Anger surged through him now as he stared down at Serena. Anger and an emotion he refused to recognize as protectiveness. She stood with her back to him, but he had shifted to one side so he could see a little of her face over her shoulder. She looked impossibly young and sad standing there with her hair down around her shoulders and no makeup on her face.

«I was in the hospital for a week,» she said. «Suffering from exposure and snakebite. As you can see, I never did quite get over it.» She gave a little laugh, but it held no humor, only pain and frustration and a sense of shame. She sniffed and shrugged. «Now you know my disgraceful little secret: The calm, cool psychologist has a phobia she can't overcome.»

Lucky closed his eyes and folded his arms around her, holding her because he knew how badly she needed comforting. He could hear it in her voice and he couldn't keep from responding. He pulled her back against his big, solid body and marveled absently at how perfectly she fit.

Serena didn't fight his embrace. She wasn't sure what it meant, this show of caring from such a hard man, but she accepted it. She let herself lean back against him and soaked in the feeling of safety his arms inspired. In that moment it didn't matter how they'd fought or how different they were from each other. He was just a man offering her compassion when she needed it badly. She turned her head and pressed her cheek to his chest, listening to the solid thud of his heartbeat.

«This is why you didn't want to come out here in the pirogue, oui?» he asked softly, resting his cheek against the top of her head without even realizing it, certainly without recognizing the tenderness of the gesture.

«I didn't want to come out here, period.»

«Why did you?»

«Because I had to. Somebody had to.»

«That you're so afraid of the swamp-why didn't you tell me this sooner?»

«And give you another reason to sneer at me? No thank you. Frankly, I didn't think my fears would be of any interest to a man like you.»

«We've all of us got fears, chere,» he murmured almost to himself.

She looked up at him over her shoulder, arching a brow. «Even big, bad Lucky Doucet?»

Lucky said nothing. It was one thing to have Serena confess to him. It would be quite something else to turn the tables. He wouldn't, couldn't, let her get that close to him. He had worked too hard to pull himself together to let some lady shrink dissect him.

«What are you afraid of, Lucky?» she whispered, her dark eyes glowing with intelligence and curiosity. There were tear tracks on her cheeks and her mouth looked soft and vulnerable.

«Nothing,» he murmured, turning her in his arms, «nothing.» He lowered his mouth to hers.

He kissed her deeply, parting her lips expertly and sliding his tongue into her mouth in a gesture of possession. She tasted salty and sweet and so damn good his mind nearly went numb from it. He stroked his hands over the unbound silk of her hair and down her back to the subtle curves of her hips.

He hadn't stopped wanting her in the time he'd been gone. The fire had merely been banked, not put out. The flames leapt to life as her mouth moved beneath his, as her body moved against his. He had pulled away the first time, but he had no intention of pulling away now. He wanted her. It was desire, nothing deeper, nothing more complex than the basic story of a man wanting a woman, of a male needing a female.

With one hand splayed across the small of her back, he pulled her hips tighter against his. With his other hand he found the hem of her top and slipped beneath it to stroke the smooth satin of her skin. With deft fingers he unsnapped the front catch of her bra and cupped a breast. The fullness of it surprised him. The feel of her nipple hardening at the brush of his fingertips excited him.

He dragged his mouth from Serena's lips to her jaw to her ear. She shivered as he traced the delicate shell with the tip of his tongue and trembled when he whispered to her, his voice as dark and hot as the night.

«I want your breast in my mouth, chere. I wanna taste you. I wanna feel your nipple between my lips.»

A whimper caught in her throat.

«I wanna be inside you. I wanna feel you around me, tight and hot and wet.»

Serena's mind reeled with the seductive images he was conjuring. She could feel her temperature rising, sexual desire like a fever in her blood. It was exhilarating, intoxicating, frightening. Her body pressed against his, making its own desires known even as her mind grappled for control.

He kissed her throat, letting his teeth graze the skin. Serena caught her breath against the moan that threatened, but she couldn't stop herself from arching her neck to give him better access. He whispered a more explicit request in her ear, then sucked gently at the soft petal of her earlobe.

«No,» she barely managed to say between gasps. It sounded more like a question than an answer. «No,» she said more forcefully.

Lucky rolled her nipple between thumb and forefinger, tugging subtly at the turgid peak. He raised his head a fraction and stared down at her, his eyes heavy-lidded and dark with passion, the thin band of amber ringing the pupils as warm as the light from the lamp on the table.

«Yes, chere,» he whispered.

Serena's gaze drifted to his mouth, that incredible, sensuous mouth, gleaming wet and red from their kiss. She stared at it, imagining it at her breast, tugging, sucking, his tongue laving her nipple while his fingers stroked her most sensitive flesh.

«No,» she murmured, the word barely a breath moving from her lips. «I hardly know you.»

«You know I'm a man. I know you're a woman. What more do we need to know?»

«We don't even like each other.»

Lucky growled low in his throat as his mouth moved toward hers. «I'm likin' you just fine right now, sugar.» He kissed a corner of her mouth, probing gently at the cleft of her lips with the tip of his tongue.

«J'aime te faire l'amour avec toi,» he breathed the words against her lips. «Bien, ma chere, casse pas mon coeur.

He might have been saying anything. He might have been telling her she was uglier than a mule, but the words, spoken in his smoky voice and flavored with their rich French accent, had their desired effect just the same. Serena felt her common sense further diluted by desire. A languid weakness floated through her arms and legs. She leaned heavily against Lucky and his scent filled her head-musky and warm and indisputably male.

He kissed her again, filling her mouth with his taste. His fingers left her breast to encircle the wrist of her right hand. He drew it down from where it rested flat against his chest. He moved against her hand, nuzzled her cheek, nipped her ear. «That's all for you, angel. Let me give it to you, chere.»

Serena let her fingers flex hesitantly. Another wave of heat flashed through her. Oh, God, she wanted him. She wanted a man she'd only just met, a man who was a mystery to her, a man whose overwhelming masculinity frightened her on a fundamental level.

She turned her head away to draw in a deep breath, and her gaze hit the butt of the semiautomatic pistol that nestled against his ribs. Her heart skipped a beat, then rushed into double time as she looked beyond the gun to his biceps. An ugly two-inch-long gash was carved in the flesh and a line of dried blood trailed from it.

He was a dangerous man. A criminal. A man without scruples.

Shaking from the conflict that raged inside her, Serena pushed herself back from him. «You're bleeding.»

«What?»

«Your arm. The one next to the gun,» she said pointedly. «It's bleeding.»

«It's nothing.» Lucky reached for her.

Serena stepped back, crossing her arms in front of her, still avoiding his gaze. «Not to me it's not.»

He reached out slowly to touch her hair, lifting a golden lock to rub it between his fingers. «If I put a Band-Aid on it, will you go to bed with me?»