Midnight Flame Read online

  When another streak of lightning flashed, she saw his face, the agony and desire in his eyes, as if he warred within himself. She began to plead again but stopped when he moved and his body covered the length of hers. His hardness rested against the spot between her legs, and a searing heat spread through her body and lodged in that area. Involuntarily she strained against him, aching for something only he could fulfill.

  Tony laughed bitterly. “You’re not fooling me, you never did. I knew from the moment I met you that you’d belong to me, that I’d do the dishonorable thing by making love to you. You do want me, don’t you?”

  He nipped at her lips, his hands moving over the material of her blouse, then sliding inside to cup a warm, full breast. His tongue drifted downward to the nipple, which he gently sucked.

  Hot lava flowed through Laurel. Never in her life had she felt such intense pleasure, an insane longing to forget propriety, to be a woman at last and wrap her legs in wanton abandon around Tony as he filled her with his love. The thunder overhead was lost in the beating of her heart as Tony’s hand moved over her rib cage, then downward to the velvety smoothness of her naked thigh.

  Her arms wound around his neck, and she whispered his name in a husky voice that she barely identified as her own. Pulling him closer, she trailed fiery fingers over the broadness of his back and then kneaded the warm, hard flesh of his chest.

  “I’ve never desired a woman as much as you,” he said in a tortured voice. “I can’t resist you. God help me, I can’t!”

  His mouth ground down upon hers. Laurel felt his tongue collide with hers, swirling and tasting the sweetness of her mouth. Her breath quickened. Exquisite and pleasurable sensations shot through her body, and not even the piercing white lightning that flashed hotly above them or the rumble of the thunder disturbed her.

  “Love me, Tony. Love me, love me,” she whispered in a passion-laced voice.

  “Oh, God forgive me!” he cried.

  Suddenly the sound of alarmed voices and bright torches filled the night.

  “Monsieur Tony! Monsieur Tony!”

  Tony cursed under his breath. “That’s Rabelais, my foreman. What can he want now of all times?” He began to stand, but instead he tenderly kissed her lips again. “Wait for me, my temptress,” he whispered before leaving her.

  Laurel lay upon the wet grass, feeling a slight mist settle upon her flesh. Her pulse beat hard. It was only when she heard the cries of “Lightning has struck the barn! Get the buckets!” that her senses returned. Standing up, she arranged her clothing and smoothed down her tousled locks and then walked toward the sound. She found that the barn was bathed in a red-orange glow. The male guests were lined up from a well to the fire and were passing heavy wooden buckets of water to Tony at the front of the line. The taut muscles of Tony’s back strained with the movement each time he emptied one onto the flames.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” a guest dressed as Aphrodite whispered to no one in particular.

  “Clarice, you must lead a boring life to enjoy such a spectacle,” the husky voice of Simone Lancier commented. “Tony and I are never bored, if you understand my meaning.” Simone and the woman giggled, but Simone’s flashing blue eyes were directed in Laurel’s direction.

  Because the fire had been discovered immediately, the barn and the horses housed inside were saved. The men stopped passing the buckets. A hissing sound and the odor of burning wood permeated the air. A perspiring Jean DuLac, in his soot-covered, green-and-red clown costume, saw Laurel. He wiped his brow with a kerchief. “That Tony is a lucky devil, chérie, with life and the ladies.” He winked and went inside the house.

  Laurel lost sight of Tony and Simone as the guests began milling about to inspect the damage. Then she saw them at a distance, standing beside the charred ruins, arm in arm.

  Laurel’s face burned with humiliation, anger, and pain. If not for the fire, Tony would have used her like the worst trollop. To think she had begged the man to make love to her, had writhed beneath him on the grass like a whore. Her hands flew to her face, unsure of what she had been thinking to allow such liberties. Yet she couldn’t deny that her traitorous body had desired him. Tears flooded her eyes.

  Then Tony turned in her direction and made a movement to rush after her, but she spun around and ran down the gravel driveway.

  “Where are you going?” Simone clutched at his shirt sleeve.

