He grabbed that, too, pulling her arms apart, forcing her up against him, breathing hard as he stared down into her face.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said.
“You want it rough?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. How am I supposed to know? But you’ve been pushing me, teasing me,
A slow smile grew on his face. “You’re ready to do what you want instead of what’s proper?”
“Yes.” She was definitely ready for that. She could go back to being proper next week in Boston. For today, she wanted to belt out fiddle tunes and have wild, unbridled sex with Samuel.
He nipped at her neck, moving down toward her breasts, leaving small love bites as he made his way toward her nipple. “You ever been on top?”
Her eyes fluttered shut, and she shivered. “No.”
“You ever been tied up?”
Her eyes flew open at that one.
He chuckled. “Okay. Baby steps.”
“I don’t. I mean. I-”
He tugged her shorts down in one decisive motion. “I’m not tying you up.”
“Good.” She licked her lips. It might not be that bad. Maybe…
“You scare the hell out of me, you know that?”
“Why?”
He answered her with rough kisses. “Because you are the most gorgeous, exotic, erotic, repressed… You make me want to teach you everything.”
“So teach me.”
“We don’t have that kind of time.” He retrieved a condom from his pocket then shucked off his pants and sheathed himself.
He slid his hands behind her thighs and easily lifted her from the ground. Then he wrapped her legs around him and pulled her into the cradle of his body, immediately sliding inside her, making her groan with pleasure.
He took the few steps to put her back against the cool wall. Then he pinioned her hands against it, forcing pulses of sensation through her body.
“Fast or slow,” he rasped.
“I can get slow back in Boston.”
He immediately jerked into motion. “That’s my girl.”
His kisses were soft. The wall was hard. And his body possessed an inexhaustible supply of strength and stamina. She lost track of time and space as fireworks went off inside her head over and over again.
Finally, when she was limp and tingling and totally satisfied, he slowed, then stilled against her. She blinked her eyes open, and the world shimmered back into focus-the plump, white pillows, the messy floor, and his father’s violin surrounded by sheet after sheet of priceless music.
JOAN SMACKED a file folder down on the table in the breakfast nook of La Petite Maison. “I just don’t get it. What are they scared of?”
Anthony empathized with her frustration. He’d read the entire transcript from the inquest, and he couldn’t make any kind of an incriminating connection with
Heather sat up, cross-legged on the window seat overlooking the back lawn and the oak grove. “What do we know for sure?”
“That my parents were murdered,” said Samuel.
“That’s beginning to look more and more likely,” Anthony agreed. He was surprised the state police hadn’t followed up on the blunt force trauma suffered by Samuel’s mother.
“But why come back now?” asked Joan, picking up Luc’s copy of her book. “What is
Anthony stood up and paced across the room. “And why your parents?” he asked. “Was it random? Was it theft? Did they see something? Were they-” He snapped his fingers, freezing in place. “Is there any chance your parents witnessed a crime?”
“In Indigo?” asked Joan.
“Why not in Indigo?” He turned to Samuel. “Can you remember anything about that week? Did they seem spooked? Upset? Did they try to contact anybody?”
Samuel shook his head. “Everything was normal. It was a Monday. They’d been down to the shack over the weekend. I stayed home because of-”
“The shack?”
“Dad liked crayfish. He had a little shack about thirty miles up the bayou.”
“What else is up there?”
“Nothing, as far as I can remember. I haven’t been back since.”
“Moonshine? Drugs? Gunrunners?”
Samuel frowned. “Moonshine’s hardly worth getting shot over.”
“Survivalists?” asked Heather.
“Or lunatics,” said Samuel. “There’s a few people in the backwoods that I wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night.”
Joan shook her head. “A crazy hillbilly isn’t going to follow them all the way back to town and shoot them.”
“Drugs, then,” said Heather.
It was a distinct possibility.
“But why did my book spook them?” asked Joan. “There were no drugs in my book.”
“But there is money,” said Anthony. “Or maybe it was as simple as you guessing it was a murder and not a suicide.”
“So what are they looking for in Samuel’s house?”
All three heads turned his way.
“The first time the guy broke in, he went through my photo albums.”
Anthony turned cold. “Your parents took pictures that day?”
Samuel shook his head. “No, they were just family photos.”
Heather uncurled her legs and swung them over the edge of the bench. “But the bad guys might
Anthony met Samuel’s gaze. “Thirty miles up the bayou, you say?”
“Luc!” called Samuel, rolling to his feet. “We’re gonna need a boat.”
ANTHONY FOLLOWED Samuel’s hand signals from the bow, maneuvering the airboat toward an aging dock on the lush shore as the atmosphere and insects thickened around them. They were ten miles down Bayou Teche, another twenty miles into an increasingly complex web of narrow, winding channels that formed tributaries draining into the bayou. The oak canopy had closed over them. Gnarled roots from half-submerged cypress trees twisted between strands of hanging moss that curtained the forest and undulated in a snaking breeze.
If something happened to Samuel, they could be lost out here for months.
Anthony cut the engine, and the big fan blades whirred to silence as they drifted the last few feet. The bushes creaked and groaned with unseen secrets, while insects whirred and chirped in the undergrowth. With a rope in one hand, Samuel grabbed a pillar on the dock and levered himself onto the weathered planks.
“Hold still,” he warned the women as he tied off.
Anthony stripped off his life jacket and tossed the coiled stern rope into Samuel’s waiting hands. As the craft stabilized, he stood up to help Joan and Heather.
“Spooky,” Heather remarked, gazing around at the dense bush as she got her footing on the dock.
“You sure this is the place?” Joan asked Samuel when he handed her up. Anthony released his stabilizing hold on her hips.
