Sweeter Savage Love Read online

  Sweeter Savage Love

  Sandra Hill

  To my longtime friend, Julie Daley,

  who has been so wonderfully enthusiastic

  about my writing and is one of my

  most avid fans.

  And to her outrageous husband, Tom,

  who has “sold” innumerable copies of

  my books on golf courses across the country.

  Without a doubt, Tom will take great

  pleasure in unabashedly claiming

  that he posed for this cover.

  When a rogue kisses you, count your teeth.

  —Hebrew Proverb

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  It was the most politically incorrect sexual fantasy in the…

  Chapter One

  “Women of the nineties are still in the Stone Age…

  Chapter Two

  Harriet had been asleep only a short time, or so…

  Chapter Three

  After her initial jubilation, Harriet tapped a forefinger against her…

  Chapter Four

  “Damn! Did you have to bring cold water?” Etienne griped…

  Chapter Five

  Don’t worry,” Etienne assured the woman when she balked at…

  Chapter Six

  “Sweetheart, this is M’sieur Gautier,” Etienne said with the slick…

  Chapter Seven

  Simone and Cain continued down the hall, chatting amiably, while…

  Chapter Eight

  “So what’re you goin’ to do with your Dr. Ginny?” Cain…

  Chapter Nine

  He released her hands and braced himself on outstretched arms.

  Chapter Ten

  Etienne took one last sip of the thick chicory coffee,…

  Chapter Eleven

  As dusk began to descend on the bayou, Etienne leaned…

  Chapter Twelve

  A stark male scream ripped through the bayou. One cry…

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Honey, you have to stop fighting this birth,” Harriet told…

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ancient black woman sat rocking on the ground level…

  Chapter Fifteen

  Harriet didn’t see Etienne again for another hour. She was…

  Chapter Sixteen

  Etienne heard Abel’s strong baritone voice ripple out into the…

  Chapter Seventeen

  A shrill scream ripped through the night air.

  Chapter Eighteen

  That night, for the first time since her train ride…

  Chapter Nineteen

  There was one important thing Harriet needed to do before…

  Chapter Twenty

  Etienne was so brain-boiling furious he felt as if his…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next day, they crossed the Texas border into Devil’s…

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Harriet was an open wound of suffering, and the man…

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  On October 28, 1870, Harriet Ginoza sat in a private…

  Epilogue

  Everyone agreed it was the grandest party ever held at…

  Author’s Note

  Other Books by Sandra Hill

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Chicago, 1997

  It was the most politically incorrect sexual fantasy in the world.

  With surprising gentleness, he forced both hands above her shoulders…

  Dr. Harriet Ginoza should have been outraged.

  …and circled her wrists with his strong fingers, pinning them to the mattress.

  Instead, Harriet was loving every minute of her recurring erotic dream…a dream that had been plaguing her for the past two weeks, ever since her new book hit the stands. No, not an erotic dream, she amended. More like a forbidden nightmare, challenging all her cherished beliefs.

  And the leading role was played by Steve Morgan—the quintessential male chauvinist.

  He lowered his face—his dark, sexy, outlaw face, stubbled with a week-old beard. He was primitive, dangerous, barely civilized.

  She tried to look away. She couldn’t.

  Deep blue, fathomless eyes flashed arrogantly as they held hers captive, demanding her surrender.

  “Stop,” she protested. “I don’t want this.”

  He laughed—a cynical, disbelieving contradiction to her all-too-obvious arousal. “Liar,” he murmured, his breath hot against her lips—lips already parting, involuntarily, with invitation.

  At first, she tried to examine the unfolding event with the clinical detachment of her PhD training…as if she weren’t truly involved. It didn’t work.

  She was naked. Steve was fully clothed, right down to the spurs that jangled softly as he adjusted his body with blunt aggression against the vee of her thighs.

  Guilt. She felt so guilty.

  And he knew. Coolly amused at her struggles, he withheld the kiss she dreaded…and anticipated.

  With her personal integrity, not to mention her professional reputation, at stake, Harriet strove for one last vestige of sanity. Finally—thank God!—logic came to the rescue, rearing its head like a stumbling beast. Thus fortified, she fought wildly now against Steve’s restraining hands. She bit his shoulder. She kicked. She bucked upward. All to no avail.

  “I want you, Ginny,” he said quietly against her ear. “Yield to me, my love.”

  She groaned, and tried to tell him she wasn’t his legendary Ginny. The words wouldn’t come.

  His mouth came down hard on hers, bruising the soft flesh. Scorching and brutal, he kissed and kissed and kissed her till she opened for him. A willing victim.

  “Yes,” she gasped out finally.

  He lifted his head to study her for one long moment, then smiled in satisfaction. A dazzling display of white teeth against dark skin. Ruthless. Feral. Possessive.

  She didn’t care.

  “Tell me,” he insisted.

  With her hands still pressed to the bed and her lower body immobilized by his hips, she raised her head to meet his lips, murmuring, “I want you, too.”

  The forceful seduction was complete.

  Once again.

  And her nighttime lover took her with sweet savage love.

  Chapter One

  “Women of the nineties are still in the Stone Age when it comes to sexual fantasies.”

