She should have proved to him that women could enjoy passion as well as any man.
But the blood rushed to her face to recall what had nearly happened between them, and the memory of it, the way her flesh still tingled from his touch, caused Laurel to place her hands on her heated cheeks. She couldn’t be nonchalant about lovemaking. It wasn’t in her nature to take such an intimate act lightly. Duvalier had intended to make love to her, and afterward he would have left her to seek the arms of Simone Lancier, his fiancée.
“The conceited bastard won’t have a chance to humiliate me again,” she spoke aloud and wished Tony’s driver would hurry the coach along. The sooner she returned to her room at the hotel and packed her bags for her journey to San Antonio, the better off she would be, she decided. She would forget Tony Duvalier and her wanton response to him. Yet not to remember his dark passion-laced eyes, the sensual stroking of his strong hands on her flesh, would be almost impossible. Even now her traitorous body tingled from the experience.
“Forget him!” The vehemence of her own words startled her, and sanity returned.
Rain pounded upon the roof of the vehicle. Lightning illuminated the passing countryside, allowing Laurel to see the wind-whipped trees that swayed on each side before blackness enveloped them.
Would she never reach the town? Inwardly she cursed Tony Duvalier for luring her to his Mardi Gras dance, for choosing her revealing costume, and then using it against her. His motive still bewildered her, and she cursed herself all the more for her own stupidity in believing she even possessed a fatal charm. She laughed aloud at her own folly. Fatal charm, indeed. Her charms had fueled Tony’s ardor to such a degree that he would have made love to her on the lawn if the fire hadn’t started—and she would have let him. Thank the fates for the bolt of lightning that struck the barn. She couldn’t imagine anything worse than becoming another one of Duvalier’s easy conquests. And Laurel had no doubt that she would have been one.
Wild winds and pounding rain besieged the coach, rocking it unsteadily. Laurel held tightly to the edge of her seat, encased in utter darkness, except for the faint flicker of the outside carriage lanterns that sputtered and then were extinguished completely. Still the horses raced onward.
The coach wheels rolled slickly along Grand Prairie Road toward town. From far off she heard what she assumed to be a peal of thunder, but shortly she realized it was the steady beat of a horse’s hoofs behind the coach.
“Halt!”
A man’s voice penetrated the darkness. The coach jerked to a sudden and jolting stop.
Giving a small cry, Laurel nearly slipped from her seat. She braced herself against the door, and in the brief instant when a flash of lightning emblazoned the night sky, she saw him, attired all in black with an equally dark hood over his head, on an ebony stallion. Both were silhouetted against the suddenly incandescent night. Above the din of the rain she heard him shout to the driver not to move, to remain seated. The pulse in Laurel’s throat throbbed an irregular beat, and she could barely swallow. Did this man intend to rob them? She vaguely remembered the hotel clerk informing her that at Mardi Gras time ruffians sometimes traveled the roads. Just her luck, she thought through a haze of fear and dread, to be caught in such a situation. And all because of Tony Duvalier, the arrogant bastard. One more reason to hate him.
Should she run or put up a fight? The man had turned his horse toward the coach. For a brief instant she froze, poised on the brink of indecision. Before she had time to react, the door was abruptly thrown open. A long, black-clad arm reached into the interior and plucked her from the coach as if she were a rose in a garden.
Her fear prevented her from screaming. In fact she seemed to have no voice at all as the man positioned her in front of him on his horse and coiled his arms, ropelike, around her waist. Tony’s driver sat immobile, his face obliterated in the darkness. When she felt the man behind her spur the stallion, she knew she had to do something to stop him.
“Let me go!” she cried and attempted to break free, to somehow throw herself from the horse and run anywhere, anywhere away from this man who held her so tightly against him, so close against his powerful chest that she could feel the beating of his heart against her back. But his hold wouldn’t be loosened, and her entreaty had no effect upon him.
