Nauti Dreams (3 page)

“The trucks are getting closer.” There was weariness in her voice, but no fear yet.

“They’ll search for a while. I’m good at this. Don’t worry.”

He checked on Faisal’s hole. It was silent. Faisal knew how to hide; it wasn’t his first

time, probably wouldn’t be his last. He had everything he needed to stay secure as long as

no one identified the hiding place Natches had made.

“How did they get you?” he finally asked her when she said nothing else.

“Dragged me out of my car outside Baghdad, threw me in a van, beat the shit out of me,

and played with some torture.” She shrugged, but he heard the echo of horror in her

voice.

“What do you have that they want?”

She was an American woman and she had enough strength to strip a dead man and get his

clothes on in the time it took him to pop a few heads and get to her location. She was an

agent; he knew that from the comment she had made about needing to let someone know

about Nassar. That was going to take a few hours at least.

“I don’t have anything anyone wants,” she said tiredly. “I’m a relief worker. I was

working in Baghdad.”

“Don’t pull no shit with me, sugar.”

“Then don’t pull none with me. You know how it goes.” She copied his accent exactly. “I

have to get out of here.”

Yeah, he knew how it went. She couldn’t disclose and he shouldn’t be asking, but he was

a nosy bastard and that was the truth.

“Won’t be long now. I’ve already missed my bus,” he stated. “When I’m not at

extraction, they’ll send a team out for me. I’m important, you know.”

“Obviously more important than I am.” She sighed. “Can I take a nap?”

“No naps.” The helicopter was getting closer. He hoped Faisal had his deflecting blanket

over his head. “Come here; we gotta hunker down.”

Fear flashed across her face for just a second as he unfolded the light, silver-backed

blanket and pulled it over their heads, tucking it in carefully around them. So much as a

foot sticking out from beneath it would allow any heat-seeking equipment to pick them

up.

He had no idea what that helicopter was packing, and he wasn’t taking any chances.

He was wrapped around her like a possessive lover now, and he could feel her fear as

easily as he could feel the heat building beneath the blanket.

“You know, if I was back home, the ladies would be purring at being here with me,” he

pointed out to her as he smiled against her head. “They like my hard body. They think

I’m sexy.”

A nervous laugh parted her lips as he rested his cheek against her hair.

“I can’t see if you’re sexy,” she reminded him, and he hated that quiver in her voice.

“Oh, you’re missin’ out.” He sighed pitifully, his voice whisper soft. “I’m damned fine,

Chay. Green eyes and a nice tan. I got hard abs. Black hair. The women drool over me.”

He smiled, listened carefully, and was thankful to feel a small measure of the fear ease

from her. He didn’t consider himself particularly handsome, but he knew what the ladies

said. He had to distract her though, and this was all that mattered.

“Conceited, too.” Her hands were clenched tight around his lower arms, broken nails

digging into his flesh.

“Hell yeah, I am. I’m spoiled as hell.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“Playing? Escaping the marriage market?” He held her closer as the sound of the

helicopter hovering overhead had her shuddering against him. The camouflaged top of

the blanket, added to the dead brush secured to the narrow timbers above them, would

hide them from sight. He had a moment to worry about Faisal, then pushed it away. If

they were caught, they were probably dead anyway, despite the extraction team that he

knew would be barreling its way to him.

He had pictures, layouts, troop movements, and hidden terrorist bases. He’d been out in

bum-fucked nowhere for six weeks now after completing the primary mission he had

been sent on to aid in the extraction of another captured agent.

That agent had been rescued. So why hadn’t a team been sent out for this one?

“They’re getting closer.” Her voice was a breath of terror.

“No worries, baby. By nightfall, we’re going to be safe and sound and celebrating with

some homemade shine I’m saving just for the end of this mission. I’ll get you drunk and

seduce you.”

“Seduce me?”

“Oh yeah.” He held her closer. “I’ll lay you down and kiss every bruise, then lick all the

hurt away. I’ll lave those pretty, tender nipples, and when I go lower, you’ll forget all

about the pain.”

“Ego.” She was shuddering in his arms at the sound of the vehicles moving into the

ravine.

“Truth.” He kissed the top of her head. “When I’m finished, this will all seem like a very

bad dream. Distant and gone away. It will be just me and you, sweetheart. Sweaty and hot

and doing things that might make both of us blush.”

“I bet you don’t blush.” She buried her face in his chest at the sound of voices shouting in

Arabic.

“I bet you could make me blush.” He kissed the top of her head and smiled, triumph

singing through him at the feel of the light vibration of the radio at his thigh. “You gonna

make me blush tonight, sugar? I just got signal.” He took her hand and laid it against the

radio. “Five minutes and hell is gonna sweep through here. Five hours and I’m going to

make you blush.”

“You can’t.” He could have sworn he heard tears in her voice.

“Making you blush would be my sole aim in life,” he murmured. “I promise, baby, I can

do it.”

“I’m married.”

August, Four Years Later

Chaya Greta Dane found the tracking device that had been left beneath Dawg Mackay’s

vehicle on the side of a dirt road so deep in the Kentucky mountains that she knew she

would play hell finding her way out.

She blew out a hard breath and shook her head. The Mackays weren’t stupid, but

sometimes her boss liked to pretend they were, and that was a very big mistake,

especially in light of the fact that Cranston really wasn’t a fool.

She stared around the area before brushing back her dark blond hair and resigning herself

to the inevitable.

Dawg Mackay had led her on a merry chase, and he had known exactly what he was

doing. Through twisting hollows, up steep mountain roads that barely passed as trails,

and into the thick forests that surrounded Lake Cumberland like a protective lover.

