Lucky's Lady (18 page)

“Damn you,” Serena told him as he pulled his hand away from her mouth. She tried to twist around in his arms so she could hit him, but he held her in place with ridiculous ease. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Yeah, you oughta be scared of me,” he muttered, nuzzling the side of her throat.

He made that kind of comment again and again to convince her of the blackness of his character, but Serena was no longer willing to buy it. Now that she had caught glimpses of the real man, she was no longer willing to believe the myth. Her heart had, with a will of its own, set itself on that man beneath the dangerous façade. However futile it might have seemed, she wanted to latch on to the goodness she knew was inside him and draw it out.

That he still wanted to keep her away from who he really was made her angry—angry with him and angry with herself. Of all the men in the world, why did this one have to be the one to capture her heart? Two days earlier she hadn't even
liked
him. She wasn't sure she liked him now, but she couldn't escape the fact that she had fallen in love with him. It seemed impossible and foolishly romantic and very unlike the Serena Sheridan who lived a sane and orderly life in Charleston. But they weren't in Charleston and she wasn't the same person who had left there, she reminded herself with weary resignation.

“Stop it,” she said, her exhaustion with the whole situation showing in her voice.

“Stop what? This?” He rubbed his beard-roughened cheek against her skin again, breathing in the scent of her. “Or this?” he asked, sliding his dark hand down over her belly to the juncture of her thighs where he stroked her boldly through her clothes.

Serena moaned at the sensations that burst and flowed inside her like floodwaters from a dam. In the span of one night Lucky had conditioned her body to respond to his without reserve. She wanted him instantly, wanted nothing more than to lie down and welcome him into her, to love him with every part of herself. But she forced herself to pull away from him, fighting to retain some small scrap of control, some tiny piece of sanity.

He let her go, chuckling wickedly, and sauntered over to her dresser, where he idly picked up and examined a perfume bottle as he watched her in the mirror from beneath his lashes.

Serena tightened the belt of her robe, staring hard at his reflection. “Stop trying to scare me away from you,” she said.

“Was that what I was doing?” He made a face of surprise. “Me, I thought I was on my way to gettin' you in bed.”

“You know what I mean.”

He shrugged and refused to comment, devoting more attention to her toiletries than to her argument. Frustration swelled inside her, but she refused to vent it, knowing that goading her was one of his favorite methods of keeping her at bay.

“What are you doing here? No poachers to thwart tonight?”

He gave her a black look by way of the mirror and picked up a tube of moisturizer. “How was dinner?”

“Englightening. Burke says Tristar has never been convicted of anything regarding pollution.”

“Oh, no,” he drawled. “Just like they've never been convicted of bribing government officials or transporting illegal substances to unlicensed dumping sites. But if he said they've never done it, he's a liar.”

“He doesn't seem ready to give up on the idea of building here.”

“I'm sure he's not. They'd get a perfect site on the edge of nowhere, acres of dumping grounds in their backyard, and an eager young politician to boot.” He shook his head as he fingered the carved back of a rosewood hairbrush. “
Mais non
, he's not gonna give up.”

Serena moved to stand beside him, her gaze on his long artist's fingers as they touched her things. “What else can he do?” she asked. “Gifford says he won't sell and he means it. There's nothing Burke can do. Gifford can't be forced into selling.”

The instant she said it she remembered the look in the big Texan's eyes as he'd sat at their dinner table and told them Gifford would have to be persuaded. He struck her as a man who got what he wanted by whatever means were necessary, and her grandfather stood between him and his goal. How hard might he push? To what lengths might he be willing to go?

She pushed the disturbing questions from her mind and went to stand at the open door again, looking out into the night as if she might see an answer shining like a star in the darkness. “He says the plant would employ two hundred fifty locals to start.”

“That's bullshit,” Lucky said. “A hundred, mebbe. Seventy-five, probably. The rest would be company men. There aren't a lotta chemists and engineers standin' around on street corners here lookin' for jobs.”

“Still, that's more jobs than Gifford can provide. The boost to the local economy would be tremendous.”

“And the damage to the local environment would be devastating.”

