Straight For The Heart Read online

  Alisha had flung herself tearfully into his arms and Josh had succumbed like a hapless schoolboy. He was so desperately in love with her she could have asked for the moon and he would have flown straight up to fetch it. He had played into her hands more perfectly than she could have hoped, and he still did, sweet merciful Jesus. He still did. “Josh,” she gasped. “Josh!”

  Alisha bit her lip against the scream that was threatening to tear from her throat as his hands and mouth worked her body into a frenzy. She clutched at his arms and dug her nails into his flesh, vowing to rake him into bloody ribbons if he didn’t replace the dancing, teasing fingers with something of more substance.

  When he did, she welcomed the first savage thrust with an eagerness that left them both gasping for the wit to muffle their cries of pleasure. She met each successive thrust with shuddering breathlessness, wrapping her arms, her long legs around his plunging body, urging him to a near-brutish demonstration of his skill as a lover.

  She was not disappointed. His strength and power filled her, even frightened her a little as the force of each thrust slammed her closer and closer to the splintered edge of the stairs. But the fear was an added elixir and she arched up in an agony of pleasure as her climax tore through her, the spasms so powerful, they shocked her body into a hard, tight curl of ecstasy.

  She heard Josh’s strangled groan and felt the heat breaking within her, and she held him locked in her arms, rocking and writhing with each throb of sensation until the last heated pulse was wrung from their flesh.

  “Alisha … Alisha …”

  She swallowed hard and gulped at the air needed to clear her senses. He was still moving inside her as if reluctant to admit the finality of the act. She stroked her hands down the length of his back and kept her limbs twined around his waist, sharing his despair at feeling him slowly diminish.

  “Tell me you love me,” she whispered. “Promise me you will never leave me.”

  “You know I love you,” he rasped, dragging his head out of the crook of her shoulder. “You know I could never leave you.”

  His mouth descended with a fierce passion and when the kiss ended, Alisha’s eyes were glazed with pleasure and triumph.

  “I … want to be with you so much. Promise me we’ll be together one day, Josh. Only promise me this and I know I can endure anything. Anything,” she added, her voice catching on a sob.

  Josh lifted himself free and rolled beside her. He gathered her protectively against his chest and felt the sting of outrage burning behind his eyes, not even wanting to think of what lay ahead, only three weeks away.

  “Are you absolutely certain you want to go through with the wedding?” he asked tautly, his body rigid with anguish.

  “You know I must The situation is even more desperate now that the crops are a total loss.”

  Josh pressed a fevered kiss into the silky blonde crown of her hair. “I can’t bear to think of that bloated, loathsome toady touching you. Sometimes … sometimes I think I’ll go mad just imagining what he’ll want from you.”

  “What he wants and what he will get are two different things,” she insisted.

  “He’ll be your husband, for God’s sake. He’ll have rights.”

  “He will never have the right to my heart,” she whispered, tilting her head up so that their eyes met. “For it belongs only and always to you, my love. Only to you.”

  His hands shifted and he grasped two streaming fistfuls of silvered hair, holding her mouth against his until the salty taste of her tears broke them apart.

  “I must go,” she breathed, and started to collect the scattered articles of her clothing.

  “When will I see you again?”

  “Tomorrow,” she said, deliberately misinterpreting his question. “You are still coming to tea, are you not?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Alisha shook her head. “We will have to be careful from now on.”

  Josh laughed dryly and glanced around the summerhouse. “You call this being careful?”

  “You were the one who came tossing pebbles at my window. If I hadn’t come down, you probably would have climbed that rickety old trellis and crashed straight into Ryan’s room.”

  “I needed to see you. I probably wouldn’t have been able to make it through tomorrow’s little farce without telling them all to go to hell and lifting your skirts right there in the parlor.”

  Alisha let a small rush of breath escape her lips as his hands pushed up beneath the camisole she had just slipped over her shoulders. Her nipples constricted instantly under the pressure of his fingertips, but she drew determinedly away and set to work fastening the ribbon closure.

  After a long moment of frowned concentration, she looked up and smiled. “You wouldn’t dare do something so scandalous … would you?”

  “Wouldn’t I? It isn’t me who is insisting we keep our feelings for one another a secret. And it certainly isn’t me who’s afraid to tell Ryan what a bastard he is.”

  Alisha’s smile froze. “You’re not planning to do something … rash … are you?”

  Josh pulled his shirt over his head and raked his hands through his hair. “If you want to know if I plan to demand satisfaction on a dueling field, the answer is no. Unfortunately, Ryan is a far better shot than I, and the baron … well …”

  Alisha held her breath. “Yes?”

  He ground his teeth together as he dragged his breeches over his ankles. “The baron has a purpose to serve. After that, I won’t guarantee anything.”

  “Wh-what do you mean?”

  “I mean, I will do whatever I have to do to make you mine,” he said quietly.

  “But I am yours, you know I am.”

  “Mine completely” he said with grim emphasis. “In every way. Even if it means making a rich widow out of you.”

