Nauti Nights (30 page)

Chester Jansen had always been certain a fortune awaited him just around the corner. He had searched for gold, for artifacts. He had nearly destroyed his small business playing the stock market, and he had

constantly been taken in with fly-by-night moneymaking schemes.

“Alex did a good job raising you,” he pointed out.

“He did. Alex was already ten when I was born. He had learned to take care of himself, and he applied it to taking care of me.” She nodded as she arranged the chicken and side dishes before setting two china

plates between them and pulling out the glass carafe of sweet iced tea and unscrewing the lid that covered it before pouring the dark liquid into drinking glasses.

“Neither one of you turned out too bad.” He accepted the glass she handed him, then watched as she

began opening the food and placing the serving spoons into it.

“We survived.” She shrugged, glancing at him warily again. “He warned me about you when I was

sixteen, you know.”

“Really?” Dawg drawled. “I’ll have to discuss that with him. What warning did he give you?”

“To stay away from the Mackay cousins.” She flashed him a teasing smile. “He said the lot of you were

bad news to any girl who wanted love rather than nasty games.”

“And you didn’t want nasty games?” He smiled back at her wickedly. He had a feeling that some of those

games she would have taken to like a natural once she had gotten older. She sure as hell took to them

now.

She ducked her head for a long second before lifting it slowly and staring back at him in determination. “I didn’t want to be one of the Nauti Boys’ Toys. That’s what your women were called.”

“But you wanted to be my woman?” He needed to know. He needed to hear her say it.

Crista dragged her gaze away from Dawg’s and stared across the clearing to the serenity of the small cove they faced. Water lapped against the rocky shore with a soothing rhythm.

She had wanted to be Dawg’s woman. Even then, ten years before, at a time when she had no concept

what it meant to be anyone’s woman. Her fascination for him had been soul-deep, and it had culminated

in one heated night that had threatened to destroy her soul.

“I wanted to be your woman,” she admitted on a sigh. She hadn’t lied to him to this point. Lying was

something she hated. She had hated it as a child, and as an adult, she hated it even more.

“What changed that, Crista?” he asked her then, his voice insidiously soft, gentle. “We had one night

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together, and instead of slapping me with a frying pan the next morning, you ran.”

She shook her head. Over the past few days she had figured that one out for herself.

“I was too young for you, Dawg,” she finally admitted as she turned back to him. “We both knew I was

too young for you. I couldn’t handle what I felt for you along with what I thought you wanted from me. It was too much.”

“And now?”

“And now you’re blackmailing me.” And she loved him more now than she had then.

“If I hadn’t blackmailed you?”

There was something in his voice that pulled at her then. Something she was certain she would see in his eyes if she pulled the dark glasses from his nose.

She reached out and did just that. Slid them from his face as he watched her, met his darkened gaze and

felt her heart trip in her chest.

He was staring at her like no other man ever had. Equal parts hunger and pain.

If he hadn’t blackmailed her?

“I would have caved eventually,” she whispered, caught, held by that look in his eyes. “One of those

nights that I was driving around the marina just to see if you were there, I would have weakened. I would have walked out to your houseboat, and if you had been alone, I would have come to you.”

She had been weakening, and she knew it. Tempted by his smiles, his teasing, his determined irritation

each time she rebuffed him.

“You came to the marina just to see me?” He reached out, his fingertips smoothing over her collarbone

and sending heated spirals of need crashing through her system.

Crista licked her lips, and for once, she didn’t fight the need welling inside her. She didn’t fight the love she knew no other man would ever possess.

“Often.” She fought to overcome the breathlessness, the racing of her heart. “And I’d stop and see the

lights on in the Nauti Dawg, and I’d have to make myself stay in my car. I’d have to fight the need to go to you.”

“You should have come to me.” His hand cupped the back of her head, and he pulled her to him. “You

should have let me love you, Crista.”

Crista’s senses exploded when his lips touched hers. It wasn’t the fiery, hungry kisses she was used to. It was a slow, tender exploration. It was letting her get used to the feel of his tongue against her lips before he slipped inside. It was sharing the taste of himself even as he drew hers in. It was heated, sensitizing, it was a kiss that drove the breath from her lungs and left her moaning with the need for more.

Her hands braced on the cloth beneath them as her hair enveloped them, hiding their faces, their kiss,

shielding them in a veil of intimacy as his lips pulled back just enough to cause her eyes to open as a

whimper of denial left her lips.

“I would have pulled you inside,” he whispered, his lips brushing hers as he spoke. “I would have locked out the world and drawn you to my bed. I would have made certain you never wanted to leave it again.”

“I don’t want to leave it now.” She couldn’t hold the words in.

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A distant part of her brain cursed her foolishness, cursed her weak heart and the part of her soul that had never released the memory of his kiss, his touch.

She watched as Dawg’s eyes dilated, darkened, then he was stealing her kiss. He ravished her lips, ate at them, and grew greedy on the taste of her. His tongue licked, his head slanted, and the kiss deepened as fireworks exploded through her body. Brilliant heat. Flames licked over her flesh and seared her nerve

endings.

When he drew back, all the way back, they were both breathing hard and fast and fighting for control.

“Not yet.” His voice was a graveled sound of need. “Too fucking soon. You have a few hours before you

can take it yet.”

“There are other ways.” She leaned forward, touching her lips with his again, and saw the surprise in his eyes. She whispered wickedly, “Come on, Dawg. Show me how nasty you can get.”

Show her how nasty he could get? Oh, she had no idea the fantasies he had of getting nasty with her.

“What about lunch?” He glanced down at the food she had laid out.

“Fried chicken tastes better cold,” she reminded him, and Dawg watched in eager anticipation at the slow little lick her tongue made at her lips. “We can always eat later.”

