Lucky’s Lady

CHAPTER 7

THE PIROGUE CUT ACROSS THE INKY SURFACE OF the bayou as softly as a whisper on the wind. Mist drifted like smoke among the smooth dark trunks of the trees. The air was heavy with scents, like a courtesan's perfume, sweet, almost palpable-honeysuckle and jasmine, verbena and wisteria, all mingling with the darker metallic scent of the water and the decaying growth that lay beneath it. Intertwined with scent was sound-the chirp and trill of insects, the song of frogs, the call of an owl and the whoosh of its wings as it left its perch. In the distance an alligator roared, a nutria screamed. Night feeders had come out to hunt and be hunted.

Lucky let his boat drift toward the shelter of a massive live oak that overhung the waters edge. The bank had been eaten away to the gnarled roots of the tree and formed a tiny cove that was deep enough to keep the boat afloat. It provided natural cover with the canopy of the tree spreading out wide and low, its ragged beards of moss hanging down like a moth-eaten curtain. It was the perfect place to wait.

He dug a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it, taking a deep, soothing drag. The tip flared red in die gloom of the night. The match hissed as it hit the surface of die water. Tension hummed inside him like an overloaded power line. Tension for the job he was here to do, but a greater part of it was sexual frustration. He'd never wanted a woman so badly in his life. Never. Not even in his youth when his hormones had roared in perpetual high gear. Not even after he'd spent a year in a Central American prison. He had never wanted a woman more than he had wanted Serena Sheridan in that blinding flash of heat. He was still shaking with the intensity of it. He was still half hard.

Damn her. Why her? Of all the women on the planet, why her? How could it be possible for him to look at Serena and remember Shelby's duplicity and still want her?

She wasn't Shelby. He knew that. Shelby would never have come after Gifford. She would never have stood nose to nose with the old man and matched him temper for temper. Shelby's methods of getting what she wanted fell more into the eyelash-batting and pouting categories. No, in terms of personality, the sisters were nothing alike. Shelby was all calculated flirtation and coy charm. Serena was all business and sass. Still, he didn't want to want her. She was dangerous to his sanity, reminding him of the past and the affair that had set his life on a near-disastrous course.

He had surrendered to Shelby's charms, succumbed to her, and lost himself. He was a junior at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette, young and hot and full of himself, caught up in the idea of taking the world by storm, determined to show everybody what he could do. The big brooding kid everyone watched with a wary eye was going to be the first Doucet to get a college education. He was going to be a biologist. Having Shelby Sheridan on his arm-and in his bed-was another feather in his cap. He had the world by the tail that spring. Then it turned around and knocked him senseless.

He was nothing but a means to an end, a tool for Shelby to get what she really wanted-John Mason Talbot IV. Talbot was balking at the idea of marriage. Shelby took up with Lucky to provoke jealousy. A simple, time-honored plan. The fact that she had gotten pregnant with his baby had been an inconvenience easily dealt with just as soon as Talbot put his ring on her finger.

Lucky could still taste the bitterness. He hadn't loved Shelby as much as he had loved the idea of her. When she dropped him, the blow to his youthful ego was terrible. When he found out about the aborted pregnancy, the cut went to his very core. Shelby had shattered his pride with careless ease and gone on with her life as if nothing had happened at all, while pain and humiliation drove him to abandon school and all his grand plans.

With youthful drama he dropped everything and joined the army, sending his life down a path that led to a gray place of shadowed existence, where there was no good or evil, only missions and objectives, a place where his soul was stripped away from him a little bit at a time.

Thirteen years passed and he could still feel the shame of having been played for a fool by a pretty dark-eyed blond belle.

And now he was being tempted by another.

He swore in French and flung the butt of his cigarette away. As if he didn't have enough trouble already, he had to go stirring up old nests of resentment. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was revenge he wanted when he looked at Serena. Or maybe he was complicating matters unnecessarily. Maybe it was just sex.

