stared up at him, suddenly uncertain, before her gaze dropped helplessly to where their bodies were beginning to merge.

The thick, engorged head of his cock parted her folds, pressed against the clenched entrance then began pushing, working, stretching her flesh as he began to possess her.

It was like being consumed by flames. Like having an iron-hard heat pressing inside her, searing the tender flesh and awakening nerve endings never touched before.

“Fuck, Bren, baby, you’re so tight,” he groaned as she watched his flesh working between the swollen lips of her pussy. “So sweet and fucking snug.”

Glistening with the thick moisture that clung to it, the heavy, wide flesh pressed in again, his cock head suddenly popping past the entrance as sensation slammed through her and left her struggling to breathe.

“Yes, damn you, take it,” he groaned as a strangled cry tore from her chest. “Take my dick, baby. All of it.”

Before she could warn him, before she could consider the consequences of the heavy tensing of his body, Jase’s hips eased back. Dragging his cock nearly free of her, he stopped, paused, then with a sharp, heavy thrust, pushed inside her again.

She screamed. She couldn’t help it.

Lightning sharp, too hot, stretching her until she was certain there was no room left to stretch, and then stretching her more as the thick flesh took her innocence.

Her eyes flared open when she became aware her lashes had drifted closed. Immediately, Jase snared her gaze, shock in the depths of his eyes as he stared down at her.

“You’re a virgin,” he groaned, his voice filled with realization, and thicker with the need pulsing through his body.

She was still trying to breathe. Trying to make sense of the sensations rushing through her with the force of a tidal wave.

Hard, echoing deep, slamming through her again and again, violent pleasure threw her higher, shuddering through her body as she felt the throb of his cock inside her.

It was as though his flesh were melding with hers, he was lodged so tight inside her.

“Jase.” Panting for air, she could only whisper his name as she struggled to accept the broad intruder wedged inside her. The pulse and flex of the thick shaft stretched her farther with every surge of blood through the heavy veins surrounding it. Each shift against her felt like a full thrust, the broad head of his cock caressing her inner tissue and further exciting the sensitized nerve endings.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” he groaned, his body straining, his thighs tense as he prepared to pull back.

“I thought you knew,” she whispered, her breath hitching as her thighs clenched, the action causing a surge of sensation to race through her cunt.

Her nails bit into his shoulders, the fear that he would leave her, that he would end the racing sensations and flash-fire pleasure dragging a whimper from her throat and clenching the delicate muscles surrounding him.

“God, don’t do that, baby.” His hand latched on to her hip as though he could keep her from clenching the internal muscles. As though she could keep from doing it.

The involuntary response was beyond her control, and as it happened again, she could only whimper in rising pleasure.

“I can’t help it,” she panted, her nails digging into his flesh again as her hips shifted beneath him, her clit rasping against his pelvis as wicked, sensual agony shot through her. “Jase, don’t make me wait. Please. Don’t torture me. Fuck me. Please fuck me.” She writhed beneath him desperately. “Let me come, Jase. Let me come for you.” Tears filled her eyes. “I’ve dreamed of coming for you, Jase.”

His hips jerked, burying him deeper as a guttural sound of pleasure escaped his throat.

Heat. Pleasure. Pain. That stretching burn, the sensation of being overfilled and then still stretched more. It was more pleasure than she had ever known, had ever anticipated. And it was more pleasure than her body and mind seemed capable of processing at once.

But he was moving. The small thrusts began to work his cock in and out, stretching her as he eased his way in and out of her in slow, shallow increments.

The sensations exploding through her were amassing faster than he was moving though. She needed more of him. He was going too slow. She needed more.

“Harder,” she gasped, lifting to him. “Fuck me, Jase. Fuck me harder. Please, please make it burn…”

His hips jerked back, and when he thrust inside her again, it wasn’t in slow increments. He buried himself to the hilt, her cry shattering the air around them as he began the deep, heavy thrusts that buried his cock inside her over and over again.

She could feel the waves of sensations pouring through her. They swamped her self-control, her sense of balance. They tore through her like surging strikes of electrified heat as she felt Jase gripping her legs, pushing them back as he used the heavy muscles of his biceps to keep them in place.

“Fuck yes,” he groaned as he sank deeper, the slap of his balls against her rear signaling he had taken her as deeply as possible.

Then he began to fuck her.

Brenna hadn’t known a man could take a woman so fiercely and she would still survive it. She hadn’t imagined she could feel so full, so burningly aware of the pleasure and pain mixing, surging within her and tearing through her senses.

Each heavy thrust like jackhammer strikes, parting her flesh, forcing its way inside her with each surge into the untouched muscles.

Clenched and screaming in response to the pleasure, the rising ecstatic pain that seemed to merge and blend, creating a force of such sensations that Brenna could feel herself coming apart at the seams.

