Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (23 page)

She hardly knew when he reached to draw up the hem of her skirt. She felt the draft of cool air and then the firm clasp of his hand upon the knee of her drawn-up leg smoothing the weave of her stocking, probing at the ribboned knot of her garter. He flicked off first one shoe and then the other, kicking them aside.

Disheveled, luminous with desire, she lay with half-closed eyes and waited for what he would do next. Still, it shocked her, that bunching of her petticoats, that daring plundering beneath them as he slid his fingers between her white and trembling thighs. He rested them there, gently squeezing, kneading, and grazing the tender flesh with his thumb. His mouth, his tongue at her breast quieted her alarm with soft circling, massaging, exquisite adhesion. When his hand crept higher, her lashes quivered, but she moved slightly, involuntarily, in accommodation.

She heard the swift inward rush of his breath, felt suddenly the hard pound of his heart as he lay against her. The knowledge that he was not as controlled as he would like to appear to be made her own pulse leap. This was pure arousal, a heated joy totally without the malicious satisfaction she once had known. She lifted the arm that lay beneath him and pressed it to his back, spreading her fingers wide as she felt, in the deepest depths of her, an unfurling, like the opening of a woodland fern in spring.

She wore no undergarment. His broad hand rested on the soft and springy fleece of her, spanning the gentle mound it covered, giving her its warmth and weight. His hand smoothed over her hip to the firm curve underneath, gathering it, holding her with increasing tightness. With quickening senses, she felt the rigid length and heat of him against her other thigh. His eyes were squeezed shut. A tremor ran over his skin. He lifted his head, relaxing as if with an effort.

“Shall I stop?”

It was a moment before she could force words through her throat. “It might be best.”

“Oh, without doubt, but is it what you want?”

Her heart was beating so loudly she thought it a miracle he did not hear it and her body was enwrapped in flames. Her eyes lustrous, liquid with passion and pity for his madness, she said, “It isn’t what I want.”

“Nor I,” he whispered as he uncovered her other breast and lowered his gaze to its white-and-coral splendor. “Nor I.”

Her need was a vibrant pressure in her throat, her breasts, her thighs. Her skin tingled, rising in gooseflesh as he brought his hand back to the flat of her abdomen. His fingers trailed lower, tangling in the fine curls and slipping into the hollow at the apex of her legs. A spasm tightened the tendons of her thighs, making her clench them on his hand. Gently he moved his palm against her until the tension flowed away. He cupped his hand over her then, pressing firmly, intently, steadily invading. Once more internal muscles closed upon him, then eased, allowing entry.

Never had she known anything except stabbing violation or rough caresses that caused more pain than pleasure in her unaroused state. This careful exploration of her senses was entrancing, a revelation. Rapture, vivid and beguiling, rose inside her. As she felt the wet and lovely roughness of his tongue on her breast once more, she moaned and turned her face into her arm.

His hand moved in slow rhythm, its firm heel in direct contact with the most sensitive area of her body. Her hips lifted in gentle counterpoint. Waves of pleasure licked over her. Captivated by the incredible sweetness of it, she soared in voluptuous wonder.

It caught her, the sudden glory, in such surprise that it brought a strangled cry to her lips. He released her breast to seek her lips and she pressed her mouth, slanting, searching, to his, tasting the faint salt of his blood, lost in the wondrous rapture of the senses. She thrust her full breasts against him, wanting to be held tightly, needing his hardness, his power.

He released her after a moment, but only long enough to strip off his breeches. He levered himself above her, placing his thigh between hers, rolling so that she was beneath him. The heated and pulsating force of him rested against her, gently probing.

“Elise,
ma chère
?”

Her face was flushed with the same delicate color that made her breasts an opalescent rose and dark coral. She refused to look at him, refused to think, could not in the lovely ravishment that held her. She understood the demand and the plea in his voice, however. Understood and felt its vibration deep within. There were more things in the world to fear than this, many more. Above her head the dark limbs of the trees made a fragile cross-hatching against the gray porcelain bowl of the winter sky. Warm beside this man, she felt none of its chill, none of its terror.

“Please,” she said.

He might not have heard if he had not been waiting. Still, faint though it was, he needed no more. With straining sinews and delicate perception, he eased into her liquid warmth. Her breath of wonder fanned his cheek. She made a soft sound, then pressed herself to him with her hands clutching his shoulders and trembling arms, gripping tighter and tighter, rubbing, grasping, urging him to the turbulent vigor that must surely bring the return of glory and an ultimate surcease.

“Ah, love,” he said the words thick, ragged, shadowed with laughter, “I should not have swum so long.”

He plunged into her as if unable to resist any longer that perilous temptation. Stalwart, powerful, he held her, thrusting past old memories, banishing them and bringing new peace, seeking and finding joy. The surcease, golden and beckoning, touched them. It came.

It was completely dark by the time they reached the house. Candlelight glowed from the windows, casting yellow beams into the night to welcome them. They did not hurry, but strolled with their arms about each other, stopping often to kiss with unappeased hunger. Elise rested her head against Reynaud’s shoulder, though now and then she turned to peer into the encroaching blackness of the woods.

“What are you looking for? The panther?”

“Nothing really, only to see if there is anything to be afraid of.”

“You think there might be?”

“Not as long as you are here,” she answered and was disturbed to discover how true those impulsive words were. She went on, her tone tentative. “It seems strange to have nothing to fear.”

“Nothing?”

“At least not at this moment.”

“There will be other times, other things. We need fear to encourage caution.”

“I don’t want to be cautious!” she said with sudden heat.

He smiled down at her. “I hope that in one thing you won’t be.”