Hell, he could handle sex. It would be fabulous between them. He already knew that. The instant he'd touched his mouth to hers he'd been wild to get inside her. And she'd lost that cool control of hers and responded to him with all the fire she had previously reserved for sarcasm. Yeah, he could handle sex with Serena Sheridan. The idea of having all that cool beauty and inner heat beneath him and around him damn near made him burn up from the inside out.

It was an emotional entanglement he wanted to avoid. He was smart enough to keep that from happening. He wouldn't let Serena get that close to him. He wouldn't let anyone get that close, not even his family. He didn't have anything left to give anyone. He guarded what was left of his soul like a miser.

The distant buzz of an outboard motor broke in on his thoughts. Lucky came to attention, following the sound carefully. It wasn't too far off-over on the next bayou and nearing the fork that branched into the little no-name stream he was on. He was exactly where he needed to be. A nasty smile unfurled across his dark face. He pulled a pair of infrared goggles from his gear bag, put them on, then took up his baire and draped it over himself, pulled his gun, and waited.

Serena couldn't sleep. She hadn't tried. Her exhaustion went bone deep, but the fear went deeper. She was alone. It didn't seem to matter very much that she was in a house with a roof over her head. She was still in the swamp, alone. In the ordinary course of things she thought of herself as a strong, competent, self-reliant individual able to handle most anything that might come her way. This she couldn't quite handle. Even after all these years the memories were too strong. Every sight, every sound, every smell only brought them into sharper focus. She would have given her left arm for a Valium. Just one. Anything to dull the little knives that were splitting her nerve endings.

«Pull yourself together, Serena,» she muttered aloud, tightening her arms across her chest in a symbolic gesture as she paced the width of the dining room. «If your patients could see you now, they'd pack up their neuroses and go shrink shopping.»

A skittering sound rattled across die gallery just as she passed the screen door. She shrieked and bolted sideways, banging her knee and stubbing her toe on a table leg. She swore a litany of curses under her breath and limped around the table.

In the time since Lucky had left she had done little else but pace. She had washed up in the tiny spotless bathroom, found a comb and restored some order to her hair. She'd made a sandwich with a spongy slice of Evangeline Maid white bread and peanut butter and eaten on the move, too keyed up to sit. Really, she'd been too keyed up to eat, but she knew from experience that not eating properly only magnified her paranoia. So she had walked and chewed, hiking over every inch of the first floor of Lucky's house.

There was nothing much to distract her from her fear. There was no television, no radio, no stereo. She spotted a CB radio on a shelf in the kitchen, but she had no idea how to work it. She couldn't even amuse herself by unpacking and repacking her suitcase because it was still outside.

She assumed Lucky had taken her luggage out of his pirogue. It probably wouldn't do for a poacher to be caught toting silk lingerie and a supply of makeup. Other swamp boys might get the wrong idea. But even if he had left her bags on the dock, they weren't going to do her any good because there was no way in hell she was walking out to get them. The ground was literally crawling out here at night. In her imagination she could picture herself trying to tiptoe across yards of writhing reptilian bodies.

«Stop it!» she snapped as a spasm of fear ran down her back and a wave of it rose up in her throat as thick and sour as grease.

From somewhere in the far distance beyond the front door came the crack! crack! of what sounded like gunfire.

Lucky.

«Oh my God,» Serena whispered. Her eyes teared up and she lifted a trembling hand to her lips. What if he were shot? What if he were killed? What if whoever did him in came looking for God knew what?

Her heart thudding like a paddle ball behind her ribs, she crept toward the door, straining her eyes to see something in the stygian blackness beyond. For a moment all she could hear was the blood roaring in her ears, then the raspy screech of frogs. Something screamed, a terrible bloodchilling sound that might have been an animal in its death throes or a woman on the brink of hysteria. The sound tore across the night like a knife ripping through silk and then it was gone, leaving an eerie stillness in its wake. Serena sucked back a sob and moved quickly away from the door and into the next room.

She resumed her pacing, picking up speed as she walked a path from the front window past the old horsehide sofa to the bed and back. The sore on the bottom of her foot had gone past the point of pain to numbness. She wished for the pain back; it would have been something else to think about besides this awful choking fear.

