Heaven in His Arms (13 page)

She tightened her grip on his arms, pressing closer to his warmth, to the well-muscled curve of his back. The blue twilight gleamed off the resinous, knotty trunks of the pines, silvering the bark. The branches waved wildly. Whatever the creature was, it didn't seem disturbed by their presence.

Andre raised his pistol slowly as the beast waddled out of the underbrush.

Genevieve suppressed a smile and pressed her cheek against Andre's arm. The beast they had waited for with such anticipation was black and furry and as big as a lapdog. A pair of long white stripes ran along its back. It waddled to the edge of the stream, oblivious of their presence, nuzzling the ground with its black snout and then lifting it to the wind.

She released Andre and grinned into his eyes. "Is this one of the wild animals of the forest I should fear?"

He flashed her a look, then shoved his pistol into his sash. "You're lucky it isn't a wolf or a bear."

"The most savage thing I've encountered in these woods is you, and we both know just how savage you are."

"Do you?" His gaze, as deep and potent as rum, slipped over her body, over her loosened headrail, over her bedraggled appearance. He tilted his head toward the creature, who had noticed their presence and now stood still, sniffing the air and staring in their direction. "Do you know what that is?"

"I have no idea, but it looks as harmless as a cat."

"It's not running away from us." He rested his hand on the hilt of his knife. "How do you know it doesn't eat human flesh to survive?"

She rolled her eyes. "I suppose next you're going to be telling me it has piercing fangs and claws like knives."

"It might have venom in its teeth or poison on its fur."

"If you're afraid of it, my husband, I'll scare it away for you."

''Go right ahead." He grinned and crossed his arms. "I dare you."

She blinked in mild surprise. He was taunting her, as if she really feared this furry little animal, as if the creature could really do her harm. Genevieve glanced at it. She had never seen anything like it in France, but she could tell it was stiff and frightened. She was sure it would race away as soon as she approached. Unless he was telling the truth . . .

What rot. She frowned, angry at herself for letting him plant a grain of doubt in her mind. This beast was nothing but an oversized rodent. Her husband was taunting her, testing her courage, and she'd been in enough gambling halls to know a bluff when she saw one. Tossing her head, she strode toward the creature and waved her arms at it.

"Get away, little furball, before my husband faints of fear." Startled, the creature turned its back and raised its tail. She raced toward it, stamping her feet loudly on the ground, then laughed and pointed at it. "Look, Andre! Look at your maneater now. . . . Oh!"

An odor, more rank than anything she had ever smelled, exploded into the air. She covered her face with her hand and coughed, smothering in the vile, putrid stench, stumbling back, away from the animal who scurried, tail raised, into the bushes. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"

His laughter echoed in the clearing. She turned and glared at him through the stinging eyes, and saw him bent double in mirth, his hand pressed against his belly.

"You've just met your first
putois d'Amerique
." His teeth gleamed. "The skunk has a unique way of warding off predators, wouldn't you say?"

"You wretch!" She looked down and saw wet spots upon her skirts. Her eyes teared from the odor and her nostrils burned. "That creature shot poison at me."

"It's not poison, it's only scent." He covered his nose and mouth with his hand as she shook her stench-ridden skirts, trying to disperse the odor. "Now you know that something small and furry can still be dangerous."

"And something that's not so small can be as wicked as Lucifer!"

"You offered to scare it away."

"You dared me when you should have warned me!"

"If you were the kind of woman to listen to warnings, you wouldn't be on this journey with me now."

Genevieve stalked to the edge of the creek and dropped to her knees, lifting palmfuls of water to her skirts in a vain attempt to wash herself free of the stench. She should have known he would play a trick on her; she should have expected his treachery. A thousand vile curses rolled in her head and surged in her throat, most of them concerning his birth, his health, and the size and capabilities of certain parts of his anatomy. It took all her will to silently pour the frigid water over her lap and pretend to be a lady, when she wanted to curse him to the bowels of hell.

"Don't bother," he said. "It'll take days before the scent wears off, no matter how well you wash."

