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She nodded slowly. “Fine. ”
Dawg let off the brake and eased back onto the road before adding speed and heading down the dark highway.
“You act like you’re heading to the gallows. ” He grinned.
She didn’t reply.
Dawg glanced at her again, watching as she rubbed at her bare arms and stared out the window, her expression bleak, disheartening.
Damn her. It wasn’t as though he intended to rape her. Blackmail her a little bit, definitely. But sex would be only under certain conditions. He’d make damned sure she wanted it as badly as he did, first.
He wasn’t a complete bastard.
But he was a horny bastard. And a mad bastard.
Eight fucking years she had lived in his dreams, and he couldn’t figure out why. She had changed him at a time when he needed to retain that edge of careless unconcern. She had pricked his emotions, filled his head, and he couldn’t make sense of it.
She tormented him. It was that damned simple, and it was time the torment eased.
“Don’t worry, darlin’. It won’t be so bad,” he assured her, reaching over to pat her knee in a totally false gesture of comfort. “We used to get along good once, remember?”
Once.
Crista turned her head slowly and stared at his profile. Once, she had loved him with all the passion and innocence of a young girl who revered the town’s baddest bad boy. But she wasn’t a girl anymore; she was a grown woman. She was well aware of just how easily he could destroy her life again.
“I remember how stupid I was,” she finally answered him with a measure of self-disgust at the memory. “And I remember learning my lesson. I don’t really remember much other than that, Dawg.
Perhaps you could remind me of a time that we actually got along. ”
He didn’t remember that night. Crista knew he didn’t. And she knew Alex would have never told him what happened. He had promised her.
Dawg tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “You ran from me every chance you got,” he growled back at her.
Not every chance. Not one dark night when she had found him too drunk to drive and helped him home. And then helped him break her heart.
“I was smart then,” she said, feeling the regret that welled inside her. If only she had been smarter.
If only she had faced the truth then, and what had happened. Maybe the past eight years would have been different. If nothing else, she might not have been tormented with so many what-ifs and the fact that she had been a coward.
Dawg grunted at that. “Too bad you weren’t smart enough to stay out of dark warehouses at night. If you had, you wouldn’t be here now. ”
Too bad she hadn’t been smart enough to stay in Virginia to begin with. But no, she had to come home. She missed being home. She missed the mountains, the lake, and home. And she had known it was time to lay old ghosts to rest. She had come home to make peace with the memories and with herself. And with Dawg. She just hadn’t expected to make peace with him in quite this way.
Instead, she found more demons. She found herself in the untenable position of relying on Dawg for something as imperative as her freedom. And there wasn’t a doubt in her mind exactly how he intended to manipulate this one.
He had been after her ever since she had returned to Somerset a year ago. He hadn’t stalked her.
He was just always around. Always smiling that rakish grin of his, giving her that mocking once-over, that invitation to play. If he wasn’t doing that, he was glaring at her. And he filled her dreams. Heated dreams, memories of one unforgettable night and the consequences of it.
She watched the miles pass by, feeling his hand on her knee when he wasn’t shifting gears in the powerful pickup, and feeling the warmth of his touch burning through her skirt.
At least he wasn’t groping her. Her body was so hyped on nerves right now that she wondered if she could bear that. If her heart could bear it.
She thought she had learned her lesson before leaving Somerset. After all, she knew what Dawg was, she knew what he intended, and she knew she could never live with it.
The Nauti Boys were legendary in Somerset and the surrounding counties. Their prowess, dedication to a woman’s pleasure, and insistence on sharing those women had been well-known. Her brother, Alex, had warned her about Dawg repeatedly.
Her head had warned her about Dawg, but her heart hadn’t wanted to listen. She could tame the bad boy, she had assured herself. Love would make him possessive. All she had to do was touch him, love him, and he would realize he loved her.
