She slid him a glare. “It’s not funny.” But one corner of her pink lips twitched in a grin. “I skipped a trip to the beach with my sister that weekend so I could stay home and wait by the phone.”

Marc sucked a breath through his teeth. “And I never called.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said, then added, “ever again.”

“I’m sorry, hon.” He dropped a quick kiss atop her head. “It wasn’t anything you did. I was telling the truth that night when I said I wanted to take you out again.”

“So what changed?”

He’d changed. More specifically, the skin all over his happy place. “The next day something happened that made me think the curse was real. I woke up with, uh . . .” Was there a delicate way to say blisters all over my johnson? “Well, an outbreak.”

She glanced up at him with a question in her eyes.

“On my manhood,” he clarified.

Allie gasped and gave him a playful shove. “And you thought that was my fault?”

Marc shrugged. “Daddy and Pawpaw kept telling me sex with a Mauvais woman would make my junk fall off, so . . .” He trailed off because the rest seemed obvious to him.

“But a rash could mean a dozen different things,” Allie said, ticking items off on her fingers. “A reaction to your laundry detergent, a new soap, a food allergy, or—if that rumor about you and the cheer squad is true—a social disease.”

“No way.” Marc held up one hand in oath. “I’ve never gone bareback in my life, and I get tested on the regular. I’m cleaner than a priest on Sunday.” He didn’t mention that the old rumor was true. He had worked his way through the varsity squad—but always protected by a barrier of nice, safe latex.

“Still, I can’t believe you blamed that on me.”

“Not you,” Marc said. He’d never believed Allie meant him harm. “The curse.”

“Same difference.”

“Not really.” It was Allie’s great-great-grandma who’d cursed the Dumonts, not her. “One is beyond your control and the other isn’t.”

“The other?” she asked.

“You know. Hexing people on purpose.” At her piercing glare, Marc added, “Just speaking hypothetically. I don’t pay a lick of credence to that stuff.”

“Uh-huh,” Allie said, clearly not buying it. “So you don’t even believe the curse is real anymore?”

“Nope.”

“Care to test it?” Her eyes—one the color of fine whiskey, the other grayer than a summer storm—twinkled with mischief and put a skip in Marc’s pulse. “Because I know a way to find out for sure.”

“What’s that?”

“Easy,” she said, raising one brow in a challenge. “Kiss me again.”

Of its own volition, Marc’s gaze flew to her mouth, full and soft and still wet from the shower. He froze, unable to form a response to her proposal. He’d often fantasized about taking that pouty lower lip between his teeth and tasting Allie Mauvais—kissing her and doing it right this time.

So what was stopping him?

“What’s the matter, baby?” she teased. “You scared?”

Maybe a little, but he’d never own up to it.

“Of kissing a pretty woman? Never.” Marc accepted her dare, pushing up her robe sleeve and taking her hand in both of his. “But I think we should start small. You know, make sure lightning doesn’t strike us dead.”

“Mmm,” she agreed with a mock solemn nod. “Baby steps.”

“Yeah, exactly.” He trailed an index finger along her wrist, all the way up to the inside bend of her elbow and back down again, then peered at her and asked, “Feel anything?”

The thumping vein beneath Marc’s fingers told him Allie felt a whole lot, but she shook her head. “Nope.”

“That’s a good sign.” Holding her gaze, he lifted her palm to his mouth and placed a slow, lingering kiss there, hiding a smile when she shivered and bit her lip. “How about now?”

Allie swallowed hard enough to shift her throat. “Nothing.”

“Mmm, you don’t say.” It was time to dial it up a notch. Scooting nearer until their thighs touched, he swept back her dripping locks, then bent down and brushed his lips back and forth over her ear. He flicked his tongue along the rim before gently biting her lobe and whispering, “Now?”

A whimper was her only reply.

He was sure starting to feel something. Right behind his fly.

He worked his way down the side of her neck. When he found a weak spot at the top of her shoulder, he teased it—licking and sucking and nibbling until Allie’s low moans vibrated the skin beneath his lips.

He’d always wondered what she tasted like, and now he knew. Clean and savory, like honeydew. Marc couldn’t hide the lust in his voice when he tore his mouth away from her and asked, “Feel anything now?”

