The Nauti Boys Collection

by Lora Leigh

  “Johnny’s mother managed to win over half the property in Dawg’s father’s estate,” she told Crista softly, obviously seeing the confusion in her face. “It was a prime piece of property and borders the land Dawg bought to build the house on. She and Johnny have gloated over it ever since. Just as Dawg gloats over the fact that he owns the rest of that valley and they have no idea who bought it out from under them.”

  “This is insane,” Crista muttered. “How could they steal his inheritance? Didn’t his parents have a will?”

  “A will Nadine protested based on several letters Dawg’s father sent to her stating that Dawg didn’t deserve it, and how he wished Johnny had been his son as well. They read those letters in the courtroom. I was there when it happened. I swear, Crista, you could see something break inside of Dawg then. For years, there was so little softness inside him that he would have terrified you.”

  It terrified her now. It would have destroyed most men.

  “Johnny’s a dead man walking,” Kelly said then, her voice steady, saddened. “Rowdy, Ray, or Dawg won’t touch him, but Natches…” She turned and looked Crista in the eye, her own gaze heavy with remorse and fear. “Natches will kill him. He’s closer to Dawg than he is to anyone else. He won’t let this go.”

  And that would destroy Dawg.

  Crista stared at the three men as they moved into the kitchen, and she could hear the worry in Ray’s voice as he asked about Natches.

  “He’ll be fine, Uncle Ray.” Dawg was assuring his uncle, but Crista could hear the worry in his voice, too.

  “You know he didn’t start building that house until you moved back to Somerset, don’t you, Crista?” Kelly asked then.

  Crista stared back at her in surprise.

  The other woman’s face was reflective, her gaze assessing.

  “I hope you love him as much as I think you do, and that doesn’t even compare to how much I know Dawg loves you. Don’t betray him.” Kelly’s voice hardened then. “Betray him, and you’ll make some very bad enemies.”

  It was a warning, and one Crista took no offense to. She shook her head as a smile tipped her lips.

  “Kelly, I’d die first,” she said softly. “I didn’t wait eight years to grow up and come back to him, just to betray him. You can forget the warnings, because they’re not needed.”

  A bright smile tipped Kelly’s lips then, and a hint of teasing laughter filled her eyes.

  “We’re going to be great friends then,” the other woman declared. “After all, we need each other to talk trash on them. Trust me, you’ll have days you’ll swear you should have shot him rather than loved him, but it all balances out good. Rowdy and Dawg are too much alike. There are days I swear I’m going to shoot Rowdy, but I know I could never live without him, so I resign myself to dealing with it.”

  Crista let her gaze linger on Dawg again. He stood with Rowdy and Ray at the other end of the kitchen. They were talking in low voices as they fortified themselves with the beers Dawg had taken from the refrigerator.

  His eyes met hers, and the corners of his lips tipped into an encouraging smile at he nodded at something Ray said.

  “Dawg’s different with you, Crista,” Kelly said then. “Calmer. Not as prone to stand distant and apart from the others. He was doing that before you returned. Slowly drawing away from Rowdy. It was breaking Rowdy’s heart.”

  As she watched Dawg, she could understand why he would have been drawing away. Rowdy had a father who loved him, a family, and a woman to fill his heart. Dawg understood what he was lacking in his own life, just as Crista had always known what was lacking in hers.

  “Rowdy was loved,” Crista murmured then. “He had something Dawg knew he needed as well.”

  Kelly glanced at Dawg, then back to Crista as she nodded slowly.

  “The change didn’t come after he blackmailed you. It came with your return. Dawg knew what he was missing, and he thought he’d never find it. When you came back, the part of him that knew how to love reawakened, Crista. Don’t doubt that. And don’t doubt for one minute that he would give his soul to protect you.”

  As she would give hers. No. She amended that. She no longer had a soul separate from Dawg’s. It was melded with his and had been for over eight years.

  “Let’s get more plates and get them fed,” Crista said then, calculating the amount of food sitting on the table and how far it would go. It should just stretch.

