by Nancy Warren
That was true enough. Although he enjoyed acting, he was beginning to tire of living in some other character’s skin for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. And then there was the issue of control. It wasn’t that he was a control freak or anything—hell, damn straight he was.
There wasn’t much in the movie business under anyone’s control. It was, he’d often considered, like playing one of those flying trapeze artists without a net. But directing offered more opportunity for calling the shots than acting ever would.
“How would you like to star in my first film?” Encouraged that she hadn’t yanked the slit in her skirt closed, he trailed his fingers up petal-soft skin.
“You want me to star in a porno film?”
“An erotic film,” he corrected huskily, getting turned on by the imagined sight of a nude Emma in his viewfinder. “One with limited distribution. Just the two of us.”
“I don’t think—”
“I’ll take a page from Gauguin’s book and film you outdoors,” he said reflectively, overriding her refusal as creative wheels started turning. The more Gabe thought about it, the more it seemed like a perfect way to while away the days he was going to be stuck out in the bayou.
“Maybe on that old swing at the camp, lying on your back, your hair loose, flowing over your breasts, your rosy pink nipples thrusting through those long wild curls.”
With his free hand, he plucked the clip from her hair, allowing the curls to tumble riotously free, shining like a bright copper penny in the stuttering rays of sun managing to break through the gathering clouds.
“Gabe.” His name shuddered out from between glossy pink lips. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what, chère? Don’t touch you?” When his fingers continued their sensual quest, she trembled, but did not pull away. “Don’t imagine how you’d look, with the sun setting at your back, your long sexy legs spread over the wooden arms of the swing, your lower lips all lush and wet, and—”
“Dammit, Gabriel,” she complained. “Please.”
“Please, oui?” He skimmed a feathery touch back down to her knee, this time on the inside of her thigh, and watched her unconsciously rub her thighs together.
Gabe wanted to be there.
Between those long, wraparound legs.
Inside her.
“Or please, non?”
“How am I supposed to think when you’re doing that”—she arched her back against his touch as he lightly scraped the warming flesh with a fingernail—“let alone drive.”
Realizing that if he wasn’t careful, he could be responsible for them ending up in the water, Gabe reluctantly reclaimed his hand and turned back to the idea of filming Emma in the throes of passion.
“You’ll need to be eating something. An apple fits Gauguin’s Eve in the Garden of Eden theme, but it’s too clichéd,” he said thoughtfully, getting into the idea as creative juices stirred along with sexual ones. “A ripe peach.” He nodded, pleased with the notion. “I’ll feed it to you. Then lick the sweet, sticky juice off your sun-warmed naked flesh.”
She actually moaned. The same way he imagined she would if he were trailing his tongue down her torso, over the soft feminine swell of her stomach. Then beyond.
He was about to tell her just to pull over to the side of the road, when the front tire suddenly started going thump thump thump.
“Damn.” The mood was shattered. Emma hit the steering wheel with the palm of her hand as she pulled over to the side of the road. “That’s all we need,” she complained. “That storm’s getting closer, and this time of day, it’ll take the auto club at least an hour to get out here from the city.”
“No problem.” It took all his acting talent to keep his tone even when what he wanted to do was bang his head against the dashboard at the way she’d been yanked out of the sensual spell his seductive words had wrapped around them. “You’ve got yourself a spare, right?”
“Well, of course, but—”
“I haven’t changed a tire since my old days working at Dix’s Automotive. But I’ll bet it’s one of those things you don’t forget. Like ridin’ a bicycle.” He winked at her. “Or sex.”
Now that the moment had been lost, the thing to do was get the damn tire changed so they could get to the camp.
Where he and the luscious, soft-skinned, sweet-smelling Emma Quinlan could begin driving each other crazy.
Five
As Gabe took the jack from the Miata’s trunk, Emma tried to remember her former husband ever doing anything more physical than swinging a golf club and came up blank.
