Nauti Temptress (22 page)

Scratching at his chest, he leaned down, snagged his shirt from the rug that lay over the stones, and pulled it over his arms. As he began securing the buttons, his gaze lifted as though drawn by the thought that suddenly seared her mind.

“What?” he asked absently, snagging his sneakers and untying them before propping himself against the heavy support column and pulling them over his feet.

“You didn’t use a condom,” she stated, watching him closely.

He paused for a moment before resuming with his shoes. Pulling the other one on, he tied them quickly before straightening and staring back at her.

“No, I didn’t,” he admitted—a little too calmly to suit her.

“You didn’t pull out either.”

His fingers raked through his hair, pushing it back, if not neatly, then at least into some kind of order.

“I know,” he admitted again.

She stared back at him, feeling a sudden disquiet begin to settle around her. “Why?”

He sighed heavily. “Because whatever’s going to happen began last night. The condom split, and before I could think to pull free, I was already spilling inside you. This morning isn’t going to make a difference.”

“You didn’t tell me this morning,” she stated, wondering why.

His jaw clenched brutally, a sudden feeling that he was pushing back something angry and bitter filling her senses.

“I was waiting to make certain it would be too late to use the morning-after pill,” he finally snapped, his eyes turning a dark gray as he glared back at her. “I don’t believe in it, Eve.”

She looked away, frowning heavily.

She couldn’t believe he had just said that. She couldn’t believe he would even suspect she would do something so horrible. That she would abort her baby, just get rid of it as though it were trash. Damn, he sure did have a hell of an opinion of her, didn’t he?

What hurt more, though, was the fact that he seemed to think it was okay to make that decision for her. That he thought she would be so easy to control and to maneuver.

He may not have lied to her, but what he had done was by far much worse: He had tried to take her free will, her right to a choice away from her.

“What?” he growled.

She rose from the bench, smoothed her skirt, then stared back at him painfully. “At what point, Brogan, did you begin to believe that you were entitled to make any decisions for me? Let alone one so important?”

Didn’t he know her any better than that?

There had been a few moments over the years when she had sworn she had known what he was going to do or say, or what his opinion would be even before he voiced it. Yet after all this time, he believed he needed to hide something so important from her rather than trusting her?

“When the decision involves me or mine, then I have some say in it,” he growled.

She laughed, a mirthless, angry sound that she didn’t bother to hide.

“No, Brogan, you only have the right to discuss it, and you just made damned certain you no longer have even that right.”

She moved from the grotto, aware of him following behind her, silent, a dark shadow keeping pace with her as she moved quickly back to the house.

Stepping inside the glass doors and hurrying through the living room, she suddenly came to a hard, surprised stop. Behind her, she heard Brogan curse, and she would have seconded the explicit word if it weren’t for the fact that she knew it was a word her brother was attempting to erase from his vocabulary.

And there he stood, along with Rowdy and Natches, all three men staring at Brogan with an animosity that would be impossible to miss.

“I’m fairly certain you were told that I was fine, Dawg.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and glared back at the three men.

“I was told,” he growled.

“You didn’t believe it?”

“Physically,” he offered, “I believed you were fine.”

“Then can I ask why you’re here? Tell me, have you decided to take it upon yourself to make some decisions for me that have absolutely nothing to do with you, as well?” she asked sarcastically.

“Told you so,” Rowdy muttered aside to Dawg as he lifted his hand and covered his mouth.

“Shut up, Rowdy,” Dawg ordered, his gaze still locked with hers.

“I told you so, too,” Natches offered.

Dawg didn’t bother to give the same order to his younger cousin.

“I’ll tell the four of you what.” She included Brogan in the offer. “You can stay here and beat one another to a bruised pulp, scream, yell, curse, or whatever, and I’ll just get my things and roll.” She looked over at Natches. “You were smart enough to drive yourself, right?”

“Yeah,” he answered warily as he hooked his thumbs in the belt cinching his lean hips. “Why?”

“You owe me,” she reminded him. “I want your ride.”

“Ah, hell, now, come on, Eve.” He frowned, protesting the order as he glanced at the other three. “I don’t like their company.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Dawg and Rowdy.

“You’re not leaving, Eve,” Brogan stated behind her.

She turned slowly, drew in a hard, deep breath, and met the anger burning in his gaze. “You don’t want to do this,” she told him softly. “I won’t be manipulated, ordered, or deceived, Brogan. If you learned anything about me in the past two and a half years, then you know that.”

