«You're not afraid of me?» he said, arching a brow, the words barely audible. He leaned closer still. «Then mebbe this is what you're afraid of.»
He closed the distance between them, touching his lips to hers.
The heat was instantaneous. It burst around them and inside them, as bright and hot as the flare of the lamps on the table beside them. Serena sucked in a little gasp, drawing Lucky closer. He settled his mouth against hers, telling himself he wanted just a taste of her, nothing more, but fire swept through him, his blood scalding his veins. One taste. Just one taste… would never be enough.
Her mouth was like silk soaked in wine-soft, sweet, intoxicating. His tongue slipped between her parted lips to better savor the experience. He stroked and explored and Serena responded in land, reacting on instinct. Her tongue slid sinuously against Lucky's. His plunged deeper into her mouth. The flames leapt higher.
A moan drifted up from Serena's throat, and her arms slid up around Lucky's neck. She could feel herself growing dizzy, as if her body were floating up out of the chair. Dimly she realized Lucky was rising and pulling her up with him. His arms banded around her like steel, lifting her, pulling her close. His big hands slid down to the small of her back and pressed her into him.
He was fully aroused. His erection pressed into her belly, as hard as granite, as tempting as sin. She arched against it wantonly, reacting without thought. A growl rumbled deep in his chest, and he rolled his hips against her as he changed the angle of the kiss and plunged his tongue into her mouth again and again.
He stroked a hand down over the full swell of one hip. Cupping her buttock, he lifted her to bring her up against him. She made a small, frightened sound in her throat and need surged through him like a flood. He wanted her. He wanted her right here… right now, on the table, on the floor. It was madness.
Madness.
Sweet heaven, what was he doing? he wondered, finally hearing the alarm bells clanging in his head. What was she doing to him? He set her away from him with a violence that made her stumble back against the chair she'd been sitting in. She stared at him, her eyes wide and dark with a seductive mix of passion and fear. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders in golden disarray. Her mouth, swollen and red from the force of his kiss, trembled. She stared at him as if he were something wild and terrifying.
Wild was exactly what he was feeling-out of control, beyond the reach of reason. His chest was heaving like a bellows as he tried to draw in enough oxygen to think straight. He speared his hands into his hair and hung his head, closing his eyes. Control. He needed control.
Control. She'd lost control-of the situation, of herself. Serena swallowed hard and pressed a hand to her bruised lips. How could this have happened? She didn't even like the man. But the instant his mouth had touched hers she had experienced an explosion of desire that had melted everything else. She hadn't thought of anything but his mouth on hers, the taste of him, the strength of his arms, the feel of his body. Shivers rocked through her now like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Heaven help her, she didn't know herself anymore. What had become of her calm self-discipline, her training, her ability to distance herself from a situation and examine it analytically?
You wanted him, Serena. How's that for analysis?
She shook her head a little in stunned disbelief. «I think I would have been safer with the coon hounds,» she mumbled.
Something flashed in Lucky s eyes. His expression went cold. «Non. You're safe in this house, lady. I'm out of here.»
He turned and stormed into the next room. There was a banging of doors that made Serena wince. When he reappeared he was wearing a black T-shirt that hugged his chest like a coat of paint. He shrugged on a shoulder holster. The pistol it cradled looked big enough to bring down an elephant. Serena felt her eyes widen and her jaw drop.
«It's not hunting season.» She didn't realize she had spoken aloud, but Lucky turned and gave her a long, very disturbing look, his panther's eyes glowing beneath his heavy dark brows.
«It is for what I'm after,» he said in a silky voice.
He pulled the gun and checked the load. The clip slid back into place with a smooth, sinister hiss and click. Then he was gone. He slipped out the door like a shadow, without a sound.
Serena felt the hair rise up on the back of her neck. For a long moment she stood there, frozen with fear in the heat of the night. With an effort she finally forced her feet to move and went to the screen door to look out.
The night was as black as fresh tar with only a sliver of moon shining down on the bayou. The water gleamed like a sheet of glass. She thought she caught a glimpse of Lucky poling his pirogue out toward a stand of cypress, but in a blink he was gone, vanished, as if he were a creature from the darkest side of the night, able to appear and disappear at will.
«Heaven help me,» she whispered, brushing her fingertips across her bottom lip. «What have I gotten myself into now?»
CHAPTER 7
THE PIROGUE CUT ACROSS THE INKY SURFACE OF the bayou as softly as a whisper on the wind. Mist drifted like smoke among the smooth dark trunks of the trees. The air was heavy with scents, like a courtesan's perfume, sweet, almost palpable-honeysuckle and jasmine, verbena and wisteria, all mingling with the darker metallic scent of the water and the decaying growth that lay beneath it. Intertwined with scent was sound-the chirp and trill of insects, the song of frogs, the call of an owl and the whoosh of its wings as it left its perch. In the distance an alligator roared, a nutria screamed. Night feeders had come out to hunt and be hunted.
Lucky let his boat drift toward the shelter of a massive live oak that overhung the waters edge. The bank had been eaten away to the gnarled roots of the tree and formed a tiny cove that was deep enough to keep the boat afloat. It provided natural cover with the canopy of the tree spreading out wide and low, its ragged beards of moss hanging down like a moth-eaten curtain. It was the perfect place to wait.
He dug a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it, taking a deep, soothing drag. The tip flared red in die gloom of the night. The match hissed as it hit the surface of die water. Tension hummed inside him like an overloaded power line. Tension for the job he was here to do, but a greater part of it was sexual frustration. He'd never wanted a woman so badly in his life. Never. Not even in his youth when his hormones had roared in perpetual high gear. Not even after he'd spent a year in a Central American prison. He had never wanted a woman more than he had wanted Serena Sheridan in that blinding flash of heat. He was still shaking with the intensity of it. He was still half hard.
Damn her. Why her? Of all the women on the planet, why her? How could it be possible for him to look at Serena and remember Shelby's duplicity and still want her?
She wasn't Shelby. He knew that. Shelby would never have come after Gifford. She would never have stood nose to nose with the old man and matched him temper for temper. Shelby's methods of getting what she wanted fell more into the eyelash-batting and pouting categories. No, in terms of personality, the sisters were nothing alike. Shelby was all calculated flirtation and coy charm. Serena was all business and sass. Still, he didn't want to want her. She was dangerous to his sanity, reminding him of the past and the affair that had set his life on a near-disastrous course.
He had surrendered to Shelby's charms, succumbed to her, and lost himself. He was a junior at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette, young and hot and full of himself, caught up in the idea of taking the world by storm, determined to show everybody what he could do. The big brooding kid everyone watched with a wary eye was going to be the first Doucet to get a college education. He was going to be a biologist. Having Shelby Sheridan on his arm-and in his bed-was another feather in his cap. He had the world by the tail that spring. Then it turned around and knocked him senseless.