Nauti Dreams (Nauti #3)

She felt a chill race over her head at the thought, then down her spine. Then it sort of went over her body as she forced herself to move away from Natches. Once Natches knew who DHS had targeted, he was liable to kill her and Cranston.

“What do you want from me, Natches? You know I can’t give you this mission or Timothy’s suspects; so what’s left?” She stared around the large living room with its heavily cushioned furniture and male accoutrements.

There were pictures of Natches and his cousins Dawg and Rowdy. A few that were taken while he was in the Marines with buddies. There was a picture of Natches with Faisal.

A table had been set up at the side of the room with a jigsaw puzzle. Hell, she didn’t know people still did those.

There were some oil lamps on a table and a heavy lamp on the end table next to the couch. The kitchen and living room were separated by a bar. There was no dining room, but the kitchen was large enough for the heavy oak table that was set to the side of the room.

She assumed the doorway off the living room went to a bedroom, but she wasn’t checking that one out.

And as she stared around, she realized Natches hadn’t answered her.

She turned back to him, watching nervously as he strode past her and moved into the kitchen, his expression stark, furious. This was it and she knew it. Natches wasn’t going to let her avoid the past any longer.

“I’d have followed any other agent,” he finally growled, pulling out a beer from the fridge and unscrewing the top with a quick jerk of his hand.

Broad, long fingered. Those hands could make a woman think of heaven even as hell moved in around them. And she knew they could make a woman fly, steal her senses and her thoughts with their touch.

Would he ever want to touch her with those hands after Timothy’s operation finished here in Somerset?

“I didn’t think I’d see you back here,” he said, staring back at her with a hint of sensuality, a hint of anger.

“Cranston has a way of convincing agents to do his dirty work for him.” She shrugged with a mocking smile. “Come on, Natches, you know how it works. The follow-up was important. He wants that money and he wants to make certain no one else is involved here. That’s all.”

“Are you investigating my family?” Short and to the point. And here was where things were about to get sticky. Because she couldn’t lie to Natches. He had saved her, not just once but twice, and then he had held her and let her fly while she found her sanity once again.

“As far as Cranston is concerned, everyone is suspect,” she reminded him dryly. “You’re all on my list to question.”

“Why did he send you?” He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank, his gaze never leaving hers, the dark green depths dragging her in and leaving her breathless.

She was an agent, fully trained to ignore sexual need or even fear during a mission. But she couldn’t ignore Natches. He made her weak, made her need, and he made her fear herself.

“Because it amused him?” She lifted her shoulders as though she didn’t know and didn’t care. “He was pissed over my attempted resignation and decided to play with me. Cranston’s good for games like that.”

“Cranston’s good at games, period.” Natches finished his beer, then tossed the bottle in the trash as Chaya watched him closely now.

He ran a hand over his face before staring back at her.

“Do you have any idea how much I missed you?” he said, his voice soft. “How much I ached for you last year?”

Chaya backed up a step, her movement jerky as she tried to look everywhere but at Natches. She didn’t want to talk about last year; she didn’t want to talk about five years ago. She wanted this over with. She wanted to run and hide, to bury her head in the sand and pretend this mission and this man could be ignored.

“That wouldn’t have been very wise then, and it wouldn’t be now,” she answered, her throat tightening as she watched him, as she watched his expression flicker with primitive lust.

He wasn’t going to just let her go this time, and she knew it. He was going to force her to face everything she didn’t want to face, and she didn’t know if she could do it.

Chaya shook her head at the look. “Don’t, Natches.”

She couldn’t handle his touch, not now, when this entire mission hinged on betraying him. She wasn’t cold-blooded enough; she wasn’t the agent Timothy thought she could be.

“Don’t.” He shook his head wearily before running his fingers through his thick hair and staring back at her with an expression of torment. “How long is it going to lie between us like a double-edged sword, Chaya? When are you going to forgive me?”

No. Oh God, she couldn’t deal with this. Her throat tightened and closed with pain and fear as she saw the determination in his eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about that.” She gave her head a hard jerk. “We can argue over this operation or Cranston or anything else. But not that.” She had to fight her tears, her sobs. She had to fight the memories that wanted to return in a rush of agony.

“Damn you.” He was across the room before she could avoid him. His hands gripped her arms as he jerked her against him, and she felt the heat of him, felt the weakness that threatened to flood her as she dragged in a hard, gasping breath.

“Five years.” He moved, forcing her to back up as she stared up at him in shock. “Five fucking years, Chay. How much longer do we have to suffer for something that neither of us caused?”

“No.” Her cry sounded too close to hysteria. “Stop, Natches. I can’t discuss this. I won’t.”

“She was a beautiful little girl. I saw her pictures later.” His voice was agonized, tormented.

Chaya heard the pain-filled moan that left her throat. Even when she was being tortured, she hadn’t made a sound like that.

“He stole her.” He groaned the accusation as she felt his forehead press against hers. “She was safe with your sister, wasn’t she, Chay? If he had just left her there.”

