nb1 (23 page)

“How’s that, baby?” Rowdy leaned over her, his chest pressing against her lightly as he fucked into her slow and easy. “Can you take it?”

“Please…” She was crying, so desperate to come she was shaking from the need. “Fuck me. Please. Please…”

-188-

NAUTI BUOY

He moved. His cock and the vibrator began to power inside her in tandem. The friction, the overwhelming intensity of pleasure consumed her. At first slow, tentative, then faster, harder, he began to thrust inside her with strong, powerful strokes.

Kelly writhed between Rowdy and the toy, the sensations of the dual penetration, of the pleasure flowing between them, just them, no one else, sent ecstasy screaming through her system.

She couldn’t survive this pleasure. It was burning, intensifying, stealing her mind, her body. She felt each stroke tightening her womb, pushing her closer, deeper into the maelstrom overtaking her.

She was going to explode. She could feel it, flew closer to it, feeling the rapture build, the pleasure, so deep, so intense, so overwhelming…

Rowdy’s name was on her lips. A scream of fear, of ecstasy as she felt the orgasm rip through her. It tightened her body, her vagina, tore through her and flung her into a pleasure she couldn’t fight, couldn’t resist.

She felt Rowdy stiffen, felt the heat of his release, the hard shudders that suffused his body and the heat, a blinding fiery blaze of emotion that had her screaming his name.

As the hard, wracking shudders eased from her body she collapsed against him, wasted, exhausted, certain she couldn’t open her eyes if her very life depended on it.

-189-

Lora Leigh

Rowdy walked from the bathroom half an hour later, dressed in fresh jeans and a shirt before moving to the bed and the shoes he had left forgotten beside it. Kelly still slept. A hard, hopefully dreamless sleep.

Sprawled on her stomach, one arm tucked beneath the pillow her cheek rested on, boneless and breathing deep. She looked innocent, sweet and untouched.

It was hard to believe she had been a wildcat less than an hour before. The sweet little kitten sleeping bonelessly bore no resemblance to her, he thought with a smile. Rowdy shook his head, the smile creasing his face further at the memory. He had always known she would be a firecracker in bed, ready and willing for any adventure he could give her.

She was earthy, lusty, and she liked that sharp little edge of pain he enjoyed giving.

He reached out, smoothing back a thick swathe of hair from her cheek as emotion overwhelmed him, tightened his chest and reminded him of what he could have lost. If he had given in to the demand that he take her the year before, the attack might have never happened. Hell no, it wouldn’t have happened because he would have demanded re-assignment. He couldn’t have left her. He had known that then. Once he had her, there was no way he could have walked away.

-190-

NAUTI BUOY

He was crazy about her. So crazy in love with her that it terrified him clear to the soles of his feet. She was young as hell, and still so innocent it broke his heart.

That innocence was so much a part of her soul that he knew that with plenty of care and love, it would always remain. Women like Kelly didn’t come along everyday, and he knew that. Women so innocent that their hearts shone in their eyes, in their smiles. Women who saw past what the world wanted them to be, and who eagerly accepted who they were instead.

Leaning forward, he pressed a butterfly kiss against her forehead before tucking the sheet closer over her shoulders and turning back to his shoes.

Minutes later he was striding from the hallway into the living room where Natches and Dawg waited on him. Natches had his head back on the couch, eyes closed. Dawg just looked grouchy as he stared back from the chair he sat in.

“Bastard!” Dawg grunted as Rowdy dropped into a chair across from him. “Guard duty sucks.”

“Did guard duty pay off though?” Rowdy lifted a brow, staring back at his cousin questioningly.

Dawg grinned in satisfaction. “Guard duty paid. I slipped out the doggie hole and found a nice little perch topside. We had some definite movement.”

Natches’ eyes opened as he straightened in his seat, his expression going as darkly dangerous as Rowdy felt.

“What kind of movement?”

“Little fellow, barely taller than Kelly. Dressed in hunting gear with a hooded mask. He was being real careful. Watching the house from heavy cover. I couldn’t get a shot.”

