Damn, she was making him high just from the feel of her. The blood was pounding in his head, adrenaline and lust clouding his vision as he shook his head and breathed in roughly.

Just a few more minutes. God, he had to feel her just a few more minutes. He couldn’t come yet, not yet, not until those little ripples around his dick began to clench and spasm in release.

Crista felt her legs lifting, felt her body melting, and she whimpered at the surrender that rushed through her mind. She couldn’t fight this. He was buried inside her, fiery hot and thick, pulsing and stroking internal muscles that even after all this time hadn’t forgotten the pleasure he could give her.

She bit her lip as she stared up at him. Her wild man. That was what he was, a wild man. Maybe not hers, but here, buried inside her, for this moment in time, he was hers. And he was every inch a primal, sexual male.

His eyes were so light now they seemed to glow within his face, his lips tight with the fight for control. She didn’t want his control. She wanted what she had before. Wild, primitive. Maybe, just maybe she could survive the fallout later.

As she watched, a smile tugged at the taut line of his lips, and he began to move again. That slow, destructive rhythm that forced her to feel every blazing inch of his cock.

Oh, that was good. Her breath hitched; a hard, jerking shudder tore through her body as her hips jerked upward to hold him inside her as long as possible.

“Oh yeah, you like that,” he muttered, his voice becoming thicker, rough. “I like it, Crista. I like it a lot.”

Of course he liked it. He was winning. Triumph glittered in his gaze as her hands tightened on the wrists beside her head.

“Let’s see if you like this.”

The rhythm stayed the same, but his head lowered, his lips surrounding a hard, sensitive nipple and drawing it into his mouth.

“Oh, God. Dawg, please, don’t…” Don’t make her feel this. Don’t make her lose her senses to him.

Her head twisted against the mattress, though she arched closer, pushing the peak deeper into his mouth.

His lips, teeth, tongue. They all played with the hot nerve center of her nipple. Licking, nipping, suckling with male greed as he continued to thrust inside her slow and easy.

Her pussy was clenching around the length of his erection, spasming with brutal need and desperate lust. Her hands moved from his wrists to his head, trembling fingers sinking into his long hair, holding him closer as her hips moved beneath him.

“Harder.” The cry shocked her. It came from her in a voice strangled with furious need. “Fuck me, Dawg. Please. Please, like before.”

The desperation rose inside her. The need for more, the need for racing bolts of electric ecstasy tearing through her rather than zipping teasingly around her.

“How was it before, baby?” he whispered, his voice a guttural rasp now. “Tell me what I missed, Crista. Tell me how I took you.”

“Hard.” She was panting, shaking. Sweat dampened both their flesh now as her juices built along her thighs, easing from around Dawg’s cock with each movement inside her.

She was so wet, so hot, and becoming violently sensitive to each touch of his mouth against her nipples, each stroke inside her.

“How hard?” He nipped the sensitive curve of her breast before stroking his stubbled cheek against it.

Crista felt the breath tear from her throat.

“So hard. Please, Dawg.”

“Did I pound inside you?” Tortured, hungry, his tone stroked her senses just as his cock stroked inside the burning center of her body.

“Yes,” she hissed, writhing beneath him.

Crista could feel her response blazing out of control now. Her senses were overwhelming her common sense. She knew it; she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t force it back inside her now that Dawg had released it.

“Do it!” She jerked beneath him, her legs rising, her ankles clasping at his hips as she shoved upward, then cried out at the feeling of him delving deeper, stretching her farther.

A hard male groan tore from his chest then. Hard hands pulled her legs free, pushed them back as he rose to his knees in front of her and gave her what she demanded.

Just as he had the first time.

He rose over her like a sex god come to life. Hard hands held her behind her knees, forcing them to bend, forcing her legs back as his hips began to move.

A bed pounder. The headboard would have been striking the wall behind them if it weren’t attached. The mattress shook, and Crista felt the tender tissue of her sex quaking in rapture as he began to fuck her with hard, driving strokes.

Burning strokes.

Pleasure and pain that combined inside her and had starlight bursting in front of her vision as she exploded beneath him.

Lightning tore through her veins. It licked over her nipples, her clitoris, then ruptured forcefully inside her womb as she felt the wet, hot force of her orgasm frothing inside her, around Dawg’s pounding erection.

Within seconds, it was joined by his release. His teeth clenched, his lips pulling back as his gaze caught hers, held it, and the feel of his semen spurting inside her triggered another forceful, screaming, sheet-clawing orgasm inside her.

“Fuck yes!” he snarled. “Come for me, Crista. Like that—fuck yes, milk me with that sweet pussy. Take it. Take it all.” He jerked spasmodically inside her before his head tilted back on his shoulders, and a harsh tremor shook his hard body.

He released her legs slowly. They melted back to the bed as he came over her, still buried inside her, his cock jerking weakly now as he covered her.

“I came like that inside you the first time,” he panted at her ear. “I remember that, Crista. Over and over again I came inside you.”

He had. Her lashes lifted to stare at the ceiling, to force back the bitter memories.

“Tell me.” His voice was insidious, low, dangerous. “Were you pregnant when you left Somerset?

