Authors: Lora Leigh
before when he took her downstairs on the couch, pushing into her, possessing her.
He should have known, he told himself as he turned his head to stare at her. All these years, he should
have known that something had happened that night. If not because of Crista’s abrupt change, then
because of her brother Alex’s.
Alex Jansen had become more mocking, if possible, and even more critical of the cousins’ lifestyles the
same week Crista had gone from an emerging sex kitten in her flirtatiousness with Dawg to a cold,
frightened woman running from a nameless terror.
Too young and too dumb, Dawg thought now. That was what he had been.
Which made him an even bigger bastard now in her eyes. His lips twitched at the memory of her fury the
previous day as soon as she realized exactly how damned sexy she had been when he took her.
He couldn’t believe he had dared to blackmail her into his bed. He could still remember the shock in her eyes, the disbelief, the way she had watched him through the day as though expecting him to suddenly
smile and declare it had all been a joke. Right up until she had opened her eyes, stared into his, and
realized there was no chance to escape now that he had had her.
She was dreaming if she thought that was ever going to happen. Dawg had learned a lot of things in the
four years he had been in the Marines and then the last four years training and working with the ATF. He had learned how to be hard. How to kill. He knew how to assess a situation in a single moment and make
lightning-fast decisions that had saved his life on more than one occasion.
And he had known, standing outside that warehouse with Crista safely hidden in his pickup, he had
known there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to come to his bed in any conventional manner. No, he
would have to take the choice from her first, then work on making her forgive him for it.
He turned his head and looked at her now, a smile playing at his lips. It had taken hours to get her to try to sleep. She had spent the day pacing the downstairs section of his houseboat, railing and arguing and
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coming up with some damned good arguments as to why he was a class-A bastard and a disgrace to the
human race.
Her last argument still had him holding back a chuckle.
“Alex is so going to kick your ass!” she had raged as he finally grew tired of the arguments, picked her up, and carried her to his bed. “He’ll have your balls for this, Dawg.”
As though she would tell Alex.
Alex most likely knew about the night they had spent together, but he didn’t know enough to want to kill Dawg. Eight years ago he could have done it. It would be a little harder job now, however.
She was in his bed, though. Still wearing her T-shirt and panties, but minus the jeans that had covered her slender legs when he pulled her up here. She might have been too angry to give him another taste of the
heated arousal he knew she felt, but the knowledge that she felt it was still there.
He drew the sheet from her legs slowly, ignoring her mumbled little protest as she shifted on her back, one leg bending at the knee, the other stretched out along the bed.
A soft cotton thong covered her pussy, the material shaping itself over her mound and revealing the soft curls beneath. Dawg rarely liked that silky growth on a woman’s mound. It hampered his dining pleasure
when he was going down on a woman. He wanted to taste her flesh, feel the responsiveness of each soft
fold that hid the treasure beyond.
Those curls would have to go. Binding Crista to him wasn’t going to be easy. She was stubborn as hell,
and she had already made up her mind that Dawg and his sex games were too far out of her league.
Because she was scared. He had seen that flash of fear in her eyes. That feminine knowledge that she had come up against something or someone that she wasn’t certain how to handle.
She would learn how to handle it, how to handle him, because the bottom line came down to the fact that
he couldn’t risk letting her go.
The information they had on the female within the group of thieves that had stolen that arms shipment en route to the U.S. Army garrison in Fort Knox was too similar to Crista’s description. There were no
photographs yet, no one had managed to identify her, and Dawg was going to make damned sure that
Crista didn’t get identified in the criminal’s stead.
He didn’t like the pinch in his gut that warned him that some bad shit was coming down the road. He
could feel it, like a premonition. An instinctual warning that danger was moving in on his position like a bird of prey gliding over the valley searching for food. And Crista was sitting smack-dab in the middle of that valley, a tasty little morsel just waiting to be plucked into the jaws of whoever or whatever was
moving in.
It had to do with these missiles; he could feel it. It wasn’t a coincidence that she had been there, but he couldn’t convince himself she was involved, either. He had found something else in the small house her
parents had left her and Alex, though.
The freshly swept carpet had shown signs of traffic. He knew Crista; like most women she did things in a certain way, and he remembered Alex bitching years ago about how she always swept the floors before
they left the house. She would sweep back to the front door, storing the sweeper in the hall closet before they left and leaving the carpet pristine and devoid of tracks.
Crista’s carpet had tracks in it. Tracks just slightly too large to be hers. Or so he tried to convince himself.
They were subtle; he gave credit to whoever had made them, someone had tried to wipe them out, but they
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hadn’t completely managed it.
The tracks had started in the living room, just off the small foyer. They had walked through the living
room, gone up the steps, and moved into her bedroom to her dresser, then to her closet. While there, Dawg had found the address to the warehouse tucked into a dark bronze blazer that had been hung haphazardly
in the closet. There had been nothing else. Not a scrap of paper, not a stash of money, nothing to tie her to the theft of the weapons, other than that address. There had been just enough of a disturbance to allay his conscience in lying to his superiors.
Not that he needed to excuse that very often. He had a very high respect for the chain of command, there was no doubt; he was, after all, a Marine. But he knew that sometimes, some things needed a little closer investigation before he reported them. Crista was one of those instances.
Soft, warm, hotter than hell, and fighting him tooth and nail. But she was back in his bed and sleeping
next to him.
How many times had he awakened over the years, certain he would find her next to him, knowing that the
dream that had haunted his sleep had to be more than a dream. And each time he had awakened alone,
until now.