After flailing against him, she realized her struggles were for nothing. There was no way she could escape from him, and she doubted he was even listening to her pleas for release. She had to keep all her strength and wits about her. However, seconds later, when he veered onto a side road that seemed to appear from nowhere and rushed headlong into a densely forested area, she wondered if she would ever find her way out of this even if he did release her unharmed.
Through the rain-sodden night they rode. Rivulets of water streamed freely down Laurel’s face, nearly blinding her. Her hair was plastered to her head, as were her clothes against her body. But she realized these discomforts were nothing to the tortures this man probably planned for her. Yet she must quell her fear and concentrate if she hoped to escape alive and tell the authorities.
Quieting down and being forced to lean unwillingly against her kidnapper’s hard chest, a musky male scent assailed her nostrils. She found his scent disturbing, strangely familiar, but it was the slight smell of alcohol upon his breath that made the most impression upon her. Was it brandy? A not unpleasant whiff stirred past her nose, and she recognized it as Napoleon’s brandy, a liquor her father had drunk many times. Such an expensive drink seemed somehow out of character with the highwayman behind her. Another, more disturbing scent made an impression upon her. There was a lingering trace of wood-smoke about him.
A shiver of fear coursed through her again when she felt the horse change direction. No longer were they on the side road. Now they were gingerly making their way through an area filled with palmetto. The bayou? She practically choked on her fear. She would never survive here. Or did this man intend her to survive at all?
The rain had slackened. Low overhanging vines became visible when a sliver of a moon appeared from behind a cloud. Moss-draped trees dripped steady drops of water onto the ground. From far off the growl of a panther cut through the night, followed by the cry of its victim. Laurel compared herself to the hapless creature and the man behind her to the panther. She was the prey who had just been snared by the hunter
.
The thought occurred to her that she might bargain for her freedom. He must be desperate to have kidnapped her. Perhaps money was what he wanted, and she had plenty of that. She must swallow her fear and speak to him, to make him believe she wasn’t at his mercy, although she knew very well that she was. As much as she had wanted to flee Duvalier earlier, she now wished she had never foolishly run away. At least, she would have been safe at Petit Coteau. She felt no security in this man’s arms.
Turning her face slightly to the right, she glanced up at him, but was unable to discern anything behind the slits in his hood. However, she felt his gaze upon her and wondered if he had been watching her for a long time to gauge her reaction.
“Kidnapping me will avail you nothing. I haven’t any money on me.” Damn! Did her voice sound as terrified to him as it did to her? She must hide her fear. “But if you will take me to my hotel, I’ll get you some.” There. That sounded better, more confident he would have a change of heart and release her. “Take me back, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Laurel winced when a bitter laugh escaped him, his scorn evident in its rich timbre. His wet hand snaked below the neckline of her blouse and gently massaged a pouting nipple. Did she imagine that his eyes blazed with a fire behind his hood?
“I want no money,” he whispered raspily. “The treasure I seek is within my arms.”
His meaning was clear. He intended to ravish her. For some unaccountable reason, he wanted her, not money.
A warm hand still caressed her breast, swirling the nipple between his fingers and triggering a melting sensation within her not unlike that which she had experienced in Duvalier’s arms earlier. What was wrong with her? she asked herself. Was she a wanton, eager for any man who touched her?
“Don’t do that,” she entreated.
“What?” he whispered against her ear.
“Touch me like that!”
“I think you like my hands upon you.”
His voice was so husky and low she barely heard him, but his intentions were obvious. This dark-clad stranger was going to have his way with her, and all her protests would avail her nothing. He had her at his mercy in this wild and untamed setting. True to his word, his hand remained in her blouse, gently rubbing the throbbing peak of one breast before snaking over and finding the other.
The feel of his hand upon her, the sensations his touch produced, weren’t unpleasant to Laurel. She knew she should fend him off somehow, but she was trapped within his grasp. From somewhere deep inside her throat, she emitted a low moan of pleasure.
