by Nikita Black
"You were!" Mama Breaux said, with eyes narrowed and once again pointed her finger at Sahara. "You were! Until she came along."
It was a railroad job. Pure and simple. It didn't matter that everyone in the room knew the truth, Mama Breaux had it in her head he was to marry this woman and dat was dat.
Nobody disobeyed Mama Breaux.
Nobody.
"I haven't been a virgin for twenty years," he asserted half-heartedly, the fight going out of him.
With defiance in her beady gaze, Mama Breaux demanded, "So you deny she forced you?"
Sahara sputtered.
"Of course I deny it!" he said.
"Samuel!" Triumphantly, Mama Breaux turned to Sahara's young guard. "Tell everyone how you foun' dem when you went to get dem tonight!"
Jacque shut his eyes and groaned. They were so screwed.
"The woman had him tied to a chair." Samuel began, pausing dramatically as a murmur spread through the crowd. "Naked."
The murmurs turned to chuckles and bawdy comments until Mama Breaux shushed them all. Samuel concluded, "She'd just finished—" his cheek twitched and he shot Jacque a nervous glance "—er, going…um, doing things to him."
"Had Jacque said anything to her before dis?"
"He tol' her to stop, dat she was killin' him."
Mama Breaux turned back to him, moving in close. "You deny dese words?"
"No. Non. But—"
"Ah! Den there is nothin' else but she must make it right. She must marry you, to save your honor!"
"No!" Sahara's angry cries echoed through the room as she fought to free herself from her captors. "No!"
She looked so sexy in her furor, hair flying, her eyes sparking fire and her pretty breasts bouncing enticingly under her thin T-shirt. For a split second, he was so entranced the thought hit him how lucky he was to have such a lusciously exciting bride.
Merde, he was as crazy as the rest of them!
Her yelling continued. "This is ridiculous! I refuse to be a part of this farce! I can't marry anyone, I have a home! A job! You can't make me!"
A man in a smart khaki uniform stepped forward. "I'm afraid we can, young lady," he said sternly.
Police Chief Legrand. The old bat had gotten the law on her side. And the fact was, there were real laws against the sort of thing they'd been accused of. Unmarried fornication, certain acts of sex considered by some as unnatural—there were any number of local ordinances against such moral offenses. Forced marriage as a punishment wouldn't be found in any law book, but a judge in these parts had wide discretion in meting out justice. Jacque noticed Judge Thibodeaux standing right behind Chief Legrand and clamped his jaw tight.
"We will proceed with the ceremony," Mama Breaux crowed in triumph. "Remove her clothes!"
Sahara let out a strangled gasp. "This is barbaric!" She appealed to him, her eyes wide with disbelief.
He licked his lips, all of a sudden torn between cool reason and an unexpected, fierce selfishness that exploded over him. He realized with scary intensity that he wanted this woman. Wanted her with an obsession he'd never before experienced.
Maybe, if she were forced to stay for a while, she'd change her mind about him. About the life she'd planned. That she'd grow to want him more than her prestigious career and fancy three-story mansion on the water.
Again, his hesitation was duly noted. Mama Breaux squeezed his hand and peered up into his eyes. "Search your soul, mon fils. Do you wish to have this woman?"
Le bon Dieu mait la main. God help him, he did.
She looked at him slyly, then limped to Sahara and lifted her T-shirt a few inches. She placed her wrinkled hand on Sahara's stomach. "An' do you wish to have the black-eyed child I see in her belly?"
A child!?
His gaze dropped to Sahara's exposed abdomen, then darted up to her astonished eyes. A child would change everything. There was no way he'd let her go if a child were involved.
She shook her head vigorously. "I'm not pregnant," she rasped. "You know I'm not. We've been careful. Jacque, please, don't do this to me."
Mama Breaux was never wrong.
He wanted Sahara desperately, and he wanted her with his child even more.
His will solidified. "It's best this way, chère," he said with a growing certainty that what he was about to do was the right thing. If she still didn't agree after a few weeks, and if she wasn't pregnant, then he'd let her go, and deal with the consequences.
