Chapter 4

Dawg shut back the rage and the fear that he had somehow hurt her and she wasn’t admitting it. No doubt, this changed things. Son of a bitch, he couldn’t blame her for staying as far away from him as possible all these years. But that didn’t mean he was willing to let her go.

He would have been inclined to doubt that he could forget a night with her, but there were too many dreams, too many indications that she was right.

He had taken her virginity. He had taken her without consideration of her innocence, her youth. He had taken an eighteen-year-old virgin to his bed and done things that even mature women would blink at being asked to do.

He cleaned up the glass from the broken bottle carefully, aware of her watching him now with quiet concern. Fuck that; he didn’t need her concern. He wanted her. He wanted her hot and wild, all that hunger and passion he had glimpsed in her burning for him.

She would have loved him, he thought, to have followed him into his bed all those years ago. It made him cringe, wondering what he had done to her, how he must have hurt her to make her run before he even awakened.

And he deserved it even less now than he had eight years ago.

“This deal. It involves us only,” he told her as he threw the glass in the garbage and kept his back to her. “No one else.”

When she didn’t speak, he turned and stared back at her.

What the hell had been wrong with him the night he had taken her? He had known that Crista wasn’t the sharing kind. She was a one-man woman, just like Kelly.

“Why can’t you just let me go? You owe me that, Dawg.”

Yeah, he owed her. If his dreams were anything close to what had actually happened, then he owed her a hell of a lot more than he could ever repay.

“You owe me as well,” he told her coolly. “All I have are fragmented dreams that drive me fucking crazy. Whatever we started eight years ago, we’ll finish this summer. One way or the other.”

Nothing on earth could convince him to let her out of his sight now. Possessiveness, desire, and emotions he hadn’t felt in so many years he barely remembered them rose to the surface of his consciousness. Emotions he felt in those dreams. Something softer, more tender, and yet a thousand times hotter than lust alone. He wouldn’t call it love; he had assured himself years ago that love didn’t exist. Besides, this went deeper than anything he had heard love described as.

“Just like that.” Bitterness curled at her lips. “As though the fact that I don’t want to finish anything doesn’t matter.”

“It wouldn’t be blackmail if it did.” He shrugged, fighting back the guilt he could feel building in his gut. “If you wanted to pay the price, then it wouldn’t be such a dirty word, would it?”

She stared at him with big dark eyes filled with hurt and made him wish he were someone other than who he was.

“Tell me something,” he asked her then. “That night we had, did you at least enjoy it?”

Her gaze flickered away as sharp heat filled her face.

“That’s not the point.”

“If my dreams are anything to go by, you were just as hot for it as I was. Tell me I’m wrong, Crista. Tell me you hated it.”

He moved toward her then, watching as her head snapped back and her eyes tracked his progress across the room.

She didn’t retreat; she couldn’t be frightened of him. She stared back at him defiantly, her hands clenched at her sides, her expression mutinous.

She wanted to say she hated it, but she couldn’t. She hadn’t been able to lie worth a damn when she was younger, and she couldn’t do it now.

“It was hot, wasn’t it, Crista?” He stopped within inches of her, his hand cupping her arm, smoothing down it to her wrist before he lifted her hand to his shoulder and gripped her waist. “So hot we burned down the night. That’s what I dream. That you’re wet and wild, screwing me with the same crazy lust I’m screwing you with.”

Her face flamed brighter.

“And you slipped out on me that morning, didn’t you? Just ran away, like the scared little girl you were.”

Her eyes flashed with anger.

“I’m not a plaything for the Nauti Boys. Not then and not now.”

“And you were too scared to stick around and fight for the singular position, too, weren’t you, Crista. What happened, baby? Did it get too hot?”

“Fight for Dawg?” She widened her eyes as though mocking him. She tried to mock him, but he saw the pleasure she was fighting to hide as he drew her closer, nudging his cock against her lower belly and feeling the muscles clench. “Why fight over something every other woman in the county had already had?”

Dawg smiled. “You were scared.”

“I was disinterested.” She couldn’t lie. He heard the tremor in her voice, saw her grimace as she acknowledged it.

He shook his head at her as he allowed the fingers of his free hand to twine into those long, silky strands of hair. Soft, fragrant hair. In his dreams it had twined around him, snaring him, binding him to her. And it had never let him go.

“Are you more interested now?” The hand at her waist bunched the material of the shirt in it.

He was going to have her. He was going to touch her, taste her, feel her come apart in his arms.

“Dawg please…” Her voice trembled then.

Dark eyes stared back at him almost pleadingly as the shirt cleared her thighs and rose higher.

“Please what, Crista Ann?” He lowered his head until he could inhale the scent of her. Sweet vanilla and wild roses. She always smelled of vanilla and wild roses to him.

