Nauti Dreams (27 page)

me back here.”

He infuriated her as he nodded slowly. “Yes, I was. Until I remembered this is who you

are. You couldn’t walk away now even if I demanded it. No more than I could. I don’t

want to change that part of you, Chay.”

She pushed her fingers through her hair and turned her back on him.

“Why aren’t you angry with me?” She turned back to him a second later. “I could be

carrying your child and I went out there anyway. I finished those interviews knowing

someone wanted me dead.”

“And I made sure you did what you had to do, while I watched your back,” he said

simply. “Chay, I don’t want a lapdog. If I wanted a woman willing to say yes to

everything I wanted I could have had it two hundred times over by now. I want you.”

“Why?” She clenched her fists at her side as that anger poured through her. “Why do you

want me?”

“Hell, do I have to have a damned reason?” he fired back. “For God’s sake, Chay,

because you know how to stand up to me? Because you know how to live? You know

how to love.”

“I don’t.”

He stopped. “You don’t what?”

“I don’t know how to love, Natches.” She felt the tremors shaking through her body then.

Deep, hard shudders, the ice building, tightening inside her until she wondered if she

could ever be warm again.

He smiled then. That slow, wicked smile that sent a flame shooting through the ice and a

ragged tremor of response ripping through her senses.

“Well, I guess that’s why you need me then.”

“Why?” She did need him. She needed him until she couldn’t breathe without the thought

of him. And she still couldn’t fathom how to deal with it.

“To show you how to recognize all that love burning within you,” he answered.

He moved to her, stalking across the room until she had to look up to hold his gaze, to

stay connected to the only security she had found in all the years she had lived.

“Where?” She needed to know where it was, how to open it, and how to set it free.

“Ah, Chay,” he whispered, framing her face, his lips brushing against hers. “It’s all just

right here, baby. Burning inside you. All you’ve got to do is let it burn.”

FOURTEEN

Natches wanted to kill. As God was his witness, the moment those shattered honey gold

eyes locked with his after they entered the houseboat, he wanted to kill.

He wanted to make her dead husband, Craig, die again. He wanted to make Nassar

Mallah suffer. He wanted to beat Cranston to a bloody pulp and he wanted to rip whoever

had dared to kill Denton, limb from limb.

He wanted their blood to wash over his hands, but even more, he wanted to ease the

haunting pain from Chaya’s eyes.

“Look at you,” he said, keeping his voice low and gentle. “Running on nothing but coffee

and a few donuts. Shaking in my arms and staring at me so fiercely. I bet if your eyes

hadn’t been swollen shut when I rescued you, I would have seen that same will to fight in

them then.”

“Don’t do this.” She shook her head. “I’m not what you see. I’m not that strong.”

He flashed her a wicked smile, because he knew better. A smile as smug and confident as

any self-appointed sensualist had ever given a woman. And it succeeded in bringing a

flush to her face, a glitter of anger to her eyes.

“You think you know everything.” She pushed at his chest, as though he was actually

going to let her go now. “Let me go.”

He laughed at that. “Baby, I watched your back and let you fight. I took you into the

baddest honky-tonk in three counties and sat at the bar like the good little boy I was told

to be. This is my territory now. I don’t have to be a good boy here.”

“As if you’ve ever been a good boy,” she snorted and tried to twist in his arms.

Natches chuckled at that. “I’ve always been a good boy with you, Chay. I let you run

every time you wanted to run, remember?”

“You’re not letting me run now,” she snapped. “And all I want to run to is the damned

shower.”

He held her easily, letting her twist, letting that sleek little body stroke and rub against

his. His cock was rock hard, it had been ever since he had watched her in that damned

bar.

He’d wanted to wrap her in his arms and rock her, and at the same time he wanted to fuck

her until she knew to the bottom of her soul exactly who she belonged to.

“Yeah, but I’m tired of being a good boy today.” He grinned and dipped his head,

stealing a kiss before she could do more than gasp in protest.

