The Nauti Boys Collection

by Lora Leigh

  Crista stood still, freezing as anger threatened to overwhelm her.

  “I can’t believe you.” She tried to jerk her arm back, then stared at his fingers as he refused to release her.

  They were shackled on her wrist like irons, snug enough to hold her in place, to remind her that he was bigger, stronger, harder than she was.

  “What can’t you believe about me?” he asked, drawing her along with him to the truck where it sat, driver’s side door still standing open, a few feet behind him.

  “Let me go, Dawg! I have to go job hunting,” she sneered with false sweetness. “Someone cost me this job.”

  Mocking disbelief filled his face. “No! Someone got you fired? Shame on them.”

  Wicked amusement filled his eyes, almost playful, inviting her to share in the fun when he had just taken her only means of support.

  When she jerked her wrist back this time, he let her go.

  “Tell me, Dawg, how do you expect me to support myself? To pay my bills? To keep my car? I don’t have a job now because of you.”

  “You have a job.” The playful amusement left his expression.

  “I have a job?” she jeered bitterly. “Let me guess, you’re going to pay me to play your whore?”

  His expression stilled then. “Get in the truck.”

  She should have been nervous. She had seen that expression on her brother’s face before, and it was one that was best avoided. One she would have avoided if she weren’t so damned mad.

  She knew what he expected, and it enraged her.

  “Not on your egotistical little life!” Her hand slapped against his chest as she felt anger engulf her. “I have a job to—”

  The breath rushed from her chest as he jerked her to him, her breasts flush against his broad chest, the fingers of one broad hand tangled in her hair as he pulled her head back, his gaze imprisoning hers as she stared back at him in shock.

  “We made a deal.” His voice rasped with something akin to anger, and yet it went deeper than anger.

  Crista trembled as she stared into the light green eyes and the determination that glowed inside them.

  “That deal didn’t include stealing my job and my life. You had no right to do this.”

  “My bed, or jail. My terms. And my terms say that while you’re sharing my bed, then by God you’ll share when I want you there, not when you have time for me.”

  Shock filled her, and not for the first time. This wasn’t the Dawg she had known eight years before, but he was the man who had taken her that night so long ago.

  The veneer of teasing charm had been stripped away, and in its place was a man she wasn’t certain she could handle.

  “You won’t arrest me.” Her voice trembled. “You know I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

  “We have a deal,” he repeated. “Now get your ass in that truck. We’ll discuss the terms of it back at the houseboat, but we will not discuss them here, in the middle of a goddamned parking lot.”

  He didn’t give her time to argue. He picked her up by her waist, turned, and pushed her into the vehicle.

  “My clothes…” She tried to scramble back out, only to come face-to-face with eyes that began to become turbulent in their color. Light greens, sparks of darker color, a swirl of chaotic shades that had her suddenly stilling.

  His jaw bunched with tension, the muscle in his cheek twitching twice before he managed to control it.

  The keys were plucked from her fingers.

  “Don’t move. So help me God, you come out of that truck, Crista, and you’ll regret it. Because I’ll turn you over my knee and paddle your ass here and now. Do you understand me?”

  She stared back at him warily.

  He stomped, literally stomped the short distance to her Rodeo, unlocked it, and dragged her suitcase from the front seat.

  “My flowers.” Her voice gained strength. If all she was risking was a spanking, then he could damned well get everything she had packed. “And the box in the back.”

  The suitcase thumped on the ground as he turned and stared back at her broodingly.

  “Surely I can at least have the few things I need.” She smiled back at him tightly. “Even condemned prisoners get a few personal articles, Dawg.”

  His eyes narrowed before he locked the driver’s side door and slammed it closed. He paced to the back of the vehicle, unlocked the hatchback, and jerked it open. The box of extra clothes, makeup, and personal items was set out, then the miniature rosebush and flowering cactus that sat in the corner.

  Slamming the hatchback closed again, he locked it and packed her items in the backseat of his truck.

  “Move over.” His voice was harsh as he stepped to the opened door once again.

  “I need my car.”

  “I said move over.”

  “You can’t just leave my car sitting here, Dawg, I need it.” She forced herself not to scream in complete frustration. “This is going too damned far…”

  He gripped her waist, and before Crista could fight him he had lifted her over the console and dropped her into the passenger side seat before climbing in.

  Damn him. She gripped the door latch with every intention of throwing herself from the truck and reclaiming her precious Rodeo.

  “Open that door, and so help me, you’ll regret it.”

  She stilled at the sound of his voice, turning to glare at him furiously as he put the truck in gear and turned the monster vehicle around.

  “I need my car.”

  “Natches can collect it later.” One hand tightened on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift that rose from the floor as he drove from the parking lot and turned back onto Main Street before heading for the interstate.

  “That’s not fair. None of this is fair, Dawg,” she yelled. “You stole my job. That’s the same as stealing everything I own.”

  And that wasn’t much, admittedly. Mainly the Rodeo, but it was the thought that counted.

  “I’ll take care of your bills,” he bit out.

