Nauti Nights (8 page)

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.

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“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.”

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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.

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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

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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.

FIVE

Some days, it just didn’t pay to wake up. Waking up in Dawg’s bed had been bad enough, but thankfully