Midnight Confessions

by Candice Proctor

“Do you want it?” he whispered, nipping at her ear, slipping his hands beneath her hips to lift her up to him.

  She answered by tightening her hand around him and guiding him to where he wanted to be. Her gaze locked with his, her eyes as dark and unknowable as an enchanted sea, and he fell into them, fell into the essence of her being as she took him inside herself.

  He drove into her hard and deep, and heard her let out a breathy cry, her hands gripping his upper arms, her body arching up. She was making small, erotic noises deep in her throat, driving him on, faster, harder as he plunged into her again, and again. He was consumed by need and want and a savage pleasure such as he had never known. He took her there, on the floor of her dining room, with the French doors open to the wind and lightning splitting a turbulent sky. She was holding on to him, her hips rising to meet each thrust, her hair a dark tangle that wrapped around them both. He braced himself above her on outstretched arms so that he could watch her face as he pounded into her. And he knew, somewhere deep within him, somewhere far beyond the power of this all-consuming moment of savage pleasure and blinding need, that he could spend the rest of his life making love to this woman and gazing into her sea eyes, and it still wouldn’t be enough, that what he wanted from her was more fundamental even than this primal union, more intimate, more demanding, and infinitely more enduring. But then the thought was gone, swirled away on a violent roll of thunder and an all-consuming fever of painful need and fierce pleasure and a hot, frantic climax of soughing breaths and pounding hearts and sweat-slicked bodies straining toward each other.

  She clung to him, her fingers digging into the tensed muscles of his upper arms, her neck arching as she screamed and writhed in the grip of a wild rapture ripping through her with such intensity that it pulled him over with her. He flung back his head, his teeth gritting, his voice joining hers. He gave one last, powerful thrust, burying himself in her. But the shuddering went on and on, and he gave himself up to it, surrendered to the onslaught of ecstasy, and to her.

  Emmanuelle lay on her back, the floorboards with their thin summer covering of woven straw hard beneath her spine and shoulders, his man’s weight heavy at her breast. She could hear the thunder rumbling, far away at first, then closer, wilder, a hot wind gusting up to rustle the fronds of the banana trees in the courtyard below and set the French doors to creaking on their hinges. It had been years since she had truly enjoyed holding a man in her arms like this, since she had reveled in the thrill of running her hands down a man’s sweat-slicked bare back and feeling his heart beating hard and fast so close to hers. Years since she had known this trembling moment of enervation and exquisite pleasure and ease mingling with the slow reawakening of a desire too heady and intense to be satisfied with one release.

  “I must be crushing you,” he said softly, and shifted some of his weight onto his bent elbows, although he kept his face buried in the curve of her neck. “Did I hurt you?” His lips moved against her flesh, trailing warm kisses along her neck.

  “I’m not as fragile as I look.”

  He lifted his head to gaze down at her, and she saw in the depths of his eyes the reflection of her own resurgent passion. “I know that.”

  In the fierce light of the gathering storm, he was beautiful. Dark and beautiful, his face hard, almost cruel-looking in arousal, yet still tender. He both excited her and frightened her, this man. Even if he didn’t half-suspect her of murder, even if he didn’t have the power to send her to her death, he would still frighten her. He was too passionate, too intense, that unfathomable, innate connection between them too demanding of a level of intimacy that went far beyond this simple union of their bodies, and terrified her.

  He bent his head, his mouth closing over hers in a long, deep kiss that drove away thought and left only sensation and want and a growing, insistent need. She was losing herself again in his kiss, swept away by a swirl of mating tongues and sharp, nipping teeth and a breathless heat. He tangled his fingers in her hair, his thumbs brushing against her cheeks as he lifted his head and stared down at her with eyes that seemed to glow.

  “I want you again,” he whispered. She watched, bemused, as the edges of his lips quirked up in that bad-boy smile of his that always came so dangerously close to stealing her heart. “Are the rug burns on your backside as bad as the ones on my knees?”