As she struggled, he managed to wrestle her shirt off her. She had changed clothes at the

hotel, but he realized her luggage was likely up in smoke somewhere. The bomb squad

had set several of those suckers off just to match the debris with the dead agent’s car.

The thought of how close she had come to going up in flames as well had his hands

trembling as he held her hips against him and took another kiss. A deeper kiss.

Hell, if he didn’t forget the bone-chilling fear he felt when he realized her car was rigged

to blow, then he might disintegrate from the inside out.

“Natches.” Her voice was more a breathy moan now. “You have to stop this. I have to

think.”

“No thinking allowed here.”

He let her struggle, let her twist until she turned and met the edge of the bar that

separated the living room and kitchen. And then he pressed her shoulders down.

He wasn’t going to go for slow and easy tonight. Slow and easy would come later. Right

now, he was burning alive for her.

He loosened her jeans and dragged them over that very shapely ass. The prettiest ass in

fifty states he swore as he hurriedly released his own jeans and freed the tormented length

of his erection.

Fucking her was ecstasy, and he couldn’t do without it much longer.

“What are you doing?” Breathless, hot, her voice washed over him. She wasn’t

protesting, she was losing herself in it, just as he always lost himself in her.

“We’re trying to make a little Natches, remember?” He tucked the head of his cock

against the swollen, saturated folds of her pussy before pressing into her.

Damn. It was like pressing into a living flame. Natches groaned, feeling sweat coat his

flesh as she burned him alive. He worked his cock farther inside her, feeling her tighten

around him, feeling the delicate muscles of her vagina milking and caressing his sensitive

flesh.

Nothing was this good. There was no pleasure on earth that could ever be as good as

taking Chaya like this. When she reached back for him, her short, neat little nails digging

into his thigh, he gave her more. Slow, easy strokes that buried him inside her a little at a

time. Gave him a chance to relish every ripple of response around the ultrasensitive head

of his cock.

“Damn you, Natches,” she cursed him even as she tugged at his thigh, trying to force him

deeper.

Her voice was thick, a feminine little growl of demand that had him grinning with the

pleasure of it.

“What? You want me to stop?” He stopped. Buried halfway inside her, his cock head

throbbing, dying for more.

“You’re insane,” she cried out.

“Hmm. Good thing one of us is sane then.” He leaned forward and laid a row of kisses

between her shoulder blades. “Our kid needs at least one sane parent. You be the sane

one.” He pressed in farther.

He felt the wash of her juices and had to grit his teeth to hold back his release. His balls

had drawn tight against the base of his shaft, electric sparks of sensation racing from

them with the need to come.

“Oh God, Natches, we can’t keep keeping doing this.” She was breathing hard now,

panting little breaths that assured him that she was as far gone to the pleasure as he was.

“Doing what?” Sweat trickled along his temple as she burned him clear to his soul.

“Talking babies.”

His hips shifted and he drove another inch inside her, quick and hard, and gritted his teeth

as she arched, a hungry little moan begging him for more.

“The thought of giving you babies makes me harder,” he panted. Hell, the thought of her

breathing made him harder. He stayed hard between each release at just the hope of

having more of her.

“Everything makes you harder,” she gasped, and he had to laugh.

“Everything about you makes me harder.” He drew back, the head of his cock poised just

inside her liquid heat before he forged inside again.

A throttled, feminine wail filled the air as he took her again. Pushing deep inside her,

pausing and drawing back, only to push inside her again. Impaling her with slow strokes,

then one fast hard thrust that pinned her to the table and had her trying to scream his

name.

“Did you get those condoms today?” He could barely think, let alone talk. But it was the

love play she needed tonight. That, and the slow realization that it was going to happen.

She was going to belong to him. All of her.

“Damn you,” she cursed, but there was no anger, an edge of laughter, maybe.