That elusive little scent wasn’t enough though. He had to taste her. His lips touched the silken flesh of her neck, his tongue tasting her flesh, and he swore he saw stars as the taste of her exploded against his tongue.

His arm came around her back, lifting her to him as primal hunger replaced the careful seduction he had intended.

He pulled her head back, covered her lips with his own, and found the fiery heat he had been searching for, for eight damn years.

And son of a bitch if it wasn’t worth waiting for. She exploded in his arms. A shudder rushed through her, then her hands were twining in his hair, pulling at the thick strands, and pulling his lips harder against hers.

God, she made him feel. Made him feel things he couldn’t remember ever feeling, except in his dreams. Dreams of her. Dreams of heat and primal pleasure and sensations he couldn’t have imagined really existed.

But they existed here with her in his arms, her body straining toward him, her whimper of pleasure and distress filling his ears as his tongue parted her lips and delved inside.

Fiery sweetness. Spicy ice. She was every contradiction in the world, and his blood raced at the defiance, the challenge, and the sheer response he felt radiating from her.

Crista tried to tell herself she could fight the attraction, the pleasure. Before he touched her, she tried to convince herself she could hold herself aloof from him.

Until his eyes had dilated with pleasure and he had pulled her to him. Until his lips touched her neck; then that hungry moan had left his lips a second before his kiss rocked her mind.

This was a very bad thing. Starbursts of pleasure were exploding inside her bloodstream as she fought herself, fought her response to him, and failed.

Oh how she failed. She was trying to climb into his body instead, to burn in the center of a sensation so hot, so dark and heated she was lost beneath it.

“Off!” His lips lifted from hers only long enough to whisk the shirt from her arms and over her head before she could react. Before she could stop him. Then he was bending to her, his lips moving unerringly for the tight, too-sensitive nipples lifting to his lips as though they had craved this caress for eight years.

And they had.

“Oh God. Dawg.” She arched in his arms as he sucked her nipple into his mouth.

And it was as good, no, it was better than before. His lips drew on the tender tip, his thigh pressed between her legs, and within seconds she was pressing the aching flesh between her thighs into the heavy muscle of his leg and riding it almost frantically as he sucked at her.

“Yes.” The word hissed from between her lips. “Oh yes. Do that. Just like that.”

Just as he had that night years before. His teeth raking over her nipple before he sucked it back, hard and hot, his tongue lashing over it like a fiery whip.

She was falling. Dizzy. Off balance. And before she knew it, stretched out on the couch with Dawg’s lips still ravishing her tender nipples, first one, then the other, growling with hunger and heat as his hand cupped between her thighs.

Finesse was forgotten, but it wasn’t finesse she wanted. Dawg was rumored to be smooth, practiced, deliberate in every touch. But there was nothing deliberate or practiced in his touch now.

Experienced, yes. Confident and too damned experienced.

His fingers parted the curl-covered folds between her thighs, and a second later, one broad, male finger was piercing her core.

Crista froze. Heat exploded in her vagina, tore through her bloodstream and into her womb as she felt the tender muscles clenching desperately around his caressing finger.

“So hot.” He was panting as his lips lifted from a reddened nipple, and his eyes, darker now but still mesmerizing, almost hypnotizing, stared into hers. “So tight and hot, Crista.”

Her hips jerked as his finger pulled back, then stroked inside her again. One long thrust that had her gasping and arching in his arms, her thighs falling farther apart, her hips lifting for a deeper, wilder penetration.

“You’ll destroy me,” she cried out, her fingers digging into his scalp as his tongue licked over her nipple. “Again. You’ll destroy me again, Dawg.”

He had to understand. He couldn’t do this to her again. She could easily give herself to him, just like before.

“It’s okay, Crista. I won’t hurt you, baby,” he groaned. “It’s just us. See? No one else is here. Ever. God, I’d kill the man that tried to touch you now.”

She cried out as another finger joined the first, thrust inside her, parted flesh that had never known another man’s touch, never clenched, never became slick and hot and achy as it did for Dawg.

“Mine.” His snarl shocked her.

His lips covering hers again fed the hungers rising sharp and deep inside her.

Her hips lifted, arched as she bucked against him, writhing beneath his larger body as his fingers fucked into her, sent a firestorm of sensation raging through her.

She had sworn she would never let this happen again. But here she was, naked, hot, wet, and begging for more.

Her lips were wild beneath his, taking kiss for kiss and returning it with another. Her fingers held him to her. Her thighs tightened on the cloth-covered leg between her knees, and she fought to hold his fingers inside her.

She was falling. Just like she had before. Losing her common sense, her heart, and her soul to this man.

Dumb. Caution was screaming through her brain.

“Now this is a pretty sight. Damn, Dawg, you started without me. I’m hurt.”

