by JoAnn Ross
“You.” She clutched at him, her fingernails digging into his back. “I want you.”
It was part plea, part surrender. And all truth. Daria wanted to feel his mouth against her fiery flesh; she yearned to take him deep inside her, to surround him, embrace him, to have him satisfy the tension that was drawing her entire body into an ever-tightening knot. Desire, thick and smoky, ruled her thoughts; passion, hot and ravenous, ruled her body.
It was all he needed to hear. All he’d been waiting to hear. He heard the voice in the back of his mind trying to remind him that he’d been in this deadly situation before, and ignored it.
He dragged the wet leggings and panties down her legs and flung them aside. Then, rocking back on his heels, he took hold of her ankles and spread her legs, offering the most intimate part of her feminine body to his view.
“Lovely,” he murmured, as those wicked fingers skimmed over the outer lips rosy from the heated blood that had flowed from her heart into the tingling flesh. “Like rose petals. Smooth and soft and glistening with early-morning dew.” His gaze met hers, and he watched the unmasked desire rise in her remarkable eyes as he parted those tender pink lips.
The fur was soft against her back as she lay there, as helpless and exposed as she’d ever been. But Daria was neither afraid nor embarrassed as she watched him watching her with unblinking intent.
The tension built deep inside her as he slipped his finger into her. When a second finger joined the first, and probed deeply, she began to squirm, then caught herself.
“Don’t.” He lowered his mouth to her breast and closed his teeth around her nipple. “Don’t hold back, sweetheart. I want it all.” His words were muffled against her flesh, but Daria had no trouble discerning his meaning. Flinging away the last of her restraint, she began to move against him, seeking relief to her escalating need.
All it took was the touch of his thumb against her ultrasensitive clitoris to make her come. Feeling her inner spasms, Roarke paused his intimate stroking, to enjoy her orgasm. When the convulsions began to subside, he put his wide hand beneath her bottom, lifted her off the rug and pressed his mouth against the soft, swollen flesh between her thighs, savoring her taste as a man would enjoy the flavor of a ripe, juicy peach.
Daria cried out when she climaxed again, and would have pulled away, but Roarke refused to permit her to rest. He drove her higher and higher with lips and teeth and tongue. The low, rough sounds she was making deep in her throat as he brought her to orgasm after orgasm caused his own hunger to flare even hotter.
The wind rattled the windows, howling like dark spirits around the cabin. The rain continued to hammer on the roof and the thunderous booms echoed those of Daria’s pounding heart as the storm inside her raged even more wildly than the one outside.
“Roarke,” she gasped as she clung to his shoulders. “I can’t...”
“Yes, you can.” He closed his teeth around a stone-hard nipple, wetted it with his tongue as he slipped a hand between them and proved her wrong. His own body felt on the verge of exploding, but he wasn’t about to stop until he’d wrung every last ounce of passion from her.
Daria had never imagined that such passion existed, had never known that she was capable of such uninhibited response. She cried out—in anguish, not in ecstasy—as he released her and stood, depriving her needy body of the power of his touch, his strength.
She wanted to complain, but the words would not come. She was in his power, helpless to resist, willing to do whatever he wanted, desperate to go wherever he took her.
She watched as he finally stripped off his own wet clothes, then lay down beside her again, pulled her to him and filled her, claiming her as she knew no man had ever done before.
Her shattering climax was instantaneous. Seized by tremors, her cry reverberating around the warming room, she clutched at him, afraid that if she wasn’t somehow anchored, she would go spinning off the edge of the world.
Fired by her uninhibited response, Roarke’s own tautly reined-in control snapped. Maneuvering them so that they were lying facing one another on their sides, her top leg high on his hip, he drove into her like a jackhammer, harder, deeper, until they came together in a mind-blinding explosion.
Neither Roarke nor Daria could speak. Neither moved. They lay there, breathing heavily, gasping for breath, arms and legs entangled on the fur rug for what could have been minutes. Or an eternity.
