Just Once

by Jill Marie Landis

  “Oh, please. I’d give anything for some protection from this thing. Did you see the ghost in here earlier?”

  He shook his head so violently that she thought he might jar something loose. “No, missus.”

  Jemma looked over her shoulder and then furtively urged him to go get the charm. “For both our sakes,” she added as a last resort.

  “You won’t go no place ‘til I get back?”

  “Of course not. You think I’m insane enough to go out alone on the streets of New Orleans at night?”

  She thought of her daring escape a year ago. Knowing what she knew now about the city, she couldn’t believe she had survived. Tonight would be different. She knew the way to the convent. It wasn’t far. If she stuck to the shadows and hurried, she would be there in a matter of minutes.

  The slave hesitated, uncertain. She left the doorway and went to her prie-dieu, knelt down, and began a hushed prayer. Sneaking surreptitious glances, she saw him watching her, mumbling to himself. At last, he turned away and started along the balcony to the stairs. Jemma jumped up and ran to the open doors. For a man his size, he was light on his feet and swift, which amazed her.

  She flew back into the room. To make the slave think she had gone to bed, she shoved her pillows beneath the sheet, and pulled the mosquito net closed. Then Jemma slipped off her shoes, cradled them in her arms, and grabbed her traveling bag. She hurried out the doors and along the balcony in the opposite direction.

  Cutting through the sitting room, she exited on the back balcony on the opposite side of the house. All she had to do was climb down the decorative wrought-iron trellis to the street and slip away.

  Afraid the stable hand would return at any moment, she pulled the back hem of her dress through her legs and tied it up with the ribbon beneath the bodice. Then, she heaved her bag over the balcony railing.

  Hunter had roamed around so long that the effects of the whiskey had already worn off, leaving behind a horrendous headache. He had reached Jemma’s house and, deciding that entering the courtyard might raise an alarm, he walked around the corner. Before he began his climb up the iron trellis, he reached out to see if it was secured.

  He had one hand on the trellis when a traveling bag flew over the rail, slammed into the top of his head, and fell into his arms. His breath left him in a whoosh. He staggered back, shook his head, and looked up in time to see a shoe plummet toward him. He sidestepped, but it hit him on the shoulder and bounced onto the sidewalk. Figuring the mate to the shoe had to be on the way down, Hunter set the bag down and took cover beneath the balcony. He might not know much about women, but he decided it didn’t take a genius to deduce that Jemma was behind the barrage.

  Daring to stick his head out and peer upward, he was treated to the sight of a shapely leg encased in a pair of frilly pantaloons as it came over the rail. He held his breath while Jemma felt around for footing and then found it. She swung her other leg over and started climbing down.

  Hunter stepped closer in case she slipped. He didn’t say a word as she made her way down the trellis. When she reached the ground, he was waiting with her bag and both shoes in his hands. Jemma turned around, saw him, and gasped.

  “Is this how you really escaped the convent in Algiers? I never actually believed the story about the tunnel,” he whispered.

  She had barely opened her mouth before he dropped the bag and shoes, whipped her into his arms, and covered her mouth with his.

  Her arms went around him and she held on tight, returning the hot, bruising kiss he gave her measure for measure. His head was spinning by the time they stepped apart.

  “For a woman who’s about to get married to someone else, that was some kiss.”

  “The kind that would definitely lead to other things,” she said with a smile.

  “Are you eloping?”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Your father. The bag.”

  “Actually, I was on my way to find you. I wanted to hire you to take me to a spot I know of upriver.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “My father let it slip. I found out tonight that he had betrayed me again—”

  “I saw you with that Creole earlier.”

  “You were here and didn’t say anything? Oh, Hunter.”

  He reached out and wiped her cheek with his fingertips. “I never saw anyone laugh and cry at the same time before.”

  She glanced up at the balcony. “We have to get out of here.”

  “We?” He was smiling like an idiot and didn’t care.

  “We.” She paused, staring up at him, the stars above them reflected in her eyes. “You did come back for me, didn’t you, Hunter Boone? You aren’t going to stand there and give me that speech about being a loner again, are you?”

  “Yes, I did, and no, I’m not,” he whispered. He glanced up at the balcony. “I take it your father wouldn’t approve of your leaving town with a backwoods yokel?”

  “Oh, Hunter, I’m so sorry for anything insulting he might have said to you. I really am.”

  “Don’t worry about it. To my mind it just justifies running off with you again. Where did you say you were headed this time?”

  She threw her arms around his neck again. “Anywhere you’ll take me.”

  Before Hunter would agree to take her back to his hotel, Jemma had to promise that she would marry him as soon as possible. She asked him if they could wait until they reached Sandy Shoals.

  The hotel room in the French Quarter wasn’t luxurious, but it was clean and comfortable. The minute she walked into the room and took one look at the bed, Jemma felt an odd combination of shyness mingled with unbridled excitement. Hunter left the door open so that light from the hallway would filter in until he lit the lamp on a bedside table. She waited in the middle of the room until the light flared. Hunter set down her bag, then closed and locked the door.

  Eager for him to hold her, Jemma walked over to Hunter, but he held her at arm’s length and frowned.

