Remy stood to remove his clothing in the darkness. She knew that he thought her sudden decision to make love with him was based on the storm and her fear of death. Lots of books had been written about the principle of enemies becoming friends under fire, that people behave recklessly in the face of danger. Not so in her case. Sometime between their kiss downstairs and Remy coming up to check on her, she’d subconsciously surrendered to the pull of her heart. Nothing had changed. In reality, she still didn’t trust him; in reality, he was still angry with her. But there would be no reality checks here. Just for tonight they would set their differences aside. No strings. No recriminations. No promises. Just for these few days they had left, she would give herself to him. A gift of love.
She wiggled out of her panties and drew the football jersey over her head, then waited for Remy.
He slid onto the mattress beside her.
Both remained silent as they contemplated what they were about to do. Unsure of themselves, in the oddest way.
Rachel had the most compelling urge to have Remy inside her. Now. No preliminaries. Just joined with her. Be- fore she could voice that need, Remy said, “I want you so much, Rachel. I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
“I feel the same way.”
He laughed. “You can’t hurt me.”
“Oh?” She pushed him to his back, and before he could ask what she was up to, Rachel swung a leg over his hips, took his very hard erection in hand, and guided him into her.
“Oh, sweet Jesus!” he gritted out. Then, with a self-deprecating chuckle, he added, “I was wrong. You can hurt me.”
Rachel sat perfectly still with her knees on either side of his hips, her butt on his upper thighs, and his penis imbedded in her to the hilt. “Am I hurting you?” she asked with alarm, prepared to disengage.
He put his hands on her waist to hold her in place. “In the best possible way, sweetheart. Delicious agony.”
“I needed you in me, right now,” she confessed. “Is that slutty of me?”
“Very slutty.”
“I mean, it’s usually men who want to forego foreplay, not women. This time I didn’t need all that. In fact, I had to have you this way. Does that make sense?” She still sat on him, unmoving, and it was the most wonderful feeling of fullness. Two vital parts connected.
“I need something, too. Can you give me what I need?”
“I don’t know. Is this another perversion?”
He laughed or tried to, but it came out strained, as if it might hurt to laugh when he had a rock-hard penis planted in a willing vagina.
“Just sit still and don’t move, no matter what,” he ordered. Putting his hands on her knees, he spread them wider, which caused her outer folds to open and her inner folds to grasp him tighter. He gasped. Then, he did the most outrageous thing. He put the three middle fingers of one hand into her mouth and used the wetness to moisten her, as if she weren’t already wet enough. “Remember, don’t move.” He still had one hand on her waist.
“Remy, I have to move.”
“No! No, you don’t. I want to see how it feels to have you come around me, on me, without moving. Besides, I really am afraid I’ll hurt you if I thrust right now. Come on, you can do it. Put your hands back, and hold onto my knees. That’s the way, honey. Just like that.”
He began to strum her slickness then with a middle finger: a constant, fast-paced flick that barely skimmed the surface. Almost immediately, her inner muscles began to convulse around his shaft. Not just once or twice. A continuous grasp-release, grasp-release that matched the tempo he set. She could swear that his already huge erection grew more huge. A wail began deep in her throat and emerged as a long continuous, “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!” She tried to move, to undulate her hips on him, but he had both hands on her hips now, fingers digging into her skin.
“Ride it out, chère. Relax and let it come. You feel so good. So good. Like a million squeezing fingers tempting me.”
Rachel threw her head back and keened into an incredible orgasm. Finally, her body went limp.
Remy was anything but limp.
She was so sated, she wanted to curl up in his arms and fall asleep.
Remy had other plans.
“Now, darlin’, a special treat,” he announced breathlessly. “You know that I used to be a cowboy?” “Uh-huh,” she answered tentatively. “Well, I’m gonna teach you to ride.” “A horse?” “No, silly. A Cajun.” And, boy, did he ever!
Do it to me one more time, or two, or three
Remy was pounding into her body, relentlessly.