“Ah yes, Bren,” he groaned as she felt her pussy tightening further, struggling to take each thrust as the pleasure began to reach a critical point.

“There, baby, tighten that little pussy on me,” he groaned. “Milk it, love. Suck my dick with that hot little pussy. Milk it, baby. Ah, hell yes, give me that tight little cunt.”

He was moving faster, thrusting inside her harder, the stretching burn increasing, amassing until she could feel the flames tearing through every particle of her body and suddenly, viciously, throwing her into an ecstasy that Brenna knew she would never fully recover from.

The orgasm that slammed through her, that exploded like a burst of radiant light through her system, sent a rush of violent pleasure tearing through her senses.

She couldn’t even call it pleasure. It wasn’t pleasure. It went so far beyond pleasure, there was no name for it.

She was screaming his name. Trying to scream his name. There wasn’t much breath left. There wasn’t much energy left. There was only the deep, rapid-fire spasms of sensation that rushed through her pussy, her clit, then centered in her womb as Jase gave one final thrust. Then, with a harsh, ecstatic groan, he began pumping his come inside her.

The heated spurts of his seed triggered another response, another climax that went deeper, that exploded through parts of her she didn’t know physical pleasure could reach.

She swore she could feel the explosions of sensation rocking inside the core of her soul. Each clenching, burning ribbon of release twisted, tightened and locked deeper inside her.

Each pulsing throb of her own release seemed torn from an inner feminine core that went far beyond the physical and into a depth she knew she would never be able to escape or remove him from.

Jase’s arms were wrapped around her, holding her to him.

They each shuddered as tremors of climactic sensations continued to ripple through them for long, pulsating seconds.

She couldn’t have envisioned this, she told herself. She couldn’t have known what it would come to. She couldn’t have prepared herself for it.

And there was no way, not even in another lifetime, could she have known that orgasming in his arms could mean so much pleasure. She’d had no idea it would leave her with the knowledge that no matter what happened, no matter how much he hurt her, distrusted her or refused to believe in her, she belonged to him totally. No matter how little he may ever love her. Brenna knew her heart and soul now belonged to Jase Samuels in a way she would never be free of.

He owned her.

He owned parts of her she had never known existed.

And she was suddenly terribly, terribly afraid that when it was over, and she knew the day would come that, for Jase, it would be over, then he would destroy her.

Chapter Five

When Brenna awoke, it was to an empty bed and a delicious sense of fulfillment that seemed to permeate her entire body. The feeling only added to the lazy contentment that suffused her. A contentment marred only by the fact that Jase wasn’t there to awaken to.

Sunlight spilled through the balcony doors as the cool wash of the air conditioner filtered through the bedroom, only adding to the drowsy idea of remaining in the bed for a while longer.

Better to lie and luxuriate in the fantasy that she had been well loved rather than well fucked. She would much rather allow herself to believe for the moment that the next time she faced Jase, she wouldn’t see the anger and hatred in his gaze that she had seen the day the will had been read.

Rolling to her side, she pulled his pillow to her and hugged it to her breasts. Burying her face in the cool silk of the pillowcase, she inhaled the subtle scent he’d left on the fabric. Closing her eyes, she tried to pretend that everything would have changed. That Jase would have never taken her with such hunger and such sweetness if he didn’t care for her just a little.

She knew better. Even she wasn’t so naïve as to believe that. She might have been a virgin in his arms, but she wasn’t entirely innocent.

She couldn’t lie there and keep allowing herself to believe otherwise either. She’d found it was always better to face reality whenever possible, get it the hell over with, than allow herself to lie and daydream that things were different.

She was good at that part.

Sometimes.

Rolling to her back once more, she stared up at the ceiling then turned her head and glanced at the balcony doors.

Three months with nothing to do. She was going to go insane.

At least before she had gone to college she’d had the clubs she was involved with, outings with her friends. She hadn’t been involved with the country club scene though. The pretentious posturing that went on at that particular location frankly bored her.

Stacey worked for her uncle at his lake house and wouldn’t be available to socialize until later or perhaps even the next day. That left forcing Jase to allow her to work at the ranch, which was probably not a very good idea; lounging in bed the rest of the day, which she had no intention of doing; or working on the tan that had disappeared more than a year ago after moving from the ranch.

The third option was the only one she was willing to consider.

The pool would hopefully wash some of the gathering nerves away and give her a little peace before she had to face Jase again.

Moving from the bed, she quickly showered before pulling on the skimpy, two-piece bathing suit and matching cover-up before drying the long, heavy weight of her blonde hair. Securing it into a high ponytail, she collected a bath sheet from the closet and the tanning oil from her cabinet before leaving the bedroom and heading downstairs to the kitchen for a tall, icy glass of tea. The cook, Josie, always kept a fresh pitcher of tea in the fridge along with sliced fruits and vegetables for a light lunch or late breakfast.

