Satin Doll (15 page)

She was afraid. “I can’t,” Sam cried, straining against him. She was afraid of him, too. He had too much power over her. It was like being lowered into a volcano.
 

He quickly lifted her in his arms and held her angled against his body, one arm around her shoulders. The scent of him, warm and faintly musky, assailed her senses. The hard touch of his fingers, which held her and stroked her, wouldn’t release her. “Yes, you can. Make love to me, Samantha, let yourself go. Think of me making love to you, and how much you want it.”
 

He quickly closed his hungry mouth over hers. Electricity, a hot, fervent searing jumped from his kiss into her flesh. Against her will, she could feel her body driving into a wild, heated dimness in which her mind focused only on that stroking inside her, that red flame in her flesh that was growing relentlessly. Suddenly she was squirming, sliding her legs up and down against his with frantic need, enveloped in a magical blackness where mounting fire centered around the imprisoning caress of his hand.
 

“Give yourself over to me, love.” He watched her intently, his dark face rigid with desire.
 

She was drenched with perspiration, moaning and sliding against him, chasing a mounting, burning frenzy. She fought it, making loud, sobbing sounds as the lightning-streaked darkness roared down at her, swept over her and brought her up, straining, against him. She cried out as passion shook her, wrenched her, devoured her.
 

His hard mouth closed over hers, drowning her cries. He pulled himself over her, sliding to grip her thighs with his hands, coming into her so fully that Samantha moaned. Enveloped in fountains of flames, she sheathed him tightly. She heard his ragged groan.
 

“Samantha, open your eyes and look at me.” She did as he said, his black opal gaze right in hers. “Put your arms around me.” His powerful body shuddered its length against her. “Look at me while I’m taking you.”
 

Her hands slid against his smooth skin, along the quivering, powerful muscles of his arms and broad shoulders to the back of his neck. The strands of his hair were sweaty against her fingers. Then with a groan he was in her, claiming her triumphantly, his rhythmic stroking driving her to another fevered peak of desire.
 

This time it was her kiss that opened his lips and took him wildly. He groaned a wordless sound into her mouth. The inferno broke over them in a tumult that made them both cry out. Samantha shrieked, and he answered with a hoarse cry in her ear. He contracted, raking her, pouring himself into her. She dug her face against his shoulder, her mouth frantic, her teeth brushing sweat-slick skin, tasting his salt on her tongue.
 

Still jolting, Chip’s big body came down on her. He twined his hands in hers, his fingers tightly lacing them together. “Ah, Samantha,” he rasped. “It can’t be any better.” He sounded surprised.
 

After the violence of passion, there was silence. She was lulled, drifting, enveloped in indescribable pleasure. Not
better
. The words floated in her mind.
Magnificent.
It had happened at last.
 

He pulled her against him softly, his mouth in her hair, holding her with familiar possessiveness. “Tired?” he murmured.
 

When she didn’t answer, he looked down at her for a long moment. Then he dragged the spread away and pulled the sheets over them, settling them in the bed. “Get some sleep,” was all he said.
 

Much later, in the deepest part of the night, she heard a low voice saying, “Samantha, wake up.”
 

Sam pulled herself into the edge of consciousness unwillingly, drugged with tiredness. She had no idea where she was; she was so exhausted she didn’t care.
 

The husky voice was saying, “Samantha, darling, wake up.” Arms went around her, lifting her. “You’re crying in your sleep, love.”
 

Yes, well, maybe she was. It wasn’t the first time—these nightmares were old and familiar. In the darkness her cheek was pressed against something warm and solid, smooth flesh and muscle, and arms held her tightly. Her mouth and eyes were wet and so was his skin where she lay against him. He gave off a virile, evocative scent she couldn’t place.
 

She’d been dreaming the same terrible dream that always came when she was troubled—there was a blizzard and she was terrified of being left alone. Only this time all was lost and everything and everyone had gone away. She couldn’t find the people she loved.
 

The bed where she lay was warm as a nest. A big body held her tenderly, and without fully waking she turned to it, seeking comfort and hope. “Make love to me,” she murmured.
 

Gently, fingers stroked the track of her tears down the side of her face. “Love, are you sure?” the dark voice whispered to her. “You want me to make love to you, now?”
 

“Umm, yes.” Her own voice was husky with sleep. Her body pressed against him, and her hands pulled a big, sleek muscular body over her. She felt him ease between her thighs, already wanting her, already hard.
 

She should have remembered Jack. After all, Jack was the man she’d been in love with not so long ago. All the guilt and pain she felt for Jack Storm should have kept him alive in her memory. But it hadn’t.
 

There was someone else, warm, tender, and exciting, but his identity slipped from her consciousness and faded into the night.
 

The only images Samantha visualized in the hot rush of passion as his mouth closed over hers were the beautiful aristocratic features and the tilted golden eyes of Alain des Baux.

La Coupe
 

The Cut

Chapter Eight

There were two doorbells at the Maison Louvel. One, a small recessed pearl button that had been out of order for years, was located in the framing of the ancient wooden doors that opened into the rue des Bénédictines. The other doorbell, seldom used since customers came in without announcing themselves, was on the first-floor landing at the entrance to the salon. When pressed, this button sent a loud, irritating buzzing that echoed up the wide, marble stairwell and all through the building. During the last three or four minutes of Sam’s Monday morning conference with Solange Doumer, someone had been ringing this doorbell persistently.
 

The first hangover of Sam’s life pressed behind her eyes in a black fog of guilt and pain, and the worry that Chip might be hanging around the building somewhere that morning didn’t help, either. The doorbell that no one was answering added to the torment. And then there was Madame Solange Doumer.
 

