Creole Fires (40 page)

All afternoon, Michele’s words echoed in her ears. So little time was left to them. And yet she dared not seek him out. She wasn’t sure she would ever have the strength to leave him again.

“Alex, it’s good to see you.” Thomas extended a hand. “You remember Michele?”

“Mademoiselle Christophe.” Alex raised her gloved hand to his lips. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“You’re getting thin, Alexandre,” Thomas chided. “You must be working too hard.”

“We’re a little behind with the harvest, but I think we’ll be back on schedule soon. The new equipment’s doing an even better job than we had hoped. Which is
one of the reasons I came by. I thought we should go over those new shipping contracts Mouton sent over.”

“Speaking of M’sieur Mouton,” Michele put in, surprising them. “I luncheoned with Nicole yesterday. She’s been working on your sugar ledgers. She says she’s almost done, but she needs your factor’s set so she can compare the two.”

Alex worked to keep his expression carefully blank. “I’ll see that she gets them. Thank you for telling me.” He forced a smile that felt a little stiff. “I hear congratulations will soon be in order for the two of you.”

“That’s right, my friend,” Thomas said. “And I owe it all to you. If it hadn’t been for you and Nicole, Michele and I would never have met.”

“Yes …. It seems there are many things for which Nicole is responsible.”

After finishing his business with Thomas, Alex headed straight for Louis Mouton’s office. He tried to deny the voice that told him the ledgers were just an excuse to see Nicki again, but in truth he didn’t care. He just felt grateful for the chance.

When he reached Mouton’s office, Louis wasn’t in, but at Alex’s unbending insistence, the young man who worked for him finally turned over the ledgers. Before he could take them to Nicki, Alex had two more business appointments, which seemed unending, and an early supper engagement with a friend, who remarked on his preoccupation and half-hearted attempts at conversation.

“You’re working too hard, Alexandre,” Jonathan Whitmore said. “This isn’t urgent. Why don’t we discuss it when you’ve got a little more time.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Alex agreed with a sigh of relief. “There are a few things on my mind this evening.”
Like my meeting with Nicole St. Claire.
Of course, he wouldn’t be able to make love to her. Wouldn’t even be able to touch her. Just seeing her again would have to be enough.

By eight o’clock he was headed down Toulouse Street toward his town house. Through the garden, he noticed only a few lamps lit the windows, one in the study where Ram would most likely be, and one in Nicki’s upstairs bedchamber. His heartbeat quickened just to think of her.

Carrying an armload of heavy leather-bound volumes, Alex knocked on the carved cypress door. Frederick opened it, his smile warm with welcome.

“Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening, Frederick.” His eyes strayed toward the staircase leading up to the bedchamber he had once shared with Nicole.

“She took supper upstairs,” Frederick explained. “She’s been doing that quite often lately.”

Alex frowned. “She isn’t sick, is she?”

“No. It’s nothing like that.” Frederick seemed about to say more, but didn’t.

Alex didn’t press him.

“Shall I tell her you’re here,” Frederick asked, “or would you prefer to do it yourself?”

He knew he should stay downstairs, keep things less personal, himself less vulnerable. “I’ll let her know,” he said instead. Still carrying the ledgers, his hands growing damp on the dusty leather, he climbed the staircase and knocked on her door.

A moment passed and then another. Alex’s grip tightened on the ledgers. Then Nicki pulled open the door and the breath he’d been holding rushed from his lungs.

Standing in the lamplight in her simple cotton nightshirt, her copper hair brushed out and hanging to her waist, Nicki looked more beautiful than he had remembered.

“I was at Thomas’s this morning,” he told her, his voice a little husky. “Michele was there, and she told me you’d been working on the ledgers, that you needed Mouton’s set in order to finish.”

“Yes,” she said, the word just a whisper.

