Somewhere off in the direction of the levee road, a bolt of lightning suddenly crackled across the dark heavens and left a blazing tree in its wake. For a few moments it illumined the night in a ruddy, hellish glow and then vanished as the downpour quenched its flames and the blackness of the night closed over it.
The rain was coming down so heavily now that it seemed to be pounding her mercilessly into the steps. She tried to lift her head toward Miguel but gulped so much water she nearly choked. Miguel was literally pulling her along with him now. Coughing and sputtering in a frantic effort to breathe, she no longer seemed to have the strength to resist the weight of the pounding rain and onrushing wind. Purgatory must be like this, she thought. Or perhaps she was already in the depths of hell, trying to climb out of the pit, but the demons were pulling her down, lashing out at her, tormenting her…
Suddenly she realized she was on the gallery and Miguel was pulling her to her feet. He held her for a moment pressed close to the firmness of his body until he was certain she had regained her balance. Then, still holding on tightly to her, he fumbled with the key until he found the lock.
With a gush of wind, the massive oaken door suddenly flew open and the dark hallway in the interior yawned before them like the mouth of some hungry giant. She could feel herself being pushed by a huge invisible hand into those waiting jaws. She tried to clutch at Miguel or the doorjamb, to resist that mighty force, but it was too late. With a startled cry, she was suddenly torn from Miguel’s grasp and sent hurtling headfirst into the inky blackness of the hallway.
The next thing she knew, she was lying wet and bruised on the floor, weary and gasping for breath but welcoming the reality of the solid cypress boards beneath her.
Miguel followed, groping and stumbling as he tried to keep his footing and close the door behind him against the wind and rain. The darkness was impenetrable now as he made his way cautiously down the hallway to where he calculated the console was, with its candelabrum and tinderbox always ready for any emergency.
“Monica, my dear, where are you?” he called out to her in the darkness. “Are you all right?”
She heard him call her name again, but she was so weary she could only mumble a weak reply—a reply that the angry storm, pounding and shrieking to be let in, completely drowned out.
Suddenly the toe of his boot brushed her leg, and she called out a warning to him from where she lay on the floor, but before he could catch himself, he was falling forward, hopelessly entangled in her cloak and skirts. Impulsively she lifted her hands to protect herself from the impact of his fall…
For a moment they lay there in a confused heap on the floor, wet and spent, bruised and soaked to the skin, yet somehow vibrantly alive. They had just been through hell and back and were grateful to feel the familiar nearness of each other’s bodies once more. The darkness that enveloped them suddenly seemed friendly and protective… warm and sensuous… Memories of the moments they had shared together earlier under the staircase returned. Monique reached up to him and clung to the wet velvet of his coat, weeping with the sheer joy of being alive and knowing he was there.
For the first time, she murmured his name with no prefixes or surnames and drew him closer. All the hostility had drained out of her. Only the desire that had lain submerged beneath it was left now.
His body was pressing longingly against hers, and she could feel the hard core of him throbbing wildly against her thigh. It excited her, set her pulsating to its rhythm. His breath was warm and rapid on her cheek as his lips found her in the darkness.
“Mona, my sweet, adorable little doll… I want you so!” A flood of soft Castilian caressed her lips as he cupped his mouth hungrily over hers. The scent of him invaded her nostrils, penetrated the very pores of her being. This time their kiss was long and lingering, yearning for fulfillment. Her tongue leaped to meet his, and the taste of him filled her mouth.
The hurricane had burst in all its fury outside, but it seemed distant compared to the storm raging within her, drowning out all other impressions except those racking her being at that moment.
She locked her arms around his neck and held fast, fearful he might pull away from her as he had done before under the staircase. But he was on fire now, and his lips were softly tracing the soft hollow of her neck down into the deep valley between her breasts, while he slipped his arm under the curve of her back and arched her even closer to the lean hardness of him.
“If you only knew… how I want you… only you…”
He groped momentarily in the darkness, exploring the décolletage of her gown. Eagerly he drew one of those soft firm breasts into the moist warmth of his mouth, caressing it rapidly with his lips, then the flutter of his tongue, again and again. She could feel the tip begin to harden and come to life as strange new sensations began to awaken deep within her.
Suddenly his mouth tightened over the swelling fullness of her breast and he began to suck long and hungrily until she felt the very essence was being drawn out of her and she was trembling wildly in the circle of his arms. It was like nothing she had ever felt before. Every corner of her body was throbbing with a thousand tiny pulses, all afire for want of him!
Her fingers gripped the damp thickness of his hair as she gave an involuntary moan of pleasure and she murmured his name again and again. Oh, yes, he was the one. She knew at last she loved him! All those nights of wondering… trying to imagine who it was going to be… how it was going to feel… yet never in her wildest dreams had she thought it could be like this! It had to be Miguel. There could be no other man now for her but him. Wars could rage… generations could hate… none of it mattered anymore. It all dissolved in the heat of their passion.
Miguel could feel her breast expanding and pulsating with mounting desire, pressing urgently upward through his fingers, eager to meet his lips once more. His whole being was on fire now for want of her. That gnawing knot in his loins had sprung to life and could no longer be denied. He pressed the burning ache of it desperately against her, and the feel of her soft and yielding beneath him set his pulse racing. He knew she wanted him. Her whole body was pleading for him to take her, and he could no longer deny the urgency of his own long-denied passion.
