Nauti Dreams (21 page)

“And here I thought you were more intelligent than that. Hell, I thought Timothy was,”

he growled. “Do you believe that bull-shit, Chaya?”

“No. But I’m asking you to do it anyway,” she told him. She didn’t want him involved in

this. She wanted him as far away from Timothy Cranston’s games as possible. She knew

how Timothy worked. He lied and he connived and manipulated everyone to get what he

wanted, the way he wanted it. She didn’t want Natches pulled into the webs Timothy

created.

“All I have to do is ask the questions,” she repeated. “The danger is limited, Natches, and

he’s watching whoever he suspects.”

“He suspects someone he knows I’ll try to protect, or he wouldn’t have sent you.” He

snorted. “And that one, I have to admit, has me as confused as hell. Because Timothy

knows me, too, and he knows there’s few people here that I’d protect.”

“No one you would protect could be involved,” she argued. “Rowdy, Dawg, Ray, or their

wives? For God’s sake, I know for a fact they aren’t under suspicion. Do you think I

didn’t do my own damned homework? Do you think I would let him try to crucify

someone I believe is innocent?”

“Timothy wouldn’t try to crucify someone who’s innocent.” Natches shook his head as

he stared at her from across the room.

He looked dangerous, too controlled, too suspicious.

“Timothy’s a lot of things,” he continued, “but he doesn’t do witch hunts. Whoever he

suspects, you can bet they’re guilty, he just needs the proof of it. And he’ll sacrifice

anyone or anything for that proof, Chaya. Even you.”

He had already sacrificed her, and she knew it. He couldn’t have guessed that Natches

would give a damn about her if his cousins turned against her. And it appeared that was

exactly what was happening.

And perhaps Natches wasn’t standing by her. He was angry, she knew that. Suspicious.

She turned away from him and moved to the sliding doors, staring beyond them to the

nearly deserted boathouses. Summer was over. There were very few year-round residents

here. And she didn’t blame them. It was colder than hell on the water.

“Dawg, Rowdy, and Ray aren’t under suspicion. Neither is Crista. I have Timothy’s word

on it,” she told him quietly. “According to him, he doesn’t want you involved in this

because you draw too much notice and you’re too temperamental where the Mackays are

concerned. The questions he has me asking involve family, connections between

Chandler Mackay, Nadine, and Johnny Grace. I record the answers and send the

recordings via FTP back to him.”

She didn’t know what Timothy was looking for, and she was beginning to wonder if it

even mattered. Timothy knew who he was after by now. The questions had begun

changing, taking a new direction, leading her straight into the heart of too many family

secrets. At this point, he was merely playing a delicate little game designed to catch his

quarry faster.

“I want to see the names and the questions before you leave each morning.”

She swung around. “I have direct orders that you’re not to see anything.” And she

followed orders. The agency had been her life for the past five years. It had held her

together when nothing else could have.

He smiled.

Chaya felt her stomach tighten as he moved across the room. Clothes did not hide the

shift or power of the muscle lurking beneath them, nor did it hide the sheer arrogance of

the male animal she was now facing.

“I said, I will see the names and the questions before you leave my bed each morning,”

he growled, his eyes darkening, his expression forbidding, and for the first time in ten

years, Chaya faced a force that had her swallowing back her nerves.

“Or what?”

“Oh, Chay, sweetheart,” he crooned. “Now we just don’t wanna go there, do we? We

wanna wake up in that big bed of mine, nice and warm every morning, and work this out

together. Because, if we’re not working this out together, then we’re going to be fighting.

Yelling. At odds. Out of sorts. And if we’re out of sorts, then bad things might start

happening. I might follow you into these places where you’re questioning folks. I might

make things rather hard.”

She stared back at him in confusion. “Why? I swear, your family is not involved in this.”

“Something more important than family is involved here,” he said then.

“What?” She threw her hands up in disbelief, amazed that Natches could find anything

more important than family. From what she had seen since coming to Somerset, he

wouldn’t just die for them, he killed for them. “What could be more important to you

than your cousins or your uncle?”

“You.”

She blinked up at him, and she swore she felt the very air around them become thicker,

still, heavy with tension.

“You don’t mean that.” She shook her head slowly. He had to be lying to her. He loved

his family, he was loyal to them, loyal enough that he would lie to her.

It broke her heart, but she accepted it. She had no other choice.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” she whispered, moving around him as she put her hand to

her brow and eased her palm over the perspiration forming there. “I know you have

priorities.”

“I’m glad you do. And I thought you knew, Chay, I don’t bother to lie to anyone. Wastes

too much of my damned time.”

She held her hand up while keeping her back turned to him. She couldn’t handle this. If

he needed this bad enough to lie to her, then fine. He could have it. It wasn’t enough to

tip Timothy off, and she knew Natches was going to do whatever the hell he wanted to do

anyway.

“You can see the list and the questions,” she whispered, picking up her briefcase before

turning to face him. “I’ll meet you at the hotel in the morning.”

A sharp laugh left his throat. “Bullshit. You’re not leaving me. Not again, Chaya. I’ll tie

you to the damned bed at night.”

“And I’m not going to stand here and let you lie to me to protect your family.” Something

was building in her, shimmering like a bloodred cloud in front of her vision as she

watched his eyes go from dark to light, watched moss green go brilliant green, like a

forest in spring.

“You actually believe I’d lie to you like that?” He glowered back at her. “Baby, I don’t

have to lie to you to get that list, those questions, or anything else I need out of you. All I have to do is get you beneath me.”

And it snapped in her head then. Chaya felt herself almost sway in shock. He hadn’t used

a condom last night or the night before. He had been bare, his semen spurting inside her,

sending her crashing into another wave of release even as a part of her mind had

whispered the warning. Each time, and her emotions had been in such disarray that she

had ignored the implications.

