Nauti Nights (17 page)

over his paperwork. Her eyes had gleamed in joy the minute she saw the mess his personal office had

become over the past year. A man would think she was staring at diamonds rather than the paperwork

from hell.

And Natches, being Natches, had found no end of amusement in the sight of Crista’s curvy little ass

plopping in Dawg’s oversized chair as she told him, none too politely, to just get the hell out of her way while she organized his mess.

“Do you think I have an office to return to?” Dawg sighed the question in resignation.

“Think smelly candles and vases of flowers.” Natches lifted his head, his nostrils flaring as though testing the air for a sweet scent. “I’m betting vanilla and roses,” he said then, looking back at Dawg.

Hell, if all it took was the scent of vanilla and roses to keep her tight ass out of trouble, then he was all for it. He was to the point that he was ready to pull his hair out. He hadn’t had her in his life forty-eight hours yet, and she already had him on such a tight edge that explosion was imminent.

Explosion of the sexual sort. He was so damned hard he was about to rupture his jeans with his erection.

Or choke said erection with the confinement.

He hadn’t had enough of her that morning. Hell, he had a feeling he could take her for hours and still not have enough of her.

As they left the small downstairs office Cranston had taken in the London, Kentucky, courthouse, Dawg

stayed carefully on guard for watching eyes. Exiting the lower level, they were able to stay out of the main portion of the courthouse. The other agents used other exits, other hallways.

Paranoia. It had been bred into him by his coldly suspicious parents long before he ever joined the

Marines and then the ATF. Even as a kid, too damned young to know what the word meant, he had begun

to develop a suspicious nature.

Of course, with two cold, selfish egomaniacs as parents, how could he help it? His mother saw shadows in shadows, and everyone was out to get her. Emotions were her worst enemy, and she had fought against

them tirelessly. And his father. Hell, his father had been as much a bastard as Natches’s father was.

Sometimes Dawg wondered how Rowdy had hit it so lucky. His father, Ray, had been tough but caring.

And Rowdy had never suffered a beating in his life.

Until Dawg was old enough and big enough to fight back, his father had taken great delight in making his son cower.

Dawg hadn’t inherited his father’s habit of striking first, but his mother’s insidious paranoia was a part of him.

So much so that he couldn’t get out of his head the look in Crista’s eyes when he asked her about a

pregnancy. For a second, pain and fear and sorrow had flashed in the chocolate orbs. It had been so quick he couldn’t even be certain it had been there. Paranoia or fact?

He shook his head as he and Natches moved toward their Harleys. Dawg pulled his dark glasses from his

shirt pocket and placed them on his nose as he stared around the sunlit courthouse parking lot.

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“Stop worrying so much,” Natches murmured as they straddled the bikes. “We have any number of

reasons for being here.”

Dawg glanced over at him before turning the key and starting the cycle. The rough, dangerous rumble of

the motor ignited beneath him. The relaxing sense of freedom it normally gave him was absent now.

He had found a new freedom. A new peace. That of being buried so deep inside Crista that he could feel

her heartbeat.

Agonizing arousal clenched his cock and balls at the thought of taking her. The shock and surprise that

had at first filled her eyes had been followed closely by desperation, desire, and emotions he didn’t want to even think about. But she had burned him alive.

There had been more pleasure in her arms than he’d had in a lifetime of sexual acts, and that was damned scary.

Because he wasn’t a fool. He knew what they were facing. One little slipup, one agent remembering the

wrong thing, and he would be revealed; Crista would be betrayed. And, hell, that would suck. Because

there wasn’t a chance he was going to let Homeland Security get their hands on her.

If he was paranoid, then Homeland Security was over the limit. Even Cranston, as much as Dawg liked

the special agent in charge of the investigation, was more paranoid than anyone Dawg had known before

or since. He would jerk Crista out of Somerset and send her straight to a detention center out of the

country. And once there, she would be buried in so much fucking red tape and shadows that he would

never find her again.

Once they were far enough from London to find a relatively secure spot to pull into, Dawg and Natches

turned their Harleys onto a secluded lane and pulled into the small, deserted clearing hidden from the

road.

Cutting the motor, Dawg bit off a curse and stared around the clearing before turning his gaze to Natches.

“What did you find out?”

Natches had talked to the agents last night, subtly questioning them and covering Crista’s ass.

“No one saw anything but me,” he drawled. “I reported that you came in before me, and I borrowed your

girlfriend’s car to drive in. I was point, remember? No one can question me, because no one else knows

any different.”

Natches had indeed had point outside the front of the warehouse, communicating with the rest of the team that had been in place as the interested parties drove in. He’d announced the arrival of the woman, and in his voice Dawg had heard something the others hadn’t. A warning.

“Watch the front, Dawg,” Natches had drawled. Not because Dawg had been closest, as Cranston had

reminded him sharply.

“My mistake,” Natches had murmured into the communications link.

Dawg had known then. Natches didn’t make mistakes, not like that. Whoever the woman was, something

was wrong, and Dawg had moved to intercept her.

The agents assigned to this case were wild-eyed and bitter, paranoid and determined. And it didn’t help

one damned bit that Crista so closely resembled the superficial description they had of the woman acting as a contact point between the buyers and sellers.

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“If someone set her up, then we need to know why.” If someone set her up. Son of a bitch, he was aching

so bad to fuck her that he was trying to find excuses where he knew he should be finding handcuffs

instead.

“Someone’s setting you up,” Natches grunted as he stared at Dawg over the rim of his glasses. “And that’s not a good thing. Who could know you’re on the team?”

Dawg shook his head. “Better yet, who would know to use Crista if they did?”