Fury burned in his eyes, but his lips thinned as he only continued to glare at her.

Turning to her brother once again, she stared at him until his gaze flickered. No one, but no one could make Dawg flinch when he believed he was completely in the right.

“This is none of your business,” she told him. “I’m not six; nor am I sixteen. I’m a grown woman and I can make a grown woman’s decisions.”

“Can you?” His arms went across his chest as his brows lowered broodingly. “Even if he’s a damned criminal?”

“Even if I’m wrong about the fact that everything inside me tells me he’s not a criminal,” she amended, “I can’t live my life by your instincts and your rules, Dawg. I have to live by my own.”

“You made me a promise, Eve,” he reminded her. “I thought you understood the stakes.”

“Are you going to disown me, Dawg?” she asked curiously. “You once said we’d get along fine as long as I didn’t betray family, country, or myself. I haven’t betrayed any of the three. But you skirted the line when you manipulated a promise from me that you knew I’d never be able to keep.”

Rowdy and Natches both turned a look of disgust on their cousin.

“Man, you know Christa’s gonna find out,” Natches warned him.

“Not if you keep your fat mouth shut,” he growled.

Natches frowned and turned to Eve. “Is my mouth fat?” He was suddenly fingering his lips as though worried before turning on Dawg. “I’m going to give you a fat lip in a minute.”

Dawg snorted. “Yeah, and go home all bruised to Chaya? I don’t think so.”

Natches grinned. “I won’t get in near as much trouble as you will.”

Eve shook her head. “You three just work that out on your own.” She turned her attention to Natches. “Give me your keys.”

“That’s the last time I play cards with you,” he threatened her, clearly annoyed that the promise he owed her from the poker game months before had resulted in losing his ride for the day.

“You said anytime, anywhere,” she reminded him with a shrug as he tossed her the keys.

“Eve.” Brogan moved in front of her. “We need to discuss this.”

She shook her head, steely determination and offended pride clawing at her emotions. “No, Brogan, we don’t,” she told him softly, distancing herself from the frustration and the edge of desperation she felt emanating from him. “Not now. Not until you decide that controlling me may not be as important as you seem to think it is.” She turned to Dawg then. “You knew he wasn’t a traitor. Hell, your instincts are better than mine. You all but lied to me, Dawg. And I would have sworn that was something you would have never done to me. You knew all along he was an agent, didn’t you?”

Facing him, seeing the brooding guilt in his gaze, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had been aware of what he was doing when he did it.

Her eyes filled with tears.

She couldn’t stop them. She couldn’t stop the sudden, brutal sense of betrayal as it exploded inside her any more than she could have stopped the sun from rising that morning.

“Why did you do it?” Her voice cracked with the tears suddenly filling her eyes. “I wouldn’t have done that to you, Dawg. I wouldn’t have lied to you about Christa to keep you away from her.”

“Ah, hell.” It was Natches who emitted the low exclamation as he and Rowdy both turned on Dawg.

“He’s going to hurt you,” Dawg stated, so certain of it, so determined he was right that pure arrogant stubbornness filled his face.

“So what if he does.” A tear slipped free as she suddenly realized just how much she and her sisters, even her mother, had allowed Dawg to shelter them. “Can’t I live, Dawg? Do I have to have your permission?”

He frowned at the question. “No . . .”

“Evidently I do,” she cried. “You made me swear I wouldn’t take him as a lover by telling me he was the only man you couldn’t abide my being with. That you believed he was a traitor.” Her breathing hitched as astonishment filled the cousins’ expressions as they turned to Dawg.

“There’s no proof that says he’s not a traitor,” Dawg accused Brogan, his fingers clenching at his sides as his expression turned wrathful and centered on the other man.

Eve shook her head as a sob escaped her. “Momma once told me that even good men had the power to be bad,” she whispered. “And I didn’t believe that of you, Dawg. I really didn’t. I believed there was nothing bad or deceitful in you. That all I had to do was find a man like you and I’d always be safe and loved.”

He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck in agitation.

“Come on, Eve,” he cajoled gently. “I’m not perfect, honey.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Natches bit out.

“Shut the fuck up, Natches,” Dawg snarled, silencing them all in surprise as he said the hated F-word before turning back to Eve. “Look, I never meant I would disown you or anything else if you broke a promise. I just meant that you know he’s going to hurt you. You know it, if he hasn’t already.” He shot Brogan a look of promised retribution. “That’s all I meant.”