She tried to think about the situation at Chanson du Terre, but there were still too many pieces missing for her to make any sense of it. Thoughts of her last few moments with Lucky drifted through her head, but she shooed them away. She didn't yet want to consider the ramifications of getting that close to man who claimed to be crazy and carried a gun.

Her toe connected with something solid hidden under his bed as she turned the corner to pace back toward the front window. Hesitantly, she turned to face the bed. It was a mahogany half-tester with delicately carved details. A thick curtain of mosquito netting was draped back from the headpiece. The coverlet was an exquisite example of Cajun weaving in soft brown cotton with narrow indigo stripes.

The idea of Lucky, pagan and barbaric, stretched out naked on this elegant bed stirred the embers of desire deep inside her. Serena shook her head in amazement. How could she want a man who was so contrary to her idea of what a modern man should be?

She knew there were women who wanted to be dominated, women who would have melted into puddles at the feet of a man like Lucky Doucet. She was not among them. She had always held to the idea of equality between the sexes. Lucky was a throwback to the heyday of male chauvinism. She didn't trust him, didn't like him, didn't respect him. How could she want him?

Her gaze roamed over the bed again, and heat unfurled like a dozen ribbons in her belly, tickling, tantalizing.

Tearing her thoughts away from sex, she dropped to her knees on the woven rug beside the bed and lifted the edge of the coverlet. There were several large cardboard boxes stashed away and she reached for one, stopping herself just as her fingertips grazed the edge. She could find something she would be better off not knowing about. Or she could find something that would give her a clue to who Lucky Doucet really was. She nibbled her lip in indecision but jerked the box toward her as another strange scratching sound drifted in through the window.

The carton was packed with books.

«God, who would have guessed he even knew how to read,» she muttered to herself.

Her fingers drifted lightly over the spines of the hardbound volumes that had been so carefully packed. They were largely college-level text books on biology. There was a collection of Shakespeare, several tomes on art history, and a set of small, very old-looking volumes with French titles in faded gold print. Serena carefully lifted out one of the science books and turned back the cover. It smelled musty and sweet and the pages stuck together as she turned to the title page and read the handwritten note in the upper right-hand corner:

Etienne Doucet. USL. 1979.

College. She tried to imagine Lucky walking the hallowed halls of USL, going to class with books in his arms, but could picture him only in army fatigue pants and no shirt, climbing up into a tower with an assault rifle. But he'd been a student, and a serious one, if these books were anything to go by. Why then was he making his living by nefarious means?

«I'm over the edge. I might do anything.»

«He's been living like an animal out in the swamp ever since he got out of the army. Folks say he's half crazy.»

How did a student of science and the arts make the jump to the military and from the military to here? What had happened? What events had shaped him into the tough, sullen man he was today?

Her mind working on the question, Serena replaced the book and shoved the box back under the bed. She perched herself on the edge of the bed and sat there for a long moment, thinking, her gaze drifting around the room as she tried to make sense of the enigma that was Lucky.

The stillness crept in on her by degrees. By the time she was fully aware of it, it seemed absolute. The night that had seemed almost raucous with sound was suddenly silent. The eeriness of it felt like fingers tracing down her back.

She felt totally vulnerable. If someone outside the house were bent on coming in, the only thing to stop an intruder was a screen door. She thought she heard the scrape of a boot on the gallery floor, but the sound was gone so quickly she might have imagined it. The fear that had temporarily abated rushed back like a flood tide. There was more than snakes and alligators to be wary of in the swamp at night. The faces of the men Lucky had confronted at Mosquito Moutons came to mind with nauseating clarity, and the big man's threat came back loud and clear-I'll get you…

Serena blew out the kerosene lamp on the night-stand, dousing the room in blackness. Grabbing a heavy brass candlestick, she crept on tiptoe toward the front wall. Lucky could fight his own fights, she was sure, but if his enemies came looking for him, she was not interested in being made a secondary target for their violence.

She pressed her back against the wall beside the window and strained to hear. Nothing… a faint thump… or was that just her heartbeat? She inched her way toward the door, breath aching in her lungs, candlestick raised in a white-knuckled fist.