  “Good idea. Food usually settles Rowdy’s bloodthirsty instincts.” Kelly sighed. “He’s ready to help Ray kill Johnny.”

  He wasn’t the only one.

  As they gathered around the table, Crista continued to watch the three men, drawing in impressions and letting the final pieces of the puzzle that represented Dawg fall into place.

  His bond with Rowdy and Ray extended to Kelly, but there was no lust, no hint of desire, when he looked at the other woman. Crista saw friendship, affection, but nothing more. As she watched, she realized that one of her greatest fears had been that of seeing Dawg stare at Kelly with arousal.

  She knew the games he had played in the past with his cousins and found it hard to believe they could step away from it so easily. Even for love.

  But it appeared that at least Dawg and Rowdy had done just that. Crista wasn’t uncomfortable when Rowdy looked at her; she saw no interest other than the casual interest that would have been expected.

  Dawg teased Kelly, laughed with her, but he didn’t desire her.

  Watching the interplay made her realize exactly what she had missed in the years she had been away, but they weren’t years she would regret. She had matured, grown up, learned something of herself and of the world around her. Enough to know where home was and who her heart belonged to.

  Dawg belonged to her. She felt it, where she had feared it before. Just as she belonged to him.

  “What do you think, Crista?” Dawg’s voice drew her back from her thoughts and had her staring back at him. She blinked and refocused to see the heat stirring in his light green eyes and the heavy interest in his expression as he watched her.

  “About what?” she asked.

  “About taking tomorrow morning to head into town for some fresh baked goods. After all, as far as Johnny knows, none of us know what the hell he’s up to. How do you feel about shaking him up a little bit?”

  She stared at the three men and one woman watching her expectantly and felt shock rise inside her.

  “I think you’ve lost your minds,” she retorted in disbelief. “Don’t you think that once he realizes I never left Somerset that he’s going to get suspicious? That he’ll figure out that you’re onto him?”

  The smile Dawg gave her was frankly terrifying. It was filled with expectation, anticipation, and a gleam of dangerous determination.

  “That, fancy-face, is exactly what we’re counting on.”

  TWENTY

  “I don’t like it!” Crista exclaimed again, hours later, after the houseboat had cleared out and she followed Dawg upstairs, where he carefully pulled a panel from the bedroom wall and displayed more weapons than she wanted to think about.

  Lord, the man was an armory by himself.

  “It’s perfectly safe, sweetheart.” He was using that conciliatory tone that he had used downstairs.

  She hated it then, and she definitely hated it now. It smacked of patronization, and that was something she had never tolerated well.

  “Don’t you sweetheart me,” she told him fiercely. “And don’t bother patronizing me now that you can’t blackmail me any longer, Dawg. That’s only going to piss me off.”

  “And blackmailing you didn’t piss you off?” His eyes crinkled with amusement, amusement overlying pain, as he glanced around the opened panel and pulled free several handguns and clips.

  Crista stared askance at the weapons. She recognized the Glock handguns; Alex had several similar ones. That didn’t mean she liked them or the necessity of having them.

  “At least I understood t
he blackmail,” she snorted. “I would have done it myself if I had the chance.”

  He paused, his brows arching, as he laid the two handguns on the dresser and reclosed and locked the panel as he stared back at her in interest.

  “You would have?” His gaze heated, filled with arousal, as she watched his body tense in preparation.

  Crista frowned back at him fiercely. “Don’t go there, Dawg. We’re going to talk about this.”

  “Of course we are,” he assured her smoothly as he sat down on the bed and patted his knee. “Come here, fancy-face, and tell me what you would have done if you could have blackmailed me.”

  Her lips pressed together firmly, controlling the amusement that would have slipped free.

