Her mother’s fingers trailed over her cheek as an approving smile shaped her lips and filled her golden brown eyes. “You will weep often,” her mother assured her. “You will rage and you will cry and you will ask God why. But you will always find yourself again, and you will never sell your soul to a man who cannot love you. If he cannot love you with all his heart and all his spirit as well, then you are better off without him.”
Eve nodded. Reaching out, she wrapped her arms around her mother and held on tight. “I love you, Momma,” she whispered.
“And I love you, my Eve,” her mother swore, hugging her just as fiercely. “And if you carry his child and he does not wish to be a part of your lives, then your sisters and I will surround you and that precious babe with all the love you could ever need. I promise you this.”
Eve nodded against her mother’s shoulder as a single tear escaped.
The last one, she knew. The last one for the child she had been until that final maturity had occurred in Brogan’s arms. One last tear for what might not be, and what she may not ever be able to fix.
She could love him, and she did love him.
But she would never again lose herself for fear of his walking away.
Or for fear of his taking her heart with him.
* * *
Timothy stepped back from the kitchen doorway, turned, and slipped through the dining room, his hands shoved into his slacks as a frown pulled at his brow.
He’d heard it all. Dawg had told him most of it at the reunion, then called later that night to tell him the rest. Neither he nor Dawg had been certain how Eve would deal with it, though. Whether she was strong enough to truly love and understand a man such as Brogan.
She was too strong for him, Timothy decided.
Hell, Eve was too good for the likes of Brogan Campbell and his damaged heart.
He’d give the boy a chance, though. Mercedes would ask that of him; he knew her well enough to know that. And there was nothing he could deny his Mercedes.
* * *
Showered and lying back on her bed, naked and relaxed for the first time since leaving Brogan at the cabin, Eve realized how desperately she had missed him.
Most of it had been her fault, she admitted. She’d kept herself away from the house and away from him until she’d heard he’d left town. Even Dawg didn’t know when he would return, and she was hesitant to ask Timothy.
Timothy was as protective over her and her sisters as she imagined he would have been over the daughter he had lost so long ago. Fortunately, she hadn’t had to rouse his suspicions; nor had she had to tempt that protective side of him.
Lying in the bed now, drifting in and out of a peaceful dreamscape, she found her memories turning to the pleasure she’d found in Brogan’s arms.
Those heated, completely destructive kisses. The way he touched her, as though he knew from one touch to the next exactly what she needed. The way he could make what should be painful, exquisitely pleasurable. A mix of pleasure and pain that she might be becoming addicted to.
As her body began to heat, to pulse with the memories, she found her hands straying to her body, stroking down her side, across her abdomen. One hand caressed her breasts—along the rounded curve, cupping one, her thumb sliding over the nipple as her breathing began to accelerate.
Pausing, her eyes opening on a frustrated groan, Eve moved from the bed and collected the dildo she’d bought for herself a few years before and had never used properly. After meeting Brogan, she had been determined that if he ever took her, then there would be no mistake that he was her first. That she had saved herself for him.
That veil of innocence was gone now. It had been given to the only man she knew would ever hold her heart as fully as Brogan held it.
The warmth beginning to rise in the tender tissue and delicate muscles of her pussy tormented her now. Her nipples and breasts ached, her body tingled for touch, and she was certain bringing herself to release would be better than nothing.
She had the memory of his touch, knew it as freshly as if he had just taken her the day before.
Lying back on the bed, Eve resumed touching, stroking. In her mind he was with her, drawing the breathless little moans from her lips and filling her with a hunger she couldn’t control.
Her own touch wasn’t nearly as heated and knowing. It wasn’t as instinctively experienced. But it was enough. Enough to build the need and the pleasure until she was able to slip the vibrating dildo inside the snug channel with a desperate moan.
She ached for him.
She needed him.
But if she had to, she’d live without him. Now all she had to do was convince her body of that.
* * *
The compensation package the Mackays wanted wasn’t easy to acquire. When it came right down to it, Brogan had to threaten Doogan with his father, and apprising the director of his actions, if he didn’t get it.
Nearly three days after leaving for D.C., Brogan drove back into Somerset after midnight and headed straight to the inn.
He’d missed Eve.
Admitting it hadn’t been easy. He’d lost two nights’ sleep, jacked off more than he wanted to, and found he didn’t get aroused in the slightest when he visited what had once been his favorite watering hole for drinks with his father.
He wasn’t a one-night-stand sort of person, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get aroused when obvious interest was shown. Until now. Until all he could think about was Eve and the feeling he’d had as he came inside her. That feeling that he could sense part of her soul that he had no right knowing. Parts of her heart that he knew no other man had ever felt, had ever gotten close to.
Pulling into the parking area and cutting the Harley’s motor, he breathed out a sigh of relief before slipping off his helmet and hanging it over the handlebars of the cycle. Looking toward the side of the house, he could see the faintest sliver of light beneath Eve’s curtains, and his cock came to instant attention.
For the briefest, briefest moment, a sense of knowledge shot to awareness inside him and his entire body tightened.
Son of a bitch, he knew what was going on, but he was damned if he wanted to admit to it. Not yet, at any rate. There was no way in hell he could have such a connection to a woman. That he could feel her, that he could imagine exactly what she was doing and know to the depths of his soul that he was right.
Blowing out a hard breath, he moved to the porch, making his way quickly along the wraparound porch and moving past the door to his own suite, toward Eve’s instead.
He didn’t bother knocking.
Sliding the key he’d lifted from her room and had copied before he left, he quickly, quietly unlocked the patio door and stepped inside.
“Fuck me,” he groaned roughly, his eyes widening, his breath stopping in his chest at the sight that met his eyes. “I swear to God, if you move, I’m going to die.”
She didn’t move.
Knees bent and lifted, her pretty delicate feet planted against the mattress, emerald eyes slitted and burning with lust, she slid the dildo free of her gripping little pussy until nothing but the head remained, then pushed it in slowly.
So fucking slowly he swore he held his breath waiting for it to stop. Her hips lifted, her breath catching as the toy delved deeper inside her until her lashes fluttered when she could take no more.
Closing the door carefully, locking it without taking his eyes from her, Brogan moved one hand to the buttons of his shirt and quickly released them.
Sitting in the chair next to the bed, he pulled his ankle boots from his feet, then stood and shrugged the shirt from his shoulders. He was breathing heavily as his hands went to the metal buttons of his jeans, released them, then quickly shed the jeans. Still watching her, fighting to remember how to breathe, he wrapped the fingers of one hand around his cock and watched her, mesmerized.
He stroked the hardened flesh from base to tip, a groan working from his chest as he watched the artificial dick pull free of her clenched inner muscles. It glistened with her juices as they clung to the latex form. The realistic design with its flared head and bulging veins was a poor substitute for what she wanted, though.