“Damn you.” He bit her shoulder, his hands gripped her hips, and as the climax began to ease, she felt the powerful first spurt of his semen blasting into her.

She arched violently through the second release. Tightening on him to the point she could feel every throb, every pulse, every ripple of Dawg’s release inside her. And she felt another part of her emotional defenses collapse.

Dawg once again held her heart.

SIXTEEN

Two days later, Dawg admitted what he should have known eight years ago. Crista Ann had managed to wrap herself around his heart in a way that he knew he would never manage to escape. He could feel the bonds tightening as he pulled the pickup into the parking slot directly in front of the small, exclusive spa that had moved into downtown Somerset.

Beside the truck, Rowdy pulled up on his Harley and helped the little wildcat he was engaged to from the back. Beside Rowdy, Natches pulled his Harley in and waited.

“This is insane,” Crista muttered in the passenger seat as she stared mutinously at the front door of the spa. “It’s going to hurt.”

“I’ll kiss it all better tonight.” He turned to her, letting her see just how much he was anticipating kissing the delicate flesh between her thighs and easing the memory of any discomfort she would feel with the waxing he had had Kelly schedule for her.

Her arms crossed over her breasts defensively.

“How did I let you talk me into this?” she snapped, only half-angry. The other half was uncertainty, perhaps a little embarrassment.

“Because I’m persuasive?” he asked with a waggle of his brows.

He had done his best to be persuasive. For hours. Licking, kissing, tempting her with the knowledge of how much better it could be, making her so hot, so damned desperate, she would have agreed to anything.

Her lips twitched then, a sensual smile of remembrance tugging at the lush curves as a faint blush stole over her cheeks. And his chest clenched. Right there in the front seat of his pickup, Dawg felt his heart swell with an emotion so unfamiliar he knew it was fucking love. It was strong enough, hard enough that he reached up and rubbed at the center of his chest to ease the constriction.

“You were very persuasive.” She sighed, staring back at the spa morosely. “And you know I’m going to be very put out when I’m finished.”

A goofy smile tugged at his lips, and his heart raced.

“I’ll take you someplace special when you’re finished,” he told her then. “Someplace you’ll enjoy.”

She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes.

“How special?”

“So special I’ve never taken another woman there,” he promised, watching her gaze jerk away, that hint of hesitancy that tensed her slender frame.

She was scared of whatever he made her feel, and he couldn’t blame her. He had blackmailed her, and he would keep blackmailing her until he knew she belonged to him.

She cleared her throat delicately. “Fine. But it better be worth this.” She gathered her purse from where it sat behind his seat and stared him fully in the eyes as she turned back to him. “And it better not hurt too bad.”

“You’ll love it,” he promised her. “Just imagine me doing it.”

She looked scandalized. “Oh Lord, don’t go there, Dawg. This is going to be hard enough.” She pulled at the door latch quickly, escaping before he could say anything that would deepen that blush along her cheeks or give her eyes more of that confused, uncertain look.

He had a feeling Crista had once believed that she knew him. That she could predict him. He could have told her that wasn’t going to happen.

He moved from the truck as she and Kelly headed into the spa, meeting Natches and Rowdy at the front of his truck and staring around the street curiously.

“We picked up a tail,” Natches said quietly, his dark green eyes glancing to the gray sedan that had pulled in farther up the street. “She pulled in behind you after you hit the city limits.”

Dawg glanced up the street, his gaze narrowing on Greta Dane. Normally when a woman looked at man with an expression as cold and hard as flint as Greta was giving him, it tended to make the balls draw up in fear.

Thankfully, Dawg wasn’t prone to allow such things to affect his private parts.

“Something’s up,” he murmured, turning back to the other men. “Have you heard from Cranston?”

“Nothing.” Natches shook his head as he crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands by his sides. “We picked the bulldog up there just inside the city limits, and she didn’t bother to try to hide it.”

Dawg rubbed his hand over his chin. “Stay here. Let’s see what I can find out.”

He stepped to the sidewalk and strode quickly to the little sedan Greta was driving. As he neared, the window rolled down, and Greta’s pinched expression increased. She was also nervous. She tucked a cigarette between her lips and lit up as he neared the car.

“What’s up, Greta?” Dawg leaned against the pickup next to her and stared back at her quizzically.

“Cranston’s orders,” she informed him waspishly. “Unlike some people, I’m a team player.”

Dawg tilted his head and smiled slowly. “Are you implying I don’t play well with others, Greta?”

She drew on the cigarette again before flicking the ashes to the portable ashtray in the middle console.

“I’m not implying anything, Mackay. I’m stating a fact.”

The stare she leveled back at him was suspicious, chilling in its complete lack of emotion.

“So you were ordered to watch me?” he asked her.

“No, I was ordered to follow your girlfriend.” Her own smile was nothing short of relish. “I didn’t ask why.”

Bullshit.

Dawg stared back at her, his gaze narrowed, his body prepared. Somehow, Cranston had focused on Crista. This wouldn’t be a good thing.