Once Brenna entered the kitchen, it was to realize she was starving. Taking a plate of the sliced fruits and vegetables and a selection of cheese, she poured the tea and sat down in the breakfast nook to enjoy it.

The house wasn’t normally so quiet. Josie and Carol, the housekeeper, were often embroiled in confrontation, and Miriam never failed to become involved in it.

The drama of it would then make it to Jase, who invariably ended up yelling at all three women in frustration before slamming out of the house.

It was a little early for that to have happened though. It wasn’t even after noon yet.

Rising from the table, she carried her plate to the sink, rinsed it then placed it in the dishwasher before turning to stare at the pool through the large garden window over the sink.

The sun was blazing hot and fierce, pouring down on the crystal-clear water and giving it a refreshing, inviting appearance.

And she definitely felt like a woman who needed refreshing. The more she allowed herself to sit and think, the more she was remembering the night before and the hotter she was getting.

She swore she could almost feel Jase’s touch against her flesh. A phantom whisper of sensation that slowly clenched her pussy and left her clit aching more by the second.

This was exactly what she didn’t need today.

She didn’t need to ache for him.

She didn’t need to become so heated and wet that the silky essence of her arousal began to spread along the swollen folds of her cunt.

Giving her head a hard shake, Brenna tried to push those memories behind her as she moved toward the patio doors that led to the pool.

She was reaching for the door latch when she heard him. Felt him.

The soft thud of his boots as he stepped into the kitchen from the carpeted hallway had her tensing before she swung around to face him.

He stood at the counter, only a few feet from her, his dark gaze narrowed and gleaming with something predatory as he watched her.

His gaze moved over her body, taking in the wrap over the bikini, and obviously making note that she was dressed as skimpily or perhaps more skimpily than she would have been in just her underclothes.

“I had a feeling you’d be running for the pool the minute you had a chance,” he grunted with a heavy rasp, and she felt her nipples tightening in response beneath her bathing suit top. They were no doubt pressing against the thin material covering them and easy to see.

“There was nothing else to do.” She cleared her throat, nervous, aroused. The effect he had on her should have been illegal.

“You could have stayed in New York and finished this semester on time.” His expression darkened at the obvious thought.

He had no idea how badly she had wished that were an option.

“Yeah, I could have,” she said softly. “I needed to come home though.”

His expression seemed to darken further at her words.

“You consider this home? Even with Dad gone?”

His question had her pausing. For a moment, fear seemed to paralyze her.

She hadn’t considered—

She swore she could feel her world crashing around her, brick by brick, coming apart at the seams as she stared back at him.

“It isn’t my home anymore?” she asked, almost frightened to allow the words to pass her lips.

His arms crossed over his chest.

Brenna watched the move, knowing it for what it was. It was a classic Jase stance whenever dealing with her and the possibility that she wasn’t going to like what he thought.

“Dad’s gone,” he said softly. “When you graduate, you’ll have your own life, Bren.”

That was what he wanted?

She could feel her heart racing in her chest, pain and fear almost tearing her apart at the thought that Jase didn’t consider this her home.

Was that why Poppa Jason had set the will as he had? To ensure she had the chance to accustom herself to being thrown out?

Jase was right. It wasn’t really her home. She had just been allowed to live here for a while, that was all.

“Of course,” she said faintly, shoving her hands in the pockets of her cover-up as she fought to find a way to keep from sobbing in pain. “I’m sorry, Jase, I should have thought…” She shrugged.

Thought what? That she would always be welcome here, even though she knew better after reading of the will?

She should have thought—no, she should have known after the reading of the will that he felt this way. It wasn’t as though he had tried to hide how he felt. He’d told her then that she couldn’t steal herself a home or roots. That wasn’t how it worked.

Unfortunately, her roots were here, with him. Home was with Jase. And she could feel her soul breaking in two at the thought that he didn’t want her there.

“Should have thought what?” He scowled. “I’m not angry over it, Brenna. It’s not as though you were raised here.”

But she was. And of course he wasn’t angry over it. It was what he wanted to begin with. He didn’t want her here. He didn’t need her here. She was an interloper, nothing more.

As she had suspected earlier, she’d simply gotten a good fucking rather than good loving. There had been no love on his part, and it was best she always remember that.

“Not to worry.” It was all she could do to push the words past her lips. “Excuse me, Jase, I forgot something in my room.”

Her heart. A part of her soul. She’d lost it as she lay beneath him in the bed she had once called her own, and now she needed to find it again.

The pool suddenly had no appeal. The bright sunlight suddenly seemed dimmer, less inviting. A future without Jase and without the Arrow S suddenly stretched before her, and the thought of the loss she was facing was heartbreaking.

Rushing past him, averting her face to hide her tears, Brenna all but ran through the house and back to her bedroom.

