“Did you make her write the will? Did she know what she was doing, or was she too sick to realize?”
He looked at her for a long moment, “She wrote the will six months before she died. She knew exactly what she was doing. She didn’t care about you, Rachel. She never did, and now she never will.”
Everything suddenly became very still. “What if I refuse to believe you?” she said in a dead voice, knowing she already believed. “What if I fight you?”
“Then I’ll destroy you. I’ll take away your last and only defense, the one strength you hold on to. I’ll make you want me, Rachel. I’ll make you need me so badly that nothing else will matter.”
She summoned a twisted smile. “You can’t do it. You can’t brainwash me into becoming one of your mindless followers.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed softly. “But I can make your body need me.”
She found she could laugh. “No, you can’t! Haven’t you been listening? I’ll spell it out for you. I’m frigid. I hate sex, I hate men, and I hate you.”
“You’re halfway there already, you’re just so busy fighting it that you don’t know what’s going on,” he whispered. “That’s what you’re afraid of, Rachel, whether you admit it or not. Deep down inside you’re afraid I’m right. And that you want me just as much as I want you.”
She shoved, and this time he released her. He didn’t step back, though, and she was trapped between his body and the wall, even if he wasn’t touching her. “I don’t want you, I don’t want anyone,” she said fiercely.
“It’s what’s making you crazy, isn’t it? Here you thought nothing could ever make you want sex. Need it. And now you find that the person you hate most in the world is the only person you want to fuck.”
She gathered her strength for one last assault. She looked up at him with clear intent. “If you ever touch me in a sexual way I’ll kill you.”
His grin was lopsided. “Too late, Rachel. I’ve already done it, and more. And you’re not going to kill me. You need me.” He moved his head down toward her.
“Don’t!” She couldn’t keep the raw panic from her voice and she no longer cared what he thought.
“Are you a virgin? Afraid to try?” he taunted.
“I’ve tried it. I hate it.”
He nuzzled the side of her face, gently, and there was no way she could escape him. His skin was warm, slightly rough where his afternoon beard was coming in, and he smelled like tobacco and coffee. The flaming hypocrite.
“Try it again,” he said. He caught her chin in his hand and tilted her desperate, defiant face up to his. “We can start with a kiss.” And he set his mouth against hers.
She froze in disgust. It had been years since a man had come close enough to try to kiss her, and she knew there was no escape from him. She held herself still, waiting for the wet, horrible assault.
It didn’t come. His lips brushed against hers, lightly, a feathery caress that made her shiver. He lifted his head a fraction of an inch. “That wasn’t so terrible, now was it?”
“Do anything more and I’ll bite your tongue off,” she said furiously.
He laughed, damn him. “Try it and I’ll beat you.” He kissed her again, just as lightly, then drew away.
“Why are you doing this? There’s no earthly reason why you’d want to kiss me.”
“Isn’t there? Maybe I just want to torture you,” he suggested calmly.
“It isn’t torture. I can stand it. I’ve put up with worse.” She reveled in the grimness of her voice.
He was hardly appreciative of the compliment. The mockery in his eyes was almost as infuriating as his hand still keeping her face captive. “Let’s see if I can up the ante,” he murmured. And this time when he put his mouth on hers it was damp and open.
Whatever tiny portion of calm and sanity she had left vanished. She’d been kissed before, and survived the experience. She’d had consensual sex without making a scene. But Luke Bardell’s mouth against hers was terrifying. He was like a giant bird of prey, pressing, devouring, sucking away her breath and life and destroying her. She beat at him in panic, but he ignored her struggles, one arm around her, keeping her prisoner, the other holding her face still so he could assault her mouth.
She hated it, and she hated him. She hated the treacherous gentleness, the slow, devastating eroticism that was making her bones shake. She hated his long fingers stroking the side of her face even as he held her. She hated the fact that she wasn’t fighting him, she was simply standing rigid in his arms as his mouth raped hers.
It wasn’t rape. It was seduction, slow, determined, demonic, and he was sucking her will from her with his clever mouth. She leaned back against the wall, his body pressed against hers, and she was trapped, helpless. She had no choice but to let her mind float, away from this place, away from what he was doing.
She closed her eyes, but there was no safety there either. The danger was even more intense—her breasts were burning, tingling, her hips were restless, and she told herself it was disgust building inside of her. But she was horribly afraid he was right, that he could see right through to her well-guarded heart. That all the defenses and anger couldn’t keep him away when he was so determined to destroy her.
Because it would be destruction. She would have nothing left if she stopped fighting. He would devour her whole and then spit her back out into the dust.
He lifted his head to stare down at her in amusement. If he was the slightest bit moved by the kiss he showed no sign of it. “What do you want to do next?” he whispered.
“What are my choices?”
He took her hand and drew it down his body, and her struggles were absolutely useless against his strength. He placed her hand over his zipper and held it there, forced it there, so that she could feel the size of him. He was unquestionably hard, and she shivered in reaction. A reaction she told herself was revulsion: But she wasn’t quite certain if it was that simple.
