by JoAnn Ross
Everyone knew Claude beat his son, but since a lot of people in the rigidly Catholic, conservative bayou town believed in that old maxim about sparing the rod and spoiling the child, authorities were never called in. Besides, no one in their right mind wanted to get on the wrong side of Crazy Claude Broussard.
So, he continued to drink and brawl, until that New Year’s Eve, two years ago, when he drove his truck off the bridge leading into town. There was no funeral since the only people who might have shown up would have been those wanting to see for themselves that the bully of Blue Bayou really was dead.
No one, least of all Emma, had been surprised when Gabe didn’t return home for his father’s interment in the far corner of the cemetery once known as Paupers’ Field.
Chapter Eight
While so much had changed in both their lives since the last time they were together, the cabin was exactly as Emma remembered it.
Like most other bayou camps, it had been built on stilts to allow for rising water to pass underneath; the cypress had weathered to a soft silver hue and a dark green metal roof slanted low over a front porch.
The narrow oyster shell road ended by the front door, but since land and water were always warring in this part of the country, one good storm could turn the road back into a waterway. Which was the reason for the flat-bottomed boat tied to the floating dock.
“This rain’s going to have the ground more boggy than usual,” he predicted. “No way you’re going to be able to walk to the camp in those spindly shoes.”
He was right. They’d also be ruined by the mud. “No problem. I’ll take them off.”
“You’ll get your feet muddy.”
“You have running water, right?”
“Yeah. Nate checked on that when he brought out the groceries.” He rubbed his jaw. “I’ve got a better idea. I’ll carry you.”
It had not been easy, growing up a chubbette with Bayou Barbie for a mother. Emma had struggled against self-esteem issues most of her life, which, she’d realized with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, was how she’d ended up agreeing to marry Richard against her better judgment.
It wasn’t that her mother had loved her ex-husband’s slick southern charm. (Though she had.) Nor was it because her father had been impressed by his Vanderbilt degree. (Which, the FBI discovered during the embezzlement investigation, had turned out to be a forged document.) It was because a man who looked a bit like Brad Pitt—if you closed one eye and squinted just right with the other—professed to love her. A fat, shy wallflower who’d only gone to the graduation night cotillion because she’d been assigned to take pictures for the year-end edition of the school paper.
No, it hadn’t been easy, but the good thing that had come out of her divorce was that she’d vowed never to let anyone—especially a man—make her feel insignificant again.
Still, for the first time in ages, she found herself desperately wishing Roxi had some magic spell that could make her instantly lose ten—okay, make that twenty—pounds.
“You can’t carry me.”
“Why not?”
Emma looked him straight in the eye. “Because I’m fat.” There. She’d said it. It was a test and they both knew it.
“You’re lush.” Emma hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she noticed his gaze had drifted down to her breasts, which were in danger of popping out of the neckline of her blouse. “Voluptuous. Hell, darlin’, if you’d lived back in pagan times, you’d have been declared a major goddess.”
Well. That was definitely not what she’d been expecting to hear.
“Here’s how we’ll do it,” he said with the absolute self-confidence she suspected had allowed him to believe a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks in Nowhereville, Louisiana, could become the hottest hunk in Hollywood. “I’ll come around to the driver’s side. You’ll get out and wrap those long gorgeous legs around my waist.”
He skimmed a hand up her leg in a slow, hot path. “Then, if I can resist takin’ you against the car, in the rain, like we almost did back there along the road, we’ll make it inside without messin’ up those pretty girly shoes or gettin’ hit by lightning.”
Feeling as if the lightning scenario had already happened, leaving her tingling from the inside out, Emma agreed.
Scarlett O’Hara, eat your heart out. Emma had always thought Rhett sweeping his unruly wife into his arms and up that famous movie staircase, was one of the most erotic moments in movies. But if Rhett had carried Scarlett the way Gabe was holding her—pelvis to pelvis, his hands digging into her bottom, the rock hard bulge of his erection thrusting against her crotch, her legs twined around him as the rain came down so hard and hot she feared she might dissolve from lust—they’d have never made it to the bedroom because Rhett would’ve taken Scarlett right there on those stairs. And she would have helped him.