Allie’s breath came in shallow gasps. She tilted her head for more of his touch and murmured, “Not a thing.”

So he made love to her throat until she writhed in pleasure and leaned back onto the bed, sinking her fingertips into his shoulders to pull him atop her. A distant voice warned Marc he was going too far, but the blood drained from his brain and rushed between his legs, smothering his conscience with lethal force.

Distractions eliminated, he covered Allie’s body with his own and pressed her soft curves into the mattress, then nibbled a path from her shoulder to her jaw. He reached the corner of her mouth and pulled back to look at her—sodden curls fanning out around her flushed face, eyelids heavy, lips parted in need. Lord have mercy, she was so gorgeous, he ached deep inside where nobody had stirred him before.

“If you still don’t feel anything,” he whispered, “we can probably try that kiss now.”

“No lightning here.” Allie reached up and unfastened his hair, sending it spilling down like a curtain. “How about you, baby?” she asked with a seductive grin. “Anything scary happening in your pants?”

Chuckling softly, Marc aligned their hips and rocked, long and slow, against the terry cloth between her thighs to demonstrate exactly what was happening inside his pants. He must have hit the right spot because her eyes rolled back, mouth widening as she arched her neck and strained against him. Marc seized the opportunity and lowered his face to hers in a gentle kiss.

Or at least he tried to be gentle.

Once their lips met and she sighed into his mouth, he lost all control. A growl emanated from the back of his throat as he took her mouth with the force of nine years’ pent-up longing. She fisted his hair and angled her face to take his seeking tongue, luring him deeper into her mouth in wet thrusts that mimicked the unconscious motion of his hips.

If he thought Allie’s throat tasted good, it was nothing compared to her candied lips. He fed from her mouth, dizzy with the sensations of her warm scent and the noises rising from her chest. When she broke from the kiss and moaned his name, Marc quit caring whether or not the curse was real. If he woke up tomorrow with his head on backward it would be worth it.

“Marc,” she repeated, bucking against his erection, her eyes closed in rapture.

His body heated, and he rushed to shrug out of his captain’s jacket without leaving the decadence of Allie’s embrace. With that accomplished, he gazed past his waist to the long, tanned leg wrapped around his hips . . . the very bare leg.

“You naked under there?” Marc asked in a husky voice, not sure if he wanted to hear yes or no. It would be so easy to untie that white robe, unzip his fly, and slip right inside her.

But part of him knew it was a bad idea.

She answered by taking his hand and leading it up the length of her thigh, stopping where their clothed bodies met. He shifted aside so he could continue all the way to the top, and when he arrived at his destination he found her exposed, waxed baby-smooth, and already slick with desire.

God bless. He was going to burst in his drawers.

Bending to kiss her again, he ran one fingertip along the length of her slippery seam and stroked her with a whisper touch, teasing and tickling until she spread herself wide and dug her heels into the mattress in a silent plea for more pressure.

“How ’bout now, sugar?” he whispered against her mouth. “Feel anything?”

She only groaned and slurred a strand of incoherent Creole.

He didn’t need a translation to know what she wanted, and he gave it to her—massaging circles over her slippery flesh and swallowing her cries of pleasure. She was petal-soft and hot beneath his touch. Marc wanted to watch his fingers as he worked more tension into her coiling muscles, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the sweetness of her mouth. So he let his fingertips send images to his mind, imagining the sheen of arousal glistening at the juncture of her thighs, the pink pout of her sex as he slid a finger deep and felt the first wave of orgasm clench around him.

Then in the worst imaginable timing, someone began pounding on the bedroom door.

“Don’t get that,” Allie gasped, thrashing her head from side to side.

“I have no intention of stopping,” Marc promised. Nothing short of a fire would get him out of Allie’s room—or her body.

He added a second finger and pumped deeper, then twisted his hand palm-up to massage her sweet spot. The next surge crested in a climax twice as hard as the first. Marc covered her mouth with his, smothering her moans of release. Her pleasure rang inside his head like music, pride washing over him until he nearly burst with it. He loved making Allie shudder in ecstasy; his only wish was to take her higher.

He had to join himself with her completely, to bury his throbbing erection where she was blazing hot and wet enough to take all of him in one hard thrust. Allie must have sensed his need, because even in her weakened state she reached for his belt buckle.