by Nora Roberts
“You’ll do what you’re told to do. You’ll do what you’re told, you little bastard.”
The slash of the belt sliced white-hot pain through flesh, through blood and into bone. And he screamed, and he screamed, and bolted upright. For a moment his dazed eyes saw only the dark. His skin was still shivering against the bite of the belt as hands reached for him.
He jerked away, fists clenched, teeth bared. And saw Roxanne’s stunned face.
“You had a nightmare,” she said calmly, though her heart was tripping at double time. He didn’t look quite sane. “It was a nightmare, Luke. You’re awake now.”
The madness faded from his eyes before he closed them on a groan. His skin was still quivering when she risked touching a hand to his shoulder. “You were thrashing around. I couldn’t bring you out of it.”
“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his hands over his face, willing the nausea away.
“You don’t have to be sorry.” Gently, she brushed the sweat-dampened hair from his brow. “Must have been a lulu.”
“Yeah.” He reached for the bottle and upended a swallow of warm wine into his mouth.
“Tell me?”
He could only shake his head. There were things he could never tell, not even to her. “It’s over.” But there was a tic in his jaw. Roxanne smoothed her fingers over the movement to soothe.
“Why don’t I get you some water?”
“No.” He grabbed her hand before she could rise, clinging tight as if he couldn’t bear her to be even as far away as the next room. “Just be here. Okay?”
“Okay.” She slipped her arms around him.
He’d forgotten they were naked. But oh, the feel of her skin against his was magic, vanquishing those last tattered remnants of the nightmare. Needy, he buried his face into the soft curve of her shoulder.
“It’s still raining,” he murmured.
“Umm-hmm.” Instinctively, she stroked his back, her fingers gliding coolly over the ridges of old scars. “I like the way it sounds, the way it makes the light so soft and the air so heavy.”
He watched it fall, still hard and heavy though the thunder had danced on to the west. Beyond the terrace doors his tangle of geraniums stood triumphant against the gloom. “I always liked red flowers best. I could never figure out why. Then one day I realized they made me think of your hair. That’s when I knew I loved you.”
Her fingers paused, lying still against his back. Her heart broke a little, but sweetly, as it must with joy. “I didn’t think you’d ever tell me.” On an unsteady laugh she pressed her lips to his throat. “I was considering going to Madame and asking her for a potion.”
“You’re all the magic I need.” He tipped her face back to his. “I was afraid to say it. Those three words are an incantation that releases all kinds of complications.”
“Too late.” Her lips curved against his. “The spell’s already cast. Here.” She lifted her hands, palms out, waiting until he placed his against them. “I love you, too. Nothing can change it. No sorcery, no enchantment, no trick of the eye.”
Very slowly he slid his fingers between hers so that their spread palms became sturdy, joined fists. “In all the illusions, you’re the only truth I need.”
He knew then that he would pay Cobb, would dance with the devil himself to keep her safe, to keep what they had unspoiled.
She saw the flash in his eyes, like lightning against a churning sky. His fingers tensed on hers. “I need you, Roxanne.” He released her hands to pull her close and press her back onto the rug. “Now. God, now.”
Like brushfire, the force of that need burned from him into her, scorching the blood. His desperation tumbled with them over the rug, igniting the spark of hers, fanning the flames higher, brighter, until it was a roar of heat.
His hands were everywhere, streaks of lightning over her flesh that sent hundreds of pulse points thudding. Their playful, good-hearted loving of the afternoon paled like the moon against the sun.
He clasped her hands in his again, holding her arms out to the side as he raced his mouth over her. His teeth scraped, nipped, satisfying an urgent hunger for the taste of flesh. Her hands flexed once, twice, under his grip even as her body greedily absorbed the sensation of being taken, possessed. Devoured.
To want and be wanted like this. She could never explain it, never describe it. Could only thank God for it. When he dragged her higher, into that blinding heat, the pleasure was so intense she felt her soul quake.
More, was all she could think.
She tore her hands free to take them over him, all speed and eagerness. Agile and quick and more than half mad, she rolled on top of him, flesh sliding hot and wet over flesh, mouth meeting ravenous mouth like the clash of bright, dangerous swords.
The power built inside her, sang in her blood, seemed to spark from her fingertips as she felt his muscles bunch and quiver beneath her touch. He’d taught her the magic, tutored her in its varieties. Now, for this moment, the student had become the master.
He groaned, dazed by the suddenness and strength of her assault. Her answer was a laugh, low and breathless and devastating. He would have sworn he smelled hell smoke mixed with that taunting perfume of wildflowers.
“Roxanne.” Her name shuddered through his lips between heaving breaths. “Now. For God’s sake.”