Richard had been too busy stealing money from his employer—who just happened to be his father-in-law—and screwing the bimbo to help out with any chores.
Now, watching Gabe work, she decided that there was something to be said for having a male around the house to do those manly things. Like change a tire. Mow the lawn. Tie you up.
Tie you up? Where had that come from?
From that damn Jean Lafitte movie. Emma had known she was in trouble the minute it had come up in the conversation and was vastly relieved that there was no way Gabe would ever know she’d sat in the dark of the Bijou, popcorn going uneaten, as she’d watched his larger-than-life character throw that woman over his shoulder, then leap from her husband’s Spanish galleon to his own ship that was flying the bloodred flag feared throughout southern waters.
His captive had fought like a wildcat, kicking, biting, scratching, her nails leaving a scarlet trail down the dark skin of his back. But she’d been no match for the rapacious rogue. Nor her own rioting female desires. By the time the actress was bucking beneath him, opening herself up to his invasion, Emma’s panties had been drenched and her legs so weak, she’d had to stay seated until long after the credits had rolled and the theater emptied.
That night she’d dreamed of being held hostage by a pirate, who, unsurprisingly, looked exactly like Gabriel Broussard. Dressed in a pirate’s black shirt, tight trousers, and high black leather boots, he’d tied her to the mast of his ship, his strong hands claiming her body at will, while his low, rumbling voice told her all the things he intended to do to her.
Wicked, outrageous things. Things that shocked her. Shamed her. And, dammit, excited her.
Just remembering that movie, and the dream, along with the scandalous way she’d allowed him to touch her in the car, was enough to make her so hot she was surprised she wasn’t liquidizing from the inside out.
Watching him work wasn’t helping. Who’d have guessed that changing a flat tire could be such a turn-on? As he crouched down and loosened the lug nuts with a speedy efficiency that a NASCAR pit mechanic might have envied, the faded denim pulled tight against strong, muscular thighs in a way that had Emma imagining naughty things. Kinky things.
She was used to seeing men without clothes on. Her days, after all, were spent with nude men who wore nothing but a towel and a blissful expression as her hands brought them to ecstasy. Or, as close to it as a person could get without having sex.
But, Emma was discovering, there was a huge difference between nude and naked. Nude was when a man wasn’t wearing clothes. Naked was when he wasn’t wearing clothes and was up to no good.
And, heaven help her, naked was how she wanted Gabe.
When he bent over to jack up the wheel, any lingering desire to kick his butt evaporated. It was a gold medal, world-class butt and what Emma wanted to do, was aching to do, was bite it.
Do it, that devilish Samantha perched on her damp shoulder, advised.
I can’t just maul him!
“What world do you live in, chica?” A new voice, sounding a lot like Gabrielle, from Desperate Housewives, chimed in.
Terrific. Now they were ganging up on her.
“It’s not that easy, dammit.” Emma was appalled when she heard the words come out of her mouth.
“Something wrong?” Gabe glanced back at her.
“No.” She forced a smile. “I was just saying that didn’t look very
easy.”
He shrugged. “Like I said, some things you never forget. Who’d have thought a past working as a grease monkey would ever come in handy?”
Thunder rumbled ominously on the horizon; black clouds raced in from the Gulf. The dense air was thick enough to drink. As he returned to work, sweat dampened his shirt, causing it to cling to his back, revealing every corded muscle. More muscles bunched in his arms as he pumped the jack.
Lightning crackled across the darkening sky. Emma could taste the electricity on her tongue, beneath her skin, scorching along her nerve endings. She’d lived in south Louisiana all of her life. She was accustomed to the heat and constant humidity. But never had she been so hot she felt on the verge of fainting.
Her head grew light. White spots, like paper-winged moths, fluttered in front of her eyes. She placed a hand against the back fender of the Miata to steady herself. Gabe, who’d replaced the flat with the spare and was tightening the lug nuts, glanced up at her.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Of course.”