What was she going to do? She couldn’t leave. Not if she wanted to ensure the forty percent of the Arrow S Poppa Jason wanted Jase to have was given to him. She couldn’t bear the thought of him losing it.

She couldn’t bear the thought of losing Jase.

Closing the bedroom door quickly behind her, she pressed her hands to her stomach and drew in a hard, ragged breath as she stared around.

The tears fell, she simply couldn’t help it.

Her bed was still mussed, and she knew Jase’s scent would still linger on the sheets. It was her bed. It was her bedroom.

Or it used to be.

A silent sob shook her body as she slowly slid down the door and buried her head in her arms, fought to keep the silent sobs hidden.

She couldn’t let Jase know how he had just wounded her. She couldn’t let him see just how deeply she loved him. It would kill her pride. Her heart had already been broken, her soul damaged, she couldn’t let him steal her pride as well.

He wouldn’t want to hurt her intentionally, would he?

Was the reference to the Arrow S not being her home retaliation over the will his father had left? Or had Poppa Jason somehow known Jase would try to take the only home she had ever known away from her?

How had she let herself love him so deeply? How could she have convinced herself that he cared about her when he didn’t?

Sitting on the floor alone, that sense of loss, the feeling of abandonment surrounding her, Brenna wondered exactly where she was supposed to go from here. Where was she supposed to go and how was she supposed to stop loving the only man she had ever loved in her life? The one man she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was so imprinted on her soul, there wasn’t a chance of ever being free of him.

* * * * *

Jase stood silently, his head down, staring at the ceramic floor of the kitchen as the silence of the house wrapped around him and reminded him of what it was like when Brenna was gone.

He reminded himself this was what it would be like again when she left to return to her life in New York and the college degree she had been working so hard toward.

Veterinary medicine. As though she intended to return to the ranch with an education she could put to use here.

He wasn’t fooled by her appearance, and neither had his father been fooled by her. Jason had wanted her to have what she wanted though. He’d filled the gardens outside her window with bright, colorful blooms, with the fanciful figurines she so enjoyed, in an attempt to encourage her to return home.

Home. This wasn’t her home, he reminded himself.

He couldn’t let her believe it was her home. He couldn’t deal with a future of Brenna dropping in whenever she wanted, using the Arrow S for a layover and nothing more.

After the night he had spent with her, he’d realized exactly how dangerous she was to him. He’d watched his father suffer the deaths of the two women who had stolen his heart, and he’d never understood how Jason Samuels had had the courage to love again after his first wife Gina had died of a lingering cancer nearly twenty years before.

“Well, aren’t you the bright one? Cutting off your nose to spite your face again, Jase?” Miriam stepped into the kitchen as he lifted his head and stared up at her with a carefully blank expression. He should have known she was lurking around some damn place, despite his suggestion she take a couple days off.

“Fuck off, Miriam,” he growled. “I should fucking fire you for failing to realize exactly what was going to happen last night.”

Miriam was his smokescreen. He’d hired her two years before after they’d run into each other at a mutual friend’s party. They’d gone to school together—Miriam had married one of his friends from college and then moved overseas for several years.

She’d needed a job to supplement the widow’s benefits she received from the Army. Jase had needed an assistant willing to be a smokescreen, a dinner companion and a piece of arm fluff without reading more into it than exactly what it was—a job. Nothing more.

But even more importantly, her job had been to stand between him and Brenna. To provide not just a smokescreen but also an impenetrable wall that Brenna would find impossible to see through.

And for the past two years she’d done an excellent job. She’d gone above and beyond the job description until that night a year ago when his father had managed to trick him and send him to Brenna’s room. She looked ill, his father had stated. Something was wrong.

Jase had rushed to her room and walked into a sensual minefield that he hadn’t expected.

“Well, aren’t you the one who sent me home yesterday?” She arched a dark brow mockingly.

Damn her. She’d never been one to play games before, why the hell was she doing it now?

“You are ignoring me, Jase.” Mocking laughter filled her gaze as she crossed her arms over her breasts and tilted her head to the side. “You know that really doesn’t work.”

She knew him too well, and that was the problem.

Pushing his fingers through his hair, he breathed out a hard sigh, still fighting the inner battle to keep from rushing upstairs after Brenna.

Brenna had looked devastated, and he’d known his words would hurt her. The implication that she no longer had a home here had done more than hurt her though. It had done more than insert a wedge between them. He’d seen it slice straight into her soul and leave her bleeding.

“She’s crying, Jase,” Miriam said softly, the accusation in her voice impossible to miss. “I saw her run up the stairs. She was sobbing.”

His jaw clenched, his fingers curled into fists and it was all he could do to force himself to stand in place. To keep from going after Brenna. To keep from holding her, to keep from begging her for her forgiveness.

“Let it go, Miriam,” he growled.

“You are such a coward.” Amusement filled her voice now, but also a hint of censure. “She’s a twenty-four-year-old college student. Surely you can handle her. Since when did the big, bad Jase Samuels start backing down from babies?”

