Page 64

“Hush. Soon, ma petite,” Jean Marc muttered. He reached around and cupped her buttocks in his palms, lifting her up to his every thrust. He plunged deep, deeper, driving to the quick.

“Look at us,” he urged thickly. “Watch us together.”

She didn’t know what he meant until he cradled her head in his palm and lifted it so that she could see him driving in and out of her body, drawing almost out and then plunging back, again and again.

She bit her lip to keep from screaming. It was as if watching him multiplied the sensation tenfold.

His gaze darkly intent, nostrils flaring, he looked down at their joining.

He held her head steady so that she could continue to watch and with the other hand closed her around himself, petting, playing, squeezing while his thrusting hips grew more forceful with every movement.

The tears were running down Juliette’s cheeks as she clutched desperately at his shoulders. “Jean Marc, I can’t bear…”

The tension flared and then broke and she surged upward convulsively.

Jean Marc cried out and clutched her to him.

Her breasts were lifting and falling as she tried to get her breath. She was shaking uncontrollably, weak, dizzy with pleasure, a heavy languor attacking every limb.

“Juliette…” Jean Marc’s lips were on her own, his tongue warm and lazy, sweet, soft, all violence gone.

Yet he was not gone. She felt him within her, still joined.

He pulled back, his hands moving across her belly, stroking, pressing, soothing, possessing.

“I was rougher than I meant to be. You have no pain?”

She was aware of a faint aching sensation, but she didn’t want to lose his delicious fullness so she shook her head.

He was leaving her anyway, she realized with disappointment.

He moved off her and beside her, lying on his back with his arm beneath his head, his breath still coming harsh and quick, his black hair tousled.

He looked tough, overpoweringly male, and yet at the same time oddly boyish, Juliette thought. This was another kind of vulnerability than the one she had sketched on the bridge. She had a sudden desire to hold him close, smooth his hair, and stroke him tenderly.

“Why?” His lids had lifted and he was gazing at her with the same wariness he had shown when he had come into the cabin.

Juliette felt a pang of sadness. He was no longer vulnerable but armored again.

“Because I suddenly realized I was being very foolish. Words don’t really matter, but you were making them matter to me.

You were making me play this silly game with you even though I didn’t want to do it.

” She met his gaze composedly. “So I decided to put an end to it. You can’t fight me if I won’t fight back. ”

He gazed at her for a long time before his eyes closed once more. “Mother of God, you’ve done it again.”

She raised herself on one elbow to look down at him. “What have I done?”

“I said you had an instinct for the game.”

She frowned. “But I told you that—”

“I know what you told me. You’re going to make me battle with shadows.”

“I’m not battling at all. I find I very much like what you did to me. It would be very stupid of me to deny myself pleasure just to oblige you.” She continued politely. “Now, may I touch you?”

His eyes opened and he looked up at her. “What?”

“Your body pleases me. You’re very beautiful, you know.

” She moved closer, her gaze on the corded muscles of his belly pulled taut by his supine position.

“I’ve often thought I’d like to paint a nude male.

Men are so much more beautiful than women.

The lines are cleaner.” Her hands were running over the springy thatch on his chest, savoring the soft tickle on her palms. “But a woman never has the opportunity to study musculature. Michelangelo and da Vinci studied the dead to examine the way a man is made—” Her palm rested on his stomach and she felt the muscles contract and ripple beneath her palm.

“Oh, that felt very interesting. Can you do it again?”

He was laughing softly, and her gaze flew back to his face.

The mirror had vanished again and his expression was alive with humor and mischief.

“I assure you it felt very interesting to me too. And yes, I’d say with your cooperation I could give you any needed response.

Now, if you’d just move your hand a little farther down… ”

He was boldly aroused again, and she felt a thrill of heat even as she tried to look at the phenomena with a calm objectivity.

How had it happened again so soon? Her hand curved around him and she felt him jerk beneath her touch.

“That response is quite glorious, isn’t it?

” She squeezed gently and heard him gasp.

“Will you let me paint you without clothing?”

“I think not. I don’t believe I’d be fond of seeing my masculine attributes in a gallery.” He pushed her gently back down on the bed and moved over her. “But I’ll be delighted to provide you with a demonstration.”

“You’re very quiet. What are you thinking about?

” Jean Marc idly unwound one springy ringlet at Juliette’s temple and then released it.

Immediately, the ringlet wound itself back into its original curl.

The curl was as stubborn and true to its nature as Juliette herself, he thought in amusement.

“If you’re lying there planning on how next to approach me on the subject of posing without clothing, you needn’t waste your time. I’m not going to do it, Juliette.”

Juliette shook her head and the curly wisps brushed softly across his naked shoulder. “I wasn’t thinking of the painting.” She fell silent again and it was another moment before she asked, “Do you have children, Jean Marc?”

He stiffened. “No.”

“How can you be certain?” She raised herself on one elbow to look down at him. “I imagine you’ve had a good many mistresses.”

“I’m certain.”

“But how?”

“I have made quite sure I’ve left no bastards. A child gives a woman certain powers over a man.”

She nodded gravely. “And I know you’d never permit that. It would interfere with your silly game. But how can you be sure?”

He drew an exasperated breath. “I used a preventive machine made of sheep’s bladder.”

