Sandra Hill - [Creole] (35 page)

He gasped at her vulgarity, but inside he toasted her audacity. “Harriet, get out of here.” He wearied of the contest and feared the cruel demons that had overtaken his tongue. He moved toward her purposefully, intending to toss her out the door.

“Stop right there,” she said, raising the gun. “I’m freaking out here, and I can’t predict what I might do.”

I can, honey. And you’re about to land flat on your rear, back in your own compartment
. “That revolver isn’t worth a pisshole in the snow if I decide to take it from you.”
And it’s probably not loaded
.

“I warned you.” She raised the gun high, closing her eyes and pressing the trigger.

He ducked his head at the loud report. “Harriet!”

She’d been aiming for the ceiling, but what she hit was a pineapple spindle atop one of the bedposts behind him. He could tell she was as amazed as he was.

“You’re crazy.” he observed, halting his advance on her.

“Yep. Now, do as I say. First, take off your shirt.”

Take off my shirt?
he echoed silently. “Harriet,” he protested with a whoosh of disbelief.

She raised the pistol again.

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.” He did as ordered, wondering if Harriet suffered from strange mood swings before her monthly time. She probably wouldn’t appreciate his asking. So he raised an eyebrow in question.

“Undo your trousers, slowly, then drop them to the floor.”

He hesitated only a second, then complied. He was no longer weary of the contest. And he didn’t give a damn about her mood.

“The socks, too.”

When he stood there, naked as a plucked chicken, about
six feet from her, she wavered, as if not sure what to do next.

“What’s the point of this…seige?” he asked thickly. His “drawbridge” was certainly rising to the occasion.

“Forceful seduction.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m going to forcefully seduce you. I don’t like the “Happy Trails” tune you’ve been playing, ditching me in your dust. Now I’m calling the tune, and you’re gonna dance, I promise you.”

A grin tugged at his lips, but he managed to hold it at bay. “Do you have any idea the size of battle required to seduce me?”

He could tell she wasn’t sure if he meant that he would be easy or hard. All she’d have to do was to drop her eyes a few feet and she’d see his “drawbridge.” And she called men dumb!

“Now take one of those socks and tie your right arm to that post at the bottom of the bed.”

He obeyed, intrigued now and wondering just how far she’d carry the game. He stood still while she helped him slide his broken arm back in its sling. Still not satisfied, she made him stand against the bed frame at its bottom, thighs parted, and she tied his left foot to the base of the other bedpost.

“Satisfied?” He tugged with his right arm and left foot to show he was secured.

“Hardly.”

He grinned.

“Tell me what you’d like me to do,” she urged, putting her gun aside and moving up close.

Oh, sweetheart, don’t ever give a man an open invitation like that
. “Untie me.”

“Besides that.” She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips—a nervous gesture.

You could start with your tongue
. “This is your battle, not mine.”

“Okay, then.” She dropped her knife to the floor and raised herself on tiptoes. Fingering the edges of his hair, she cupped one side of his jawline tenderly. Gliding her tongue along the seam of his lips till he sighed, she molded her mouth against his with changing moist patterns.

“Harder,” he rasped out. “Inside. Give me your tongue.”

She smiled against his mouth and nipped his bottom lip in chastisement. “Easy, babe, easy. Not yet.”

He rewarded her with a soft moan.

Taking all the time in the world, she kissed the curve of his neck, his inner elbow and the soft flesh of his wrist on the upraised arm. His eyes followed her every movement, mesmerized. She whispered her admiration for all his various body parts. When she rubbed her silk-clad breasts against his chest, abrading his nipples. he moaned.

“I’m seduced,” he said with a raspy laugh. “Untie me now.”

“Oh, no, no, no! That’s not the way forceful seduction works. You have to be brought to your knees, figuratively speaking, that is,” she said, and did, in fact, drop to the floor on her own knees. “You have to be brought to the point of begging for release.”

“I’m begging you to release me now.”

“Tsk-tsk! Not that kind of release.”

“Oh.” Then, “Are you sure there are all these rigid rules for forceful seduction?”

