Catalina's Caress

by Sylvie F. Sommerfield

  If he wondered why she hadn't resisted, his question was lost in the searing heat of his pleasure as her mouth, soft and moist, opened to his like a flower welcoming the heat of the morning sun.

  Catalina not only returned his kiss with wild abandon, she clung to him with an intensity that amazed her as it did him. When his mouth reluctantly left hers, her breath was coming quickly and her heart pounded rhythmically. Her senses seemed to be filled with his presence.

  Marc's breath caught in his throat, and he was not quite sure he would be able to take the next one.

  His eyes swept her in a deep passion-filled caress. His world had seemed to lose its sense of balance.

  "Marc .. . please give me just a little time. Wait here for a few minutes before you come to me."

  She sounded like a frightened bride, and Marc, if his urge for revenge had been predominant, would have been rough and demanding. But he had forgotten all but the promise of the sweet intimate pleasure they would share.

  He nodded and felt the void as she stepped from his arms and only the subtle scent of her perfume remained. He stood in silence, trying to keep his mind centered on the purpose he intended to accomplish on this night. But he failed miserably. He could only envision her preparing for him, her body pale gold in his bed.

  It took all the self-control he had for him to remain still and allow the time to build into a half-hour. Finally, he could tolerate no more. He turned from the rail and strode purposefully toward his cabin.

  When he reached the door, he was amazed, and laughed softly, at the fact that his hand actually trembled. He swung the door open and stepped in. Then he stopped and sharply drew in his breath, for a vision met his eyes. The room was lit only by the glow of a few candles, and their mellow haze enhanced the mood.

  He swallowed as if something had interfered with his breathing, and his blood surged through him in a violent flood.

  She lay on her side against the pillows, her sable brown hair spread about her. The gown she wore was a wisp of material that revealed much more than it would ever hope to conceal, and her breasts, pressed against the soft white material, were vaguely pink, their erect nipples suggesting a need to be free. One leg, revealed by a split in the gown, was creamy smooth and delightfully inviting. She smiled a Mona Lisa smile, and her eyes held a seductive promise as she extended an inviting hand to him.

  As if he moved within a dream, Marc approached her and reached out to take her hand. As he bent over her, she slid her other hand into his hair to draw his head to hers.

  Her intoxicating fragrance drew him to her as potently as the tingle of warm smooth skin, and he savored the feel of her. Then he stood to remove his clothes, his eyes sweeping over her as if to memorize every line, every curve.

  Cheeks flushed, Catalina caught her lower lip between her teeth as vibrant excitement coursed through her when she viewed his muscular body in the glow of the mellow candlelight

  Again he stood for a moment, looking down at her. One day, in the future, he would recall that at this moment his resolve had begun to slip and for a fleeting moment he had envisioned Catalina as more than his mistress. Then he joined her on the bed and drew her warm body to his.

  A soft whispered moan escaped her a second before his lips caught hers in a moving kiss that left her weak and clinging to him. As his mouth took hers eagerly, they strained together in a mutual hunger heightened by the feel of flesh on flesh and by exploring hands. The flame of desire intensified, surged through Catalina's veins until it consumed her. Yet his lips nibbled and played, parting hers and leaving her gasping with breathless and rapidly rising passion.

  They were caught on the wings of a whirlwind that carried them to the dizzying heights. The reasons he had for retaining control deserted him in the face of the slim silken body, velvet smooth beneath his hands, that surrendered to a primitive, demanding need that matched his, touch for touch, passion for passion.

  It was an eternity of exquisite torment as hands caressed, lips blended, and bodies merged. He was heated pride as he pressed himself to the depths of her and felt her enclose him, hold him. She moved urgently against him, arching her body to meet his driving thrusts. Gentleness was forgotten as they dissolved in the fire of desire.

  Finally they lay in each other's arms, legs entwined silently, enjoying the luxury of mutual completion. Catalina felt as if she were floating in a heavy mist, held in iron-hard arms. She was content. She realized she had found such contentment nowhere else but in Marc's arms.

