She laughed suddenly, clicking open her briefcase. In one hand, she held up the silk leopard-print nightie, and in the other, a pair of remarkably intact panty hose. She planned to write a letter of commendation to Christian Dior’s hosiery department when she returned home.
Wiping away her remaining tears, Harriet threw in a quick prayer. Please, God, help me break through the defenses this hardheaded man has erected around his emotions. He’s a prisoner in his own castle of bitterness and fear. Help me demonstrate that only love can free him, especially love for himself.
One last thing, God. Please don’t let me fall in the moat.
Etienne couldn’t avoid his bed any longer. Or the dreams. Gambling didn’t help. Reading that blasted novel didn’t help. Drinking didn’t help. Somehow, some way, Harriet had exorcised her dreaded sexual fantasy dreams. And passed them on to him.
He’d become Steve Morgan aka Etienne Baptiste and he was having a powerful good time every night with his nemesis, Ginny Brandon aka Harriet Ginoza. A very unsatisfying replica of the real thing. Not that he’d tell Harriet. Oh, no! She’d dive right in, psychoanalyzing him. Talk, talk, talk. Force him to think. Make his nonstop headaches even worse.
What had possessed him to suggest she accompany him to Bayou Noir one last time? Why hadn’t he let her part from him tomorrow? A clean break? No loose ends?
He hated her for what she’d done with Briggs, or almost done. Perhaps there was a bit of the harlot in all women, even her…or especially her. But stronger, more frightening emotions fought to overcome that hate. Stupidity, that was what it must be. Only a thoroughly stupid man would willingly jump in the lion’s den, waiting for the cat to strike. And Harriet would tear him to shreds before she left Bayou Noir, he just knew it.
Making his way along the corridor to his cabin, he hesitated before her door. Another dumb notion occurred to him. Maybe he should knock on the lion’s door, walk right in and surrender without a fight.
No, he decided. I’m, not that dumb.
Harriet had drunk a glass of bourbon from the bottle in Etienne’s room to reinforce her courage before she finally heard his key turning in the lock. Taking a deep breath, she stepped back into the corner and waited.
At first, Etienne stumbled around in the dark. The only light came from a small window on the deckside wall where she braced herself woozily. She sensed, rather than saw, him remove his jacket, drop his gun belt onto a built-in cabinet, then sit down on a chair and take off his boots. Thud! Thud! With a loud yawn, he stood and padded over to a bedside table, lighting the oil lamp with a sulfur match. Instantly, a yellowish glow filled the room. Yawning again, he slipped his left arm out of its sling and rotated his shoulder socket. The broken arm was still splinted and bandaged from elbow to wrist, but he didn’t need the sling all the time now. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it from the waistband of his trousers.
He was so damn handsome. Even clothed. Even from the back. Wide shoulders, well-defined muscles in his arms, slim waist and hips, long legs, and, of course, all that wonderful territory in between. Much of his skin, which she expected to see soon, was covered with bruises not yet healed from Briggs and his ruffians.
Then he turned.
“Holy hell!” Etienne exclaimed, seeing Harriet for the first time on the other side of the little chamber. He recoiled in surprise and hit the back of his head against a tall post on the narrow bed. But then, every time he was around Harriet, he sustained one kind of injury or another. As he straightened, he got his first good glimpse of her, and his jaw dropped practically to his kneecaps. “Holy hell!” he said again.
She wore her leopard-print chemise and waist-high, sheer hose, plus she’d added a gun belt slung low on her hips for an extra touch. In one hand she held a pistol and in the other a knife. Sacrebleu! Guns and a chemise? Is it some kind of sporting house outfit? Like the jockey suit he’d seen a diminutive whore wear one time? But, no, that prostitute had wielded a whip, not a gun. “What are you doin’ here, Harriet?”
“Laying siege.”
“Huh? On what?” Really, I must give the woman credit. She always manages to shock me.
“You.”
