the taste of male passion and heated flesh filled her senses. the feel of his tongue rasping, thrusting, and licking overwhelmed her.

nothing mattered now but the pleasure. her pleasure. his pleasure. the race to release and the need for completion. it was a like a fever in her blood, that need that consumed and overwhelmed everything else.

her fingers stroked and pumped the stiff flesh of his cock. she sucked at the throbbing head. her tongue lashed and stroked and tasted the heated male passion, while his tongue drove her to distraction.

stroking and thrusting and fucking inside her as his fingers caressed and pressed against the tender opening between her rear cheeks.

she was swamped with pleasure. taken by it. her hips writhed above him as he held her to him, thrusting against his tongue and driving it deeper into the aching core he possessed.

her cries and his groans filled the clearing.

his fingers pierced her ass and her pussy simultaneously. his lips surrounded her clit, drew it in and sucked it with wicked force.

crista cupped the fingers of one hand around his balls, fondled and caressed as the other hand stroked the steel-hard shaft and her mouth sucked the head with hungry greed.

his fingers pumped inside her, fucking her with strokes that, combined with the heated suckling of his mouth around her clit, threw her into an orgasm that would have had her screaming, should have had her screaming. but dawg's release had him arching, pressing his cock deeper into her mouth and filling it with the creamy essence of his semen.

they collapsed long seconds later, crista's head pillowed on dawg's thigh as he turned to her, his lips pressing into the inside of her knee as they fought for breath.

"i won't let you go," he finally told her, his voice dangerously calm, stunning her as the words reached her ears. "no matter what you do, crista, i'll never let you go again."

eighteen

he remembered.

as he felt crista's orgasm shaking her body, the memories washed over him like a wave of crashing emotion. how she had found him in that damned ditch, the truck he had been driving then so damned stuck his liquored mind couldn't figure out how to get it free.

her voice had been soft, filled with pain, and it had soothed the ragged edges of fury tearing at his mind. he had let her lead him from the truck to alex's car, and as she drove them to the marina, the scent of her had wrapped around him like sunlight.

he had made her laugh.

he leaned close to her and said something about alex letting her out to play with the big boys, and she had laughed at that.

once they got to the marina, she had kept him from falling from the docks into the dark water below. leading him to the nauti dawg, she kept up a steady, whispered conversation. teasing, her voice urged him on and made his dick so damned hard he had been amazed. he'd thought he'd drunk enough whiskey that night to keep from getting a hard-on for days.

but he had been hard for crista.

and once he got her into the houseboat, getting her into his bed hadn't been that hard. she had wanted to make certain he was safe. that he was comfortable.

he had fallen back on the couch, and she eased his boots and shirt off. as he struggled with his pants, she helped there, too, even as she blushed to her virgin roots. and as she began to move away from him, he had cupped his hand around her head and had drawn her lips to his.

from that moment she had been his. his in a way that no other woman had been. she had taken to his touch as though she had been created for him alone. and perhaps, in a way, she had been.

now, eight years later and nearly two hours after the memory had seared his mind, he walked behind her, back to the houseboat, the still-full picnic basket in his hand and crista's stiff shoulders in front of him.

she had clammed up the minute he had made his declaration.

"we need to talk," she had stated as she rose from beside him and began looking for her clothes.

"so talk." dawg had sat up, draped his arm over his upraised knee, and watched her struggle into her clothes.

she had shaken her head angrily. "not here. i can't do this here."

and now, he was more than interested in whatever the hell had her so damned mad.

he had fucked up eight years ago; he admitted it. but not to the extent she thought he had.

half-formed thoughts had slipped past his lips, unfinished. the possessiveness he had felt rising inside him then had shocked him, left him reeling and off balance.

now, eight years later, he was reasonably more mature, but he still felt like he was in over his head with crista ann jansen.

as they stepped onto the deck of the nauti dawg, dawg unlocked the door and ushered her in as he lifted his brow at her continued silence.

she had barely spoken in the truck. the closer they had come to the marina, the quieter she had become.

"here we are." he placed the basket on the table and turned to face her, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head.

her gaze flickered around the room before coming to rest on him. her lips parted, and at the same second, a hard knock sounded on the glass door behind her.

crista jumped as though a gunshot had sounded rather than the sound of knuckles against glass.

"who is it?" he barked out.

"dawg, i have cranston with me. open the damned door." natches's voice was anything but happy.

pressing his lips together, dawg stalked to the door and whipped the panels to the blinds back to see cranston's stocky form standing behind natches.

grimacing, he opened the door again, watching from the corner of his eye as crista turned to the visitors with an edge of curiosity.

timothy cranston stepped into the room, his briefcase clenched in his hand, his gaze going straight to crista. dawg closed the door, watching as the special agent watched her with an intensity that had a frown pulling at his brow and crista's.