  “A widow? Oh, Josh, no! No, you mustn’t even think such a thing. If anything went wrong, or if you were caught! No, Josh. No! You must promise me you won’t even consider—”

  “Hush,” he commanded, pulling her into his arms. It was the first time he had dared to voice his turbulent thoughts out loud, and he cursed his error in judgment, especially when he felt the tremors of fear racing through Alisha’s body. “I’ll think what I want to think, and if I think there is some safe way to hasten your toad prince along to his kingdom in the sky … well …”

  Alisha clung to him, unable to suppress her shivers of excitement. It was working! It had taken him long enough to agitate himself into such a state that the only logical solution had finally presented itself. For all his boldness and brawn, he was somewhat lacking in the area of initiative, and she had begun to think she would have to spell out the obvious answer to all their problems. But now that the idea had taken root, she would see that it flourished and grew, and in seven or eight months’ time—after the baby was born, of course …

  A low throb of sound, still distant, yet familiar enough to raise the tiny hairs along her arms, echoed through the darkness, distracting both occupants of the summerhouse. As they stared motionless at the velvet blackness that stretched out toward the river, Alisha’s fingers curled around the gold locket that hung between her breasts and she rubbed it as she would a talisman.

  A second plaintive wail reverberated over the waters of the mighty Mississippi and Alisha groped the shadows for Josh’s hand.

  “The Contessa,” he guessed, returning the questioning squeeze in her fingers. “She is due to dock in Natchez tomorrow.”

  “The Contessa,” Alisha repeated in a hushed murmur. “We missed her on her last trip upriver.”

  Josh looked at her with some surprise. “Didn’t you just finish saying we had to be careful from now on?”

  Alisha’s eyes were shining. Josh had introduced her to more than just sexual adventures. Like most of the Southern gentry, he had learned early that to a planter’s son—especially one who was groomed to marry into money rather than earn any of his own by honest means—the sound of a rive
r-boat whistle was the beckoning call to easy women, smooth-flowing whiskey, and high stakes games of chance.

  He had taken her on board one of these floating casinos, intending only to amuse her with a few hours of harmless diversion, but the diversions had grown less and less harmless when she realized she could put her father’s clever parlor tricks to good advantage. Over the course of the past few months, the meager handful of hoarded dollars they had started with had grown into enough to pay for the rent on a small hotel room and to outfit them both in the fancy attire needed to gain entry to the best games on the best boats.

  “It may be our last chance for a while,” Alisha said breathlessly. “It may be our last chance period to luck into a big game. If we won enough, we could give Ryan the money he needs to stave off the bankers and I wouldn’t have to go through with the marriage to Karl von Helmstaad.”

  Josh drew in a slow, deep breath along with the bait. “It’s too risky. What if someone sees us? What if someone recognizes you?”

  “If the Contessa is up from New Orleans, there won’t be anything but Yankees on board. Rich, bored Yankees who have nothing better to do than play poker and stare down the front of my bodice.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, hesitating. “Didn’t you say the last time you thought someone was staring at more than your bodice?”

  “They were,” she agreed, leaning against him. “But then so were you. I could feel you undressing me all the way across the salon. Why, it almost put me off my game the whole blessed night long.”

  He was weakening, and he knew it. Her breasts, clad only in the thin layer of her chemise, were pillowed against his chest, warm and soft and ripe with entreaty as she tickled his chin with a kiss.

  “Besides,” she whispered, trailing her lips down his throat. “You know how enthusiastic I get when we win.”

  Josh knew. He also knew the risks of becoming too familiar a face along the waterfront. He had already heard the rumors concerning a beautiful lady gambler whose “luck” was beginning to annoy the owners of the riverboats. He dared not tell Alisha, however. The challenge, the thrill, the danger would only whet her appetite more.

  “Hasn’t anyone become suspicious about you making so many trips into Natchez?”

  “Au contraire, my darling. I’m sure they’re happy not to have me underfoot all the time. Furthermore, I have a trousseau to buy, don’t I? And they know I’m well chaperoned by my dearest friend Olivia Ward. She’s such a mouse, they think me quite admirable for spending any time with her at all. Not that I have,” she giggled. “I doubt I would recognize her if I tripped over her in the street. Oh, Josh—” She laced her fingers behind his neck and covered his face and throat with tiny, feathery kisses. “Can’t we go? Can’t we at least pretend we are still just as rich and bored as all those damned Yankees? Just one more time?”

  “Alisha …”

  She pouted prettily and thrust her tongue between his lips. His breeches had not made it above his knees, and she was more than a little aware of his weakening resolve. She left his mouth wet and still wanting, and trailed her tongue down onto his chest, stalking his nipple like a hungry predator. Sharp white teeth plucked at the raised nub, winning a jolted curse before they prowled lower on his belly.

  Josh threaded his fingers into her hair, his teeth clamped around a half-formed protest as he felt the greedy tug and pull of her lips. She would get her way again. She always did. He would take her into Natchez and help her dress in her velvets and ruffles, and he would be there to watch her back if something … anything went wrong. She was good with the cards, there was no question of that. Even counting the ups and down, the wins and losses, the extravagant meals and hotel rooms, he knew there was enough to buy their way into one big game where five hundred could become five thousand in a matter of minutes.

