Dane - A MacKenzie Novel Read Free Page B

eyebrows.
    Cade’s brothers were well aware of the kind
of sexual appetite he had. He was the kind of man who demanded
everything from his lovers. His thought had always been that there
should never be anything sexual between a couple that was
considered too dirty or taboo, and he stayed far away from women
that didn’t know the score going into an affair. There was no way
in hell his neighbor wouldn’t run away in horror at the things he
wanted to do to her.
    “And she does have a fine ass,” Shane
added.
    “I’m going to kill you,” Cade said.
    Shane ignored the threat and said, “I swear
there’s something about her that’s familiar though. I’ve seen her
somewhere before. It’s hard to forget someone that looks like she
does, but don’t worry, it’ll come to me.”
    “Maybe she’s on one of those Girls Gone
Wild videos,” Declan threw in.
    Cade tuned his brothers out and thought about
the neighbor. He’d run a background check on her, as well as
everyone else on the street. Old habits were hard to break. And it
wouldn’t be long before Shane realized who she was.
    Her name was Bayleigh Scott, and she owned a
lingerie boutique in the square by the university. She was
twenty-eight and came from a military family—a large family—just as
he had, and one of her brothers was on the same SEAL team as
Shane.
    Cade knew Brady Scott in passing, and he knew
her other brother, Brant almost as well as he knew his own
brothers, but there was no way that either of her brothers would be
happy if Cade pursued Bayleigh. Hell, he’d feel the same way if one
of his buddies showed interest in his sister, Darcy.
    The agents and SEALS he called friends were
too hard for women like Bayleigh and Darcy—men whose lives
consisted of constant danger didn’t have qualms about adventuring
into the darker sides of sex, especially after coming off a
mission.
    The background check he’d done on Bayleigh
didn’t do justice to what he’d just seen with his own eyes. The
file hadn’t said she had a body that would make him instantly hard.
His cock had almost burst from his jeans the moment she’d pranced
across his driveway in those tiny shorts and thin tank top. She
hadn’t been wearing a bra, and even now his hands wanted to touch
and his mouth wanted to taste.
    She’d looked him over as thoroughly as he’d
looked at her, and she’d been almost entranced by the sight of his
erection. Her tongue had dashed out to lick her lower lip and he
swore he almost felt the motion along his cock. There’d been
interest in her eyes, no doubt about it.
    It had been too damned long since he’d been
laid. When the itch took over or the dreams of Carmen became too
frequent, he found the nearest woman who would have him and fucked
himself into oblivion, until the past was buried again and the itch
was gone. It was the best he could do with the hand in life he’d
been dealt. He never expected anything more, and wasn’t prepared to
give anything more in return. Life was sometimes a bitch that way.
But the thought of going to another woman wasn’t nearly as
appealing as it should have been. Hell, Bayleigh Scott was already
complicating his life.
    ***
    Two hours later, the truck was unloaded and
furniture was in a semblance of where it was supposed to be. Cade
looked at the clock and decided there wasn’t a thing wrong with
having beer in the morning if you hadn’t been to bed yet. He took
two more into his bedroom at the back of the house and handed them
to his brothers, who were putting together an enormous four-poster
bed that had belonged to his great-grandmother.
    “You don’t have the sex life for a bed like
this,” Shane said, sucking on his skinned knuckles.
    The bed in question was dark and ornate and
had been hand-carved by his great-grandfather MacKenzie. It also
had to weigh close to a thousand pounds. His Grandpop had been a
hell of a carpenter. There was a large matching armoire, with a
hidden panel large enough to fit