“Well,” he said in a meditative voice as he leaned his forehead against hers, all the while he forced her hand against his erection, “you could always run away, screaming for help. You could beg and plead and promise never to bother me again and maybe, just maybe, I might show you some pity.”
“I don’t want your pity,” she said in a tight voice.
“Or you could get down on your knees and take me in your mouth.”
She tried to jerk her hand away, but his grip was like iron, for all the seeming gentleness in his voice. “Why don’t you just kill me then?” she said. “I think I’d prefer it.”
“A fate worse than death?” he murmured, and the thread of laughter made her hate him all the more. “I don’t think so, Rachel. I’m going to take you to bed. And what’s worse, you’re going to like it.” He brushed his lips against hers, just briefly. “Aren’t you?”
She brought her knee up, swift and hard, but he was too fast for her, spinning out of her way before she could connect with his testicles. She’d taken him off guard, but even then he was too alert.
“Don’t you listen?” she snapped. “I don’t want you, I don’t want anyone, and there’s no need to prove your manhood by making the frigid little girl enjoy sex. Save it for someone else. Save it for one of your panting followers.” Her rage was fierce and genuine, and it covered up the tremor in her voice. “You offered me a bargain; all right, I accept. I’ll make no more claims on Stella’s money. I’ll let you run your little cult in peace, fleecing the unsuspecting. I will disappear from your life.” Her mouth twisted in a grimace. “I’ll even accept your pity, okay? Just don’t come near me again.”
“I didn’t exactly offer you that. I said it was a possibility, if you begged and pleaded. A few tears would help matters, I think.”
“Nothing makes me cry.”
“I could.”
“Go to hell.” She’d had enough. She stalked past him, half expecting his arm to strike out and capture her, but he just leaned against the wall, watching her out of hooded
eyes.
She forced herself to walk slowly through the empty house, retracing her steps to the front. She had no idea whether he was following her or not, but for some reason he was giving her a chance to escape, and she had every intention of taking it. He was standing in the room beyond, a shadowy figure, when she left the house and headed for her car.
It wasn’t there. She’d parked in front of the tangled old ruin when she’d made the very dire mistake of investigating, and while she’d been battling with Luke, someone had taken it.
“What did you do with my car?” Her voice was fierce as she stared out into the overgrown forest.
He was closer than she’d realized. “Not a thing. I was with you, remember?”
She could still feel his mouth pressing against hers. “I can find my way out on foot. There’s a road I can follow.”
“There are alligators. Water moccasins, all kinds of nasty critters. This isn’t the friendliest part of the world, Rachel. Especially for a city girl like you.”
She turned to face him. “Where is it?”
“Sheriff Coltrane must have done something about it. It’s a habit he has. Lots of teenagers come out here to make out and to scare each other. They say Jackson Bardell’s ghost walks these woods, his head half blown off, looking for the other half.”
“Don’t!” she said with a shudder.
“Or they come out here to screw on the wooden floor where their parents won’t catch them. Didn’t you ever do that, Rachel? Didn’t you ever sneak out to have sex with your boyfriend? Or did you wait until you were in your twenties to find out you don’t like it?”
She’d been pushed far enough for one day. She could still feel him against her hand, the pulsing strength of him. She could still taste his mouth. His voice was low, insinuating, sneaking into her blood until she wanted to scream.
She turned to look at him. “I learned I didn’t like sex when I was twelve years old and my stepfather raped me,” she said with deliberate calm. “And nothing’s about to change my mind.”
He didn’t even blink. “Don’t you think it’s time you tried it with a man instead of a pervert?”
“I’m not sure you qualify.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Rachel,” he said, “I suspect you’ll be the death of me.”
“I can only hope so.”
14
He’d made a mistake with Rachel Connery, a mistake he seldom made. He’d underestimated her. Her dislike of men and sex went a lot deeper than the game he was playing with her.
Stella had said something about it, but Stella’s take on the world had been a grand drama where everything revolved around her. She blamed Rachel’s lies for the failure of her third marriage. She hadn’t been able to come up with a scapegoat for marriages one, two, four, and five, but if pushed she probably could have blamed them on her daughter as well.
Luke looked down at Rachel, momentarily abstracted. She was miserable, a woman who never cried. She needed years of therapy, she needed a mother’s caring, she needed a tender, patient lover who’d let her evolve at her own pace, learning to trust her body and his.
Tough luck that she ended up with him.
“I’ll give you a ride back to town,” he said abruptly.
“Why?” At least she had the sense not to trust him. Beneath all that pain and rage she was still damned smart.
He managed a convincing shrug. “Maybe I feel guilty.”
“I doubt it.”
He ignored her snort of disbelief. “The least I can do is take you to your car.”
“Where is it?”
“I expect Coltrane left it at Esther’s.”
“You’re going to drive me to Esther’s?” Her voice was rich with disbelief.
“I didn’t say I was going to walk you to the front door,” he drawled. “There’s a limit to that Southern gentleman bullshit.”