It was Roarke who finally broke the silence. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“What?” She’d been thinking that they had, indeed, lived up to his promise of “world-class.”
“I shouldn’t have taken you on the floor like some wild man.”
“Oh, I think I liked that.” She smiled up at him. “I take it back. I know I liked that.” Her smile widened, lighting up her eyes. In the glow from the nearby fire he saw tiny twins of himself in her pupils. “I feel absolutely ravished.”
He pushed some wet strands of hair away from her flushed face. “You know, it is possible to be ravished in a bed.”
Personally, Daria wasn’t sure she would ever be able to move again. And she was certain that she’d used up at least a month’s quota of orgasms. “Surely you don’t mean...” Her voice drifted off as she felt him beginning to swell inside her. “Roarke, you may be an iron man, but I couldn’t possibly—”
His dark head swooped down and he cut off her protest with a deep hard kiss that threatened to steal what little breath she had left in her lungs.
“Want to bet?”
Gently unwinding their arms and legs, he lifted her from the rug and carried her into the adjoining bedroom, where he laid her down on the soft mattress stuffed with dried Spanish moss and proceeded to kiss her senseless.
As the storm moved on and a full white moon rose over the bayou, Roarke proceeded to demonstrate exactly how much Daria had underestimated her aptitude for passion.
THE CABIN BEDROOM was cloaked in a silvery predawn light when Roarke awoke. The pain that had been held at bay by his sexual hunger now throbbed in every muscle of his body. And he hadn’t had such a headache since the night he’d gotten into an ouzo-drinking contest in Athens with a UPI reporter.
He also realized he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. And, after the Moscow fiasco, that was really saying something.
He looked down at Daria, who was sleeping in his arms. Her hair had dried into wild waves that felt like silk ribbons against his chest, her lashes were thick and black on her cheeks, and the slight shadows beneath her closed lids revealed a lack of sleep. The beard-reddened skin on her cheeks and breasts was evidence of exactly how she’d spent that sleepless night
She looked as innocent as a newborn fawn. Which he’d decided she was. During their long, love-filled night, she’d opened for him completely, had held nothing back. She was nothing like Natasha, who’d used sex as a means first of enticement, then control.
Unlike Natasha, Daria had willingly surrendered all control to Roarke. He suspected that there had been nothing he could have asked her to do that she wouldn’t have willingly done; no secrets he could have insisted she reveal that she wouldn’t have told him. She was, amazingly, one of those rare individuals absolutely without guile.
Which was what made her career choice so surprising. And also explained why so many people were out to kill her. Mike had said she was both fearless and relentless when prosecuting the bad guys. She’d already succeeded in bringing down those crooked judges; this time, it seemed she’d zeroed in on someone who was not willing to spend time behind bars. The fact that a federal attorney had been involved was even more proof that whoever she was after was high up in Louisiana’s power hierarchy.
Such integrity was to be admired, even though he personally found it foolhardy. Unfortunately, he’d proved himself to be far less honorable.
Roarke was not feeling guilty about having spent the night having sex with Daria Shea. He was, after all, a normal male with normal desire
s. And what man wouldn’t be fascinated and intrigued to discover that a woman whose closet was full of prim little dress-for-success suits possessed such a deep core of primitive passion?
The mistake had been not once thinking of protection. And even as he tried to blame his mental lapse on the beating he’d taken, Roarke knew that it wasn’t the thugs who had made him forget what had been an elemental part of his sexual behavior since his early teens. It was Daria. She had clouded his mind just as she’d caused his body to bum with a shimmering white heat
But even as he tried to blame her, he knew the responsibility rested solely on his battered shoulders—as would whatever outcome that might occur from such a stupid, careless lapse in judgment.