The directrice of the Maison Louvel faced Sam across her desk with an expression of almost melodramatic disdain, her hands clasped in front of her. She wore a high-necked black dress that emphasized her dark red hair, the camellia complexion, the slender, still-attractive figure. Sophie wasn’t there to help translate—deliberately, Samantha suspected. Madame Doumer would speak only French.
 

Whatever game was being played, they weren’t making much headway, except that certain words like “invoices” and “cash flow” seemed to be getting through: Sam could see a flicker of understanding, quickly hidden, in those liquid, prominent brown eyes. But all she was getting back from the directrice, was a rapid-fire barrage of French in which “personne d’autorité” and “Jackson Storm” were featured prominently.
 

“Jackson Storm is on a tour of his Far Eastern plants,” Sam explained for the third or fourth time, “and he can’t talk to you. Right now, since I’m here, I’m the one on the job. And I’d appreciate a little cooperation.”
 

She didn’t think Madame Doumer would go over her head to New York and if she did, it didn’t matter; she was acting out a role now as Jack Storm’s representative in Paris.
 

“And I want you to send somebody up to the apartment to clean it. Vacuum cleaner, understand?” With insulting simplicity she pantomimed running a vacuum across the floor. Solange Doumer’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Then get somebody to change the sheets on the bed. White ones, please.” She pressed her thumb to the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes for a brief second. Whoever was leaning on the doorbell downstairs was driving her hangover headache right to the edge. “I can’t sleep in those black satin sheets every night. They keep me awake.”
 

White-lipped, the other woman glared back at her. “
Je ne comprends rien tout ce que vous dites
.”
 

“Let’s set this meeting up again for tomorrow,” Sam said carefully. “Only next time you’ll have your daughter here to interpret for us.” She was pretty sure Solange Doumer understood her, but she wasn’t going to wait to find out; she was going to strangle whoever had been leaning on the buzzer.
 

Sam rushed out of the directrice’s office to the landing and looked down the big curving staircase. “Who is it?” she yelled. “Who’s down there, dammit? What do you want?”
 

The figure of a young woman moved away from the doors to the salon and came to the railing and looked up. “Nobody answers the bell,” she yelled back. “This place isn’t closed on Mondays, is it?”
 

Oh lord, not another one, Sam thought, looking down at her. The woman’s hair was black, dyed bright orange on the ends and hair—sprayed to stand up in spikes like a punk rock singer’s. She wore a puffed green satin blouse, long Indian print cotton skirt, and red plastic boots and carried a black patent leather shopping bag.
 

“Do you work here?” the apparition asked, moving around the railing to the stairs. “I’m Brooksie Goodman, a freelance writer and photojournalist here in Paris. Real name’s Elaine but the Brooksie is for Brooklyn, because I’m supposed to have an accent, you know, at least to the French, but actually I’m from Long Island.” She hardly took a breath before she went on, “I freelance for Fairchild Publications. Also I’ve had stuff published in French magazines like
Elle
. What’s an American doing—”
 

At the foot of the stairs she could see Sam more clearly and her eyes widened. “Jeez,” she cried, “you know who you look like? Hey, you are—you
are,
aren’t you?” She put her foot on the bottom step. “Aren’t you Jackson Storm’s Sam Laredo?”
 

Sam came down the stairs two at a time. A freelance writer? How was she going to handle this? The elevator was coming up from ground level. Brooksie heard its melancholy whining and froze.
 

“Can I get back to you later?” the journalist said hurriedly. “Because if this is who I think it is—” She did a crabwise shuffle to one side of the elevator doors, dragged open the patent leather shopping bag by its straps and pulled out a professional-looking Nikon camera with flash attachment.
 

“Wait a minute,” Sam said. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
 

The elevator reached the salon floor. The doors slid open, revealing a tightly packed group of people inside. Two burly men in tweed jackets abruptly pulled the gate back and stepped out onto the landing, partly shielding a stout, balding man who held the arm of a teenage girl wearing a windbreaker, tight faded jeans and dirty running shoes.
 

The girl, her hair cropped short as a boy’s, sullen-faced and not particularly pretty, was the first to see the photojournalist. She stopped, trying to pull back. Before the bodyguards could move in front of the man and the girl, Brooksie had scurried up and taken several rapid shots of them with her camera.
 

There was a strange, static pause as the photo flashes popped brightly, the
szznick, szznick
of the camera’s automatic advance loud in the sudden stillness. Then the teenage girl screamed. The stout man put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him as one bodyguard lunged for Brooksie and the other bodyguard wrenched at the French doors to the salon as though he would tear them from the hinges.
 

“Leggo, you bastard,” Brooksie was screaming. The man in the tweed jacket tried to drag the Nikon from her hands. He gave her a shove with one hand, the other on the camera’s flash attachment, and Brooksie fell to her knees.
 

“Keep your hands off her,” Samantha cried, grabbing for the camera. “What do you think you’re doing!”
 

“Associated Press!
New York Times!
” Brooksie howled, getting to her feet. She backed away, holding her camera over her head. “I’m an American journalist! You suckers cool it, okay?”
 

The flash attachment had come apart, a piece of it in the bodyguard’s hand. He made a lunge for the rest of the camera just as the doors to the salon suddenly opened. Without hesitating, the short man and girl rushed through, followed by both men. The French doors slammed shut behind them.
 

The figure in the green satin blouse and trailing peasant skirt leaned against the wall, gasping. “I knew they’d come here.” She quickly stuffed the camera back into the shopping bag. Then she bent and picked up the broken piece of flash attachment from the floor and swore under her breath. “Lousy rotten gorillas. You couldn’t get the Prince to pay for it, if you sued him.” She started for the stairs. “See you later,” she said over her shoulder.