Repacking the food was a simple matter of snapping the lids back on the containers and resetting them in the basket. The basket itself was set to the side. Dawg found himself moving, forcing her down to her

back as he came over her.

“I won’t be nice,” he warned her. “You might want to reconsider that little dare you just made.”

Letting loose his fantasies could have disastrous results. Because he had a lot of fantasies.

“It could get worse than a spanking and a butt plug that vibrates and ripples?” She stared up at him in

amused disbelief, even as her hands pulled his shirt free of his jeans.

She was wild, wanton. Dawg could see it in her eyes now, and he wondered if he hadn’t somehow sensed

that wildness inside her years before.

He held back, feeling her slender fingers pulling at the buttons of his shirt, releasing them one by one as she stared up at him with a challenge in her eyes.

He wondered how far she would go. How wild she would let herself get before she pulled back. And

maybe a part of him had to know. He had no desire to share her, but that didn’t mean his sexuality had

dimmed in any way. He liked his sex lengthy, hard, and nasty. Crista couldn’t have a clue exactly how

hard and nasty he could get with her. But he could show her. He could show her, and try like hell not to scare her off while he was doing so.

Because scaring her was definitely something he didn’t want to do. But he wanted her. All of her, in ways that had his cock pounding in agony at the thought of it.

“I could definitely make it compete with the butt plug,” he assured her with a smile as her fingers

smoothed the shirt back from his shoulders.

Dawg shrugged the material away, feeling the summer breeze as it whispered through the trees and

caressed his naked flesh. It was nowhere as sensual as the feel of Crista’s fingers working at his belt, drawing the leather free of the buckle before pulling at the metal button that held the band secure.

“You steal a girl’s breath with your wicked ways, Mr. Mackay,” she drawled teasingly, that hint of

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Southern belle deliberately thickened as his zipper rasped lower.

Dawg felt helpless above her. He stared into her chocolate eyes, certain he should be doing something

himself. Kissing her soft lips, drawing her clothes from her body, but it was all he could do instead to maintain the strength in his arms to hold himself above her.

His jeans were loose now; her silken hands gripped the waistband and began drawing it from his body.

“That’s only going to go so far,” he warned her with a grimace. “We still have to get rid of the boots,

sweetheart.”

She smiled, a reckless, heated smile that had his balls drawing tight in anticipation.

“Lie down,” she ordered softly, her palms pressing into his abdomen. “Lie down, Dawg, and we’ll see if

we can’t get rid of them.”

He lay down.

Giving a woman control had never been his strong suit, but he gave it to Crista. Because watching her,

feeling her touch, was like being warmed in the winter. It wrapped around him and eased him into the

sensuality rather than allowing him to throw his partner into it.

She cast him a heated look from beneath her lashes as she moved to his feet and removed his boots, then

his socks. Then, like the wanton he dreamed of, she gripped the waistband of his jeans and began to drag them and his briefs down his legs.

It was agonizing, watching her undress him, seeing the pleasure in her eyes and knowing how hot it made

her. As she tossed his jeans to the bottom of the red checked cloth he was lying on, his brow arched.

“You’re still dressed, Crista.”

She looked around as though gauging the privacy of where they were. As he started to speak, her hands

gripped the hem of the little shirt she wore, and she drew it over her head.

She wore nothing but a thin lace bra beneath it. One that framed her perky breasts and almost revealed her tight, hard nipples.

Watching him with slumberous, sexy eyes, she rose slowly to her feet and dropped the cotton capris as she pushed her sandals off her feet.

“Leave the panties on.” His voice was harsh as her fingers hooked into the little elastic band of the thong she wore.

Her lips tilted again. Knowing, sexual.

“What about the bra?”

“Lord have mercy.” He sighed. “Take it off.”

She released the clip between her breasts slowly and let the cups fall away from the hard-tipped mounds

before shrugging it from her shoulders.

And there was no mercy to be found. There was sunlight spilling through the trees overhead and washing

her creamy flesh in golden rays of heat.

When she came to him, Dawg couldn’t help but suck in his breath at the complete sensuality of her

flowing movements. She wasn’t embarrassed. She wasn’t playing coy. She was hungry, and she was going

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to feed on the sexual, sensual intensity blazing between them.

Her lips came to his. Her hands gripped his wrists, holding them at his head as her breasts brushed over his chest. Her nipples were like fiery brands, her lips as they sipped at his, nipped, laved them with lust, were extensions of the hunger raging between them.

Dawg’s cock was so hard, so fully engorged it was painful. Each brush of her nipples against his chest had him flexing, his body raging to take control of the sex play and to bury his dick as deep inside her as he could get.

“You’re riding the line, fancy-face,” he growled as her lips pulled back, the curtain of her hair embracing them in an intimate world all their own.

Crista felt Dawg’s wrists flex beneath her hand and glimpsed the powerful muscles of his biceps as they

rippled.

“I’m not riding anything yet, Dawg,” she reminded him teasingly, her head lowering so her tongue could

lick at the powerful cords of his neck.

Her hands smoothed along his arms as she braced herself on her knees on each side of a powerful thigh.

His cock pressed against her hip, his hard chest stroked her nipples with each breath. And beneath the lace of her panties her pussy was creaming furiously.

“Keep it up, and you’re going to be riding more than you should be handling for another few hours,” he

warned her tightly, his hips flexing beneath her, pushing his cock more firmly against her hip.

The heavy male thigh she straddled shifted as well, bringing a gasp to her lips and a surge of sensation to the swollen clit it pressed against.

“Other ways,” she whimpered. There were ways she was dying to try. Long-dreamed-of acts she needed to