-191-

Lora Leigh

“Did you recognize anything?” They were getting close. The bastard was losing his grip on reality if he had been at Dawg’s house this soon after the attack.

Dawg shook his head. “I watched him as best I could. Maybe something will trigger if I see him around anywhere.” A grimace twisted his expression. “Catching him might not be easy, but I have feeling he’ll make another move soon.”

Of course he would, Rowdy thought.

“I’ll take guard duty from here on out,” Natches spoke up then, his voice bland, unassuming. Dangerous. A good ole boy attitude covering a steel core of determination.

Rowdy stared back at him curiously. Natches had changed in ways that were hard to put a finger on. He had returned from the Marines only months before Rowdy had, quieter and a hell of a lot harder than he had been when he went in. That hardness was more than maturity and confidence, more than a soldier who had seen battle in the sands of another nation. Despite his vow that he had never grown up, somehow, Rowdy knew better.

Something had happened to his friend, something Natches was hiding from them all. But he wasn’t the only one. Dawg had changed as well, and until this situation with Kelly was resolved, he didn’t have a hope of figuring out why or how.

“Fine.” Rowdy nodded slowly. “You take watch. We’ll head into town in the morning, take Kelly shopping, do some stocking up. We’ll let the bastard see what he’s missing. If he’s the nutcase I suspect, he’ll hit by tomorrow night.”

“Are we going to give him an opening?” Natches’ voice softened, became more of a drawl.

-192-

NAUTI BUOY

“We can’t make it look too easy. He has to work for it.” Rowdy sat back in the chair, considering their options. “Dawg, weaken the security monitor on the kitchen window, and in the shrubbery beneath it. Make it look natural, something he can get through. He’s broken the women’s security systems so he’s not a stranger to security. Let’s see what the bastard’s made of.”

Dawg nodded sharply as Natches continued to watch them with a hard, merciless stare that assured Rowdy that he wasn’t the only one waiting to shed blood.

Rowdy turned his gaze back to Natches, realizing in that second that he had seen the look in his friend’s eyes before. He had seen it in another man’s eyes, a Marine assassin. He had worked alone, disappearing for weeks at a time and returning with that same dead, cold chill in his eyes.

Hell. He blew out a silent breath as Natches met his eyes, his expression never changing.

“Go ahead and set up,” Rowdy told him quietly. “Let me know before morning how you want to play it.”

Dawg’s head had lowered, proof that he was aware of a truth that Rowdy hadn’t been privy to. A truth he still wasn’t certain of the details to.

“I’ll go public with you when you need me to,” Natches said softly. “I’ll use the bolt-hole otherwise.”

The bolt-hole, or dog door as Dawg had amusingly named it, was the single, secret entrance into the house from a shrub-hidden door several hundred feet around the base of the hill. Dawg wasn’t the trusting sort, and his time in the Marines hadn’t helped his trust issues any.

“Boys, we need to talk when this is all over and done,” Rowdy sighed, watching the weary resignation in his cousins’ eyes. “Keeping secrets among ourselves isn’t a good thing, ya know?”

-193-

Lora Leigh

Dawg grunted, a sound of wry amusement that was typical Dawg.

Natches’ lips quirked into a smile.

“A good drunk maybe,” Dawg growled as he rose from his chair and paced across the room toward the kitchen. “Until then, boys, I need food.

You want me to take mess duty?”

Rowdy’s eyes met Natches’ in shock, as his cousin’s widened in horror.

“Hell no!” They both came out of their seats, rushing for the kitchen as they heard pans rattling beneath the stove cabinet and remembered Dawg’s past attempts at manning a stove. The memory wasn’t a pleasant one.

ad

He had checked on his girls. His special good girls. Kelly was weak,
she was allowing herself to be degraded, to be taken. Oh, how he had
hoped she had been the only one. He had prayed, prayed so long and
hard that his good girls were waiting on him.