The storm outside had died down to a steady rain. No more thunder or lightning or high winds. The worst was over.
But the storm inside Remy still raged. Sweat poured off of him. Cords of tensed muscle stood out on his arms and neck. His knees would have linen burns, for sure. Hell, his cock would be raw meat before he was done. And poor Rachel! She would be black and blue if he kept this up— down below, for sure, but also on her breasts, her thighs, her butt, everywhere.
But he couldn’t seem to get enough of her and, much as he wanted to, he could not end the exquisite torment in his center. Even when she’d ridden him to her own orgasm a half hour ago, he could not come. It was as if subconsciously he knew this tenuous bond between them would last one or two days at the most, and then she would be gone. Some deranged part of his psyche was dictating that if he did not come, he could forestall the end.
Someone moaned. He guessed it was him.
Rachel cradled his jaws in her hands and said, “Remy, did you hear me?”
“Huh?” he asked through the daze of his arousal.
“I said slow down.”
He did, immediately.
“I love you.”
He moaned again.
“Don’t try so hard. No matter what happens, I love you.”
Oh, God! She understands. She knows how friggin’pitiful I am. Oh, God! In this unusual darkness, where visibility was almost nil, Remy had felt whole. He could pretend that his body was undamaged, not a beast. But her words had called him back to the present and the fact that even a blackout couldn’t hide his flaws.
His strokes were long and exquisitely slow now, accompanied by her soothing hands running from his shoulders down to his buttocks, then back again. Over and over. With each stroke, she whispered, “I love you.”
He said the words, too, but only to himself, because words were beyond his powers right now.
When she arched her hips off the bed—a mighty feat of strength—and undulated in counterpoint to his slow rhythm, he lost it. Finally! Bless the saints! With a guttural roar, he slammed into her one more time and spilled himself in hot spurts into her welcoming womb. With his senses heightened to the point of almost-pain, he wondered if anything in the world could compare to this mind-blowing orgasm. It reached beyond his cock and rushing blood and racing heart deep into his soul, shaking him, then releasing him in blissful, decreasingly less powerful ripples of satisfying shocks. In the end, he lay atop Rachel with his face between her breasts, her hands caressing his shoulders, and fell asleep—or maybe he passed out.
Moments later, he awakened to Rachel’s continued soothing caresses. He raised himself on straightened arms and looked down at her, seeing nothing in the dark, but sensing the smile on her face. He knew for sure that she smiled with her next words.
“Was that good for you?” she asked.
He laughed then, and laughed, and laughed.
Life was good . . . for now.
Just surprise me
“This bed smells of sweat and sex,” Rachel said a short time later.
“Aaah! The male aphrodisiac. Eau de SweatySex.”
Rachel punched him in the vicinity of his belly and he said, “Ouch!” though she probably hadn’t hurt him.
Then, the precious man did the most precious thing. He felt his way in the dark to the downstairs bathroom where he got towels and some kind of rose-scented antiseptic cream—something concocted by
Tante Lulu, no doubt. When he came back and proceeded to lay the towels over the damp bed, he kept apologizing, “I am so sorry, Rachel.” Over and over. Then, he forced her to lay back down and rubbed the cream onto her neck and breasts and belly and her buttocks and most especially—Holy Moly!— between her legs. You’d think she had war wounds.
“Stop saying you’re sorry. For what, for heaven’s sake?”
“I hurt you. I know I did.”
“If you hurt me, it’s a good kind of hurt.” What was the name of that song? “Hurt So Good,” or something like that.
“Really?” She could hear the smile in his voice. The cad!
“And, frankly, I’d bet that I hurt you, too.”
“Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “Black ’n Blue ’R Us.”
“Come to bed,” she said with a wide yawn, holding her arms open for him.
“Not now, honey. I’ve got to go down and check on the storm damage. Go to sleep. I’ll be right back.” He leaned over, gave her a quick kiss, then picked up the flashlight and left. By the time he returned an hour later, she was fast asleep, on her back, with her arms and legs splayed, probably drooling.