If you didn’t count the fact that she was on the verge of falling flat on her face. Her hair was clinging to her forehead; more unruly curls had escaped to stick to the back of her damp neck. Swaying a bit, she tried to brush it away with the hand that wasn’t holding onto the car for dear life, but her fingers were shaking.
Deep blue eyes framed by long, sooty lashes that would have appeared feminine were it not for the lean, hungry lines of his face, studied Emma with an intensity that did nothing to help clear her head.
“You look as if you’re about to pass out, mon ange.”
He’d called her his angel that night. When he’d drawn her down onto that mattress and kissed her. A deep, searing kiss that had scorched away a lifetime of inhibitions. A kiss she’d been fantasizing about since she’d been twelve years old. But the reality had far surpassed those romantic, junior high school daydreams.
“I’ve never fainted in my life.” The spots swirled like snowflakes as she tossed her head.
“There’s always a first time for everything.”
He tossed aside the jack, stood up and curled his hands around her upper arms to steady her.
The wind picked up, rattling the sugar cane in the fields on either side of the road. “You’re tremblin’ like a willow in a hurricane, you.”
Emma was far from willowy, but at this moment, with this man, she felt strangely, uncharacteristically fragile.
“You scared of storms, chère?”
“No.” She swallowed.
“You’re not scared of me?” His hands were moving up and down her arms, the gesture, which was meant to soothe, made her ache with the need to feel them everywhere.
“No.” She shook her head.
Emma was afraid of herself. Of this dizzying, hot way only this man had ever made her feel. Despite her little internal pep talk about rejection being no big deal, the truth was that while Richard’s very public affair had wounded her pride, Gabe’s taking off without so much as a good-bye kiss had been like an arrow shot into the center of her heart.
It had taken her a long time to get over that night; now, what she feared was risking her foolish heart again.
She lifted her hand, skimmed her fingers over his face. Even with that scar cutting across his cheekbone, it was beautiful, the face of a fallen angel which could have been washed off the ceiling of a cathedral.
“Should I be? Afraid of you?”
“Mais, non.” He touched her in turn, his fingertips feeling like sparklers as they traced the line of her mouth, brushed her cheek, her temple, into her hair. “I’d never hurt you, Emma.”
But he would. Oh, he honestly wouldn’t mean to. But she could see the heartache coming as clearly as the storm barreling toward them across the bayou.
As she felt herself drowning in the midnight blue of his eyes, Emma suspected that the pain could be well worth the risk.
Lightning forked across the sky, sparking inside her. The rumbling answer of thunder was echoed in Emma’s own heart as she stood there, looking up at him, knowing that her wildly foolish heart was glowing, unguarded, in her eyes.
He framed her face with his hands. “I’m going to kiss you now, chère.” His deep voice was tender, yet roughened with arousal.
Emma had to remind herself to breathe as his mouth, slowly, inexorably, moved downward, toward hers.
Having never forgotten the last time they’d been together, she braced herself for the heat.
Six
Prepared for an invasion of teeth and tongue, Emma was surprised when he began kissing her gently—little licks and nips up her cheek, over her eyelids, which closed at the touch of his lips, her temple, the hollow beneath her lower lip—which no other man had ever taken the time to discover—was somehow directly connected to that hot, damp place between her legs.
“Gabe?”
“What, chère?”
The tip of his tongue touched hers, then retreated, while he trailed a hand down her throat, to where she knew he could feel the out-of-control beat of her blood.
Her arms felt heavy as she lifted them, linking her fingers together behind his neck. “I thought you were going to kiss me.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“But I want . . .”
Her voice trailed off as his caressing touch dipped into the warmth between her breasts.
“What do you want, Emma?”
Taking hold of her hair, he pulled her head back, to give his mouth access to her throat.
“I want you to really kiss me.”
She felt his smile against her tingling lips.
