She forced herself to breathe slowly, evenly, to draw in the scent of Dawg that permeated his truck and filled her senses with memories. Memories she had fought to forget for eight long years.

The feel of his thighs between hers as he parted them and lowered himself to her. Watching as one large hand gripped the shaft of his cock, nudging it against the hot, wet curls between her thighs.

“Wax your pussy,” he had growled, “so I can see your soft flesh gripping my dick.”

Her womb clenched at the memory, as clear now as it had been the morning after.

And he didn’t even remember it. She still had to fight back the rage and the pain of that one. The bastard. He had seen her two days later and had looked right through her as she stood in her parents’

convenience store, her heart in her throat, certain that he had come for her.

But he hadn’t. He had smiled and flirted, and on his arm hung some stupid twit blond bimbo who cooed over his muscles as he paid for ice and snacks.

He had made some cheerful comment to Crista about her hair, and she glared at him. He had frowned, tried again, and she had turned her back and left Alex to take care of him. Because she couldn’

t look at him; she couldn’t bear remembering and knowing that not so much as a glimmer of that night remained in his memory. Knowing, that if he had her again, they wouldn’t be alone.

And then, weeks later, the knowledge that she hadn’t escaped that night without repercussions.

She had carried his child.

Her initial reaction had been one of anger, of resentment. He was partying, enjoying his life and his women and the dirty little sex games he and his cousins played, and she was pregnant.

But within days that anger had stilled. The knowledge that she would always have a part of him had consumed her young mind, her heart. The heart she had given Dawg on a sultry summer night. And that happiness had built, filling her, glowing inside her.

Until three months to the day after he had taken her. The day she had lost the child she had grown to love so deeply. She had left the clinic Alex had taken her to, packed her bags, and left for Virginia with friends who had been visiting that week.

And here she was, eight years later, her fingers curled into the leather of his truck seat, shaking, terrified as the sound of gunfire finally eased away and shouted commands filled the night instead.

Suddenly, the implications of her very precarious position slammed inside her head. She was at the scene of an obvious raid of some sort. Wasn’t that what they called it? A raid? A sting? And she had been right smack-dab in the middle of it.

Which meant she was about to be right smack-dab in the middle of a whole lot of suspicion.

FUBAR. That’s what this entire fucking night had turned into. Fucked up beyond all repair, and it was all his own damned fault.

He stared into the shadowed expanse of the warehouse parking lot, his brows lowered, trying to make sense of what he had done and why. The why of it more than anything else.

What had crashed through the hard core of training and beliefs in what he was doing long enough to rush Crista from the warehouse and hide her? What had made him risk his own soul this way for a woman?

Not just any woman though: Crista. The woman that had invaded his dreams for longer than he wanted to admit. The woman who had, somehow, wormed her way into his soul before she left Somerset eight years ago. And the why of that one had no explanation. Just as the dreams of her that had tormented him over the years made no sense.

“I moved her Rodeo,” Natches said, sidling up to Dawg as he stood guarding the warehouse entrance. “She was parked outside the range of the cameras, and her head was down as she came through the entrance. With any luck, we can cover her identity.”

Dawg glanced at his cousin and best friend from the corner of his eye. He was half tempted to blame his cousin for every second of this madness. Following the vague warning he had given, Dawg had moved to find who they assumed was the female seller who had entered the warehouse. She was the only one unaccounted for now.

Dawg had moved to intercept her ahead of the rest of the team and reacted rather than thinking. If he had given himself time to think, she would be stretched out on the warehouse floor with the rest of the bastards they had arrested in the raid.

They had the buyers, the sellers, four missing experimental missiles, and their guidance chips. It was a damned good haul for the investigation. Except for the fact that the woman who had masterminded the deal hadn’t arrived.

That, or she was hiding in the backseat of Dawg’s pickup truck.

“Remind me why we’re covering her identity,” Dawg said softly, his gaze tracking the rest of the combined ATF and Homeland Security team.

Hell, he knew why, but damned if he wanted to admit to it. This wasn’t something Crista would do. He knew it wasn’t. At least, it wasn’t something the Crista he had once known would do.

“Because she’s not involved?” Natches hazarded a mocking guess.

“She was here,” Dawg pointed out, even as he ignored the hard mental flash of denial that Crista could be involved in this in any way.

“Uh-huh.” Natches nodded. “Of which I warned you. You were the one who jerked her out like a wolf protecting its mate, not me, Cousin. I just covered your six. That’s my job. Remember?”

Like a wolf protecting its mate. Or a Dawg protecting a bone, he thought sarcastically.

He had taken one look at her, and something inside him had exploded in awareness. He knew damned good and well what would happen if he didn’t get her out of there. If she had been caught with the others, with the description of the female suspect they had, she would have never gotten out of the arrest and subsequent imprisonment, involved or not.

And why that should matter to him, he couldn’t figure out.

“She’s not involved.” Natches cradled his rifle in his arms like a lover as he stared back at Dawg.

“That’s not Crista, Dawg.”

