Compulsion

by Charlotte Lamb

  She did not even look towards Luc's table. Walking off in a storm of applause, she found Chris waiting for her. His eyes had an odd harsh glitter in them.

  Lissa looked at him defiantly, her mouth level.

  Chris stared and didn't say anything, but his eyes were trying to read hers.

  Lissa walked past him and went through the club to the foyer. She got Fortune from the desk clerk and took him out into the warm still night.

  She could not sleep after that. She felt wrung and yet elated, her mind confused with the rush of too many impressions. She watched the dog's white coat ahead of her and heard the sigh of the sea far off on the beach. The stars pierced the deep blue mantle of the sky, brighter than steel, sharper than knives. She stared up at them as she walked and shivered.

  She would not think about the odd painful emotion she had felt before she began to sing.

  She wouldn't think at all. She walked because her mind was far too wide awake for sleep and her body was restless and taut.

  When she found herself on the edge of the pale beach she stood there watching the waves sigh up on to the sands. The dog ran down towards them, kicking up sand with his paws, printing the immaculate silvery beach with his marks.

  The sound of movement behind her did not surprise her. She had known he was coming for at least a minute. She had been standing there, listening to his footsteps and shuddering like someone with a chill.

  He came up behind her and stood there, breathing. Lissa stared at the sky, the sea, the silvery sands.

  His hands touched her arms, slid caressingly down them, the cool brush of his fingers making her skin leap with awareness.

  He moved closer, turning her to face him. She stood with lifted head and hard, wide eyes watching him as he watched her.

  'Well, well, well,' he murmured. 'You are the most surprising creature, aren't you? What got into you to­night?'

  She did not bother to reply. The peculiar anger in­side her wouldn't let her speak.

  His fingers ran down her check. He softly touched her folded lips with one of them gently tracing the warm moulded shape of her mouth. 'Why so silent?'

  The tickling sensation of his finger went back and forward. He stared at her, brows sharply lifted.

  'What's wrong, Lissa?' His tone had changed. The amused warmth had gone out of it and he was no longer smiling. 'What happened when you got back this after­noon? What did Brandon say to you?'

  'Do you care?' She shot the words out like a dagger and saw his features tighten, his eyes narrow.

  'What happened?'

  'He told me never to see you again,' Lissa said icily. 'So please go back to the hotel, Mr Ferrier.'

  His frown deepened. He took her slender shoulders in his hands and bent towards her, speaking curtly. 'Tell me! He was angry? What did he do? Did he threaten you?'

  'Threaten me? Chris?' Her astonishment was in her face, but even as she threw back the words incredu­lously her mind was recalling the brutal violence in Chris's handsome face and she was shaken by the memory.

  'He's no angel,' Luc Ferrier said harshly. 'His repu­tation on the island is far from pretty.'

  Her eyes flew wide, her heart hurt inside her breast. 'What?'

  Luc Ferrier's skin was taut, the hard bone structure beneath it clenched. He looked as tough as Chris had claimed he was—he looked dangerous, ruthless, a man with eyes that bofed into her own and made her deeply nervous.

  'He runs this place with a private army, doesn't he? Those men in the gaming rooms would carve you up sooner than look at you. He has the island nicely organised. Makes money hand over list, keeps a whole horde of women busy making the swag he sells in his shops, and pays them in peanuts to do it.' 'That's a lie,' Lissa said angrily, trembling. 'Is it? Do you know how much he pays them?' 'Do you?' she asked furiously, glaring up at him.

  'Oh, yes,' he returned, taking her breath away. 'On average, I understand, he pays them one percent of what he makes from the finished product.'

  'One per cent?' Lissa's lips stiffened, dried. 'Who told you that? It's a lie!' It must be, she thought. Chris wouldn't, surely? Make money like that out of the local people? Cheat and manipulate them? Chris wasn't that sort of man. He was warm and friendly and kind. He wouldn't.

  'It's the truth,' Luc Ferrier bit out, staring at her. 'Ask around. You know them all, you've known them all your life. Surely you must have realised how he ran this place?'