“Wake up, Rachel, I have a surprise for you.”
“Reeeemy. I’ve had enough of your surprises for one night.” She turned over on her side, away from him, and pretended to still be asleep.
“Not that kind of surprise,” he said with mock indignation. She could feel the mattress on his side shift as he sat down. “Hamburger Surprise. Aren’t you hungry?”
She rolled over and sniffed. Yep, he’d brought the leftover casserole dish from supper. “And what else?”
“Bread and a jug of water.”
“Drink,” she pleaded. “I’m dying of thirst.”
He put the lip of the bottle to her mouth and she drank greedily. Then, with the two of them propped on pillows in the dark, they used two spoons to eat Hamburger Surprise in bed. The sheets were already a mess; now the towels would probably be a mess, too. Oh, well.
“Is everything all right outside?” she asked when he set the dish and bottle aside on the floor.
Remy slid back into bed beside her, still naked, fluffed the pillows and pulled a single sheet over them before answering. “Hard to tell by flashlight and with it still raining. At the least, there will be a lot of broken branches, but my biggest concern—the snakes—proved to be no problem.” He suddenly went silent as if regretting his last disclosure.
Rachel went stiff. “What snakes?”
“Now, don’t go getting upset, but sometimes in a storm the bayou streams flood the banks which causes snakes to seek higher ground. There were no snakes on the porch that I could see.”
“I could kill you for planting that idea in my head.”
“I told you, it’s not a problem.”
“But it could have been a problem, and you didn’t tell me.”
“Are we having an argument?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you might be giving me the finger.”
“Would you forget about that finger business?” Rachel began to sniff again. “What is that smell in your hair? Pine? Oh, you rat! You took a shower while you were downstairs, didn’t you?”
“Just a little one.”
“Oh, that is so unfair. Now I stink, and you don’t.”
“I like your stink, darlin’,” he said, laughing as he forced her into a spoon-embrace where he held her close and pretended to be sniffing her shoulder. Then he softly kissed the side of her neck. “Relax, babe, and sleep some more. I have something I want to show you tomorrow.”
“Oh, goody, I can’t wait. Is it long and hard and purple?”
“Purple!”
“My night vision isn’t so good.”
“Purple!”
As they both shifted and shuffled their bodies into a more comfortable position, still spoon-style with Remy’s arms locked about her waist, Rachel said softly, “Remy?”
“Hmmm?”
“I love you.”
He hesitated for only a second, long enough for Rachel to think he might have fallen asleep. But then, he said, “I love you, too.”
Chapter 19
In days of old when knights were clueless
“So, have you taken a vow of celibacy?”
Remy practically fell out of the hammock at her question, whether from shock or being abruptly awakened from sleep, she couldn’t say. “Wha .. . what?”
“You heard me. You haven’t made love to me since the middle of last night. It’s now three in the afternoon.”
“A whole ten hours?” he teased.
“I know your appetite for sex. You’ve either gone celibate or your wazoo fell off. What’s the deal?”
“My wazoo?” he sputtered, still trying to steady the hammock. When he did, he folded his arms beneath his neck, crossed one ankle over the other, and grinned at her. He was wearing a pair of ancient jeans that had faded to almost white, and that’s all. His hair was still damp from a recent shower, after having spent the morning and part of this afternoon fixing the generator, clearing up all the debris left by the storm, searching for hidden snakes (at Rachel’s insistence), and talking ad nauseam on his now-operating cell phone, to Luc, to Tante Lulu, and to every muckety-muck in the DEA. But did he have time for her? No way, José. He was avoiding her like the bloody plague. And she knew why. One night of loving, and he already crawled back into his Remy shell, shutting her out. Or else, he was pulling the Cajun Knight act, protecting her, from himself or herself, she wasn’t sure.