Hell no, he wasn’t letting her out of this one. He would blackmail her a thousand times over if that was what it took to get her into his bed and to keep her there.
He watched her carefully, reaching out with his hand, his fingertips only touching the silky flesh of her thigh.
Damn, she was soft. Like the finest silk. The most expensive satin. Warm and sweet.
She shifted again, a muttered little moan slipping past her lips as he let more of his fingers experience that heated sensation, caressing the rounded flesh gently.
She whispered a sigh, her thighs falling farther apart, giving him a clear view of the sweet flesh covered in cotton.
Was she wet?
His fingers paused on her thigh, only inches from what was paradise.
“Does this deal include molesting me in my sleep?” Her half-drowsy exclamation of contempt was
punctuated by a quick jerk at the sheet to draw it back over her thighs.
He grinned. Damn, she was going to be a challenge, maybe more than he anticipated.
“I think I should start a list,” he murmured lazily, drawing the sheet back toward him. “Keeping your little butt off the firing line could get complicated. I’ll need compensation.
She didn’t let go of the covering. Her fingers tightened on it, her chocolate eyes glared back at him.
“Now, Crista,” he chided her gently, though his gaze was anything but gentle as it met hers. “Let go of the sheet. Let me see what I’m lying for today.”
“You wouldn’t turn me in.”
He could see the bravado in her gaze now. She was well-rested and feeling more confident, better able to handle him. Let’s see if she could.
He pushed back desire, need, temptation, and gave her the steely eyed look he had perfected in the
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Marines. The one that assured those both above and lower in rank that he was someone to be reckoned
with.
Her eyes flickered with indecision.
“It’s like this, fancy-face.” He smirked. “When Alex returns, he won’t be able to do a damned thing about what’s happened here, right now. If my superiors connect you to this case, then you’re gone.”
“Over drugs?” She snorted. “I don’t think so, Dawg. Drug dealers are not terrorists.”
“Unless terrorists are dealing in drugs.” He shrugged, omitting the fact that his case didn’t have a damned thing to do with drugs.
She blinked back at him silently again. Damn, that little mind was quick. He could see it working in her expression, the play of emotions that crossed her face finally settling into lines of resentment and anger.
“Stop doing this,” she finally pushed out between clenched teeth.
“Why?” If she had a good reason, he might relent. For this morning.
“Because I don’t want it.” He could feel her tensing as he drew the sheet fully away, his gaze going to the mounds of her breasts beneath her shirt.
Didn’t want it, his ass. He restrained a knowing smile. He knew women, and he knew body language, and
if he wasn’t totally wrong, she wanted it just as bad, maybe worse, than he did. Though he couldn’t
imagine her wanting it worse. He swore his cock would rupture with the need to burrow into the tight,
heated confines of her pussy.
“Your nipples are hard.” And he was going to taste them soon. “Is your pussy wet? Sorry, baby, but if you didn’t want it, then you did a damned good imitation of it on my couch yesterday.”
Shock, arousal, it filled her face as surely as the blush that began to work up along her neck and into her face. And it was damned enchanting. He hadn’t seen a woman blush in years.
But she wasn’t ready for another round yet, and Dawg could sense the uncertainty in her. If he weren’t
careful, she could choose prison over him. Crista could be incredibly stubborn as he well knew. She
wasn’t above cutting off her own nose to spite her face.
“No answer, huh?” He let an amused grin quirk his lips.
Hell, Crista was fun. Even with her back up and her mad on, she was fun.
She licked her lips, and his gut clenched. He wanted that tongue on his dick again. If she didn’t decide on his course of action pretty damned soon, then he was going to have to play another very delicate card in the hand he had dealt himself.
Yep, blackmail was a very dirty word, and a man had to have some way of backing up his threat.
“I have to meet with my team this afternoon.” He rolled away from her, stretching lazily as she seemed to freeze beside him. “We have bad guys—and girls—to catch.” He threw her a careless smile as he
untangled his legs from the sheet and rose from the bed.
Her eyes were narrowed on him, but her fingers had a death grip on the sheet as she held it over her.
She was thinking, though. He could always tell when she was rolling something around in her head. He
remembered before she left, catching that look on her face and wanting to be so deep inside her that she couldn’t hide anything from him. That need had only grown. Right now, he would give his eyeteeth to be
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buried so deep inside her that even their cells would bond.
“So what am I supposed to do now that you’ve had me fired from my job?” she snapped back at him
irately. “I’m going to assume that during this game you’re playing, I’m not allowed to work.”
Dawg scratched at his chest, feeling a surge of satisfaction as her gaze licked over him. He was naked,
aroused, and he would be damned if he was going to try to hide it from her.
“You have a job,” he assured her, turning to the low chest of drawers on the other side of the room and
pulling out clean clothes.
“What kind of a job?” The low, wrathful tone had his lips twitching again.
“Fucking me. I’m fairly high maintenance, Crista. You won’t need another job.”
Then he ducked to avoid the alarm clock that came sailing at his head, then to avoid the picture frame that held a picture of his Harley. But he felt a swell of joy rise inside him as he jumped for her, gripping her wrist as she reached for the lamp, pulling her under him and holding her to the mattress as she bucked and writhed and cursed with all the exuberance of a damned sailor.
Crista couldn’t remember ever being so furious. A haze of red distorted her view, and a mix of murderous, adrenaline-crazed fury pumped through her veins.
“You bastard!” She tried to scream past the tightening in her chest, her throat. “Do I have whore written on my forehead? Do I look like one of your sex-starved little bimbos?”
She cringed from his body lying atop hers now, from the heavy, naked thighs pushing between her own