Quickly he felt beneath the wet, clinging skirts for her thighs and lightly stroked the smooth, firm lines of them, running his fingers again and again over their length until they were quivering uncontrollably to his every touch. Her lips murmured into his kisses… her breast pulsated wildly against the palm of his hand… slowly her trembling limbs began to part… ready… waiting. How he had dreamed of this moment… all those long months of aching, despairing… He was swollen with desire for her, eager to plunge at last into the innermost depths of her being and make her his own at last. He eased his knee between her thighs and gently, with the palm of his hand in the curve of her back, arched her toward him…
A flash of lightning suddenly illumined the hallway through the stained-glass window above the main entrance, and in that split second he saw that childlike face with its wide, trusting eyes bathed in ecstasy, those tiny little fists that she had so often lifted in anger against him clinging to him now, clenched with passionate longing. How terribly vulnerable she was at that moment… so young… so passionate… so completely aroused… God help him! What was he doing? Here he was about to take her, driven only by the urgency of his own torment, his own needs, with no thought of the consequences for her! He had nearly killed two men to stop them from seducing her… to stop them from doing exactly what he himself was doing at that moment! And he was her guardian, sworn to protect her! Qué barbaridad!
He drew back and his loins went into a paroxysm of agony.
For a moment he knelt there on one knee above her in the darkness, trying to calm the turmoil twisting his insides into a thousand knots. Every fiber of his being screamed to go on to completion, and he could feel her voluptuous little body still stirring in his arms, begging to be taken.
But that mome
ntary flash of lightning had brought him to his senses. This was Monique, his sweet, innocent little Monique whom he loved more than life itself. Also, this was his unpredictable little Monique who, up until less than an hour ago, had hated him with the same intensity as she was responding to his caresses now. No, even though he knew he could take her then and there, he didn’t want it to be that way—not with her lying on the floor, wet and confused, worked into an emotional frenzy by the events of the night and his imprudent lovemaking. This was the woman he hoped to marry. He wanted their first time to be so different. Most of all, he wanted her love. He wanted her to be as certain of her feelings for him as he was of his for her.
Clumsily he smoothed the damp curls back from her forehead with trembling fingers and tried to calm her, despite the fact that he was far from calm himself. Desperately he tried to ignore the raging furnace consuming him from within… the shrieking protests of his tormented loins.
“It… it’s so dark,” he mumbled huskily as he labored to catch enough breath to get past the constriction in his throat. In despair he kissed the outstretched hand that tried to detain him and moved back from her, momentarily fumbling in the dark with the yards of muslin tangled around his limbs. “Let me find the candle.”
He rose carefully and groped for the table that he knew had to be nearby. He had to have light! In the light everything would take on more sensible proportions. He nearly knocked over the candleholder as he felt about blindly for it. His fingers were trembling uncontrollably as they struggled with the tinderbox.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The four-stemmed candelabrum seemed startlingly bright as it illumined the blackness of the hallway. Monique blinked bewilderedly as she rose from the floor and self-consciously tried to arrange her disheveled clothing.
Miguel seemed his usual cool, collected self once more as he walked on into the parlor and continued to light every candelabrum in sight. Then, mumbling something about going to find Old Meggie to get them some fresh clothing and a good meal, he hurried off.
Monique sat down on the sofa, feeling strangely exhilarated despite the physical weariness of her battered body. The storm was still raging outside, and the shutters rattled behind the drawn curtains as the house vibrated in the demanding embrace of the lusty wind.
The brightly lit room seemed familiar, yet she knew that somehow things would never be quite the same again for her after that night. The taste of him was still on her lips… the feel of his body still imprinted on her own. Every part of her seemed to be tingling with a pulse of its own. Even as she sat there vibrating to the familiar timbre of his voice as he spoke to Old Meggie off in the rear of the house, she longed to feel his caresses again, to yield to him at last the very core of her being. She wasn’t certain what had been expected of her… what else she should have done. She wasn’t even certain exactly how that passionate moment between them should have ended, but her instincts told her that he had brought his lovemaking to an abrupt halt… that he had drawn away from her again at the crucial moment, just when every fiber of her being had wanted to go on to fulfillment… to experience at last the very essence of him.
She felt a sense of incompleteness, as though she had opened her portals to him and been rejected. Had he been disappointed in her? Perhaps he had compared her to Azema and other women he had known and found her wanting. He had drawn away from her under the staircase, too, after their first kiss…
Azema was so beautiful, so experienced in pleasing a man. How could she possibly expect to compete with such a woman? But no matter how perfect Azema Ducole was, one thing was certain. That horrid woman could never love Miguel the way she did. And she knew now that she loved him… loved him with every particle of her being. If only she could learn to please him so he’d never want Azema or any woman again but her! Now that she had known the feel of his hands coursing over her body, his lips suckling at her breast, his tongue seeking out the hidden recesses of her body, she could never bear the thought of him doing those things to any other woman. She had to let him know how much she loved and wanted him… that no one could possibly love him as much as she did!
