Chapter 1

SCOTLAND NECK. NORTH CAROLINA, THREE YEARS LATER

"Mac, did you see my comb?" Keiley called from the bathroom, her voice a little sharp with irritation and simmering with impatience.

"I have my own, Kei," he reminded her in the same tone. She moved from the bathroom, naked as the day she was born, water still beading on her shoulders, her cap of dark hair mussed around her face as she began searching the tops of the dresser, the vanity, the bedside tables.

Delicate and fragile. That was his wife. At twenty-six she still captivated him, made him harder than hell, and made him think of fairies on a fantasy night. A sensual, sexy fairy sandwiched between two male bodies and gleaming with moisture. He shook the image away, frustration surging through him as his control weakened further.

"It was just in there yesterday," she muttered as Mac cinched his belt and considered uncinching it just as quickly.

If he moved fast enough, he could be undressed, have her flat on her back and his cock sinking into the fist-tight heat between her thighs.

He was loosening his belt when her gaze sliced to him.

"Don't even think about it." Hazel eyes were still dark with lingering anger.

"I'm still in the doghouse, then?" Mac grinned as he fastened the belt before sitting down on the end of the bed to pull on the scarred work boots he wore on the farm.

He tended to indulge Keiley whenever he could, but he had to admit, there were times he was tempted to indulge more than just her feminine wiles. That glimmer of confrontation and defiance in her eyes often tempted him to indulge a dominance he had so far managed to keep strictly under control.

"However you want to consider it." She bent down, her delightful little tush sticking up in the air as she looked beneath the bed.

"Keep flashing that ass at me and I'll show you how short that stay in the doghouse is going to be."

He felt he owed her at least a warning. She had good reason to be a shade upset with him, after all. Standing a woman up for an intimate dinner at home, complete with candlelight, because he had become distracted at a horse sale wasn't a good idea. Especially when he had been warned to be home on time. He hadn't forgotten a damned thing. His control was just that shaky. He hadn't dared show up on time. She had waited up on him, too. Dressed in scarlet red silk, thigh-high stockings, and heels. She met him at the door, told him good night sweet as sugar, then went to bed. His dinner had been in the oven. The candles had burned to nubs. She had obviously eaten. And he had managed, for one more night, not to mention the hungers tearing him apart.

"Touch my ass and you'll lose your hand," she informed him as she straightened and looked around the room with an expression of confusion. "That was my favorite comb, Mac."

"Did you look under the cabinet?"

She had so much fussy female stuff in there that he sometimes wondered how she found anything.

"Of course I did." She shot him a frown that warned him he should have already known that.

He flashed her a grin that had better warn her that he was getting damned horny watching her run around naked. He wasn't above seducing her. She could protest until hell froze over, but they both knew

that after the first kiss she was going to cave. It was a given. He knew it, she knew it, and his cock knew it.

She did beat a hasty retreat back to the bathroom as Mac drew in a silent breath of relief.

"You know, you need to get a handle on yourself," she told him, causing him to catch his breath again minutes later as she left the bathroom.

"That waistband is too damned low." He glared at the sight of her lovely hip bones above the elastic band of the shorts. And the so-called t-shirt wasn't much better. It flashed too much belly, and showed her navel ring. A navel ring that had been driving him crazy the past few months.

"Get used to it, Daddy," she pouted sarcastically. "Do I bitch over your t-shirts that stretch over your chest, or your ass in your jeans?"

"My jeans aren't low enough to flash my dick, either. There's not enough material to those shorts to keep yourself decent, Keiley."

Let alone him. He was almost panting now. His balls were tight. He was ready to fuck and he was ready to go for it now. She was tempting a hungry man. And she knew it. Over the past year his fiery wife had become a sexual force to be reckoned with.

"That's too bad. I'm sure you would get a lot of notice if they were." She eyed the bulging crotch before glancing back at him with sparkling amusement. "Arrested, too, most likely, but it would definitely be interesting."

"Change clothes."

"Not on your life."

She slid her feet into a pair of sandals and walked sedately out of the bedroom, her ass twitching in those damned too-tight shorts, flashing it at him like a matador flashes a red cape at an enraged bull.

She'd been doing that a lot lately. Tempting him. Defying him. Pushing the boundaries he had allowed her to set when they first married.

A part of him had watched the progression with anticipation. He knew what was coming. She was tired of waiting on him to push her sexuality. She was pushing it herself now.

Her boundaries and his.

Did she intend to go out in public like that?

Mac jerked his shirt on, working the buttons as he stomped through the hallway and downstairs to the kitchen.