“Louis wasn’t there, but his assistant rummaged around until he found them.” Careful to avoid her, Alex walked past her into the room and set the books on a desk Nicki had installed in one corner. His hand shook as he slid them away from the edge and turned to face her.

“You’re going to bed awfully early, aren’t you?” Just saying the word caused a tightening in his loins. He wanted to go to her, sweep her into his arms,
carry her over to the deep feather mattress and strip away her clothes. He wanted to kiss her until she could barely breathe, wanted to feel her breasts in his hands. He wanted to sink into her, make her respond to him, make her feel what he felt for her.

“I’ve been working up here in the evenings,” she said, her hand toying self-consciously with the pink satin bow that closed the front of her nightgown. Her hands looked delicate in the pale-yellow lamplight. Alex remembered the way they felt against his skin. When she ran her tongue nervously across her lush bottom lip, it was all he could do not to stride across the floor and haul her into his arms. She would be his again, at least for a while.

“I hope everything’s working out for you,” he said. “I mean, I hope you’re happy.”

I haven’t been happy a single moment since the day you left.
“I’m doing fine, thank you. And you? The harvest is progressing smoothly?”

“Yes. With Rillieux’s steam vacuum system, the quality and quantity are even better than we expected.”

“And everyone’s fine at Belle Chêne?”

Everyone but me.
“Just the usual problems. Nothing to worry about.”

“Will you be staying the night?”

Nom de Dieu, I
want to. I want to stay this night and every night. But only if I can share your bed.
“I can still make the late boat. I’d probably better be getting back.”

“I suppose that would be wisest.” But when Alex nodded with such bitter resignation, Nicki’s heart did a queer little twist. “When will you be returning?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll send someone to pick up the ledgers just as soon as you’re through with them.”

What if he didn’t come back until she was gone? What if this was her very last chance to tell him the truth?

“I appreciate all your hard work,” he told her. “It was nothing. The least I could do to repay your kindness.”

“Kindness?” Alex’s expression turned grim. “It was kind of me to take your maidenhood? It was kind of me to keep you in my house against your will? It was kind of me to betray your father’s friendship by forcing his daughter to become my mistress?”

“Don’t say that, Alex. None of that matters now.”

“It matters to me,” he said. “It always mattered. I just couldn’t seem to help myself.” His eyes searched her face. “I wish there was a way I could make it up to you.”

Nicki’s throat felt so tight, she could barely speak. He looked so tall and handsome. So masculine and proud.

And so very lonely.

“You can,” she whispered.

“Tell me,” he said, “tell me and it will be done.”

“Stay with me tonight.”

Alex just stared at her.

“Don’t you know I love you? That every day without you has been an agony. That if things were different, I would stay with you forever.”

Long, powerful strides carried him across the room. Alex reached for her, swept her into his arms, and buried his face in her hair. “I love you,” he whispered beside her ear. “I love you more than life. I’ve tried to deny it, but I can’t.”

Nicki clutched him tighter. “Oh, Alex.” Her fingers slid into his hair as she held him close. “I wanted to believe you cared, but I wasn’t sure. I never thought to hear you say it.”

“I need you, Nicki. Now that I’ve found you, I don’t know if I can make it without you.”

Nicki kissed his eyes, his nose, his mouth. “Make love to me, Alex. Make me forget everything but you.”

“I love you,” he whispered, kissing her until she was as breathless as he. He could feel her heartbeat against his chest, hear her shallow breathing. She smelled of violets and faintly of the feminine scent that always inflamed him. He wanted her so badly, his hands shook and he fought an urge to take her roughly, drive into her and demand she tell him over and over that she was his.

Instead he kissed her tenderly, passionately, then pulled the ribbon that closed up her nightgown and settled his mouth on her breast. Nicki moaned and swayed against him. Her fingers worked the buttons on the front of his shirt, then her hands slipped inside to tease a flat copper nipple.