Serena sighed and brought her hands up to rub the tension from her forehead. “It's not as simple as I thought it would be.”

“It is simple,” Lucky argued adamantly. “It's stupid simple. Black and white. Good guys and bad guys.”

Serena turned and faced him. “Which are you, Lucky? I thought you didn't care about anyone or anything. You tell me you're a bad guy, then I find out you're out playing Lone Ranger in the night. You let me think you're some bad-ass poacher, then turn around and spout environmentalist propaganda at me. Who are you really?”

“Trust me, sugar,” he said. “You don't wanna know.”

She met his scowl without flinching. “I
do
want to know.”

“I told you before, Doc,” he said darkly, raising a finger in warning. “Don' go lookin' inside my head. You won't like what you find.”

Serena stared at him, taking in the fierce set of his jaw, the intimidation in his stance . . . the brief flicker of uncertainty in his eyes—a wariness of her or of himself?

She could feel the dangerous desire to reach out to him shifting through her, a need to know that went beyond curiosity. A smart woman would have taken heed of his warning. A smart woman would have kept her distance. He had drawn the boundary line between them, and like a fool she stepped across it again, figuratively and literally, moving toward him, needing to know, needing to touch him.

“And what would I find in your heart?” she asked softly as she closed the distance between them.

“That I haven't got one,” he said, his face carefully blank.

Serena shook her head. “I don't believe that. You go out of your way to help people. My God,” she said, gesturing to the bandanna still tied around his injured arm, “you risk your life to help people.”

“Don' make me out to be some hero,” Lucky snapped, just barely resisting the urge to back away from her. “I get paid back for what I do.”

“In French bread and cookies?”

“In privacy. People wander into my life and I get them out. That's all I do. That's all I care about,” he insisted, his inner tension crackling in his low, rough voice.

“Is that what you tell yourself, Lucky? You're a liar.”

“It's the truth.” He brought his hands up to take Serena by the shoulders, his fingers pressing on silk and tender flesh as if he might be able to physically force his opinion on her. His heart pounded with the necessity of it, the urgency of it. He leaned over her, his eyes as bright as a zealot's. “I'm a devil, not a saint, and whatever heart I might have had once got ripped out by the roots a long time ago, sugar. Don' go lookin' for things that aren't there.”

Serena said nothing, but lifted a hand and splayed it across his chest, her fingers small and white against the black of his T-shirt. Her eyes locked on his as they both felt the frantic pounding behind his ribs, the evidence that shattered his lie more than any words could have.

Lucky gave a snarl of frustration and rage and battled within himself as fear swelled like a balloon inside him. He kicked it down, checked it ruthlessly, hardening himself against it with an effort that trembled through him like an earthquake. He gave Serena a shake.

“I don' give a rat's ass if you don' believe it,” he said in a voice like smoke. “You wanna go diggin' through your psych books for explanations, do it on your own time. I didn't come here to get analyzed; I came here to get laid.”

His mouth swept down on hers, hard, seeking to punish, but he was met with no resistance, no fear. She was soft and sweet, melting against him, and that undid his anger as nothing else could have. He softened the kiss, making a sound of surrender in his throat as her lips parted beneath his in invitation. The kiss deepened and he felt himself going under, losing himself. His heart pounded and he clutched Serena to him, his mind swirling with the question of whether she was the stone that would sink him or the branch that would save him from drowning.

Neither, he told himself. She could be neither because this was desire and nothing more. She couldn't hurt him; she couldn't heal him. She could give him pleasure and he could help her forget her problems for a few hours. It was simple. Stupid simple. Black and white.

“I want you,” he whispered against her mouth.

He brushed his lips against her temple and turned her in his arms so she faced the mirror above the dresser. Serena stared at their reflections—Lucky, big and masculine behind her, his arms around her, his head bent down, his eyes on hers in the glass; and herself, dainty and feminine in his shadow, golden and white beside his darkness. She watched as his fingers untied the belt of her robe and stood motionless as he drew the garment back off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. The gown she wore beneath it was silk and lace, a sheer white mist clinging to the curves of her body and hanging past her knees.