Emma felt a momentary stab of loss when he put her back on her feet once they got to the porch so he could retrieve the key from above the lintel.
After warning herself that it was her last chance to back out, she took the hand Gabe held out to her and walked through the open door.
Gabe flicked the light switch by the door. Nothing.
“The electricity’s out.” Which wasn’t any big surprise. Power was iffy this far from civilization. Especially during a storm.
It had been out that night, he remembered. When Emma had brought him here after the doctor had stitched up the slice made to his cheek by his father’s state football championship ring. Having been drunk as usual, Claude had tracked him down after the graduation ceremonies. Having never made it out of Blue Bayou himself, he was damned if he’d let his kid get away.
If Emma, who’d been taking pictures at the cotillion, hadn’t come along when she had, Gabe probably would have killed the bastard. Which would’ve landed his father in Paupers’ Field years earlier, and him in Angola.
“Fortunately, I came prepared.” He dug a lighter from the pocket of his jeans and began lighting the candles kept on hand for just such contingencies. Then, once the living room and adjoining bedroom were bathed in a flickering yellow glow, Gabe turned toward Emma, drinking in the sight of her rich, ripe body, showcased by the clinging silk.
Because his mouth was hungry for the once forbidden taste of her luscious lips, his hands desperate to explore every inch of her plush breasts, and his throbbing erection aching to bury itself deep inside her, he forced himself to back away. To take his time. To this time, do things right.
Gabe realized she’d mistaken his hesitation for second thoughts when she dragged a hand through her tangled hair.
“I must look like a drowned cat.”
Something in his heart turned over. “There you go, being too hard on yourself, chère.”
Gabe had never considered himself a particularly sensitive person, but he would have had to have been dense as a stone not to understand some of what Emma was feeling.
Knowing that the lingering bit of insecurity was a legacy from that stick-thin, ice-hearted bitch of a mother who’d threatened to have his “trailer trash Cajun ass” thrown in jail if he ever so much as laid a finger on Emma, Gabe vowed that before tonight was over, Emma would realize exactly how desirable she was.
He pushed some wild curls away from her face, then lifted her round chin. “You look wet, you. And fuckin’ hot.”
“This is too fast,” she said on a quick, shuddering breath as he bent closer. “Too much.”
“No, ma belle.” He touched his mouth to hers. Her lips were soft as thistledown, as potent as whiskey. “It’s not nearly enough.”
The blood was pounding in his head. His cock.
God help him, he’d tried. She was right about things having gone too fast. Emma wasn’t some one-night stand he’d picked up in a Melrose Avenue bar. She deserved better than a quick, hard, anonymous roll in the sheets.
After nearly taking her against the car, Gabe had vowed to slow things down. To take his time; do thin
gs right.
But he hadn’t counted on her twining her arms around his neck. Or smashing her breasts hard against his chest as her hungry mouth opened beneath his.
Half crazed, desperate to touch her, he peeled away the wet silk from her skin.
“Lift your arms.”
She did as instructed, allowing him to yank the blouse over her head and onto the floor.
Lacy cups framed her voluptuous breasts. Forget the Grand Canyon or Victoria Falls. Emma’s breasts were the true natural wonders of the world. And even more amazingly, unlike all the ones he’d come across the past few years in California, they were real.
“Damn, Emma.” He cupped her breasts in his hands, embracing the warm weight of them. “You’re wearing white lace.”
“Colored would’ve looked tacky beneath the blouse.”
“You couldn’t look tacky if you tried.” Well, there was that fantasy of her wearing those black boots. Which wasn’t so much tacky, he decided, as hot. Hot and wicked. “Do the panties match?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.” He rocked forward on the toes of his boots, kissed her. “I fantasized about this,” he murmured as he skimmed a fingertip over the white lace flowers covering her taut nipples.