“Don’t do this.”

“She looked like you. She had your smile and your hair. Your innocence.”

“Stop it!” She screamed the words at him, tearing from his embrace as she pressed her fist against her stomach and swallowed back the sickness rising in her throat. “You didn’t know her. You didn’t raise her, and you didn’t love her. And it’s none of your damned business.”

Beth. Sweet Beth.

“She was three years old, and your husband had her flown to Iraq. While you were being tortured, she was landing at the airport in a military transport believing she would see her mommy again.”

Her heart felt as though it were shattering in her chest now, and she didn’t want to collapse from the pain of it. She had lost everything in that damned desert. She didn’t want to remember it, and she didn’t want to think about it or talk about it. Especially not with the man who had been there to witness it, who had held her back, who had covered her with his own body to protect her while her child died.

“Why?” She turned on him, tears she swore she wouldn’t shed escaping now. “Why are you doing this to me? Do you think I don’t know what happened?”

Her voice was rasping. She sounded nothing like herself. She sounded like the demented creature she had been the day she lost Beth.

“Army Intelligence didn’t know he had your child.” His expression looked as agonized as hers felt. “They didn’t give the orders to bomb that hotel, did they, Chay? Someone else did. Something fucked up like it always fucks up, and your baby was killed.”

She shook her head. Her body shook. Tremors raced through her as she stared at the ceiling. But she didn’t see the ceiling; she saw the missiles, ribbons of steam flowing behind them, the hiss of flight, the fiery destruction with impact.

“I know who killed her,” she whispered. She had always known.

Her husband. Beth’s father. He had killed their child just as surely as he had ordered his wife’s torture and death. But she knew even more than that. She knew there had been others, those who knew what her husband had done, and they had struck out. They had killed her child when there had been a chance of saving her.

She lowered her eyes back to Natches and saw the pain, his eyes so dark with so many emotions. Grief and sorrow and need.

“You hold her between us as though it were my fault,” he said then, his voice graveled, accusing. “As though I ordered the attack or I arranged her death, Chay.”

Chaya swallowed tightly and turned away from him again. She didn’t know which way to turn, which way to run. She wanted to run. She wanted to escape the shared memories, and she wanted to escape her own loss.

Natches had been with her when they had learned where Beth and Chaya’s husband, Craig, were staying. The suspected headquarters of a terrorist cell. He had raced after her when she went to rescue her child. He had thrown her to the street, held her down, and tried to shield her eyes as missiles slammed into the building.

“I held you when you identified her. I held you then, and I held you through the night. Did you think I wouldn’t hold you longer, Chay, if you had given me the chance?”

FIVE

Craig Cornwell had been a major in Army Intelligence and a traitor. He had been selling secrets to Iraqi terrorists, and when he’d known he would be identified for it, he had arranged for his daughter to be brought to Iraq, believing he could hold her for Chaya’s cooperation in helping him escape.

He couldn’t have known the cell he was tied to had already been targeted and that their headquarters would be taken out so violently.

Natches stared into her face now, paper white, her golden hazel and brown eyes dark with the memories that tore at him as well. And he wanted to howl out in rage, in agony. Because he felt the need to wipe the horror from her. To tear aside that wall she had placed between them.

“I don’t blame you.” She tried to tear herself from his hold again. “I never blamed you for her death.”

“You blamed me for saving you instead,” he snapped, fury rising inside him at the thought of losing her like that. “Is that what you wanted for me, Chaya? For us? To have it all end that way?”

And despite his anger, he could only touch her with tenderness. He lifted his free hand, brushed back the hair that fell over her forehead, and he ached.

“There was no us.”

She only infuriated him with that statement, because he knew better. He’d always known better. From the moment he’d torn into that fucking cell and seen her struggling to drag that dead guard’s clothes on, her eyes swollen shut, lips bloodied, and courage shining in her face, he’d known there was going to be an “us.” It was just a matter of time.

And later, buried in that hole, waiting on extraction, he shouldn’t have been attracted to her. She had been in shock. She had been hurt and fighting so valiantly to stay conscious. And in such a short time, she had dug her way inside him. Into a place he hadn’t realized existed within the killer he had been shaping himself into.

He’d breathed in her pain when she’d realized her husband had betrayed her to the enemy, that he had betrayed his country and their marriage. And he had soaked in her pain the night she’d lost her child. He’d stroked her trembling body as she’d begged him to hold back the horror of what she had seen. He had taken her, amid both their tears, and the next morning, when he’d awoken, she had been gone.

He released her now, grimacing, feeling his flesh tighten over his muscles, as though something within him stretched dangerously, confined by his own skin and growing impatient.

“I guess there wasn’t, because you were gone the next morning,” he bit out.

“And you were gone that night when I returned,” she snapped back, anger trembling in her voice, anger and something else. A finely threaded emotion that had his gaze sharpening on her pale face. “You didn’t come back.”