Enough was enough! She’d donned her armor: a full-fledged teenage Charmaine outfit. Criminey, Charmaine must have been hell on wheels at fourteen if she sported stuff like this. On top, Rachel wore a form-fitting bustier-type blouse that laced up the front with a built-in push-up bra. Down below, she wore denim shorts so tight she’d had to lay on the floor to zip them up, and when she stood, they rose so high the bottom edge of her butt cheeks peeked out.
And what did Remy do as his eyes made a quick survey of her teenage hooker get-up? He grinned even wider. “Going somewhere?” he asked. “Like a biker bar?”
“I would, if there was one nearby. And I’d pick me up a randy biker guy, too . . . someone who was more interested in me than you apparently are.” She blinked hard and turned away, not wanting him to see the tears welling in her eyes. How could Remy have been so hot for her last night, and now so cool? How could he have told her that he loved her then, and not once since then? And how dare he flash that slow, sexy grin at her?
“Rachel, I was really rough with you last night,” he said, the grin gone. “I’m trying to be considerate of you, to let your body heal, before I attack you again.”
Well, she hadn’t thought of that reason for his avoiding her. “Are you hurt?” she asked, looking down at his crotch. “Is it broken?”
“No!” he said with what started out as a laugh and turned into a bout of choking.
She didn’t feel sorry for him. “I’m thirty-three years old, perfectly capable of taking care of myself. So, cut the chivalry crap, LeDeux,” she ordered him in blunt terms. “This lady isn’t appreciating it one bit.”
“Crudeness, Rachel? Tsk-tsk! What’s got m’lady in a royal snit?”
Oh, that did it. The grin and now a patronizing attitude. She did what any self-respecting lady would do then. No, she didn’t give him the finger again; that would give him too much pleasure. She raised her chin high, spun on her heels and stomped away.
She heard him shuffle off the hammock and swear, probably having been dumped to his knees by said hammock. Soon, he was closing in on her. “Where you going, Rachel?”
“I’m walking back to Houma.”
“In your bare feet?”
She didn’t answer, but he brought up a good point. There might be snakes or other slithery things. Yeech.
“Besides, you’re going the wrong way.”
Without losing a beat, she took a sharp right.
r /> “Stop smiling.” She couldn’t see him, but she knew he was probably getting a kick out of her antics.
“Hot damn!”
She refused to look back and see what had brought that response. Even if it was a snake, she was not going to look.
“Darlin’, do you have any idea how short your shorts are?”
Uh-oh! She did a quick peek over her shoulder and sure enough Remy was ogling her big behind in the short shorts. She stopped abruptly and he almost ran into her, so hard was he concentrating on her bootie.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what? Ogling my butt?”
His lips twitched as he stifled yet another grin. “I’d never be sorry for that. No, I’m sorry about hurting you last night, and I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings today.”
“And I’m sorry you feel so sorry. No, I’m not. I’m sick to death of your sorrys. Get over it.”
She had a whole lot more to say to the lout, but she never got to say it. Remy picked her up and started carrying her back to the cabin. At first, she was too surprised to protest, but then she began kicking and squealing. “I’m not making love with you now after I had to practically force you into it. Forget about sex, big boy. You lost your chance.” She was kicking and thrashing but he wouldn’t let go. In fact, he was laughing.
“Now, Rachel, calm down. I have a surprise for you.”
“I’ve had Hamburger Surprise up to my eyeballs. Don’t think you can tempt me with food.”
“It’s another kind of surprise,” he told her with his lips pressed against her ear. “But it involves eating.”
Here comes the terrible trouble
The rest of the day was absolutely perfect.
Remy had been almost afraid to breathe for fear something would go wrong, but it hadn’t. . . not for this day, anyway. The love between him and Rachel was ironclad. But the bond that kept them together was tenuous as tissue paper and could go up in flames in an instant of misspoken word, careless act, or remembered grievances in their past.
As a result, they both treaded with extreme care, mentally knocking on wood.