  “I wasn’t talking about blackmailing you.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and glared back at him. “Dawg, Johnny can’t be completely sane—”

  A bitter bark of laughter left Dawg’s throat. “Crista, sweetheart, Johnny isn’t insane. He’s highly intelligent; he graduated only one point below valedictorian. Just under Natches, who claimed that honor during their high school graduation. He’s not crazy; he’s a highly intelligent menace who will cut your throat if you turn your back on him. Just like he did the driver of the military transport carrying those missiles.”

  Crista stared back at him in horror. “They killed him?”

  “The lone female of the group sliced his throat open. We suspect, based on the video and voice box in the cab of the transport, that he knew her. Or him, as the case may be. We know Johnny has portrayed himself as female through this whole deal. As you.”

  “He set the explosive in my Rodeo then?” she whispered.

  Dawg nodded heavily. “He’s the only one with a motive, Crista. Killing you would have made it look like a hit by the mercenaries and placed all guilt on you. He would have gotten away with the money, and the mercenaries would have been in prison scratching their heads.”

  “What about friends of the men you arrested?”

  He shook his head as he reached out and drew her to him, pulling her onto his lap.

  Crista leaned into him, her head resting on his shoulder as her arms looped around his neck.

  He kissed the top of her head before he answered her. “The mercenary and his team didn’t have a name for the woman, only a description, which they gave. No name, and the physical features of the face, though similar, weren’t yours. The buyers aren’t talking yet. Cole knew your name, but only after Johnny visited in the detention center. In the small talk, Johnny told him to get fucked, pretending to be you. He had the money and he was free; Cole wasn’t. That would have drawn those mercenaries right to your door. They learned different during the interrogation Cranston and Natches led after Johnny’s visit. We suspect even they weren’t certain exactly who they were dealing with. Johnny’s slick like that, Crista. He always was. I’m just surprised that he could actually kill in cold blood. I didn’t expect that out of him.”

  Neither had Crista. But she had a feeling Johnny had disappointed Dawg as well. For all Johnny’s faults and his mother’s influence, Crista had the feeling that Dawg had managed to hold out a measure of hope for his other cousin.

  “He was the one who told Natches’s father about the sharing, when we were teenagers,” Dawg said then. “I thought Dayle had killed him when we got to the house with Uncle Ray. Natches’s mother had called, calm as hell, and told Ray he needed to come for Natches before Dayle killed him. There was blood everywhere, and his father was still trying to beat the hell out of him. He was in the hospital for a week and refused to admit his father had done it. He still has scars on his back. And Johnny cried when we confronted him. Blubbered like a baby and swore he hadn’t meant for it to happen. That he had been playing, poking at Dayle because he was always so critical of him.”

  Dawg’s voice echoed with that past horror.

  “He meant to do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Dawg mused. “To this day, I still don’t know. But I suspect he knew what would happen. We all knew not to push Dayle where Natches was concerned. He took great pleasure in beating the hell out of him whenever he could justify it.”

  Crista blinked back her tears.

  “And your father?” She already knew part of Dawg’s history, had known it even before that first night she had spent with him.

  “He wasn’t as violent as Dayle.” He shrugged negligently. “And I knew how to fight back. Natches never fought back, and I never understood why.”

  “Because of Janey.” Crista lifted her head and stared up at Dawg, suddenly suspecting why Natches had never fought back.

  “Janey?” he asked.

  “Natches’s sister.”

  “I know who Janey is, but what does she have to do with this?”

  “Maybe he didn’t fight back because he was afraid Dayle would turn his aggression on Janey. Maybe he was trying to wait until she was old enough to run if she had to.”

  Janey was a lot younger than Natches, at least ten years younger. She would have been ten or eleven when Natches was publicly disowned so long ago.

  “Maybe,” Dawg said thoughtfully before sighing heavily. “God help the bastard if he ever hit her, though. Natches would murder him.”

  “Do we really have to do this, Dawg?” she finally asked on a sigh. “Push Johnny like that? It could be dangerous.”

  “Only for Johnny.” His voice darkened, sending a shiver up her spine at the danger that filled it. “Mark my words, Crista, I won’t let him get away with this. He knew what he was doing when he decided to frame you. And he should have known what would happen if I ever figured out what was going on.”