  She let out a startled gurgle of laughter, her hands sweeping down his sides to the swell of his wonderfully tight, naked buttocks. “I do own a bed. Although you’ll need to promise to take off your boots and spurs.”

  “My—” He pushed himself up, and she knew by the surprised widening of his eyes and the way he swung around to stare down at the trousers shoved below his hips that it hadn’t occurred to him until now that he still wore them. He rolled onto his back, his weight propped on his elbows, his head falling back as a laugh burst out of him, a deep, sensual man’s laugh that took her breath and brought a wholly inexplicable sting of tears to her eyes.

  Emmanuelle lay beside him, her peignoir ripped open, her body bare to the night air and vaguely sticky between her thighs where he had been. She stared at him, saw lightning flash, gleam blue-white and dangerous on the taut, naked skin of his chest and the corded sinews of his throat. A desperate urge stole over her, the wish that she could reach out and catch this moment and hold it. Afterward, she decided it was his laugh that undid her, that made her want to hold him in her life, forever.

  She’d left a light in her bedroom, a hurricane lamp set high on the carved mantel, where it cast a warm flicker over walls papered in faint gold on cream stripes. In the center of the room she stopped to swing suddenly about, her arms creeping up to hug her waist as she stared at the man who paused just inside her door, his coat and sword belt thrown casually over one shoulder. It was an infinitely more frightening thing to be making love to him at leisure here, in the intimacy of her room. Downstairs, with passion running as high and wild as the night wind, she might be able to convince him, convince herself that what she felt for him was raw lust, simple and uncomplicated by feelings or needs or secret wants. But here . . .

  “Second thoughts?” he said, his eyes narrowed, his jaw hard as he gazed back at her. He’d fastened his trousers, but his suspenders dangled in wide loops against his thighs. And while he’d pulled on his shirt, he hadn’t buttoned it. “Should I be putting this coat on?”

  Reaching out, she took the coat from him and turned to drape it over the round-backed chair of her dressing table. It gave her a peculiar sense of dislocation to see it there, that hated dark blue cloth with its double row of eagle-crested brass buttons. Strange, how she could find herself forgetting for hours at a time what uniform he wore, what he was.

  “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” he said, coming to stand behind her, his gaze meeting hers in the mirror. “Yet less than two years ago, the uniform I wore was the uniform of your country. My country was your country.”

  “This isn’t two years ago.”

  “No.” He put his hands on her shoulders and swung her to face him. “Two years ago, your husband was still alive.”

  She looked up at him, her heart beginning to thump painfully in her chest as she studied his face. “Tell me, Major; who just said that? General Butler’s provost marshal, or my lover?”

  He ran his hands in a possessive sweep down her back, his fingers cupping her buttocks to pull her in close. “Your lover.”

  He kissed her long and hard and deep, his hands roving with sure familiarity over her body. “Now,” he said, raising his head. His breathing had deepened, become more rapid; beneath the fine linen of his shirt, she could see the hard rise and fall of his chest. “We’re going to do this right.” He tugged at the sash she’d knotted again about her waist. “Take this off. I want to see you. Here, in the light. All of you.”

  She took a step back, a faint smile on her lips as she untied the sash. “I’m beginning to suspect you’re a bit of a sensualist yourself, monsieur,” she said, watching him watch
her as she eased the thin linen peignoir from her shoulders. It slid down her arms to fall in a soft whisper at her feet.

  He stared at her, his eyes dark and cruel with a man’s desire, and she knew a shiver of delicious apprehension and fierce excitement. “And you like it, don’t you?”

  She took another step back that brought her to the side of the great rosewood bed with its ornately carved headboard and towering half-tester draped in a film of mosquito netting. With the aid of the steps, she settled on the edge of the high mattress and leaned back on her elbows, her head tipping back so that her hair slid over her shoulders and pooled on the gold and cream brocade of the counterpane beneath her, her legs falling slightly apart as she gazed up at him. It was a blatantly provocative pose, a deliberate taunt that would have frightened many men, but not him.