“And you left me feeling like I had betrayed you. Like I was no more than a criminal myself, Dawg, because you couldn’t let me follow my own instincts. You couldn’t let me follow my heart.”

“Dammit, Eve, whatever the hell he’s into could get you killed,” he yelled back at her.

“And that was just too hard to tell me at the time, wasn’t it,” she cried out, furious and hurt, and feeling her heart breaking in two. “You lied to me, Dawg. You may not have said the words, but you still lied.”

Gripping Natches’s keys in her hand, she turned to Brogan, seeing for the first time the heavy, dark emotion that filled his gaze, and feeling something hesitant, something distant shutting that door on what had been forming between them.

His eyes were that unique blue-gray. The color was no longer shifting with emotion, just as his emotions were no longer reaching out to her.

Her lips twisted bitterly as she suddenly felt so bereft, so alone without that connection she’d had for such a few short hours.

Another sob escaped before she forced the others back and quickly dashed the tears from her cheek.

“You should have known I would have never done something so vile,” she whispered for his ears only. “I believed in you, Brogan.” She shook her head bitterly, painfully. “I believed in you.”

Turning away from him, she strode quickly to the front door, glancing back at her brother and her cousins as they stared back at Brogan with the same expression.

Disappointment.

Pushing through the front door, she ran to the car Natches had driven, surprised that he hadn’t driven his truck, hit the automatic lock, and slid inside the low-slung sports car quickly.

She had to adjust her seat so she could reach the gas pedal, but once she did she pushed the start button and felt the throbbing vibration of the powerful little Mercedes before reversing and turning, then sliding the vehicle into drive and roaring away from the cabin.

She should have kept her promise to Dawg, she thought.

She should have never given in to Brogan. She should have never given in to her own needs. If she hadn’t, then perhaps her heart would still be in one unbroken piece.

FIFTEEN

Dawg shook his head as the door slammed be
hind his sister’s livid form, his gaze locking on Brogan accusingly as the other man stared at the door with a piercing, intent look.

“Man, you are one stupid fucker,” he stated, pitiless. “I could almost feel sorry for you, but you brought every damned bit of it on yourself, and you know it.”

“No.” Brogan shook his head slowly, his gaze still locked on the door.

He was watching the heavy wood panel as though he actually thought Eve would walk back through the doorway at any moment.

“No?” Dawg glanced at his cousins before his gaze moved back to Brogan. “No what?” He looked back to Natches and Rowdy again. “Is he okay?”

Natches gave a brief, amused chuckle as they all watched Brogan take a step toward the door before pulling back almost immediately.

He raked his fingers through his hair.

“Knew better,” he mumbled peevishly as he left a spike of red-gold hair standing on end. “Fucking knew better. She’s a fucking Mackay.”

Dawg actually growled.

Now, that was just damned uncalled-for.

“He’s in love.” Natches snickered behind Dawg.

Dawg glowered back at his cousin. “I already fucking knew that. Thanks for the news flash, cuz.”

“Then why get Eve to promise to stay away from him?” Rowdy was the one who asked that question.

Dawg wished he’d kept his damned mouth shut now.

“Fucking knew better. She’s a Mackay,” Brogan mumbled, drawing their attention back to him as he glared at the door again.

Brogan turned his gaze to the Mackays then.

“It’s your fucking fault,” Brogan accused Dawg. “You son of a bitch, if you had just left her the fuck alone.”

“My fault?” Dawg would have shown him the business end of his fist if Rowdy hadn’t grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

“You.” Brogan’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “Why didn’t you stay the fuck out of it?”

“Because she’s my sister, asshole!” he bellowed back at him.

“Someone needs to have a talk with your wife,” Brogan suggested snidely then. “I have a feeling she’d put a stop to your fucking meddling.”

Dawg snorted, though he knew that was way too close to the truth. Behind him, Natches snickered.

“I warned you last year,” Dawg reminded him. “Didn’t I warn you, Brogan? You could step the hell out of what you were doing or you could stay away from my sister; it was your choice.”

Yeah, Rowdy and Natches were both staring at him now as though he were crazy, but Dawg figured Brogan would end up letting the truth slip out of his mouth anyway, so he might as well strike first.

Brogan’s eyes narrowed in contempt before he turned and stalked across the house to the patio room, where he stood with his back to them, obviously staring out into the woods beyond the house.

“What have you done, Dawg?” Rowdy muttered.