  She parted her lips to argue further but found herself instead flat on her back on the bed and staring up at Dawg in surprise.

  “Enough about Johnny,” he growled. “And I’ve waited long enough to collect on that little tease by the lake earlier.”

  “Tease?” she gasped in mocking offense. “That was no tease, Dawg Mackay. You weren’t exactly groaning because you didn’t get to come, you know.”

  “It was a tease, pure and simple.” His hand pushed the hem of her camisole top up over her stomach. “All I got to do was lick that sweet pussy while you drove me insane with your mouth. I need more. Sweet heaven, Crista. I need so much more of you.”

  Her shirt was pulled slowly from her and tossed to the floor.

  “Keep your arms there.” He pressed them against the mattress, above her head, as she had done with him earlier beneath the wind and the sky. “Let me unwrap you, Crista. My own special present. I must have been a very good boy at some point to deserve this.”

  Her throat tightened at the emotion in his voice, at the tenderness in his touch, as he released the catch of her bra and drew it from her as well.

  His hands cupped her swollen breasts, his thumbs raking over her nipples as his gaze darkened at the sight of the flushed tips.

  “Would you have nursed our child?” he asked her, his voice incredibly deep, filled with regret and hunger, pain and longing.

  “Yes.” Crista arched into his touch, feeling her nipples tighten further as his finger and thumb gripped the pebble-hard tip.

  “Would you have let me watch?” His head lowered, his lips feathering over her collarbone as Crista arched to the heated caress.

  “Yes.” She moaned the word.

  His fingers were tormenting her nipples, making her wild for the touch of his lips, lips that were moving slowly over one flushed mound, his tongue licking at her flesh as it came closer to the aching tip.

  “I love your breasts. How they feel, how they taste. How hard and hot your little nipples get for me.” His hands cupped the mounds again, plumping them, lifting one closer to his lips as his tongue arrowed on the stiff peak.

  When his mouth covered it, Crista was on the verge of begging. Once the heat of his suckling mouth and the lash of his tongue took possession of it, she was begging.

  “Dawg. Please.” Her
hands fisted in the blanket beneath her. “More. Harder.”

  His touch was light, tender. She needed hard and hot. She needed the hunger she could feel barely leashed inside him. A hunger that was tearing through her, clenching in her pussy, spasming her womb.

  “Harder, darlin’?” He licked over her nipple. “I don’t want to rush this. I want to build the burn inside you. I want you ready for anything, for everything I can give you.”

  And she remembered exactly what he could give her when he touched her slow and easy. When each deliberate caress built the fire inside her to the point that pleasure bordered pain, and pain became a sensation so erotic that even the most wicked acts were the ones that brought the greatest pleasure. The most sensation.

  “We’ll both remember this, Crista. Forever,” he swore. “Neither of us will forget.”

  Because they were both aware, connected now in a way they hadn’t been before.

  Crista stretched before him, her hips lifting from the bed as he gripped the band of her soft capris and drew them from her legs. His palms smoothed back up her legs, over the narrow band of her panties, and drew those from her as well.

  Her eyes opened, her sight dazed as she stared down at him, watching as he spread her thighs slowly. His gaze became heavy lidded, drowsy with sensuality.

  “Such a pretty pussy,” he groaned, his thumbs moving into the indention between her thighs and the tender folds of her sex. “Soft and pink. Your juices glistening on it.”

  And they were. Already the silky wash of her arousal was gleaming on her flesh.

  He didn’t stop to touch or to taste though. Instead, he pulled himself on the bed beside her, leaned over her, and kissed her with all the pent-up lust she saw glowing in his gaze.

  One large hand gripped her wrists as she tried to lift her hands to touch him. He anchored them to the bed above her head and ravished her lips. His tongue twined with hers, tasted her mouth, and caressed her lips. His free hand caressed her breasts, her belly, her thighs. His fingers plumped her nipples, gripped and teased them, and fanned the flames glowing from them.