"since your father threw you out of your home." she turned on him, feeling it burn in her now, that icy rage. nearly everyone she had spoke to knew about it, mentioned it, seemed to wallow in the dirty gossip and nasty stories they thought they knew.

"it was never my home," he said simply. "it was a place to crash for a night or two."

he said that so simply, as though it didn't even matter.

"the scars on your back? he beat you senseless . . ."

"yeah, well, he managed it that time." his grin was smug if tinged with bitterness. "he has a few scars on his back now though. what the hell is this, chay? i was barely twenty years old. we got into a fight over my sister and ended up fistfighting. he had the bigger fists at the time. too bad, so sad. i survived it." he shook his head and stared at her in confusion. "if you want to crucify dayle mackay, i'll be the first in line to help you, but that's not what this is all about."

no, it wasn't. it was about the fact that he had every intention of jerking her out of that bar. that he had informed her, quite bluntly, that they would be discussing it when they returned here.

well, she was ready to discuss it now.

"you haven't yelled at me yet, and i'm sick of waiting on it." her hands were shaking with nerves, with reaction. "go ahead and do it and get it over with. i should have come straight back here this morning, right? i should just let you take care of all the pesky little details of my job and of protecting me. go ahead. say it." she waved her hand back at him as she felt the tears trying to fill her eyes. "get it off your chest."

she was yelling. she was irrational. she had never been irrational in her life but as natches stared back at her with that expression of patient male understanding, she wanted to scream. men didn't understand. they didn't feel the same things, they didn't hurt the same way. they didn't fear the same things. and she knew damned good and well he hadn't understood anything when they entered that bar.

"so. let me get this straight." he crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head, watching her curiously. "i should be chewing on your ass for doing your job? despite the fact that it just impressed the fucking hell out me. kind of like it did in that damned desert. now, suddenly, i'm supposed to change everything about you that made me so crazy about you to begin with?"

"you didn't want me to go," she snapped back. "you were ready to tie me up and drag me back here."

he infuriated her as he nodded slowly. "yes, i was. until i remembered this is who you are. you couldn't walk away now even if i demanded it. no more than i could. i don't want to change that part of you, chay."

she pushed her fingers through her hair and turned her back on him.

"why aren't you angry with me?" she turned back to him a second later. "i could be carrying your child and i went out there anyway. i finished those interviews knowing someone wanted me dead."

"and i made sure you did what you had to do, while i watched your back," he said simply. "chay, i don't want a lapdog. if i wanted a woman willing to say yes to everything i wanted i could have had it two hundred times over by now. i want you."

"why?" she clenched her fists at her side as that anger poured through her. "why do you want me?"

"hell, do i have to have a damned reason?" he fired back. "for god's sake, chay, because you know how to stand up to me? because you know how to live? you know how to love."

"i don't."

he stopped. "you don't what?"

"i don't know how to love, natches." she felt the tremors shaking through her body then. deep, hard shudders, the ice building, tightening inside her until she wondered if she could ever be warm again.

he smiled then. that slow, wicked smile that sent a flame shooting through the ice and a ragged tremor of response ripping through her senses.

"well, i guess that's why you need me then."

"why?" she did need him. she needed him until she couldn't breathe without the thought of him. and she still couldn't fathom how to deal with it.

"to show you how to recognize all that love burning within you," he answered.

he moved to her, stalking across the room until she had to look up to hold his gaze, to stay connected to the only security she had found in all the years she had lived.

"where?" she needed to know where it was, how to open it, and how to set it free.

"ah, chay," he whispered, framing her face, his lips brushing against hers. "it's all just right here, baby. burning inside you. all you've got to do is let it burn."

fourteen

natches wanted to kill. as god was his witness, the moment those shattered honey gold eyes locked with his after they entered the houseboat, he wanted to kill.

he wanted to make her dead husband, craig, die again. he wanted to make nassar mallah suffer. he wanted to beat cranston to a bloody pulp and he wanted to rip whoever had dared to kill denton, limb from limb.

he wanted their blood to wash over his hands, but even more, he wanted to ease the haunting pain from chaya's eyes.

"look at you," he said, keeping his voice low and gentle. "running on nothing but coffee and a few donuts. shaking in my arms and staring at me so fiercely. i bet if your eyes hadn't been swollen shut when i rescued you, i would have seen that same will to fight in them then."

"don't do this." she shook her head. "i'm not what you see. i'm not that strong."

he flashed her a wicked smile, because he knew better. a smile as smug and confident as any self-appointed sensualist had ever given a woman. and it succeeded in bringing a flush to her face, a glitter of anger to her eyes.