Maybe it wasn’t. But then again, maybe it was, and he just couldn’t see it for his own lust.

Dawg tightened his lips and stared back at the organized chaos inside the now well-lit warehouse.

He was a paranoid son of a bitch. He trusted no one but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and Crista wasn’t included in the Trinity last he checked.

Yet he was risking his own reputation to protect her. Not because of Natches’s warning but because his own emotions had interfered with the job for the first time in eight years. And as he stood there, watching the arrests, the recovery of the missiles and their chips, and felt the sense of triumph that the team radiated, he felt disassociated.

He was impatient. Eager to have it over with, because his mind was brewing with all the possibles filtering through it. It was possible Crista wasn’t involved. And if she wasn’t, then it was possible that for the first time since her return a year ago, he had an edge on her. She couldn’t just turn and run, as she was wont to do whenever he came near.

Oh no. Not anymore.

His eyes narrowed, and his lips curled with an anticipatory smile.

He had lived on instinct too damned long to discount it, and instinct was giving her the benefit of the doubt. But he was still a part of the ATF, and she was at the scene of an arms buy. She also fit the brief description of the one female in the group of thieves that had hijacked the weapons and attempted to sell them.

He was going to have to keep an eye on her. A very close eye on her.

“Oh hell, I hate that smile,” Natches suddenly groaned beside him. “Dawg, what the hell are you up to?”

Dawg glanced over at him, his brow lifting in mock innocence. “I’m just considering how best to determine who’s guilty and who’s innocent,” he drawled. “Nothing for you to worry about, Natches.

Nothing whatsoever.”

It was a lot for Dawg to worry about, and even more for Crista.

For Dawg, because Crista made him break his own rules, and that was something he never did, under any circumstances. And for her, because he was going to take payment for those rules out of her sweet little body.

Natches’s shoulders slumped. “Hell. Why do I have a feeling now that I should have just played the knight in shining armor myself rather than giving you the opportunity to pull your head out of your ass?”

Dawg snorted at that. “Stop worrying. I have it covered.”

“I’m guaranteed to worry at any time that you tell me not to worry. It’s a cosmic rule.”

Dawg lifted his brows and chuckled in amusement. “Trust me.”

Natches stared back at him in worried disbelief. “Man, don’t go pulling that kamikaze shit on me again, okay? Four years of it in the Marines were enough. You promised to take it easy once we got home. Remember?” Natches reminded him. “Think about your knee, man. You’re only one good accident from being a cripple. Let’s not push it, ’kay?”

Dawg let his grin widen. “Take it easy? Easy wasn’t what I had in mind, but taking it sure as hell is.”

Natches stared at him suspiciously. “Don’t do something you’re going to regret, Dawg. I don’t have time to pull your ass out of any fires.”

Dawg clapped him on the shoulder before moving toward the men being lifted from the cement floor and prepared for a nice little trip to the nearest jail cell. “No worries, Natches.” He grinned over his shoulder. “No worries at all. Grab her car. Tell the commander we drove in separately; they won’t know any better. You were just borrowing a friend’s vehicle. And I’ll catch ya later.”

He had plans to make. Plans that included one sexy little waitress, his bed, and all kinds of wet, hot, nasty sex acts.

The next time she turned her back on him, she would at least remember what it felt like, what it meant to be owned by him. And by God, before it was over, he would own her. Heart and soul. By fair means or by foul. Dawg wasn’t playing anymore.

TWO

She was still where he left her. Not that he hadn’t expected her to be, but it was always comforting to know one was right about these matters.

“Stay put,” he told her as he moved into the driver’s seat and stuck the key in the ignition.

“Wouldn’t want anyone to see you as we leave, now would we?”

He flipped the music on. AC/DC rocked through the cab of the truck as he held down the button to the windows, opening them all the way, and peeled from the parking lot like a man on a mission.

He lifted his hand to the state police officers in the front lot, and not for the first time was thankful that he had parked his truck alongside one of the abandoned buildings rather than coming in with the rest of the team later.

He and Natches had been posted to watch the area through the day and give the go-ahead when the team could move in. It was the one thing that had saved Crista’s ass. No one would be any wiser when Natches explained that they had come in separately and he pulled out in Crista’s Rodeo. They might wonder, until the gossip hit that one Crista Jansen was currently residing with one Dawg Mackay on his infamous houseboat, the Nauti Dawg.

As he put distance between the truck and the scene of the arrest, he let the muscles of his neck and shoulders relax before turning down the music and glancing between the seats to the long bench seat in the back.

Something inside him clenched at the sight of her pale face and wide, dark brown eyes. Chocolate eyes. She had big, dark, chocolate eyes, and he was a man that knew how to savor that particular sweet.

“You can come up here now,” he told her, turning his attention back to driving as he turned onto one of the curving country roads that wound through the county.

She moved slowly, uncurling from the backseat and moving into the empty passenger seat beside him before settling in and staring out the windshield stiffly.

“Put your seat belt on.” Dawg propped his arm on the open window frame and scratched at his jaw consideringly as he drove.