Like a slap of cold water, Natches’s voice tore through her head as Dawg’s head lifted, and Crista swore she heard him curse.

Anger. Pain. Fear. It lashed through her as she stared up at Natches, fighting back the wave of sickness as his gaze flickered over her with amused lust. He was leaning against the bar, thankfully dressed, grinning, and the epitome of every reason why she should have fought harder, should have remembered why she couldn’t let Dawg have another part of her soul.

“Let me go!” She slapped at his shoulders. “Get off me.”

“Damn it, Crista. You’re naked,” he snarled the reminder.

“Get off me!” She kicked at him, jerking out of his arms and rolling from beneath him.

“Look your fill, asshole,” she told Natches as she grabbed Dawg’s shirt from the floor. “Because it will be the last damn look you ever get the chance to take.”

Clasping the material over her breasts and making certain it covered her thighs, she tore from the room, rushed past him, and ran for the stairs.

Fine, she was flashing her ass. Let them both look. One last damned time.

“Natches, you’re a bastard,” she heard Dawg curse.

Natches was laughing, and Crista felt like crying.

Because for a few precious moments, she had believed.

She was a fool for it, she admitted to herself. A fool for Dawg. And seconds later, staring around the opulent bedroom, the monstrously large bed, and the drape-shrouded windows that surrounded it, she realized what she had done.

She had run straight to his bedroom rather than the spare room. Straight into Dawg’s private lair.

Dawg stared at Crista’s perky little butt as it disappeared up the stairs and sighed heavily.

“What the hell do you want, Natches?” he asked his cousin wearily, turning to him and watching as Natches grinned back.

The other man hadn’t watched the charming display of flesh; it was the only reason he still had all his teeth in his head.

Natches shook his head. “You and Rowdy. Man, you two are so possessive it’s enough to make a man’s stomach turn. And here I thought I could depend on you to hold out.”

Dawg grunted at the comment. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I brought her Rodeo back. I thought I’d drop in and see how you two were doing before heading to bed.” His grin was pure evil. “And I thought I’d give you this. It was in the passenger seat.”

Dawg took the slip of paper. Express Movers. The letterhead and address were legit. The scrawled handwriting assured Miss Jansen she could now pick up her items in Store It Yourself, and enclosed in the envelope she would find the key to the indoor warehouse locker.

“I hacked the company computers before coming over here. They don’t have a record for the delivery. Someone set her up.”

Dawg tucked the note carefully into the pocket of his sweats until he could lock it in the upstairs safe later.

“Looks like you were making progress, anyway,” Natches smirked.

“We were doing fine until you opened your mouth. But I think you were aware of that.”

Natches glanced toward the stairs then. For a second, regret sliced across his features, then his ever-present mocking smile was back on his face.

“One-man woman, huh?” he asked, though from his look, it was more a statement.

Dawg stared back at him, seeing the flash of loneliness, of knowledge that filled his cousin’s dark, forest green eyes.

“She’s not as agreeable to being my woman as I would wish, though.” Dawg raked his fingers heavily through his hair as he glanced at the stairs again. “I blackmailed her.”

He glanced back at Natches in time to see his cousin shaking his head.

“I knew you were going to do something dumb like that.” He chuckled, though the sound carried little amusement. “Good luck on that one. I just stopped by to drop these off.” He dropped Crista’s keys on the counter. “And to tell you Cranston wants our final reports in his office by the end of the day. Oral and written. He’s still a little upset over losing the woman. But he seems certain the men he captured will talk.”

“They probably will.” But who would they identify?

If Crista had been led there, then it was for a reason. The thieves would spill their guts in a heartbeat, either way.

“I don’t know.” Natches shrugged. “I followed them to the van when they were loading them up. All Cranston got from them were vague looks when he was questioning them. They might not know.”

Dawg stared at him in complete disbelief.

“Hey, we can hope,” Natches snickered, holding his hands up in surrender before straightening from the bar and heading for the door. “I came in the back, I’ll leave through the front. Give the gossips something to crow about. While you’re having fun, I’ll see what I can find out, see who’s too interested in the setup you have going on here. I don’t like this a damned bit, Dawg, I’ll tell you. She shouldn’t have been there tonight. It’s a setup.”

Dawg couldn’t agree with him more. “Let me know what you find out.”

As Natches left, Dawg relocked the doors behind him and reset the alarms. But he didn’t immediately follow Crista to the bedroom on the upper deck. He stared around the lower level instead, seeing more than the crisp, clean lines of the interior and the nice furnishings.

He’d been living on the Nauti Dawg for years. Only through the coldest months did he leave the marina and stay in the small apartment he had above the lumber store. He rarely stayed at the underground home his father had built before his death.

