Nauti Nights (3 page)

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Right at her feet.

“Goddamn you, Crista!”

She recognized that voice.

Jerking her head up from the sight of the bloody mess her assailant’s face was now, she stared back at the dark figure, Law Enforcement emblazoned across the bulletproof jacket he was jerking from his broad

chest.

“Put it on, damn you!” His voice was a hard rasp, guttural, animalistic, as he jerked her around and

strapped her into the vest until the black velco strips were holding it snugly to her chest and back.

“Let’s go!” Hard gloved fingers wrapped around her arm as, with a shove, the crate she had been fighting to move was pushed back as though it were no more than a heavy box. “Move it!”

He pushed her through the opening before gripping her arm again and pulling her through the dark.

“What’s going on?” She breathed out roughly. She couldn’t scream, she couldn’t cry. All she could do

was follow Dawg.

And she knew it was Dawg. Those brilliant celadon green eyes, that dark, male, honeyed voice. No other

man sounded like Dawg. No other man moved like him or smelled like him.

And besides, it was just her dumb luck. He was here. She was here. Hell was erupting around her. Fate

was laughing her ass off, and it was all Dawg’s fault.

“Shut up!” he snarled, not even bothering to so much as try to explain as he pushed her through the

darkness. “Keep your mouth shut, keep your head down, and if God is in a good mood today, I might be

able to save your ass.”

Save her ass?

“But I was just here—”

“Just fucking save it.” He pushed her against something cement, the dim light that spilled in from

overhead windows emphasizing the enraged flames in his eyes. “I just killed a man for you, princess. A

man worth a hell of a lot more alive than he was dead. Now shut your goddamned mouth and do exactly

what I say. Exactly. Or I’ll slap cuffs on you and haul you in so fast, you won’t have time to twitch that pretty ass of yours.”

Before she could process the fact that they were racing from the back of the warehouse, Dawg was lifting her into the backseat of his black four-by-four double cab pickup. He pulled the bulletproof vest from her and jerked it back on, his eyes glowing with rage as his fingers tangled in her hair. He stared down at her, remorseless, before gripping the bottom of her T-shirt and wiping it roughly over her lower face.

Blood. She shuddered at the thought. Someone else’s blood stained her now. Then Dawg forced her head

back a second before his lips covered hers.

Gunfire receded. Reality dimmed. The world narrowed down to his lips slanted over hers, his tongue

pressing between them as hers opened. Electricity sparked, exploded, and sizzled through her head with a dazzling display of color as pleasure tore through her system.

Eight years without him. Without this. Without the hunger that consumed and burned away the ragged

wound in her soul that leaving him eight years before had left inside her.

Her hands curled against the bulletproof vest, and a whimper that shocked her vibrated from her throat as 11 of 183

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he tore his lips from hers as quickly as he had taken them.

She stared up at him, wide-eyed, shocked, as he glared back at her.

“Where did you park?” he snapped out.

Her lips trembled as she fought to drag in enough air to answer him.

“The back lot,” she whispered as he jerked her purse open and before she could stop him, pulled her keys from inside.

“You’re damned lucky your car wasn’t here when this started, Crista,” he snarled. “Luckier than you’ll

ever know. Now, lie down. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t twitch. So help me God, if you give yourself

away in here, I’ll toss you into a cell so deep and so dark you won’t know up or down. Do we have that

clear?”

She tried to nod, just as she was trying to breathe. A second later he was pushing her to the seat, pressing her cheek into the fine black leather with a harsh order to “Stay,” before the door slammed and he was

gone.

And she was alone. She could still hear the gunfire, but it was distant and easing away. It was replaced with shouted orders, vehicles moving, and strident calls.

Inside the truck she shuddered, drew her knees to her chest, and tried to still the shaking in her body.

Shock. She knew she must be having some kind of shock reaction, because it was the middle of the

summer. She shouldn’t be freezing so much she was shaking; breathing shouldn’t be hard. And God help

her if she puked in Dawg’s truck. He would probably shoot her himself.

She forced herself to breathe slowly, evenly, to draw in the scent of Dawg that permeated his truck and

filled her senses with memories. Memories she had fought to forget for eight long years.

The feel of his thighs between hers as he parted them and lowered himself to her. Watching as one large

hand gripped the shaft of his cock, nudging it against the hot, wet curls between her thighs.

“Wax your pussy,” he had growled, “so I can see your soft flesh gripping my dick.”

Her womb clenched at the memory, as clear now as it had been the morning after.

And he didn’t even remember it. She still had to fight back the rage and the pain of that one. The bastard.

He had seen her two days later and had looked right through her as she stood in her parents’ convenience store, her heart in her throat, certain that he had come for her.

But he hadn’t. He had smiled and flirted, and on his arm hung some stupid twit blond bimbo who cooed

over his muscles as he paid for ice and snacks.

He had made some cheerful comment to Crista about her hair, and she glared at him. He had frowned,

tried again, and she had turned her back and left Alex to take care of him. Because she couldn’t look at him; she couldn’t bear remembering and knowing that not so much as a glimmer of that night remained in

his memory. Knowing, that if he had her again, they wouldn’t be alone.

And then, weeks later, the knowledge that she hadn’t escaped that night without repercussions. She had

carried his child.

Her initial reaction had been one of anger, of resentment. He was partying, enjoying his life and his

women and the dirty little sex games he and his cousins played, and she was pregnant.

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But within days that anger had stilled. The knowledge that she would always have a part of him had

consumed her young mind, her heart. The heart she had given Dawg on a sultry summer night. And that

happiness had built, filling her, glowing inside her.