“No.” She laughed again, dipping her head. “Not yet, Callahan. I’m not finished with you yet.” She teased his nipple, then slid down, over his rib cage, down his taut belly until an oath exploded from him.
His need was like a wild beast, snapping and clawing for freedom. And she held the whip, tormenting, promising, preventing him from that final burst that would lead to escape.
“You’re killing me,” he managed.
She trailed her tongue over him. “I know.”
And the knowledge made her giddy. Drunk with power, she took him to the thin, quivering edge of relief, then retreated. Witchlike, she slid up his body.
“Tell me again.” Her eyes were open and glowing. “Tell me now, when you want me so much it feels like it’s ripping you apart. Tell me now.”
“I love you.” He gripped her hips with unsteady hands when she straddled him.
“Magic words,” she murmured and shifted her body up to take him inside her.
When he filled her, when her throbbing muscles contracted to welcome him, she threw her head back with the sheer stunning pleasure of it. For the space of a dozen heartbeats she held him tight inside her, her body angled back and still as a statue.
He’d never forget how she looked, her skin the palest gold and gleaming with damp, her lips full and parted, her eyes closed, her hair tumbling fire down her back.
Then her body shuddered, wracked by a fast, hard orgasm. A slow, sinuous moan slipped from her, but still she didn’t move. Then her lips curved, her lids fluttered up to reveal eyes deeper, more beautiful than any emerald he could covet.
She groped for his hands, locked fingers tight and rode him like a woman possessed.
When at last there was no more to take, no more to give, her body flowed like water down to his. The rain had stopped. Watery sunlight crept mystically into the room. He stroked a hand down her hair.
“Move in with me,” he said.
She used what was left of her strength to lift her head and arch a brow. “My bags are already packed.”
He grinned and gave her pretty butt a light pinch. “Pretty sure of yourself.”
“Damn right.” She gave him a smacking kiss. “I only have one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Who’s going to do the cooking?”
“Ah.” He trailed a finger down her ribs, searching for a foolproof escape. “I burn everything.”
Roxanne hadn’t been born yesterday. “Me too.”
There was an easy way out, he decided. “The Quarter’s lousy with restaurants.”
“Yeah.” Her grin spread. “Aren’t we lucky?”
She settle
d back into his arm. As they lay close in the thin sunlight it seemed possible that the biggest problem they would face would be their appetites.
22
It was as easy as pulling a rabbit out of a hat. They had, after all, lived with each other for years. They knew each other’s habits, flaws, eccentricities.
She got up at dawn; he pulled the covers over his head. He took endless showers that used up all the hot water; she took paperback novels into the bathtub and stayed submerged in plot and bubbles until the water turned cold.
He worked out with weights on the living room floor; she preferred the structure of a thrice-weekly exercise class.
The stereo blared with rock when Luke had the controls and ached from the blues when Roxanne had her way.
They did have plenty in common. Neither would have thought of complaining about the need to practice a single routine over and over and over. They both adored Cajun food, movies of the forties and long, meandering walks through the Quarter.
And they both shouted when they argued.
They did plenty of shouting over the next few weeks. They thrived on it. Friction was as much a part of their relationship as breathing, and both would have regretted its loss.
As August steamed through New Orleans, passing toward the blessed relief of fall, they squabbled and made up, snarled and snapped and pushed each other with regularity into frustration and laughter.
For her birthday he gave her a crystal wand, a long, slim staff of amethyst wrapped with thin silver wires and crusted with cabochons of ruby, citrine and deep blue topaz. She set it on a table by the window so that the sun would strike it every day and pulse its magic through the air.
They were wildly in love and shared everything. Everything but the secret Luke paid for every month with a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars.
Max had called a meeting, but he was in no hurry to start. He sipped LeClerc’s hot, chicory-flavored coffee and bided his time. It felt good to have his family gathered around him again. He hadn’t realized what a blow it would be to have both Roxanne and Luke out from under his roof. Even though they lived only a short walk away, the loss had staggered him.
He felt he was losing so much in such a short span of time. His children, who were no longer children, his hands, with their stiff fingers that so often seemed to belong to a stranger.
Even his thoughts, and that frightened him the most. So often they seemed to float away from him, to hang just out of reach so that he would stop, desperately trying to capture them again.
He told himself it was because he had so much on his mind. That was why he’d taken a wrong turn on his way to the French Market and had ended up lost and disoriented in a city he’d known most of his life. That was why he was forgetting things. Like the name of his stockbroker. Or the cupboard where LeClerc had stored the coffee mugs for years.
But today, having them all around him, he felt more strong, more sure. His voice reflected none of his doubts as he called the meeting to order.