  “What happened to your face?” He reached out and stopped short of touching the bruise on the side of her cheek.

  “Let’s not talk about it.” Her eyes stung with tears.

  “Your father hit you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Why?” His eyes went icy cold with rage, his mouth hardened into a determined line.

  She folded her hands and took a deep breath. “I confronted him about a conversation I’d overheard earlier, between him and André Roffignac, the man you saw me with. Father had arranged another marriage, without my knowledge or consent. I let him know that I had no intention of going through with it.”

  “Damn the man—”

  “He said something that led me to believe you had been there and he had turned you away. I was furious and so I told him I wasn’t a virgin anymore. That’s when he hit me. Then he locked me in my room and put guards at the doors.”

  He was disgusted and mad enough to spit as he tossed his hat on a chair and then shrugged out of his coat. “How did you get out?”

  “That’s another story. Let’s not waste time talking about my father.” She was surprised at the trace of sadness that still lingered in her tone. Slipping her arms around him, she attempted to calm his rage. “I’m all right, really.”

  He ran his hands through her hair, untying the ribbon that held her braid, then loosened her curls and drew them around her shoulders. Bending his head, he touched his lips to hers and she knew such a sweet longing that she wanted to cry with relief.

  When the kiss ended, Jemma drew far enough away to look up into his eyes. “I missed you so,” she whispered. “I thought that time would help, that I would forget the way your touch makes me feel. I sometimes prayed that the day would come that I would wake up and not be listening for the sound of your voice. I told myself that I had to stop wanting you, that you were out of my life forever, but my heart wouldn’t listen.”

  “Oh, Jemma.”
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br />   He picked her up and carried her to the bed. While he held her in his arms, she drew aside the mosquito netting and then Hunter sat down and held her on his lap.

  “What made you have a change of heart, Hunter? Why did you come back?” She drew the thong out of his hair and tossed it aside.

  He gave her a quick kiss on the lips and set her down. Then he walked over to where he had hung his powder horn and possibles bag on the back of a chair.

  “I met a man named Charlie Tate up the Missouri.” He opened the bag and reached inside. Unable to take her eyes off him, Jemma watched him draw something out of the bag. “He was sick, dying very slowly. He was all alone until I got there. That night I saw myself in Charlie and saw what might become of me if I turned my back on everything and everyone forever.”

  He crossed back to the bed and held out his hand. In his palm lay a battered, tarnished heart-shaped pendant the size of a gold piece. Jemma reached for it, picked it up and rubbed her fingers over it.

  “I found it in Charlie’s cabin the night he died,” Hunter told her. “Right then, I knew that I had to come back to you. I couldn’t refuse the love you had offered, Jemma, not for one more day, let alone a lifetime.”

  Clutching the heart in her palm, she tipped her face up to him. He cupped her chin in his hands and bent down to place a gentle kiss of promise on her lips.

  “I’m so glad you came for me,” she whispered against his mouth. “I love you, Hunter Boone.”

  “I love you, too, Jemma.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing you say that.”

  “‘I love you’ isn’t something you say just once. Now that I’ve spoken the words out loud, it just might become a habit.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I do love you, Jemma. I’m just thankful you’re still mine.” He straightened, finally able to smile since seeing her bruised face. “On the way back, I tried to think of one of your saints to pray to but I forgot their names.”

  “They heard you anyway.”

  “I would have been here in May, but when I started downriver, Noah was injured in a boat accident. I stayed to see that he made it.”

  “He’s all right?”

  Hunter hesitated so long that she felt a wave of alarm. Then he said, “He’s blind in one eye and badly scarred on the left side of his face. The scar will fade, but the whole thing has made him more of a recluse than ever. I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me for saving his life.”

  “How could you not? You just have to hope he eventually comes to his senses.” She stood up and hurried over to where he had left her bag.

  “What are you doing?” He drew his shirttail up out of the waistband of his buckskins and worked his shirt off over his head.

  “Getting out my nightgown.” Jemma tossed items right and left. She came across the painting of St. Michael, smiled down at it, and set it aside.

  Hunter came up behind her and picked up the miniature. “Who’s this?”

  “St. Michael the Archangel.” She watched Hunter trace the sword in the painting and stare at the devil lying crushed beneath Michael’s feet.

  “Looks like he could handle just about anything.”

  “That’s why I chose him when I left the others behind. I couldn’t carry them all.”

  Hunter stood the painting on a table and took Jemma’s hands in his. “Will you miss everything you have to leave behind, Jemma? I saw your home: the silver, all the riches—”

  She put her fingertips to his lips. “Not for a minute. Now take me to bed. I’ve been thinking a lot about kissing.”

  “And other things?”

  “Definitely the other things.”

  He undressed her slowly, taking his time, touching her gently as he explored every curve, every rise and hollow. When she stood nude before him, he ran his hands over her breasts, cupped them and lifted them to his mouth. He suckled one nipple, then the other.

  Jemma grasped his shoulders and threw her head back, crying out with pleasure. He kept up the wonderful, maddening torture until she was weak with the heady sensations pulsing through her. Then he took her hand and led her over to the bed.