He sat down slowly on the couch, leaned back, and breathed out wearily. God, he was exhausted. Tired and horny and conflicted. It was a hell of a state to be in at three o’clock in the morning.

His silent laughter was bitter and mocking. Hell, he was turning into the bastard his father had always predicted he was. Maybe he was more like his grandfather, Nate August, than he wanted to admit. The son of a bitch had left three bastard sons and a daughter in Somerset before returning to his Texas home more than fifty years before. Of the four children, Dawg’s father and his uncles and aunt, only Ray Mackay, Rowdy’s father, had shown any sort of decency to his wife or his children. His aunt didn’t count. She worshipped the ground her son, Johnny, walked on, but many suspected she had driven her husband, Ralph, to his grave.

Dawg rubbed at the ache in his knee, feeling every steel pin that held the joint and kneecap together. The weather was getting ready to turn damp; he could predict it within days now. And he’d been on his leg too damned long. He was riding close to twenty-four hours without sleep, and Cranston wanted him in to give his final report.

And upstairs, Crista was waiting in his bedroom. Pissed off and probably feeling just as betrayed as she had every right to feel.

He should just let her go. He owed her that much. But he couldn’t do it. Everything inside him howled in protest at the thought of letting her go. He had a hold on her now, a way to keep her in his bed if nothing else. A chance to figure out why she had haunted him for eight fucking years.

She wasn’t the only woman he had fucked in his life that he couldn’t remember. For a few years there, there had been more than a few. But she was the only woman who had ever lingered in his head to the point that the thought of her nearly drove him insane.

Seducing her wasn’t going to be easy. He didn’t just want her body; he wanted more, and he was man enough to admit to it. Just fucking her would never be enough. He needed to capture the elusive sense of something more that was so much a part of her.

He rubbed his jaw as he considered that one. Hell, he had never courted a woman a day in his life, especially not one he knew he could fuck. He could walk upstairs to that bedroom and within a few hot kisses, have her ready and willing. For the moment.

But she would resent it. She would eventually hate him for it, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her sweet smiles, her soft touches. He wanted her to be his lover, not just a bedmate.

He’d never really had a lover.

Dawg frowned at that. He was thirty-two years old, yet he had never had a steady lover, a woman he wanted in his bed for more than a night or two. And he couldn’t figure out why.

Oh, he had considered it once. Eight fucking years ago. When he had been trying to get Crista into his bed, he had known then that he wanted more than a few nights with her. A few weeks, a few months, maybe.

Something tightened in his chest at the thought, something akin to regret, a knowledge that even a few months might not be enough.

One step at a time, he thought tiredly. Tonight, he’d just sleep with her. Just hold her. See how that went. That was something else he had never done, just held a woman through the night and felt the warmth of her against him.

Rowdy swore that some nights, it was better than sex, just having Kelly next to him, soft and sweet.

Would it be like that with Crista?

He glanced back at the stairs, his mind filling with the memory of her sweet scent, the warmth of her delicate body. Maybe, for one fucking night in his life, he could sleep without dreaming, if he were holding her.

He pushed himself to his feet and moved through the houseboat. He checked the windows, the back deck door, and the security alarms before moving up the stairs. When he stepped into the bedroom, he stopped in surprise.

He expected her to be awake and ready to shoot him. She had been madder than hell when she flew up that metal staircase. Instead, she was curled beneath the blankets of his king-sized bed, the covers pulled up to her nose, sleeping like a baby.

And she wasn’t just on the edge of the bed. She was in the middle, where he slept. A slow smile curled his lips as he stripped silently, leaving the small, dim light, which sat on the corner table on the far end of the room, turned on. He moved around the bed, slid beneath the blankets, and carefully, very cautiously, he eased in beside her.

She muttered something not so nice. A drowsy little comment about cold feet, but she settled back to sleep as his arm came over her and he drew her against him.

She didn’t awaken.

His frown deepened. A woman who slept alone was always aware when a man slid into bed beside her.

Crista was used to sleeping with someone.

Had that someone held her through the night and kept dreams of Dawg at bay? The bastard. He gritted his teeth at the thought of any other man holding her like this.

She belonged here, curled against his chest, snuggled into his body, keeping him warm.

It was…interesting.

He was still harder than hell. Hornier than he could remember being in years, but there was no need to hurry. No race to satisfaction so he could be alone.

His eyes closed as she muttered something again. Something about Alex and the electric bill, and he grinned. Female fluff stuff that Rowdy always teased Kelly about.

Hell, this was nice.

His eyes drifted closed, his arousal pounded between his thighs, but the edge was tempered with exhaustion and a slow easing of the tight sense of cold anger that had gripped him for years.

He buried his face in Crista’s hair, breathed out slowly, and let the darkness have him, for a few hours at least.