Natches gave him a long, mocking look then. “Dawg, Cuz, who doesn’t know that Crista Jansen is your

weakness? You’ve been dogging her ass like a stray mutt for months now.” Natches smirked at his own

puns.

“Ha-ha,” Dawg sneered.

Then he rubbed the back of his neck. Hell, had he been that transparent?

“Even Johnny noticed.” Natches was gleefully snickering now. “And he just can’t understand the

attraction, doncha know?”

Dawg grimaced. Johnny Grace. He was a lousy damned excuse for a cousin. When Dawg’s parents had

been killed in an auto accident, Johnny’s mother, Dawg’s aunt, had decided to attempt to claim part of the estate Dawg’s parents had left him. Dawg had spent a year protecting the inheritance that amounted to the only damned thing his parents had ever willingly given him.

And there had been Johnny, standing in a court of law, reciting his father’s complaints against Dawg and swearing that his parents had meant to leave the better portion of their estate to his mother.

And through it all, Johnny had sneered and snidely reminded Dawg over and again that his relationship

with Dawg’s father had been much deeper than that of his son’s.

Because Johnny was an ass-kissing little bastard that played up to Dawg’s father’s opinion of himself.

“Old man Thompson was by the garage this morning,” Natches said then. “He was bitching about the

lights moving back along the mountain last night behind his house. We could check it out again.”

Again. That about summed it the hell up.

Dawg rubbed his hand over his stubbled cheeks before making a mental note to shave before rubbing on

Crista again. She had razor burn on her neck that morning after her shower.

“Someone knows something, Dawg,” Natches said softly. “They know enough to throw Crista at you to

distract you. Give you someone to suspect.”

Dawg shook his head. “I know better than to be distracted that easily. Besides, we have everything but the money and the woman. How am I a threat to either, as things stand now?”

“This is someone who doesn’t know you heed your common sense when it’s important,” Natches pointed

out. “This is someone who only knows the fact that Dawg distrusts everyone but the Father, the Son, and

the Holy Ghost. Which could be just about everyone you’ve met in this country and a dozen others. And it could be someone who is afraid one of the men we captured will talk. If he talks, who says they won’t

name Crista?”

Dawg wasn’t known for his trusting nature.

“We’ll let them think they’ve succeeded then.” He smiled slowly, watching as Natches grimaced. “And

Crista has an alibi. You were using her Rodeo; she was at home.”

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“Man, I hate that smile.” Natches sighed, resignation glittering in his gaze. “What are you going to do?”

Dawg leaned forward, rested his forearms on the handlebars of the motorcycle, and let his grin widen.

“I’m going to let Crista distract me, of course. Why fight it? And while she’s distracting, I’m going to see who’s watching and what happens later. If she was thrown into my path to catch me off guard, then they

threw her in for a reason. Let’s see what they intend to do with it now that they have her there. And why it’s so damned important that she be there. They couldn’t have expected the raid. So their plans are going to be off balance.”

“They expected her to be arrested, shipped off, and you running at her heels,” Natches bit out. “Be careful they don’t catch you in that little net, and you and Crista get shipped off together.”

Yeah, that one had occurred to him around midnight.

“I guess I’ll just have to take my chances. Hell, I’ve already broken more laws than I want to think about just getting her out of there. They told us to use initiative, but I don’t think that’s exactly what they were talking about.”

“Sure it was,” Natches drawled. “We knew she wasn’t involved, so we evened the playing field with no

fuss and no muss. Its redneck code. That’s what we’ll tell ’em.” The laid-back country-boy drawl

wouldn’t fool anyone who happened to know Natches. There was pure bloodthirsty redneck bloodletting

in that tone, and it was something Dawg knew he could count on. Natches would watch his back.

His and Crista’s.

And that thought opened a whole other can of worms. One he wasn’t ready to empty right now. He knew

Natches hadn’t taken Rowdy’s defection from the ménages very well. He had waited, anticipated Rowdy’s

return and the slow seduction of his fiancée, Kelly. When Rowdy had put the skids on that idea, Natches

had been downright pissed.

Hell, the sharing had been a part of their lives since their first sexual encounter as teenagers.

The widow Barnes. She had been soft and sweet, older, more experienced, and lonely enough to take three

young boys to her bed.

At the time, no one knew she was also hiding from her psychotic husband, a man who had been watching

the teenage Mackay cousins slip into her house, and through the window he had watched the sexual antics

they had gotten up to.

That first foray into the dark sexuality of a ménage had come back to haunt them last year when the lady’s son, warped beyond belief by his father’s molestation of him and the beatings he had endured, had begun

raping the girls he claimed as his own.

Then he had targeted Rowdy’s stepsister and the woman that held Rowdy’s heart, Kelly Salyers. The

bastard had nearly killed them all before they stopped him.

And now, Natches was in the cold again, and Dawg knew that was how he had to be feeling. And he was

withdrawing. Dawg had been feeling it for a while now. Natches was drifting away from them; the

connection that had held him with his cousins all these years was gone now. The ménages, the emotional

bond they created, Natches didn’t have that anymore.

“Come on, Dawg, stop wrestling over it,” Natches advised somberly. “Let’s play this out and see what the hell happens. I have an SOS out to her brother, Alex. The minute his head pops out of whatever hole the

government sent him to, then he’ll come running with backup.”

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“We’ll play it out.” Dawg breathed out roughly before pushing his sunglasses back up his nose.

There wasn’t much more they could do. Someone else, someone who knew too much, had dealt Crista

into a very deadly game. To save her now, Dawg was going to have to risk everything and pray to God

they caught the thieves before the Swede pulled in friends or the task force learned she was at the

warehouse. If that happened, all shit was going to hit the fan.

“Look, man, we’re backup mostly. The majority of the investigation is being handled by those HS