  She ran her tongue tip over her dry lips and he watched the movement with an impassive face. 'Chris has to be firm with difficult customers. That's why he has so many men around the gaming rooms. Trouble can flare up if someone loses. Gamblers have volatile tempers.'

  'That's what he told you?' Luc Ferrier said drily.

  'Well, of course, it's true—up to a point. One or two tough boys are always around a place like this—but he has squads of them on tap. He doesn't just run the hotel, he runs the whole town. He's into everything from the tourist shops to the restaurants. He takes a percentage of that place we were eating at today.'

  Her eyes wide and shocked, Lissa shook her head. 'No,' she muttered. 'I don't believe you.'

  'Why should I lie?'

  She looked at him fixedly and tried to decipher the hard strong face. 'You're making Chris sound like a gangster,' she protested.

  Luc grinned humourlessly. 'He may use different words. He probably calls himself a businessman, but that's what he is, Lissa—a thug.'

  'Don't!' she shivered, her brows drawn. 'Not Chris!'

  He looked probingly into her anxious green eyes. 'Do you love him?'

  'Of course I do,' she came back in a husky tone, but her eyes slid away from him. A week ago she would have been astonished by the question, given a firm and un­thinking 'yes'. Now although she still made that posi­tive reply she felt a strange tremor running through her, an uneasy flicker of uncertainty. Her love for Chris had been part of the backcloth of her life. She did not know what had changed- Herself, perhaps. She wasn't the same girl she had been a week ago. Odd things had happened to her, and all of them connected with this man.

  She was half afraid Luc would press her, make her look at him. She knew instinctively that he was aware of the way her eyes had moved away as she spoke, but he didn't say anything. He just watched the smooth flushed oval of her face with a hard, intent observation of which she was very conscious.

  'You owe it to yourself to look at him very carefully before you think of marrying him,' he said flatly. 'You're the type to whom marriage means a lifetime. Before you sign up for life I'd take a good, hard look at what you're getting, if I were you.' He paused, then said slowly, 'Especially his women.'

  The shock of that took her breath away. For a moment she didn't move, then she looked up and asked him in a voice which shook: 'Women?' He was lying; he had to be. He wasn't talking about Chris, her Chris. She had never seen Chris giving interest to any girl but herself.

  Luc stared down at her, his eyes glinting silver in the moonlight which was streaming down the sky. 'You didn't know about them, either?'

  'You're lying,' she denied furiously, scarlet sweeping up her face. 'Lying, lying! I don't believe you!'

  'Jealous?' asked Luc in a harsh curt voice.

  'I don't believe you. Why should I be jealous? Chris wouldn't.' She glared at him. 'I've known him all my life, practically. Do you think I wouldn't have noticed if there was anyone but me around him?'

  'He keeps the current woman in Joubeau Street,' Luc said calmly.

  She swallowed. 'Joubeau Street?'

  'So I'm told. She's one of Pierre's cousins.'

  Lissa swayed, feeling faint and sick. All the colour went out of her face. She shook her head over and over again, refusing to believe it, but she found it hard to shut out the hard certainty of Luc's face. Her eyes clung to him, pleading with him to say he was lying.

  Luc slid his arms round her, supporting her. 'You'd better sit down,' he said curtly, 'You look as if you're going to pass out.'
>
  She was too dazed to argue. She let him take off the white jacket he was wearing and spread it on the sand. He helped her to sit down on the jacket and sank down beside her. She was shivering as though, she were icy cold, her head bent.

  'Who told you all this?' she demanded.

  'A little bird,' Luc drawled. 'An expensive little bird.'

  'Expensive?' she stared, bewildered, then her breath caught in a long sigh. 'You paid someone? But they might have lied to you if you offered them money. You don't know these people. They're cheerful about mak­ing up stories to amuse visitors. They don't see it as telling lies, it's just a game to them.'

  'This was no game,' Luc insisted. 'I got the truth.'

  'You don't know Chris,' said Lissa, shaking her head.

  'No, Lissa,' Luc denied, 'it's you who doesn't know him. The man you grew up with isn't the man you think he is.'

  'People can't hide things like that, not for years,' she protested shakily.