  He came to stand before her, close enough that his thighs touched the inside of her spread knees, dark blue wool pressed against tender flesh, a gentle reminder of who and what he was that brought an unexpected twist of awareness low in her belly, a perverse heightening of arousal. Slowly, he let his gaze rove over her. She could feel the heat of it like a touch, caressing the swell of her bare breasts and sliding down her stomach to the juncture of her thighs, where he had already been. And then he was touching her, a light caress of his fingertips that trailed fire over her breasts and drew an aching line downward, only to stop just short of what she needed.

  “You’re teasing me, monsieur,” she said, curling up toward him.

  He cupped the back of her head with one hand, drawing her right up to him, spreading her naked thighs wider as he leaned into her, her tender woman’s flesh pressed with exquisite sensitivity against the blue cloth of his uniform and the hardness beneath. “Turn about is fair play,” he said, smiling at her with his eyes as he nipped her lower lip with his teeth, and she laughed.

  He pressed her down into the feathery softness of the bed, but when he would have bent over her, she stopped him with an upflung hand against his chest. “Your boots and spurs, Major.”

  He straightened slowly, his eyes dark and almost frightening in their intensity as he took a step back. He kept his gaze on her face as he gathered handfuls of his shirt’s soft linen and drew it over his head in one swift, flowing movement of taut sinew and flexing muscle. He tossed the shirt aside, his hands falling to ease open the buttons of his trousers. But then he must have remembered his boots, for he swung around to rest his hips against the edge of her mattress and pull off first one, then the other, their gilded spurs gleaming in the lamplight. As he bent, his trousers gaped open, revealing the ridged, tight plane of his belly and the darkness below. Then he stood and with swift purposefulness peeled the dark blue cloth down over his hips, baring to her gaze the muscled curve of his buttocks. He was naked and he was beautiful, and she couldn’t quite stop herself from reaching out to skim her hand over that pale, evocative curve.

  He straightened slowly and swung to face her, his trousers still clenched in one fist. As she watched, he flung them aside with a quick, almost angry flick of his wrist, his hands settling on his hips as he stood naked before her, legs straddled in a blatantly masculine pose. “Tell me; am I still your enemy without my uniform?”

  A strange pain clutched at her chest. She let out her breath in a long sigh, trying to ease it. “You’ll always be my enemy.”

  He walked up to her and nudged her knees apart so that he stood again between her spread thighs. “Because I am a man?”

  She opened her eyes wider, both surprised and dismayed by how well he knew her. “I can handle men,” she said, shaking her hair back from her shoulders.

  He placed his splayed hands on her bare breasts, cupping their fullness, dark strong fingers against her pale woman’s flesh. “So it’s something more.”

  She could have said, You are my enemy because you make me feel the way I haven’t felt in ten long years, the way I never wanted to feel again. You are my enemy because I dream of the taste of your lips, because I lay in this bed at night and ache for what I have now, the touch of your hands on my breasts. You are my enemy because I want you with a fierceness that consumes me, and I swore I would never, ever allow any man to have that kind of power in my life again.

  Instead, she said, “You frighten me.” And even that was perhaps too much.

  Another man would have said, Don’t be frightened, and lavished tender loving kisses upon her. Zach Cooper smiled a rakish smile and slid his hands down her arms to tighten around her wrists and stretch her arms above her hair, pinning her beneath him. “But you like that,” he said, leaning into her, and she laughed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Long, lean, and naked, he slept facedown in her bed, this enemy, this Federal provost marshal who had become her lover.

  Lying beside him in the familiar darkness of her room and listening as the first scattered raindrops from the storm began to pound against her shutters, Emmanuelle knew a strange sense of dislocation, of unreality. She had made love to this man more times and in more ways than she could remember. He had explored every inch of her body with his tongue and his lips and his hands, and she had come to know him with the same intimacy. Yet somehow she still could not quite believe that he was here beside her, that she had given herself so openly, so utterly to him. Through all those long, passion-filled hours of the night, she had held nothing back—except, of course, her heart.