“You fantasized about me?” Her eyes, which had fluttered down to half-mast, opened.
“Kinda.” His touch circled, teased. Her nipples were the color of ripe strawberries, which brought up a fantasy of spreading chocolate on those amazing breasts and licking it off.
“After my fictional fiancée broke our fake engagement by telling the world I had certain, uh, predilections of the kinky kind, women started bombarding my house with panties.”
He slipped the straps over her shoulders. “They came FedEx, UPS, in the U.S. mail.” While his hands stayed busy with her breasts, his lips nuzzled her neck. “Some ladies were more direct and just tossed them over my gate.”
“Those weren’t ladies.”
He chuckled. “At least not proper Southern ones,” he agreed. He kissed her collarbone. “Most of the panties were black.” Her shoulder. “The rest were red.” The crest of her breast and inhaled her scent. “I was thinkin’ it’d be nice if just one of those women had decided to show off her softer side.” His lips dipped into the cleavage framed by the white lace. “And talk about soft.”
Emma trembled as his tongue stroked over her straining nipple.
“Bon Dieu, you are one tasty female.”
“It’s the lotion.” Emma gasped when his teeth closed around a tightened nipple and tugged. “Roxi blended it especially for me. From essential oil of peaches, vanilla, and coconut.”
“What I’m tastin’ sure isn’t peaches. You taste like temptation, you. And sex. I’ve a mind to lick you all over.”
Her skirt had an elastic waist, and fastened with a hook-and-eye and zipper in the back. Proving himself to be a man who definitely knew his way around women’s clothing, he dispatched the hook with a simple twist of the fingers.
Emma drew in a sharp breath when his knuckles brushed against the bare skin of her back.
The sexy sound of the zipper, slowly lowering, tooth by tooth, had her wet with wanting.
The silk skirt whispered over her skin as it slid down her thighs to pool on the floor at her feet, leaving her standing there, in the center of the cabin, barely clad in a bra that was clinging to the tips of her breasts, a pair of panties, and those shoes, which must make her look like a porno actress in one of those Voluptuous Vixens DVDs she’d seen for rent in the back room of the Video Express.
Some women—like Roxi—might be able to get away with wearing barely there underwear and high heels. Emma had never believed herself to be one of them.
“Don’t,” he murmured when one hand instinctively went to her breasts, the other to conceal her crotch. “Don’t cover up anything. And don’t move. I want to see you.”
Well, that was sure as hell going to blow her midnight-stuck-in-a-cabin-with-Gabe-Broussard fantasy right out of the water.
He was standing there, taking her in, studying her slowly, silently, as if memorizing every curve.
“I don’t think this is such a good—”
“Shh.” He touched a finger to her lips, forestalling her complaint at being looked at like a…what?
A sex object.
Which was impossible. No one had ever looked at her in this scorchingly hungry way Gabriel was looking at her. If even the smallest percent of what the tabloids were always saying was true, Gabe had slept with some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. In the entire world. Women with “buns of steel” asses, Bowflex-tight stomachs, and pert, perfect breasts.
Emma didn’t even want to think about how she might compare to all those past lovers.
It had been hard enough to make the decision to throw caution to the wind and sleep with Gabriel. To stand still for such an intense study from a man whose beautifully formed physique could have been immortalized in marble and gleaming bronze, chipped away at Emma’s hard-won confidence.
“You are,” he said, “without a doubt, the most—”
Fat, her mind jumped ahead of his words. Though she doubted it’d help all that much, Emma sucked in her oh-sonotflat stomach.
“Female woman I’ve ever seen.” His eyes, which lust had darkened to nearly a midnight black, looked into hers as he fondled her heavy breasts. “J’aimete faire l’amour avec toi.” His deep voice was as thick as gumbo. “I wanna make love to you the way a woman like you deserves to be made love to.”
