Heaven in His Arms (24 page)

***

Andre didn't think. He'd long moved beyond the point where he could think clearly when it came to the woman looking up at him with hope and desire in her eyes. He reacted to those innocent, hesitant words by clutching a handful of the deerskin blanket and yanking it clear off her body.

There she lay, all rosy flesh on a pelt of fur, naked as the day she was born, her thighs pressed together and her knees raised, her arms crossing instinctively over her full breasts. His mind conjured up a thousand images of how he could love that body, how he could caress and kiss and suck her flesh into ecstasy, imagining how she would feel and taste, the texture of her deepest flesh.

He dropped to one knee, prying open her thighs, viewing her moist inner core, touching her with one bare hand. She bucked and gasped in surprise, then relaxed and looked down at him with eyes soft with wanting. She grew hot and moist, welcoming his hand.

Something inside him cracked. I'll give you what you want, wife.

He fell atop her, between her legs, then clutched them at the backs of her knees and lifted them up, up, so her sex lay open beneath the tumescence straining against his breechcloth. He ground himself against her, seeking the heat pulsing beyond the thin barrier of deerskin.

Color rushed to her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut and thrashed her head back, arching against him. He released her legs and clutched her wrists, dragging them high above her head, holding her tight beneath him with one hand.

Her neck tasted of salt and musky woman. With his tongue he felt the vibrations of a groan flutter in her throat. Sweet, foolish, reckless, dangerous woman .. .
look what you've done to me.
The mindless heat burned away all pretense of tenderness. She was all yielding flesh beneath him, soft and small and trembling. And he took, and took. He turned her chin and kissed her hard, sinking his tongue deep into her mouth as it gave way to him, then clutched one breast pressing against his shoulder, beading the nipple between his fingers, scraping it against his palm, then sucking on it—hard, deep—drawing it against the back of his throat.

What does it take to make you scream, woman?
Even now, when she should be fighting against this assault, she ground her hips up to him instead, bucking beneath the restraint—a wild virgin, deaf to all but the cries of her own body. He should give up trying to frighten her away; but the woman would not run, the fool of a woman would stay, damn her.

He reached down and tugged free the ties of his breechcloth, shoving the leather between them out of the way.

Hot, slick, wet. He ground his shaft against the crease of her womanhood, back and forth, back and forth, the damp essence of her licking his most sensitive flesh from tip to root. This was the closest they could get without him taking what he wanted, the closest he could come to temptation. She quivered beneath him and he felt every throb; she struggled to loose her hands from his grip.

No. He would not loosen her. If he did, he'd lose every last bit of restraint, that tiny leash that kept him from plunging in at an angle each time he drew back, each time he felt the heat of her center blast against the tip of him; that's where he wanted to be, that's where he belonged.

Her body tensed and she growled a tight cry. He dragged his hand under the hollow of her back, then wedged his fingers beneath her buttocks, lifting her hips against him even as she arched, even as she cried out and swelled against his loins, reaching her climax already, already.

He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in her neck, his fingers digging deep into the soft flesh of her bottom as the same swelling tightened his tumescence to the thin edge of bursting.
I belong inside you, woman. I want to touch that center of you forbidden to me. .
. .

Then he pulled back and the tip of him lodged in that throbbing, hot place . . . and for one crazed second he bucked, slipping slightly between those lips. He felt his soul cushioned there, welcomed, soft, home, he wanted to be here, to explode here, and then the bursting rushed up on him . . .

And in one shout of frustration he pulled away and ground his shaft on her belly, releasing the flood of passion, easing the tightness on the soft hollow of her abdomen until the strain ebbed away ... to an aching throb of frustration.

Andre rolled off her. His heart hammered against his rib cage as he stared up at the bellowing tarpaulin of the tent The air was full of the sound of their harsh breathing, while outside the men went about their day, laughing, joking, and a bird in some nearby branch lilted a mournful song.

Genevieve nudged her cheek against his arm. He lifted it and guided her into the nook of his throat, rolling her warm body tight against his side.