  Yet she had been aware all along of a subtle undercurrent in Marc, a part of him that excluded her.

  With all her heart she wished that there was some slender crack in the iron casing that enclosed his heart, a small fissure that she could find her way through.

  She had so little time. They would be in Natchez for only one night Then, in a few more nights, they would arrive in Memphis.

  Would he return the Belle to her or just walk away from her as if the wild and beautiful magic they now shared was less than the perfection she knew it to be?

  She would have derived a great deal of pleasure from knowing that despite all his efforts to retain control, Marc's mind was moving in the same general direction.

  "What will we do while we are in Natchez, stay aboard the Belle?" she asked.

  "No. There are a few people I want you to meet," he replied casually, knowing she was thinking the worst and allowing her to do so.

  "You want me to meet... You mean you want to display your new conquest?" she said bitterly.

  "One does not acquire a mistress like you every day, my pet." He chuckled. "Do you blame me for wanting to show you off a bit?"

  He heard her soft intake of breath as she twisted to look up into his eyes, shock and disbelief on her face.

  "You wouldn't dare,'' she groaned. "I won't be displayed like some ... some..."

  "It goes along with the bargain, love," he replied, and she could not mistake the taunting humor in his voice. "What good is it to have the loveliest mistress on the Mississippi if one cannot see envy in other men's eyes?"

  "I won't do it! I won't!"

  "All right, no argument," he agreed amiably. "We'll just forget the whole thing right now."

  She knew he was deliberately pushing her to the limit to see how far she would go.

  Did she have the courage to face his friends with only her pride as a shield? Did she have the daring and the wit to allow him to claim her while she was silently claiming him? Could she turn the game to her advantage, make him see that she was woman enough to belong at his side?

  For a long moment her pride refused to allow her to think of such a thing. Then a subtle thought came to her. She could envision his surprise when his arrogance was tossed back in his face. The price was high, but the reward she had already tasted; and it would be heady wine if she could bring him to her side as... her husband.

  To his surprise, she nestled close to him, laying her head against his chest and drawing one leg across his lower body while her fingers slowly threaded through the mat of hair on his chest.

  "You are right again, Marc. A bargain is a bargain. I won't back down."

  He raised himself on one elbow and looked into her eyes, knowing some devious thought was spinning in her mind. But her expression was wide-eyed and innocent—too innocent.

  "You continue to surprise me, Cat."

  "I." She laughed softly. "How can I surprise you? There is little you do not know about me now."

  "I think," he said quietly, "that there is little that I do know about you."

  "You make me sound so mysterious."

  "Yes," he said thoughtfully, "mysterious is the word. You are a mystery, but one I intend to solve before we reach Memphis."

  "Solving this mystery might prove more difficult than you think."

  "Is that a threat, love?" He smiled and his eyes glittered with wicked humor. Then his arms slid about her and drew her to him as his mouth hovered close to hers. "If it is a threa
t, let me remind you that I don't frighten easily and difficult things usually prove to be intriguing and definitely challenging"

  "You like challenges, don't you?"

  "If they are as lovely as you, most certainly. What an entrancing creature you are when your eyes light up with anger like that," he teased, but his smile faded as his eyes lingered on her mouth.

  Catalina could feel the heat of his gaze tingle through her, and she shivered suddenly as if she were cold.

  "Yes," he whispered, as his mouth brushed lightly against hers, "you are deliriously exciting and if you're a threat, love, you are the most exciting threat I've known."

  His arms tightened about her, and no protest on her part could have stopped the kiss that swept away her breath.

  Her coldness turned to warmth and then to heat, which spread from the center of her being throughout her body, turning it into a cauldron of renewed desire.

  The night was long and they were both lost to all but the pulsing pleasure that touched them both again and yet again... until the gray light of dawn touched the day and they slept in sated exhaustion and utter contentment.

