by Lora Leigh
Dayle laughed at the question. “Trust me, Daniel, I know my son. I knew it was just a matter of time. The boy’s a killer. He was a killer in the Marines, and he’ll always be a killer. That kind of cold only adheres to its own kind. He’ll come in.”
“Very well,” Daniel agreed. “Arrange the meeting and contact us when you’ve finished.”
The sound of the recorder disengaging flipped a switch in his mind. Cold. Hard. Yeah, he was a killer. He turned slowly to meet his cousins’ eyes.
“Chaya, do you still have those files?” He knew she did.
“They’re upstairs in my case.” She moved for the staircase but not before she cast him a suspicious look.
As she disappeared upstairs he looked at his family. His cousins and the man he called friend.
“This might not go as easy as she thinks it will,” he told them quietly. “If anything happens to me, you take care of her and my child.” He looked to Dawg and Rowdy. “Give him what Uncle Ray always gave me, and make it stick.”
Dawg and Rowdy glanced at each other.
“Man, this is going to be a walk in the park,” Dawg protested. “Alex has point, your woman has your wire, DHS in the van, and me and Rowdy in place. Nothing’s going to happen.” Dawg’s gaze sharpened. “Unless you do something dumb. You gonna do somethin’ dumb, Natches?”
Natches’s lips quirked at the question. “Have I ever done things any other way, cousin?”
“Hell.”
“He’s going to do things right, or he’ll find me standing beside him.”
Natches jerked around, frowning at Chaya, who didn’t have those files in her hand. But her hand was propped on her hip and her expression was something just this side of pissed off.
“Isn’t that right, Natches?”
He inclined his head smoothly. “I’ll play by the plan,” he promised her.
But he knew Dayle. And he knew Dayle would never play by any kind of rules. This was it and he knew it. When he walked out of that meeting, one way or the other, it was going to be over.
And she didn’t believe a word he was saying.
“Here’s the cell phone.” Alex pulled the phone out of his pocket and handed it across the table. “Cranston’s proud as hell of this little puppy. He said not to break it; it’s the only prototype they’ve managed to complete successfully.”
Natches lifted the phone from the table, flipped it open, and checked it for anything that Dayle could use to identify it as a wire rather than a phone.
“It even makes phone calls,” Chaya told him with a hard smile.
“Cranston has the van parked in town, one agent inside. As soon as he has the location point he can park it within half a mile and still receive clear reception,” Alex informed them. “As far as any listening ears at the hotel could know, he’s raging over Natches’s refusal to join the team or to help Agent Dane complete her mission. He’s making plans to pull out of Somerset once she contacts him.”
“Which will be tonight,” she told them. “I’ll contact Cranston and inform him that he should pick me up in the morning and that I’ll be returning to D.C. with him.”
“That’s when I assume Dayle will make his call.” Natches nodded.
“I’ll need to activate the cell phone to your number rather than using your own cell,” Chaya told him. “We want a recording of it. Calls will transmit with no possible trace outside the half-mile limit.”
“We’ll be ready to move when Cranston gives the order.” Alex nodded to Dawg and Rowdy. “We’ll have everything in place and ready to move.”
“And he’ll have his own watchers,” Natches warned them.
“He has six we’ve identified, and we’ll have men covering them. We’ll allow them to stay in place until the last minute before taking them out.”
It was a damned good plan. Natches nodded to the three men as he curled his arms around Chaya and pulled her back against his chest, one hand against her lower stomach as he stared back at his cousins, his look intent.
They knew. Brief nods assured him they knew. If anything happened to him, then Chaya was to be protected, just as he would have protected one of their wives, one of their children.
They had made that vow long ago and far away. Three boys that should have been brothers, that had wished they were. They had become brothers. And they had made that vow, what belonged to one was the others’ to protect. That simple.