  'When someone like you is so damned innocent, they can,' Luc said with a grim smile. 'It wouldn't have entered your head to suspect any of this—to notice any of it. You've been drifting around with your eves closed for the past couple of years and Brandon has seen to it that your eyes were kept shut as far as he could. All his people have strict orders to treat you with kid gloves,’

  Lissa knew that. She wasn't so innocent that she hadn't been aware of the smiling, protective kindness surrounding her. Looking at Luc with disturbed anxiety, she asked: 'Is Chris in trouble? He isn't doing something illegal?'

  Luc laughed brusquely. 'Hell, I doubt it. The law is as much in his pocket as everything else around here. He's got the place sewn up. His only danger is going to come when a bigger shark moves in and decides to take over from him. Once St Lerie is on the tourist map it will attract the attention of speculators elsewhere, then Brandon may have a fight on his hands. The kid gloves will come off then, Lissa. You'll see how tough he is if that happens,'

  She stared down at the pale, moonlit sands. The dog was dancing through the waves excitedly, the faint splash of his movements coming clearly to her ears.

  'What are you going to do?' Luc asked, his eyes on her averted profile.

  She turned to look at him dully. 'I don't know.'

  Luc drew in his lower lip. 'Don't face him with it, Lissa. It wouldn't be wise of you to do that. Just keep your eyes open from now on—stop seeing him in a romantic mist and start thinking. It doesn't take much digging to show what's going on underneath the tourist tinsel. All you have to do is use your eyes and your ears.' He paused, added, 'And your brain, Lissa. For God's sake, use that.' 'I wish you hadn't told me,' she broke out miserably.

  Luc's brows twitched together in sharp anger. 'You would have preferred to stay in dreamy ignorance, would you? And married him? What then, Lissa? Are you prepared to share him with the lady in Joubeau Street? And turn a blind eye to his commercial activi­ties?' ‘I don’t know,’ Lissa groaned, confused and bewildered. 'No, of course not. But Chris ... I can't believe it.'

  'You mean you don't want to,' Luc agreed. 'It would swallow you up too, Lissa. Don't you realise that? How long could you stay blind? And what would it do to you to find out later? You're changing already. That song you sang tonight—you sang it differently this time. You may not know it, but the scales are already falling and you may not like what he makes you. Corruption isn't always as simple as it sounds. It eats you up inch by inch like rust spreading on metal.'

  'Chris loves me!' Her voice was low and he bent to hear her.

  'Sure he does,' Luc said curtly. 'You're not only very sweet, you're potentially very sexy. You don't know it yourself yet. But he can see it and he's prepared to wait until you wake up. But he means to be the one to wake you. Brandon believes in monopolies. He's had you tied up and waiting for him for two years while he eases his frustration elsewhere. Lissa, open your eyes and look at him.'

  She opened her eyes, but in the moonlight she was looking at Luc, her face pale and disturbed.

  He lifted a hand to touch her cheek gently. She did not move, her green eyes enormous.

  Luc kissed her softly, his lips moulding her own, brushing over them and returning.

  Lissa drew back, breathing painfully. 'Don't,' she said under her breath.

  Luc's hand dropped. He sat watching her.

  'Why did you tell me all this?' she asked, staring at him.

  His mouth twisted. 'Don't you think it was time someone did?'

  'But why you? You paid someone to tell you these stories, you said.'

  'I paid someone to dig up what they could about him,' Luc said. 'I hadn't expected to hear all that. I'd already realised he ran the casino like an armed camp. The rest of the stuff came as a surprise to me.'

  'Why did you get someone to investigate Chris in the first place?'

  Luc ran a hand through his black hair, grimacing. 'I was curious about him.'

  'There's more to it than that,' she accused.

  For a moment the blue eyes were as hard as steel, glittering between their shielding lids, then he shrug­ged. 'That's right, I told you, Brandon has something I want and I was trying to discover if he had any weak spots.'

  Her body ran with a strange, cold flame. She looked away and Luc moved closer. She glanced back, shiver­ing.

  'Come away with me, Lissa,' he whispered. 'Let me ' take you out of all this—you can't marry Brandon.'