She reached up to draw his mouth down to hers. It was some time before they walked on.

There was only Madeleine and Henri in the salon when they stepped inside it. Reynaud’s cousin looked up and saw their rumpled state. Her mouth tightened, but she said nothing, only transferring her gaze to a point just above their heads as she spoke.

“Dinner will be served in half an hour.”

“We will take it in our bedchamber.” Reynaud’s voice was calm, faintly mocking.

The woman lifted her brows. “If you wish it.”

“We do. We will now bid you good night. Make our excuses to the others, if you please.”

“I will do that.”

“Elise?” he prompted.

“Good night,” she said, inclining her head to Madeleine and nodding with a quick smile at Henri.

Without waiting for a reply, they whisked themselves from the room and into the bedchamber they had shared without intimacy until this moment. Quietly they closed the door behind them.

The candles had been lighted in the crystal-and-gilt candelabra on the mantel. Reynaud moved to take a taper from one, using it to light those on the dressing table. Elise turned to face him, suddenly ill at ease with him here in the house in the brightness of the candlelight. A momentary shame for the fervor of her response to him made her movements stiff.

The candle flames were reflected in his eyes as he smiled at her. “I wish I had thought to refuse dinner.”

“What?”

“I would like to undress you now, this minute, and begin all over again.”

The words seemed to touch some vulnerable place just under her heart. “Would you?”

“I am like a man long thirsty; I can never have enough of you.”

When had she last thought of him as unfeeling, without emotion? The idea seemed laughable now. A slow smile curved her mouth. “I’m as bland as water, am I?”

“As necessary.”

She heaved a mock sigh. “It is too bad.”

He tilted his head, lifting a questioning brow.

“That you didn’t refuse dinner, of course!”

He reached her in a bounding stride and picked her up, turning and swinging her so that her skirts flew out around them. Their mouths met as his momentum slowed and finally he set her on her feet.

He bent his neck to rest his forehead on hers. “Ah, but perhaps it’s as well. We had better keep up our strength.”

“Yes,” she murmured, “especially you, after all that swimming.”

“Witch,” he said, laughing. “It was your fault, you know.”

“Mine?” She tried to draw back in umbrage, but he would not let her.

“How else was I to keep a hold on myself unless I was exhausted when I fell into bed with you?”

She played with the opening of his shirt, slipping her fingers inside and rubbing their backs over the smooth hardness of his chest. “Well, in that case—”

He caught her questing hand, lifting it to his lips. “Behave if you want to eat.”

“Reynaud?”

“Yes, love?”

She felt the vibration of the word in his chest and she almost let the question forming in her mind go unspoken. She looked up at him, the rust flecks in her amber-brown eyes brilliant. She looked down again. “Would you really have left us behind if I had not agreed to your bargain?”

“The others possibly, never you.”

“You would have left them to die?”

Her body stiffened by degrees. Feeling it, his hold tightened. “They would have been no worse off than if I had never seen them. By my offices they escaped; why could they not have done the same thing alone?”

“Some tried and failed, like the four men killed on the river. But you well know that if they had gone on alone, I would have been with them.”

“Not if I had kidnapped you.”

“You would have done that?”

“Without a qualm, rather than let you risk the mercy of Pascal, who might well have abandoned you if you became a burden, or rather than see you become a slave to someone else if the attempt failed.”

“You would have brought me here by force — or perhaps you thought to enslave me yourself at the village of the Natchez?”

He frowned at her rising tone, but answered without evasion. “The village would have done. Except for our bargain and my theft of you and the others who were enemies of the Natchez, I had no need to escape.”

“But you said … I thought you were going to the Natchitoches country anyway.”

He shrugged. “There was no urgency.”

She pushed away from him and was momentarily surprised when he let her go. She swung away. “I can’t believe what you are saying. You would actually have made me your slave?”

“The idea had a certain appeal.”

“I’m sure!” she said with a flashing glance over her shoulder. “But what of Madame Doucet? If I would have been a liability to Pascal and the others, how much more would she have been? Would you have taken her, too?”

“Can you honestly say that she is better here than with her daughter and grandson? Are you sure her tasks as a slave would have been any more draining on her physical strength than the overland journey here?”

“I couldn’t say, never having been a slave,” she answered harshly. “But to think that you would abandon your own countrymen — Henri, St. Amant, Pascal — sickens me.”

He answered with deliberate quietness. “This is the wilderness. Men are expected to be able to take care of themselves and those who depend on them. Those who can’t do that have no business here. As for the men, they came with me, not out of despair at their own chances, but because they recognized that I could give them a better one.”

There was a certain truth to his argument. She moved to the candle, cupping her hands around the flame to warm them against the chill that had begun to creep along her veins. “You may be right, I don’t know. Still, what of me? If you could so easily have taken me, why the effort of rowing across the river? Why make the journey at all?”

“I had no desire to humble your pride or to have you set yourself forever in opposition to me for possessing you by force.”

“Are you sure? I had insulted you.”

“And intrigued me with your complexity. You still do.”

“How marvelous for you that it wasn’t a wasted trip.”

Ignoring her brittle sarcasm, he said softly, “And for you.”

She turned, her eyes brilliant with accusation. He came toward her with lithe steps, taking her hands and resting them against his chest. When she did not resist, he drew her into his arms.

“Why do this to yourself,
ma chère
?” he said against her hair. “Is it guilt that you gave yourself to me? Do you despise me because I urged your surrender? If it is neither of these, what does the rest matter? I did bring the others here with you. They are alive and well because of you. It is useless to talk of what might have been unless you are content to let doubt rule your life as surely as fear.”