“I believe I have something of interest,” he began when the room quieted. “A particular collection of jewelry—” He noted that Roxanne’s eyes cut to Luke’s. “I’ve taken a more specific interest in the sapphire portion of this collection. The lady appears to have an affection for this stone, and her jewelry wardrobe—which is extensive—reflects it. There is also a rather elegant pearl and diamond choker that is not to be scoffed at. Naturally, this is only part of the collection, but enough, I believe for our needs.”
“How many pieces?” Roxanne pulled a notebook out of her purse and prepared to scribble information in her own complex code. Max beamed his pride toward his precise and practical daughter.
“Of the sapphires, ten.” Max steepled his hands. Odd, now that the game had begun, he no longer felt the ache in them. “Two necklaces, three pairs of earrings, a bracelet, two rings, a pin and an enhancer. Insured for half a million. The choker is valued at ninety thousand, but I believe that to be slightly excessive. Eighty thousand is a more reasonable estimate.”
Luke accepted a cookie from the plate Lily passed him. “We got any visuals?”
“Naturally. Jean?”
LeClerc picked up the remote, aimed it toward the television. The set clicked on, then the VCR below it hummed into life. “I have transferred photographs to videotape.” As the first picture flashed on, he struck a match and, holding it over the bowl of his pipe, began to suck. “I enjoy these new toys. This necklace,” he continued, “is of a conservative design, perhaps lacking in imagination. But the stones themselves are good. There are ten fancy-cut sapphires of a cornflower blue. Total weight, twenty-five carats. The diamonds are very good quality baguettes of a total weight approximately eight point two carats.”
But it was the next picture, the enhancer, that caught Roxanne’s attention. With a quick sound of surprise she stared at the screen, then at her father.
“Justine Wyatt. If that’s not the same piece I saw her wearing on the ship last summer, I’m brain-dead.”
“You were never that, my sweet,” Max said. “It’s precisely the same piece.”
The smile started first, spread into a grin, then bubbled out in a laugh of sheer good humor. “We’re going to do it after all. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.” He preened, delighted with her reaction. “Consider it a kind of early Christmas gift, though it will be closer to Easter by the time we have everything in place.” He gestured toward the set. “Skip ahead, will you, Jean? We can come back to this. The photos are copied from the insurance file. Our own contribution should be more entertaining.”
The pictures zigzagged through fast forward then settled into live-action videos aboard the Yankee Princess.
“Home movies.” Mouse grinned over a mouthful of cookies. “I took these ones.”
“And a budding Spielberg in our midst,” Max congratulated.
Indeed, the video was clear as crystal, the picture steady as a rock, the sound perfect. The slow pans, zooms and wide shots flowed together without any of the jerks and jolts of the amateur.
“Oh, look. There’s that nice Mrs. Woolburger. Remember, Max. She was in the front row at every show.”
“And there’s Dori.” Roxanne leaned forward, propping her elbows on her thighs. And . . . oh.” She flushed a bit when Mouse’s lens zoomed in on the portside rail, capturing her and Luke in a long kiss.
It was odd and exciting to watch herself skim her fingers up into Luke’s hair, to see the way his head tilted so that his mouth could cover hers more truly.
“That’s the love interest,” Mouse said with a wide grin. “Every good movie’s got one.”
“Run that part back again.” Luke kneaded his fingers over Roxanne’s shoulder.
Roxanne snatched the remote before LeClerc could oblige. “Ah, the plot thickens,” she murmured as Sam and Justine strolled out on deck. Roxanne inched forward even as the picture focused in on a close-up of the bracelet they’d just studied in the still. The camera followed their progress over the deck, where they chose chairs side by side.
There were none of the secret smiles and lingering touches of newlyweds. Without exchanging a word, they settled back, she with a glossy magazine, he with a Tom Clancy techno-thriller.
“Romantic devils, aren’t they?” Roxanne considered as she studied Sam. The breeze was ruffling his hair. He had the light tan of a man used to being outdoors. “The camera’s good to him. I suppose that’s a political asset.”
“Barbie and Ken,” Luke commented behind her. “The amazing plastic people.”
Mouse thought Sam had shark’s eyes, but he didn’t say so because he thought the family would chuckle, and he didn’t mean it to be funny. In his heart he wished Max had stood by his original decision so that they would all give Sam, his wife and her pretty stones a wide berth. But to Mouse, Max was the smartest person in the world, and it would never occur to him to question or doubt.
As the sc
reen faded to gray, then bled to color again, Roxanne let out a low whistle.
“So that’s the choker.”
“Superb, isn’t it? Freeze it there, darling.” When Roxanne complied, Max began to lecture like a dedicated professor.
“The choker was a gift from her parents on her twenty-first birthday, four years ago this coming April. It was purchased at