  Chapter 24

  In its surging passage from Memphis to the gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi came to a high, sun-splashed hill. To the west, the green alluvial lowlands of Louisiana stretched mistily toward the horizon. To the east rose two hundred feet of red-brown bluff, crowned by vines of wild grape, magnificent magnolias, and the sweep of oak. Here, the river became a wide crescent of lakelike tranquility; then it turned to glide, silver and yellow, into the distance, away from Natchez.

  Natchez! The name came from an Indian nation, an offshoot of the Aztecs. The fields about the city were whitening with cotton, for Natchez was the capital of the cotton empire. On the bluff and beyond, the planters lived a secure life, while on a table of muddy ground lay Natchez-under-the-hill—a violent place where anyone could get away with anything if he was strong enough.

  As the Belle docked, Catalina and Marc stood at the rail. The sun was just above the horizon, but it was bright enough to reveal the colorful scene before them.

  Marc was amused when Catalina's eyes glowed with excitement as she watched this tableau. In this moment he knew she had been pampered and protected all her life. He paid no heed to the fact that he felt a distinct urge to treat her in the same way. Natchez-under-the-hill was the kind of place in which he had intended to desert Catalina Carrington. What good would the Carrington arrogance do her there?

  But that would come later, when their bargain was finished and he was done with her, when her kiss no longer excited him and her body had lost the magic that made him desire her as he did even at this moment.

  Watching her lips part in breathless excitement, seeing her cheeks pinken in the breeze and her golden eyes glow with an enthusiasm that was contagious, he was shaken by the fact that he wanted to crush her in his arms and hear her call to him in passion.

  Damn! he thought. He had tired of most women after a few tussles on the sheets, but this one seemed to have a new magic each time he looked at her. Something about her made his limbs grow weak and his body heat with desire. Her sable hair was rich and luxuriant, and he had to restrain the urge to reach out and touch it. Her skin was flawless and blooming with color, and her features seemed perfect, fine boned.

  He knew, if she turned to him, her eyes would be unfathomable as always, filled with some mystery he would have the renewed urge to explore. He was reasonably sure it would take quite a long time to tire of her lush charms.

  Catalina, unaware of the intensity of his gaze, bubbled with pleasure as she watched the milling crowds.

  The colorful sight before them, vibrant with life, would be a magnet to any onlooker who had not tasted the brutality beneath the facade. Knowing this, Marc moved closer to Catalina without even realizing he had done so. The current of her excitement drew him to her.

  "I'm going to send a few messages, but I'd like to leave the boat in an hour or so. Can you be ready?"

  "Oh, yes. Will we be spending the night in a hotel?"

  Marc laughed outright "A hotel! In Natchez-under-the-hill? My dear Cat, unless you intend to share your delightful charms with every man jack in Natchez we will make our way past this den of hell." He pointed to the cliffs above the city. "We'll be going up there as soon as a carriage can be brought for us. A closed one." He chuckled. "For I'd never be able to hold you on a ride through the city. I don't have enough guns to do it. You're a beauty and there is not much beauty in Natchez-under-the-hill."

  Her lips parted as she gazed up at him in surprise.

  "Believe me, Cat"—his voice gentled without his realizing it—"I'd kill to keep you right now, and that's what I'd have to do to keep you if you were to show that lovely face and that delicious little body to the degenerate scum in Natchez."

  Her eyes sparkled, but she turned back to the bustle below her. She had heard, in his voice, things he would deny. Why would a man with a very temporary mistress protect her—vow to kill to protect her—if he had no feeling for her? It was a spark, and she fervently wished it could be induced to grow into a fire.

  "It seems so ... so small to have such a reputation," Catalina said.

  "For the size of it, there is not a more profligate place in the world. It's a drinking place, a fighting place, and a killing place."

  "How do you come to know Natchez so well?"

