Hall, Jessica (34 page)

When she made a frustrated sound, he lifted his head. "You
want me to stop?"

She groped until she found the drawer to her side table, pulled
out her spare revolver, and pointed it at his face. "You want to
die?"

He only chuckled as he used his fingers to open her. He looked at
her for a long moment before lowering his mouth and applying short, wet hard
strokes to her clit.

Terri had enough presence of mind to replace her gun before the
first spiral of hot delight began uncoiling inside her. He forced her up hard
and faster, smashing her through the first climax and into the second, and when
she sobbed and twisted he held her pinned and moved her on to the third.
Darkness and heat pressed in on her, and by the fourth she was reduced to
mindless begging. Only then did he move up and position himself against her.

"Therese." He waited until she opened her dazed eyes,
then pressed in. Even with the soaked conditions down there, it was going to be
a very narrow fit. She turned her head, but he immediately stopped, halfway
lodged inside her. "Don't look away from me."

She felt suddenly, irrationally furious. What did he
want
from her? He'd already ruined her for most of the men on the planet; did he
have to own her soul?

But Cort didn't know she loved him, and that was one thing he
would never get out of her.

She let her lips curve. "Do I have to get the gun
again?"

He held her hips down and penetrated her completely with a heavy,
forceful push.

All the breath whooshed out of her lungs.
Narrow fit, hell.
She
might have to go for some repair work after. "I guess not."

He didn't say much, but she wouldn't have heard him. He murmured
her name, and watched her eyes as he plowed into her, slow and searching for
all the right spots, then concentrating his strokes on them when he found them.
They were both covered in sweat—somewhere in the dim recesses of what was left
of her mind Terri realized she'd forgotten to turn on the A/C—and their skins
made tiny kissing noises as he worked over and inside her.

She wanted to hold on, to come with him, but the unyielding length
of him working back and forth inside her was too much. She came with a thin
cry, and Cort held himself deep inside her, let her ride it out on him.

He dragged her to the end of the bed, his penis still deep inside
her as he loomed over her, his feet braced on the floor, his hands hard on her
hips. He never looked away from her face as he started again, harder and faster
this time. And even when his thrusts slammed the head of the bed into the wall,
and plaster dust drifted down from the gouges the headboard left in it, she
never stopped watching his face. His eyes became slits, and then he stiffened
and said her name one last time.

She felt every pulse inside her as he came, and counted them
silently, the way another woman would pluck petals from a daisy.
He loves
me, he loves me not, he loves me...

Terri didn't close her eyes until he collapsed on top of her, and
then it was only to hold back the tears she wouldn't let him see.

Caine drove Sable to a mobile-home park and told her to wait in
the truck as he went to the door of a small, shabby-looking trailer. He knocked,
then tried the knob and went inside. He emerged a few minutes later looking
pale and shaken.

"Caine?" As he put his hand on the steering wheel, she
saw a streak of blood on the back of it.

"Don't talk to me."

He drove from there to a small fishing shack he and some of his
men used when running his bigger boats on the Mississippi, and this time he
brought her inside with him. He wouldn't talk to her or untie her, except when
she asked to use the bathroom, and even then he stood watch outside the door,
making it an embarrassing business.

"Are you keeping me here?" she asked him as he sorted
through the food he'd brought with him, but that only earned her a blank look.

Slowly he seemed to recover from whatever had upset him, and he
began to talk to her as he prepared their meal. Mainly he asked her a lot of
questions— about Marc, but also about what she remembered of her mother, and
why Ginny had been so afraid of people.

"Mama was just shy," Sable insisted as he brought
the
pot of gumbo he'd reheated to the table. "She always kept to
herself."

"Ginny loved to talk to people. She sold more bait than any
girl on the bayou." He spooned some rice into a bowl before adding the
rich seafood stew to it. "It was only after the fire that she became that
way."

"You think she was afraid of someone." When he didn't
reply, she made a frustrated sound. "Caine, Marc wasn't trying to kill
me."

He eyed her. "I can prove it."

"Do you know who killed him?"

"I thought I did." He reached behind her and untied her
wrists. "I'm not so sure now."

"Who? Was it Billy?"

He thumped the bowl down in front of her. "Eat your
gumbo."

That night he made a bed for her with a sleeping bag on one of the
wooden bunks, then sat up watching the night through the window. She was so
worn-out from worry about what he might do that she drifted off to sleep before
she could work out a way to escape him. Then it was morning, and Caine was
shaking her and helping her up from the hard bunk.

He untied her again so she could drink her coffee and eat the dish
of brown sugar and apple oatmeal he made for her, but when she studied the
scalding hot coffee, he tapped her cheek. "You've never been a stupid
girl, Isabel. Don't start now."

They left the river and drove back toward the city, joining the
long lines of cars doing the same. He made her wear one of his baseball caps
over her hair, but otherwise didn't seem to be worried about driving around New
Orleans with a known fugitive in his truck. On the contrary, he stopped and
parked to watch two different parades, and admired some of the
more
outlandish costumes. Except for the fact that he wouldn't let her out of the
truck, they could have been tourists.

He's biding his time,
she decided,
but for
what?

Caine bought an enormous shrimp po'boy from a street vendor, then
parked on a tiny side street around the corner and split the sandwich with her.

"This is just so cozy," she grumbled. "We going
dancing next?"