Chaya felt his hand on her stomach and stared at Dawg and Rowdy fiercely. No matter what Natches wanted, he was to be protected. Their gazes flickered to her, then back to Natches, and she hoped, she prayed that the nod they gave was an affirmative to that silent demand.
The Nauti Boys were thick as thieves, it was said. Their loyalty was to each other and to family alone. That bond would protect Natches.
“We’re out of here then.” Alex got to his feet and looked to the back of the boat. “Damn, that water’s fuckin’ cold tonight.”
“And Kelly and Crista have electric blankets and hot coffee waiting on us. That’s the best you’re going to do tonight, Alex,” Dawg informed him.
“Yeah, the two of you curl up with a warm body, and I get stuck with an electric blanket,” he grunted. “I always get the short end of the deal with you boys.”
“Yeah, and we’ll remind you of that one of these days.”
They disappeared along the hallway, silence slowly descending through the houseboat. There wasn’t a splash, a dip of the boat, or a slide of a door to indicate they had left.
“Come sit with me.” Natches drew her to the couch, but rather than sitting, he stretched out on the cushions and drew her into his arms.
“Just sit?”
“Just let me hold you.” He tucked her close, his body warm and hard, strong and secure.
“Stop making this feel like a funeral, Natches. Nothing is going to happen.”
He chuckled at that, then sobered. “You know, Chay, the last time I spoke to him I was twenty. I had cracked ribs, one was broken, my mouth was full of blood, and I could have sworn I was dying. I told him, as Dawg, Rowdy, and Uncle Ray dragged me off of that floor, that the next time I spoke to him, I’d kill him.”
He’d spat his blood on the bastard’s shoes and made a vow, and Dayle had laughed at him. Natches had never forgotten that gloating laugh; he had heard it again tonight.
“And you’re not going to kill him,” she told him.
“Yeah, I am.” Natches smiled as she stiffened in his arms, and at the thought of what he was going to do to Dayle. “Betraying him to DHS will be the same as death for him. It’s the ultimate revenge for me. Because I’ll know, every day, that he’s breathing; we’ll both know I beat him.”
He held that inside him, though he knew clear to his gut that things weren’t going to be that easy. He was a Marine. A sniper. An assassin. He’d always worked alone, without a spotter, sometimes without extraction. Because shit happened after blood was shed, and when shit happened, information came out. He’d learned to go with his gut. To know when to run and when to hang around. And when something wasn’t going to go as planned.
This wasn’t going to go as planned.
And if it all went to hell and back, then he wanted this night. He wanted to hold her, he wanted to talk to her.
His hand slid along her stomach once again.
“If our child is a boy, I want to teach him to play baseball,” he told her softly.
She laughed at that. A soft, amused little sound that had a smile curling at his lips.
“If it’s a girl, you’ll be a tyrant.”
A girl? A frown drew at his brows. A daughter, with her mother’s hair and eyes and, God help him, Mackay blood. He shuddered. “I’ll lock her up until she turns fifty.”
“You will not.” Her hand covered his, her fingers twining those of his other hand as it lay on her thigh.
“I promise you. Till she’s fifty. That girl will be wilder than the wind and harder to control than a green mu
le.”
She looked up at him, the dim light in the room catching the sparkle in her eyes, the love, the concern, the fears that would ride her until this was finished.
“She’ll be a lady.” The sound of her laughter was almost a giggle, because she knew better, just as he did.
“Wild as the wind,” he argued again.
“And a boy wouldn’t be?” She reached up and touched his face, and that touch, tenderness and warmth combined, was another memory he stored inside him.
“Boys are different,” he told her.
She frowned, just as he knew she would. “How do you figure?”
“Boys are born to be wild.”
“And girls are born to tame the wind,” she said softly. “What are you doing, Natches?”
He knew what she was talking about. Why was he just holding her, just talking, just building memories?
“I’m creating my shield.” He lowered his head and kissed her lips. “You’re my shield, Chay, you just don’t know it. Soft and sweet, born to tame the wind and to tempt my dreams. When I walk into that meeting, I want to carry this with me.”
