«Oh, Lucky,» she gasped. «I can't. You're too-«
«Shh…»he whispered, brushing his lips tenderly against her temple. «Just relax for me, chere,» he went on seductively, schooling his own body to sink down against her. «Relax. It's gonna be all right. It's gonna be so good. Just relax for me, sugar. That's it. That's right.»
She moved hesitantly beneath him, taking another inch, then tightening around him, taking him to another level of ecstasy. Lucky checked his passion ruthlessly, reining in the urge to drive himself into her, to bury himself to his hilt. He brushed her hair back from her cheek and kissed her slowly, deeply, sinking into her a little at a time as her body relaxed beneath his.
«You're tighter than a fist,» he whispered breathlessly, his lips brushing hers. He struggled to hold himself still against the gentle rippling of her body as it adjusted to accommodate him. «Mon Dieu, don't those men up in Charleston know what to do with a beautiful woman?»
Serena didn't answer him. She couldn't. She was beyond speaking, beyond telling him she couldn't even remember the name of the last man she'd gone to bed with because it had just been permanently erased from her mind. All she could think of was Lucky. All she could feel was Lucky, filling her, stretching her, kissing her. She stroked her hands over the sweat-slick muscles of his back, stroked a finger down the valley of his spine. Her hands cupped his taut buttocks and pulled him deeper into her as she tilted her hips to accept him fully.
His big body pressed down against her and he began moving slowly, easing in and out of her, gaining speed and strength with each thrust, until he was lifting her hips off the floor each time he drove into her. Serena arched against him, straining to meet him, straining toward something she had only guessed at before now. It was unlike anything else she had experienced, this feeling of intense excitement that grew like a bubble inside her, pushing away sanity, pushing aside her need for control. It was at once frightening and exhilarating, sweeping her away on a wave of sensation.
She clung to Lucky as if he could anchor her to the real world. She wrapped her arms around him, wrapped her legs around his lean hips. And still the wild sensation grew, hotter and brighter and more intense, swelling until it burst into a million brilliant shards.
«Lucky!»
Lucky felt her climax, heard her cry his name, then his own consciousness dimmed as he exploded inside her. He arched into her with a hoarse cry, unable to think, unable to comprehend anything except the exquisite pulsing of her body around his. The moment was so sweet, so perfect, so golden that for an instant all the darkness was banished from his soul and he felt clean and whole and at peace for the first time in a long while. He clung to the feeling, clung to Serena, holding her to him as if he might be able to absorb some of the goodness he'd found in her.
Reality returned by slow degrees, coming to him as if out of a mist. The paint-stained dropcloth. The feet of his easel. The stripes of filtered daylight falling through the blinds. The woman beneath him.
He looked down at Serena and felt something squeeze painfully in his chest. She was crying silently, her head turned to the side, the teardrops leaking out through the barrier of spiky lashes. He'd hurt her. He'd felt how tight she was and still he'd let his own need overwhelm him and banged the living daylights out of her. Dieu, what land of an animal had he become?
As many times as he'd told himself he didn't care about anyone or anything. Lucky couldn't stomach this. He'd been raised to treat women gently and with respect. Despite the cynicism that had taken root inside him over the years, the idea of a man physically abusing a woman, overpowering her with his strength, was abhorrent to him. The idea of hurting Serena, brave, proud Serena, whose regal mask hid secret fears, cut deeper than he wanted to admit.
His hand was trembling slightly as he brushed her hair back from her temple. «Serena? Serena, I'm sorry-«
«Don't be,» she whispered. «I'm all right.»
«I hurt you. I was too rough. I-«
«No. That's never happened for me before,» she said, breaking in on his apology with her confession.
Lucky went still above her as comprehension dawned. «Never?»
She turned her head and gave him a tremulous smile. «Not like that. I didn't have any idea it could be like that. I've never been very good at sex.»
Nothing could have aroused Lucky more strongly or more immediately save having her tell him she was a virgin. Knowing he had taken her somewhere no other man ever had was the next best thing. Possessiveness surged inside him and for once he didn't try to fight it or deny it. She was his. He felt it on a fundamental, instinctive level. She was his.
Still snug in the silken pocket of Serena's womanhood, his body stirred strongly and her body tightened around him in automatic response. He stared down at her, feeling caught in the grip of a powerful emotion he couldn't name. She looked up at him, her eyes dark and liquid, her lips parting softly as her breath caught.
«Oh, ma jolie fille,» Lucky said, lowering his head to gently nuzzle her throat. «That might have been your first trip to heaven, but it sure as hell won't be your last.»
CHAPTER 10
He'd had the dream a hundred times, he was crawling through a sewer tunnel under the private prison of self-styled general and drug kingpin Juan Rafael Ramos, the fumes choking him, the screams of prisoners in the interrogation rooms coming to him through the stone walls like the eerie cries of tortured souls from another dimension.
He had planned this escape since the day he had regained consciousness after his first «questioning» by Ramos's men. He had concentrated on the plan every time they tortured him, focusing his mind on freedom instead of the excruciating pain, had visualized it in his mind over and over through the endless hours in a dark, dank cell. Now the end of the tunnel was literally in sight. His fingers threaded through the rusted grate and pushed it out. On the other side, standing in a ball of bright light were Ramos, Amalinda Roca, and Lieutenant Colonel R. J. Lambert.
He lunged for Lambert first and killed him with a rough metal shank. Blood gushed from the body like water from a fire hydrant and pooled around him, thick and warm and shoulder-deep. He could hear a woman's laughter, and he turned toward it slowly, his movements hindered by the fluid rushing around him. Amalinda hovered above him, her long hair flowing around her like streamers in the wind.
The instant he recognized her her face contorted grotesquely into a monster's snarling countenance with fangs dripping venom. Her fingers transformed into snakes that wrapped around his throat and pulled his head under the swirling current of blood, drowning him. He could feel the pressure, the pain in his lungs, the panic rising in the back of his throat-
Lucky jerked awake, gasping for air and looking wildly for the source of the pressure on his chest. A woman lay with her cheek pressed over his heart, her hair spilling like a curtain of silvery silk over his dark skin. Shelby. No, no, he told himself, working to keep another rush of ugly memories at bay. Not Shelby. Serena.
It took him a long moment to sort reality from the nightmare, to realize who Serena was and where they were. Fragments of thought and emotions swirled like dust at the edges of his mind, and he painstakingly selected the appropriate pieces and frantically attempted to push the rest aside.
Serena. Safety. Home.
She lifted her head and blinked sleepily, looking up at him in silent question. Lucky said nothing. He eased out from under her and left the bed, padding naked to the front window.
A cold sweat filmed his skin. His hair was damp as he ran his fingers through it, slicking it back from his face. He was shaking-perhaps not visibly, but inside he was shaking violently and his heart beat like thunder. He braced his hands against the frame of the open window, trying to get a breath of fresh air, trying to hang on as fear tore at the edges of his sanity. It crawled up the back of his throat to choke him, and he coughed and gripped the window frame harder as he fought the sensation back down.