Dawg grimaced at the question. “Protected my sister.”

“I wonder how you would react to it if Christa’s brother Alex up and decided to protect his sister in the same way?”

“Kill him.” He shrugged as though he would do just that.

He wouldn’t, but hell, it would be damned close.

“What was the threat?” Rowdy bit out, obviously pissed now. “You had to have had a threat to go with it.”

Dawg shifted uncomfortably beneath his cousin’s glare as he dropped his arms from across his chest and gave the other man a scorching look. “What threat? What do I have to threaten him with?” he muttered.

Brogan turned back to them then, and Dawg wondered whether he had been unlucky enough that the other man had heard the question.

“Dawg, what the fuck did you do?” Rowdy’s no-nonsense tone had him breathing out roughly.

The threat had been a simple one. Dawg still had connections, major connections at the Department of Homeland Security and among the politicians that could make or break a man’s career in law enforcement. Dawg had simply told Brogan that if he was an agent, and if he did care anything about his career, then he’d understand the ramifications of Eve’s heart getting broken.

His father might well be the director of Homeland Security, but that wouldn’t save Brogan’s place in the Federal Protective Service if Dawg wanted him out of there.

Brogan chose that moment to stalk through the house and disappeared into a room up the short hall. The bedroom, no doubt, Dawg thought.

“Maybe I should just tell Kelly what happened today and see if she wants to ask Christa if she knows what’s going on,” Rowdy suggested.

Hell, he was getting tired of this. Every time his two yahoo cousins went blabbing on him, Dawg managed to do without his wife’s tender touch for far too long. At this rate, they were going to cause him to have to just start knocking heads together again instead of trying to be nice about things.

“We didn’t come up here to hurt Eve or piss Brogan off,” Rowdy reminded him as the door slammed behind Brogan with enough force that Dawg swore the windows rattled.

“He’s not going to listen to us right now,” Dawg reminded him testily. “He’s going to be too busy feeling sorry for himself.”

“And whose fault is that?” Natches questioned behind him.

“Would you two stop acting as though this is all my fault?” Dawg questioned them incredulously. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You breathe, Dawg,” Rowdy accused him bluntly. “You breathe. Some days that’s seriously all it takes.”

The bedroom door jerked open so hard it crashed against the inside wall as they turned and stared at Brogan in surprise.

He was carrying two small bags; one was obviously Eve’s.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Dawg inquired sarcastically.

“Wherever she went,” Brogan informed them ruthlessly as he stalked to the door. “Stay as long as you like. There’s nothing here that’s mine.”

“We didn’t show up here to watch you stalk off, asshole,” Dawg called out as they followed close on his heels until he reached Timothy’s pickup.

“No, you accomplished what you showed up to do,” Brogan informed them, keeping his voice calm. He’d caused Eve enough heartache and pain; he wouldn’t compound it by sending her brother and cousins to the hospital. Not unless they forced him to it.

“Well, there was that,” Dawg agreed with a vein of amusement behind the words. “But that’s not the only reason we’re here.”

“I’m already aware someone tried to break into her room.” Thank God for Eli and Jed. Brogan wasn’t certain Doogan would have told him, if it had been left up to him.

“Well, there was that,” Dawg repeated. “But once again, not the only reason we’re here.”

“Then why the fuck are you here, Dawg?” he snarled back, his hand clenching on the truck door to keep from ramming his fist in the other man’s face.

He’d get the first strike, but he doubted he’d leave unscathed. Then Eve would just be pissed as hell at him. And if he did manage to get her to let him touch her again, he’d be too sore to do much.

Dawg chuckled. “You see that look on his face, Rowdy?”

Rowdy grinned, his arms crossed over his chest, the smile amused and mocking.

“That’s the ‘I’d love to try to kick his ass, but if I do, she’s gonna be too pissed and I’m gonna be too sore to love her later’ look.” Natches snickered knowingly. “I’d tell him to join the club, but he’s not quite paid his dues yet; what do you think?”

Rowdy shook his head. “Nah, not yet. We’ll make him wait awhile just for being a prick about us showing up and all.”

“The three of you are fucking insane.” Brogan moved to step into the truck.

“Pull out before we’re finished and I promise you, I’ll make your life such hell that you’ll beg me to let up on you. And I can do it, Brogan. I promise you I can do it.” Arrogant assurance and self-confidence filled Dawg’s expression as well as his voice.

Brogan gripped the door hard enough that he could feel his knuckles turning white as he glared back at the three men.