"You miserable wretch." She glared at him over her shoulder as water dripped from her chin. "You're nothing but a mangy cur --"

"You can do better than that."

"There are names for men like you."
Whoreson. Pox-ridden, thieving spawn of a babbling idiot.
Her chest heaved with the effort not to wish upon him the French disease or sundry other painful, embarrassing conditions that would affect the most sensitive organ of a man's body. Marie Duplessis would know nothing of them. Damn it, had she ever really been as innocent as Marie Duplessis? Had there ever been a time of innocence?

"I should go chase after that thing." she argued and throw it o you."

"I doubt it has any scent left after that shot." Andre coughed as she stood up from the edge of the creek and the wind blew in his direction. "
Dieu!
I've never known anyone to get hit so badly. You smell like burning flesh."

Her teary eyes narrowed. His face was red from trying not to breathe in too much of the stink. She stopped thinking. She reacted like Genevieve and threw all vestiges of ladylike behavior to the winds.

His laughter stopped abruptly as he saw her racing toward him, her auburn hair fiery, her eyes blazing green. He straightened and fled into the woods.

"Afraid of a little stench, Andre?"

"A little stench?" His laughter returned as he eluded her, running deeper into the woods. "You smell like the gaping mouth of hell!"

"A scent you will soon be very familiar with."

Andre laughed, crashing through the underbrush, and she followed in hot pursuit. He swung around pines to divert her, raising clods of mud in his wake, recklessly snapping branches and holding saplings so they would whip back and impede her progress. He headed into the thickest growth of bushes where, in her blind, headlong rush after him, her skirts tore and caught upon the thorns, slowing her down. She stumbled and cursed, not caring that the hanging branches pulled at the pins in her hair, sending them flying all over the forest, making her tresses tumble in knotted locks down her back. She didn't care that she was hiking her skirts well above her knees, that branches and twigs and saplings were pulling on the delicate wool of her stockings. His taunting laughter floated back to her, and she swore before the night was over, she'd rub her stench-ridden skirts all over his body so he, too, would pay the price of her foolishness.

The men, attracted by the sound of them crashing through the forest, wandered in through the trees to see what was about. Andre knocked Julien over as he rushed by, and Genevieve pushed him away as she followed. The sun had nearly set, making it more difficult to see in the shadows of the woods. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath and figure out which of the silhouettes she saw through the trees was Andre.

"You wretched coward." Genevieve hiked her hands to her hips, coughing as she took a deep breath and the stench burned all the way to the bottom of her lungs. "Your men are here now; do you want them to see you running away from a woman?"

A voice came from behind her. "They'll get one whiff of you, my wife, and they'll run, too."

She whirled in the litter, racing after him, keeping her gaze fixed on the fluttering fringe of his shirt, the bare skin of his thighs. The voyageurs laughed and clapped, urging her on as they watched from the periphery, their silhouettes stark against the orange-red fires of the campsite. Her feet swelled unbearably in her tight boots, but she ignored the pain. He was too swift for her, too sly and clever, and she knew he was taunting her, coming close but never close enough for her to do more than scrape the deerskin of his shirt with her nails. Once he teased her by trapping himself in a copse of pines, then slipping between the close trunks when she raced in for the kill. Just when she thought her lungs would burst from the exertion, fate intervened in the form of a tall, blond-bearded giant.

Tiny thrust his foot out from behind a tree and Andre flew to the ground. The giant's laughter echoed in the forest, like the roar of a great beast. "Since when has a little stench kept you away from a woman, Andre?"

"Mutiny!"

"It really isn't fair,'' Tiny continued, "with the poor girl having to carry her own case and all."

Panting, Genevieve reached them, feeling a joyous quiver of victory when she saw Andre on the ground, struggling to rise. She launched herself upon his body, slamming fully into his chest and bracing her hands on either side of his head.

"I've got you now, husband."

He placed his hands on her waist and tried to lift her offhim, but she pressed brazenly against his body, using all her weight to fight him. The men gathered around them.