  "As a rought and unruly boy, I spent a great deal of time here," Marc replied. He didn't want Catalina to know that the house in which he had been born and raised stood in magnificent splendor atop the bluff and its gleaming white columns could be seen in the distance.

  The Garrison home was a serene place perched in the clouds. When mist settled on the river, the house looked as if it were suspended in nothingness, riding a gray ocean. It was the first sight of upper Natchez that greeted visitors, and the last. The clean white pillars supported a hipped roof, and an immaculate captain's walk.

  To the side and behind the house were smaller buildings, set amid the gardens and off the bordered paths that followed the curve of the hill.

  At the bluffs edge, benches were placed so those visiting Garrison Hall might inspect the river and landscape below. And when one sat in the gardens beneath the trees, the tall pillars of the house seemed a challenge to time and man.

  He couldn't tell her that as a boy and a young man he had been as wild and untamed as many others in Natchez, nor that his prowess in bed could be traced to the more elite local whores. And he was held momentarily silent as he realized he had a deep desire to share his life with her. It annoyed him.

  He turned his gaze up to his home, and for a moment he was caught in a mixture of emotions, some violent, some poignantly beautiful. They tugged at his senses. He thought of the comfort of the place, of how it had been years ago. Then his mind drifted to the day he had set out on his present course.

  He had gotten the house back, had returned to it with his sister and had then told her that she would have to remain there alone until he got some satisfaction for what had nearly destroyed them both. She had wept and pleaded with him to forget the past, to help her, to build a new life. He remembered-----

  "One day we'll both marry, Marc. We'll have children and well rebuild. We'll make this house all that Mama and Papa wanted. We'll make it a memorial to them.''

  "A monument you mean," he had growled in bitter anger. "A monument is more like a tombstone. I can't let it go like that, Lorelei. I have to clear father's name, and clear my own before I can give it to any woman ... or to sons."

  "I don't want you hurt, Marc," she had whispered through her tears. "Worse yet, I don't want you to hurt someone else."

  "I'll only hurt those that are guilty, only the guilty-----"

  He was drawn back abruptly to the present.

  "... guilty of some of the things you were telling me about," Catalina was saying.

  "What?"

  "I said I hope you're not guilty ..."
/>
  "Now or when I was a younger man?" he asked with a chuckle.

  She laughed softly, and her eyes appraised him with a look that shook his already fragile control.

  "I can see you as a devilish little boy, even as a wayward young man, but..."

  "But what?"

  "But I can't see you as a gambler, a rake, or..."

  "And how do you see me, my little kitten?" he said gently, as he reached to brush aside stray strands of hair the wind had blown against her cheek.

  "I don't know. It's as if I'm only seeing a part of you ... as if I were looking out a window when it's raining. Everything is vague and uncertain ... almost unreal."

  "Well, this is real enough for both of us," he said softly as he bent to touch her mouth with his, so lightly his lips were like a whisper of wind.

  "Go below and pack a few things—enough for a day or so—and please bring that beautiful green gown you wore the other night. We will be entertaining guests later and I want them to get a good look at the most beautiful woman from New Orleans to Memphis."

  "Marc, I—"

  "Shh, love, I want you to meet another young woman who is very special to me. You two will get on famously. Now I have some messages to send."

  "I'll stay here and watch a few more minutes; then I will go to my—your—cabin and pack."

  He knew she was annoyed that he would deliberately flaunt her, but he couldn't seem to resist bringing Catalina and Lorelei face to face.

  "Good girl. I'll come back to get you after the midday meal."

  She nodded, hurt by his deliberate disregard of her emotions, and Marc left her stewing silently. He could not suppress a grin of satisfaction, and it became a broad smile when he saw Travis coming his way, distaste clearly written on his face.

  "Good morning, Travis," Marc said pleasantly.

  "The amenities are hardly appropriate," Travis growled. "Where is Catalina?"

  "Catalina," Marc said innocently. "Why, I believe the last I saw her she was standing on deck watching the boat dock. Natchez seems to have quite an attraction for her."