“Oh, man, that’s too bad, Chay.” His hands clenched on her hips as he drew back.

“Natches, don’t you dare stop,” she cried out, panic filling her voice. “Oh God, please,

don’t stop.”

There wasn’t a chance.

He thrust inside her to the hilt, snarled at the pleasure that bordered pain as he forced

himself to stop, to hold deep inside her. To feel her.

She was close to orgasm. Her pussy was clenching around his shaft, stroking the sensitive

head, rippling over him like a thousand hungry little fingers caressing him at once.

“You feel so good.” He leaned into her, kissed the shell of her ear then drew the lobe

between his teeth to worry it erotically. “So tight and hot around me. I could stay inside

you forever, feeling you come for me, over and over again, Chay.”

He could feel the perspiration coating both their bodies now. Her nails were digging into

his thigh, a sharp little pain to keep him centered amid the pleasure.

“Are you ready for me, Chay? I’m going to take you hard. I’m going to take you so hard

and deep you’ll think you’re dying. Then, before the last tremor is gone, I’m going to

take you again. Over and over again, until you feel all that love burning and heating

inside you. You hear me, sweetheart? We’re going to find all that love.”

She cried out his name. The sound of her voice, dazed and thick with the pleasure he was

giving her, was almost, just almost, enough to send him over the edge right then. He had

to clench his teeth, had to fight to hold back his release. But he knew holding back wasn’t

going to happen for long.

Gripping her hips firmly, he began to move. He started slow and easy, but slow and easy

wasn’t what either of them needed. She needed to burn through her pain and he needed to

guide her through the heat. He needed to feel her come apart around him, shattering with

the ecstasy as she shattered with hers.

Within seconds, the thrusts built. He was slamming against her, burying his cock inside

her with blinding, furious strokes as she begged for more. For harder. Harder, stronger,

until he heard her wail fill his head and felt her pussy, like a fist tightening on his cock,

milking it, pulling his release from him, tearing through him with fire and lightning.

“Ah hell!” He barely recognized his own voice. “Chay. Ah God, baby, yes, take it. Take

all of me.”

He poured himself into her as he felt the contractions of her pussy spill her release around

him. Deep, violent spurts of semen tore from the head of his cock, the racing pleasure

tearing through his body as he thrust against her, buried himself deeper, and felt stars

exploding in his head as she cried out his name.

He collapsed over her, his knees weak, and damn if he wasn’t starting to feel as

exhausted as she had looked earlier.

The contractions flexing around his cock were easing, and as he kissed her shoulder, he

smiled.

“You know what, sweetheart?” he drawled.

“Hmm.” She was boneless beneath him, sated, relaxing.

“You know you are so pregnant now, don’t you?” Pride flared deep and strong inside

him, and he swore he was growing hard again. “See? I told you, the thought of making

babies with you just makes me harder.”

No sooner had Chaya showered and eaten the impromptu meal Natches had waiting for

her than his family converged on them. Rowdy and his wife, Kelly; Dawg and his wife,

Crista; and their uncle Ray and his wife, Maria. And Crista’s brother, Alex Jansen.

Chaya knew Alex Jansen fairly well—he was better known as Timothy Cranston’s

muscle, though Chaya doubted the Mackays knew that. And from the warning look he

had thrown her, he didn’t want it known, either.

Oh, how tangled this little web was becoming. She knew Alex could report back to

Timothy and cause her more trouble than she wanted to face, but she also knew the man’s

incredible loyalty to his little sister, Crista.

Which way would Alex’s loyalty swing in this one though?

As the men converged on the beers Natches had stacked in an ice-filled cooler and the

women came bearing snacks, sandwiches, and chips, Chaya got a look into the

relationships between the Mackays, their wives, and the uncle that had more or less raised

all of them.

Ray Mackay was the complete opposite of his brothers or sister. He loved his son and his

nephews, he was incredibly protective over all of them, and the loyalty and warmth