she held her hand up while keeping her back turned to him. she couldn't handle this. if he needed this bad enough to lie to her, then fine. he could have it. it wasn't enough to tip timothy off, and she knew natches was going to do whatever the hell he wanted to do anyway.

"you can see the list and the questions," she whispered, picking up her briefcase before turning to face him. "i'll meet you at the hotel in the morning."

a sharp laugh left his throat. "bullshit. you're not leaving me. not again, chaya. i'll tie you to the damned bed at night."

"and i'm not going to stand here and let you lie to me to protect your family." something was building in her, shimmering like a bloodred cloud in front of her vision as she watched his eyes go from dark to light, watched moss green go brilliant green, like a forest in spring.

"you actually believe i'd lie to you like that?" he glowered back at her. "baby, i don't have to lie to you to get that list, those questions, or anything else i need out of you. all i have to do is get you beneath me."

and it snapped in her head then. chaya felt herself almost sway in shock. he hadn't used a condom last night or the night before. he had been bare, his semen spurting inside her, sending her crashing into another wave of release even as a part of her mind had whispered the warning. each time, and her emotions had been in such disarray that she had ignored the implications.

she wasn't protected.

"not without a condom you won't be." her head snapped up, her vision clearing as fear surged through her. "and not without the truth between us."

"what the hell do you mean by that?"

"the truth? it's a fairly easy concept . . ."

"i mean the condom." his hand sliced through the air. "i'm safe, chay, and you know it just as well as i do. i may have played some games in my life, but i always protected myself."

"this isn't about stds," she snapped. "i'm not protected, natches. i went off the agency-sanctioned shots last year when i thought i was resigning and didn't have time to restart them. you need condoms. i can't believe you didn't use one last night."

natches stared back at her. from her eyes, to her stomach. back to her eyes and her stomach again as he swallowed tightly.

she wasn't protected? he'd filled her more than once with his release the night before, pumping into her, crying her name, feeling her so sleek and hot, milking it from him.

use a condom now? the first time he'd taken her, there'd been nothing between them either, and he remembered that last mission, wondering about the agency protection she used. wishing she didn't. wishing he could fill her with his baby, to give back to her everything she had lost.

he blinked now, feeling the sweat that gathered on his back, the sense of hunger that suddenly raged through his body. he'd rationalized those thoughts as insanity years before. her grief had marked him in a way he hadn't expected, couldn't have been prepared for, he had told himself.

but now it wasn't grief. he was staring at her belly, seeing her growing round with his child, and the hunger for it grew.

"are you okay?" her eyes narrowed on him as he jerked his gaze back to hers. "i'm safe right now, natches, but that doesn't last long. get the condoms. and stop lying to me. we'll get along much better that way."

"no." he shook his head slowly, barely able to believe that word had slipped past his lips. they were numb, his throat was tight, thick with so many emotions he didn't know how to make sense of them.

"why?" she had a death grip on that briefcase and one on his soul. hell, even he hadn't known the grip she had on him until now. "is the truth so damned hard?"

"the truth is easy." he had to fight to hold himself back, to keep from latching onto her, to keep from devouring her. "i meant, no condoms."

chaya went silent. even her thoughts seemed to stop in shock as she stared back at natches. he couldn't have said that. he didn't just say that.

"i see." she wet her lips. had he changed his mind that quickly? was she misunderstanding something important in this conversation? "if you don't want to have sex with me, i can understand . . ."

"i want to lay you down and lick every inch of your body. i want to bring you over me and watch you ride me. i want to fuck you so many ways, so many times, that neither of us can find the energy to crawl from the floor let alone the bed. oh, baby, wanting you is like a sickness with me, and it never fucking goes away."

"oh." her heart was racing. each word out of his mouth had her skin sensitizing, her clit swelling. "then what do you mean, no condom?"

he stalked to her then. slowly. his expression was more savage than she could ever remember seeing it, his eyes bright, his lashes lowered over them. he looked dark. dangerous. and something in that look terrified her.

"i mean, if you don't want my baby, then you better get your ass to a clinic and take care of the birth control yourself." his hand flattened on her stomach as she stared back at him in a shock so deep, so overwhelming, she wondered how she was standing upright. "because i'm betting i have the fastest, slickest little soldiers in the state of kentucky. just a breath of a chance, sweetheart, and you're pregnant." his expression, his eyes, grew taut with possessiveness. possessiveness and lust. "and i could very much get into making damned certain they have every chance."

chaya felt herself swaying. she could feel the blood draining from her face, even as it began to thunder in her ears.

she could feel natches's hand on her belly, his eyes boring into her soul, as though will alone, and nothing more, could make her conceive.

and it didn't make sense. she couldn't understand this. he couldn't be serious.

"why?" she forced the word past numb lips. why would he want to tie himself to her like that?