  “Why not just stamp whore on my head,” she sneered.

  The truck was jerked to the side of the road, rocking to a hard stop as he turned to her, the effort to control whatever rose inside him visibly apparent on his face.

  “Call yourself a whore again, and I’ll make sure that spanking you have yet to receive is nothing pleasant,” he snarled between clenched teeth.

  “What do you call it then?”

  “I call it a deal you made and agreed to.” He spoke with hard deliberation as his eyes speared into hers. “And I make the rules. You don’t. Now sit back, fasten your seat belt, and stop arguing the point with me before I do something guaranteed to show everyone who passes by this truck just how little I care about propriety or their fucking opinions of either of us.”

  Which amounted to nothing, and Crista knew it. Gritting her teeth against the furious words rising to her lips, she slammed the seat belt latch in, crossed her arms over her breasts, and stared straight ahead.

  She admitted to being slightly nervous. Not exactly frightened of Dawg, but warier than she would have been even two days before. There was a glow of lust, of hunger in his gaze that had the feminine core of her shaking in trepidation. And it had her mind spinning.

  Dawg had always been so fiercely controlled. He never showed anger, at least that was the rumor. He was a get-even rather than a get-mad kind of man.

  It wasn’t anger she saw in him now but the dark, primal core of a man who was no longer hiding who or what he was. And the savage hunger that glowed in his eyes aroused her more than the false charm ever had.

  This was the Dawg she had always sensed lurking beneath the surface. The one who had held her back when she was younger, who frightened the immature sexuality she had possessed then.

  It was that inner man he had let loose on her the night she had spent with him. The drunken charm had evaporated once he had her in his bed, and though he hadn’t been rough, he had been determined, hungry.
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  “What happened that night?”

  His voice had her stilling, her heart beating faster in her chest. She didn’t want to talk about that night. She didn’t want to relive it any more than she already had.

  “We had sex. Period.”

  “We had sex, so you ran out of town with another man, stayed away seven years, and now you’re fighting something between us that threatens to burn down the county once we get back into bed. Sorry, fancy-face, that one doesn’t go over so well with me. You’re lying.”

  She remembered, this was how he got his name. She’d heard Ray relate the tale, how even as a child he would get something in his mind and wouldn’t let it go. Like a dog with a bone. Dawg. He hadn’t changed much.

  “What happened eight years ago doesn’t matter, Dawg.” She shook her head tiredly. “What’s happening now does. I can’t afford not to work for three months, and I won’t accept money to sleep with you. I have to have a job.”

  “We’re not talking about that right now.” His voice rumbled with displeasure.

  “And we’re not talking about what happened eight years ago, either,” she retorted. “Actually, that night is really pretty fuzzy in my head. I’ve all but forgotten it.”

  And that had to be the biggest lie she had ever told in her life.

  Crista glanced over at him, satisfied and yet more nervous than ever once she saw the dark, brooding intensity of his expression.

  “It just pisses me off when you lie to me, Crista Ann,” he growled, glancing at her over the top edge of his dark glasses as he came to a stoplight.

  The vehicle rolled to a stop as Crista stared out at the town that stretched on each side of the highway running through it. It had grown in the years she had been away from it, but it was still filled with the same qualities she had missed.

  There were no high-rises here, no frantic rush of people walking down the sidewalks, fighting to get from office to office and ignoring everyone around them. She could walk into any store and see someone she knew or had known from her childhood.

  She had friends here, distant relatives, and history.

  She was aware of him glancing back at her as he put the truck into gear and accelerated through the green light, gathering speed and heading to the marina outside town.

  “How long have you been working undercover against the drug dealers around here?” she asked him then. “I know Alex said the problem had grown, but I didn’t know it was bad enough to warrant late-night raids.”

  “They’re rare.” His voice was clipped, the message clear. He didn’t want to talk about it.

  “It must be getting pretty bad. The guy who caught me in the warehouse looked like one of the monsters television portrays. If the Latin factions have moved into Somerset, won’t it be hard to weed them out?”

  His fingers tapped against the steering wheel as he glanced at her.

  “Doubtful.” He was determined not to discuss it with her, that was more than obvious.

  “Do you know who the woman was who was supposed to be there?”

  At that question, he froze. “Not yet.”

  Crista bit at her lower lip nervously. “You’ve questioned the other men though, right?”

  “This morning.”

  “Did you find the money they were missing?”

  His head swung around briefly, his gaze hidden behind the dark glasses now.

  “Not yet.” Clipped, dark, his voice sent a shiver down her spine. “Why?”

  “He seemed to think I had it. That was what he said to me: ‘Where’s my money, puta?’ Evidently, he’s not the only one that considers me a—”

  She swore he growled. Crista compressed her lips at the silent snarl that pulled at his lips.

  “What else did he say?” he snapped out.

  “He didn’t have time to say anything else. You splattered his blood all over me less than a second later.”

  “It beat seeing your fucking blood staining that damned warehouse.” Violence filled his voice before Crista watched him forcibly rein it in with a tight grimace. “Did you hear anything else? See anything else?”

