Nauti Nights (9 page)

he had been gone. She’d been able to steal a shirt and someone’s smaller-sized sweatpants, call a cab, rush back to her brother’s house to shower and change, and arrive to work on time.

Only to be fired.

Fired from a crappy waitress job in a diner that obviously didn’t have enough help to begin with. And it had been more than clear that the owner was reluctant to fire her, which led Crista to only one conclusion.

Dawg had influenced the owner.

He had her fired.

He wasn’t even decent enough to stop at just blackmailing her when she knew he had to know she was

innocent. But now she was out of a job so he could have his little plaything close by.

She stood by the register as the manager wrote out her final paycheck and sighed wearily.

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“Thanks, Madge,” she said quietly when the other woman, concerned and clearly upset with the orders to

fire her, handed over the check.

“I’m sure sorry ’bout this, Crista.” Madge sighed, her hazel eyes compassionate. “Owner just called and

said do it. Nothing I could do.”

Crista shrugged. The owner was friends with Dawg, she knew that, she knew how it happened.

Turning from the register, she tucked the check in her purse and made her way across the floor. There

were few customers at this time of the morning. Some coffee drinkers, an early rising tourist, and Johnny Grace, her next-door neighbor and Dawg’s cousin. Though Dawg admitted to the relationship only when

he was forced.

He sat at the back table, a heavy frown on his brow as she moved toward him.

“Crista.” He stopped her before she could make it to the door. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine.” She gave him a stiff smile. “Cutbacks, I guess.”

She liked Johnny. He ran a bakery from his house beside hers and often brought her over fresh bread and

sweets on baking days, free of charge, just because, he said, they were neighbors.

His gaze flicked to the manager, the frown still darkening his amazingly clear, soft brow. Dark blond curls framed his face, giving him an almost feminine appearance.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Anything he could do? She had a feeling there wasn’t a damned thing anyone could do. She shook her

head, forcing a stiff smile to her face.

“I’ll be fine, Johnny. I have to go now, though. I’ll catch you later.”

Johnny was a good neighbor, but not a confidant. Right now, she couldn’t handle discussing this with

anyone.

Her hand tightened on her purse as she stepped from the diner, her gaze swinging unerringly to the big

black pickup across the street.

How the hell had she known he would be there? What instinct possessed her that she could feel him

watching her, wanting her?

He was a dark shadow behind the tinted windows, until the passenger side window rolled smoothly down,

revealing his unsmiling countenance and the dark glasses shielding his eyes.

His overlong black hair was tied back at the nape of his neck, revealing the strong line of his jaw and the arrogance that permeated his expression.

His hand lifted from where his long arm was stretched along the backseat, and his fingers beckoned her to him with regal confidence that she would come. Like a damned pet.

Her eyes narrowed on him as she turned and stalked down the sidewalk to the side of the diner where her

Rodeo was parked. She had packed a suitcase that morning before heading to the job she didn’t have

anymore. She had actually given Dawg the benefit of the doubt that he would at least trust her to work

while he was playing the high-and-mighty blackmailer from hell.

But could he do that? Hell no. He had to have it all.

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She jerked her keys from her purse as she heard the powerful motor moving behind her. She threw a glare

over her shoulder before striding furiously across the parking lot.

She had bills to pay, a college loan to honor, not that she was using the damned degree at present, but

there was always the potential of getting a decent job. Now she was going to go job hunting again and

pray there was someone willing to laugh in his face when he ordered her fired.

God, he hadn’t changed. In eight years, most people managed to mature a little bit, but Dawg was still

Dawg. Just a little darker, a little more dangerous, but still determined to have everything his own way.

“I don’t think so.” His big hand shackled her wrist as she moved to shove the key into the lock of the

Rodeo.

Crista stood still, freezing as anger threatened to overwhelm her.

“I can’t believe you.” She tried to jerk her arm back, then stared at his fingers as he refused to release her.

They were shackled on her wrist like irons, snug enough to hold her in place, to remind her that he was

bigger, stronger, harder than she was.

“What can’t you believe about me?” he asked, drawing her along with him to the truck where it sat,

driver’s side door still standing open, a few feet behind him.

“Let me go, Dawg! I have to go job hunting,” she sneered with false sweetness. “Someone cost me this

job.”

Mocking disbelief filled his face. “No! Someone got you fired? Shame on them.”

Wicked amusement filled his eyes, almost playful, inviting her to share in the fun when he had just taken her only means of support.

When she jerked her wrist back this time, he let her go.

“Tell me, Dawg, how do you expect me to support myself? To pay my bills? To keep my car? I don’t have

a job now because of you.”

“You have a job.” The playful amusement left his expression.

“I have a job?” she jeered bitterly. “Let me guess, you’re going to pay me to play your whore?”

His expression stilled then. “Get in the truck.”

She should have been nervous. She had seen that expression on her brother’s face before, and it was one

that was best avoided. One she would have avoided if she weren’t so damned mad.

She knew what he expected, and it enraged her.

“Not on your egotistical little life!” Her hand slapped against his chest as she felt anger engulf her. “I have a job to—”

The breath rushed from her chest as he jerked her to him, her breasts flush against his broad chest, the fingers of one broad hand tangled in her hair as he pulled her head back, his gaze imprisoning hers as she stared back at him in shock.

“We made a deal.” His voice rasped with something akin to anger, and yet it went deeper than anger.

Crista trembled as she stared into the light green eyes and the determination that glowed inside them.

