Midnight in Ruby Bayou (33 page)

Sensation tightened like fine, hot wires from her breasts to her core. Her body clenched and shuddered with pleasure. She made a sound that was surprise and his name combined. He bit her with exquisite restraint, then sucked until her back arched and she twisted in slow motion against his mouth. She tried to tell him how good it felt, but all that came out was a gasp as something burst inside her, drenching her with heat.

Walker felt the change in Faith, smelled the primitive, heady musk of feminine arousal, and knew she would be worth every instant of the frustrated agony she had put him through. Not that he was blaming her. It wasn't her fault that a man took one look at her long legs, high breasts, and pouting lips and thought of nothing but raw, hot sex.

On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with thinking about it, either.

Smiling, he took his mouth lower, biting, licking, tasting, letting her essence infuse him until his head was spinning and she lay open to him, her mind stunned by pleasure. He liked having her that way, liked the dazed look in her half-closed eyes and the humming heat of her body. He teased her as long as he could bear it before he gave in to his hunger and nuzzled with his mouth into the center of her soft heat.

At first she didn't understand. Then the unexpected, silky probing of his tongue made her arch like a bow. Her hands were free now. She would have lifted them, but she was too weak. She made a broken sound and shifted. Even she couldn't have said whether she was moving toward his hungry mouth or away. She knew only that she had never felt anything as sleek, as hot, as wild, the world spinning away until she was twisting, crying, falling, turning. The tender, merciless greed of his mouth never let her catch her breath, her mind, herself.

The hoarse, shattered sound she made when she came was nothing like the measured whimpers she had manufactured for Tony. It was a cry torn from her soul, shock and discovery and ecstasy intertwined. He drank it as he drank her, consuming her even while she lay slack and trembling, destroyed, reborn.

Distantly she heard herself call his name again and again, not knowing what she wanted, only that saying his name was more necessary to her than breathing.

This time when Walker entered her, the joining was as smooth as it was hot. The sultry core of her gave sweetly around him, then clasped him like a wet velvet fist. Slick. Tight. God, she was tight. So good. Too good. The pulses of his climax were already bursting at the base of his spine.

Walker's groan sounded a lot like Faith's. He knew he wouldn't be able to hold on long. Nothing in his life had felt as good as her clinging to him, gliding and sliding over him, sleek and eager and utterly seduced. No matter how far he pushed into her, she welcomed him, pulsing, pleading, demanding that he take her as hot and deep as he could.

With a throttled shout, he gave her what they both needed, locking himself hard and deep within her until not a single drop of ecstasy remained.

His sudden, slack weight felt wonderful to Faith. Her hands stroked down the valley of his spine in languid motions. She laughed softly when she discovered that despite being deep inside her, he was still wearing his smuggler's shorts.

“You laughing at me?” he asked, his voice muffled and lazy against her breasts.

“You're still dressed. Kind of.”

“So are you. Kind of. Wanna get naked?”

She glanced aside. A pale blur in the moonlight told her that her blouse and bra had ended up under the claw-footed side chair. She had no idea where her jeans and underwear had gone. “What am I still wearing?” she asked idly.

He shifted until he could nibble up the side of her neck. “Gold earrings. And me.”

“In that case, I don't want to get naked.”

Walker's chuckle was another kind of caress, for he moved inside her with each laugh. Sensation danced up from her core like sparks lifting from a fire. She made a murmurous sound of pleasure and nuzzled against his neck. Sighing, nibbling along the edge of his ear, she wondered how a woman thanked a man for the best loving of her life.

“Maybe you should just keep on wearing the rubies,” she said, smiling to herself.

“Why?”

“You deserve them.”

He rolled over onto his back, taking her with him, still locked deep inside her. “Is that your way of saying you wouldn't mind going another round?”

She shifted and slid down on him more fully. “Anytime. Anywhere. Anyhow.”

“You sure?”

She knew he was remembering her worried, headlong approach to sex. “I'm very sure. You make me feel wonderful. Sexy and female and alive.”

“That's because you're all of those things.”

“Not before tonight.” She put her cheek against his warm, sleekly muscled chest and sighed. It was wonderful to be intimate with a man she respected, liked, enjoyed, admired, trusted . . . everything. The sexual freedom he brought to her was rooted in her feelings for him, not simply his technique. She hoped she brought the same level of freedom and pleasure to him. “You're good for me, Walker. I hope I'm good for you.”

Pleasure and pain sliced through him like a silver razor. The pleasure came from hearing the trust and contentment in her voice. The pain came from the same source. Just the thought of having someone trust him that completely made Walker cold to his soul. He didn't deserve that kind of trust. Not after failing his brother in such a final way.

He caught Faith's face between his hands and kissed her very gently before he released her. “Enjoy me, but don't depend on me. That kind of trust makes me real nervous.”

Slowly Faith let out a long breath and smoothed her cheek against the soft mat of hair on his chest. At least he wasn't like Tony, lying about love and happily ever after in order to get close to the Donovan bank account. Surely she was adult enough to take what Walker offered and not sulk because there wasn't any more.

And if she wasn't adult enough, she could keep it to herself. “Okay,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“Just that,” Faith said simply. “Okay. What we just had was more than I ever expected with a man. I'll take it for as long as it lasts.”

Her words should have made him feel better. They didn't. Instead, he felt like something was sliding out of his grasp. “Sugar, I didn't mean to hurt you.”

She lifted her head and looked him in the eye. “Then take off those rubies.”

“What?”

“They're digging into me.”

There was a moment of startled silence, followed by his soft laughter. “Why don't you take them off for me?”