"Where are you going today?" He asked as he came to a stop in the doorway, watching as she put coffee on.

"No place, unless you start demanding I change clothes first. Then, I don't know. Main Street shopping, or if you prefer, hooking the street corners." She blinked back at him innocently.

"Smartass."

"Don't start, Mac." Her frown said it all.

"You might as well go ahead and forgive me, Keiley," he warned her.

"Why should I do something that stupid?" she asked incredulously. "This is three days in a row that you've come home late from some sale or meeting. Normally I'm in the bed asleep before you ever walk in the front door. If I did that to you, you would have a fit."

"I'd paddle your ass," he muttered.

"Don't tempt me, McCoy. I still have the baseball bat." Tense, narrow-eyed, and now spitting mad, she faced him like an enraged little fairy. All she lacked was the little gossamer wings fluttering for effect.

"Did you find your comb?" He changed the subject quickly. She wasn't fooled, but at least she let it slide.

"No." Ruffling her fingers through her hair, that little confused look filled her face again before she turned back to the coffeepot and flipped it on. "I must have moved it without thinking."

Which wasn't like Keiley. Then again, the atmosphere between them had been more than a little strained lately. He shouldn't have stayed out late, no matter how hard he was trying to avoid looking at himself in the mirror. He just had to do it again the next morning anyway. And it wasn't as though he could forget the hungers that raged through his mind.

The missing comb bothered him, though. His mind refused to let it go.

"Have you lost anything else?"

"You're not an FBI agent anymore, Mac," she reminded him as she took cups out of the cabinet. "You are now a farmer and horse and cattle breeder. Remember?"

"You know what they say, Kei, you can take the boy out of the agency—" He shrugged.

"Well, un-agent." She pulled the refrigerator door open and collected eggs, butter, and bacon. "I've just misplaced the comb without thinking. That's all. I'll find it before long." Maybe he was going a little overboard, Mac thought, but it felt funny. Keiley didn't just lose things. For all her fussy feminine girly stuff, she was so organized she made his back teeth clench at times.

"I've been distracted lately," she finally admitted. "It's been a long month." He heard the note of censure in her voice and felt an edge of guilt. Guilt wasn't something he liked feeling in his marriage. It meant he was failing her. That he had hurt her, and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Keiley.

Hell, he had said one could take the boy out of the agency, but this had nothing to do with his work as an agent. It had to do with his sexual past. One could take the man out of the club, but the club still lingered in him. The needs were beginning to eat him alive. But if he wasn't wrong, Keiley's were now eating at her, as well. Restraining the dominance knotting his gut was becoming harder by the day Restraining his sexual hungers was becoming impossible. And it was giving his delectable little wife the impression that his back was made for her delicately shod feet to walk right over.

"I'll try not to be late again," he promised, watching her back tense as she laid bacon in a pan.

"Doesn't matter. I'll just make certain I don't make any more plans to surprise you." Damn, that one hurt. Mac winced. He liked her surprises. When she met him in silk, stockings, and heels and smelling of a faintly musk and floral fragrance that made his dick pound and his hands ache to touch her.

No more surprises meant no more wild sex on the coffee table, the couch, or the chair. That didn't suit him at all.

"I could always surprise you instead," he suggested.

"You could." She nodded. "You could start by telling me what has you wound up tighter than one of your studs during breeding season?"

She glanced back at him too fast for him to contain his reaction. Hell, he had been out of the agency too long. He knew she caught the flash of guilt in his eyes, the telltale wince of his expression. The tightening of his lips.

"It's been a busy month, Kei." That was his story and he was sticking to it. For now. Until he knew for certain where she was headed with it. In the past three years he had watched her grow in sexuality and confidence. He'd pushed the boundaries needed to help her deal with the gossip and the people of a quickly growing community and helped guide her toward the friends he knew would aid in that. Now, Keiley was making her own steps. For the past year, she had been pushing herself and him. And it appeared she was beginning to reach for an even higher goal. His dick tightened painfully at the thought, every muscle in his body tensing in preparation for it.

"As I said, it would surprise me." She turned back to the bacon, but her shoulders were straighter, her back still tense.

That damned sleeveless t-shirt was riding up her back, too, flashing skin. Skin he could be kissing right now if he weren't such a jackass. If nightmares and desires weren't haunting his dreams and pushing his own tension higher. A tension Keiley was obviously reading well. And reacting to as their marriage progressed.

In the past three years she had found a place within the social structure that existed in Scotland Neck. As an independent computer analysis and programming expert, she had joined the Business Council in town. She was a part of several charities and worked several hours a week as a volunteer at the local women's shelter. She was thriving here. The years she had spent under suspicion because of her father's embezzlement at a highlevel D.C. accounting firm, and his subsequent imprisonment and death, were slowly being forgotten.

