Forever His(140)

“For our second child,” Gaston said indulgently, “the name shall be your choice.”

“Dweezil, maybe,” she offered, hiding a grin. “Or how about Moon Unit?”

He turned, looking a bit less indulgent. “These are common names in your time?”

“Oh, very common,” she assured him, trying to look serious. “Then there’s Whoopi. That’s very popular. And Spike, and Rumer. Or maybe Zowie, if it’s a girl.”

“My daughter ... Zowie?”

“Or we could combine a couple of those into one. Whoopi-Zowie de Varennes,” she mused thoughtfully, stirring. “Hmm. I like that. Lady Whoopi-Zowie.”

He looked appalled.

She had to stare down into the bowl and bite her tongue to restrain a giggle.

“Lady Whoopi-Zowie?” he echoed.

She focused her attention on stirring vigorously. “Yes. Or maybe Whoopi-Rumer. Or Whoopi-Cushion?” She glanced up, fighting to keep a straight face.

He was speechless.

“Or ...” She let herself smile, let her love for him shine through in her eyes. “We could always go with something simpler. Like Jacqueline. After my sister.”

A grin slowly curved his mouth. “You are jesting about the other names,” he accused.

“Yes,” she admitted, laughing. “I am jesting.”

He walked over to her, a smile lighting his features and making his eyes crinkle at the corners. “It is good to hear you laugh, Roussette.” He leaned one elbow casually on the tabletop, watching her work in silence for a moment. “Do you know, I never noticed before, but this table is precisely the right height for a use other than cooking.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” She ducked around the corner of the table to evade him before he could make a move. “A duc can’t live on lovemaking alone. At least let me feed you first.”

He made no effort to pursue, lounging where he was. “Very well, feed me if you must, ma chère.” He sipped his wine, heated promise glowing in his gaze over the edge of the goblet. “But I mean to feast on you later.”

She snagged a small iron cookpot from the other side of the table and poured her makeshift salsa into it. “You’ll have to catch me first,” she challenged softly.

“A hunt, my sweet vixen?” he drawled. “I believe I can rise to such a contest.”

She caught the way he emphasized the word “rise”—and could feel the temperature rising in the kitchen as heat sizzled between them. “A contest? One that might last all night?”

“Nay, it is to be a short one, Roussette. When I have captured my prey and carried her to my lair, I mean to subdue her quickly. Beginning with kisses. The first on her soft—”

“Keep this up and we’ll be going to bed hungry.”

“I am already too hungry to wait for bed.” He stroked the tabletop with the flat of his hand.

She picked up the cookpot and her spoon, flashing him a bold look. “But the longer I make my predator wait,” she teased as she crossed to the hearth, “the hungrier he will be.”

He growled in reply and she could feel his gaze following her every step. She hung the pot from one of the hinged hooks embedded in the stone wall of the fireplace. Positioning it over the flames, she started stirring.

After a moment, he exhaled slowly, patiently, his voice taking on a softer, deeper tone. “You will be even more beautiful than you are now, Roussette, when you are round with child.”

Celine opened her mouth to reply—when a sudden, sharp pain struck her lower back.

Like she had been stabbed.

She stopped what she was doing, so startled she simply froze with an agonized little gasp. Gaston couldn’t have heard it, because he was still talking, telling her in that tender voice how lovely she would be when she was pregnant with his baby.

The pain was intense, jagged, worse than anything she had felt before. She waited for it to pass.

Her right leg started to feel tingly and numb.

Oh, God.

She gripped the spoon hard, trying not to shake. Everything was going to be all right. They had only two days left. Two days until the eclipse. Two days and she would be back in 1993 and the doctors would take out the damn bullet fragment and then she could come back to her husband.

Two days. There was nothing Gaston or anyone could do to stop the pain. She just had to hold out against it until she could get home and go to a hospital.

She forced herself to keep working, stirring. “Beautiful? Round?” she asked lightly, trying not to let him see that she was breathing in short, shallow gulps. “I’ll be ... fat.”

“Nay. Beautiful,” he assured her. His voice dropped to an even deeper tone. “And I shall make love to you very, very gently.”