Nauti Dreams (23 page)

grew harder, pulsed harder.

“You’re killing me.” His voice was graveled, thick and rasping as she kissed the base

then licked the tightly drawn sac below.

He flinched, jerked, and moaned hard and low.

Chaya clenched her legs around the hard thigh rubbing against her pussy and knew she

was drowning in this pleasure. She was sinking into a sensual storm and had no idea how

to save herself. She didn’t want to save herself. She wanted to ride the waves. She wanted

them cresting over her, surrounding her, swamping her.

She lifted her head and dragged herself over him, embracing his muscular hips with her

thighs and lowering herself onto the rigid, heated flesh rising to her.

“There, Chay. That’s it, sweetheart; take me. All of me, Chay. It’s all yours.”

She stared into the narrowed bands of green as he watched her, his expression twisted

into lines of savage lust and determination.

She couldn’t keep from sobbing at the pleasure. The feel of him penetrating her slowly,

taking her as his hands moved up her back, down her arms, then his hard fingers linked

with hers.

“Take me, Chay,” he demanded. “This ride is all yours, baby.” He was barely buried

inside her, his cock throbbing, eager to take her.

“Ride me, Chay, like we’ve both dreamed.”

She straightened, flung her head back at the incredible pleasure racing through her, and

she took him. Slow and easy, then with quick, shallow strokes. Her hips twisted, rose and

lowered and she lost that final piece of herself.

Nothing mattered but the pleasure. Nothing mattered but the sensation of flying within

his embrace, knowing he was there to catch her if she fell, that he would hold her if she

faltered, and he would give her the reins when she needed them.

She needed them now.

Holding on to his hands she took him to the hilt, feeling all that wild heat and hardness

penetrating her, stretching her, a burn that was pleasure and pain, and she gloried in it.

She twisted against him, and she rode him as he lifted beneath her, driving his erection

deeper and harder inside her. Perspiration gathered between them. It rolled down her

shoulders, ran in rivulets down his chest. Slick and heated they clashed together, twisting

and thrusting, strokes that speared straight to her soul as the driving rhythm grew,

deepened, heated until she was exploding, flaming out of control and screaming out his

name.

Deep wracking shudders jerked her body tight as her womb spasmed, her vagina

convulsing, milking around him as his hard, throttled shout was followed by the deep,

heated spurts of his seed inside her.

Chaya’s eyes jerked open, met his and locked. She felt his cock jerk inside her, felt each

pulse of his release, and felt her body heat and shudder further at the feel of it. That final hard orgasm rippled through her as his gaze held hers, as his soul wrapped around her.

Forcing her to see, to know, nothing in life could be as good as right here, in his arms.

As the final, desperate tremors washed through her, she sank slowly against his chest, just

fighting to breathe, to make sense of the woman she became when Natches touched her.

Because it wasn’t the woman she had known before she met him five years ago.

It was as though he had opened something inside her during that time in a cramped little

hole in the desert. He had rescued her. He had protected her. And as danger swirled

around her he had teased her and made her want to fight at a time when it felt as though

the fight had been sucked out of her.

And that was how he made her feel now. Like fighting. Like tearing down the obstacles

she knew stretched between them, and she knew it could be done so easily.

She could betray Natches, or she could betray the rules she had lived her life by. And at

this moment, she knew the choice she was going to make. No matter what tomorrow

would bring, she chose Natches. The naughty dream that haunted her, the man who

owned her soul.

I love you. She mouthed the words against his chest because she couldn’t bring herself to

say them yet. As sanity began to whisper through her mind once again, that one shred of

fear remained. She had only told one person in her life that she loved them, and that tiny

vision of purity was gone now, jerked from her so brutally that she had feared she

wouldn’t survive it.

That edge of fear still held its grip on her, strangling her with the words that wouldn’t

whisper past her lips and bringing tears to her eyes as she held on to Natches tighter.

“I love you, too, Chaya,” he said, his voice rough. “It’s okay, baby, because I love you,

too.”

TWELVE

Somewhere in the darkness of night, she had to have lost her ever-loving mind. And

finding it again didn’t appear to be an assignment Natches was going to allow her.

“Look, you have the information, the interview files, and the recordings,” she told him

the next morning as the first rays of the sun began to peek over the tops of the mountains.

“I need to return to my hotel room—”

“And check out,” he interrupted her, his voice controlled, mild, as he went through the

files she had transferred to his laptop. “You’ll move into the apartment with me. Dawg

and Rowdy should have the door fixed by now.”

She inhaled deeply. “That’s not going to work right now, Natches.”

He lifted his head slowly. It was a curiously dangerous movementthe way he did it. The

calculated restraint in it had her holding back the shiver that would have worked up her

spine.

“Why? Because you won’t have a chance to rebuild all those nifty little defenses you

keep between us?” he asked, his mocking smile grating on her temper.

“Because I won’t have the investigation compromised any more than it has been

already,” she told him. “I’m sharing information with you despite direct orders to the

contrary. Do you have any idea how many years Cranston could put me behind bars for

that?”

He merely grunted at that and turned back to the file.

“I’m meeting Mayes in just a few hours. I need clean clothes, and I have my own notes to

put together as soon as Cranston sends the new list of interviewees this morning. I can’t

do that with you breathing over my shoulder.”

“You might as well give it up now,” he murmured. “You’re not driving back to that hotel

alone and you’re not staying there alone. You don’t want to stay at the apartment, that’s

fine. I’ll stay at the hotel.”

He said it absently, his eyes narrowed on the laptop screen, as though simply because it

was his decision then it was a foregone conclusion that it was happening.

“Natches, you seem to be forgetting something here,” she told him coldly. “This is my

investigation and my job. I don’t need your help doing it.”