On the surface, their marriage seemed perfect. In a lot of ways, it was perfect. If it weren't for the darker sexual hungers that filled him, then the unnatural stress beginning to grow between them would never have been there.

"Coffee." There was a note of thankfulness in her voice as the machine beeped to indicate it had completed the brewing cycle. "Sit down, Mac, you make me nervous hovering over me like that."

He wasn't exactly hovering over her. Just trying to get a little closer as he considered another attempt to get into those indecent shorts.

Instead, he did as she suggested and sat down at the kitchen table while she cooked. It occurred to him that while she was frying bacon might be the wrong time to risk making her any madder. She only fried bacon in black iron, and if she ever decided to use it as a weapon, he was in some serious trouble.

But he couldn't help the hunger gnawing at his insides, either. Over the past three years he had become something, someone, he wasn't. And it was beginning to leave a funny taste in his mouth.

He had always been an extreme lover. The dark sexuality that drove him had always been a part of his character. It was one of the things that made him a good investigative agent. He understood the darkness, the shadows that could drive a man to extreme acts. It was a part of himself he hid from Keiley. And in hiding it from her, he was beginning to become wary of the press of darkness in his mind.

"I think you miss your friends in Virginia," Keiley announced as she set breakfast on the table, causing Mac to stare back at her warily.

Mac arched his brow, allowing his expression to shift momentarily with the hunger eating away at him.

It was beginning. He could feel it now; it was in the air as thick as the scent of bacon frying and coffee wafting beneath his nose.

The challenge was being laid on the table. Finally.

For years he watched her navigate the gossip that begun with their appearance in his hometown. Old would-be flames prodding at her. Innuendo, smug smiles, and outright lies concerning his activities away from her had gone from worrying her to amusing her. Now, she was stepping into territory she had left unexplored when she escaped Virginia, and confronting the fear of his past sexuality. The fear was no curiosity. The gleam of it in her gaze had fire ripping through his body and for the first time since he realized what she meant to him, he let it free in his expression. Keiley's lips parted almost in surprise, as though the arrogance and sexuality of the look had come as a shock to her. And it would have. Mac rarely allowed enough of a chink in his facade to let her see the shadows that tormented him. She cleared her throat delicately. "You know, all your male-bonding guy things at Sinclair's Club."

She stared back at him with supreme innocence. Her hazel eyes were bright and compassionate, her expression sympathetic. As though she were talking about a baseball buddy or guys' night out at the local bar. But he saw the heat shadowing it, burning behind the blander emotions.

"There were no bonding guy things there, Kei."

"Do you miss it?" She tilted her head to the side, watching him curiously.

"You know what the club was," he reminded her. "I don't miss fucking other women, if that's what you're asking me."

Keiley kept him more than satisfied sexually. She knew how to tease him, how to make him crazy, and she was as adventurous as hell. More adventurous than she realized.

"That wasn't what I was asking you, Mac." She rolled her eyes before lowering them to her breakfast. 'Just forget I mentioned it."

That wasn't going to happen.

"Why did yon mention it?"

She stared back at him once again, her gaze reflective. "Because you're too tense. You have very few friends, and despite the invitations we receive, you never want to socialize. You weren't like this in Virginia."

"I'm busy, Kei."

"You're hiding," she told him. "And hiding never works. It's definitely not going to work with me. Are you missing your sex games in Virginia, Mac? Is that the problem?" He wished he could have snapped at her. He wished he could have stood up and stomped out. He wished he could have avoided her.

But she was staring at him with that faintly frightened expression she had used the first time she asked him about the club. Wariness filled her eyes, and he felt like a jerk. Like a bastard. Like he was failing her. Pushing her. Stealing himself against it, he let her see the lie coming.

"I'm not missing any sex games." The lie didn't come easily to his lips. "Now eat your breakfast."

The curiosity blazed in her eyes then. He was daring her, whether she realized it or not.

"What was it like?" she asked, as he dug his fork into the scrambled eggs on his plate and fought the anticipation building inside him.

"What was what like?" The words nearly choked him.

"Sharing a woman with Jethro Riggs? Didn't you ever get jealous, Mac?" Son of a bitch. He was going to come in his jeans!

If she hadn't been watching for his reaction, she might have missed the expression that flickered over his face. It was dark, carnal, arousing. His eyes lifted slowly from his plate a second later, his features smoothing out, but his eyes, his eyes were like storm clouds now, brewing with dangerous undercurrents.