“There’s a lot to be said for a martyred messiah,” she shot back.
It was a throwaway line, one of the barbs she flung out at random in an attempt to protect herself, but oddly enough, this one hit its mark. She had no idea how close she was coming to the truth. Even he wasn’t sure.
“I’m not in the mood to be martyred,” he said. “Not today.”
“Maybe some other time,” she said sweetly.
“You want a ride into town, or would you rather walk for miles in this heat?” He added just the right touch of impatience to his voice. She’d be more likely to agree if she thought he was irritated.
She just looked at him. She really had extraordinary eyes, he thought, keeping his own face expressionless, slightly bored. It was those eyes of hers that were his downfall. He could resist her anger, he could resist her body and her sarcastic tongue. But those deep brown eyes, so full of pain and fury, need and defiance, did him in.
“I guess you owe me one,” she said grudgingly.
He’d forgotten what they were talking about. “One what?”
“A ride. You can drop me off a block or two away from Esther’s.”
He reached past her to touch her arm, and she jumped back as if he were a water moccasin. “We’ll go out the back way. Unlike you, I have more sense than to leave my vehicle out in plain sight of passersby.”
The word vehicle should have tipped her off, but she was still too unnerved by his touch. It was too damned easy to throw her for a loop. She’d just about started babbling when he’d kissed her. And the damnable thing was, he wanted to kiss her again, and to hell with her panic.
Nice guy, he mocked himself, leading the way through the tumbled-down ruin that had seen the worst years of his life. Joliet Prison had been a summer camp compared to the emotional and physical havoc of life with Jackson Bardell. At least in Joliet he hadn’t had to worry about protecting his mother.
The back part of the house had already been claimed by the swamp. The barn where he’d found his mother hanging was long gone, and soon the rest of the house would go as well, collapsing into the ooze and muck. But there was still a patch of solid ground beyond where he’d managed to park.
“There it is.”
She spun around, starting back into the house, but he put his arm out, catching her across the waist, keeping her from escaping.
“I’m not riding in that thing.”
“Look at it this way, it’s not a Harley.”
She glared up at him. He could feel the faint tremor in her skin where his arm touched her waist, but she wouldn’t give in to her fear. “At least on a motorcycle I’d be safe.”
“If Esther didn’t see me first. It’s hard to steer those things with a bullet in your brain.”
She looked back at the aging black converted van in disbelief. “You’re not the type for a Winnebago.”
“It’s not a Winnebago. Just think of it as an oversized hearse.”
She glared at him, definitely not amused. “Is this where you’ve been sleeping?”
“I couldn’t very well get a decent rest when the ghost of my victim was wandering around, now could I?” He paused. “How come you never say my name?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Luke? The apostle, the physician, the healer?” He shook his head in mock disapproval. “How unbiblical of you.”
“The charlatan, the cheat, the extortionist …”
“I don’t need to extort money. People hand it over quite willingly. And you forgot murderer in your litany of compliments.”
“You’re admitting you killed Jackson Bardell?”
“I’m admitting that I was convicted of killing a man in a bar fight,” he said smoothly. “And that’s as far as my confessions go. For now.” She hadn’t moved away from his hold, which was a good sign. He had to get her used to his touch, and he wasn’t in the mood to be terribly patient about the process. “Are you going to get in the van?”
She suddenly realized he was still holding her. She backed away nervously, glancing around her for possible escape. The only place she could go
was his van. “You’ll drive me straight into town?”
“Straight into town,” he said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
And she was fool enough to believe him.
* * *
He was right—it looked more like a hearse than a Winnebago, Rachel had to admit as she climbed up into the front seat. It wasn’t made for life on the open road, for middle-class comfort and RV campgrounds. It was more like a boat, everything neat, compact, shipshape.
He climbed in beside her, making no move to start the engine. Instead he leaned back and looked at her, and it was all she could do not to jump out and take off into the swamp.
“I thought you were going to drive me to Esther’s,” she said. “I don’t see you starting this thing.”
“All in good time. It’s early.”
She glanced out into the tree-shrouded afternoon. She couldn’t see the sky through the towering pines, but the light was gray, ominous, unnaturally dark for that time of day.
“It’s going to storm,” she said.
“You’ve been in Alabama for twenty-four hours and you think you can read the weather?”
“Then why is it so dark?”
“It’s going to storm.”
She wanted to hit him. “Then I’d appreciate getting to my car before it hits. I don’t like thunderstorms.”
“No, I imagine you don’t,” he said softly. “That’s just something else you’re afraid of. Sex, men, thunderstorms, being poor. Me. Anything else?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m afraid of alligators and poisonous snakes, or otherwise I wouldn’t be here in this hearse with you.”
“They have some amazing thunderstorms in New Mexico,” he said, ignoring her remark. “The whole sky lights up, and the thunder echoes from canyon to canyon till you think the ground is shaking.”
“I can skip that,” she said with a shudder.
“Maybe.”
She jerked her head to glare at him. “Why would I go back to Santa Dolores?”
“Why did you come to Coffin’s Grove?”