Then his tongue thrust between her lips, sweeping deep to mate with hers, and his mouth, which had been so gentle only a moment before, ground against hers hard enough to bruise, the plundering kiss one of raw, sexual possession.
“Mon Dieu, you taste good,” he rasped as he pinned her between the hot metal of the car and the even greater heat of his body. “I could eat you up.”
She wrapped a leg around his; her skirt fell open, baring her thigh all the way up to her panties and she managed to get a hand between them, curving her fingers around his length.
“You’re killing me here, Emma,” he groaned when she began stroking the erection that swelled even larger, hotter, against the denim.
He yanked his head back just long enough to look down at her. The masculine hunger darkened, like molten cobalt flowing over obsidian.
“Where the hell have you been hiding?” His voice was low and guttural, his hands thrillingly rough. Relentless.
“I wasn’t hiding. I’ve been right here. In Blue Bayou.” Waiting for him, Emma could have said, but didn’t because it would be too hard to explain how that could be true when she didn’t understand it herself.
Gabe might have been her first man, but he hadn’t been her last. She had, after all, been married.
But she’d never forgotten their night together and now she was discovering that some secret, hidden part of her heart had been awaiting his return.
As for her body . . . it wanted him. Everywhere. In every way.
“I’ve been here,” she repeated breathlessly beneath the plundering mouth that had branded her on a stormy night ten years ago.
A clap of thunder caused the ground beneath them to tremble. The black sky overhead opened up.
As a hot, stinging rain pelted down on them, Gabe dragged her hand from his groin. Her body might be lush, but her bones were narrow, allowing him to wrap his fingers around both slender wrists. Lifting her hands, he held them against the roof of the car, forcing her body into a taut, trembling bow.
She didn’t fight against his dominant male behavior. Didn’t try to free herself. Yet there was nothing submissive about the way she was rotating her pelvis against his, or the way, somehow managing to stand on those spindly little fuck-me-big-boy high heels, she lifted her leg even higher, wrapping it around his waist.
He ran his
free hand up her smooth bare leg. The crotch of her panties was soaked. And not from the rain.
He felt her suck in an expectant breath as he pushed the elastic band of the high cut leg aside.
He paused.
She whimpered.
“Dammit.” She arched her hips even higher, straining, seeking. “Touch me.”
Obliging Emma, pleasing himself, Gabe stroked the slick, hot flesh.
One of them trembled as he slipped a finger into the welcoming wet warmth. Gabe wasn’t sure whether it was Emma. Or him.
He slipped another finger inside her, at the same time flicking her swelled clitoris with a searing stroke of his thumb.
“Oh, God.” She rolled her head against the window as he swallowed her moan with a long deep soul kiss.
“Tell me.” He bit her bottom lip, then soothed the sting with the tip of his tongue. “Tell me that you want this as much as I do.”
“Of course I do.” A sound, somewhere between a laugh and moan was ripped from her throat as he thrust deeper. Harder. “Can’t you tell?”
She was flowing over his hand. Her avid lips ate into his, her breasts pressed against his chest.
“Mais, yeah.” He ripped open the top button of his jeans, wondering why he’d never before noticed that the 501s he’d worn since high school were like a fucking chastity belt.
Maybe, he conceded, as his fingers, which were not nearly as steady as he was accustomed to, struggled with button number two, the reason he’d never noticed was that having always preferred to be the one in control, he’d never been so desperate, so damn needy to bury himself inside a woman. Up to the hilt in one hard, deep thrust.
But then again, he’d never known a woman as uninhibited as Emma. It wasn’t that he wasn’t accustomed to good sex. He always made sure the woman came, at least once, before he gave any thought to his own satisfaction; but there was always a part of him that remained an uninvolved observer, watching how the women beneath him moved, the expressions on their faces as he urged them higher and higher, the breathy little sounds they made when they came. The man in him was proud of his ability to satisfy; the actor in him recognized a performance when he saw one.