She could see his response and feel it inside herself. See the sudden shift of hunger in his gaze as he stared at her, the tension in his body, the way it whipped through the air and licked over her flesh. In three years of marriage she had rarely seen that look on Mac's face, and it almost, just almost, frightened her. It would have frightened her if her own arousal hadn't tempered the fear. She had to force herself to control her breathing, to control her response to him. To the thought of that forbidden act. She had suspected he missed the Club and the sexual acts he engaged in there with Jethro Riggs. Rough, edging on dangerous, Jethro's sexuality drew every woman she knew. Even herself at one time. Until she met Mac.

The thought of those acts had terrified her when she first met Mac, but something stronger, something darker had drawn her to him, made her love him. She had thought she had pushed back her reckless impulses years before she met Mac. But in the past year or more, Keiley had found curiosity eating her alive. Mac never mentioned his sexual past with Jethro or the Club. He never referred to it, never suggested revisiting Virginia.

But that sexual darkness that had at first drawn her to him had been growing inside him, spurring her own. She needed to know what had drawn him to it. Why he had done it. For reasons that didn't make sense even to herself, that past was now tormenting her dreams and her fantasies.

"Why do you want to know, Kei?" His tone was a velvet rasp, rough, with the promise of a dark caress beneath it. It stroked over her flesh, reminded her that she had been days without feeling his possession.

Why did she want to know? Because it was killing her. Because in the past three years it had grown within her mind as her confidence within her own sexuality had grown. At first, it had been tainted with fear. The knowledge of the gossip that could arise, the whispers and destructive rumors that could build. But as she had found her place in Mac's hometown, watched it grow within the past three years even as she had grown, she had begun to wonder.

Why did he do it? And did he miss it? Was that the reason why the tension within him, the darkness that glittered in his gaze, had grown as well?

She shrugged uneasily. "We've never discussed it. We've talked about everything else in our lives except that."

And it was the truth. She had discussed things with Mac that she had never talked to anyone else about. The horror of facing the realization that her father had embezzled money from the company he worked from. The fear when she had lost her home, when her father

had been imprisoned and her mother had committed suicide. Mac knew every part of her, but there was still so much she didn't know about him.

"It's not worth talking about." He turned his attention back to his breakfast as Keiley watched him closely. He was hiding from her, and that only dared her curiosity.

"That doesn't tell me why you did it, Mac." She continued to press the point even though the tone of his voice warned her that it was a subject he didn't want to discuss. He was avoiding this subject just as he avoided other subjects when it came to explanations concerning the dark, shadowed parts of his soul.

Marrying Mac hadn't come without a little baggage. He was an alpha with a capital A, irritating, proud, arrogant, and bold. Mac didn't do anything by half measures and he sure as hell didn't offer a lot of explanations.

He avoided issues he didn't want to discuss, and when she pushed it they most likely ended up in bed where she couldn't remember the subject they were arguing over anymore than she could remember her own name once he started touching her. He challenged her independence with his arrogance, and compromise hadn't come easily to him. She had the feeling that once she opened the door he was warning her to keep closed there would be no closing it again. There were parts of Mac so shadowed inside that she wondered if he wasn't just as wary of them as she knew she should be. She was tired of the wariness. She was tired of feeling that a part of her husband was hidden from her. That a part of her own life was missing when he grew quiet and dark. She was tired of being more frightened of losing him than she was of getting to know him. That was the mistake she had made when they married. She had known it was too soon to make their relationship permanent. Known there was too much about Mac that she didn't know, and now it was time to figure it. It was time to get to know the man she had married, whether he wanted her to know him or not.

His fork clattered to his plate as he laid his arms carefully on the table and stared back at her, his gray eyes brewing like thunderclouds.

"Because I was horny," he answered.

"You were horny, so you shared your women with other men?" She lifted her coffee cup and drank from it as though her pulse wasn't racing, as though she wasn't suddenly nervous as hell and so aroused she could feel her juices heating the folds of her pussy.

"That about sums it up," he growled.

"So, the women you shared, they weren't your lovers in particular? Just someone else's?"

His eyes darkened. In the three and a half years they had been married, she had never seen such contradictory emotions roiling through his gaze. Anger, irritation, longing, and arousal. It was a little scary and a lot harder to accept the suspicions that had been brewing inside her for months.

Or maybe she had just finally seen it in the past few months. She knew she could feel it. As the past three years had seen the growth in their marriage, it had also seen a vague restlessness. One she hadn't recognized just in herself, but within Mac as well. What was happening to her? Pushing Mac like this was never a very good idea. He was indulgent for the most part, but once his dominance was roused it seemed only to push a part of her that craved more and more within their sexual relationship.