  “Wait,” she whispered, drawing away from him, returning to the small table across the room. She turned the picture of St. Michael to the wall before she went back to Hunter’s side. He was watching her with a half-smile playing over his lips.

  She shrugged. He laughed out loud and drew back the sheet.

  Jemma slipped into bed and watched, wide-eyed and curious, while he took off his buckskins. There was nothing beneath them but bare skin. His manhood stood proud and erect in a thatch of tight curls.

  “I knew it,” she said with a shake of her head.

  “What?”

  “No drawers.”

  It was his turn to shrug, hers to laugh.

  He slid in beside her and stretched out, pressing against her. His body was all hard muscle and firm lines, strength tempered with gentleness. She loved every inch of him.

  “I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she whispered against his neck. “Sometimes I thought that what we did before might have only been a dream.”

  “It was a dream. One that I kept dreaming every night I was away from you.” He slipped his hand between her legs and cupped her mound. She jumped with surprise when his fingers touched that most sensitive nub at the apex of her thighs.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “No,” she moaned against his shoulder. “I … you surprised me is all.”

  “I hope to surprise you a few more times tonight,” he said just before he began to kiss her.

  His lips were as soft as she remembered. When he slipped his tongue between her teeth she shivered all over. His fingers slowly smoothed deeper into her and then out. His tongue followed the same rhythm, slow and steady at first, then faster, delving deeper, demanding that she give herself over to him.

  Before she was aware that she was even near a peak, she cried out, thrusting her hips higher, forcing his fingers further inside her. He stilled and cupped her while she broke and melted.

  As the world around her became real again, he stroked her back, gentling her, molding her against his hard erection. “I want you, Jemma,” he whispered against her ear. “I want to feel you all around me. I want to be inside you, moving and feeling you move against me. The way it was that night beneath the stars.”

  “Yes.” She rolled onto her back, urging him to come over onto her, to press her down on the mattress. The oil lamp was still burning low. Jemma looked down, saw their flesh pressed together. The sight of his hard body, of her breasts flattened against him, excited her and made her bold. She reached between them, closed her hand around his erection, felt the dewy drop at its tip. She could feel him throbbing against her palm. “I want you, too. I want to feel you inside me.”

  Once more, he kissed her deeply. She moaned and tightened her hold before drawing her hand up along his thick, turgid shaft. He gasped and stilled. “Don’t …” It was all he could manage, but she understood and released him.

  Touching his forehead to hers, he remained still, breathing erratically, his heart pounding against her breast. Gradually, he gained control, rose up, and then pressed the tip of his shaft against the entrance to her moist sheath. In that one instant in time, the world could have dissolved around them and Jemma wouldn’t have noticed. All she was aware of was Hunter—over her, breathing with her, his skin hot and exciting against hers.

  She bucked her hips, urging him to enter. When she moved to lower her hands to his hips, he captured her wrists, drew her arms up and imprisoned her hands against the pillows. Only then did he enter her, slowly, so very slowly that the anticipation caused her agony. She wanted to scream in frustration and cry out, but he kissed her again, catching the sound in her throat.

  Then when she craved him so much that she thought she would go mad, he was suddenly moving again, driving into her farther and farther, deeper and harder until s
he wrested her hands free, clasped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his hips, and cried out with glorious abandon as he reached his own climax and spilled his seed inside her.

  * * *

  Jemma fell asleep with her head on his shoulder, but for another hour, Hunter stared up at the ceiling. He traced the delicate skin of her shoulder with his thumb, looped a curl around his finger. He couldn’t get the image of her father striking her on the face out of his mind.

  Slowly and carefully, he slipped out from beneath her and left the bed, careful to draw the mosquito net back into place. He dressed without a sound, put his knife on, found his hat, and crept into the hall. He locked the door behind him.

  It would be hours before dawn, but he practically ran all the way back across the Quarter until he was standing in front of the same trellis Jemma had used to make her escape from her father’s house. Within minutes he was on the second floor, inching his way along the hall. He nearly tripped over a slave asleep on the floor in front of a bedroom door. It didn’t take him long to find the master bedroom.

  Thomas O’Hurley didn’t wake up until Hunter had put one knee on the mattress and was leaning over him with the long skinning knife just above his jugular.

  “Good evenin’, Mr. O’Hurley,” Hunter said in a tone as smooth as honey, deepening to a backwoods Kentucky drawl. “I hope you weren’t having pleasant dreams.”

  “What … what are you doing here?” Thomas O’Hurley started to rise, but when the cold blade pressed against his throat, he flopped back down on the bed.

  “I came to get your blessing.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jemma and I are getting married.”

  “I forbid it,” he sputtered.

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to forbid much of anything right now, do you? Besides, she’s already safe from the likes of you. I just wanted you to know that you’ll never have an opportunity to hit her again. I’ll see to that myself. And if you’re smart, you’ll take my advice and never hit a woman again.”

  “I’ll do whatever I damn well—”

  Hunter pressed the knife closer. “What? You’re arguing? Why, I’d like nothing better than to kill you, but seeing as how you’re Jemma’s pa, I’ll let you off easy this time. All I’m asking for is your blessing. I’m going to marry your daughter.”