"ah, chay," he whispered, his expression gentling, just a bit, just enough to force her to trap a sob in her chest rather than give rise to the cry that seemed to echo through her soul. "sweetheart. don't you know i'd give everything i possess to hold you to me? and the thought of giving you my child, of watching that pretty belly grow large with my baby, makes my dick so damned hard i wonder if it's going to push straight past the zipper of my jeans."

she felt the briefcase drop from her fingers as she stared back at him, searching his eyes, searching for the lie. there had to be a lie there. but lying didn't make sense. she knew natches. knew he would never, ever risk a child of his so cavalierly. he was so damned protective over family that even cranston feared him. he would kill for them. he had proven it.

"chay." he breathed her name against her lips, and she felt herself weaken. her knees. her soul. something inside her, something she needed for protection, to hold back the dreams and the loss and the years she had run, even from herself, began to crack. "let me have you like that. just us. just the chance that we could dream together like that."

eleven

natches could feel himself shaking inside, a need, a hunger he couldn't control, didn't want to control, rising inside him.

chaya. just her name invoked the power to make his knees weak, to make him hard, to make him want to believe in miracles and to reach for them.

the boy inside him that had once screamed out in the darkened forest, howling in fury at the loneliness, the pain that melded through his body, howled out now in hope.

because chaya was here. for such a brief moment in time in a foreign desert, in a hostile land, natches had known peace. one night, so far away that it felt like a dream, he had held her in his arms and knew she belonged to him. no matter what happened, no matter where life took either of them, he had found the one person that was his alone.

chaya.

he stared into her eyes. honey eyes. eyes that drew him in and promised him life, promised him joy. he could find joy with her. he found joy with her.

"you're not serious," she murmured, her voice as dazed as he felt lowering his hand once more to her stomach. there, his child could be growing even now. sheltered in the warmth of her body, growing strong and sure.

sweet god-the prayer slipped into his mind unbidden-let my child rest there. within the woman who held his soul.

"i'd die for you," he said softly. "i'd kill for you, chay. and i'd go to my knees for you."

he had never willingly gone to his knees for anyone, man or woman, no matter how many times his father had tried to force him there.

she blinked back at him. those clear golden eyes of hers flickering with dreams that she fought to keep buried, with hope that he knew she tried to hide.

she was his hope, but he knew, to the bottom of his soul he knew, he was hers as well.

"natches." she shook her head, her lips parted, fully, lush now with the arousal he knew was moving through her.

it made her wet, just as it made him hard, the thought of coming together, bare, unprotected, spilling into each other to create something new. something innocent.

it shouldn't have been that way. he knew that. hell, the last thing he needed to think about with his childhood was a kid. but a baby with chaya? something to bind her to him forever, just as he would be bound to her.

family was his salvation. his uncle ray, his cousins, they were all the family he'd had. he'd never had his own. until now, he hadn't wanted his own.

"you want me like that, chay, don't you?" he lifted her shirt, flattened his hand against the bare skin of her stomach and watched her eyes.

it was chaya's eyes that held her secrets. there, they flickered in those honeyed depths, the soft golden brown color warming him no matter her mood.

"bare, chay." his jaw clenched at the hunger. "i want to pump inside you and feel you reaching for me. milking me. that sweet hot body taking my seed and nourishing it."

her face flushed instantly, hot, as her eyes flickered with fear and with dreams.

"i want to watch your stomach grow round with my baby. i want to lay my head against it, feel our child move within you."

she trembled, shuddered, and her eyes darkened as they always did when she began to surrender to him.

he wanted that surrender.

before his knees gave out on him he swept her up in his arms, ignoring her little cry of protest and he carried her through the boathouse to the stairs. up the rounded staircase, to the bedroom, to the big bed that awaited them, the sun-drenched warmth that welcomed them.

"we can't just decide to make a baby." she was breathing hard, rough as he set her on her feet and pushed her blazer over her shoulders.

"of course we can," he crooned, knowing, as he had always known, how much she loved that sound. when his voice roughened, deepened. she shivered in response to it. a sound he had never known how to make, had never given another woman.

"it's completely irresponsible," she protested, but it was a moan, filled with surrender as his hands stroked down her arms then gripped the hem of her shirt.

"it's every dream i've ever had," he told her as he tore the shirt from her body and cupped those pretty breasts as they filled the lace of her bra. "i want to watch you nurse our child here." he kissed the full mounds as they spilled over the cups of her bra. "chay, you know you want it, don't you, baby? bound to me? you won't be able to just walk away anymore. think of it, sweetheart. no more reasons to run, and every reason to lie in my arms night after night."

it was her nightmare and he knew it. he used it shamelessly, because he also knew it was her weakness. his chay. so tough, so determined to never lose again, to never hurt as she had hurt before. to never risk having what she cherished most taken from her.