He stroked his hands down the front of her, cupping her breasts through the lace cups, kneading her stomach through the silk, sliding down over her hips, tracing every curve and line that expressed her femininity. He lowered his mouth to her shoulder, nibbling at her flesh, catching the narrow strap of the gown in his teeth and drawing it down. Serena watched as he feasted on her skin, kissing, nipping, licking, devouring every exposed inch. She bent her head to the side to give him access to her throat and moaned as he took it, his mouth moving fervently along the ivory column. He caught the other strap of her gown with his fingers and drew it down, then peeled the lace bodice away from her, letting it pool in a drift of white at her waist. He captured her breasts in his hands, lifting and squeezing them, plumping them together and flicking his thumbs across her nipples.

Serena's breath caught in her throat. She'd never been a party to anything so erotic. Her eyes, heavy-lidded and dark with passion, were locked on the image in the mirror. Lucky's big, tanned hands kneading her breasts, her nipples thrusting out swollen and red between his fingers. Arousal seared through her, hot and thick as she watched her own seduction and experienced every sensation at the same time.

He slid one hand down her rib cage and over her belly, pressing the white silk of her gown taut over her feminine mound. Serena leaned back against him, letting her thighs part as he slid his hand between them. He caressed her through the silk, moving the cool slick fabric against her most sensitive heated flesh. Then the gown was gone and through the haze of desire she watched his fingers stroke through the delta of tawny curls as the fever of need intensified inside her. With one arm banded across her ribs, he lifted her up against him and her head lolled back against his shoulder, rolling from side to side as he eased a finger deep into the warm, wet channel of her womanhood.

“Watch,” he whispered. “Watch,” he said, his voice as smooth and smoky as whiskey, as seductive as a siren's song. “This is what I want from you,
mon ange
.”

His eyes locked on hers in the mirror. He stroked her deeply, rhythmically, in time with her harsh breathing. Serena moaned and moved against his hand, her control gone, her instincts overwhelming her as Lucky took her closer to the edge.

She chanted his name, the words catching in her throat as she struggled for breath. Her breasts rose and fell in the image in the mirror. Her stomach quivered. Lucky's hand moved against her groin. His eyes watched her from beneath the rim of dark lashes, smoldering amber, hot and bright. Her gaze fastened on his mouth, blatantly sensual, carnal, his lips moist and parted slightly as he whispered to her.

“Vien, chérie, vien, vien, vien . . .”

Her climax hit her like a wave, breaking over her, knocking the breath from her. Her body stiffened in his arms and she would have cried out, but Lucky twisted her around and fastened his mouth over hers. He kissed her hungrily, savagely, bending her back over his arm, his free hand tangling in her hair as it spilled behind her.

In the next instant they were on the bed, Serena lying back on the cool sheets, Lucky with one knee on the mattress and one foot on the floor as he tore his T-shirt off and flung it aside. His jeans followed. He came to her magnificently naked, magnificently aroused, lowering himself over her and plunging himself into her in one smooth move that lifted her off the bed.

Serena arched up against him, taking everything he would give her and knowing in her heart it wouldn't be enough. She gave him her body, let him fill her again and again with the essence of what made him male. She welcomed the driving power of his thrusts, delighted in the feel of his muscled back beneath her hands, the hot musky scent of his body, the smoky taste of his kisses, but she longed for something more.

She looked up into his face and saw the torment there, the strain as he gave her his body and fought to withhold his soul. For an instant she could look into his eyes and feel the terrible struggle going on inside him, and it tore at her heart. There was no place here for reason or self-control. All she could give him was her love, no matter how foolish it seemed, no matter that she knew he wouldn't want to take it, no matter that she was certain her heart would get broken in the end.

As he moved powerfully over her and inside of her, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his chest, hanging on for dear life as longing tore through her shield of logic once and for all. She was in love with a man for the first time in her life, helplessly, hopelessly in love. He took her on a breathless climb to passion's very summit and soared with her over the edge, his big body straining against hers, his arms crushing her to him. And she let herself believe in that one brilliant moment that he could love her too.