As if the intensity of his thoughts had managed to filter through her consciousness, Daria’s eyes fluttered open and she found herself looking directly into Roarke’s eyes. They were the dark blue of a storm-tossed sea, which echoed the grim, tight line of those lips that had created such wondrous havoc over every inch of her body during the seemingly endless night.
“Good morning.” Although she was picking up disturbing vibrations from him, she managed a faint, self-conscious smile.
Still furious with himself, Roarke answered with a smile that was a parody of the warm ones he’d given her last night. “I owe you an apology.”
Well, Daria thought with a sigh, that was what she got for succumbing to a one-night stand with a man she didn’t really know. What had she expected? A heartfelt proposal of everlasting love?
She’d no sooner asked herself that rhetorical question when, as ridiculous as it seemed, she realized the answer was yes.
“We’ve already been through that. You don’t owe me any apology, Roarke.” She tried for a calm, matter-of-fact tone, but her words came out soft and edged with a vulnerability she hated to hear in her voice. “I wanted you to make—” she practically bit her tongue as she stopped just short of saying the fatal L word. “I wanted to have sex with you.”
“Sex is one thing. Parenthood another.”
“Parenthood?” She looked up at him, surprised. Then his meaning sank in. “Oh.” She hitched herself up in bed and feeling uncomfortably naked, pulled the sheet up over her bare breasts. “You don’t have to worry. I’m on the Pill.”
He lifted a brow. “Funny you should remember that.”
“I didn’t. I found the pills in my purse. Surely, since you searched it, you must have seen them, too.”
“You could have missed one. Or more. Your life has been a bit unsettled lately,” he said with dry understatement.
“Granted,” she admitted.
“And there’s a lot more to worry about these days than an unexpected pregnancy.”
“True again.” This time her expression was as glum as his.
“You don’t have to worry about any diseases. The network increased my life insurance before I left for Moscow. I passed the physical with flying colors.”
“James and I had physicals before we got our marriage license two weeks ago,” she recalled. “I’m fine, as well.”
“Then I guess we don’t have anything to worry about,” he said.
“No,” she said quietly. Sadly, he thought. “I guess we don’t.”
A silence settled over them. A pregnant silence, Roarke thought grimly. “Those pills aren’t one-hundred-percent accurate. If anything happens, I want you to know I won’t ditch my responsibility.”
Was he actually offering to marry her if she ended up pregnant? No, Daria decided. He was merely assuring her he would help with the expenses, which, given the news reports of his last contract negotiations, he could certainly afford to do.
“That isn’t necessary.”
He caught the thrust-out jaw between his fingers. “I said I’d do my part”
When she tried to toss her head, his fingers tightened. “Fine.” Her voice and her eyes were ice.
Deciding he liked her better when she was warm and trembling in his arms, Roarke slowly lowered his head. “Good. And now that we’ve got that settled...”
“Roarke...” She sighed as his lips feathered soft little kisses against hers. “I can’t believe that after last night you’d still want this.”
“Me, neither.” Once again the pain that had been racking his body faded away as desire rose. “But God help me, I do.” God help them both. His hand nudged between them, deftly locating the warm damp place between her thighs. “And, so, it seems, do you.”
“I know.” Her body was melting, like wax in a hot July New Orleans sun. “I can’t seem to help myself where you’re concerned.”
“I know how that feels.” He rolled over onto his back and pulled her on top of him. “Too well.”
Their lips met and clung, their bodies fit together as if they’d been designed solely with each other in mind. And as the stuttering winter sun rose over the bayou, Roarke and Daria rose with it.
“WOULD YOU LIKE some more wine, Congressman?”
James Boudreaux looked up into the smiling face of the flight attendant. She’d been hovering over him since he’d first walked through the door of the airliner, offering him hot towels, drinks, and food. Her name was Heather. She’d been working the first-class section on the D.C.-to-New Orleans route for some time and had spent more than one layover in Washington in his bed. Lately he’d gotten the impression that she’d been angling to become Mrs. Boudreaux.