  Harriet spoke directly to the TV camera as she tossed out her deliberately provocative assertion, trying to ignore the guilt nagging her conscience. Yeah, I know all about the Stone Age. Just call me Wilma Flintstone. What a hypocrite I am!

  She crossed her black silk-clad legs, tugging down the short skirt of her scarlet Dior suit—a delaying tactic, one she’d perfected for dramatic effect over the years during innumerable interviews. I’d better practice a few other things, too—like what I preach.

  Reflexively, Harriet swung one black patent-leather Ferragamo pump with a mesmerizing rhythm to give the appearance of casual confidence. Confidence? Hah! Many more of those erotic dreams and I’m going to sign myself into a padded cell.

  During the brief seconds these thoughts flitted through her mind, Harriet waited out the murmuring that rippled through the mostly female, Chicago TV audience. The “Stone Age sex” remark was always a great ice-breaker to generate discussion.

  Oprah, who stood at the edge of the stage preparing to hand the microphone over to questioners, put her hands on her hips and tilted her head in question. “Oh? Women have out-of-date fantasies, huh? Really?”

  “Really. Today’s women are liberated. They’ve gained the vote. They’re breaking thr
ough the glass ceilings in corporate America. Achieving the ‘Big O’ is a given,” Harriet explained. “But you’d be surprised at how unimaginative we all are, and no different from women through the ages. When it comes to sexual fantasies, modern women still dream of the number-one no-no, forceful seduction.” Yep! Count me at the front of that line. Darn it! “In many ways, we’re no different from prehistoric cave women. We swoon at the prospect of some Neanderthal version of Mel Gibson in an animal pelt dragging us by the hair to his cave to have his way with us.” Forget Mel Gibson. I’m picturing another dark-skinned rogue.

  “Well, now, it would depend on what Mel had on under that fur thingee,” Oprah quipped. A lot of other women concurred, as evidenced by their mirthful howls and embarrassed giggles.

  “I don’t have any sexual fantasies at all,” one young lady yelled out. “I’m too tired from chasin’ my three kids to have naughty thoughts.”

  Everybody laughed, including Oprah, who immediately picked up the cue. “That brings up an interesting point, Dr. Ginoza. Do all women have sexual fantasies?”

  “Absolutely.” Harriet smiled, the implication clear that even Oprah Winfrey was included in that statement, not to mention the overtired mother, as well as the entire audience.

  A contemplative expression crossed Oprah’s face. “And you think some of those fantasies are objectionable?”

  “No, no, no,” Harriet corrected quickly. “I would never presume to judge another person’s private thoughts or sexual life.” Now, that’s a lie. I know these dreams are wrong for me. Wrong, wrong, wrong! “I’m merely suggesting that modern women fought tooth and nail for equal rights, but when it comes to their secret erotic yearnings, it’s the same old same old.” And it feels sooo good.

  “Same old same old? Hah!” Oprah snapped back saucily as she sank into a wing-back chair next to Harriet. “You haven’t been inside my head, girl.” She arched her eyebrows meaningfully.

  “You’re the exception then,” Harriet countered, not about to accuse the number-one talk-show hostess in the country of being less than honest. “Based on more than ten years of research, I can tell you unequivocally, Oprah, that most women give lip service to sweet and sensitive—what I call S & S in my book—as a male ideal. But what they dream about is D & D—dark and dangerous. When no one’s looking, women think with their glands, not their brains…just like men.” And my traitorous glands have been in overdrive lately.

  “I beg your pardon,” Oprah sputtered with mock indignation.

  “And what’s so bad about dark and dangerous?” a well-dressed, thirtyish woman asked, stepping up to a microphone in the aisle.

  Harriet beamed, recognizing a perfect opening. Holding up her latest New York Times best-seller, Female Fantasies Never Die, she answered, “If you’d read my book”—and the audience twittered with appreciation at her blatant plug—“you’d know that forceful seduction is still the number-one female fantasy. And the darker and more dangerous the man, the better.”

  As the audience leaned forward with interest, Oprah pursed her lips pensively. “Forceful seduction, huh? I don’t know about that.”

  The next audience member at the microphone, a young man of college age, asked with a nervous ducking of his head, “What exactly is forceful seduction?”

  “I’m so glad you asked,” Harriet said with a teasing flutter of her eyelashes. “Forceful seduction is the use of everything from sweet words to physical pressure to convince a woman to make love, against her will. Or, at least, against her will in the beginning. The key word is convince; otherwise, it would be rape. As you can imagine, feminists are appalled that women still have such politically incorrect fantasies.” I know I am.

  “I find it impossible to believe that any woman would find force enjoyable,” Oprah opined with a shiver of disgust.

  “You’ve got to understand, Oprah. A woman doesn’t dream about some overweight thug with bad breath and zits attacking her in an alley. It’s more like Brad Pitt or Kevin Costner, so overcome with passion for her that he holds her down to have his way with her.” Or Steve.

  Oh, God, where did that thought come from?

  Even Oprah had to smile at that picture and added, “Or Denzel Washington.”

  “There you go!”