A hand grabbed her arm from behind.

She didn't have time to draw breath to scream before she'd been spun around and pinned to the wall. A large hand clamped over her mouth and a heavy male body pressed into hers, his weight holding her with ridiculous ease. The candlestick dropped from her grasp and clattered to the floor.

«You lookin' to put a few dents in my head, sugar?»

Serena went limp against the wall. The tension ran out of her, leaving the trembling afterglow of fear. Lucky. He dropped his hand from her mouth and eased back from her, an amused smile twitching his lips. The smile died the instant Serena launched herself at him.

«You bastard! Of all the rotten things to do!»

He caught her by the wrists and held her off. «Hey, cool out!»

«I will not cool out!» She aimed a kick at his shin, but he dodged it easily, which only made her angrier. «If you had any idea how frightened I was to begin with- Damn you!» she raged, tears of terror swelling over the dam of her lashes. She kicked again and won the satisfaction of hearing him grunt as her toe made contact. «If you had any idea…»

It all caught up with her then. The fear, the memories, the episode with Gifford, her exhaustion, the futility of trying to hurt Lucky all rushed up on her and hit with the strength and finesse of a freight train. She stopped struggling against him. His grip relaxed and she jerked her arms back, pulling free. She turned toward the door and pressed her hands over her face as the last brick in her wall of resolve crumbled.

She didn't want to be there. She didn't want to be frightened. She didn't want to have to deal with any family problems. She didn't want to have to deal with a man like Lucky.

Tears came very much against her will, but she didn't have the strength to stop them. They rolled like pearls down her cheeks.

Lucky watched with something akin to horror. The sound of a woman crying flipped a panic switch inside him. He could deal with her smart mouth and her cool reserve and the temper she had just unleashed on him, but tears… Dieu! And these were the real thing, not some phony whimpering designed to win her something. These were real tears, and it was plain she didn't like having him see them. She kept her back to him, her shoulders rigid as she tried in vain to fight them off. He stood there helpless, his hands jammed at his waist. The image of her standing on the pier at Gauthier s came back to him-the way the color had suddenly washed from her face as she'd looked down at his pirogue, the impression he'd had of inner fragility. It was there again, that sense that something inside her had cracked.

He couldn't help but feel empathy. He knew what it was to feel strength give way inside, to feel darkness creeping in like cold black ink. It didn't matter how many times he told himself he wouldn't get involved with her beyond the physical sense. It didn't matter how detached he told himself he was. He couldn't ignore this kind of pain.

«Hey,» he said, coming to stand directly behind her. He rested a hand on her shoulder and held on, gentle but firm, as she tried to shrug him off. «What'sa matter, chere? Did I scare you that bad? I didn't mean to. I don' like comin' in the front door. It's an old habit that's saved my miserable hide more than once. Saved me from gettin' a goose egg this time,» he said, pushing at the candlestick with the toe of his boot.

«It's not that,» Serena whispered miserably. She shook her head and tried to sniff back the tears, but they still squeezed out to dribble down her face. She felt too defeated to cling to her pride. It served no purpose anyway. Why not tell him and get it over with? He probably thought the worst of her as it was, and what did it matter if he did? She didn't have to answer to him.

«It's this place. The swamp,» she said. She brushed her hair back from her face and stared out the door at the shades of darkness beyond. «It terrifies me.»

«Is that why you never went out to get your bags?»

Serena nodded. «I'm sure it seems completely stupid to you, but going out there in the dark is one of my worst nightmares.»

«Why is that?» Lucky asked, backing a step away from her and letting his hand drop from her shoulder.

«Why do you hate this place so? Is it too dirty for you? Too primal? It offends your sophisticated sensibilities that much?»

The bitterness in his voice touched Serena's raw nerves like acid. She jerked around to face him, glaring up at him through her tears. «Stop it. I'm sick of your reverse snobbery. Stop putting me down because I prefer to live in a city and hold a regular job and wear a complete set of clothes. You don't know anything about me. You don't have any idea why I hate this place.»