She sighed, long and contentedly, then tilted her head to look up at him, a smile quivering on the corners of her lips. "Maybe . . . maybe we can have a wonderful winter after all."

"Maybe, Genny. Maybe."

He kissed her to hide the truth. At the touch of her warm, soft lips, passion stirred anew in his aching body. It wasn't enough, this half-loving. By God, he was greedy. He had to have all of her—or nothing at all.

As the kiss deepened, as their bodies rolled together, Andre knew he would not be able to suffer this mockery of lovemaking for an entire season. For now, yes, for now .. .

But for her sake, he must give her one last chance to escape, before he took what no man, no woman, and no conscience could deny him any longer.

***

"It's right over this ridge."

Genevieve glared at Andre. He leaned toward her and held out his hand. The golden rays of the setting sun poured over the hill and silhouetted his muscular form. It seemed as if they had been climbing this steep slope for hours, though she knew the campsite lay just below them, nestled in a tiny cove against the lull. Her body still ached from the incident in the rapids, and from the choppy ride from the mouth of the French River to this island in the Lake of the Hurons, and from their frequent, acrobatic lovemaking these past days. For the hundredth time, she wondered what was so important for her to see that he insisted she climb this wretched mountain.

Genevieve clutched his hand, curling her fingers in his. "This better be worth it, or I vow you're carrying me down."

Andre smiled and pulled her over the slick, moss-covered boulder, holding tight until she found firm looting. Then he released her and wound his way to die height of the hill.

Genevieve followed at a slower pace, picking her way among the loose stones and the grasses poking stubbornly from the fissures in the rock. She loosened the deerskin blanket around her shoulders, for the exertion of the climb made her much-mended dress stick uncomfortably to her skin. She watched him beneath lowered lashes as he sauntered to the height of the hill.

They'd reached a wary peace since they'd started loving in the tent every night. The tight fury that had always shone in his eyes whenever he looked her way had now been replaced by something else. Something hard, something bittersweet and fatalistic. For all their intimacy, for all their teasing love-words, she was no closer to Andre's heart than before she'd succumbed to her own weakness.

Genevieve kicked aside a loose rock and followed its path with her gaze. There she went again, expecting more than she could ever have, expecting some sort of caring, of all things, just because she'd revealed her body to a man. She knew better. Men and women were different creatures. For a woman, even a woman like her, it meant something to open her body to a man. For a man, it was just another function like coughing or sneezing—except it gave much more pleasure and required at best a willing partner. She'd told herself to be pleased with this uneasy, tentative friendship, with the hot, healing passion they shared beneath the furs—and to expect no more.

She was pleased . . . sort of. Genevieve ran her hands up her arms, memory coursing warm ripples of passion through her blood. For all the swift fierceness of that first time, Andre had become a most careful lover. The kissing, the touching, the heat of their bodies pressed so tightly together under the deerskin blankets in the chill of the night. . . . Yet she was honest enough with herself to recognize that always .. . always at that most crucial moment when she wanted most to be close, he wasn't there. For all the pleasure, she'd learned to live with a vague disappointment, a yearning for something greater.

Genevieve shook the troubling thoughts from her mind as she met him atop the ridge. The wind blew up over the side and struck her, cold and forceful, lifting her braid from her shoulders and chilling the spots of sweat on her chest and under her arms. She looked at the scene and sucked in her breath.

They stood on the highest point on Manitoulin Island, the apex of a long ridge that stretched westward, rising out of the meadow like the exposed bare spine of the earth. An amber glow bathed the bald, wrinkled granite as the cold northern sun sank in the west. From this elevation, she could see the entire length of the isle, the random scattering of other rocky outcroppings in the bay, and the whole sparkling extent of the Lake of the Hurons, which spread like an inland sea to the southern horizon.

Andre didn't give her an opportunity to enjoy the view. He took her arm and drew her to the very edge of the ridge. "The Duke told me they would be here." He peered down into the valley below. "He said for centuries they've been coming. Look."

Her brows knitted as she noticed a large shadow hovering in the valley. She gasped when she realized the shadow was moving.

"They're called wapiti—elk."