Me? “Me? Trust me, Harriet, this is not a good idea.” Actually, it’s looking more and more like a good idea, and that’s the problem. I knew I should have left her back in Galveston. Maybe I can slip back to the gambling tables. If I can peel my eyes off her breasts, that is. Lord, does she know that garment is nearly transparent? And surely, surely, she didn’t come out on the deck from her cabin attired in so little. “Besides, I have a piercing headache,” he added. Merde! That was such a dumb excuse, even for a dumb man.
“Maybe your head hurts so much because your halo’s on too tight,” she sniped.
Insults now? “Are you saying I’m self-righteous?”
“If the shoe fits, Mr. Holier-than-Thou…”
“Very good, Harriet. Ha, ha, ha! Now let me tell you one. Do you know the difference between a dumb woman and a brick?”
She raised her chin haughtily, refusing to answer.
“When you lay a brick, it doesn’t follow you around forever.”
Her nostrils flared on a quick intake of breath.
I am lower’n a pig’s chin on market day. Since when do I get pleasure from hurting women? “You’re not smiling, Harriet. I thought you appreciated a good joke.” Now I’m telling dumb-women jokes. I need a drink. He spied his bottle of bourbon on the other side of the room; it was no longer full. Wonderful! She’s drunk on top of everything else. “Maybe you didn’t understand the joke. I don’t want you.”
Etienne couldn’t believe the words that spewed from his mouth, like vomit. He tunneled the fingers of one hand through his hair and gripped his throbbing skull. Beast, beast, beast, beast…he berated himself to the agonizing pounding of his headache.
She flinched. “Etienne, don’t,” she said softly. But she didn’t back down.
Etienne had gambled with the best, and he just knew that Harriet was betting all her cards on the hope that he really did want her. She was bluffing, pure and simple, but, damn, he had to admire her nerve. And, damn, he really did want her.
“I’m calling the shots here, buster. I’ll decide on the battle plan, not you.” Her bottom lip trembled as she threw out the brave challenge.
He shook his head in awe. If the South had engaged a few Harriets on its side, the war might have turned out differently. “Battle plan? Siege? Where’s the battering ram, darlin’? Cause I’m not giving in without a fight.” He sliced her a condescending smirk.
“Call me crazy, darlin’, but is that a battering ram I see between your legs?”
He gasped at her vulgarity, but inside he toasted her audacity. “Harriet, get out of here.” He wearied of the contest and feared the cruel demons that had overtaken his tongue. He moved toward her purposefully, intending to toss her out the door.
“Stop right there,” she said, raising the gun. “I’m freaking out here, and I can’t predict what I might do.”
I can, honey. And you’re about to land flat on your rear, back in your own compartment. “That revolver isn’t worth a pisshole in the snow if I decide to take it from you.” And it’s probably not loaded.
“I warned you.” She raised the gun high, closing her eyes and pressing the trigger.
He ducked his head at the loud report. “Harriet!”
She’d been aiming for the ceiling, but what she hit was a pineapple spindle atop one of the bedposts behind him. He could tell she was as amazed as he was.
“You’re crazy.” he observed, halting his advance on her.
“Yep. Now, do as I say. First, take off your shirt.”
Take off my shirt? he echoed silently. “Harriet,” he protested with a whoosh of disbelief.
She raised the pistol again.
“Whatever you say, sweetheart.” He did as ordered, wondering if Harriet suffered from strange mood swings before her monthly time. She probably wouldn??
?t appreciate his asking. So he raised an eyebrow in question.
“Undo your trousers, slowly, then drop them to the floor.”
He hesitated only a second, then complied. He was no longer weary of the contest. And he didn’t give a damn about her mood.
“The socks, too.”
When he stood there, naked as a plucked chicken, about six feet from her, she wavered, as if not sure what to do next.
“What’s the point of this…seige?” he asked thickly. His “drawbridge” was certainly rising to the occasion.
“Forceful seduction.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m going to forcefully seduce you. I don’t like the “Happy Trails” tune you’ve been playing, ditching me in your dust. Now I’m calling the tune, and you’re gonna dance, I promise you.”
A grin tugged at his lips, but he managed to hold it at bay. “Do you have any idea the size of battle required to seduce me?”