“Good idea.”

“I have a few other ideas,” he offered as she shifted position.

“Mmm.” Her tongue traced the line of his ribs. “Don't hold back, sugar.”

He didn't.

J
eff got up as quietly as he could, but Mel made an unhappy sound and rolled toward his side of the bed as though already missing him. Murmuring reassurances, he touched her. After a few moments her breathing deepened. She was back asleep again and wouldn't even remember almost awakening.

The house was so quiet he was sure he could hear the sweat breaking out along his spine as he bent down to pick up the clothes he and Mel had abandoned halfway to bed.

When Boomer's nose nudged his master's bare butt, Jeff almost jumped out of his skin. He bit off a curse before it became a sound. With shaking hands and drumming heart, he pulled on his slacks. Maybe he could talk his father out of this craziness. Surely there must be another way to raise the money. The shrimp boats. The jewelry store. Ruby Bayou itself.

Anything but this.

Taking care to avoid all the squeaky boards, Jeff went down the hall to his father's room. Boomer padded alongside, pleased to have company in the middle of the night. Behind his father's door, thick snoring vibrated through the walls. Jeff knew the Marine Marching Band wouldn't have awakened Davis Montegeau.

The door was closed, but the crystal knob turned beneath Jeff's damp palm. He had a flash of memory more than thirty years old . . .
a young boy racing down the hallway, pursued by nightmares, flinging himself through the door. His parents welcomed him, held him, soothed him, tucked him into bed between them. His mother smelled of jasmine, his father of the seaweed fire he had built to steam crabs and corn for a beach picnic that night. The child snuggled between his parents' big bodies. With his hand cradled in his father's, he slept deeply, certain that he was safe.

God, it was so long ago.

And it was yesterday. He could close his eyes and smell the powdery jasmine scent of his mother. He understood her absence, her death, but he didn't understand where that boy had gone.

Or where the boy's father had gone.

“Daddy?” he whispered.

The oblivious snoring of a drunk answered him.

Impatience and anger snaked through Jeff. Some of it was for himself. The boy of his memories was as dead as his jasmine-scented mother. Now the boy was a man with his own child to protect. And if the man wished he could crawl into bed right now with his parents as the boy had that long-ago night, too bad. The world wasn't going to go away. Ever. That was what being an adult was all about.

Abruptly, viscerally, Jeff understood why his father drank. It made the world go away.

As his hand closed around the doorknob, he thought he saw something from the corner of his eye. He spun toward the pale blur that he had sensed more than seen.

Nothing was there but the closed door of Tiga's bedroom, and the doors of rooms that were no longer used. He looked at Boomer. The hound was completely at ease.

Jeff let out a soundless breath. Though he had occasionally seen Ruby Bayou's resident ghosts, he really didn't want a spectral experience tonight. He had all he could handle and then some.

Opening the door fully, he walked into his father's bedroom. It reeked of stale whiskey. At a gesture, Boomer followed Jeff inside and flopped down on the thick rug.

Quietly he shut the door and moved to his father's bed. Nothing but the sheets had been changed since his mother died. The same perfume bottles reflected tiny shards of moonlight on the vanity table. The curtains with their big magnolia flowers and trailing vines were so faded that the pattern existed only in his memory. The rug was faded, too, but it had happened two hundred years ago. Like driftwood, the rug had a silver dignity that time couldn't steal.

It was a pity that men weren't rugs.

“Daddy,” Jeff said in a normal tone of voice.

Nothing.

“Daddy.”

Still nothing.

Jeff turned on the bedside light, shook his father, then shook him again. Hard. The snoring subsided into grumbling complaints. He kept on shaking the slack body that was so unlike the sheltering parent of his memory.

“Wha'? Wha'? Jeffy, wha' you want, boy? You have a nightmare?”

Pain sliced into Jeff. He hadn't been called Jeffy since he turned thirteen. Knowing that his father remembered him as a boy didn't make the present any easier to bear. It made it worse.

“Wake up, Daddy. We have to talk.”

Davis blinked, then blinked again. Slowly he focused on the face of the man who had once been his little boy. With returning memory came a desire to escape back into sleep or booze, whichever blacked him out first. He rubbed his gritty eyes and tried to get past the dead skunk taste in his mouth. He didn't have nearly enough saliva to do the job.

“Need a drink,” he muttered.

“That's the last thing you need,” Jeff said impatiently.

“Need a drink!”

“We need to talk about how to raise the money for Sal. I'm going to mortgage Ruby Bayou, the shrimp boats, the jewelry store—whatever it takes.”

Davis looked at Jeff as though he was speaking in tongues. “You can't.”

“Watch me,” Jeff shot back. “That's what power of attorney means.”

Davis shook his head, winced at the lancing headache, and said simply, “They're already mortgaged.”

For a moment Jeff didn't believe it. “The land, the house, the boats, the—”

“Everything,” Davis interrupted hoarsely. “That's how I raised the money to go into partnership with Sal.”

Jeff looked around the room as though it already belonged to somebody else. If he didn't carry out his father's bizarre scheme, it would. He would be forty years old with no job and a crazy aunt, a drunken father, and a pregnant wife who all depended on him for food and shelter.

The jaws of the trap snapped shut hard enough to make his bones ache.

Davis groaned. Too many memories, each one sharper and more painful than the last. “I really fucked up, Jeffy.”

Something like grief twisted through Jeff, but he couldn't afford it. He had a woman and child to think about. Unlike his father, they were innocent.

Yet they would pay along with the guilty.

“Yes, Daddy. You really fucked up.”