He threw her a hard glare. “You’re evil, Miriam.”

She laughed throatily, a husky sound that he would have found sexy if it weren’t for the fact that no other woman had done a damn thing for him for a year now.

“Fix this, Jase,” she advised him softly, gently, despite the steel beneath the silk of her voice. “Don’t take the only security she has left in her life.”

“A house doesn’t provide security,” he snapped.

“No, it’s not the house that secures her, nor is it the house that keeps drawing her back here. And it’s sure as hell not that inheritance your father left her. It’s you, Jase. It’s always been you. And that is the one thing you’ve always been too much of a coward to realize.”

Chapter Six

Jase didn’t bother knocking on the door.

He opened it slowly and stepped inside, his gaze scanning the room as he looked for her.

What the hell was he doing?

He wasn’t just destroying Brenna, he was destroying himself, and he knew it.

Closing the door softly, he turned the lock and watched as her back tensed. A clear signal she knew he was there.

“There are days I’m a real bastard.” He sighed. “Not because I want to be, Brenna, but because you flat scare the shit out of me. And you make me feel things I’d just as soon not feel.”

She lay on the bed, her back still to the door, the knowledge that she had curled into herself because she was crying slicing through his heart.

She was still dressed in the bathing suit cover, the backs of her silken thighs drawing his gaze despite the fact he was doing everything possible to rein in the hunger he could feel beginning to burn inside him again.

“I spent the night fucking you, certain I could fuck this damned hunger out of my system.”

He watched her shoulders tremble as a small cry slipped from her. He hated that sound. He hated the fact he was the reason she made it.

Lifting his hands, he began unbuttoning his shirt, removing it before he took off his boots.

He dropped the shirt to the floor next to the boots before moving across the room.

“When I woke this morning, I was just as damned hard as I was the second I realized you were a virgin.”

She rolled over slowly, her dampened face breaking his heart as her eyes widened in surprise. She turned just in time to watch him dispose of his jeans and the snug boxer-briefs he wore beneath.

And he was just as hard as he’d told her he was. Iron-hard. Thick. Demanding release. His dick pulsed with racing lust as he remembered just how damn good her pussy felt. Like hot, perfect silk, her soft flesh would surround him, suck him in.

Wrapping his fingers around the base of the shaft, he watched as her gaze dropped to the heavy flesh and she ran her tongue over the curves of her lips.

“All I’ve done is ache for you,” she whispered then. “For as long as I can remember, Jase, I’ve needed you so desperately that at times nothing else mattered.”

Tear-roughened, aching with the emotions he’d wanted to deny she felt, her voice was like a caress against his senses.

She’d been making him hard for more years than he’d wanted to admit. Definitely more years than he would have allowed her to know.

“Do you think I haven’t needed you?” he asked as he stepped beside her bed and stared down at her. “Years, Brenna. I’ve spent six years watching you, so fucking hard for you it was all I could do to survive the need. You were barely eighteen and every fucking night for months I was jacking off with the imagine of you in my mind.”

And she liked the thought of that. She loved it, if the look in her eyes was anything to go by.

“Jase…” she whispered, an edge of uncertainty in her voice now. “Then why—”

“Why act like a bastard?” he asked as he watched her slowly sit up and move to him before her fingers curled around the heavy shaft. Sitting at the edge of the bed now, her lips almost, just almost in line with the engorged head of his cock, all Jase could consider was the thought of her lips surrounding it, her tongue curling around it. All he could think about was watching as he fucked those pretty lips before filling her mouth with his release.

“Why?” she whispered, her voice dazed, her look almost mesmerized as her lips parted.

“Because the things I want to do to you would probably send you screaming,” he bit out between clenched teeth. “A virgin should be eased in, baby,”

But she was determined she didn’t need to be eased in. He watched that knowledge glitter in her eyes, in the adventurous little tongue that peaked out and licked over the wide, mushroomed crest of his cock and brought to life one of his most arousing fantasies.

“Ah fuck!” His entire body tensed at the heat and silken moisture that seemed to attack his senses.

One hand moved quickly to the back of her head before she could pull back, slid into the heavy strands of blonde hair, clenched and held her in place as he gripped the base of his dick.

She didn’t know what she was doing. She couldn’t know what she was tempting, what he wasn’t certain he could hold back.

As he stared down at her, fighting to pull back for just a second, that industrious little tongue came out again, flattened against the underside of his cock head and then rubbed.

It was like having heat melt every cell of his body. Hell, that weakening, completely energizing ecstasy shot through him like a burst of electrified rapture and nearly had him spilling his seed then and there.

Instead, a small amount of pre-come eased from the tip, the bead of moisture instantly drawing her attention.