She would find her way out, eventually, but there was no doubt she was stuck for the

night. Her satellite phone wasn’t cooperating for some reason, the cell phone had no

reception, and night was coming on.

She straightened from the crouch where she had found the locator another agent had

placed beneath the Mackay vehicle, propped her hands on her hips, and stared around the

thick forest surrounding her.

It would have been enjoyable if she’d been prepared. Simple things like enough water to

get her through the night, a sleeping bag maybe. She did have her weapon. And her

thoughts. Too many thoughts the longer she stayed in Somerset—the longer she was

around Natches Mackay and all the memories she tried to push behind her.

She shook her head and reached inside her back pocket for the habit she had picked up

again in the past few months, only to find the cigarette pack she had stuck there earlier

empty. Great.

Shaking her head, she wadded up the pack and tossed it into the back of the borrowed

jeep her boss had had waiting for her just outside of Somerset, after she had reported the

direction Dawg and his lover, Crista Jansen, had been heading in.

Crista Jansen looked too damned much like the woman brokering a missile sale between

hijackers and terrorists to suit the Department of Homeland Security. It had been her job

to follow Crista, to keep an eye on her and whoever she met with.

Knowing Dawg Mackay, Crista Jansen was meeting with nothing less than every inch of

that Kentucky native’s hard body. Dawg wasn’t a traitor. He wanted those missiles as

much as they did, and it was apparent he believed his woman was innocent.

But, hell, everyone thought the person they loved was innocent. Human nature had a

tendency to overlook the truth whenever it wanted to. She had learned that lesson herself,

the hard way.

Always the hard way. And look at what she had lost. Sometimes Chaya wondered if she

hadn’t lost her soul in a desert so bleak it sucked the spirit out of a person.

She snorted at that thought as she kicked at a clump of grass and leaned against her car,

determined to enjoy just a few minutes of being unreachable by her boss, Timothy

Cranston. No doubt he was frantically calling both the cell and sat phones. And here she

stood, breathing in the fresh mountain air, feeling the peace of the place wrap around her,

sink inside her.

Beseeching her to relax. To remember. To remember one night. One man. Urging her to

close her eyes and to remember his touch. A touch filled with tears and her sobs, but also

with his gentleness, with the warmth of his kisses, the heat of his possession. A night she

only remembered in her dreams.

Her lips kicked up in a grin at the thought. Yeah, relax and drop her guard. Hadn’t she

done that before? And hadn’t she paid for it? Hadn’t she lost everything she loved in life

because she had trusted the wrong person? And here she was, a part of her wishing,

regretting things she knew she had no right to regret.

Strong arms that didn’t hold her through the night. A voice like aged whiskey that didn’t

rasp her name with heated passion at his release. Hands, calloused and possessive. And

she regretted, because that illusion was the most dangerous one she could ever reach out

for.

A second later an unexpected sound had her jerking her weapon from the holster at the

small of her back and taking aim at the front of the car.

She knew who it was. She took the precaution of waiting, watching, but the sound of the

jeep rolling up the mountain was unmistakable. Powerful, a hard, male throb of power

that her piece-of-crap borrowed jeep didn’t have.

At least he was driving up in front of her rather than slipping through the trees and taking

aim. He could have taken her out before she knew what hit her. And he would. No matter

how well he knew her, no matter the short history they had shared so long ago, he would

put a bullet between her eyes as fast as he would an enemy combatant if he felt she was a

threat.

She held the Glock comfortably, confidently, as the wicked black vehicle pulled over the

rise. If a jeep could strut, it strutted up the mountain and caused her to grit her teeth.

Cranston could make her crazy running her in circles, but he couldn’t give her a vehicle

decent enough to make those circles in.

Tall tires, gleaming paint job, and a black pipe bumper. A winch at the front, the top

pulled back, the man behind the wheel staring back at her from behind dark glasses,

hiding those incredible green eyes.

But nothing could hide his somber expression as he jumped from the driver’s seat, the

engine still idling, throbbing. Like the rumble of a monstrous cat.

This was the dream, and the illusion. And somehow she had known he would be here.

Here, in the mountains that bred him, as strong, as secure, as dangerously primitive as the

man himself. As dangerous as the regrets that whispered through her as she watched him.

Chaya licked her lips slowly, staring back at him, trying not to notice the smooth, corded

grace of his body. The way his jeans hung low on his hips and drew attention to his

thighs. The way his gray T-shirt snugged over taut abs. The aura of power and male grace

that seemed to ooze from the pores of his heavily tanned skin.

The wind ruffled through his overly long black hair, whipping it across his forehead and

along the nape of his neck. Those thick, tempting strands had her hands itching to touch

them, her fingers curling into fists to restrain the need.

Hell, she needed that cigarette bad now. She’d been working with him for months, and

she still couldn’t dampen the sickening nerves, the pain each time he came near her. The

need. Oh God, the need wrapped around her until sometimes she wondered if it would

eventually drive her insane. The need to touch. Just one more time, just one touch, one

kiss, one more night to hide within his arms.

Instead, she tucked her weapon back into its holster and shoved her hands into the

pockets of her jeans as she watched him. The way he moved. The intensity in his forest

green eyes, the knowledge in his expression. There was always that knowledge, the

words that whispered just below the surface, the memories that never really went away.

The hunger that never really receded.

Natches moved lazily to the front of the jeep and leaned against the heavy bumper. He

stared at her, unsmiling, as he crossed one booted foot over the other and eased the dark

glasses from his face.

Piercing green eyes tore into her senses, scrambled her brain and had her heart throbbing

like a schoolgirl’s. Summer’s heat rushed around her then, stroking over her body and

reminding her, always reminding her, of things she shouldn’t let herself remember.

“Busted.” He lifted his brows mockingly. “Want to tell me why you’re following my