“I’m sure,” she purred, as she caressed his toes and the arches of his feet, then the backs of his knees. “Very rigid.”

He sucked in a deep draft of air.

“Ah! The backs of your knees are extra sensitive, aren’t they?” she murmured, and went back to those knees over and over as she kissed his navel, his hard abdomen, his inner thighs.

He couldn’t speak.

Then, still kneeling, she peered up at him and back to
the source of all his pleasurable anguish, which stood out in rampant need from his body. She traced a forefinger lightly along the engorged veins and he jerked involuntarily. She did the same with the tip of her tongue and he said through gritted teeth, “
Mon Dieu!
” When she put her fingers to the backs of his knees, fluttering them like birds’ wings, and took him into her mouth, all of him, his legs buckled and he sank to the edge of the bed.

“I’m calling a cease-fire here before you get caught in the reverse artillery.” His body went stiff then as an unwelcome image flicked through his mind. “Did you do that for Briggs?”

Harriet recoiled, but she refused to answer. “What do you want me from me, Etienne? Blood? You got it. Do you enjoy torturing me with accusations? What I did with Briggs has nothing to do with us. Nothing. But punish me if it makes you feel better.” She lifted her hands in a hopeless gesture.

“Were you aroused with Briggs?”
Oh, God, where did that question come from?

A small cry escaped her parted lips.

The devil in his head replied, “I take that for a ‘yes.’”

Her eyes went huge and filled with the diamond sparkle of tears. Shamed, she folded both arms over her chest and rocked from side to side. He could tell she was about to flee.

Reacting instinctively, he slipped his broken arm from its sling and grasped her wrist. Pain shot like a lance from his splinted forearm to his shoulder, but he wouldn’t let go of her struggling body. With monumental effort, he drew her closer and ordered, “Reach down and pick up the knife.”

She did, sobbing loudly now.

“Cut me loose,” he grated out, “and stop squirming unless you want to reset a broken arm.”

She immediately stilled, glancing at his splinted arm.

He was touched to the core that, even now, she cared more for his well-being than her own.

When he was free, he fell backward on the mattress, taking her with him. First he held her on top of his body; then he rolled over to the side. Huge tears streamed from her liquid eyes and she held a breath every few moments in an effort to stifle her sobs.

“Shhh,” he soothed, shimmying up to the center of the mattress and compelling her to come with him. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Yes, you did. You’ll never forget about me and Briggs, no matter what I say. You’re a pig, but an honest pig. Don’t stop now.” She sniffled and once again tried to turn away from his embrace. “Let me go. You were right. I shouldn’t have come.”

“I changed my mind,” he said, wiping her tears with the edge of the linen sheet.

“You did?” She hiccoughed.

He nodded. “Harriet, I’m not myself these days. I don’t mean the filth that pours from my mouth. It’s like the connection between my brain and my tongue has been severed.”

She put fingertips over his mouth to halt further words. “I understand,” she said softly.

He wished he did.

Then she grimaced. “Gawd, I can’t even do a forceful seduction right.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” He chuckled, rolling to his back and hauling her half onto his chest so that his injured arm could lie flat on the mattress while his right arm caressed her shoulders, her waist, her buttocks. “Seems to me the seige was more than a victory. You got the ‘drawbridge’ up, at least.”

She blinked at him in confusion, then laughed, peeking with mock horror down below.

“Aren’t you going to finish the seige? Take the castle?”

Narrowing her eyes at him, she asked. “What’d you have in mind?”

“Well, I’m a crippled man,” he whined, raising his splint with exaggerated weakness. “I guess I’m at your mercy.”

She brightened. “I take no hostages.”

“Overconfidence has been the downfall of some of the greatest military commanders. Beware of ambushes.” He wiggled his eyebrows for emphasis.

“One thing first, Etienne,” she said, throwing one leg over his waist and straddling his stomach. “I want you to know why I came tonight.”

Talk? She’s going to talk. Now?
“Harriet, honey, please. When we talk…when
I
talk…we always end in an argument.”

She slid her bottom lower over that oversensitized evidence of his arousal and talked, ignoring his advice. “I came because I couldn’t bear to have our relationship end with you hating me.”