Jase had never seen anything so erotic. He was certain he must have experienced this very same act more than once in the past, but the memory of those acts faded in his mind to be replaced by nothing but the sight, the feel and the incredible pleasure of her hot little tongue lapping up the moisture as her expression morphed to one of complete, sensual abandon.

He knew for a fact no woman had ever given herself to him as she was at this moment. Never had he seen complete surrender fill a woman’s eyes as she touched him, as he touched her.

He should have known that with Brenna, it would be like nothing he had ever experienced before. She was like no other woman he had ever known. Hell, he’d never known…

“Fuck, Bren, baby,” he groaned as he felt her wrap the fingers of both hands around the wide shaft. Her lips parted, hunger gleamed in her eyes and as he watched, waited, lost his breath, her lips covered part of the engorged head before she sucked him inside.

He could have fucking come then and there. His fingers clenched in her hair as he applied pressure against the hold, forcing her, or rather encouraging her, to take more of his flesh until the cock head disappeared completely within the heated confines of her mouth.

It was incredible.

Jase swore that he would never find pleasure like this anywhere on the face of the Earth. It wouldn’t matter how hard he looked. It wouldn’t matter where he looked. He’d never find pleasure like this again, pleasure that had him groaning with need as he felt her mouth beginning to work the heavily engorged head.

Sensitive, painfully swollen, the thick flesh throbbed with need as pleasure began to sear his nerve endings.

And he couldn’t help but watch her. Holding her hair in his grip, keeping her in place, watching as he pulled back, pushed in, as he slowly fucked her lips and felt the tight, suckling motion of her mouth each time he returned.

It was all he could do to go slow. It was all he could do to ease her into the act, to push past her lips with slow, measured thrusts. Possessing the sweet, hot confines of her mouth.

It was incredible. It was like paradise, pleasure, ecstasy and rapture combining to burn through any barriers that could have existed within her.

So far, he hadn’t found a single one. Brenna took to his touch as though she had been born for it.

“There, baby,” he groaned as she tucked her tongue against the underside once more and did that little rubbing thing with it. Hell, it was fucking incredible.

“Beautiful little baby,” he groaned, his voice rarely recognizable as her hot tongue flickered over the heavy cock head and stroked it with primitive need. “That’s it, sweetheart, lick my dick just like that.”

He had to tighten his legs to remain where he stood, to keep her from stealing the last of his strength and leaving him a weakened heap on the floor at her feet.

With each draw of her mouth, each hungry moan from her lips, he could feel his balls drawing tighter, feel the need to come racing through his senses.

He wasn’t going to make it much longer. He could feel his release building, reaching that point of no return where he would fill her mouth with each heated spurt of his seed, rather than filling the lush confines of her pussy.

Pulling back was nearly impossible. The pleasure was so intense, so damn extreme.

But he did it, slipping from between her lips as a whimper of longing left her lips.

“Here, baby, get those clothes off.” His fingers were at the knot in her robe, desperately untying it, knowing that if he didn’t get inside her soon, he was going to go crazy with the need.

He stripped her quickly. The small robe that covered the tiny scraps of material she called a bathing suit. The bottoms of which were no more than a small triangle to cover the pretty mound of her pussy and a string that went up the crack of her ass.

It was sexy as hell.

“Jase…” She whispered his name as he pushed her back on the bed, coming over her and pushing his knees between her thighs to part them.

The head of his cock raked through the heated moisture of her pussy, pressing against the swollen folds of flesh as his lips found hers.

This was living.

That thought seared his mind as he kissed her with ravening hunger, unable to quench the needs tearing through him.

This was what he had lived for, ached for and searched for so many damn years.

He had lived for Brenna.

As she felt the thick heat and throbbing hunger that filled his cock, Brenna arched closer to him, her legs lifting, her knees bending to part her thighs farther and get closer to him.

His arms surrounded her, holding her to him as his lips and tongue caressed her, spreading a fiery, aching need that only intensified by the second as she felt the blunt tip of his cock beginning to work inside her.

He didn’t take her easily. She didn’t want easy. She wanted the hard, fierce thrusts, the fiery pleasure-pain, the need that raced through her system and left her crying out, pleading for release.

And Jase didn’t disappoint her.

With a powerful surge of his hips, he buried his flesh no more than an inch inside her as she cried out into the kiss that only seemed to feed the need raging between them.

Each thrust buried him deeper inside her, stretching her farther as she arched, her body writhing beneath him as the stroke of thick, fiery flesh across the naked nerve endings sent burning shafts of pleasure tearing through her.

She was coming apart in his arms, she could feel it. She was burning inside and uncertain who or what she would be when the flames settled and the aftermath claimed them.

A low, desperate cry left her lips as he broke the kiss, his head rising, his gaze dark and glittering with hunger as he stared down at her.

How she managed to keep her eyes open with each fierce thrust inside her, she wasn’t certain. What she did know was that the sensations were so incredible, so filled with pleasure and nearing rapture, that she was nothing but a mass of tortured pleasure seeking release.