Turning to Mama Breaux and Sahara's guards, he let the gavel fall on their sentence.
"C'est bien. Go ahead. Take off her clothes."
Chapter Six
Sahara felt the walls close in, blocking every sound but the humiliated cry that came from her own mouth.
She struggled to cover herself as Quint ripped off her T-shirt and Samuel dragged down her shorts. She swore and called Jacque every bad name she'd ever known, inventing a few new ones for good measure.
It wasn't the ludicrous marriage part that upset her so much—there was such a thing as divorce, even in Louisiana. But being stripped bare in front of a couple hundred witnesses—that was going too far.
Despite her best efforts, Quint and Samuel easily finished peeling off her clothes and held her tightly by the wrists, stretching her out between them like a cross.
She didn't care that everyone in the place seemed to think being naked in front of each other was perfectly normal. Before yesterday, only four people had ever seen her nude, and that included her parents. It was mortifying to have scores of people gawking at her from every possible angle.
The crowd moved in, tightening the circle around the five of them.
"You going to let Quint take my clothes off regularly?" she spit at Jacque, furious with him for subjecting her to this humiliation, "or just on special occasions like your wedding?"
"Quint won' ever touch you again," he said in carefully measured tones, but the hot ferocity flashing in his eyes belied his true response to her accusation.
He stood arrogantly, feet splayed and head held high, studying her with a look of intense possessiveness carved on his handsome features. His gaze stroked over her curves proudly, like he was enjoying showing her off to the other men, knowing he was the only one who'd have the right to claim her. His expression declared loudly he'd tear the heart out of anyone who tried.
She knew instinctively he'd lay down his life to protect her, and the thought thrilled her on some primitive level she was horrified to realize she possessed.
She could still smell his sex on her skin, potent and heady. It called to her to surrender, to lie down willingly beneath his body and be kept by him forever, safe and sated. Her nipples tightened wantonly and an unexpected coil of desire tightened deep in her womb for this gorgeous, forceful man who would be her husband.
Disconcerted by her powerful reaction to him, she tore her gaze away and glanced at the surrounding crowd. They were all ogling her exposed body, the women with scowls on their faces, and the men... well, the men drooled. With voracious eyes, they scrutinized her breasts and probed the blonde triangle between her legs, mouths parted like hungry wolves.
It should be a nightmare. Like one of those awful dreams where you find yourself naked in the middle of your high school reunion or at a crowded shopping mall.
It should be.
But it wasn't.
A wave of uncontrolled excitement purled through her whole body, heating her face, turning her knees to liquid. Churning in her woman's center.
Oh, God. It wasn't possible! This couldn't be turning her on—not being displayed like some bronze nude at a New York gallery. It was unthinkable! Her cheeks blazed, along with the slick valley between her thighs.
At that moment, Mama Breaux began walking around her, chanting in some strange language, gesturing and making mysterious signs with her hands.
Jacque didn't even blink. It was as if all this were perfectly acceptable to him. The forced marriage. Her nakedness. She couldn't believe he w
as going along with this whole outrageous farce. There'd be hell to pay when she got him home.
Mama Breaux's chanting abruptly stopped. At a sign from the old lady, Quint and Samuel pulled Sahara to Jacque and thrust her into his waiting grasp. She wriggled furiously, struggling to free herself, but his muscular arm bound her to his chest, front to front, like a steel manacle.
"Your bride comes to you with nothing, Jacque Cherchat. You must take care of her needs and teach her our ways. Give her lots of babies so she stays home as a good woman should."
"I will," Jacque answered somberly, quieting her with a stroke of his hand on her hip. Pressing her into him, he deliberately let her know how aroused he was. The rough denim of his jeans scraped over the sensitive skin of her stomach, sending tremors down her already needy body. He held her there, center to center, and regarded her with knowing intent. "You can be sure I'll take very good care of her."
He bent to claim a kiss.