«Then tell me.» He spoke it like a challenge, told himself he didn't care what the answer was, and waited to hear it just the same.

Serena blew a long sigh of resignation between her lips. Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned once again to face the door. «When I was seventeen I got lost out here,» she began, relating the tale in a voice carefully devoid of emotion. «My sister and I and some friends came out for the day in Giff's bass boat. We were just fooling around, having fun. We had packed a picnic lunch and we stopped off at a little clearing to eat. I wasn't sure where we were, but the boy driving the boat said he was, so I didn't worry about it.

«Shelby and I started getting on each other about something. I don't even remember what it was. We were always like that-bickering over little things, always taking opposite sides of an issue no matter how trivial. Anyway, when we got ready to leave, I realized I had forgotten my jacket in the clearing and went back alone to get it. Shelby talked the boy who was driving the boat into leaving me there.»

«She left you there. Alone.» Anger simmered in Lucky's gut, hot and furious. Shelby. «The bitch.»

Serena made a dismissive gesture with one hand, then tucked it back against her. «It was just a spiteful joke. She didn't mean for anything bad to happen.»

«Didn't she?» Lucky said flatly.

«No. Of course not. She was just mad at me and wanted to give me a scare. They went off in the boat, intending to come back and get me in an hour or so, but a storm blew up.

«It was one of those days. The sky was blue one minute and black the next.» She could still see it clearly in her mind's eye-the clouds rolling in across the swamp, gray and black with a strange yellow tinge, like noxious smoke boiling up out of a hundred factory chimneys. She could still taste the air, could still feel the weight of it pressing on her the moment before the storm broke. She could still hear the deafening thunder, the vicious cracks of the lightning as it ripped across the sky.

«It rained so hard it looked like ice coming down in sheets. It stormed for hours, and when the thunder and lightning finally quit, it just kept on pouring. I got scared. I knew no one would be able to come and get me with a boat the way it was raining. I thought if I got pointed in the right direction, I might be able to find my way back. I was wrong.»

She stopped there, unable to talk about what it had been like to walk on and on, following swelling streams that ran one direction and then another, turning so many times she'd had no idea whether she had been going toward home or hell. She couldn't talk about the terror of spending the night with no shelter, no supplies, no food. She couldn't put into words what it had felt like to crouch on a tree stump as that dark water swirled up toward her, driving a trio of cotton-mouths up to share her perch.

The pressure building inside her as she relived the memories forced the false sense of calm from her voice. «I don't remember a lot of what happened,» she said in a tremulous whisper. «I blocked a lot of it out. I remember being cold and wet… and so afraid, I thought I'd choke on it… shaking so hard with fear that I almost couldn't walk. I remember the look on Gifford's face when they found me.»

«How long did it take?»

«Two days.»

Lucky swore under his breath. He had grown up on the bayous, fishing and hunting with his father and brothers, exploring just for the sheer joy of it. It was nothing for him to spend days in this wilderness. He knew every plant, every animal, every insect, every inch of mud and water. But he could imagine the kind of girl Serena had been-a soft, pretty debutante, member of the country club and cheerleading squad-and he could imagine her terror. The swamp was an unforgiving place, a place of natural beauty and natural violence. It didn't suffer fools gladly. Serena had been thrown into it completely unprepared. Considering the circumstances, that she had survived was a miracle.

And it had all been Shelby's fault.

It was Shelby's fault Serena was standing before him now, her fierce pride in tatters, trembling as if she were being given jolts of electricity at regular intervals. She had had this fear inflicted on her by her own sister, her twin. That was unthinkable to Lucky. Whatever else he might have done in his life, he had never intentionally hurt one of his own family members. But Shelby had. Shelby, who didn't care whom she hurt as long as she got what she wanted.

Anger surged through him now as he stared down at Serena. Anger and an emotion he refused to recognize as protectiveness. She stood with her back to him, but he had shifted to one side so he could see a little of her face over her shoulder. She looked impossibly young and sad standing there with her hair down around her shoulders and no makeup on her face.

