She was close to orgasm. Her pussy was clenching around his shaft, stroking the sensitive head, rippling over him like a thousand hungry little fingers caressing him at once.

“You feel so good.” He leaned into her, kissed the shell of her ear then drew the lobe between his teeth to worry it erotically. “So tight and hot around me. I could stay inside you forever, feeling you come for me, over and over again, Chay.”

He could feel the perspiration coating both their bodies now. Her nails were digging into his thigh, a sharp little pain to keep him centered amid the pleasure.

“Are you ready for me, Chay? I’m going to take you hard. I’m going to take you so hard and deep you’ll think you’re dying. Then, before the last tremor is gone, I’m going to take you again. Over and over again, until you feel all that love burning and heating inside you. You hear me, sweetheart? We’re going to find all that love.”

She cried out his name. The sound of her voice, dazed and thick with the pleasure he was giving her, was almost, just almost, enough to send him over the edge right then. He had to clench his teeth, had to fight to hold back his release. But he knew holding back wasn’t going to happen for long.

Gripping her hips firmly, he began to move. He started slow and easy, but slow and easy wasn’t what either of them needed. She needed to burn through her pain and he needed to guide her through the heat. He needed to feel her come apart around him, shattering with the ecstasy as she shattered with hers.

Within seconds, the thrusts built. He was slamming against her, burying his cock inside her with blinding, furious strokes as she begged for more. For harder. Harder, stronger, until he heard her wail fill his head and felt her pussy, like a fist tightening on his cock, milking it, pulling his release from him, tearing through him with fire and lightning.

“Ah hell!” He barely recognized his own voice. “Chay. Ah God, baby, yes, take it. Take all of me.”

He poured himself into her as he felt the contractions of her pussy spill her release around him. Deep, violent spurts of semen tore from the head of his cock, the racing pleasure tearing through his body as he thrust against her, buried himself deeper, and felt stars exploding in his head as she cried out his name.

He collapsed over her, his knees weak, and damn if he wasn’t starting to feel as exhausted as she had looked earlier.

The contractions flexing around his cock were easing, and as he kissed her shoulder, he smiled.

“You know what, sweetheart?” he drawled.

“Hmm.” She was boneless beneath him, sated, relaxing.

“You know you are so pregnant now, don’t you?” Pride flared deep and strong inside him, and he swore he was growing hard again. “See? I told you, the thought of making babies with you just makes me harder.”

No sooner had Chaya showered and eaten the impromptu meal Natches had waiting for her than his family converged on them. Rowdy and his wife, Kelly; Dawg and his wife, Crista; and their uncle Ray and his wife, Maria. And Crista’s brother, Alex Jansen.

Chaya knew Alex Jansen fairly well—he was better known as Timothy Cranston’s muscle, though Chaya doubted the Mackays knew that. And from the warning look he had thrown her, he didn’t want it known, either.

Oh, how tangled this little web was becoming. She knew Alex could report back to Timothy and cause her more trouble than she wanted to face, but she also knew the man’s incredible loyalty to his little sister, Crista.

Which way would Alex’s loyalty swing in this one though?

As the men converged on the beers Natches had stacked in an ice-filled cooler and the women came bearing snacks, sandwiches, and chips, Chaya got a look into the relationships between the Mackays, their wives, and the uncle that had more or less raised all of them.

Ray Mackay was the complete opposite of his brothers or sister. He loved his son and his nephews, he was incredibly protective over all of them, and the loyalty and warmth seemed to extend around Alex as well. And maybe even Chaya herself.

He had hugged her as he walked in, patted her shoulder, and told her not to worry, the Mackays were going to take care of everything.

She’d wanted to grin at the proclamation, but she had a feeling he was entirely too serious.

Now, as she sat back and watched the men going through the printed reports Natches had taken from her laptop, she had a moment to worry about involving any of them. If something were to happen to even one of them, it would affect the whole family. And it wouldn’t just affect them; it would devastate them.

“The subjects you questioned were all ex-military members.” Rowdy cast her a narrow-eyed look from across the wide table as he laid down the file he had been going through. He flipped two files toward her. “Hollister Mcgrew.”

Chaya stared at the picture clipped to the corner of the file. Hollister Mcgrew’s pitted face, framed by limp brown hair and sporting a bullish look, stared back at her. He and Johnny had been reported to have been friends in high school, and later had run and drunk together in many of the local bars before Hollister signed up for the Army.

He wasn’t gay, actually considered himself quite the ladies’ man, despite his rotting front teeth and sour breath. His honorable discharge from the Army had been medical. Hollister hadn’t handled the Army well.

“George Mack.” Rowdy tossed out another file.

Pole skinny with straight, thinning brown hair and dirt brown eyes. For a few years, he and Johnny had been best friends, until George had joined the Navy. As with Hollister, George lasted only the first tour before receiving discharge, though his had been less than honorable. He’d nearly ended up in Leavenworth.