“So you keep tellin’ me.” That smooth southern drawl deepened, causing her to wince.

This wasn’t the sexy, lazy drawl. This was the cool, velvet drawl of a man who had no

intentions of backing down.

“Do I poke my nose into your garage?” she finally snapped. “Do I tell you how to fix cars

or how to deal with customers?”

He lifted his head and stared back at her. “Not yet.”

That shut her up and she hated it. Turning her back on him she propped one hand on her

hip as she nibbled at her thumbnail and glared at the covered window.

Despite Cranston’s orders to keep the Mackay cousins out of the investigation, she would

have cheerfully told him to shove it if she thought the investigation would proceed better

with Natches involved. Unfortunately, she had a feeling she knew exactly where it was

headed, and she didn’t need Natches there for that.

She had read his file so many times she had nightmares about the childhood he had

endured. His father was ex-Marine and a sorry bastard. Dayle Mackay was a bully,

heavily muscled; he had nearly beaten a young Natches to death more than once.

Natches’s back still held the scars of the most brutal beating that he had taken, at the age

of twenty. The night his father had disowned him, he had beaten Natches to the floor then

ripped his back to shreds with a lash. All because Natches had refused to allow his father

to strike his sister, Janey Mackay.

“You’ll only complicate matters for me at the moment, Natches. As well as bring

Cranston out of the woodwork.” She turned back to him as he lifted his head once again

and stared back at her. His forest green eyes were mocking, his smile knowing.

“It’s not happening, Chay.” He closed the files out before leaning back against the couch

and watching her with hooded eyes now. “From this moment on, just call me your

shadow. Because doing this alone isn’t going to happen.”

“I have the sheriff with me. Most of the people I’m talking to seem to share a dislike for

you, Natches. It wouldn’t be conducive to my investigation if you’re there.”

He just smiled. A patient, questioning smile as though he were trying to figure out

exactly why she was still arguing with him.

She propped her hands on her hips and glared back at him. “Okay, let’s try it this way.

You are not accompanying me on those interviews. Period.”

“It makes me hard when you get mean, Chay,” he drawled. “Come over here and sit on

my lap while we discuss it.” He patted his knee invitingly and she wanted to kick herself

for almost moving toward him.

“You’re just being an ass now, Natches. Stop it and let me do my job. I can be amazingly

adept at that when I don’t have to deal with men who think they can do everything better

than I can.” She smiled with false sweetness.

“It’s hard to watch your back when you’re concerned with watching where you’re

going.” He shrugged. “I watch backs real good. Ask the Marines, they loved me.”

Of course they had, he had been a suicide mission waiting to happen for over four years

and probably would have taken another tour if a sniper hadn’t taken out his shoulder.

There was talk that Natches had arranged the hit, that he knew it was coming and

managed to deflect the damage. Chaya knew better. Natches didn’t play games. Oh, he

may well have known the danger was there and that the shot would be taken. His instincts

were so well honed that he had probably felt it coming and, yes, deflected the damage.

But it wasn’t arranged. Natches was too honest for that, too in-your-face to ever play

those games.

“I don’t need you to watch my back here,” she told him. “That’s the sheriff’s job. You

have no place in this assignment, and you don’t need to be involved.”

And he just smiled. Again.

“Damn it, Natches. You’re not even a contract agent on this assignment. I am not letting

you butt your nose into it.”

“Are you ready to go pick your stuff up at the hotel this morning? You can pack while

you’re waiting on Cranston’s e-mail to come through.”

He was as immovable as the mountains surrounding them. Stubbornness defined his

expression and the cool green of his eyes, and had her gritting her teeth to hold back her

anger and her desperation.

Was it too much to ask for just a few hours to think? To clear her head enough to make

sense of what she had done the night before? Was that too much to ask for? Evidently it

was as far as he was concerned.

“You are not returning to the hotel with me. I know how to pack on my own.” There was

no getting out of moving in with him, and she knew it. But at the moment, that was as far

as she was willing to go. “You can give me that redneck pride and stubborn look until

hell freezes over, but I’m a fairly competent agent, Natches. Until Cranston begins

sending names that might actually trip some tempers in your fair little county, I’m doing

this by the book. Period. And my book says I follow orders. And those orders say no

Mackay cousins involved. Period.”

Frustration flickered in his eyes—and an edge of anger—as he rose from the couch,

standing to his full, impressive six feet two inches. And he glared at her. Natches’s

glaring was sexy as hell, but it was also damned intimidating.

“You don’t know this town or these people,” he argued again. “You don’t know which

questions will trip tempers, and from the looks of the previous questions, tempers were

more than likely tripped further than what you believe. This isn’t the city, Chay. It’s

Kentucky.”

“You make it sound like another planet.” She rolled her eyes at his tone. “They’re still

people, Natches.”

“Are they?” he growled. “One of the good ole boys you questioned can shoot a deer from

over a half mile out and his hunting rifle is sighted for even farther distances. How much

easier would it be to take out one lone little agent?”

“And now you stop bullets, too?” She widened her eyes in mock surprise. “Why,

Natches. Why didn’t you tell me sooner that you were freakin’ Superman?”

She watched him grind his teeth, the bunching of his jaw muscles, the flattening of his

lips. Yeah, it was sexy as hell, but pretty damned intimidating.

“I was a Marine assassin,” he snarled. “Do you think I won’t feel those sights on you

before some stupid bastard takes the shot? I know what it feels like, Chay, and you don’t

want me going hunting if something happens to you, because the first son of a bitch I’d

look up would be Timothy Cranston.”

Chaya almost took a step back at the banked anger in Natches’s eyes. She wanted to tell