He curled into the corner of the small dark apartment, rocking himself
gently as he stared at the first of his lovers. He had thought she was so
pure, so sweet. With her long, silken blonde hair, and her innocent blue
eyes. She had a soft voice, one that stroked the senses and made him
think of his mother before she became a whore. Before she had turned his
father away, before his father had stolen him away for his mother’s sins.

They had to punish her. She hadn’t been a good girl.

He sniffed, realizing he was crying. He hated crying. Crying never
helped, tears made a man weak, he remembered that from his father’s
lessons. A man had to do what he had to do. His father had been weak.

-194-

NAUTI BUOY

The old man had cried, he had raged but he had left the depraved creature
he had married rather than punishing her.

He should have punished her. If his father had punished his mother,
then she wouldn’t have been so bad. She would have been the good wife
and mother she should have been. If she had been a good girl, then she
wouldn’t have lost her son.

He flinched at that memory, shaking his head to force it back from his
mind as he reached out to touch thick strands of hair that flowed out from
his good girl’s head.

He touched the silken strands, rubbed them between his fingers,
remembering how soft and sweet she had been. Before she had let herself
grow weak. Before she had let another man convince her to be bad.

He stared at the man, a tight smile crossing his lips at the sight of the
nude man, laying half on the bed, half on the floor. He wasn’t dead, but he
would soon wish he was.

The girl. He sighed wearily as he let himself stare at the blood staining
the carpet. She stared back at him sightlessly, her china blue eyes
reflecting the horror of her punishment.

Kelly must have somehow convinced this one that she could be bad
too. How, he wasn’t certain. He could have sworn his girls didn’t know
about each other. He had taken pains to be very careful. But Kelly was so
bad, so depraved, that she would have found a way to convince the others
that they too could escape him.

They belonged to him. They were his good girls. He wouldn’t allow
another to touch them, not like his mother had.

He pulled himself to his feet, careful to pick up the knife and clean it of
the blood that stained it. Her blood.

“You’ll always be my good girl now,” he whispered as he stepped
around the blood and moved for the spare bedroom.

-195-

Lora Leigh

He had hidden there for hours, waiting for her to come home. Waiting
to assure himself that she was a good girl. Only to listen in pain and fury
as another man touched her, reassured her, promised her safety.

He fought back his tears again as he entered the dark room and
headed for the window he had used to slip inside the apartment. He had
bypassed her security. How easy it had been. She had thought she was
safe from him. That she could disobey him as his mother had disobeyed
his father. She had found out wrong. Just as Kelly would have to learn as
well.

-196-

NAUTI BUOY

The next morning, Kelly would have preferred to enjoy the awakening caresses Rowdy was bestowing as she swam toward reality rather than the warm, sensual dreams twining around her. Unfortunately, the moment was interrupted by Dawg’s growling message that her mother and Ray were on their way, and they had better get their asses ready before the arrival. His words, not hers.

She had enough time to shower and dress, and only seconds to eye the outfit Rowdy cajoled her into wearing. The wispy skirt and high-rise shirt were pale blue and suited her pale skin, even as they displayed it.

His wink and the hungry glint in his eye assured her that it had achieved the effect she had bought it for though. To tempt Rowdy.

The hungry light died in his eyes though, as did Kelly’s feeling of security and her newly awakened sense of hope with the news her mother and Ray brought.

“Her name was Dana Carrington.” Ray’s voice was low, angry. “She was murdered and her boyfriend was molested.”

Kelly sat in shock, listening as Ray recounted the murder that had taken place the night before. She sat at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around her coffee cup as Rowdy stood behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders as she felt fear tremble through her.

-197-

Lora Leigh

“Kelly.” Her mother leaned forward in her chair, staring back at her worriedly. “I called your Aunt Beth in Dallas, she wants you to come stay—”

“No.” Rowdy’s voice was hard.

Kelly’s gaze flickered to Ray. He glanced at Rowdy in concern, but said nothing more.

“She’s not safe here, Rowdy…” her mother protested.

“She won’t be any safer there,” he argued as Kelly tightened her fingers on the coffee cup. “At least here, Dawg and Natches and I have a chance of catching this bastard.”