He could tell she wasn’t sure if he meant that he would be easy or hard. All she’d have to do was to drop her eyes a few feet and she’d see his “drawbridge.” And she called men dumb!
“Now take one of those socks and tie your right arm to that post at the bottom of the bed.”
He obeyed, intrigued now and wondering just how far she’d carry the game. He stood still while she helped him slide his broken arm back in its sling. Still not satisfied, she made him stand against the bed frame at its bottom, thighs parted, and she tied his left foot to the base of the other bedpost.
“Satisfied?” He tugged with his right arm and left foot to show he was secured.
“Hardly.”
He grinned.
“Tell me what you’d like me to do,” she urged, putting her gun aside and moving up close.
Oh, sweetheart, don’t ever give a man an open invitation like that. “Untie me.”
“Besides that.” She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips—a nervous gesture.
You could start with your tongue. “This is your battle, not mine.”
“Okay, then.” She dropped her knife to the floor and raised herself on tiptoes. Fingering the edges of his hair, she cupped one side of his jawline tenderly. Gliding her tongue along the seam of his lips till he sighed, she molded her mouth against his with changing moist patterns.
“Harder,” he rasped out. “Inside. Give me your tongue.”
She smiled against his mouth and nipped his bottom lip in chastisement. “Easy, babe, easy. Not yet.”
He rewarded her with a soft moan.
Taking all the time in the world, she kissed the curve of his neck, his inner elbow and the soft flesh of his wrist on the upraised arm. His eyes followed her every movement, mesmerized. She whispered her admiration for all his various body parts. When she rubbed her silk-clad breasts against his chest, abrading his nipples. he moaned.
“I’m seduced,” he said with a raspy laugh. “Untie me now.”
“Oh, no, no, no! That’s not the way forceful seduction works. You have to be brought to your knees, figuratively speaking, that is,” she said, and did, in fact, drop to the floor on her own knees. “You have to be brought to the point of begging for release.”
“I’m begging you to release me now.”
“Tsk-tsk! Not that kind of release.”
“Oh.” Then, “Are you sure there are all these rigid rules for forceful seduction?”
“I’m sure,” she purred, as she caressed his toes and the arches of his feet, then the backs of his knees. “Very rigid.”
He sucked in a deep draft of air.
“Ah! The backs of your knees are extra sensitive, aren’t they?” she murmured, and went back to those knees over and over as she kissed his navel, his hard abdomen, his inner thighs.
He couldn’t speak.
Then, still kneeling, she peered up at him and back to the source of all his pleasurable anguish, which stood out in rampant need from his body. She traced a forefinger lightly along the engorged veins and he jerked involuntarily. She did the same with the tip of her tongue and he said through gritted teeth, “Mon Dieu!” When she put her fingers to the backs of his knees, fluttering them like birds’ wings, and took him into her mouth, all of him, his legs buckled and he sank to the edge of the bed.
“I’m calling a cease-fire here before you get caught in the reverse artillery.” His body went stiff then as an unwelcome image flicked through his mind. “Did you do that for Briggs?”
Harriet recoiled, but she refused to answer. “What do you want me from me, Etienne? Blood? You got it. Do you enjoy torturing me with accusations? What I did with Briggs has nothing to do with us. Nothing. But punish me if it makes you feel better.” She lifted her hands in a hopeless gesture.
“Were you aroused with Briggs?” Oh, God, where did that question come from?
A small cry escaped her parted lips.
The devil in his head replied, “I take that for a ‘yes.’”
Her eyes went huge and filled with the diamond sparkle of tears. Shamed, she folded both arms over her chest and rocked from side to side. He could tell she was about to flee.
Reacting instinctively, he slipped his broken arm from its sling and grasped her wrist. Pain shot like a lance from his splinted forearm to his shoulder, but he wouldn’t let go of her struggling body. With monumental effort, he drew her closer and ordered, “Reach down and pick up the knife.”
She did, sobbing loudly now.
“Cut me loose,” he grated out, “and stop squirming unless you want to reset a broken arm.”