  She shook her head slowly, feeling the terror that had risen inside her the night before beating at her head again. Dawg had relieved the horror of the event the night before, strangely enough, with his obnoxious blackmail demand. But now it was beginning to set in. The fact that she had nearly died. That if she had just gone to Dawg before, this might not have happened.

  She licked her lips nervously. “Look, this is probably totally unrelated, but before this, weird things were happening anyway. So weird that when I told Alex about them, he just about ordered me to call you.”

  “What things?”

  She went through them briefly: missing clothes, the feeling that someone was following her, watching her.

  “Do you think it had something to do with last night?” she asked as she finished.

  Dawg didn’t think; he knew. He could feel it burning in his gut and itching along the back of his neck. Primitive possession roiled through his mind as he glanced at Crista and realized that somehow, for some reason, someone among the crew they had rounded up last night had known to use her.

  It was far-fetched; he would do better to suspect her of being involved to begin with, but his unruly dick refused to let him consider it.

  But, if someone had been trying to throw her into the mix, then it was because they knew of his obsession for her. And there were very, very few people who knew that Dawg couldn’t forget one Crista Ann Jansen.

  He wiped his hand down his face and considered his options. They hadn’t caught the one female of the group who they knew had been involved. The mediator between the buyers and sellers had been a woman; the vague description the team had of her resembled Crista. And if she was telling the truth about the buyer, Aaron Grael, then the woman had made off with half down on a two million dollar deal.

  He blew out a rough breath as he glanced over at her. She was watching him worriedly, her chocolate eyes filled with indecision and a hint of fear. But there was no guilt. Over the years, hell, even before he joined the Marines, he had been able to spot most lies a mile away. He couldn’t see anything in Crista’s gaze but her worry and her discomfort.

  “You haven’t answered me.” There was a snap to her voice that assured him that she wasn’t frightened enough to have forgotten her earlier anger with him.

  “Let me check into a few things and talk to Natches about this,” he finally said, his voice rough. There was too damned much money missing to discount any of it. “But my best guess is that it’s all connected. Somehow. I just have to figure out how.”

  “If you’re undercover, as I assume you are, because I haven’t heard anything about you working with the DEA, then someone would have to know the truth to know to use me,” she said hesitantly.

  He had to give her credit for being smart. No one had ever accused Crista of being without her own sense of intuition.

  Too bad he wasn’t really working with the DEA; his problems might be easier at the moment.

  “Natches and I both are undercover,” he finally said. “The deal we broke up last night had been in the works for over six months. We pulled in everyone except the buyer I killed and one more player. We’re looking for the other person now.”

  She didn’t say anything for long moments.

  “The other player is a woman,” she finally guessed, her voice trembling. “And she resembles me, doesn’t she?”

  Dawg made the turn into the Mackay Marina in silence before he glanced over at her again.

  “The description we have of her resembles you,” he admitted softly, seeing her flinch from the corner of his eye. “She’s the only one missing; she has the money. There’s no reason for any focus to linger on you.”

  “Unless one of the men you captured saw me? Or recognized me from town? Or someone associated with them sees me now?”

  “Let’s not borrow trouble, Crista.” But they were thought
s brewing in his own mind. “You concentrate on the here and now; I’ll concentrate on the rest of it.”

  “Just concentrate on your little blackmail scheme?” she retorted acidly.

  “Make happy with my dick, and I’ll be a happy little camper.” He said the words for shock effect. He hated seeing the fear in her eyes, in her expression. And that took care of it nicely.

  “Has anyone ever told you what a bastard you are, Dawg?” Hostility radiated from her now.

  Dawg let his lips curl into a mocking grin. Oh yeah, he knew what a bastard he was. His father had made certain he had known at a very early age.

  “You’re telling me now.” He pulled into his parking slot close to the docks, his gaze moving carefully around the area as he shut the pickup off before turning to face her. “You ready to make nice and go to the boat yet? Or do we need to sit here and have a screaming match instead?”

  “I don’t have screaming matches.” Her expression lit with offended anger.

  “You’d be the first woman then,” he grunted, moving from the vehicle. “Let’s go. I need a cold beer.”

  Summer had just started, but it was already warming up with a ferocity that sent waves of heat curling up from the asphalt.

  He pulled her suitcase from the backseat as well as the box and tucked it under his arm as she rounded the front of the truck.

  “I’ll get the flowers.” Her expression was anxious, as though she couldn’t trust him to take care of two damned pots of flowers.

  But hell, why should she? She couldn’t even trust him to help her when Alex advised her to.

  Son of a bitch. Missing items from her home, a feeling of being watched and followed. She had all the signs of a stalker at the very least, and she hadn’t contacted anyone. If she had contacted the sheriff, Zeke Mayes, he would have let Dawg know.

  Dawg let her gather the two oversized pots in her arms. The red miniature rosebush with its pot was nearly as tall as she was. The flowering cactus was smaller but no less bulky.

  “I can have Natches come back for those,” he told her doubtfully.

  The glare she gave him had his lips tightening in annoyance.