His mouth was hot and determined, just as he seemed to be to go through with this coerced marriage. His hand slid up her torso and settled on her breast, kneading and squeezing, flicking his thumb over her beaded tip. Unable to resist his touch, she bit back a moan. All her unrequited desire from their earlier lovemaking returned in a shockwave of craving.
"Ah, chère," he whispered, sensing her response. He deepened his kiss.
If he'd lowered her onto one of the tables, parted her legs, and taken her in front of everyone, he couldn't have demonstrated his mastery over her body any more thoroughly. She had to fight to keep from rubbing against him like a cat, begging him to do just that.
"This won't make any difference," she gasped breathlessly into his plundering mouth. "I'll still leave in the morning."
He lifted his head and gave her an annoyingly unconcerned look. "You can try."
"You're crazy, you know that?"
A smile curved his sensual lips. "Oh, yeah." He looked at the crowd surrounding them and called out, "Where's Father de Fleur?"
"Here." A middle-aged, portly man in black and a collar stepped from between the onlookers. He gave Jacque a pleasant nod of greeting. "Glad to see you're finally settling down, Jacque. It's about time you got yourself a wife."
Sahara's nerves wound even tighter as she felt the trap close around her. Being the man's ardent lover was one thing, being his wife quite another.
"Doesn't the church frown on its clergymen marrying people against their will?" she suggested scornfully. "With the help of voodoo priestesses?"
"As ye reap, so shall ye sow," he simply said.
Whatever that was supposed to mean. "What about the banns?" she demanded. She was grasping at straws and she knew it.
"I distinctly remember posting them, twice. Does anyone remember seeing them?"
A chorus of agreement swept through the room and she clenched her jaw in vexation.
What was wrong with these people? Were they living in a time-warp? Things like this couldn't happen in this century!
Jacque addressed the crowd. "It would appear I need a dress for my bride. Who's got somethin' in white?"
After a moment of general confusion, two young women were pushed to the front. One had on a white tank top and the other a white knit mini-skirt.
"Those'll do." He fished into his pocket and extracted a stack of money in a clip. Without loosening his grip on her, he passed a bill to each of the women, who promptly pulled off their white garments and handed them to him. Sahara rolled her eyes when nobody reacted to the two standing there in their underwear.
"What about the veil?" someone shouted. "She needs a veil for afterwards!"
She vaguely remembered something she'd heard about pinning money on the bride's veil at a Cajun wedding.
Jacques grinned. "Never mind the veil. I'll see she gets all the money she needs." He shook out the rest of the cash from his clip, then tossed it to the man she recognized as the bartender. "But we will need a wedding feast, Claude."
Stunned, she realized it was a stack of hundred dollar bills he'd thrown.
Jacque looked down at her. "Now, would you like to get dressed?"
"What do you think?" she retorted, irritation distracting her from wondering how he could possibly be carrying that much cash.
"Ask me pretty and I might let you."
"Go fuck yourself, Cherchat."
He chuckled, slipped the mini-skirt over her head and tugged it down. "Jus' go with it, chère. There's nothin' either one of us can do 'bout it now."
"No thanks to you," she muttered caustically, and sucked in a breath when he caressed her breasts as he pulled the tank top on.
"Give me a chance," he whispered in her ear, pinching the aching crowns. "I might just grow on you." He turned her to face the priest, clamped her against the front of his chest and announced, "We're ready."
The ceremony must have been the quick version. She kept listening for the place where someone could raise objections or forever hold their peace, but apparently the priest felt it best to skip over that part. Within two minutes flat, he was at the vows.
"Do you...?"
"Sahara Jensen," Jacque helpfully supplied.
"Do you, Sahara Jensen, take this man, Jacque Martine Andreus Cherchat, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
"Not a chance in h—"
Jacque's hand slapped over her mouth. "She does," he replied, untroubled by her resistance.
She bit him. He didn't even flinch. Calmly, he said, "I do," when asked if he'd take her.
She couldn't believe it. She was married to a man she'd only met the day before.
"Rings?" the preacher asked with a hint of apology, considering the circumstances.