She wasn’t protected.

“Not without a condom you won’t be.” Her head snapped up, her vision clearing as fear

surged through her. “And not without the truth between us.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“The truth? It’s a fairly easy concept . . .”

“I mean the condom.” His hand sliced through the air. “I’m safe, Chay, and you know it

just as well as I do. I may have played some games in my life, but I always protected

myself.”

“This isn’t about STDs,” she snapped. “I’m not protected, Natches. I went off the agency-

sanctioned shots last year when I thought I was resigning and didn’t have time to restart

them. You need condoms. I can’t believe you didn’t use one last night.”

Natches stared back at her. From her eyes, to her stomach. Back to her eyes and her

stomach again as he swallowed tightly.

She wasn’t protected? He’d filled her more than once with his release the night before,

pumping into her, crying her name, feeling her so sleek and hot, milking it from him.

Use a condom now? The first time he’d taken her, there’d been nothing between them

either, and he remembered that last mission, wondering about the agency protection she

used. Wishing she didn’t. Wishing he could fill her with his baby, to give back to her

everything she had lost.

He blinked now, feeling the sweat that gathered on his back, the sense of hunger that

suddenly raged through his body. He’d rationalized those thoughts as insanity years

before. Her grief had marked him in a way he hadn’t expected, couldn’t have been

prepared for, he had told himself.

But now it wasn’t grief. He was staring at her belly, seeing her growing round with his

child, and the hunger for it grew.

“Are you okay?” Her eyes narrowed on him as he jerked his gaze back to hers. “I’m safe

right now, Natches, but that doesn’t last long. Get the condoms. And stop lying to me.

We’ll get along much better that way.”

“No.” He shook his head slowly, barely able to believe that word had slipped past his

lips. They were numb, his throat was tight, thick with so many emotions he didn’t know

how to make sense of them.

“Why?” She had a death grip on that briefcase and one on his soul. Hell, even he hadn’t

known the grip she had on him until now. “Is the truth so damned hard?”

“The truth is easy.” He had to fight to hold himself back, to keep from latching onto her,

to keep from devouring her. “I meant, no condoms.”

Chaya went silent. Even her thoughts seemed to stop in shock as she stared back at

Natches. He couldn’t have said that. He didn’t just say that.

“I see.” She wet her lips. Had he changed his mind that quickly? Was she

misunderstanding something important in this conversation? “If you don’t want to have

sex with me, I can understand . . .”

“I want to lay you down and lick every inch of your body. I want to bring you over me

and watch you ride me. I want to fuck you so many ways, so many times, that neither of

us can find the energy to crawl from the floor let alone the bed. Oh, baby, wanting you is

like a sickness with me, and it never fucking goes away.”

“Oh.” Her heart was racing. Each word out of his mouth had her skin sensitizing, her clit

swelling. “Then what do you mean, no condom?”

He stalked to her then. Slowly. His expression was more savage than she could ever

remember seeing it, his eyes bright, his lashes lowered over them. He looked dark.

Dangerous. And something in that look terrified her.

“I mean, if you don’t want my baby, then you better get your ass to a clinic and take care

of the birth control yourself.” His hand flattened on her stomach as she stared back at him

in a shock so deep, so overwhelming, she wondered how she was standing upright.

“Because I’m betting I have the fastest, slickest little soldiers in the state of Kentucky.

Just a breath of a chance, sweetheart, and you’re pregnant.” His expression, his eyes,

grew taut with possessiveness. Possessiveness and lust. “And I could very much get into

making damned certain they have every chance.”

Chaya felt herself swaying. She could feel the blood draining from her face, even as it

began to thunder in her ears.

She could feel Natches’s hand on her belly, his eyes boring into her soul, as though will

alone, and nothing more, could make her conceive.

And it didn’t make sense. She couldn’t understand this. He couldn’t be serious.

“Why?” She forced the word past numb lips. Why would he want to tie himself to her

like that?

“Ah, Chay,” he whispered, his expression gentling, just a bit, just enough to force her to

trap a sob in her chest rather than give rise to the cry that seemed to echo through her

soul. “Sweetheart. Don’t you know I’d give everything I possess to hold you to me? And

the thought of giving you my child, of watching that pretty belly grow large with my

baby, makes my dick so damned hard I wonder if it’s going to push straight past the

zipper of my jeans.”

She felt the briefcase drop from her fingers as she stared back at him, searching his eyes,

searching for the lie. There had to be a lie there. But lying didn’t make sense. She knew

Natches. Knew he would never, ever risk a child of his so cavalierly. He was so damned

protective over family that even Cranston feared him. He would kill for them. He had

proven it.

“Chay.” He breathed her name against her lips, and she felt herself weaken. Her knees.

Her soul. Something inside her, something she needed for protection, to hold back the

dreams and the loss and the years she had run, even from herself, began to crack. “Let me

have you like that. Just us. Just the chance that we could dream together like that.”

ELEVEN

Natches could feel himself shaking inside, a need, a hunger he couldn’t control, didn’t

want to control, rising inside him.

Chaya. Just her name invoked the power to make his knees weak, to make him hard, to

make him want to believe in miracles and to reach for them.

The boy inside him that had once screamed out in the darkened forest, howling in fury at

the loneliness, the pain that melded through his body, howled out now in hope.

Because Chaya was here. For such a brief moment in time in a foreign desert, in a hostile

land, Natches had known peace. One night, so far away that it felt like a dream, he had

held her in his arms and knew she belonged to him. No matter what happened, no matter

where life took either of them, he had found the one person that was his alone.