"what's going on, natches?" dawg didn't bother to soften the suspicious tone of his voice.

"you're not going to believe this, dawg." natches's smile was cynical, cold. "i've had a few hours to digest it, and i still don't believe it."

"cranston?"

the special agent was still watching crista, his gaze narrowed on her as she stared right back at him, a challenge glittering in her brown eyes.

"she's about the right height. right eye color, right hair. but i'll be damned if you're not right about the differences."

dawg felt his body tense as cranston walked slowly around crista then.

"did you turn your boat into a auction block, dawg?" crista snapped irritably as the agent tracked every curve and hollow in her body.

"there's a difference in the curves. you were right there, too," he muttered.

"natches," dawg bit out warningly. "what the hell is going on?"

dawg could feel the warning tingle in his gut, the itching at the back of his neck. the way cranston was watching crista was getting his hackles up and pissing him off. and it wasn't doing much for her, either. she flashed him a hard look, a warning to do something about the bulldoggish little man who kept watching her like a strange little puzzle he was trying to figure out.

"you're not going to believe it." natches shook his head. "i'm still not certain i believe it."

"why not explain it and give us the chance to believe it, natches," crista retorted with mocking sweetness as she edged away from cranston and moved closer to dawg.

it was the first move she had made toward him since their time in the clearing. crossing the last few feet to her, dawg wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, ignoring cranston's sardonic look and natches's quiet reflection.

he could feel crista's fear in the face of cranston, though. she knew who he was; she knew the danger he could represent to her. a danger dawg swore he was never going to let touch her.

"does this have anything to do with agent dane attempting to follow us earlier?" dawg asked.

"plenty." cranston's bright brown eyes gleamed merrily as he ran his fingers over his short gray hair and flashed them a victorious smile.

victorious. as though a battle had just been won.

"you going to explain it to us anytime soon?" evidently, there wasn't a pending arrest in the works. cranston wouldn't have made the mistake of trying to bring in dawg's woman without help.

timothy grinned cheerfully. "you know, my wife, angie, she's always telling me i need to get to the point faster. but sometimes..." he stared back at them with a scary sort of playfulness. "sometimes, you just have to have fun getting there, don't you dawg?"

dawg glanced at natches. his cousin had lowered his head and was shaking it pitifully at cranston's theatrics.

"dawg, who is this person?" crista finally asked.

she should have stayed quiet, he thought with a silent groan.

"that's right." timothy stepped forward, his palm outstretched. "we haven't met, have we, miss jansen. i'm timothy cranston, special agent timothy cranston, with the office of homeland security. i

'm mr. mackay's boss."

"homeland security?" she looked up at dawg, moving slightly away from him. "i thought you were with the dea."

cranston chuckled at that. "oh, my, no. your friend dawg is with the atf, though attached temporarily to ohs. he didn't tell you that?"

crista let timothy shake her hand, but she was watching dawg, her expression tightening in anger.

"he didn't mention that."

"that's dawg for you." timothy nodded as he stepped back. "he's good at keeping secrets, aren

't you, dawg?"

dawg sighed. "get to the point, timothy."

cranston rubbed his hands together in anticipation once again.

"now, what dawg probably didn't tell you as well was that the night he broke several federal laws and dragged your pretty butt out of that warehouse, we were in the process of arresting a small team of former military assholes who thought they could hijack several experimental missiles while en route to fort knox before continuing on their way to a storage site. we managed to round up the thieves as well as one very sly little mercenary middleman who was buying those missiles for a high-level terrorist." he looked at crista with sudden sharp curiosity. "he didn't tell you that, did he?"

"he didn't." crista moved farther away from dawg.

timothy nodded in satisfaction as he flashed dawg an approving look. "i'm disappointed in you, son, but glad to see you still know how to keep your mouth shut."

"timothy." dawg wasn't happy, and he wasn't pretending.

crista had put several feet between them and was now watching dawg and timothy as though they had sprouted horns and fangs.

"okay, here we go then." dawg watched as timothy tossed his briefcase to the table and rubbed his hands in that gleeful manner he had. the man was positively bubbling with satisfaction. it was enough to send a chill racing down dawg's spine.

timothy was no one's vision of a special agent in charge of any investigation, but that was exactly what he was, and he was damned good at his job.

"yesterday afternoon, after your good friend and cousin here was regaling the customers in that little diner in town about how your girlfriend stalked out on you, and possibly was on her way to virginia, she supposedly walked into the detention center where our hijackers are being held and requested a visit with the leader of our merry little bunch of thieves, camden cole. our boy camden lives just outside fort knox. someone checking in as miss jansen here met with mr. cole, discussed friends and family for a few minutes, gave mr. cole her love, then left."

timothy opened the briefcase and began pulling photos free.