  She was too confused to know what she felt or thought. She shook her head, feeling so brittle she would snap in two if he touched her.

  'You're worse than he is,' she said bitterly. 'At least Chris loves me. Even if he's all the things you say he is—he still loves me. I may be stupid, but I'm not so stupid that I don't know what you want.'

  'Do you?' He breathed close to her, his hard features unreadable. 'What do you think X want, Lissa?'

  She turned her head sharply to look away. 'The an­swer is no, Mr Ferrier.'

  'You don't even know the question,' he said mock­ingly.

  She felt a peculiar melting sensation deep inside her as he moved even closer. 'Don't touch me,' she said shakily, jerking away and getting to her feet.

  'I'm going to touch you,' Luc whispered, slowly raising himself from the sand. 'You want me to touch you.'

  She shook her head fiercely. 'No!'

  'Liar,' he breathed, smiling, 'From the minute I saw you on the beach that first morning I wanted to make love to you.'

  'Is that why you told me all those lies about Chris?' she asked angrily.

  'They were the truth,' said Luc. 'And so is this, Lissa

  She pushed at his chest as he drew her closer, his arms going round her. He laughed at her impotent attempts to escape the tightening circle in which he held her. 'Will you let go? I won't------' she began furiously, and was silenced by the driving force of a kiss that was unlike any kiss she had ever been given.

  Luc's hands were behind her, pressing her against him, pinning her to the lean hardness of his own body, and his mouth plumbed hers, the warm moist invasion leaving her shaking. A groan escaped her and she tried to shut her mind to the insidious, coaxing movement of his hands as they stroked down her back and caressed her hips. Her hands dug into his chest, clenching. Her mouth opened weakly. She felt and heard the hoarse sigh Luc gave.

  'Liss,' he muttered, his kiss flaring hungrily. His mouth crushed her lips, the demand he made so fierce that she swayed in his arms.

  She had her eyes dosed. All around them the palms breathed softly and the sea whispered on the moonlit sands. Luc's thighs were moulded to her body, forcing her to recognise the desire his mouth was reinforcing. Her hands slowly moved up to his shoulders, dung there, trembling against the warmth of his shirt.

  Suddenly Luc lifted her off the ground and then lowered her again, but he had come with her and her eyes flew open in shock as she realised that she was lying full length on the sand with Luc's hard body pressing her down.

  'Don't!' she groaned, pushing at hi
s wide shoulders.

  He looked at her with a twisted little smile. 'You're such an intoxicating mixture of innocence and fire, Lissa. You blush like a baby, but your eyes beckon. You don't even know what you're doing half the time, do you? It's all instinctive.'

  She was too shaken by the wild tremors running through her body to be able to say a word, looking up at him and as much afraid of herself as of Luc.

  'Come away with me,' he whispered. 'You can't stay here, and if you're honest you knew as well as I did the minute we met that this was going to happen.'

  'No,' she muttered, stiffening under the powerful body which held her down with such ease.

  'Don't lie to yourself,' he smiled. 'As soon as I set eyes on you I knew you were going to end up in my bed.'

  Shock ran through her like fire. Her skin burned and her throat ached. She met the fierce flare of his blue eyes and shook her head dumbly.

  'Your mouth promises so much more than you're pre­pared to admit,' he said huskily. He caressed her lips with his thumb, smiling at the helpless shiver which ran through her.

  'Let go of me,' Lissa forced out through dry lips. 'You're not seducing me, Mr Ferrier, so get your hands off me!'

  The smile vanished from his face. The blue eyes hardened and Dickered with heat. 'Aren't I?' He lowered his head and she felt his lips on the underside of her chin, his breath warm on her flesh. 'Aren't I, Liss?' The deep, breathed question sent waves of panic along her nerves.

  'No,' she whispered, trembling so hard it was pain­ful.

  He lifted his head and the blue eyes mocked her coolly. 'What a little liar you are,' he drawled. 'No? That isn't the truth, is it, Lissa? You make all the cor­rect responses—trained to a hair by the good nuns, I've no doubt. But even while you're mouthing all that shocked stuff about my wicked liberty-taking, your eyes are begging me to go on.'