But as the night wore on and her guardian returned with Old Meggie, he seemed to be avoiding her. They bathed and changed to some of the spare summer clothing stored in the massive bedroom armoires, and then sat down to an impromptu repast of chicken broth and cold venison that left her physical appetite satisfied but did little to assuage the deeper hunger still unslaked within her.
As soon as they had finished their meal, he suggested they retire immediately, pointing out that it was after four o’clock in the morning and time to get a few hours of much-needed sleep.
The storm had subsided now to a dismal drizzle, so just before going to his bedchamber, Miguel left orders for a messenger to be dispatched to the town house to tell Grandmother Chausson that he and Monique were all right and would be returning later that following day. He wanted to check first, however, on whatever damage the storm might have done there at the plantation, especially to the recently planted cuttings. If the soil wasn’t well packed around them, they wouldn’t be adequately protected when the cold weather set in. The planters had warned him that, hot as it was there in the summers, it sometimes got down to freezing temperatures during the colder months.
Although Monique realized her guardian was not only tired but worried about saving the crops, as well, she still couldn’t understand why he hadn’t at least made an effort to say a few words aside to her before retiring. True, he had been busy with Old Meggie and Roselle most of the time, but aside from his usual polite good night—which on this occasion he had said rather incongruously at five o’clock in the morning—there had been no hint in his manner that he even recalled the emotional experiences they had shared together earlier that night.
After tossing and turning for over an hour, her tingling, pulsating body still too vibrantly awake to let her relax long enough to sleep, Monique finally slipped into her light sacque of pink cotton and went down the gallery to her guardian’s room. It was a dismal, wet dawn, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until she’d at least seen him alone again for a few minutes.
When he opened the door, somewhat groggy from his own first hour of fitful sleep, it was obvious he had expected to see the overseer or Meggie and not his restless ward staring up questioningly at him with wide, confused eyes.
“Monica! In heaven’s name, what are you doing here? And in the damp morning air? Do you want to catch your death of cold?” he exclaimed in amazement, grabbing his wine silk dressing gown and quickly throwing it over his white linen nightshirt. He pushed back the dark waves of his tousled hair as he returned to the door where she still stood waiting. “What’s the matter, child? Why are you here?” he asked again.
“I… I wanted to see you,” she said simply. “May I come in?”
Her request seemed to put him into a panic, but he couldn’t leave her standing out there. The dreary gray morning air was still humid and heavy with the aftermath of the recent storm.
“It… it’s not proper for a young lady to be in a man’s bedchamber,” he said lamely. “Servants gossip, you know.”
“Meggie’s out back in the kitchen, and no one else is in the house right now,” she assured him. “I… I thought you’d want to see me.”
He caught her by the hand and drew her quickly into the room but left the door partially open. The curtains and shutters of the chamber were still drawn so the daylight wouldn’t disturb his sleep.
“My sweet child, it’s madness to come here like this. Things can’t be that way between us. Most certainly not while I’m still your guardian.” He was more uneasy than ever.
“You were playing with me, then… mocking me?”
“Of course not! You must believe me. It wasn’t my intention…” He ran his hand through his thick dark hair in despair. Just the sight of her brought back the agony of that moment when he had torn himself away from her. He ached to take
her in his arms again and feel her lying beneath him responding to his caresses once more. “How can I make you understand, my sweet darling?”
He turned aside, trying to veil the desire he was sure must have been burning in his eyes at that moment.
“That’s it, isn’t it? You still see me only as a child!”
“A part of you is very much a woman, my dear,” he assured her with a smile, “but the very fact that you don’t understand why I couldn’t go on—why I still can’t—only proves you’re still very much a child in other ways. You’re so young… so passionate… God forgive me! What was I thinking of? When I think how I could have taken you… I came so close… Qué barbaridad!”
He cursed his weakness of the night before. He had roused the woman dormant in her before she was mature enough to handle such emotions.
“If I’d been Azema Ducole, I wager you wouldn’t have hesitated.”
He laughed. “Azema? Why do you persist in talking about her? What does she have to do with my feelings for you? Believe me, my dear, I was only thinking of you… I’m still thinking of you. I couldn’t have borne it if I’d taken you and then you’d have regretted it afterward, perhaps even hated me all the more for having taken advantage of you like that. Why, only right before the storm you were eloping with that fellow Foucher and shaking your fist in my face telling me for the hundredth time how much you hated me. That’s why I think we should wait a little. I want you to be sure of these new emotions of yours.”
Tears were clouding over those enormous gray eyes, turning them to charcoal gray. He was just saying words, trying to spare her feelings. All the other men who had wanted to make love to her hadn’t spent their time trying to rationalize why they shouldn’t do so. She had had to fight them off. No, she knew why he’d stopped so abruptly and hadn’t tried to come near her since then… not even now that she had gone so far as to come to his room and give him every opportunity to take her in his arms and kiss her again. He had compared her to his mistress and decided he preferred Azema. She wasn’t woman enough for him. Azema was so much more beautiful than she was as a woman… and probably more expert as a lover, too.
Iron Lace Page 18