  She had thought him asleep, but when she touched her hand fleetingly, impulsively, to the smooth, taut curve of his naked shoulder, he turned his head and gave her a lazy, contented smile. “What time is it?” he asked, one arm curling out to wrap around her waist and draw her companionably close.

  “Three, I think.”

  “Hell.” He nuzzled his face in the mass of tangled curls at her throat. “Somewhere out there on the rue Dumaine is a Federal soldier who watched me come in here at nine o’clock.”

  “Whose reputation are you worried about? Mine, or yours?”

  She felt the warm air of his laugh against her shoulder. “Mine.”

  “Huh.” She brought up one hand to run her fingers through the fringe of dark hair at the nape of his neck, the way she might do with Dominic. “I’ve been thinking, monsieur. Murder isn’t always a product of arrogance or selfishness and greed.”

  He lifted his head to stare down at her. “You’ve been lying here beside me in the dark and thinking about murder, have you?”

  She smiled. “Mmmhmm. For quite some time.”

  He rolled onto his side, facing her, one wrist resting in negligent familiarity on her naked hip. “All right. When isn’t it?”

  “Last summer, one of the slave women out at Beau Lac lost her only child, a girl, just eight years old. At first, everyone thought the little girl had fallen from the broad gallery that runs around the house’s second floor, and hit her head on a flagged walkway below.”

  “But she hadn’t?”

  “No.” Emmanuelle glanced toward the connecting door to Dominic’s empty room, her voice quavering as she was struck by the swift onslaught of that paralyzing terror that comes to every mother when reminded of how vulnerable any child—her child—really is. “The little girl was already dead when she was thrown over the railing. It turned out that the woman’s lover—a slave, as well—had been abusing the child. She’d started to scream, and in the process of trying to shut her up, he smothered her.”

  “So he killed her to protect himself. How is that not an example of greed and selfishness?”

  Emmanuelle shook her head. “I’m not talking about the murder of the child. After she found out the truth, the little girl’s mother killed herself by walking into the bayou. But before she did, she fed her lover foxglove leaves mixed in collard greens, and killed him.”

  “Foxglove leaves?”

  “Mmm. They’re deadly.”

  “Does everyone down here count poisoning as one of their specialties, or is it just the people you tend to associate with?” He rolled h
er onto her back, his weight shifting to pin her beneath his long, naked body. “Hamish warned me to be careful what I eat or drink around you.”

  She stared up at him. “My point is, monsieur, that that was a murder of neither arrogance nor greed. That murder was born of great grief, and passion.”

  He went quite still. “Do you think that’s what we’re dealing with here? Revenge killings?” She would have looked away, but he cupped his hand beneath her chin, forcing her head up so that she had no choice but to meet his fierce, probing gaze. “Revenge for what? What did you and Henri Santerre and Claire La Touche do that has provoked such violent hatred in someone?”

  “I don’t know.” She sucked in a deep breath that did nothing to ease the sudden pressure in her chest. “But what if you were right in the first place? What if Henri was hit by mistake?”

  “Then the question becomes, what did you and Claire La Touche do to make someone hate you so much?” He kept his gaze locked with hers, one hand coming up to smooth the tangled hair from her face with a touch so light and gentle, it was an effort to remind herself that these hands could kill. Had killed. “If you know,” he said softly, “you must tell me. It’s the only way I can help protect you.”

  She shook her head, her eyes closing against the onslaught of frightened tears she refused to let fall. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Even if the killer were Philippe?”

  She opened her eyes wide. “Philippe is dead.”

  He sat up suddenly, pulling her with him so that they faced each other amid the crumpled sheets of her bed. “You keep saying that, but how can you be so certain? He was buried on the Bayou Crevé by a Federal patrol that only identified him because of the papers they found in his pocket.”

  “Hans told me Philippe died in his arms.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe Hans has his own reasons for not being entirely honest about what happened out there on the bayou. After all, he’s the only one who escaped alive, isn’t he?”