Not giving her a choice, he slipped a hand between them and touched the tender nerve center of her desire, taking her over the edge. Taking them both over the edge.
"Mon Dieu, angel."
Even in the dim light of dusk he could see the color rise into her cheeks as she turned her face away from him. "Oh, no, sweetheart," he said softly, skimming his fingertips along her jaw. "Don' be shy with me now. Don' be embarrassed. That was beautiful. That was perfect."
"I'm not very good at this," she mumbled, still not looking at him, despite the gentle pressure he applied to her chin.
"At what? Sex?"
That, too, Laurel thought, chagrined. "Talking afterward."
"Your ex-husband, he was a mute, or what?"
She laughed at that because she was still feeling embarrassed and because laughter was what Jack had been aiming for with his teasing. He tickled the side of her neck, and she cringed, turning toward him at last. "No. He just never had much to say afterward."
Jack looked down into her face, reading vulnerability there in her wide dark eyes, and it tugged at his heart. So fiery, so sure of herself in other ways, she was uncertain about this most natural and basic aspect of her femininity. How different she was from Savannah, whose expertise in the bedroom was the stuff of legends. He wanted to know what forces had shaped their lives to make them so different from one another, but this wasn't the time to ask. This was the time to reassure.
"What was he-paralyzed from the neck down?" he queried dryly.
No, Laurel thought, he was sweet and kind and honest, and he'd tried his best to make their marriage work, but she had failed him in so many ways. What she had felt with Wes was friendship and a sense of emotional security, not all-consuming passion. She had used him to anchor her life and had given him little in return, had in fact turned on him when The Case had been at its most stressful, all but pushing him out of her life.
"Hey, sugar..," Jack murmured. "Don' look sad, angel. I didn' mean to drag up bad memories."
If it weren't for bad memories, I'd have no memories at all. She looked away from him and tensed herself against the ridiculous urge to cry at his concern.
"We've all of us got bad memories," he said. "But they don' belong here, between us. We came out here to have fun, remember?" His fingers found another ticklish spot along her ribs and tortured a little smile out of her. "We were doin' pretty damn good there for a while, no?"
"Yes," she whispered, the corners of her mouth turning up in pleasure, in embarrassment.
"That's it," he praised her in a warm, seductive voice. Settling himself on top of her, he lowered his head until they were nose to nose, lips to lips. "Smile for me." He smiled as she did. "Kiss me," he whispered, groaning with pleasure as she complied.
Her breath caught as he shifted his hips and eased into her again. Need took precedence over old memories. "Reach out and take something you want for once." She wanted this. She wanted Jack-for now, for the pleasure he could give her and the bliss that transported her mind away from the problems that plagued her. Heaven, he called it. She arched her hips against his, closed her eyes, and held on to him for the return trip.
Midnight was nearing when they finally dressed. The process was complicated with much touching and teasing and long pauses for kisses and hot, whispered words. Laurel felt like a teenager-not the quiet, serious teenager she had been, but an ordinary, hormone-crazed teenager out for a night of forbidden fooling around with the class bad boy. Jack played his role to the hilt, trying to take off every article of clothing she put on, trying to talk her into spending the night on the bayou with him.
"Come on, sweetheart, stay with me," he coaxed, murmuring the words against her throat as he dragged the hem of her blouse upward, stroking his fingers up her sides toward her breasts. "We're just gettin' started…"
Laurel 's sense of responsibility was too ingrained, and she wriggled out of his grasp and reached for her glasses on the steering console, settling them on her nose and settling the issue.
"If I don't get back soon, Aunt Caroline and Mama Pearl will worry," she said, brushing futilely at the wrinkles in her clothes. "You don't want them sending the sheriff out looking for us, do you?"
Jack jammed his hands at his waist, the picture of a disgruntled male who was too sexy for his own good. He wore nothing but his jeans, and they weren't quite zipped. " Kenner couldn't find his own ass in the dark, let alone us."
"He could get lucky."
"But I'm not gonna," he grumbled.
"You already have."
Instantly he grinned his wicked grin and backed her against the console. "Mais yeah, angel." He chuckled, dipping his head to nibble her neck again. "And I like my odds for another go."
Laurel ducked away before he could get his arms around her. "Go weigh anchor, sailor, before I pull my gun on you."
Purring low in his throat, he sprang toward her and stole a kiss, dancing deftly away when she would have slugged him. "I love it when you boss me around."
She snatched up a pillow from the bench and hurled it at his head. Jack darted outside and used the door for a shield, chuckling the whole time.
Giving up on the idea of seducing her again, he went about the business of pulling up the anchor, cursing under his breath as it caught on something tangled in the reeds. He hauled back on the nylon rope, damning people who used the swamp for a garbage dump. The anchor finally pulled free, and he hauled it aboard. Minutes later the motor was puttering and the pontoon eased away from the bank and headed west…
… and the body of a naked woman, brutally tortured, cruelly slain, buoyed by the dense growth beneath her, floated out of the reeds and bobbed in the wake of the boat, her sightless eyes staring after them, her arm outstretched toward them in a plea for help that was much too silent and far too late.
Chapter Sixteen
The sun shone, butter yellow, a soft, indistinct ball on the far side of the morning haze. Laurel sat at the table on the gallery, staring out across the courtyard, through the back gate, and toward the bayou, where the mist hung in gauzy strips above the water and wound like ribbons of smoke through the trees. She stared toward the bayou… and L'Amour.
The old brick house stood stately and alone, half hidden by trees and shrubbery that had been allowed to encroach during generations of neglect. From the branches of one gnarled live oak hung two dozen or more neckties, their tails fluttering in the slight breeze-a testimony to Jack's abdication from the world of corporate law, she supposed. She certainly couldn't imagine him putting on a tie, much less a suit, in his current phase-the rebel, the rogue. But she thought of him younger, intense, hungry to prove himself, and the image came quite easily. Jack, elegant in double-breasted gray silk. Handsome, yet rough around the edges. Educated, but with some aura of that boy who had grown up wild on the edge of the swamp. Like a panther that had been domesticated, always with a shadow of his former self nearby, the air of danger lingering around him.
She wondered what had driven him from that world he had worked so hard to conquer. She wondered if it was wise to care.
She shifted on her cushioned chair, curling her feet beneath her, and lifted her tea cup with both hands to take a sip of Earl Grey. The rest of the household would be stirring soon. Caroline would be subjecting her body to the contortions of her daily yoga regimen. Mama Pearl would be shuffling around her kitchen in a cotton shift and terrycloth slippers, starting the coffee, setting out a bowl of chilled fruit, grumbling to herself about the state of the world while the morning news came over the radio. But for now, the gallery and the morning belonged to Laurel, and she relished the peace. Unable to sleep past four o'clock, she had showered and dressed.