“Why?”
He was silent for long moments, wondering if there was any way to make her understand.
“So I won’t kill him,” he finally admitted. “Because this memory and all the others will be wrapped around me, and I’ll remember what you’re fighting for and how important keeping him alive really is. You’re the only thing standing between him and death, Chay. Just this, and knowing he’s more important to your fight than he is to mine.”
“Then I’ll be your shield,” she whispered, turning, facing him, embracing him. “Always, Natches, I’ll be your shield.”
TWENTY
He didn’t make love to her that night. He waited until the sun rose and carried her to the bed. There, he stripped her slowly, gently, and gazed at the woman splayed out before him.
Sweetly rounded breasts, her nipples hard and red. Her stomach was smooth, only slightly rounded. There was no sign yet that his child rested there, but he knew it did.
Sweetly curved thighs, and between them, silky bare flesh.
The hours he had spent holding her, kissing her, stroking her, had stoked the fires inside them to a burning simmer. Something Natches had never known before. It was the first time in his life he had ever spent time just holding a woman, just stroking her, just laying velvet kisses wherever he could reach.
He’d been hard for hours. He could have fucked her ten times over in the time he had taken just loving her on that couch. But he wouldn’t have traded it for anything he’d known in the past. Each touch, each kiss, each little laugh, sigh, and whispered love word had bound them closer together.
She had felt it. He felt it. He knew there were silken-wrapped chains in his soul now, and they led back to her. The burn was now a flame though. Natches smiled down at her, wild, wicked hunger raging inside him.
He’d been born as wild as the wind, and like the wind, he had torn through his own life, whipping around it without direction, shearing his own dreams as he moved, until he met Chaya.
And she had been born to tame that wind inside him. Not the man, she made the man wild, made him hungry. But the rage, the burning fury that had driven him before that day in a dry, hot desert, was now tamed, held in the hands of one tender woman.
“Are you going to just stare at me all morning?” She stretched beneath his gaze, her eyes flickering to where he stroked his cock, anticipating, holding back that final moment when he would have to let her go.
“Would you let me?” He smiled, using one finger to trace a line from between her breasts to the silken, soft mound between her thighs.
“If that was what you wanted to do.” She lifted her hands and let her fingers trail along the path he had made. “I didn’t take you for a watcher, Natches. Though I’m sure we could adapt if that’s your kink.”
If that was his kink? He almost laughed; he did smile. God, he loved her. Smart mouth and all.
“What if it is my kink?” He lifted his brows curiously. Not that it was, but he could play with her. That was the joy with Chaya, she enjoyed playing. Even patched and healing in that hospital in Iraq, she had enjoyed playing with him.
“Isn’t it too bad you broke my vibrator then?” She let her fingers whisper over her mound before returning, stroking along the top of the glistening slit.
Hell, he’d come in his own hand at this rate.
“You would have let me watch?” He hadn’t anticipated that.
“Oh, I would have,” she whispered, letting her finger dip into the folds, her hips arching as he watched. “I would have shown you how I survived five years without you. I would have let you watch, and let you hear me crying because I couldn’t reach the same peak you could bring me to. Would you like to see that?”
See her cry? God no.
“I’d finish you, baby,” he promised her. “I’ll let you show me how you do it, then I’d show you how it’s done.” His wicked smile drew a light vein of laughter from her, a twinkle of the same wicked hunger to her eyes.
“Then show me how it’s done.” Her fingers lifted from her flesh, dewy with her juices and he couldn’t help himself. He snagged her wrist and brought her fingers to his lips.
Her taste exploded against his tongue. Sweet and earthy. Nothing tasted as good as Chaya’s passion. He covered the tips of her tasty fingers, licked them clean, and watched her eyes darken as he caressed the sensitive tips with his tongue.
“I’ll show you exactly how it should be done,” he murmured. “You should be savored.”