There were hundreds of them, chewing on what remained of the straggly grass that carpeted the valley. They were large and buff-coated, some with many-branched antlers. Smaller ones frolicked along the edge, scampering across the meadow and raising their snouts to the chill wind. Others stood partially submerged in a shining ribbon of a stream that wound its way into the waters of the Lake of the Hurons.

"How did they get here?" She looked behind her. Even from the height of the ridge, she could see the whitecaps on the choppy bay waters. "They couldn't have swum that bay from the mainland. We nearly tipped a dozen times between the mouth of the French River and here."

"The Duke says every winter a herd of wapiti walk to this island upon the ice of the frozen bay and become trapped here when the ice breaks. They fatten on the grasses over the summer, and in the fall his people come and hunt them." Andre shrugged and straightened. "At least they used to, before the Iroquois scattered the Hurons westward."

She had never seen so many animals—wapiti—in one place. In France, even in the densest forests, the deer did not run so thick. Here, the beasts ate unmolested, enough to feed a dozen Indian villages for the winter, fighting and bumping each other for space across the grassy meadow.

Genevieve hugged her blanket around her shoulders, listening as the mewling of the elk rose up the side of the hill with the wind. It was as if this place had not changed since the beginning of time. It was as if the world was new and fresh, as if it were the eighth day of creation, and she and Andre stood high atop the earth, watching it all.

"It's beautiful here." She whispered the words, as if afraid to break the silence. "It's like Eden must have been."

He looked at her, his eyes shadowed. "Most people think of it as barren and merciless."

"There are aristocrats in France who would kill to hunt here."

"But this isn't a gentle place. There are bears and wolves. Wildcats. Don't you find it savage?"

"No." Paris was savage. Civilization was savage. This was as natural as God meant it to be. "A person could live here, grow fat on the land, and never want for anything."

"Not even a soft feather mattress? Or lace or jewels?"

She frowned. Those were things an aristocrat would want, that Marie Duplessis might want, but those were things that Genevieve Lalande had long learned to live without. She shrugged as nonchalantly as she could. "Well, of course, those things could be imported."

Andre laughed, showing a flash of white teeth, and she watched him until the sound faded. He'd been so unpredictable since the incident in the rapids. One moment he was warning her of the danger she was in, and the next he was burning his hands bringing heated stones into the tent, or tenderly brushing her hair out of her face when he thought she was sleeping, or dragging her up a hillside to show her an enormous herd of elk. She wished she could reconcile the two men. The first one she didn't fully understand, but I his one, the one who laughed beside her, she loved with the full of her heart.

They watched the sun sink beyond the horizon and the sky fade slowly from sapphire to indigo. They did not speak. Somehow, it felt right, to be standing here, alone with Andre, with the whole world spread at their feet.

And as the moments stretched and he didn't touch her, she realized that there was another reason he had brought her to this place, for he was not a man to wait for the loving. She waited, sensing the tension growing in his body as the night closed in around I hem.

"We must talk,
Taouistaouisse
."

She pulled the blanket tight around her shoulders and looked up toward the sky. The first evening stars winked down at her from the heavens. "So there is more to this than a lesson on the fauna of the Huron country?"

"I wanted you to see this." He paced unsurely, weaving his hair into disarray. "But since the accident, my men have been like mother hens around a wounded chick, and I need to be alone with you, away from them."

Genevieve shivered, but not from the coolness of the evening. There was a seriousness in his voice. She wasn't sure she wanted to hear what he had to say; she didn't want anything resolved between them, not ret. She wanted to enjoy this half-life for now. Half I life was better than none.

"The Indians at Lake Nipissing told me that the Black Robes—the Jesuits—have settled in a place a day's ride from here." He crouched down, picked up an egg-shaped rock, and ran his ringers over the smooth surface. "They've built a mission near the river that flows out of Lake Superior into this lake. They've called it Sault Sainte Marie. We'll be there tomorrow."

Her spine stiffened. A Jesuit outpost, a day's ride away. Suddenly, she knew what he intended to tell her. "We've had this conversation before."