  Tony didn’t relish possessive women and shrugged off her hold. “Wherever I choose.”

  “We’re going to be married, Tony. I suggest you remember that.”

  He cocked an eyebrow, his face smeared with soot. “I haven’t asked you, Simone. You’ve just assumed we would.” Bounding away, he left Simone in a snit.

  By the time he reached the front of the house, he saw the carriage that he and Laurel had arrived in earlier speeding down the drive. So, he thought wryly with a degree of anger at himself for falling prey to her charms, the little tease was running away again just as she had done the day of Auguste’s death. Well, she wouldn’t get away this time. He would be damned if she led him a merry chase as she had done with his uncle. He vowed that Lavinia Delaney would not be the death of him. However, he couldn’t help but think, with a degree of contempt for himself, about what would have happened if the fire hadn’t started. Would she now have been in his bed?

  He attempted unsuccessfully to shrug the thought away. His loins tightened just to imagine her hair spread fanlike across his pillow, the feel of the soft ivory body writhing in ecstasy beneath his own, the sweet taste of her strawberry lips. “God!” he moaned aloud and broke the spell by turning and heading for the porch at the back of the house. He couldn’t let the woman do this to him, wouldn’t allow himself to fall further under her spell. He had to convince himself that she was like any other woman and could easily be replaced. So many women had vied for his kisses, had begged for his touch over the years, that Tony could no longer remember their faces or the bodies that had attracted him. But this woman was different. This woman was dangerous. He had started to feel something for her, a sweet but burning desire he had never known, a melting sensation when he first kissed her. She mustn’t get to him, he decided. She wouldn’t pull him into her enchanted web.

  Only servants remained outside now to clean up the charred remains of the fire. From inside the main house, the laughter and singing of his guests drifted through the windows and lingered on the night air, disturbed only by the rumble of thunder. He went to his room and changed into a black silk shirt. Pouring himself a glass of Courvoisier, Napoleon’s brandy, he fortified himself for what was to come.

  When he mounted his horse, raindrops splattered across the silken material of his shirt, leaving wet splotches on his broad back. Almost as an afterthought before he kicked at the horse, he withdrew a black hood from his pants pocket, crumpling the cotton material in his large hand.

  Suddenly Jean DuLac appeared on the porch and hailed Tony as he rode swiftly past. “Where are you going? Where is the pretty gypsy girl?” he cried.

  Tony barely glanced at him, steadfast purpose shining in his black eyes. Spurring the stallion, he galloped down the drive onto the road that led through the prairie area back to Washington. Rain pelted him, but he only rode harder, faster until he noticed the wavering flickers of light from the carriage lanterns.

  His prey was up ahead.

  Nimbly he pulled the hood over his head, enclosing his stony features. Soon his revenge upon the woman he believed to be Lavinia would commence in earnest. But not until he had held her in his arms, branded every inch of her ivory flesh with hot kisses, and felt waves of ecstasy wash over her when he entered her writhing body would his vengeance be fulfilled. Only when she had surrendered her body to a nameless, faceless man would she realize what a harlot he thought her to be, know the pain she had caused him by killing his uncle with her greedy passion.

  Soon, very soon, his uncle would be avenged. Spurring his horse anew, he broke into a wild g
allop and followed the midnight flame.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Within the interior of the leather-upholstered coach, Laurel reclined against the seat. She folded her arms across her breasts in a protective gesture and hurriedly wiped away a tear that threatened to fall from one of her emerald eyes. She willed herself not to cry. Crying never accomplished anything. She had cried countless tears for herself and her parents when she was away at school. The tears had never brought back her parents but gave her a red nose, which her friend, Anne, had gently told her made her resemble a circus clown.

