Page 135 of Frankly, My Dear

“I am not myself tonight.” His voice carried an odd composure, but his eyes glittered with feral turmoil. Gently he touched his fingertips to the pulse beat in her neck, his eyes holding hers imploringly. “I need you, Selene.”

And that was all Selene had to hear. She fell back on her small bed in surrender, taking James with her.

Roughly he tore the camisole from her body and dispatched his own clothing with haste. His fingers dug into her forearms as he returned to the bed, breathing raggedly. Selene tried to soothe the tense muscles of his neck and back with sweeping caresses and soft words, but James seemed beyond hearing.

Pressing his lips on hers with barely controlled aggression, he marked her as his possession. Gentle bites, firm pressure, and then the plundering claim of his tongue…all bespoke a man out of control, pushed beyond his limits. He stabbed her nipple with his tongue, then took the bud and aureole into his mouth, sucking hard. His hands and lips roamed everywhere at once, frantic, rapacious.

“You are mine,” he kept repeating over and over in a raw voice.

Selene forced herself to relax, to trust in James that he would not truly harm her. Love flowed through her, and she tried to transmit those feelings to James through the haze of his frenzied handling.

Almost immediately, he settled, shaking his head as if to clear the raging madness that had overcome him. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“Hush,” she whispered, placing her bruised lips to the wildly beating pulse at the base of his straining neck. She thought she felt a wetness on his face.

Now James’s hands turned gentle, persuasive. Methodically he searched for all the pleasure points on her body and made sexy sounds of male approval when her soft sighs affirmed his discoveries.

Taking her hand, James guided it to the steely evidence of his need for her. Whispering, he told her how he wanted her to touch him, what pleased him most.

He gripped her ankles in both hands, pushing her knees upward and out, and entered her body. Selene writhed and rolled from side to side, fighting the waves of a rising crescendo of pleasure…too intense, too overwhelming, far beyond her control.

Over and over, James drove her to the point of release. Then he would stop with a triumphant cry…and start her on her journey again. With each long stroke, Selene felt herself splintering bit by bit, but she yielded herself to James, giving herself into his care, trusting that he would help her put the pieces back together.

Finally James braced himself on corded arms, his head reared back, and teeth bared savagely. With a primitive moan, he buried himself in her, and her body welcomed his jerking manhood with loving clasps.

Sated, at last…panting with sublime exhaustion…he lay heavily atop her as he grew soft inside her body, but still he did not pull himself out. “You are mine,” he said once again, this time in a gentle voice of entreaty.

“I am yours,” she agreed.

Then, holding James in place with her hands on his buttocks and her knees locked around his hips, she kissed him softly, murmured sweetly, even chuckled, until he was ready again. And then it was Selene who cried out in the end, “You are mine.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Starting the next morning, disasters began exploding throughout Bayou Noir, one after another, like popcorn over an open fire.

“Bob is dead,” Blossom informed Selene the minute she entered the kitchen.

Bob? The three-legged chicken?

“And someone dug a hole in the south levee, floodin’ the fields,” Hyacinth added dolefully. “All the cane there is buried in mud.”

“Mam’zelle Baptiste is drinkin’ tafia like it be water,” Iris contributed, clicking her tongue against her teeth with disapproval. “An’ she claims someone been messin’ in her personal belongings.”

Selene looked about the busy kitchen where the slaves worked briskly as they talked. They glanced repeatedly up at the bell on the wall, waiting for its first dreaded tinkling.

James had long since left for the fields, leaving Selene’s bed before dawn with a sweet kiss and the whispered plea, “Trust me.” That left her to handle these household problems, when she’d rather think about the wonderful night that had just passed in James’s arms and how they were going to resolve their own monumental problems.

“Is that all?” she asked, putting a hand to her suddenly throbbing head.

“No, that ain’t all.” Blossom slammed her copper spoon down on the table. “Reba locked herself in her bedchamber ’cause she’s got a pimple and ain’t got no more makeup. And Verbena’s been crying’ and cryin’ over in the laundry house. Says she gots PMZ. What’s PMZ?”

“PMS,” Selene corrected her with a groan. She sank down on a chair and took the cup of steaming coffee Blossom set before her.

“There be voodoo signs all over the place from las’ night,” Iris told her in a hushed whisper.

Selene remembered then that she, too, had heard the drums last night before the onslaught of the bayou storm.

“Amen says he saw Mam’zelle Giselle in the woods, and she was the Mamoloi at the voodoo ceremony. Says she was the one what slit Bob’s neck,” Blossom noted. “I swear, I’m gonna whack some sense into that Amen with my soup ladle for bein’ there hisself. The fool!”