Midnight Flame (8 page)

For some reason he wanted to believe the worst of her and see her in a bad light. She decided she could give as good as she got. Duvalier had dressed her as a creature with no morals, flaunted her before his friends, but she had turned his game to her own advantage by unwittingly making him jealous. And he was jealous. Why he should be, she didn’t know. After all, he was going to marry someone else. Yet she wouldn’t leave for San Antonio until she had gotten some revenge on Tony Duvalier. The perfect way to do that, she realized, was to act the role he had written for her.

Through long, sooty lashes, Laurel fastened her gaze on Tony’s full, sensual lips. “Are you half in love with me, too?”

Black eyes measured her for a moment before he said, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

She shrugged a bare shoulder. Lifting her hand, Laurel ran her fingertips over the deep vee of his red shirt; then slowly, so slowly that she felt Tony catch his breath, her nails stroked the soft down of hair on his chest. She knew her actions were brazen, but dressed in the gypsy costume, she no longer felt herself to be the proper and staid Laurel Delaney, the woman who regally entered a room with her head held high. A shiver at her own daring coursed through her. However, she wouldn’t stop and took perverted delight in knowing that this time she was the one affecting Tony Duvalier.

“I think I’d be immensely pleased if you were in love with me, but I can have any man I want. I left a pack of drooling men in the drawing room. Why aren’t you drooling?”

Brazenly, almost as if she were someone else, her mouth lowered to his chest, and she planted a warm, moist kiss on the spot where her fingertip had just been.

As Tony sucked in his breath, she felt the rapid beating of his heart against his rib cage. His skin tasted slightly salty and was hard and smooth beneath her lips. Delighting in Tony’s rapid breathing, she trailed tiny kisses up the fur-planed expanse to the hollow of his throat.

A groan of intense pleasure mingled with a sound of pain escaped from Tony. In one motion he pulled her to him, trapping her with an arm around her waist, and with the other hand he grabbed a handful of silky tresses so she would be forced to gaze upward at him.

“I’m not like the others here,” he ground out. “I’m not so easily taken in by a beautiful face, a voluptuous body. But I know what you are, though you pretend to be virginal and innocent.” He laughed hoarsely. “In fact, I’d probably have let you alone and never touched you again. However, my gypsy temptress, I am only a man, and you’ve ignited the spark.”

His mouth came down upon hers in a searing kiss that took her breath from her. The world spun crazily. Laurel realized she had gone too far with this man. What did she know about men? Nothing. Not even enough not to tempt one, especially not this one. She broke away from his mouth’s possession, knowing she had to stop the inevitable.

“Please, please,” she croaked when he moved his head to the valley of her breasts and buried his tongue within the hollow. “Stop. I was playing a game, Tony. I’m not what you think.”

“You’re everything I thought you’d be and more,” he said in a muffled voice. He scooped her up into his arms just as lightning streaked the night sky.

Laurel struggled to escape. “Put me down, Tony. I apologize.”

His voice sounded ragged and harsh when he spoke. “Maybe this will teach you not to play games.”

He carried her from the gallery into a dark grove of oak trees that blotted out the sky and lowered her onto the soft grass. Realizing that her skirt had ridden up to her upper thighs, she attempted to pull it down and sit up, but Tony held her fast.

When another streak of lightning flashed, she saw his face, the agony and desire in his eyes, as if he warred within himself. She began to plead again but stopped when he moved and his body covered the length of hers. His hardness rested against the spot between her legs, and a searing heat spread through her body and lodged in that area. Involuntarily she strained against him, aching for something only he could fulfill.

Tony laughed bitterly. “You’re not fooling me, you never did. I knew from the moment I met you that you’d belong to me, that I’d do the dishonorable thing by making love to you. You do want me, don’t you?”

He nipped at her lips, his hands moving over the material of her blouse, then sliding inside to cup a warm, full breast. His tongue drifted downward to the nipple, which he gently sucked.

Hot lava flowed through Laurel. Never in her life had she felt such intense pleasure, an insane longing to forget propriety, to be a woman at last and wrap her legs in wanton abandon around Tony as he filled her with his love. The thunder overhead was lost in the beating of her heart as Tony’s hand moved over her rib cage, then downward to the velvety smoothness of her naked thigh.

Her arms wound around his neck, and she whispered his name in a husky voice that she barely identified as her own. Pulling him closer, she trailed fiery fingers over the broadness of his back and then kneaded the warm, hard flesh of his chest.

“I’ve never desired a woman as much as you,” he said in a tortured voice. “I can’t resist you. God help me, I can’t!”

His mouth ground down upon hers. Laurel felt his tongue collide with hers, swirling and tasting the sweetness of her mouth. Her breath quickened. Exquisite and pleasurable sensations shot through her body, and not even the piercing white lightning that flashed hotly above them or the rumble of the thunder disturbed her.

“Love me, Tony. Love me, love me,” she whispered in a passion-laced voice.

“Oh, God forgive me!” he cried.

Suddenly the sound of alarmed voices and bright torches filled the night.

“Monsieur Tony! Monsieur Tony!”

Tony cursed under his breath. “That’s Rabelais, my foreman. What can he want now of all times?” He began to stand, but instead he tenderly kissed her lips again. “Wait for me, my temptress,” he whispered before leaving her.

Laurel lay upon the wet grass, feeling a slight mist settle upon her flesh. Her pulse beat hard. It was only when she heard the cries of “Lightning has struck the barn! Get the buckets!” that her senses returned. Standing up, she arranged her clothing and smoothed down her tousled locks and then walked toward the sound. She found that the barn was bathed in a red-orange glow. The male guests were lined up from a well to the fire and were passing heavy wooden buckets of water to Tony at the front of the line. The taut muscles of Tony’s back strained with the movement each time he emptied one onto the flames.