"Christ, she stinks!"

"Worse than a savage in the height of summer.'.'

"Eh, you all right, Andre?"

Silence.

"I think we'd better leave, boys."

Their footsteps faded into the forests. She hardly heard them, for her attention was focused on the man beneath her. He was wet with sweat from racing around the forest. She wiggled her body against his, rubbing him with the stench, fighting against him as he tightened his grip around her waist.

"I'm not the only one who'll pay the price for your little prank," she said, clutching a handful of his shirt as he tried to pull her off. "You'll smell as bad as me when I'm finished—"

"Careful, Genevieve."

"Careful? I'm going to mark you with this stench if it takes all night." She wriggled again and he made a noise deep in his throat. "That was a wicked thing you did, sending me off to get sprayed by that creature."

"No more wicked than what you're doing to me right now."

"This is what you deserve. I'm not going to be the only one stinking like the open sewers of Paris—"

"Stop wriggling."

''—and if you think you're going to change clothes, I'm telling you right now that I'll wriggle all over the next set, too."

"Genevieve."

A muscle moved in his cheek and his eyes glowed with a light she had seen before. Her breath caught in her throat and she suddenly realized that his laughter had long died; she suddenly realized how provocative her motion was, how intensely he held her in his embrace. He was no longer fighting to get her off, he was fighting to keep her still.

"Someone should have warned me about you back in Madame Bourdon's house." His gaze traveled over her tousled hair, the long column of her exposed throat, and his voice was as husky as rustling leaves. "They should have warned me that you laugh like a child but move like a woman." He slid his hands up her back to tangle in her hair. "They should have warned me that you were only half lady, and the other half . . . I'm not sure what the other half is. It's half wild, impulsive. Wanton. Have you always been like this, Genevieve? Or is it these woods that bring it out in you?"

She listened to his words—magic words, dangerous words—too close to the truth, validating all she had feared, all she could not control. His fingers snarled in her hair, combing through the tresses. His shirt was untied and hung open, showing the hollow in the center of his chest and the faintest gleam of sweat. She felt an unbearable desire to lower her head and lick a drop that pooled in the darkness of that hollow.

He pressed his hips against her abdomen. "Feel what you are doing to me, woman."

Her lips parted in a silent gasp as she felt the hardness of a man's passion pressing against her navel. She knew then what she had suspected when she first laid eyes on him in Montreal, what she had feared. She wanted him. The way a woman wants a man.

Even as she admitted the passion to her secret self, another revelation came to her. She wanted him, not just because he was her husband, not just because he could give her the security and the home that she always wanted, not just because fate had thrown them together in this strange situation, and not, most importantly, just because he was a man. She wanted him, Andre, the man who could carry two hundred pounds of weight on his back for two or three miles; the man who walked and lived and breathed as comfortably in this untamed wilderness as if it were his own parlor; the hard man with a soft heart.

He could make her a woman, here, now, on the littered carpet of dried nettles and grass and crushed, crinkling leaves, and she knew with absolute certainty that she wanted to give herself to him.

Oh, God . . . what is happening to me?

She'd never thought she'd feel like this, having wondered if it were even possible or if that feeling were just another fairy tale told to little girls so they would not lay in terror of the future. Now, something inside her began to ache, to yearn . . . some deep part of her that was still innocent, the part she'd hidden all those years ago, the part that still sheltered hope, which she'd thought she'd buried forever. . . .

Impulsively, she leaned down and pressed her lips on the salty skin of his neck. A pulse throbbed against her mouth. His throat vibrated with unuttered sound, his arms tightening around her. Her body trembled with a sudden infusion of heat and passion, a tingling so intense that she felt it right down to the tips of her toes. She had never been so conscious of another person's body. It was as if these strong, hard limbs, the blood flowing through the veins beneath her lips, the tense muscles of his abdomen, were all her own, for she felt the trembling in him like an echo of her own. She wanted nothing more than to be naked against him, to open herself to this man she barely knew yet somehow seemed to have known forever.