«I was in the hospital for a week,» she said. «Suffering from exposure and snakebite. As you can see, I never did quite get over it.» She gave a little laugh, but it held no humor, only pain and frustration and a sense of shame. She sniffed and shrugged. «Now you know my disgraceful little secret: The calm, cool psychologist has a phobia she can't overcome.»

Lucky closed his eyes and folded his arms around her, holding her because he knew how badly she needed comforting. He could hear it in her voice and he couldn't keep from responding. He pulled her back against his big, solid body and marveled absently at how perfectly she fit.

Serena didn't fight his embrace. She wasn't sure what it meant, this show of caring from such a hard man, but she accepted it. She let herself lean back against him and soaked in the feeling of safety his arms inspired. In that moment it didn't matter how they'd fought or how different they were from each other. He was just a man offering her compassion when she needed it badly. She turned her head and pressed her cheek to his chest, listening to the solid thud of his heartbeat.

«This is why you didn't want to come out here in the pirogue, oui?» he asked softly, resting his cheek against the top of her head without even realizing it, certainly without recognizing the tenderness of the gesture.

«I didn't want to come out here, period.»

«Why did you?»

«Because I had to. Somebody had to.»

«That you're so afraid of the swamp-why didn't you tell me this sooner?»

«And give you another reason to sneer at me? No thank you. Frankly, I didn't think my fears would be of any interest to a man like you.»

«We've all of us got fears, chere,» he murmured almost to himself.

She looked up at him over her shoulder, arching a brow. «Even big, bad Lucky Doucet?»

Lucky said nothing. It was one thing to have Serena confess to him. It would be quite something else to turn the tables. He wouldn't, couldn't, let her get that close to him. He had worked too hard to pull himself together to let some lady shrink dissect him.

«What are you afraid of, Lucky?» she whispered, her dark eyes glowing with intelligence and curiosity. There were tear tracks on her cheeks and her mouth looked soft and vulnerable.

«Nothing,» he murmured, turning her in his arms, «nothing.» He lowered his mouth to hers.

He kissed her deeply, parting her lips expertly and sliding his tongue into her mouth in a gesture of possession. She tasted salty and sweet and so damn good his mind nearly went numb from it. He stroked his hands over the unbound silk of her hair and down her back to the subtle curves of her hips.

He hadn't stopped wanting her in the time he'd been gone. The fire had merely been banked, not put out. The flames leapt to life as her mouth moved beneath his, as her body moved against his. He had pulled away the first time, but he had no intention of pulling away now. He wanted her. It was desire, nothing deeper, nothing more complex than the basic story of a man wanting a woman, of a male needing a female.

With one hand splayed across the small of her back, he pulled her hips tighter against his. With his other hand he found the hem of her top and slipped beneath it to stroke the smooth satin of her skin. With deft fingers he unsnapped the front catch of her bra and cupped a breast. The fullness of it surprised him. The feel of her nipple hardening at the brush of his fingertips excited him.

He dragged his mouth from Serena's lips to her jaw to her ear. She shivered as he traced the delicate shell with the tip of his tongue and trembled when he whispered to her, his voice as dark and hot as the night.

«I want your breast in my mouth, chere. I wanna taste you. I wanna feel your nipple between my lips.»

A whimper caught in her throat.

«I wanna be inside you. I wanna feel you around me, tight and hot and wet.»

Serena's mind reeled with the seductive images he was conjuring. She could feel her temperature rising, sexual desire like a fever in her blood. It was exhilarating, intoxicating, frightening. Her body pressed against his, making its own desires known even as her mind grappled for control.

He kissed her throat, letting his teeth graze the skin. Serena caught her breath against the moan that threatened, but she couldn't stop herself from arching her neck to give him better access. He whispered a more explicit request in her ear, then sucked gently at the soft petal of her earlobe.

«No,» she barely managed to say between gasps. It sounded more like a question than an answer. «No,» she said more forcefully.

Lucky rolled her nipple between thumb and forefinger, tugging subtly at the turgid peak. He raised his head a fraction and stared down at her, his eyes heavy-lidded and dark with passion, the thin band of amber ringing the pupils as warm as the light from the lamp on the table.