  “Well, I won’t look like a carnival clown because of Tony Duvalier,” she groused aloud. But for all her low-voiced mutterings and the staunch way Laurel bit down upon her lower lip to keep the tears at bay, she felt foolish. Duvalier had ensnared her in a sensuous trap, one in which she had willingly participated. Unable to rid herself of the image of Tony with Simone, she dimly realized she shouldn’t have run away. Their embrace meant nothing to her. She could be as cavalier as Tony about the drugging kisses he had rained upon her face, the way his warm hands had boldly cupped her breasts and snaked up the length of her inner thighs to touch her until she was so besotted that she had wrapped her legs around his back and begged to be taken like the worst whore.

  She should have proved to him that women could enjoy passion as well as any man.

  But the blood rushed to her face to recall what had nearly happened between them, and the memory of it, the way her flesh still tingled from his touch, caused Laurel to place her hands on her heated cheeks. She couldn’t be nonchalant about lovemaking. It wasn’t in her nature to take such an intimate act lightly. Duvalier had intended to make love to her, and afterward he would have left her to seek the arms of Simone Lancier, his fiancée.

  “The conceited bastard won’t have a chance to humiliate me again,” she spoke aloud and wished Tony’s driver would hurry the coach along. The sooner she returned to her room at the hotel and packed her bags for her journey to San Antonio, the better off she would be, she decided. She would forget Tony Duvalier and her wanton response to him. Yet not to remember his dark passion-laced eyes, the sensual stroking of his strong hands on her flesh, would be almost impossible. Even now her traitorous body tingled from the experience.

  “Forget him!” The vehemence of her own words startled her, and sanity returned.

  Rain pounded upon the roof of the vehicle. Lightning illuminated the passing countryside, allowing Laurel to see the wind-whipped trees that swayed on each side before blackness enveloped them.

  Would she never reach the town? Inwardly she cursed Tony Duvalier for luring her to his Mardi Gras dance, for choosing her revealing costume, and then using it against her. His motive still bewildered her, and she cursed herself all the more for her own stupidity in believing she even possessed a fatal charm. She laughed aloud at her own folly. Fatal charm, indeed. Her charms had fueled Tony’s ardor to such a degree that he would have made love to her on the lawn if the fire hadn’t started—and she would have let him. Thank the fates for the bolt of lightning that struck the barn. She couldn’t imagine anything worse than becoming another one of Duvalier’s easy conquests. And Laurel had no doubt that she would have been one.

  Wild winds and pounding rain besieged the coach, rocking it unsteadily. Laurel held tightly to the edge of her seat, encased in utter darkness, except for the faint flicker of the outside carriage lanterns that sputtered and then were extinguished completely. Still the horses raced onward.

  The coach wheels rolled slickly along Grand Prairie Road toward town. From far off she heard what she assumed to be a peal of thunder, but shortly she realized it was the steady beat of a horse’s hoofs behind the coach.

  “Halt!”

  A man’s voice penetrated the darkness. The coach jerked to a sudden and jolting stop.

  Giving a small cry, Laurel nearly slipped from her seat. She braced herself against the door, and in the brief instant when a flash of lightning emblazoned the night sky, she saw him, attired all in black with an equally dark hood over his head, on an ebony stallion. Both were silhouetted against the suddenly incandescent night. Above the din of the rain she heard him shout to the driver not to move, to remain seated. The pulse in Laurel’s throat throbbed an irregular beat, and she could barely swallow. Did this man intend to rob them? She vaguely remembered the hotel clerk informing her that at Mardi Gras time ruffians sometimes traveled the roads. Just her luck, she thought through a haze of fear and dread, to be caught in such a situation. And all because of Tony Duvalier, the arrogant bastard. One more reason to hate him.

  Should she run or put up a fight? The man had turned his horse toward the coach. For a brief instant she froze, poised on the brink of indecision. Before she had time to react, the door was abruptly thrown open. A long, black-clad arm reached into the interior and plucked her from the coach as if she were a rose in a garden.

  Her fear prevented her from screaming. In fact she seemed to have no voice at all as the man positioned her in front of him on his horse and coiled his arms, ropelike, around her waist. Tony’s driver sat immobile, his face obliterated in the darkness. When she felt the man behind her spur the stallion, she knew she had to do something to stop him.