“Isn’t this exciting?” a guest dressed as Aphrodite whispered to no one in particular.

“Clarice, you must lead a boring life to enjoy such a spectacle,” the husky voice of Simone Lancier commented. “Tony and I are never bored, if you understand my meaning.” Simone and the woman giggled, but Simone’s flashing blue eyes were directed in Laurel’s direction.

Because the fire had been discovered immediately, the barn and the horses housed inside were saved. The men stopped passing the buckets. A hissing sound and the odor of burning wood permeated the air. A perspiring Jean DuLac, in his soot-covered, green-and-red clown costume, saw Laurel. He wiped his brow with a kerchief. “That Tony is a lucky devil,
chérie
, with life and the ladies.” He winked and went inside the house.

Laurel lost sight of Tony and Simone as the guests began milling about to inspect the damage. Then she saw them at a distance, standing beside the charred ruins, arm in arm.

Laurel’s face burned with humiliation, anger, and pain. If not for the fire, Tony would have used her like the worst trollop. To think she had begged the man to make love to her, had writhed beneath him on the grass like a whore. Her hands flew to her face, unsure of what she had been thinking to allow such liberties. Yet she couldn’t deny that her traitorous body had desired him. Tears flooded her eyes.

Then Tony turned in her direction and made a movement to rush after her, but she spun around and ran down the gravel driveway.

“Where are you going?” Simone clutched at his shirt sleeve.

Tony didn’t relish possessive women and shrugged off her hold. “Wherever I choose.”

“We’re going to be married, Tony. I suggest you remember that.”

He cocked an eyebrow, his face smeared with soot. “I haven’t asked you, Simone. You’ve just assumed we would.” Bounding away, he left Simone in a snit.

By the time he reached the front of the house, he saw the carriage that he and Laurel had arrived in earlier speeding down the drive. So, he thought wryly with a degree of anger at himself for falling prey to her charms, the little tease was running away again just as she had done the day of Auguste’s death. Well, she wouldn’t get away this time. He would be damned if she led him a merry chase as she had done with his uncle. He vowed that Lavinia Delaney would not be the death of him. However, he couldn’t help but think, with a degree of contempt for himself, about what would have happened if the fire hadn’t started. Would she now have been in his bed?

He attempted unsuccessfully to shrug the thought away. His loins tightened just to imagine her hair spread fanlike across his pillow, the feel of the soft ivory body writhing in ecstasy beneath his own, the sweet taste of her strawberry lips. “God!” he moaned aloud and broke the spell by turning and heading for the porch at the back of the house. He couldn’t let the woman do this to him, wouldn’t allow himself to fall further under her spell. He had to convince himself that she was like any other woman and could easily be replaced. So many women had vied for his kisses, had begged for his touch over the years, that Tony could no longer remember their faces or the bodies that had attracted him. But this woman was different. This woman was dangerous. He had started to feel something for her, a sweet but burning desire he had never known, a melting sensation when he first kissed her. She mustn’t get to him, he decided. She wouldn’t pull
him
into her enchanted web.

Only servants remained outside now to clean up the charred remains of the fire. From inside the main house, the laughter and singing of his guests drifted through the windows and lingered on the night air, disturbed only by the rumble of thunder. He went to his room and changed into a black silk shirt. Pouring himself a glass of Courvoisier, Napoleon’s brandy, he fortified himself for what was to come.

When he mounted his horse, raindrops splattered across the silken material of his shirt, leaving wet splotches on his broad back. Almost as an afterthought before he kicked at the horse, he withdrew a black hood from his pants pocket, crumpling the cotton material in his large hand.

Suddenly Jean DuLac appeared on the porch and hailed Tony as he rode swiftly past. “Where are you going? Where is the pretty gypsy girl?” he cried.

Tony barely glanced at him, steadfast purpose shining in his black eyes. Spurring the stallion, he galloped down the drive onto the road that led through the prairie area back to Washington. Rain pelted him, but he only rode harder, faster until he noticed the wavering flickers of light from the carriage lanterns.

His prey was up ahead.

Nimbly he pulled the hood over his head, enclosing his stony features. Soon his revenge upon the woman he believed to be Lavinia would commence in earnest. But not until he had held her in his arms, branded every inch of her ivory flesh with hot kisses, and felt waves of ecstasy wash over her when he entered her writhing body would his vengeance be fulfilled. Only when she had surrendered her body to a nameless, faceless man would she realize what a harlot he thought her to be, know the pain she had caused him by killing his uncle with her greedy passion.

Soon, very soon, his uncle would be avenged. Spurring his horse anew, he broke into a wild gallop and followed the midnight flame.

Within the interior of the leather-upholstered coach, Laurel reclined against the seat. She folded her arms across her breasts in a protective gesture and hurriedly wiped away a tear that threatened to fall from one of her emerald eyes. She willed herself not to cry. Crying never accomplished anything. She had cried countless tears for herself and her parents when she was away at school. The tears had never brought back her parents but gave her a red nose, which her friend, Anne, had gently told her made her resemble a circus clown.

“Well, I won’t look like a carnival clown because of Tony Duvalier,” she groused aloud. But for all her low-voiced mutterings and the staunch way Laurel bit down upon her lower lip to keep the tears at bay, she felt foolish. Duvalier had ensnared her in a sensuous trap, one in which she had willingly participated. Unable to rid herself of the image of Tony with Simone, she dimly realized she shouldn’t have run away. Their embrace meant nothing to her. She could be as cavalier as Tony about the drugging kisses he had rained upon her face, the way his warm hands had boldly cupped her breasts and snaked up the length of her inner thighs to touch her until she was so besotted that she had wrapped her legs around his back and begged to be taken like the worst whore.