He palmed the rock from one hand to the other, digging his nails into the grain. "You'll be safe at the mission. The Jesuits will treat you well."

"My answer is still no."

He flinched, as if he had been struck in the back. ' 'You don' t understand—''

"No, you don't understand." She had hoped he had brought her up here for another reason, and she couldn't hide her anger that the skunk hadn't changed his stripes. "Did you think that ride in the rapids made me daft?"

"I thought it might have knocked some sense into you." His fist closed over the stone. "You'd be better off wed to a man who can give you a home. A man who will stay with you—in Quebec."

"Yes, I would." She stepped toward him, and he stood up abruptly. She had never seen him so edgy, so uneasy. "But until this marriage is annulled, I'm your responsibility. You've got a house out there. We're not far away from it now. I'm staying in that house this winter. I thought I made that clear; I thought we had an arrangement."

"As long as you're with me, you're in danger. I told you yesterday—"

Andre cut himself off, then vaulted the rock into the darkness. He turned his back to her, shook his head, and planted his hands on his hips.

Her anger dissipated as a suspicion lodged in her mind. It was a wondrous thought, something she almost didn't dare believe.

Genevieve approached him. She placed her hand on his back, just below his shoulder blade. His muscles were taut and firm beneath the deerskin. "Andre . .. why are you trying to get rid of me again? After all that's happened?"

"We—you and I—we can't live in the same house." He didn't turn around. "Not over the winter. It wouldn't work."

A hot flush bathed her cheeks, but she didn't move. He wanted to send her away to someplace safe, to someplace where he wouldn't have to face, daily, his own desire for her; someplace where he wouldn't have to fight it anymore. It is as powerful for him as it is for me.

When she spoke, her voice was breathless. "Why wouldn't it work?"

"I haven't changed my mind about annulling this marriage next spring. But if you stay with me, things will happen between us that I can no longer ... control."

"But—"

"No buts." He turned around and clutched her shoulders. "This is your last chance. If you don't go with the Jesuits, then I'll do things to you. I'll take you the way /want, whether you want me to or not."

Her breath caught in her throat. It was as if a storm had suddenly blown into the valley, and they were two turbulent clouds, facing one another, the tension stretching so taut between them that she could do nothing but wait for the lightning to ignite.

And she knew the truth, in that second of hesitation, in that eternity when they gazed at each other and saw the matching naked need reflected in each other's eyes. This is what he'd hidden from her these past nights; this is what his body had screamed to her but his mind had denied. She knew, with a certainty as ageless and strong as the mountain beneath her feet, that he was in love with her.

He was trying to protect her from himself.

Raggedly, he said, "Stay with the Jesuits."

She shook her head blindly. Her heart pounded in her chest. He was trying to send her away so she would be safe from him. He was denying his own desires for her protection. But if he loved her, he would never hurt her, despite all the meaningless vows he repeated by rote.

Genevieve thought about all the risks she had taken to come to Quebec, to marry this man, and to join him on this voyage. Now, the acrid taste of death had sharpened her hunger for life, dulling her fear of the risks. There was one last gamble she could make, one final cast of the dice, and the prize was Paradise itself. He loves me. She felt as reckless as a drunkard wagering the last of his begging money on sevens, a drunkard who knew the dice were weighted in his favor.

She boldly cast the bones.

Genevieve let her deerskin blanket slip off her shoulders, to fall in a pool by her feet. She leaned toward him, brushing his shirt with her breasts, flattening her hands on his shoulders. "I don't care anymore, Andre. I want you to ... to do those things to me. All those things."

His eyes flared. His fingers dug into her shoulders until they hurt. "I warned you. God help me, I warned you."

They were nothing but words. His body and his kisses and his hands spoke more eloquently and more truthfully, and it was these she listened to, not the incoherent murmurings of his voice, for it was these that told her of his love, that spoke of his desire so strongly that she felt it in the marrow of her bones. He buried his hand in her hair and eased her head back, pressing his mouth against hers. His other arm wound around her like steel, crushing her body against his until she could feel every muscle in his frame.