“Have fun keeping up with us,” he told her then, returning the smile with interest. “I’d make sure I wasn’t easily shocked, though. After we leave here, we’re heading into the mountains. I have a blanket in the truck, and we’re stopping for a light little picnic lunch that my favorite restaurant is currently putting together for us.

Then, since it is private property, I thought I might introduce my girlfriend to a little fresh-air lovin’.

Now, I don’t mind a little exhibitionism every now and then, but you should be prepared. It could get rather hard-core.”

He watched her face flush. The hardened agent could kill a man without a thought, but the subject of sex seemed to make her jumpy as hell.

“I’m sure I’ll survive,” she gritted out.

Dawg nodded slowly and smiled again. “I’m sure you will, sugar. Just to be on the safe side though, I think I’ll have Natches go with us and sit with you for awhile. Some things just shouldn’t be done alone, ya know? And Natches, he makes damned good company in such situations.”

Her gaze flickered over to Natches and Rowdy as Dawg turned as well. Natches grinned slow and easy. He might not know what the hell they were talking about, but even from there, Natches would have seen the hard flush on Greta’s face.

“You sic that perverted bastard in my direction, and I’ll shoot him,” Greta warned him then.

Dawg shrugged. “He’ll survive. You’re not allowed to kill him, and a little bloodshed between friends…” He smiled again. “Could get interesting.” He straightened and dropped the smile. “You talk to Cranston, tell him I’m waiting to hear from him, sugar. Soon.”

He didn’t give her time to reply, but he was guessing she was on her cell phone even as he strode back to where Rowdy and Natches were waiting on the sidewalk in front of his truck.

“She’s watching Crista,” he told Natches softly as Rowdy listened in interest.

“Bad news.” Natches grimaced as he lowered his head as though to check the tips of his cowboy boots.

“How long does this female stuff take, anyway?” Dawg glanced at the doors to the spa, knowing damned good and well he wasn’t waiting inside the building for Crista to finish. No way, nohow; all that estrogen could be fatal.

“Wax, trim, and style,” Rowdy mused. “You’re looking at three hours.”

Dawg leaned against the truck. “You two can just stand here and wait it out with me,” he decided.

Natches grunted. “I had things to do, Dawg.”

“Get over it. God only knows what Cranston has up his sleeve, and I’m not standing outside this place by myself.”

“Hell. I’m getting the shit jobs and none of the pleasure,” Natches cursed. “This growing-up crap you two seem so intent on is starting to piss me off. I think I’ll go talk to Agent Dane for a while instead.

She’s always good for a smirk or two, if nothing else.”

Casting Rowdy and Dawg both an irate look, Natches ambled from his slouch against the hood of the truck and headed for Agent Dane’s vehicle.

The agent in question lit up again as she watched Natches warily.

“Do you think he’s really pissed?” Rowdy drawled as Natches neared the woman’s car.

“With Natches, who the hell knows anymore.” Dawg shook his head wearily. “That boy didn’t come out of Afghanistan easy. He was going to stay with the bum shoulder despite his CO’s advice until the Marines booted his ass out.”

Natches, already an excellent shot when he went into the Marines and an instinctive hunter, had been quickly inducted into training as a sniper/assassin. Dawg suspected his cousin had more kills to his record than he was admitting to, and secrets that only Dawg could guess at.

“You two didn’t do anything easy,” Rowdy said then. “I thought the agreement was that we’d go in, do our duty, and come home without changing who or what we were.”

Dawg had a feeling Rowdy wasn’t talking about the lack of need in sharing his pretty fiancée.

“Hey, you started it,” he said anyway. “Getting all possessive and snarly over Kelly the way you did.”

Rowdy snorted at that. “Don’t play dense, Dawg, it doesn’t suit you.”

Dawg grimaced. “We were more suited to some things than you were, Rowdy. You just didn’t want to see it.”

“Killing?” Rowdy asked. “You were never suited to that. You or Natches.”

“You just didn’t want to see it.” Dawg stared his cousin in the eye then. “Killing wasn’t the draw, though. It was taking out the monsters. And that was something Natches and I both were ready to do before we were out of our teens.”

Dawg’s and Natches’s fathers were bastards. But most of the men out of that family were bastards. Literally. Good ole Grandpa August had sired sons from one end of the nation to the other. He had paused in Somerset long enough to fake a marriage to Ellen Mackay and give her a daughter and three sons. Then he had nicely informed her that the marriage was illegal because he was already married, and then he had disappeared.

Ellen Mackay had taken the August name from her sons and given them hers instead. Four kids that she had raised herself with little help, and she had died knowing that out of all those kids, only one of them had a sense of decency. Ray Mackay had been solid as the earth. The rest? Hell, the rest of them were as black-hearted and mean as the old man himself.

As Dawg understood it, his cousins in Texas hadn’t fared any better. Their father, Joe August, the legitimate issue of old Nate August, had been pure evil. The hell he had visited on his sons had nearly destroyed them. It was only by a miracle that they had survived both during and after the torture they had endured.

“I saw Johnny’s mother and Natches’s dad with their heads together outside the courthouse yesterday when Kelly and I were driving through. They looked like they were brewing up trouble.”