He smiled a little. "I used to think about asking you out to
a dance. Never mind that I didn't have any money, or even a decent set of
clothes to wear. I just wanted to be the one you looked at, the one you smiled
for."

She frowned. "When was this?"

"About the time you met that cop, when you were in
college." He opened a bottle of soda and handed it to her. "That did
hurt, Isabel, but I wanted you to be happy. I sure as hell wasn't good enough
for you. So I sat back and watched him take you out."

He was making it sound like he'd had some kind of crush on her
instead of her mother, as she'd assumed. "Why didn't you ever...?"

"Tell you? What, and have you laugh at me, feel sorry for
me?" He shook his head.
"I
may come from poor,
chère,
but
I've never been short on pride."

"I wouldn't have laughed." She lost her appetite and
handed him the rest of her section of the sandwich. They drove around the city
for the next several hours, Caine stopping twice to take her into one of the
little twenty-four-hour bars to get more drinks and let her use the facilities.
She didn't try to run; she knew he'd only chase her down. When she got back
into the truck after the second stop, he didn't tie her hands again.

He stopped at another street vendor and bought her a sno-ball
mottled brown and white from its topping of chocolate syrup and sweetened
condensed milk. "You always loved these when you were a little girl. I
never could afford to buy you one back then."

The way he was acting was starting to worry her. "I'm sorry
if I hurt you, Caine. I never suspected you cared about me."

"You made me want to be a better man, until that night you
came running back from school." He met her gaze. "That's when I found
out you were ashamed—not just of me, of all of us. All you wanted to be was
like them."

"No, I didn't." But some of the things she'd said that
night came back to her, and she cringed a little. "Maybe I was. Caine, I'd
just been through the worst experience in my life. The only reason they did
that to me was because I was from the bayou, and they weren't."

"What about your charity work? You figure they'll finally
forgive you for being Cajun if you're giving handouts to the rest of us?"

Finally she understood why he had been so opposed to the community
project. "All I wanted was to help our people, not change or apologize for
what we are. I'm proud of our culture."

"We don't need city ways out on the bayou."

"We need better schools and medical care and assistance for
people like single mothers and the elderly. We need to help the fishermen get
the financing they need to stay in business, and cleanup of illegal dump sites.
There are a thousand things we could have for the asking, but no one knows how
to file the proper paperwork, or what state agency to contact. I have that
knowledge.
That's what I want to do—bring our people and the available resources
together."

"You can't change the world, Isabel."

"No. But I can try to change the little piece of it that
belongs to us." She looked out through the windshield at a young mother
pushing a baby stroller over the grass toward the playground. Her toddler son
was chewing on one fist and banging the other against the padded frame.
"That little boy out there will probably never go hungry. He'll get all
the shots he needs, and have his teeth checked, and go to a good school. He
won't have to give up his culture for it. Neither do we."

Caine checked his watch and started the engine. "Time to get
going."

Moriah wanted nothing more than to go home and lock herself in her
room for a week, but since her mother was determined to find a new dress to
wear to the Gambles' gala she forced herself to stay with Laure and keep her
company.

"You should go, too, my dear." Laure looked worried.
"I know Elizabet is sorry for what happened."

Moriah suspected that Elizabet Gamble would never speak to her
again. "It's better that I skip it, now that I no longer have a
date."

The older woman looked sympathetic. "Forgive me. I hadn't
considered how you must feel about Jean-Delano."

Moriah hadn't been in love with J. D., so her heart would survive,
and so would her wounded pride. "I'd much rather be here with you. So what
would you like to do this evening? Watch a video? Listen to some music?"

"I think I'll do a little reading." Laure went to the
magazine rack and picked out a copy of
Vogue.
"Have you seen the
latest fashions for spring?"

Moriah heard the sound of glass shattering at the front of the
house. "Is your housekeeper still here?"

"No." Laure rose, alarmed. "I sent everyone home
after dinner."

Moriah's heart pounded as she hurried over to the double doors to
close and lock them. "Call 911—tell them someone's breaking into the
house."

The older woman was already at the desk, holding the receiver to
her ear. Slowly she replaced it. "The line is completely dead."

Moriah looked around for anything she could use as a weapon.
"Did Marc keep a gun anywhere?"

"No, he hated them." Laure went to the windows, looked
out, and uttered a cry. "All of the security people are gone, too. I
didn't think I'd need them at night."

Heavy footsteps coming toward the library made Moriah pick up a
slender porcelain statue. "Is this priceless?"

"No."

She positioned herself by one side of the door, and flinched as
someone kicked it from the other side. "Hide under the desk. Hurry."

Before Laure could move, a second kick drove the door in, and a
big, black-haired man came in. Moriah swung the statue at his head only to find
it wrenched out of her grip by one of the man's fast, huge hands.

He held on to the statue and yanked someone behind him into the
room. "That's no way to say hello,
chère."

Moriah met Sable Duchesne's shocked brown eyes, and then looked
down at the cords binding her wrists. Fear made her move around him, and put
herself between him and Laure.

"Who are you?" Moriah tried to sound tough, but he was
huge and easily the scariest-looking man she'd ever seen in her life. "What
do you want?"

He ran his black gaze over her, then Laure. "You don't want
to give me trouble, Goldilocks."

"Moriah." The older woman's voice strangled on her name.

Moriah moved back until she could put her arms around the older
woman. "You have no business here. Get out!"