There were others. Many of them were rumored to be involved in drugs, grand theft, or burglary. The few who weren’t ex-military, such as Rogue Walker, a former friend of Johnny’s, were persons of interest who may or may not have had information tying Johnny to other persons of interest.

“Johnny was the one who admitted to masterminding the whole deal,” she pointed out, playing devil’s advocate.

“None of them had the brains or connections to have helped Johnny put everything together, nor could they have kept their dirty little paws off a million in cash,” Alex stated. “They are the pawns. Who’s the king?”

That was a good question. Chaya pushed her fingers through her hair in frustration. That one she hadn’t figured out yet.

“They have ties to others as well,” she stated. “The mayor and chief of police. George Mack is Mayor Sunders’s second cousin. Hollister worked for Sunders as a handyman for several weeks. The same pattern follows for everyone I’ve questioned. I received three to five names each day as well as their most likely locations or residences. And the questions.”

“The questions aren’t that hard,” Dawg snorted. “And it’s damned easy to lie.”

“And sometimes, it’s damned easy to see that lie.” She shrugged. “I’ve been trained to see the lies. I’m an interrogation specialist, Dawg. This is what I do well.”

She had been lied to quite a bit during the questioning, and the knowledge of that had gone into the notes she sent to Cranston each evening. The same notes everyone here now held.

“There’s no one here Johnny would have trusted,” Ray told them all as he looked through the files. “He was a strange boy, but trust wasn’t something he gave easily.”

“Trust was something he traded with,” Natches said, his voice curiously bland. “Johnny only trusted his mother and Dayle. And we know Nadine would lie out of her ass if it got her something she wanted. Dayle’s no better.”

That was his father, but there wasn’t so much as a hint of emotion in his voice.

“Cranston’s arriving here in the morning,” she told them. “I received his message before we returned to the boat. I’m hoping he’ll have more answers.”

“I’d suggest he come bearing answers.” Natches’s more dangerous drawl was back now. If Timothy didn’t have answers, then he was going to have to deal with more than one pissed-off Mackay.

“Several of these boys were military, too,” Alex noticed. “The team we captured after Johnny’s death was all ex-military. Penny-ante troublemakers, none of them did well there, but thought they were Rambo once they came home.

“The group we’re after, Freedom’s League, uses such men to help steal the weapons they’ve targeted. But the League has never attempted to sell something so powerful to terrorists before.

“The few times they managed to steal weapons of any strength, DHS was there to stop the sales. Smaller caches the agents allowed to slip by as they worked to identify and capture those heading the militia group.

“If the League was involved, then it would have been a hit. They would have taken out the Swede and his group, and they would have used men better able to pull the operation off,” Alex stated.

And Crista agreed with that—to a point.

“Except the Swedish broker has, according to evidence he turned over, worked with the contact in this area before. The missiles went cheap. Two million?” She scoffed. “Give me a break, they could have gotten twenty million for them. And that was the intention. The broker was only buying the rights to transport and arrange auction on the missiles. And that was what Johnny didn’t know. He thought the missile sale was a done deal.”

“Which means someone was pulling the strings somewhere else,” Natches mused, sitting back in his chair and staring at the papers on the table before lifting his eyes to Chaya.

She saw the bitterness now, the anger.

“Each step we take points in that direction,” she agreed.

“Fucking Somerset, Kentucky, a hotbed of illegal militia sales and homegrown terrorism.” A cynical laugh passed his lips. “Son of a bitch, boys.” He looked to his cousins. “Have we been sleeping or what?”

Chaya shook her head, aching for him. This was his home, and she knew his love for the mountains, the lake, and even in some part, the people.

“Somerset is only one of many small towns,” she told him. “The guerilla militias can grow and thrive in such areas, because of their family and community ties. They know who to target, who they can trust and who they can blackmail. Most of them are harmless. Good ole boys plotting to defend God and country against aggressors. They have ties to military personnel, gain a few weapons here and there, and it makes them feel safer. Doesn’t make it legal, but they feel safer. Then, every now and then, you get something like FL. And they twist it, pull in those once harmless groups, and suddenly they have an army with ties all across America. If we could capture the person or persons pulling the strings here in Somerset, then there’s a chance we could take the entire network down.”

“And you think asking a few dipshits some sticky questions is going to do this?” Dawg flipped his hand over the files in disgust. “I didn’t see a damned thing in there about Freedom’s League or a network of homegrown terrorists.”

“You didn’t read her file,” Natches told him quietly, his gaze still locked with hers. “I did.”

Chaya pressed her lips and dropped her eyes. She had asked the questions she knew could come back on Natches and his father. How loyal was he to his father? He claimed he wasn’t, but family ties often had strong undercurrents. And Natches wasn’t always as easy to read as he pretended to be. In some areas, his secrets went far deeper than most people could imagine.

“The questions Cranston is sending to me now are becoming more specific. Centered on Johnny, his friendships, and his ties. And there are certain threads that bind each one. Johnny’s parentage.” She watched Dawg’s jaw bunch. “His loyalties. His friends. Who he associated with the most, because within those groups, we’ll find the contact we need.”