Alex groaned. Stopping only for a moment, he tugged his shirt free from his breeches and pulled off his boots. Nicki helped him ease his shirtsleeve over the bandages that still covered his injured arm. Leaning down, she pressed her mouth against the flesh above the wound.

“I love you,” she whispered, and Alex cradled her face between his palms and kissed her, a deep, tender, loving kiss that answered the words she had spoken.

Sliding the nightgown off her smooth white shoulders and down her hips, he lifted her up, carried her
across the room, and settled her on the bed. Naked and aroused, he trailed warm kisses along her flesh, then gasped when he felt her fingers close over his manhood.

With a gentle touch, Nicki urged him onto his back. Using her lips and tongue, she teased a heated path across his chest and down the hard planes of his abdomen. Alex tensed when she didn’t stop. Just kept on nipping and kissing him and moving lower, until her soft full lips closed over his pulsing shaft.

Since their night in the cottage, this was the first time she had given herself to him freely. Wanting to show him how much she loved him, Nicki used her mouth and her tongue, tentatively at first, but sensing his powerful response and the thickening of his already rigid manhood, with more and more confidence. Alex groaned, but she didn’t stop until his wide hands circled her waist and he lifted her astride him.

“I have dreamed of this,
ma chère.
Dreamed of the day you would welcome me inside you without being forced.”

“You have never really forced me,” she told him truthfully. “I’ve loved you from the start.”

To prove it, Nicki slid along his body, felt his hardened arousal at the entrance to her passage, widened to him, and eased him inside. With a groan of pleasure, Alex thrust home, burying himself deeply and sending ripples of heat the length of her.

She felt hot and cold all over. Shivery and pulsing with need. Tightening the muscles of her thighs, Nicki worked to set up a rhythm of passion that Alex matched stroke for stroke. In minutes she gave in to the swirling sensations, no longer in control. She
barely noticed when his palms cupped her bottom, just felt an intense surge of pleasure when he drove himself farther inside.

Then with one deft movement, he lifted her up and turned her onto her back. Looming above her, he drove into her with long, powerful strokes.

Nicki’s fingers dug into his muscular shoulders and she cried out his name, but Alex made no effort to slow, just kept pounding against her, driving relentlessly, until both of them reached the edge of the precipice, and tumbled over.

“Alex,” Nicki whispered, then heard him call her name just as a tremor of passion washed over her. Alex’s muscles tensed and he spilled his seed with a force that proved his possession.

For moments he remained above her, his body damp with the sheen of his efforts. Then he settled himself beside her, pulling her into the circle of his arms.

“I never thought to hold you like this again,” he whispered.

In a way she wished he hadn’t. Because the awful truth at last was clear. “I won’t leave you, Alex. Not for as long as you want me to stay.”

“Then you’ll stay with me forever,” he told her, and kissed the side of her neck.

They slept for a while, made love again, this time more slowly, then again with the first light of dawn.

“There’s something I want you to know,” Nicki told him as they lay sated, she cuddling peacefully against his wide chest.

Alex grinned and cocked a brow. “You missed your last monthly.”

Nicki smiled and poked him playfully in the ribs.
“No. It’s about what you said last night. About the things you believe you’ve done to me.”

Alex’s expression turned serious. Tension seeped into the solid arms around her.

Nicki touched his cheek. “Maybe you should have handled things differently,” she told him. “If you could do it over, maybe you would. At the time, you did what you thought was best. And whatever you took from me, you gave threefold in return.”

“I’ve given you nothing but grief,” he said.

“You’re wrong, Alex. You saved me from a fate I can only image. You cared for me, took me into your home, gave me food, shelter, and your friendship. You believed in me when no one else would have. But even more important, you gave me back my courage. You gave me back myself.” Alex brought her hand to his lips and gently kissed the palm.

“Before you came,” Nicki said, “I had forgotten who I was. Now I know and I won’t forget again. No matter what happens, Alex, it’s the greatest gift I’ll ever receive.”