He stretched out between her thighs, pressed them wide, and blew a breath across the dampened flesh, his gaze lifting to her as a tremor shook her body. “Savored in the most delicious ways. With a kiss.” He covered her hard little clit in a heated kiss, nudged it with his tongue, and felt it throb in anticipation.
“Just a kiss?” Her voice was hoarse with pleasure now.
“Hmm. A kiss wasn’t enough?” He kissed the silken folds, drew the taste of her juices onto his tongue, and hummed in appreciation.
“Not enough.” Her hands were in his hair now as she tried to press him closer.
“A taste?” He dipped his tongue inside those luscious folds, licked softly, slowly, felt the soft flutter at the entrance of her core and the echo of the clenching need building in the muscles there.
“Taste isn’t enough.” She writhed beneath him, her hips arching, pressing her pussy closer to his mouth as he kissed and licked and listened to her cries of pleasure building in his head.
Making love. He’d never made love before Chaya, but that was what he was doing now. Making love to her. Loving her with everything inside his soul.
“Kissing or tasting?” His own voice was ragged now. “Demanding little thing, aren’t you?”
He lifted his head, smiling back at her as she watched him, lashes lowered sensually, a sheen of perspiration on her face now.
And those sweet, lush breasts. They were swollen, her nipples hard, tight, and flushed with need. He couldn’t help but lift one hand, slide it over her stomach, and cup one of those sweet mounds as he went back to kissing, tasting. And licking. He licked around her clit. He laid little kisses on it, pursing his lips and drawing it inside the heat of his mouth until she unraveled beneath him, arched and cried his name in release.
Before the tremors finished sweeping through her, he jerked to his knees, lifted her legs until they lay against his chest, and began working his cock inside her.
Fuck. She was tight. So hot he had to clench his teeth, tried valiantly to think about car motors, anything, everything but the destructive, velvet grip encasing his cock.
And nothing worked. Nothing filled his mind but the scent and the feel of her. Her voice crying out his name, her hands gripping his wrists as he held on to her hips. Until he was buried fully inside her, balls deep in the sweetest, slickest haven a man’s soul could ever find.
&nbs
p; “Natches. Oh God, it’s so good.”
Good wasn’t even a description. There was no description for this pleasure; it defied any poet’s ability to voice it. He tightened, arched deeper inside her and felt the sweat running down his chest as sensation upon sensation whipped over his body, dug into his nerve endings and filled him with ecstasy.
His head lowered until he could kiss her ticklish little ankle, before she jerked, a panting little cry falling from her lips.
He glanced up at her and grinned before licking over the side of her foot. And she moaned, her foot flexing as he lifted one hand from her hip to her foot, and as he began to thrust, let his teeth bite down, just below her big toe.
Chaya screamed with the sensation. He bit her. Bit her foot and thrust inside her, once, twice, and she was coming again. Exploding into a million brilliant fragments as his hips moved harder, moved faster. He was pounding into her, his expression tightening, sweat rolling down his neck as she felt herself flying from one peak to another, then joining him as his release flowed into her.
She watched him, the way his eyes narrowed on her, became sensual and heavy a second before they closed and a shudder wracked his body.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he breathed out roughly as he collapsed over her, allowing her legs to embrace his hips before sliding to the bed. “Every time, I only want you more.”
Running her fingers through his hair she smiled. “Good. Because I can’t get enough either.”
He rolled to his back, dragging her to him until she was draped over his chest, weak and exhausted and knowing there was no time to sleep.
They lay like that, their hearts finally easing in their chests, their breathing returning to normal.
“When you leave the boat, don’t look back,” he told her. “Don’t stop, don’t pause. You’re a woman walking away from something she can’t deal with.”
“I know how to do my job.” But her voice caught on a sob. Walking away from Natches without looking back?
“I know you do. But it won’t be easy, Chay. And you can’t pause. You have to keep going.”
She nodded against his chest.