Her clit throbbed and burned, the ache centered inside it was like a clawing beast fighting to escape.

Her hips rose and fell with his as the sound of damp flesh slapping together began to fill the room. Their moans became a symphony of pleasure and need as the intensity seemed to become a living, breathing entity binding them.

As his hand clenched her hip, each thrust surging harder inside her, his pace quickening, the heavy throb of his flesh adding to the intensity, Brenna felt the sensations suddenly explode into rapture.

Her body tightened, back bowing, the feel of her pussy beginning to clench and spasm around the shafting flesh thrusting hard and deep inside her, pushing her over the edge of an inferno of sensations.

Pleasure became pure, blinding ecstasy. His name was a litany of pure bliss on her lips as her body erupted and exploded, clenching so desperately as the feelings poured through her that she didn’t know if she would survive it.

As the explosions tore through her, she felt that final, furious thrust of his cock a second before Jase tensed, and the feel of his seed spurting inside thrust her higher into the fireball of sensations that had overcome her.

She was shuddering, trembling in his arms as her womb clenched, the muscles of her pussy rippling around his dick. Her clit became so sensitive, so ultra-responsive, that each shift of his pelvis against it sent spasms of ecstasy racing through it.

She was a mass of pure sensation. She was a creature whose only purpose was the pleasure she had been given and the pleasure she had given in return.

Her only purpose to be in his arms, to hold him in hers and to love him.

Chapter Seven

She must have fallen asleep. Brenna could understand how it had happened despite the fact that she had slipped into one of the deepest sleeps she had known the night before.

Emotional exhaustion, combined with a climax so intense she could have sworn she felt her hair straighten, could do that to a woman.

What surprised her when she awoke was to find Jase still in the bed with her.

At some point, he had managed to get them both beneath the comforter. He kept the air conditioner on frigid through the summer, and Brenna liked the cold-bedroom, warm-blanket effect. The lower rooms weren’t kept as chilly, it was mostly Jase’s suite and a few of the upstairs rooms that were kept below the sixty-five mark.

Awaking cuddled close to him was a respite she needed from the intensity of the emotional battle she was fighting. The fact that Jase had all but asked her to leave her home had been enough to throw her into a rage of anger and pain. To have him show up again, minutes later, and throw her into an orgasm that sucked the strength straight out of her body, was so typically Jase.

He could be the most irritating man on the face of the earth when he wanted to be. And the fact that he was still furious with her over the will was never more apparent than it had been earlier, when he had all but informed her that she no longer had a room at the ranch and that perhaps this wasn’t her home.

That or, as she had guessed earlier, he simply wanted her to leave.

Yet here he was, sleeping as deeply as she had slept, his chest rising and falling lazily as he held her wrapped in his arms. He held her as though he never intended to allow her to leave. As though he hadn’t torn her heart out earlier.

What was she supposed to feel? What was she supposed to do? It wasn’t as though she could read his mind, and he damn sure didn’t try to read hers any longer.

What was she going to do?

Staring into the now dim room—Jase had closed the heavy, rubber-backed curtains over the windows—she tried to make sense of what she thought her next step should be.

She’d decided that perhaps the best option would be to try to wait out the three months in silence before returning home. She had already taken the time from school, she couldn’t get it back. As much as it would kill her, at the end of the required stay, she would at least have the satisfaction of throwing the deed to the ranch in his face.

At least, that had been her plan. Until Jase had shown up in her room and the words that had come from his mouth made her hope.

Hope that he wanted more from her than just the few times he could fuck her before he insistently forced her out the door.

A part of her was still screaming this was her home, that it wasn’t right that he could ask her to leave or, even more insistently, force her from the house.

“What are you thinking about so hard?” There was a lazy quality to his voice despite the deep drawl and predatory roughness.

She was silent for long minutes, considering how best to choose her words.

“Why do you want me to leave so badly, Jase?” she asked.

There was no way to ask the question carefully or to pose it with more tact.

“Am I so hard for you to care about that you want me to leave entirely rather than have to deal with my presence?”

He was silent, and she needed that question answered so desperately.

“Do you love me, Brenna?”

The question surprised her.

She hadn’t expected it and she had no idea why he would ask it.

“If you haven’t figure that out, then you’re not as good at reading people and situations as I thought you were, Jase,” she told him quietly. “I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember.”

She didn’t doubt she had fallen in love with him the summer she and her mother had come to the ranch, just before her mother married Poppa Jason.

“Have you ever been so terrified of something being taken away from you that you simply refused to have it? That way you didn’t have to deal with the loss?”

“You,” she whispered. “Just after mother died.”

She had stayed away from him for over a year, avoiding him every time there had been a chance they would even be in the same room.