For the first time, Jacque looked stumped. "Well, let's see now." He glanced at his hands, patted his pockets, then pursed his lips. Suddenly, a grin broke out over his face. "I know." He pointed to the bar and said, "Bring me a couple bottles of Cajun Hot."
Carefully, he pulled the tiny circular labels from the slim necks of the two small bottles, slipped one on her ring finger and another on his left pinkie.
Good lord. She'd heard of cigar band weddings, but hot sauce labels? Oh, brother. The perfect final touch to the proceedings. The spectators actually clapped.
"You may kiss the bride."
Without losing his grip on her, Sahara's new husband turned her in his arms and before she could protest brushed his lips over hers.
"This is ridiculous," she said between gritted teeth as the crowd booed and called for a more substantial show of affection from the groom. "This marriage can't possibly be legal."
He pulled her closer, tipping up her chin with his fingers. "We'll talk about it later." He lowered his mouth to hers and nibbled her bottom lip. "For now, jus' pretend you love me."
His sensual, talented mouth covered hers and, for a moment, she couldn't think. Could only feel what this incredible man did to her, inside and out.
Pretend she loved him?
Would it be such a stretch?
Annoyed? Without a doubt. But she had to smile at his sheer audacity.
"Dat's better," he murmured into her mouth. "I like it much better when you're smilin'."
He held her tight and kissed her until there was no doubt in anyone's mind, least of all hers, that he was master of her flesh, owner of her desire, lord of her body's response.
She blamed it on her own brazen seduction of his flawless masculinity earlier, on her flagrantly unsatisfied lust, on the way the curves of her body fit so very perfectly with his. For, suddenly, she wanted to go along with his command. To pretend, just for a while, that she loved him to distraction and wanted nothing more than to stay and be his wife and lover.
The kiss ended and he looked into her eyes, sensing the change in her, his own need written exquisitely in the droop of his eyelids, the glittering black of his gaze, the tense slash of his kiss-reddened lips. The possessiveness haunting his eyes was intoxicating. Shivers of goosebumps cascaded down her whole body, kn
owing she was the one who did this to him.
"Just for tonight," she warned, and his answering smile was rife with promise.
He didn't let go of her all evening. Always, he had a proprietary arm about her, or hand on her, or his body pressed against hers as they talked, danced, drank and ate with his friends and family. She didn't say much, preferring simply to watch and feel, smell and taste whatever he presented for her enjoyment. Indeed, he took great pains to please her.
Their wedding feast was a banquet of pleasures.
Flowers appeared from nowhere and exotic greens were gathered from the surrounding swamps and cypress wood. Orchids the likes of which she'd never seen suddenly perfumed the air, stuck in canning jars on the scarred tables. Big pots and platters of delectable-smelling foods were lined on the bar in a savory smorgasbord of Southern specialties, with a few Mexican and Chinese dishes thrown in for good measure. The bartender kept drinks flowing freely. Musical instruments were produced, and an impromptu band took the rickety stage, filling the seedy roadhouse with the sweet sounds of a traditional Cajun waltz.
Jacque took her hand and led her to the uneven wooden dance floor, gathered her in his arms and twirled her out to the strains of the romantic tune.
"Are we havin' fun yet, chère?" he asked with a wink. His hand moved seductively over her bottom.
"Beast," she muttered, but reluctantly allowed, "I hate to admit it, but yes, once I got over the shock of being dangled naked in front of two hundred people, I've been having a wonderful time."
He laughed softly. "You looked so delectable danglin' there naked I almost came in my jeans."
She harumphed, hiding a smile, unwilling to confess how aroused she'd also been with everyone's eyes on her—especially his.
"I'm glad you're havin' a good time. It'd be such a shame not to enjoy your own weddin'." He pulled her against him, sharing just how close he still was to coming in his jeans. "Not to mention your wedding night."
"Now, that I'm counting on," she said, trailing a lingering kiss over his strong jaw. His fingers slipped under the hem of her miniskirt and stroked the back of her thigh. They hadn't given back her panties, she suddenly realized. His hand crept higher over her bare skin.