“I don’t…hate…you,” he said in a strangled moan. While she’d been speaking, she slid even lower, sitting on his thighs now. And she was examining his “drawbridge” with delicate, fingering strokes. He arched upward, trying desperately to withstand the oncoming waves of pleasure those mere strokes evoked.

“Yes, you do hate me. Your revulsion is evident,” she insisted as she continued to fondle him. “But at the same time, you feel this guilt. There’s no need for repression with me, though. Don’t think I’m under the delusion that—”

He regarded her with amusement. “Harriet, I swear, you know must know every ‘-ion’ word in the dictionary. Is that a prerequisite for being a mind doctor? But I know some even better ones.”

She raised a brow at him.

“Stimulat-ion. Erect-ion. Fornicat-ion. Satisfact-ion.”

She gave him a playful slap on the chest and then, unmercifully, prattled on. It was probably part of her assault
plan. “Believe me, it hurts to admit that I love you and that my love will never be reciprocated.”

Why, oh why do women have to talk at a time like this?
With a rumbling growl, he spread his thighs wide and dragged her upward so she lay on top of him. “Would you like to see my sword, m’lady soldier?”

“Only if you want to see my sheath.”

“Enough conversation, sweetheart,” he pleaded. “It’s time for the drawbridge and the moat to come together.”

“Oh.” She appeared dazed as he bucked upward, imbedding himself inside her to the hilt. Her tight folds clenched him spasmodically in welcome.

“
Oh” just about says it all
. “Harriet,” he rasped out, and silenced any further talk with his openmouthed kiss.

It was the shortest seige in history.

The battle wasn’t over yet, though. Throughout the night, she tried to talk, and he conducted an admirable campaign of keeping her too busy to think, let alone lecture him on all his admittedly numerous faults.

She must have told him that she loved him a hundred times.

He never said the words once, although he thought them. He would never tell her of his suspicions that he was falling in love with her because that would change the outcome of this entire bizarre drama he’d been thrown into with her.

Or was it that he feared that saying the words aloud would change nothing? Oh, that would be the cruelest blow of all to him. To tell a woman for the first time that he loved her, and have her leave him nonetheless.

Harriet was going away, to her time, of that there was no doubt. She had a life there. A successful career.

What if he asked her to stay? Would she?

No, no, no!
He would never pressure her to make that kind of decision. All she wanted and valued was in another world. She said she loved him, but it was only that he was her anchor in this time-travel. She’d forget him soon enough.

How about him going back with her?

Etienne immediately discarded that possibility. What would he do there? Be a parasite, living off Harriet’s fame and fortune? And what about Saralee?

He could picture the scenario. Harriet parading him around on her lecture tours as an example of an MCP. Dumb Man Extraordinaire.

All these thoughts went through Etienne’s mind as Harriet dozed at his side. He smiled against her hair and whispered, “I love you, stupid.” To his amazement, he felt a tear creep down his cheek.

He woke her up then. She’d have plenty of time to sleep when she left the past. And this was the only night he would have her with him. He knew that he couldn’t risk making love with her again after this night or he’d never be able to let her go.

Three days later, Etienne’s whole world rocked, then came crumbling apart as he got his first view of Bayou Noir plantation.

How could his home have changed so dramatically in the short time he’d been away? The oak alley had been cleared of all the encroaching swamp vegetation, leaving a clear lawn from the stream where he’d just tied his pirogue all the way to the main house. The mansion was still in a state of disrepair, but broken shutters had been reattached, the roof repaired, and a first coat of whitewash applied to the exterior. A bonfire blazed behind the house, where workers seemed to be throwing pieces of broken furniture and the remains of the
garçonniére
. Off in the distance, the sugarcane had been harvested and field hands were hard at work planting a winter crop. There was an air of renewal about the place.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again, to see if he might be dreaming. He wasn’t.

Etienne tilted his head with puzzlement at the tall man who walked out onto the gallery from inside the house. He
looked vaguely familiar, lean and muscular, with black hair mixed with strands of gray. When the man lifted his chin defiantly and stared right back at him, Etienne groaned.