  “Hell and damn.” He gasped and looked down at the silken crown of her hair where it rose and fell with vigorous determination over his groin. His hands tightened and his head arched back, his body began to shudder and jerk with the persuasive power of her lips.

  His own moved rigidly through a ragged promise, one that echoed harshly on each gust of his breath. It was a promise that he would never let her go. Never. Not for any reason. Not to any other man. Not ever.

  It was a promise he vowed to keep if it cost him his life.

  Amanda was wide awake, seated on the cushioned window ledge of her bedroom. She was not sure what had wakened her, only that she had been feeling restless and warm for the past hour or so. The chamber was steeped in heavy shadow, the guttering lamp on the nightstand too miserly to throw off more light than what puddled on the table beneath it.

  There was a time when lamps and fires were kept burning in every room day or night. There were servants to fetch a shawl at the slightest hint of a chill, to run a pan filled with hot coals between the bedsheets so that tender pink feet would not suffer a moment’s worth of discomfort. These days it was up to each member of the family to see to their own needs. If Amanda forgot to fill her kindling box, she spent a long, cold night shivering. Each drop of precious whale oil was guarded as if it were pure liquid gold, and if a lamp was lit past sundown, it was done so only out of absolute necessity.

  Of the hundreds of slaves and servants Rosalie had boasted before the war, only Mercy and her husband Obediah had remained, both of whom had declared themselves too old and set in their ways to regard emancipation as anything but a threat. They had stayed on of their own free will, scorning the masses of newly freed slaves who were starving and unable to find work with their new Northern masters. Promises of jobs and plenty of money to buy their own homes and hire their own servants had proved to be no more than that: empty promises. Every day Ryan went out to the stables he found more and more hungry mouths huddled there, offering to work his fields in exchange for food and a place to sleep. He had not refused any of them; he could not afford to, but the cost of feeding and clothing them only added more strain to his already limited reserves.

  In some ways, Amanda did not mind the hardships. She did not resent having to cook or sew or sweep the rooms; it gave her a sense of accomplishment, of usefulness. Granted, there had been times—and there still were—when she felt like crying from exhaustion and frustration, but there were more times when she experienced a sense of satisfaction at having learned to bake sourdough bread and cook a spicey creole that set even Mercy’s eyes to watering.

  The hard times came with watching Verity make do with dresses that were cut from her own, or seeing her clutch the rag-filled doll in her arms and pretend the gingham face had eyes instead of buttons and a mouth instead of a row of thick black stitchery. Amanda's youth had been so full of excess that it made her want to weep with the injustice of it all whenever they passed by a shop window brimming with porcelain dolls and fancy wicker prams.

  She sighed and leaned her forehead against the window sash. The clouds had blotted out what slender hopes there were of a clear morning, and it wouldn’t be very long before the mist thickened into rain. Poor Ryan. Of all of them, he had worked the hardest to keep Rosalie on its feet, scratching out gardens to keep the family fed, mucking out the stables to keep the livestock healthy. If nothing else, the rain had forced him to slow down a little. To catch his breath. In the event the weather did improve and the cotton did have a chance to recover, he would need every last ounce of stamina he possessed to oversee the harvest.

  A sound outside the window caught her attention. She listened closely for it to come again, and when it did, she lifted the heavy sash and leaned fully out into the night air to follow it.

  If the night had not been so hazy, the paddle wheeler would have been visible when it reached the bend in the river less than a mile away. As it was, Amanda closed her eyes and pictured the sight as she had seen it so many times: the deck lights twinkling and sparkling through the trees like a cluster of slow-moving fireflies, the huge rolling paddle wheel cutting into the river’s current, pushing a wash of
white, foaming water into its wake.

  As a child, she had let her imagination fling her across the open spaces and carry her away on one of the huge, floating monsters, leaving nothing to mark her passage other than the fading eddies of music and the trailing plumes of black boiler smoke.

  Her fantasies were not entirely of her own making, she knew. William Courtland had been no stranger to the riverboats, and he had regaled his family with many a colorful story of the grand salons, the high-stakes poker games, the thrill of watching fortunes won and lost on a throw of dice.

  Amanda flinched as a fat splash of rain bounced off the window ledge and startled her up off her elbows. She started to lower the sash again, but a blurred movement in the gardens below made her stop and shrink back against the wall. It looked like someone running. No … it was two people running, and one of them, her skirts hiked high in front and belling out like a canvas sail behind, was Alisha.

  What on earth was her sister doing outside at this time of the night? And who was the man in the garden with her?

  The two figures ran beneath the shelter of the roof overhang and Amanda lost them. They were too far away to hear more than a whispered exchange before the man emerged and slipped away into the darkness, leaving Amanda with the distinct impression of someone hastily tucking in clothes and refastening buttons. The shadows made it impossible to identify him, but she did not think it was Karl von Helmstaad. Alisha’s fiancé resembled a large, squat bloatfly, and would not, by any wild stretch of anyone’s imagination, have been able to run as quickly or as agilely as this late-night paramour.