  “Let me go!” she cried and attempted to break free, to somehow throw herself from the horse and run anywhere, anywhere away from this man who held her so tightly against him, so close against his powerful chest that she could feel the beating of his heart against her back. But his hold wouldn’t be loosened, and her entreaty had no effect upon him.

  After flailing against him, she realized her struggles were for nothing. There was no way she could escape from him, and she doubted he was even listening to her pleas for release. She had to keep all her strength and wits about her. However, seconds later, when he veered onto a side road that seemed to appear from nowhere and rushed headlong into a densely forested area, she wondered if she would ever find her way out of this even if he did release her unharmed.

  Through the rain-sodden night they rode. Rivulets of water streamed freely down Laurel’s face, nearly blinding her. Her hair was plastered to her head, as were her clothes against her body. But she realized these discomforts were nothing to the tortures this man probably planned for her. Yet she must quell her fear and concentrate if she hoped to escape alive and tell the authorities.

  Quieting down and being forced to lean unwillingly against her kidnapper’s hard chest, a musky male scent assailed her nostrils. She found his scent disturbing, strangely familiar, but it was the slight smell of alcohol upon his breath that made the most impression upon her. Was it brandy? A not unpleasant whiff stirred past her nose, and she recognized it as Napoleon’s brandy, a liquor her father had drunk many times. Such an expensive drink seemed somehow out of character with the highwayman behind her. Another, more disturbing scent made an impression upon her. There was a lingering trace of wood-smoke about him.

  A shiver of fear coursed through her again when she felt the horse change direction. No longer were they on the side road. Now they were gingerly making their way through an area filled with palmetto. The bayou? She practically choked on her fear. She would never survive here. Or did this man intend her to survive at all?

  The rain had slackened. Low overhanging vines became visible when a sliver of a moon appeared from behind a cloud. Moss-draped trees dripped steady drops of water onto the ground. From far off the growl of a panther cut through the night, followed by the cry of its victim. Laurel compared herself to the hapless creature and the man behind her to the panther. She was the prey who had just been snared by the hunter.

  The thought occurred to her that she might bargain for her freedom. He must be desperate to have kidnapped her. Perhaps money was what he wanted, and she had plenty of that. She must swallow her fear and speak to him, to make him believe she wasn’t at his mercy, although she knew very well that she was. As much as she had wanted to flee Duvalier earlier, she now wished she had neve
r foolishly run away. At least, she would have been safe at Petit Coteau. She felt no security in this man’s arms.

  Turning her face slightly to the right, she glanced up at him, but was unable to discern anything behind the slits in his hood. However, she felt his gaze upon her and wondered if he had been watching her for a long time to gauge her reaction.

  “Kidnapping me will avail you nothing. I haven’t any money on me.” Damn! Did her voice sound as terrified to him as it did to her? She must hide her fear. “But if you will take me to my hotel, I’ll get you some.” There. That sounded better, more confident he would have a change of heart and release her. “Take me back, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”

  Laurel winced when a bitter laugh escaped him, his scorn evident in its rich timbre. His wet hand snaked below the neckline of her blouse and gently massaged a pouting nipple. Did she imagine that his eyes blazed with a fire behind his hood?

  “I want no money,” he whispered raspily. “The treasure I seek is within my arms.”

  His meaning was clear. He intended to ravish her. For some unaccountable reason, he wanted her, not money.

  A warm hand still caressed her breast, swirling the nipple between his fingers and triggering a melting sensation within her not unlike that which she had experienced in Duvalier’s arms earlier. What was wrong with her? she asked herself. Was she a wanton, eager for any man who touched her?

  “Don’t do that,” she entreated.

  “What?” he whispered against her ear.

  “Touch me like that!”

  “I think you like my hands upon you.”

  His voice was so husky and low she barely heard him, but his intentions were obvious. This dark-clad stranger was going to have his way with her, and all her protests would avail her nothing. He had her at his mercy in this wild and untamed setting. True to his word, his hand remained in her blouse, gently rubbing the throbbing peak of one breast before snaking over and finding the other.