Grace stirred, reaching for Luc. She found only emptiness. She lurched to a sitting position and scanned her room, and found him at her desk with the open logbook.
“Trouble sleeping?” Grace tunneled fingers through her hair.
“No, I woke earlier with an urgent need to seek reasons for the variations in the effects of my curse.”
“Did you find them?”
“I think so.”
“And…?” She left the bed to find her robe, knowing he would enjoy watching her search.
Luc smiled, and his eyes did indeed track her. “I believe the curse itself is changing. The differences in my corporeal state, my ability to sleep, both can be explained by that.”
“You found this information in the logbook?”
“No. I found confirmation that the first days of my curse were highly unstable. I had to… acclimate, if you will, to existing in both physical and spiritual worlds. Once I grew accustomed to that existence, the effects settled into a specific pattern based on the phase of the moon.”
Pulling on her robe, Grace ambled across the room to him, peering over his shoulder at the open pages of the book. “It seems logical—if a curse can operate logically—variations in the effects would result from actual changes in the curse. However, given how the curse is worded, only one thing could cause it to change.”
“Precisely. I must have encountered a heartless woman and earned her heart.”
She stroked his hair, smiling to herself. “You have certainly earned my heart. However, I never thought of myself as heartless.”
“You aren’t.” He flashed a smile up at her.
“Then you’ve met some other woman recently? Have you given her your heart?”
“Only Grainne, and I gave her my heart long ago. I told her I kept back the small piece needed to remain alive. I believe I’m very close to giving that piece to you.”
Grace smiled and backed away, slipping her robe off as she went. Laying the robe at the foot of the bed, she knelt on the mattress,facing him. “Come back to bed, my love, and show me how close you are.”
She took the opportunity to lavish her passion on him. Kissing his face, licking at his neck, nipping her way down his body. She was relentless. When he moaned how much he wanted to kiss her, touch her, she tortured him with long languid strokes of hands across his arms, chest, and thighs. Those thighs, those strong, supple thighs, he’d used to bring her ecstasy earlier. She wedged herself between them, feeling his tremors, as she brushed her fingertips over them. He moaned when her lips followed her fingers from knee to apex and his full turgid flesh straining for release. Taking him in hand she stroked and squeezed, once, twice. His back arched off the bed. “Mercy, Grace, have mercy”
How could she not?
Her hands moved lower to fondle his sac. Her lips replaced her fingers on his erection. She licked and sucked, pressing down as his body bucked under her ministrations, until that final moment when he was lost to all control and she took the prize she’d sought. The gray light of a rain-soaked dawn filtered through the curtains of the French window. They lay spooned in the bed, when the dogs woke them, with demands to go out.
“Wait here, my love,” Luc said. “I’ll deal with our friends, and bring back breakfast for both of us.”
“Of course, I’ll wait. Any woman would wait for a man who understands that feeding his woman breakfast in bed is as close to making love as possible without actually doing it.” She smiled as she rested against her headboard.
As he left, she wandered to the window. The rain still pounded in buckets and the dock was completely submerged. She sucked in a breath. DeLille wasn’t the only danger. Given the amount and duration of the rain, a flood was a near certainty. How much damage would it cause toSweet Dreams? Regardless, remaining here was not safe.
She spent the time while Luc was gone washing up and dressing in her most practical clothes. Grace also pulled her carpet bag from the back of the armoire. She was loading lingerie into the valise when Luc returned with a tray.
She set the case aside and examined the meal. “Hmmm. Eggs, bacon, muffins and hot chocolate. You do know the way to this woman’s heart.”
They sat on the bed either side of the tray and devoured the meal.
“Should I be surprised that you know how to cook?” Grace asked.
He shook his head, scattering his dark locks over his tempting bare shoulders and rippling pectoral muscles. “No. Most men raised in the country know how. Preparing simple meals is a survival skill. I wouldn’t know how to make these little cakes that you call a muffin.”
“You didn’t have muffins when you were younger? What did the muffin man sell?”
“Oh, we had them, but not like these. These are more like small cakes. As for the muffin man, he sold breads of all sorts and sweet biscuits. Now tell me why you are packing a valise?” Luc gestured to her bag.
“The rain. If you looked outside when you let the dogs out, you probably noticed the dock is completely submerged. The bayou is rising, faster than even all this rain could make it. I’m fairly certain we’re about to have a flood, and I don’t want to be stranded here. Especially with DeLille plotting murder.”