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“That deal didn’t include stealing my job and my life. You had no right to do this.”

“My bed, or jail. My terms. And my terms say that while you’re sharing my bed, then by God you’ll share

when I want you there, not when you have time for me.”

Shock filled her, and not for the first time. This wasn’t the Dawg she had known eight years before, but he was the man who had taken her that night so long ago.

The veneer of teasing charm had been stripped away, and in its place was a man she wasn’t certain she

could handle.

“You won’t arrest me.” Her voice trembled. “You know I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“We have a deal,” he repeated. “Now get your ass in that truck. We’ll discuss the terms of it back at the houseboat, but we will not discuss them here, in the middle of a goddamned parking lot.”

He didn’t give her time to argue. He picked her up by her waist, turned, and pushed her into the vehicle.

“My clothes…” She tried to scramble back out, only to come face-to-face with eyes that began to become

turbulent in their color. Light greens, sparks of darker color, a swirl of chaotic shades that had her

suddenly stilling.

His jaw bunched with tension, the muscle in his cheek twitching twice before he managed to control it.

The keys were plucked from her fingers.

“Don’t move. So help me God, you come out of that truck, Crista, and you’ll regret it. Because I’ll turn you over my knee and paddle your ass here and now. Do you understand me?”

She stared back at him warily.

He stomped, literally stomped the short distance to her Rodeo, unlocked it, and dragged her suitcase from the front seat.

“My flowers.” Her voice gained strength. If all she was risking was a spanking, then he could damned

well get everything she had packed. “And the box in the back.”

The suitcase thumped on the ground as he turned and stared back at her broodingly.

“Surely I can at least have the few things I need.” She smiled back at him tightly. “Even condemned

prisoners get a few personal articles, Dawg.”

His eyes narrowed before he locked the driver’s side door and slammed it closed. He paced to the back of the vehicle, unlocked the hatchback, and jerked it open. The box of extra clothes, makeup, and personal

items was set out, then the miniature rosebush and flowering cactus that sat in the corner.

Slamming the hatchback closed again, he locked it and packed her items in the backseat of his truck.

“Move over.” His voice was harsh as he stepped to the opened door once again.

“I need my car.”

“I said move over.”

“You can’t just leave my car sitting here, Dawg, I need it.” She forced herself not to scream in complete frustration. “This is going too damned far…”

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He gripped her waist, and before Crista could fight him he had lifted her over the console and dropped her into the passenger side seat before climbing in.

Damn him. She gripped the door latch with every intention of throwing herself from the truck and

reclaiming her precious Rodeo.

“Open that door, and so help me, you’ll regret it.”

She stilled at the sound of his voice, turning to glare at him furiously as he put the truck in gear and turned the monster vehicle around.

“I need my car.”

“Natches can collect it later.” One hand tightened on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift that rose from the floor as he drove from the parking lot and turned back onto Main Street before heading for the interstate.

“That’s not fair. None of this is fair, Dawg,” she yelled. “You stole my job. That’s the same as stealing everything I own.”

And that wasn’t much, admittedly. Mainly the Rodeo, but it was the thought that counted.

“I’ll take care of your bills,” he bit out.

“Why not just stamp whore on my head,” she sneered.

The truck was jerked to the side of the road, rocking to a hard stop as he turned to her, the effort to control whatever rose inside him visibly apparent on his face.

“Call yourself a whore again, and I’ll make sure that spanking you have yet to receive is nothing

pleasant,” he snarled between clenched teeth.

“What do you call it then?”

“I call it a deal you made and agreed to.” He spoke with hard deliberation as his eyes speared into hers.

“And I make the rules. You don’t. Now sit back, fasten your seat belt, and stop arguing the point with me before I do something guaranteed to show everyone who passes by this truck just how little I care about

propriety or their fucking opinions of either of us.”

Which amounted to nothing, and Crista knew it. Gritting her teeth against the furious words rising to her lips, she slammed the seat belt latch in, crossed her arms over her breasts, and stared straight ahead.

She admitted to being slightly nervous. Not exactly frightened of Dawg, but warier than she would have

been even two days before. There was a glow of lust, of hunger in his gaze that had the feminine core of her shaking in trepidation. And it had her mind spinning.

Dawg had always been so fiercely controlled. He never showed anger, at least that was the rumor. He was

a get-even rather than a get-mad kind of man.

It wasn’t anger she saw in him now but the dark, primal core of a man who was no longer hiding who or

what he was. And the savage hunger that glowed in his eyes aroused her more than the false charm ever

had.

This was the Dawg she had always sensed lurking beneath the surface. The one who had held her back

when she was younger, who frightened the immature sexuality she had possessed then.

It was that inner man he had let loose on her the night she had spent with him. The drunken charm had

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evaporated once he had her in his bed, and though he hadn’t been rough, he had been determined, hungry.

“What happened that night?”

His voice had her stilling, her heart beating faster in her chest. She didn’t want to talk about that night.

She didn’t want to relive it any more than she already had.

“We had sex. Period.”

“We had sex, so you ran out of town with another man, stayed away seven years, and now you’re fighting

something between us that threatens to burn down the county once we get back into bed. Sorry,

fancy-face, that one doesn’t go over so well with me. You’re lying.”

She remembered, this was how he got his name. She’d heard Ray relate the tale, how even as a child he

would get something in his mind and wouldn’t let it go. Like a dog with a bone. Dawg. He hadn’t changed

much.

“What happened eight years ago doesn’t matter, Dawg.” She shook her head tiredly. “What’s happening