The dark hardwood floor didn’t have so much as a stain on it and her carpets, even after five years, appeared in flawless condition. Her bedroom… She stepped into the room and stared around it silently. There was no life here. No memories. Not even sullied ones. She had never brought a lover to her home, had never fouled her bedroom with the unnatural desires that twisted through her mind.
She had never realized how perfectly the good sisters had conditioned her. She had never known how empty her life had become until now. Until she had been forced to walk—no she hadn’t walked, she had run—from something she hadn’t realized she needed. Lucian and Devril.
She walked over to the bed, her hand smoothing stiffly over the white bedspread, fighting to ignore the compulsion to clench her fingers into the fabric and rip it to the floor.
Enough. She straightened her shoulders and turned, forcing herself to walk sedately into the bathroom. She undressed, stuffed the skirt and blouse into the wastebasket before dropping the demi-bra in after it.
She twisted on the cold water to the shower, watching the pounding spray run into the glass cubicle before stepping beneath it. Her breath caught as ice seemed to envelop her skin, pouring through her hair, over her face, stealing her breath. Washing away the proof of the hot tears that finally fell.
Chapter Eleven
Self-control, that much sought after, often sadly lamented virtue, should not have the destructive, unforgiving undertones that Dev had glimpsed in Tally’s wounded brown eyes. It shouldn’t cause a passionate, vibrant woman to deny the very heart of her sexuality, nor leave her sobbing beneath the force of a shower whose chill could be felt outside the glass cubicle she stood within. But that was exactly what it had done.
Dev and Lucian had known for quite some time that Tally Raines was unique, a challenge unlike any woman they had known in their lives. The fact that they had slowly, over the past year, fallen in love with her, wasn’t the point. They had seen in her a strength of will that often mirrored their own, and a loneliness that echoed in their chests.
He and Lucian had, despite all appearances, lived a quiet, often lonely life. The bond they shared was more intense than most other twins, stemming, he thought, from the fact that they were fraternal rather than identical twins. The first years of their lives they had been largely separated by their divorced parents, seeing each other only occasionally and even then the visits had been brief. Only with the death of their mother after their tenth birthday had they finally been given the chance to know one another. From that moment on they had been inseparable.
Dev was the quiet one. The one everyone rarely paid much heed to. He preferred to watch the foibles of men and quietly learn from other’s mistakes. Lucian was the more social brother. He thrived amid the high paced, often stressful career he had chosen and gloried in the challenges they presented. Dev was more content to work behind the scenes, to coordinate and see the projects through rather than forging into the fray and doing battle with competitors who would have taken the more lucrative contracts.
It was for this reason that Dev had stood aside and allowed Lucian to begin the first wave of sensual assaults against Tally. She was attracted to both of them, they had both known that from the beginning, though he doubted at that time that she was aware of the carefully plotted seduction and downfall they had arranged for her.
How easily their plans had blown up in their faces. Dev stood outside the shower, leaning against the wall, head lowered, listening to the faint sounds of her sobs. They had made her cry.
He shook his head at that thought. No, they hadn’t made her cry; she had allowed her demands for self-control to cheat her out of the orgasm that had been building within her body. Those same demands had sent her running from them, sent her scrambling to pull the tattered shreds of her pride around her and retreat as quickly as possible from the two men who had seen her downfall.
He moved carefully, slowly, from the bathroom. He didn’t want to alert her of his presence, that in her turmoil she had forgotten to lock her front door and had given easy access to one of the men, he knew, she considered the enemy.
He paced to the bedroom and began preparing it for her. Lucian would arrive later, but for now, Dev was in control and Tally might have figured out how to handle his brother, but she had no idea how to handle him.
He smiled at the thought as he attached restraints to the four corner posts of her bed. The soft nylon wrist and ankle cables would allow just enough freedom of movement to ensure her pleasure while holding her in place so he could assure her freedom from the strict demands of her self-control.
He put several other articles on the bedside table. A tube of lubrication gel, an inflatable butt plug and a thick vibrating gel dildo were laid to one side. Next came a set of vibrating nipple clamps and a small ball gag.
He glanced toward the door as the sounds of falling water ceased. She would be entering the room within minutes, unaware of his presence, her control shaky at best, off balance. He had a feeling that if he gave her the chance to renew that control then they would all lose. Tally wouldn’t allow herself a chance to fail a second time. She would pull that cool mockery and cold demeanor around her like a cloak of protection and forever keep him and Lucian at arm’s length. He couldn’t allow that. He wouldn’t allow that.
Taking his seat in a comfortable chair across the room, he sat back and waited. His c**k was throbbing; so damned hard and engorged he was amazed he could walk. If he had ever had an erection so demanding with another woman, he couldn’t remember it.
The shower door opened, closed. Minutes later the sound of a hair dryer could be heard and Dev sat back to wait. Tally’s hair was long and thick, a sensuous silken skein of midnight-black that fell to her hips and made his hands itch to touch it. It had to be hell to dry, though. He would have loved to stand behind her, wielding the dryer, watching the cool strands slowly dry beneath the heat of the device. Instead, he sat and waited. The fireworks to come would be hot enough; he didn’t have to tempt an early explosion.
Long minutes later the hair dryer flipped off. Dev sat up straighter in the chair, his eyes narrowing as he watched the doorway. Tally walked through it slowly, her characteristic, sensual glide a little less relaxed than it usually was. Her long hair fell down her back, caressing her hips, but the rest of her body was bare. Bare and perfect. Gold glittered at her ni**les and winked at him between her perfect thighs as she came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the floor.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Her eyes nearly glowed in furious heat, her dusky cheeks flushing with anger.
Dev’s brows rose in surprise. Her voice was gritty with emotion, her body fairly trembling with it. This was not the cool, self-possessed siren that had haunted his dreams for so long. This was better. More than he could have expected.
He propped his ankle on his knee, leaning back in the chair as she jerked a long, cream-colored silk robe from the smaller chair by her bed table and pulled it on with quick, angry movements. She still had yet to notice the restraints or the sexual devices on the table.
“Leave,” she snapped as she belted the robe around her slender waist. “Now.”
Dev sighed heartily. “I’m not Lucian, Tally. Your anger doesn’t bother me as it does him.”
Lucian, despite his often sarcastic attitude in the face of her normally cold temper, had that basic male trepidation when it came to prodding at an unpredictable female. Unlike his brother, it was an art Dev had perfected in his youth and had steadily applied over the years.
“Does jail bother you?” She crossed her arms under her br**sts as she stared back at him heatedly. “Breaking and entering is illegal.”
“The door was unlocked,” he informed her, watching in satisfaction as her eyes widened in shock.
He could read her emotions as clearly as a book now. The cold mockery had been stripped away, leaving bare the woman beneath as she stared back at him with haunting, shadowed emotion.