And don’t bother lying to me.” His head raised, his gaze spearing into hers. “Did you have my baby?”

She stared back at him, the bitterness rising inside her like a cancer she couldn’t rid herself of.

“There’s no baby,” she whispered harshly, wondering why the hell she even bothered. “I didn’t have your child.”

His eyes narrowed as fury began to light the depths.

“Did you abort my baby, Crista?”

God help her if she had. Crista could see the murderous rage lurking in the depths now.

Her lips twisted mockingly. “There was nothing to abort, Dawg. And if you can ask me that question, then you have no business coming inside me. Tell me something now. How many of your bimbos have you double-fucked with your cousins and not worn a condom? Maybe I should be checked for STDs rather than a pregnancy.”

A snarling smile pulled at his lips now as he leaned close, nearly nose to nose, his gaze flaring, heating, lightening, then darkening again.

“I marked your pussy eight years ago, and I marked it today. And trust me, sweetheart, no other has taken my seed. I’ve made damned sure of it.”

Her eyes widened in a parody of joy that didn’t hint at the anger running through her. “Oh wow.

Dawg gave me his seed three times now.” She fluttered her lashes. “How lucky am I? Well, just let me up right now so I can jump for joy and tell the world my accomplishments. I have finally arrived in life.”

A grin quirked his lips. Bastard that he was, he was amused.

“There you go, sugar, you’re getting the idea,” he murmured as a slight grimace twisted his features as he pulled free of her.

And her stupid, traitorous body tried to hold on to him. Clenching around his flesh, her hips jerking upward as though to relish that final stroke of heat and pleasure.

She flung the sheet over her as he rolled from the bed, pushing his fingers through his hair as he glanced back at her.

“You’re a smart-ass,” he grunted.

“Just figuring that one out? And here I thought I was being less than subtle for the past year.”

Twelve months of trying to keep him at arm’s length, of trying to hold back the bitterness and the memories that tormented her, and what had she done? She’d twisted and mewled beneath him like a bitch in heat. Apt, considering his nickname, she told herself cruelly.

She was setting herself up for heartbreak again, and Alex wasn’t here to save her. Mark wasn’t here to comfort her, and his lover wasn’t here to make her laugh and help her rebuild herself once Dawg was finished with her.

For the first time in her life, Crista could feel how very alone she was.

“At least you were smart enough to use protection that first time.” He sighed, though she fooled herself into thinking she heard an edge of regret in his tone.

Fooling herself. Just as she had fooled herself those months before he took her to his bed that first time. Fooled herself into thinking he cared about her, that she mattered.

“Yeah, that’s me, intelligent to a fault,” she bit out as she wrapped the sheet around her and moved from the bed. She needed to find her clothes. She needed to shower and wash the smell of Dawg from her body. The scent of sunrise and a storm. Wild and hot. He should bottle it. He would be a millionaire. Hell, she should bottle it, but she would be too stupid to sell it. She would hoard it all for herself.

That was her. Greedy as hell when it came to Dawg.

Too greedy, she imagined, for the lifestyle he had chosen years before.

“I need a shower,” she told him, furious with herself and her emotions.

It had been eight years since she had left Somerset. Eight long, exhausting, completely unproductive years, because all she thought about was coming home, returning to the mountains she loved and the man she couldn’t forget.

And he had forgotten her so easily.

“Go ahead. I’ll hop downstairs and shower. The two bathrooms have separate hot water heaters.

You’ll have plenty enough for a bath or a shower.”

The Nauti Dawg had all the comforts of home, she remembered. Including a sinfully deep tub large enough to hold even Dawg.

The thought of soaking in that tub, easing the aches and pains from her still-bruised body, was almost irresistible. Almost. Unfortunately, she had things to do. Things like finding a newspaper to begin job hunting. Again.

It was Friday, so actually hunting up a job wasn’t going to happen today. But she needed to return to the house and get organized.

The waitressing job had been okay for a while. It kept her going while she finished the tests for her business degree, but she had no intentions of staying there, anyway. She had been marking time since completing her advanced degree three months before. Something she had put off when she had landed the office manager job in Virginia.

It had been a good job. Until her boss married, and the wife decided she could save her husband’

s money by doing the job herself. Crista had received two weeks’ notice and a very small severance package, and then good-bye.

“I need a ride back to the restaurant to pick up my car,” she told him as she gathered her clothes from the floor and headed to the bathroom.

“I’ll drive you back,” he said behind her. “Then we can go to the house and collect the rest of your things. Did you have any furniture you have to bring back with you?”

Crista froze at the bathroom doorway before turning back to him slowly.

“Why would I need to bring my furniture? You just said until the end of summer.” She kept her voice calm. When dealing with Dawg, one had to learn to stay calm, or he would drive one insane.

He pulled a pair of shorts over his naked hips before straightening without answering.

His gaze pierced hers. His arms crossed over his chest in a stance of pure power, and he looked straight down that arrogant nose of his as though he were lord of all he surveyed.

Her calm slipped, just a little bit, as she stared back at him incredulously, her fingers fisting in the sheet she held around her. “Have you lost your mind?”