“I don’t like your endangering my sister’s life, and if I could have steered her toward some nice, safe, simpleminded little farmer or accountant to ensure her safety, then I would have done it. But you’re what she wants. So I’m trying my damnedest to help you here.”

“You made her promise to stay the hell away from me,” Brogan accused him furiously. “That’s not helping me, Mackay. And that was only after threatening my fucking career if I didn’t stay the hell away from her.”

Rowdy and Natches turned to Dawg incredulously.

Brogan bit back a curse as he just ignored them.

“And I knew damned good and well she wasn’t going to keep that promise.”

The acknowledgment had Brogan narrowing his gaze on the other man.

“Then why do it?”

“Because she’s my sister,” Dawg grumbled irately. “And I needed time to finish what I was doing to protect her before she drew any more attention to the fact that she was most likely the only weakness you had. You weren’t doing anything to keep her out of your bed.”

“But you couldn’t come to me.” Mackay’s arrogance and stubborn independence reminded Brogan of a crazed bull staring at a red flag.

“You’re too close to Doogan. And if you weren’t, then we knew your partners definitely were,” Dawg informed him, his tone hardening. “Until Doogan asks one of us for help, then he’s getting nothing from me that he can use to pull me into his bullshit without a hell of a compensation package, Brogan. You know that bastard as well as I do, and you know damned good and well he’d use us up, then throw us to the wolves when he was finished.”

Brogan had no idea Dawg knew Doogan, let alone that he knew him so well.

“Agreed,” Brogan growled.

“What I’ve done instead is work from where it counts,” Dawg informed him. “That motorcycle touring club is bullshit. A bunch of veterans riding around sightseeing? Give me a fucking break,” he jeered. “I know exactly what it is, what it was started as, and what it will always be now that it’s established. Just as I know there’s not a chance in hell you’re going to be pulled into the inner circle of that group, no matter how long they let you carry that title of ‘leader,’ without our help.”

Brogan stiffened, his gaze going between the three men as suspicion rose inside him.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he demanded, suddenly certain these three men were the exact reason he’d never been able to break the ice where the club was concerned.

Brogan had known there was far more to that club than he’d ever been able to figure out. Just as he’d known that many of the tours they’d taken came far too close to the known locations of small militia groups rumored to be operating from those areas.

“Not without that compensation package,” Dawg growled.

Brogan shook his head. “Fuck Doogan. He’ll come to you; I promise you that. I don’t need Doogan to do my job or to protect Eve any more than you need him to tell me what I need to know.”

Dawg glanced at his cousins, each man meeting his gaze, communicating as only men as close as they were, who had fought together and worked together in the operations that they had been conducting in the county, as long as they had, could communicate.

Finally Dawg nodded before turning to him. “Your thieves aren’t in the motorcycle club, Brogan. And the files that have been stolen don’t have a damned thing in them that tie them together. What they do have, though, is the ability to draw three men out of hiding who were working with Chandler and Dayle Mackay in the Freedom League. Twenty years ago, Chandler was stationed at Fort Knox when a transport hauling more than six million in gold bullion was hijacked. Rumor in the Freedom League was that the gold was hidden by one man and the location of it supposedly encoded in a set of files at Fort Knox in case something happened to him before it could be recovered and used to fund the League. Timothy managed to acquire the files and we found the gold. What we don’t have are the three high-ranking military officers Chandler was working with.”

Brogan stiffened in sudden outrage. “You mean I’ve been busting my ass for two and a half years for nothing?”

Dawg grinned. “Well, you did get Doogan here. And you obviously drew the attention of the three we’re looking for. Unfortunately, now Eve’s drawn their attention as well.” He glared at Brogan for that. “It was suggested to Doogan that he pull us into this, because we’re the only chance he has of recovering the gold or arresting the traitors involved in it. When Doogan refused to come to us, and decided to find the answers without us, then we let him. Don’t doubt that you’ve done your part, despite his machinations. You’ve done exactly what we would have wanted you to do if we had been working together. But when Eve became involved, I had to adjust the plan a bit to ensure she was protected.”

“You’re the bastard Donny said has the information Doogan wants and will help only if Eve was involved with me?” Son of a bitch, and they called Timothy and Doogan game players?

“Not quite.” Dawg rubbed at the back of his neck as he grimaced in irritation before propping his hands on his waist and blowing out a hard breath. “We didn’t know who that was until last night, after Eve went missing from the restaurant. He came to us then.”