Emma trembled when he ran those treacherously clever hands hand down her sides, then back down her spine, over the curve of her bottom.
“You’ve got a great ass, you.” He splayed the fingers of both hands over each cheek, began kneading her flesh. Her white, abundant flesh.
“A big ass, you mean.”
Emma wished she could take the words back the instant she’d heard them escape her lips. Talk about ruining the mood!
His fingers tightened. “I don’t ever want to hear anyone put you down.” He pressed her against him, hard. The bulge straining against the faded denim had the metal buttons pressing into her stomach. “Not even you, chère.” He thrust his hand between them, breaching the white stretch lace of her panties to tangle in the moist curls. “I wanted to take things slow. But I’m afraid this first time’s going to be a hard, fast fuck.” His free hand tangled in her hair, pulling her head back. “So if that’s not what you want…”
She was burning from the inside out. If he didn’t take her soon, Emma feared she’d self-combust. “Oh, God, yes.”
Chapter Nine
Gabe’s mouth took hers in a hard, claiming kiss, his tongue sweeping deep, mating with hers as he lifted her off her feet and carried her into the adjoining bedroom. The sweet-smelling mattress, stuffed with Spanish moss and herbs, gave way as they tumbled onto it, mouths fused, arms and legs entwined.
His mouth left hers to blaze a path down her throat, her breasts, her torso, with hot, openmouthed kisses that scorched her skin and made her blood flame.
Outside the cabin, the rain beat a strong, steady percussion on the tin roof. Inside, a storm swirled.
The last of Emma’s clothes, and all of Gabe’s, were ripped away, as if by gale-force winds. He proved to be a ruthless lover, forceful, demanding. His teeth scraped against her inner thighs, drawing a ragged moan from deep in her throat. He brushed a thumb over her swollen clit, then parted the wet pink folds of her ultrasensitive labia, spreading the moisture, exciting her, preparing her.
There was thunder. Emma could hear it in her heart, which was pounding so hard and so loud she was certain he must be able to hear it. There was lightning, blindingly bright, but she couldn’t tell whether it was outside the cabin or inside her mind.
Another tempest, more dangerous than the one conjured up by Mother Nature, swirled in the dark eyes that were watching her face intently as he slid first one finger, then another, deep inside he
r.
And when his hands dug into her hips, and he lifted her to his mouth to feast, the already all-consuming storm intensified.
Around Emma.
Inside her.
She writhed beneath him, her wet hair whipping across the bed as her head thrashed back and forth.
“More.” The ragged word was half plea, half demand as she ground her mound against his ravenous mouth. “Please. I need…I want…”
Before her passion-hazed mind could fully form the coherent plea, Gabe’s fiendishly talented tongue took one last, long, lascivious swath. She screamed his name, a full-throated scream of release that echoed out over the bayou.
Her tremors had not yet subsided when Gabe yanked open the condom he’d taken earlier from his jeans pocket. On some distant level, as he rolled the latex over his straining penis to the crisp dark hair at the broad base, Emma was grateful that one of them had thought of protection.
Taking hold of her ankles, he spread her legs wider, exposing her more fully. He was poised over her like a sleek jungle cat, every muscle taut, his dark flesh gleaming with a sheen of sweat, his sheathed erection jutting out with primal intensity.
He lifted her legs, hooking them over his shoulders.
Emma had never felt more exposed. Nor more aroused.
“Do you have any idea what I want from you?”
“No.” She could barely hear her whispered answer over the hammering of rain on the roof and the pounding of blood in her ears.
His smile was swift. Carnal.
“Everything.”
Gabe plunged into her with one strong swift stroke, slamming up against her cervix with a strength that ripped a hoarse cry from her ravished lips.
“Damn.” He sucked in a deep, shuddering breath she could feel inside her. The muscles in his arms stood out in rigid relief as he braced himself above her body. “Are you okay?”