  “I think it’s a generational thing,” an elegant, elderly lady in a business suit and chic gray chignon said. “My generation was taught to equate sex with sin. But if we enjoyed ourselves against our will, so to speak, that would be okay.”

  “Exactly!” Harriet agreed.

  Oprah threw her hands up in the air. “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is women.” Harriet displayed her book again. “For decades now, women have been told that forceful seduction is wrong. Outwardly, they agree, but behind closed doors, many of them admit to this closet fantasy.”

  She put her book down and picked up another. Sweet Savage Love. “This book was written twenty-three years ago by Rosemary Rogers. It launched a revolution in romance publishing and has been read by millions—yes, I said millions—of women across the world. The story portrays a classic case of forceful seduction…some might even say ‘love at first rape.’ No question that the hero in this novel, Steve Morgan, takes forceful seduction too far. He was a total brute…a sexy, gorgeous, enticing man…but a brute all the same.”

  Whoa! Who are you calling a brute? Harriet could swear she heard a voice inside her head. She really was going off the deep end, hearing conversations outside her dreams now. Maybe she needed a psychiatrist, she thought with self-deprecating humor.

  “Your point?” Oprah inquired.

  “My point is that, despite all their education, despite the enlightenment of women about sex, despite the power of the feminist cause, despite all logic…women still dream—in their fantasies—of a strong, domineering man seducing them into mindless surrender. They might want Tom Hanks for a husband, but in their fantasies, it’s the bad boy Johnny Depp. Or Daniel Day-Lewis with an attitude. Dark and dangerous. Single-minded in pursuit of his passions. Hot, hot, hot!”

  “Wow!” Oprah said, fanning herself with her hand mike. “Sort of like taming the magnificent wild beast, huh?”

  “Right! To many women, the greater the risk, the more intense the thrill. But only in their fantasies, remember.”

  “We had to read Sweet Savage Love in my Modern Cultures class at college, and my professor said it was a thorn in the women’s movement,” a young girl commented. “Have you actually read Sweet Savage Love, Dr. Ginoza?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you like it?” the girl persisted.

  “Not particularly.” Well, actually…

  Liar! the husky male voice in her head accused.

  Shut up, she thought back.

  “What I’d really like is to meet Steve Morgan face-to-face and show him how modern women react to male chauvinist pigs,” Harriet added. “He’s become a symbol in some psychological circles for a particular type of male personality.”

  “A jerk?” Oprah asked dryly.

  Harriet smiled. “Actually, Steve and Ginny, the hero and heroine, have become legendary lovers to many romance novel fans; so the book is certainly worthy of study,” Harriet continued. “I’m not sure I’d assess its detrimental effect on feminism in quite the same way as that professor, though. After all, men’s adventure novels use the same principle, in reverse, with no criticism. Really, how many mystery novels have you read where the detective is aggressively seduced by some villainous female? Big deal!”

  After further discussion on feminism, fantasies and their relationship to romance novels, Oprah switched gears. “Dr. Ginoza, this is your fourth book to hit the New York Times best-seller list in the past seven years. Your others have dealt with phobias, body language and hypnotherapy. With respect to this latest book…if you aren’t making judgments about women’s fantasies, how do you see your role as an author?”

  “A reporter…pure and simple. I dig up the
facts, ma’am,” she replied in a gruff Sergeant Friday—“Dragnet” style.

  “Aren’t we supposed to learn some lesson from the books we read? Shouldn’t the author help us draw conclusions?” Oprah’s forehead creased with puzzlement.

  “Oh, I want to give a message, all right. I hope women…especially young women…will understand the potential pitfalls of such sexual behavior and handle their personal lives accordingly. Know the boundaries of what is acceptable to them. Draw all the proper lines. And, most of all, be able to separate fantasy from reality.”

  “One last question before the break,” Oprah announced. “Tell me, Dr. Ginoza, do you, personally, ever fantasize about forceful seduction?”

  To her chagrin, Harriet felt her face grow hot, and an image of her nighttime dream lover clouded her vision. She could swear he winked. The rascal!

  Harriet considered lying, but her innate honesty kicked in. “Sometimes,” she admitted, adding with a rueful grin, “but I’m working on it.” I’m a control freak, no doubt about it. And the ultimate loss of control is surrender to a forcefully seductive man. But I can’t admit that before a nationwide TV audience. Nope, the answer is to work on my “weakness.”

  A look of astonishment passed over Oprah’s expressive face, which Harriet understood perfectly. Harriet’s cool, professional demeanor hid her sensual nature.

  “Working on it? Lordy, Lordy! Are you also saying we can change our sexual fantasies?” Oprah chuckled with disbelief.

  “Hey, if they can reprogram a computer, a woman ought to be able to upgrade her libido.” Harriet’s lips twitched with amusement as she shrugged. “Sort of like sweeping the cobwebs from the erotic imagination.”

  Oprah’s theme song prompted them into a commercial break as the audience laughed.

  A deep, male voice laughed in her head. Are you calling me a spider, sweetheart? Hmmm. Welcome to my web.

  Unfortunately, Harriet knew too well that he wasn’t talking about the Internet.

  Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack…