“I’m only twenty, Shane. I have a lifetime to make good decisions. Might as well get the bad ones out of the way now while I still have time to learn from them.”

He caught the hand I had put over his heart and looked at the pale skin that had faint red marks circling it in the shape of his fingers. He put his lips to the center of my wrist, right where my pulse was hammering in time to his.

“I hurt you and made you cry.”

I sighed because I knew he was right. “You also protected me, stood up for me, and made me feel beautiful and secure, which is a lot more than I can say for most people in my life. With you, taking the good with the bad just goes hand in hand.”

He shifted so that his big body was braced above me. He bent his head and placed a whisper-soft kiss on my collarbone. My body reacted instantly. I ran my hands along the ridge of his rib cage, careful to avoid his still-raw knife wound. He was so solid, all parts of him real and strong. When he wasn’t being his own worst enemy, he was the most rigid and stable being I had ever encountered in my life, which was in contradiction to the restless and careless way he lived his life.

“Is that why you call me ‘Shane’ every time I take you to bed?” His mouth landed on my breastbone. I think he was purposely ignoring the begging, plump peaks of each breast. How we had shifted gears so fast I wasn’t sure, but like with everything that came with him, I just held on for the ride.

“I call you ‘Shane’ because you’re different when we are together like this—softer, less scary. I feel like all day long Bax is who you have to be to survive this life you’ve chosen to live, but Shane is who you choose to be when you let your guard down and leave it all on the streets.”

I ran my fingers over the prickly softness of his shaved head, taking a second to rub the smooth surface of his scar.

“I’m not going to pretend I don’t like it when you’re Shane better, but Bax has his place and I can deal with him, just not in bed.”

He moved lower and kissed each one of my hipbones where they jutted upward as my belly hollowed out at the contact. He dipped his tongue into the little indent of my belly button and put a kiss that left a mark on the path of freckled skin that trailed to the apex of my thighs. He was still lying between them, so there was no cover, no protection from either his burning gaze or his questing mouth and hands.

“It’s just me, little Dove, no more and no less.”

His breath hit the damp slit that was getting achy and ready for him to take things up a notch. It made me shudder and my fingers dug into the side of his head, which had him grunting in response.

“Just you is a whole hell of a lot more than most people bring to the table anymore.”

His head dropped and everything else fell away. He had the ability to make time stand still and all the awful things that swirled and invaded everyday life just evaporate into thin air with the stroke of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth. It wasn’t the first time he had used his mouth to make love to me, but there was something in it this time, something in him that made it different. He was trying to apologize, trying to make amends for purposely trying to freak me out earlier. He was reverent, he was sweet, and oh, good Lord, was he thorough and intently focused on making sure I felt what he was doing in every other part of my body. I was so emotionally strung out that I almost shoved him away, but it felt too good and I knew there was no way he was going to let me go anyway.

He sucked hard on my cl*t and used his fingers to mimic what I wanted him to do with that erection that only moments ago had been insistent against the side of my thigh. When he swirled the flat of his tongue around that tightly wound-up bundle of nerves, I knew it was going to be over before he even really started. He was relentless. He was ratcheting me up so high and so tight there was nothing I could do but scream his name as I broke under the tension. I felt everything inside me let loose and I went limp as he continued to run his tongue along saturated folds and oversensitized flesh. He pulled his fingers out and used them to trace random patterns across my knee and upper thigh.

I struggled to get my eyes back open to look up at him. He was rising to his knees and working on the button to his jeans. I swore there would never in my life be anything hotter than Shane Baxter getting n*ked and ready to work me over. My lazy heart picked back up when the top of those flags made an appearance. The look on his face after he got me off was always the same mixture of male satisfaction and appreciation, like I had given him some kind of gift by letting him make me come. It always did something to the very core of me to realize that to him it was something special, that I was something more than what he was used to.

He shoved the denim off over the hard globes of his ass but not before handing me a foil wrapper and telling me to get to work. I was lethargic, sleepy from the orgasm and the emotional turmoil of the night, but I wanted to put my hands on him, wanted to cross this last bridge in the place that had made him go so dark on me. I was all the way in Bax’s world now, there was no more pretending I was just biding my time on the fringe until Race showed his face.

I got the latex over him, took a minute to appreciate the heated length and the weeping head, but he was done making nice, and even though I was still extrasensitive and not really all that responsive, he slid into me. It was a tight fit and made both of us gasp. He held himself up over me on rigid arms and stared down at me while I worked my legs up around his waist and my arms across the broad expanse of his tattooed shoulders.

“You okay?”

That he asked meant everything and shook the last of the lethargy out of my blood. I arched up against him and dug my heels into his ass to get him to move.

“Better than all right.”

He swore and I saw some of the shadows move out of his eyes. He sank all the way into me and I felt consumed by him. Every part of him was hot where we touched, and the drag and pull of his unyielding flesh against my quivering inner muscles had me spiraling out of control all over again. He set a pace that was brutal and all about achieving the ultimate pleasure. We weren’t connecting on any other level than physical. Too much had been bared tonight, and this was the only way it could be.