“What is that? It sounds quite disgusting.”

“It’s not at all.… Why are you asking these questions?”

“Because it occurred to me I could have conceived your child. One does not indulge in this sort of pleasure without the risk of a child, n’est-ce pas ?”

Passionate possessiveness surged through him, stunning and bewildering him with its intensity. His hand moved down to gently rub back and forth across Juliette’s belly. “I suppose there’s a possibility.”

“Why did you not use this…this…machine with me?”

“I wasn’t prepared. I warned you not to come on this journey.”

“But you said you were not surprised. So why did you not protect me…and yourself?”

She was right. Why hadn’t he done it? It was not like him to be careless and yet the thought had not even occurred to him.

His hand moved slowly across her belly again, and once more he felt possessiveness ripple through him.

“Perhaps I decided it was time I had a child.” He added dryly, “As you’re so fond of telling me, I’m over thirty and no longer in my first youth. ”

She looked at him in astonishment. “You want a child by me?”

“I didn’t say that, but it’s not impossible. I hadn’t thought about it until this moment. You do have certain qualities I admire.”

She shook her head. “It would not suit me at all to have a babe.” Her brow wrinkled in thought. “It’s strange that I didn’t consider the possibility before of having a child. I think I must have wanted you to do this to me very much to have ignored the danger.”

“It’s an act that has a way of banishing good sense.” He moved down on the bed and laid his cheek on her abdomen. He slowly brushed it back and forth, savoring the smoothness of her flesh before lifting his head to look at her. “But you wanted it no more than I did.”

“Having a child without being wed wouldn’t destroy me as it would have Catherine, but it isn’t a good thing.

A woman may have lovers as long as she’s discreet.

A child would have to be hidden away.” She met his gaze soberly.

“I would love my child. I couldn’t hide him away in some village with strangers as if I were ashamed of him. ”

“Do you think I’d abandon my child or his mother?” Jean Marc asked harshly. “I’d make it safe for— sacre bleu , why are we discussing this? It is quite unlikely that you would conceive these first few times with me.”

She lay back and her fingers tangled in his hair. “It’s done now and too late to worry, but once we reach Spain and leave the Bonne Chance we mustn’t do this again, Jean Marc. It was quite splendid, but it would not be fair to beget a child.”

“Nonsense, didn’t it occur to you I could just as easily prevent getting you with child as I did the women who—”

“But I could not trust you,” she said haltingly. “You said yourself you might want my child. I must guard myself from the harm you might do me. No more, Jean Marc.”

“No?” The intensity of his response to her rejection startled him.

He should have known she would react in this fashion.

All her life she had been forced to trust herself alone for protection.

Still, in some outlandish way he felt as if the child they had spoken of was already a reality and she was stealing both it and herself from him.

His hand slid down her stomach to cup her womanhood, his thumb finding, pressing, rotating the sensitive nub.

She gasped and a shudder of pleasure quivered through her.

He moved over her and entered her with one deep thrust. “Then I must obviously take advantage of our time together now, ma petite.”

Dupree leaned back against the brick wall of the house across the road from the Marquise de Clement’s casa and smiled with satisfaction.

It was an adequate but not a grand house, and since the marquise was not a woman who would stint herself if she had the funds to indulge her fancies, the woman must not have sold the Wind Dancer.

The small stone casa stood high above Andorra on one of the twisting streets overlooking the town on one side and a rock-strewn ravine on the other.

Scarlet bougainvillea splashed over the whitewashed walls of the house and ivy climbed the high stone walls surrounding both the house and the enclosed courtyard.

The house had no near neighbors and the location was isolated enough to provide him with the privacy he would need in which to do his work.

The woman had only the one female servant and a cook who would be easy enough to frighten away when the time came.

Of course, there were still problems to overcome.

He had made extensive inquiries since he had arrived in Andorra a few days before, and though the marquise had the reputation of being aloof and contemptuous of her bourgeois neighbors, she was spreading her shapely legs for one Colonel Miguel de Gandoria, who paid her almost nightly visits.

An officer in the Spanish Army could prove very awkward to his plans, Dupree thought.

He had encountered considerable difficulty with the local policia , who didn’t appreciate either his nationality or his position in the French government.

Extreme care would have to be taken to avoid landing in a Spanish prison after he’d accomplished his mission.

Oh, well, he had plenty of time to concoct a ploy in which to draw the Spanish colonel away from Andorra for the few days he needed to wrest the Wind Dancer from Celeste de Clement.

He smiled as he savored that pleasant prospect in store for him.

Marat had been very annoyed at the bitch’s perfidy, and his orders had been both explicit and entirely satisfactory to Dupree.

Yes, he must have at least three days with the enchanting marquise to make her realize she could not trifle with his employer without suffering the full consequences.

He straightened away from the wall, frowning as he flicked a trace of dust from his gray brocade coat and started back down the winding street toward the inn where he’d taken rooms. Andorra was proving a fiendishly uncivilized and inconvenient town, he thought peevishly.

It was dusty, the wine was atrocious, and the steepness of the cobblestoned streets caught at the high heels of his silver-buckled shoes.

If he had to endure this annoyance longer than he’d planned, he would see that the marquise suffered for it.