She immediately stilled, glancing at his splinted arm.
He was touched to the core that, even now, she cared more for his well-being than her own.
When he was free, he fell backward on the mattress, taking her with him. First he held her on top of his body; then he rolled over to the side. Huge tears streamed from her liquid eyes and she held a breath every few moments in an effort to stifle her sobs.
“Shhh,” he soothed, shimmying up to the center of the mattress and compelling her to come with him. “I didn’t mean what I said.”
“Yes, you did. You’ll never forget about me and Briggs, no matter what I say. You’re a pig, but an honest pig. Don’t stop now.” She sniffled and once again tried to turn away from his embrace. “Let me go. You were right. I shouldn’t have come.”
“I changed my mind,” he said, wiping her tears with the edge of the linen sheet.
“You did?” She hiccoughed.
He nodded. “Harriet, I’m not myself these days. I don’t mean the filth that pours from my mouth. It’s like the connection between my brain and my tongue has been severed.”
She put fingertips over his mouth to halt further words. “I understand,” she said softly.
He wished he did.
Then she grimaced. “Gawd, I can’t even do a forceful seduction right.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” He chuckled, rolling to his back and hauling her half onto his chest so that his injured arm could lie flat on the mattress while his right arm caressed her shoulders, her waist, her buttocks. “Seems to me the seige was more than a victory. You got the ‘drawbridge’ up, at least.”
She blinked at him in confusion, then laughed, peeking with mock horror down below.
“Aren’t you going to finish the seige? Take the castle?”
Narrowing her eyes at him, she asked. “What’d you have in mind?”
“Well, I’m a crippled man,” he whined, raising his splint with exaggerated weakness. “I guess I’m at your mercy.”
She brightened. “I take no hostages.”
“Overconfidence has been the downfall of some of the greatest military commanders. Beware of ambushes.” He wiggled his eyebrows for emphasis.
“One thing first, Etienne,” she said, throwing one leg over his waist and straddling his stomach. “I want you to know why I came tonight.”
Talk? She’s going to talk. Now? “Harriet, honey, please. When w
e talk…when I talk…we always end in an argument.”
She slid her bottom lower over that oversensitized evidence of his arousal and talked, ignoring his advice. “I came because I couldn’t bear to have our relationship end with you hating me.”
“I don’t…hate…you,” he said in a strangled moan. While she’d been speaking, she slid even lower, sitting on his thighs now. And she was examining his “drawbridge” with delicate, fingering strokes. He arched upward, trying desperately to withstand the oncoming waves of pleasure those mere strokes evoked.
“Yes, you do hate me. Your revulsion is evident,” she insisted as she continued to fondle him. “But at the same time, you feel this guilt. There’s no need for repression with me, though. Don’t think I’m under the delusion that—”
He regarded her with amusement. “Harriet, I swear, you know must know every ‘-ion’ word in the dictionary. Is that a prerequisite for being a mind doctor? But I know some even better ones.”
She raised a brow at him.
“Stimulat-ion. Erect-ion. Fornicat-ion. Satisfact-ion.”
She gave him a playful slap on the chest and then, unmercifully, prattled on. It was probably part of her assault plan. “Believe me, it hurts to admit that I love you and that my love will never be reciprocated.”
Why, oh why do women have to talk at a time like this? With a rumbling growl, he spread his thighs wide and dragged her upward so she lay on top of him. “Would you like to see my sword, m’lady soldier?”
“Only if you want to see my sheath.”
“Enough conversation, sweetheart,” he pleaded. “It’s time for the drawbridge and the moat to come together.”
“Oh.” She appeared dazed as he bucked upward, imbedding himself inside her to the hilt. Her tight folds clenched him spasmodically in welcome.
“Oh” just about says it all. “Harriet,” he rasped out, and silenced any further talk with his openmouthed kiss.
It was the shortest seige in history.
The battle wasn’t over yet, though. Throughout the night, she tried to talk, and he conducted an admirable campaign of keeping her too busy to think, let alone lecture him on all his admittedly numerous faults.