He kissed me hard and I clutched at him to stay anchored to this bed in this place, otherwise I would fall away and I didn’t know that I could find my way back. He ran a hand down my bowed spine and gripped my ass in a desperate hold. Our chests rubbed together so hard that my already aching ni**les actually hurt at the contact and our mouths slammed together repeatedly. It was almost violent—the unhinged and desperate way we were moving together.

He whispered my name against my puffy and swollen lips and I knew he was going to reach the end before me. If it was possible, his thrusts became more frantic, his hands greedier, and I thought I was just going to have to hold him through the storm, when all of a sudden that sneaky hand that had been clasping my backside snuck between my legs and hooked around my clit. I saw stars and then I think I blacked out for a few seconds, because he kissed me again and then my head exploded.

I heard him groan and felt some of the tension work its way out of his big body, but I was in another world. I was in a world where I was just a girl and he was just a guy, and we didn’t have problems like gangsters, murderers, and missing brothers hounding us at every turn. In this world, we were just allowed to be happy and wrapped up in each other and the reality that this had a time limit on it didn’t exist.

He dropped his forehead to mine and I had to focus really hard to hear what he was saying to me.

“I never considered you might end up being the one who hurts me before this is all said and done, Copper-Top.”

I sighed and tugged him down so I could wrap myself up in him.

“We could just try not to hurt each other, Bax. That’s how people who like each other normally operate.”

“Like that’s going to work for us.”

I ran my fingers over each defined ridge of his spine. I sighed again and nuzzled into the curve of his shoulder. “Sadly, no.”

“We have this right now. I’ve learned to appreciate the good while you got it.”

I yawned and tried to snuggle into him, even though he didn’t seem to want to turn the thinking off.

“With us, that’s all we can ask for.”

He muttered something into the wild waves of my hair but I was too spun out emotionally and physically to keep up with him anymore. I closed my eyes, and the last thing I heard before I fell asleep was him telling me that amongst all the things he thought that I deserved, someone better than him was at the top of that very long list.

I wasn’t sure what woke me up a few hours later. We were on our sides facing each other. He had one arm curled around my shoulders and I was using the inside of his other arm as a pillow. I had my free arm tucked along his ribs and had thrown one of my legs over his lean waist at some point in the night. There was barely any space between the two of us. His n*ked chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm, like he was still sound asleep. But when I pried my heavy eyes open, the first thing I saw was his wide, dark eyes focused unwaveringly on my face.

I was going to ask him what was wrong, what had caused us to wake up, when I noticed the even darker muzzle of a gun pointed right at Bax’s temple. I woke up because we were no longer alone in the crappy apartment and a looming figure had a gun pointed at Bax’s head. I sucked in a breath and opened my mouth to scream in reflex when the armed shadow suddenly moved and a faint glow of moonlight highlighted the familiar face and glinted off of golden-blond hair. I was going to snap my brother’s name and ask him what in the hell he thought he was doing, but I never got the chance because Bax was suddenly a flurry of activity. Like he had done from the get-go, he put himself between me and whatever the perceived threat might be.

He rolled over so fast it almost toppled me to the floor. I screamed at him to stop, terrified Race would fire the gun by accident, but neither one of them was listening to me. Bax grabbed the barrel of the gun my brother had pressed to his head and shoved it up and back toward Race’s startled face. I knew now that Race wasn’t any kind of saint, but there was no way he was going to be a match for Bax. Maybe before his best friend had been sent to jail they were an even match, but now Bax had five years to fuel his fury. Five years of loss to pay Race back for, and it didn’t seem to matter that he was buck naked.

They both emitted a sound that was more animalistic than human, and the next thing I knew, the gun was lying on the bed next to me and they were trying to rip each other apart with their bare hands. I scrambled to my feet and put on the first thing I could find, which happened to be Bax’s hoodie. I zipped it up and snatched the gun up before either one of them could remember it existed. I called first Race’s name and then Bax’s, only to be ignored by both of them. The sounds of heavy fists hitting flesh and the coppery scent of blood soon filled the small space. I didn’t even try and warn them when the brawl moved from the space near the bed closer to the TV stand. The flat screen was no match for two furious men, both over six feet and apparently intent on destroying each other.

I winced when Race landed a solid blow on Bax’s already battered ribs and then had to squeeze my eyes shut when Bax retaliated by slamming his elbow repeatedly into Race’s cheekbone. They were both bloody, and even in the dark I could see the cold looks of fury on both of their faces. It wasn’t going to end unless I did something about it. Unfortunately, I had no idea what that something should be. I shoved my hands through my hair, closed my eyes, and screamed as loud and as long as I could. If their battle hadn’t drawn the attention of the neighbors, my bloodcurdling shriek surely would. I screamed until my throat was raw, until hot tears burned down my face, until I thought I would pass out from the lack of air in my lungs, and I didn’t stop until a pair of arms wrapped around me and pulled me close. Since the chest I fell against was bare and slicked with blood and sweat, I knew it was Bax who had collected me and not my brother.