"Sometimes they were my lovers," he admitted, his voice lowering, becoming rough around the edges, roughening. "Sometimes I even cared about them, Keiley. Sometimes I cared about them a lot. The more I cared about them, the more I enjoyed it." He was pushing her now, daring her. In that second Keiley realized she had made a dangerous error of judgment when it came to her husband. She had suspected he was missing his friends, his sexual games, that a part of him wished he were back in Virginia. But now she knew he had been waiting knowing this was coming.

Now she had brought the subject out in the open. She had broken the boundary she herself had set, and she knew her husband, for whatever reason he had had for holding back, it would be gone now.

He could be amazingly ruthless. Mac lived by his own set of rules, and over the past three and a half years they had learned how to adjust, how to compromise with each other, and keep their marriage alive and growing. But she had always known he was holding something back. Had known and feared it.

"But you didn't love them," she said hopefully. "Not like you love me." His lips quirked. "I've never loved anyone or anything like I love you, Keiley," he admitted. "You know that."

"Then you're not missing your friends? You're not missing the club?" His gaze flickered with arousal and anticipation. "That wasn't what I said. That's what you said. And a word of warning, sweetheart. If you don't want to wake the monster, then don't poke at him. And right now, you're definitely poking." Keiley felt her lips part, felt her mouth go dry, felt the tension shimmering in the air suddenly thicken, nearly choking her with the heavy undercurrents suddenly whipping through it.

She could see it in his face now, in his eyes, a desire that he kept leashed, a fantasy, a hunger, perhaps a need, she couldn't have fully anticipated. Then, just as quickly, it was gone. He picked up his fork, resumed eating, and let the subject drop while Keiley began wrestling with the implications he left in his silence.

"Stop worrying, Keiley," he stated, his voice still too dark, still too rough, moments later. "My membership in the club in Virginia isn't going to follow us here. No one knew for certain what Sinclair's Club was for."

"I don't care about the damned talk or how it follows us, Mac. I care about the fact that you're refusing to talk about it when I know damned good and well it's what you're thinking about."

She didn't give a damn what people thought about it. She had grown out of caring about gossip about six months after their move here and her realization that Delia Staten, one of the county's leading figures, intended to make her life hell. Because Keiley had Mac and she didn't. Delia had never forgotten that Mac had rejected her. It was childish and stupid. Keiley had learned from the best exactly how to weather gossip. Whether or not anyone thought she was involved in one of the many ménage relationships in this damned county didn't really faze her.

The fact that Mac's lips had thinned warningly did faze her. It pissed her off that he was continuing to ignore the subject.

"It wasn't a whorehouse, Kei. It was simply a men's club. A place to relax, share a drink, and unwind."

"And find a friend to share your women with," she inserted.

"That was an added benefit." The tight, controlled curve of his lips held back the lush sensuality that could fill them. "Now, I have to get to work. I have to make a trip into town later, though. Do you need anything?"

"Just answers," she sighed. "We need to talk about this some more, Mac."

"Talking about this is the worst thing we can do at this point," he told her. "What you need to do is drop it. Let it go away, Keiley, just as you did before we moved here. It doesn't apply to our life or what we have here. That's all that matters." Oh yeah, she was just going to obey him like a good little girl. With that, he finished his coffee and rose from the table before bending to brush a kiss over her cheek and move to the back door.

"I love you, Kei," he said behind her.

"I love you, Mac." She returned the words and the emotion.

"I'll be up for lunch if you take a break, then," he told her. "I'll talk to you later." About anything but what she could feel pulsing in the air now. As he left, Keiley grit her teeth in frustration.

When she had first heard the rumors of Mac's sexual history, she admitted a fear that had nearly ended their relationship. She had been terrified of the darkness of such a sexual act, and the darkness in the man she was falling in love with. She had been a virgin. Uncertain. Still wary of gossip and still wary of the strength of her desire for Mac. And the strength of her interest in his best friend and known third in his sexual relationships.

She had first met Jethro at an office party. A few weeks after that he had introduced Mac to her. Mac had stolen her heart within days.

She didn't know how to handle Mac, let alone another man. Especially a man as hard and as shadowed as Jethro.

She wasn't that frightened little girl anymore. But she wasn't certain she wanted fantasy to become reality, either. What she wanted, what she needed, were answers. And the only person she could get those answers from didn't seem willing to talk. She stared at the backdoor and felt her resolve harden. That was just too damned bad. That was her husband. Her life. He could talk or he could deal with the consequences. Namely, she damned well wouldn't leave him alone until he did.