«Yes, chere,» he whispered.

Serena's gaze drifted to his mouth, that incredible, sensuous mouth, gleaming wet and red from their kiss. She stared at it, imagining it at her breast, tugging, sucking, his tongue laving her nipple while his fingers stroked her most sensitive flesh.

«No,» she murmured, the word barely a breath moving from her lips. «I hardly know you.»

«You know I'm a man. I know you're a woman. What more do we need to know?»

«We don't even like each other.»

Lucky growled low in his throat as his mouth moved toward hers. «I'm likin' you just fine right now, sugar.» He kissed a corner of her mouth, probing gently at the cleft of her lips with the tip of his tongue.

«J'aime te faire l'amour avec toi,» he breathed the words against her lips. «Bien, ma chere, casse pas mon coeur.

He might have been saying anything. He might have been telling her she was uglier than a mule, but the words, spoken in his smoky voice and flavored with their rich French accent, had their desired effect just the same. Serena felt her common sense further diluted by desire. A languid weakness floated through her arms and legs. She leaned heavily against Lucky and his scent filled her head-musky and warm and indisputably male.

He kissed her again, filling her mouth with his taste. His fingers left her breast to encircle the wrist of her right hand. He drew it down from where it rested flat against his chest. He moved against her hand, nuzzled her cheek, nipped her ear. «That's all for you, angel. Let me give it to you, chere.»

Serena let her fingers flex hesitantly. Another wave of heat flashed through her. Oh, God, she wanted him. She wanted a man she'd only just met, a man who was a mystery to her, a man whose overwhelming masculinity frightened her on a fundamental level.

She turned her head away to draw in a deep breath, and her gaze hit the butt of the semiautomatic pistol that nestled against his ribs. Her heart skipped a beat, then rushed into double time as she looked beyond the gun to his biceps. An ugly two-inch-long gash was carved in the flesh and a line of dried blood trailed from it.

He was a dangerous man. A criminal. A man without scruples.

Shaking from the conflict that raged inside her, Serena pushed herself back from him. «You're bleeding.»

«What?»

«Your arm. The one next to the gun,» she said pointedly. «It's bleeding.»

«It's nothing.» Lucky reached for her.

Serena stepped back, crossing her arms in front of her, still avoiding his gaze. «Not to me it's not.»

He reached out slowly to touch her hair, lifting a golden lock to rub it between his fingers. «If I put a Band-Aid on it, will you go to bed with me?»

«No.»

«Why not?»

«Because I don't indulge in meaningless sexual flings with men I barely know,» she said, struggling to resurrect her facade of calm.

Lucky watched her lift her chin and straighten her shoulders and resented like hell the ease with which she seemed to throw off the need that still pounded through him. «You mean you'll fuck a man only if you think he'll put a ring on your finger,» he said brutally.

«That's not what I said.»

«Mais non, but that's what you meant.»

«That isn't what I meant,» Serena argued. «I don't believe in casual sex. I don't go to bed with men who have no intention of investing emotionally in a relationship just because they happen to be well hung. That's what I meant,» she said bitingly. «Are you going to try to tell me you're in love with me?»

Lucky forced a laugh. «Not a chance.»

Serena clenched her jaw against the unexpected stab of hurt his words inflicted. Of course he wasn't going to say it-not now, not ever. Nor did she want him to. «That settles it, then, doesn't it?»

«Only for tonight, sugar,» he said, hooking a finger beneath her chin and tilting her head back. He bent his head and brushed a mocking gentleman's kiss against her lips. «Bonsoir, cherie. Sweet dreams.»

Serena watched him saunter out the front door. She had no idea where he was going. She told herself she didn't want to know. At any rate, she was too exhausted to care. She'd been put through an emotional wringer, and every muscle and bone ached with it.

Avoiding even a glance at the bed, she curled herself into one corner of the sofa and tried not to think about Lucky, his heat, his passion… the way he had held her when she'd told him she was afraid.…