“Wanton witch,” he intoned in her ear.
“Please leave me alone. Take me back to the main road.”
She hadn’t intended to plead like this, but she understood that he wasn’t going to release her until he was finished with her—if he did intend to free her. The thought that he might kill her entered her head for the first time, and she visibly trembled. She wasn’t ready to die yet. God, she had barely started to live.
“You’re shivering,” the man noted in his raspy voice, and his arms tightened around her like a protective covering when he withdrew his hand from her bodice. A tiny surge of hope rose in Laurel at the thought that he felt remorse for what he was doing to her, and this bit of physical comfort was his way of making amends, that he might have a change of heart and release her. But her hopes were dashed when he said, “I don’t want you to fall ill on me. That would take all the enjoyment out of my plans for you.”
“I hope you catch your death, you filthy beast!”
Where the courage to utter such words came from, Laurel didn’t know. When she felt him stiffen behind her, she expected he would strike her. Instead he laughed again and slid a hand along the swelling curves of her breasts, almost as a perverse reminder that she was his captive and he had the right to intimately touch her.
“Until I decide your fate, you belong to me.”
“Have you no conscience?” she asked, not willing to resign herself to the fate he had decreed for her.
His hand moved down to her waist, then lower until his fingers gently grazed the soft flesh of her inner thigh. “Not where you’re concerned.”
“I’ll never give in.”
“Admit to yourself that you’re more than the smallest bit excited by this kidnapping, by my hands stroking your satiny flesh. Before this night is finished, you’ll be on your hands and knees to me.”
“Never!”
Her objection vibrated through the moss-laden trees and across the water, which rippled with slithering and swimming creatures. He said nothing else, and Laurel knew any further protests would go unheeded. Somehow, she resolutely decided, she would escape.
The horse had traveled along a shore path the entire distance and now crossed a shallow body of water to the opposite shoreline. This side of the bayou wasn’t as dense with trees and undergrowth, and soon the dark silhouette of a small cabin came into view. Supported above the ground by four rough-hewn logs, the cabin rested half over the water and half over the shore. The horse approached the shore side and stopped to graze on the furling edge of a fern.
The black-clad man jumped down and unceremoniously hauled Laurel from the horse. Dragging her protesting form, he pulled her up the wooden steps onto a rickety porch. Then, pushing back the thick iron latch from its sheath on the cabin door, he propelled her into the inky-black room.
She spun around from the force. When her head stopped spinning, she attempted to focus her gaze. At the moment she could see little, only a vague outline of a table and chair against the wall and a cot near the window. But when the moon peeped through the clouds, she saw very clearly that the window was barred. What sort of place was this makeshift prison?
“You can’t make me stay here!” she declared.
“You’ll do whatever I decree,” he stated with such deadly calm that she shrank away from his voice in the darkness.
“Someone will find me. I was a guest tonight at Petit Coteau, and the carriage you abducted me from belongs to Tony Duvalier. His driver will tell him about you, and the authorities will be called in. You’ll never get away with this.”
His raspy tone held a hint of a smile. “I already have. Granted, Duvalier may search for you, but he won’t find you. You’re in the bayou, and access to the road is long and arduous. But we’re wasting time with such foolish talk. I brought you here for a purpose. Take off your clothes.”
Laurel backed away. Even in the room’s darkness she felt his eyes upon her, almost imagined she could see them flare like twin flames. She sensed his approach toward her; then his hands, heavy upon her arms, lifted her up as if she weighed nothing and threw her on the cot. She wouldn’t be able to plan an escape. She must act.
Lifting her legs, she kicked out, not certain that her knee had reached its mark until she heard him groan. Pushing herself off the cot, she gained a moment to run across the room toward the door, eager to be outside, not caring that the bayou was filled with harmful creatures. Those creatures would do her less harm than this man, and at the moment she wanted to get out of the cabin and find the horse. She would flee the hooded stranger and somehow find her way to the road.