Until three months to the day after he had taken her. The day she had lost the child she had grown to love so deeply. She had left the clinic Alex had taken her to, packed her bags, and left for Virginia with friends who had been visiting that week.

And here she was, eight years later, her fingers curled into the leather of his truck seat, shaking, terrified as the sound of gunfire finally eased away and shouted commands filled the night instead.

Suddenly, the implications of her very precarious position slammed inside her head. She was at the scene of an obvious raid of some sort. Wasn’t that what they called it? A raid? A sting? And she had been right smack-dab in the middle of it.

Which meant she was about to be right smack-dab in the middle of a whole lot of suspicion.

FUBAR. That’s what this entire fucking night had turned into. Fucked up beyond all repair, and it was all his own damned fault.

He stared into the shadowed expanse of the warehouse parking lot, his brows lowered, trying to make

sense of what he had done and why. The why of it more than anything else.

What had crashed through the hard core of training and beliefs in what he was doing long enough to rush

Crista from the warehouse and hide her? What had made him risk his own soul this way for a woman?

Not just any woman though: Crista. The woman that had invaded his dreams for longer than he wanted to

admit. The woman who had, somehow, wormed her way into his soul before she left Somerset eight years

ago. And the why of that one had no explanation. Just as the dreams of her that had tormented him over

the years made no sense.

“I moved her Rodeo,” Natches said, sidling up to Dawg as he stood guarding the warehouse entrance.

“She was parked outside the range of the cameras, and her head was down as she came through the

entrance. With any luck, we can cover her identity.”

Dawg glanced at his cousin and best friend from the corner of his eye. He was half tempted to blame his

cousin for every second of this madness. Following the vague warning he had given, Dawg had moved to

find who they assumed was the female seller who had entered the warehouse. She was the only one

unaccounted for now.

Dawg had moved to intercept her ahead of the rest of the team and reacted rather than thinking. If he had given himself time to think, she would be stretched out on the warehouse floor with the rest of the

bastards they had arrested in the raid.

They had the buyers, the sellers, four missing experimental missiles, and their guidance chips. It was a damned good haul for the investigation. Except for the fact that the woman who had masterminded the

deal hadn’t arrived.

That, or she was hiding in the backseat of Dawg’s pickup truck.

“Remind me why we’re covering her identity,” Dawg said softly, his gaze tracking the rest of the

combined ATF and Homeland Security team.

Hell, he knew why, but damned if he wanted to admit to it. This wasn’t something Crista would do. He

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knew it wasn’t. At least, it wasn’t something the Crista he had once known would do.

“Because she’s not involved?” Natches hazarded a mocking guess.

“She was here,” Dawg pointed out, even as he ignored the hard mental flash of denial that Crista could be involved in this in any way.

“Uh-huh.” Natches nodded. “Of which I warned you. You were the one who jerked her out like a wolf

protecting its mate, not me, Cousin. I just covered your six. That’s my job. Remember?”

Like a wolf protecting its mate. Or a Dawg protecting a bone, he thought sarcastically.

He had taken one look at her, and something inside him had exploded in awareness. He knew damned

good and well what would happen if he didn’t get her out of there. If she had been caught with the others, with the description of the female suspect they had, she would have never gotten out of the arrest and

subsequent imprisonment, involved or not.

And why that should matter to him, he couldn’t figure out.

“She’s not involved.” Natches cradled his rifle in his arms like a lover as he stared back at Dawg. “That’s not Crista, Dawg.”

Maybe it wasn’t. But then again, maybe it was, and he just couldn’t see it for his own lust.

Dawg tightened his lips and stared back at the organized chaos inside the now well-lit warehouse. He was a paranoid son of a bitch. He trusted no one but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and Crista wasn’t included in the Trinity last he checked.

Yet he was risking his own reputation to protect her. Not because of Natches’s warning but because his

own emotions had interfered with the job for the first time in eight years. And as he stood there, watching the arrests, the recovery of the missiles and their chips, and felt the sense of triumph that the team

radiated, he felt disassociated.

He was impatient. Eager to have it over with, because his mind was brewing with all the possibles

filtering through it. It was possible Crista wasn’t involved. And if she wasn’t, then it was possible that for the first time since her return a year ago, he had an edge on her. She couldn’t just turn and run, as she was wont to do whenever he came near.

Oh no. Not anymore.

His eyes narrowed, and his lips curled with an anticipatory smile.

He had lived on instinct too damned long to discount it, and instinct was giving her the benefit of the

doubt. But he was still a part of the ATF, and she was at the scene of an arms buy. She also fit the brief description of the one female in the group of thieves that had hijacked the weapons and attempted to sell them.

He was going to have to keep an eye on her. A very close eye on her.

“Oh hell, I hate that smile,” Natches suddenly groaned beside him. “Dawg, what the hell are you up to?”

Dawg glanced over at him, his brow lifting in mock innocence. “I’m just considering how best to

determine who’s guilty and who’s innocent,” he drawled. “Nothing for you to worry about, Natches.

Nothing whatsoever.”

It was a lot for Dawg to worry about, and even more for Crista.

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For Dawg, because Crista made him break his own rules, and that was something he never did, under any

circumstances. And for her, because he was going to take payment for those rules out of her sweet little body.

Natches’s shoulders slumped. “Hell. Why do I have a feeling now that I should have just played the knight in shining armor myself rather than giving you the opportunity to pull your head out of your ass?”

Dawg snorted at that. “Stop worrying. I have it covered.”

“I’m guaranteed to worry at any time that you tell me not to worry. It’s a cosmic rule.”