“I remember.” He nodded as his hand caressed down her hair. “I lost my mother when I was young. No sooner than I had grown used to your mother’s warmth and acceptance, she was gone as well. When Dad died, I swore I’d never watch anyone else I love be taken away from me. The only way to ensure it didn’t happen was to turn you against me. To make you so angry you left.”

She stared back at him in surprise. “The will—”

He gave a shake of his head. “I expected Dad to ensure you were taken care of, baby. He ensured you couldn’t sell it, give it away or control it. It’s still mine, nothing changed that. He just made certain you were always mine as well. I just thought I could ignore it. I thought I could make you hate me, and then the hunger for you that was destroying me would go away.”

“Did it work?” she asked him with a hint of smug certainty.

He laughed at that. “No, love, it didn’t work for long, did it? Every time you’re around, I want nothing more than to touch you, to hold you, to show you exactly how hungry you make me, and how desperate I get to touch you.”

She sat up slowly. Pulling the sheet around her breasts as she curled her legs beneath herself, she watched him somberly.

“What do you want from me?” she finally asked, the need to understand where she stood with him nearly as imperative as the need for his touch and the need for his warmth.

“To never leave me,” he said with a small, self-depreciating smile. “And yes, love, I understand exactly how naïve that request is.”

“I would never willingly leave you, Jase,” she said. “As long as I’ve known you, I’ve loved you in one way or another. You’ve always been my hero. You’ve always been the one who’s made me want to dream of happily ever after, even though I felt you and Poppa Jason raised me to believe that few things are forever without a hell of a lot of work.”

His lips twitched at the statement. “Dad wanted you to know how to take care of yourself, Brenna, but he also wanted you to be free to love.”

“And are you free to love, Jase?”

He breathed out heavily. The expression on his face somber and hinting at the fact that perhaps it was a question he didn’t want to answer.

“How can I be free to love, Brenna, when you own my heart? When you’re every breath I’ve breathed for far too many years and every dream that’s haunted me when darkness falls? So no, I’m not free to love. I love you far too much for anything to be left over for anyone else.”

Joy exploded inside her.

With a burst of warmth and fierce, overriding emotion, it surged through her, filling the darkened corners that had begun growing inside her at the thought he didn’t love her. That she would lose everything she had dreamed of having because he couldn’t love her.

“Jase,” she whispered.

His hand lifted to tuck back a long strand of hair that fell over her shoulder.

“And I know about the true nature of the will,” he told her. “I know the extremes you were willing to go through to ensure no one could take this land from me, Brenna. No one else would have done that for me. There is no one I know as selfless as you, to give up what could amount to millions of dollars in the future in order to secure the inheritance that has stayed in the Samuels family.”

“But how?” Confusion raced through her. Had she given it away somehow?

His lips curled into a smug smile. “Because, baby, I knew Dad, and I know how he works. Besides, he left me a letter as well. One the lawyer gave to me after everyone else left. Even his attorney didn’t know what he had written there.” He touched her face, his expression gentling. “He didn’t want me to be angry with you. He wanted me to see and to understand what you were prepared to do to protect me, because you loved me. And you were willing to do it too, weren’t you? Even thinking I hated you? Even knowing how angry everyone was after rumors of the will began circulating. You were still going to abide by his wishes, even to the point you returned here willing to endure the possibility of my anger for three full months.”

“It’s your ranch,” she reminded him. “It always has been.”

“And you’re my heart.” He drew her to him, bringing her lips to his as he stared up at her, his gaze filled with all the emotion she had feared she would never see in them.

“I love you, Brenna Laine,” he whispered against her lips.

“And I love you, Jason Samuels,” she whispered back. “I will always ensure you know you’re my one.”

And to that he had to smile. A smile that whispered against her lips, filled with love, with happiness and with joy.

“My one,” he repeated softly. “That was the promise the first Jason Samuels gave his Cheyenne princess when he married her.”

“Poppa Jason told me that story,” she reminded him. “And I’ve always remembered it. You’re my one, Jase. And you always will be.”

“As you’re mine,” he promised her. “My one, my only.”

The kiss they shared affirmed the promise, locked it in their hearts and sealed it in their souls.

The One. The first, the last, the only one the other could love. The keeper of the heart, the keeper of the love—but more importantly, the one who would forever cherish, protect and nurture that most fragile yet strongest of bonds.

Love.

About the Author

Lora Leigh lives in the rolling hills of Kentucky, and is often found absorbing the ambience of this peaceful setting. She dreams in bright, vivid images of the characters intent on taking over her writing life, and fights a constant battle to put them on the hard drive of her computer before they can disappear as fast as they appeared. Lora’s family and her writing life co-exist, if not in harmony, in relative peace with each other. Surrounded by a menagerie of pets, friend and a teenage son who keeps her quick wit engaged, Lora’s life is filled with joys, aided by her fans whose hearts remind her daily why she writes.

The author welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

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Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Print books by Lora Leigh