Which, of course, wasn’t going to happen in this lifetime. He’d had his life planned from the time he’d entered seventh grade at the Longfellow middle school: a brief term in the state legislature, two terms in the U.S. Congress, then a senate seat that would launch his move into the White House. These past years, being considered one of Washington’s most eligible bachelors had garnered him a great deal of publicity, but his pollsters had determined a senator needed to appear more stable, more of a devoted family man. Which was why he’d proposed to Daria Shea.
She didn’t have any family to interfere with their lives; she was attractive, intelligent and would undoubtedly make a good mother to the children that would provide the last all-important detail to his public persona before he made his move to be elected president.
The problem was, he’d made the mistake of overlooking exactly how seriously she took her career. She was adamant about keeping her damn job as a prosecutor and she refused to understand that by constantly irritating the powers-that-be in the state-no one in his memory had actually dared indict a sitting judge—she was endangering his future, as well.
The moneymen had warned him she was becoming a liability. Enough so that he’d decided to break things off. Then when she’d begun investigating the Tribunal, he’d thought that by marrying her he could prevent her from testifying against him in the event his part in the group became known. But after she’d witnessed that murder, and discovered that he was the leader of the men who’d taken it upon themselves to dispense justice when the system failed, he’d realized that Daria Shea had to be eliminated. And now, it appeared, he was going to have the pleasure of finally settling things with his childhood nemesis, as well.
He would make O’Malley beg, James decided. Then crawl. Oh, yes, he thought with a rush of pleasure that was almost sexual, he was going to enjoy breaking Roarke O’Malley.
He smiled up at the pretty brunette holding the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. “Thank you, darlin’,” he said, resisting the urge to run his hand up her smooth thigh. “I believe I would enjoy another glass.”
When she bent down to refill his glass, which put her bouncy breasts right at eye level, James regretted that business was going to prevent him from enjoying what she was so obviously offering.
Perhaps, he considered as he sipped his wine, he would have sex with Daria one last time. Although he’d never been able to excite her, perhaps part of the problem was that he’d always treated her too carefully.
Fear might loosen her up. And a little pain might even melt some of that damn ice she’d encased hers
elf in. That was what he would do, James decided. He would let his men knock her around a little, just to warm her up. Then he would take her, hard and rough.
And then, after he’d finally gotten Daria Shea to scream, he would kill her.
The idea made him smile. The thirty-something woman across the aisle, thinking the smile was meant for her, smiled back.
11
DARIA SAT OUT on the porch of the cabin, her feet up on the railing, drinking the coffee Roarke had brewed, reveling in the restful stillness of the bayou morning. The storm had passed and the bright rays of the morning sunlight shafting through the trees glistened like liquid gold on the still, dark water.
At first glance, the bayou was so serene she felt as if she and Roarke could have been the only living things in the world. But gradually, she began to notice the white egrets on a distant bank dining on a breakfast of minnows, while nearby, a family of white-tailed deer grazed peacefully on the marsh grass. A pair of nutria swam by, so close she could have reached out and touched them; a squirrel ran in circles up a cypress tree beside the cabin, chattering furiously; flocks of wintering ducks floated by and bullfrogs croaked.
“This is almost worth it,” she murmured as she heard him open the screen door and come out onto the porch behind her.
He bent down and kissed the top of her head. “What’s that?”
“Being here in this magical place almost makes up for everything that’s happened to me in the past few days.” She glanced up at him and smiled, her heart in her eyes. “And being here with you makes it even more special.”
He knew exactly what she meant Because he felt the same way himself. Even so, Roarke felt obliged to remind her that they weren’t here on a vacation.
“I take it being in the bayou hasn’t triggered any memories of that murder you witnessed?”
She sighed. Even knowing he was right to bring the subject back to their reason for being here, Daria didn’t want reality to intrude on the pleasure she was feeling. Not quite yet.