"you think you know everything." she pushed at his chest, as though he was actually going to let her go now. "let me go."

he laughed at that. "baby, i watched your back and let you fight. i took you into the baddest honky-tonk in three counties and sat at the bar like the good little boy i was told to be. this is my territory now. i don't have to be a good boy here."

"as if you've ever been a good boy," she snorted and tried to twist in his arms.

natches chuckled at that. "i've always been a good boy with you, chay. i let you run every time you wanted to run, remember?"

"you're not letting me run now," she snapped. "and all i want to run to is the damned shower."

he held her easily, letting her twist, letting that sleek little body stroke and rub against his. his cock was rock hard, it had been ever since he had watched her in that damned bar.

he'd wanted to wrap her in his arms and rock her, and at the same time he wanted to fuck her until she knew to the bottom of her soul exactly who she belonged to.

"yeah, but i'm tired of being a good boy today." he grinned and dipped his head, stealing a kiss before she could do more than gasp in protest.

as she struggled, he managed to wrestle her shirt off her. she had changed clothes at the hotel, but he realized her luggage was likely up in smoke somewhere. the bomb squad had set several of those suckers off just to match the debris with the dead agent's car.

the thought of how close she had come to going up in flames as well had his hands trembling as he held her hips against him and took another kiss. a deeper kiss.

hell, if he didn't forget the bone-chilling fear he felt when he realized her car was rigged to blow, then he might disintegrate from the inside out.

"natches." her voice was more a breathy moan now. "you have to stop this. i have to think."

"no thinking allowed here."

he let her struggle, let her twist until she turned and met the edge of the bar that separated the living room and kitchen. and then he pressed her shoulders down.

he wasn't going to go for slow and easy tonight. slow and easy would come later. right now, he was burning alive for her.

he loosened her jeans and dragged them over that very shapely ass. the prettiest ass in fifty states he swore as he hurriedly released his own jeans and freed the tormented length of his erection.

fucking her was ecstasy, and he couldn't do without it much longer.

"what are you doing?" breathless, hot, her voice washed over him. she wasn't protesting, she was losing herself in it, just as he always lost himself in her.

"we're trying to make a little natches, remember?" he tucked the head of his cock against the swollen, saturated folds of her pussy before pressing into her.

damn. it was like pressing into a living flame. natches groaned, feeling sweat coat his flesh as she burned him alive. he worked his cock farther inside her, feeling her tighten around him, feeling the delicate muscles of her vagina milking and caressing his sensitive flesh.

nothing was this good. there was no pleasure on earth that could ever be as good as taking chaya like this. when she reached back for him, her short, neat little nails digging into his thigh, he gave her more. slow, easy strokes that buried him inside her a little at a time. gave him a chance to relish every ripple of response around the ultrasensitive head of his cock.

"damn you, natches," she cursed him even as she tugged at his thigh, trying to force him deeper.

her voice was thick, a feminine little growl of demand that had him grinning with the pleasure of it.

"what? you want me to stop?" he stopped. buried halfway inside her, his cock head throbbing, dying for more.

"you're insane," she cried out.

"hmm. good thing one of us is sane then." he leaned forward and laid a row of kisses between her shoulder blades. "our kid needs at least one sane parent. you be the sane one." he pressed in farther.

he felt the wash of her juices and had to grit his teeth to hold back his release. his balls had drawn tight against the base of his shaft, electric sparks of sensation racing from them with the need to come.

"oh god, natches, we can't keep keeping doing this." she was breathing hard now, panting little breaths that assured him that she was as far gone to the pleasure as he was.

"doing what?" sweat trickled along his temple as she burned him clear to his soul.

"talking babies."

his hips shifted and he drove another inch inside her, quick and hard, and gritted his teeth as she arched, a hungry little moan begging him for more.

"the thought of giving you babies makes me harder," he panted. hell, the thought of her breathing made him harder. he stayed hard between each release at just the hope of having more of her.

"everything makes you harder," she gasped, and he had to laugh.

"everything about you makes me harder." he drew back, the head of his cock poised just inside her liquid heat before he forged inside again.

a throttled, feminine wail filled the air as he took her again. pushing deep inside her, pausing and drawing back, only to push inside her again. impaling her with slow strokes, then one fast hard thrust that pinned her to the table and had her trying to scream his name.

"did you get those condoms today?" he could barely think, let alone talk. but it was the love play she needed tonight. that, and the slow realization that it was going to happen. she was going to belong to him. all of her.

"damn you," she cursed, but there was no anger, an edge of laughter, maybe.

"oh, man, that's too bad, chay." his hands clenched on her hips as he drew back.

"natches, don't you dare stop," she cried out, panic filling her voice. "oh god, please, don't stop."

there wasn't a chance.

he thrust inside her to the hilt, snarled at the pleasure that bordered pain as he forced himself to stop, to hold deep inside her. to feel her.