She looked up at him. “No?” Did she seem eager?
He laughed. “Well, you still remember where you’re from.”
She grinned. “Oh yeah. I guess I do. The state anyway. The town name is fuzzy. You’d better give me something more.”
“You asked for it.” He kissed her hungrily, then reached for his pants beside the bed and the condoms—hey, he was an optimist—in the pocket. He pushed himself up to kneeling and started to shed his boxers.
“Oh, let me.” Tori was suddenly sitting up and reaching for him.
She was so open about what she was feeling and wanting. He loved that. He loved when it was directed at and about him especially, but he loved that about her in general. It seemed the only time she tamped things down was when Andrew was there, reminding her to dial it back.
Fucking Andrew.
Tori pulled his boxers down and sighed happily as she took in the sight of his cock—his never-this-hard-before cock—for the first time, and Josh forgot about anything and anyone but her.
There was no, “Oh my God, you’re so big” or “You’re so hot”. Nothing seductive. She just reached out and took his cock in her hand, circling it and stroking up and down, watching herself touch him.
Josh felt his balls tighten and he had to grit his teeth against the sensations suddenly pounding through him. It was her touch, of course, but it was also the look on her face and her contented little exhalation. Like she was just so happy in this moment.
She wasn’t a virgin, maybe, but she was hardly experienced. She had flirted with him last year at Bourbon O, but she hadn’t been trying to seduce him. She’d just been having fun, teasing, enjoying. Which was what had seduced him, he realized. It was just how honest and open she was about how she was feeling and what she was thinking. She hadn’t liked the Hurricane. The gin fizz had been okay. She’d really liked the beer. It had all been there in her face and voice. And that was how he’d known how she felt about him. And why he’d wanted things to be different with her.
Right now, watching how turned on she was and how much she clearly just liked touching him and looking at him, was the hottest thing he’d ever seen.
Well, maybe second to that moment when she’d first spread her legs.
And when he’d first twirled her on the dance floor.
And when she’d lit up first seeing him on the dock in Autre.
Holy hell, he was falling in love with her.
Like someone had smacked him in the face, it was clear.
And he’d never wanted a woman more.
He handed her the condom without a word—because he was actually a little worried about what he might say—and she tore it open and rolled it on. Then he pushed her back, kneeling between her knees, scooped her butt up in his hands, and positioned himself.
She looked down and watched as he slid into her wet heat slowly, making lust surge through him as strong as all of the other softer emotions.
Josh gritted his teeth as he pressed forward, wanting to take it easy and slow, overriding his body’s urges to thrust and pound. But her little moans and the way she moved against him tested every shred of self-control he had. He would freaking go to war for the, “Oh, Josh” she gave him. Not to mention the way her sweet body clamped around his cock like she never wanted to let go.
He pressed all the way in, relishing everything about being balls deep, before pulling out again, also slowly. He moved in and out with long, easy strokes, watching her perfect breasts bounce, her hands grip the sheets, her body take him fully, softening around him, welcoming his length and girth even as her pussy gripped him snugly.
“If I move to that place you’re from,” he said, teasing gruffly. “I will insist on doing a lot of this too.”
She swallowed hard, looking up from where she’d been watching him fuck her. “Where am I from again? I can’t remember.”
He wanted to grin. He wanted to tease and laugh. But for some reason the light, don’t-really-mean-it words wouldn’t come. “Too fucking far away,” he told her. Then he ran his thumb over her clit, circling and pressing and taking the air from her lungs so that she couldn’t respond to that with anything other than a hard, fast orgasm.
She gasped his name, arched her neck, and squeezed his cock with her pussy so tightly that he was only a few seconds behind her, coming hard, shouting her name.
Yeah, he fucking hoped someone was in the next room to hear that too.
It took several seconds for the waves of pleasure to quiet and calm. Josh stayed braced above Tori, breathing hard, watching her gasp for air as well. He was still deep inside her, and he couldn’t tell if the aftershocks from the shared orgasm were from her or him.
Finally, he lowered himself onto one elbow and rolled slightly. But he didn’t pull out. He couldn’t bring himself to separate their bodies just yet. He snuggled her up against him, one of her legs draped over his hip, spreading her open and keeping him fully embedded.
She sighed heavily and seemed perfectly content tucked up against his side.
They just lay there, breathing, for several long minutes. Long enough that he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
But finally she said, “So that was definitely worth waiting a year for.”
He chuckled. And agreed a thousand percent. Then he was again hit by emotions that he’d never felt when tangled up in bed sheets with a naked woman. A sense of panic among them. He might have never seen her again. Last year on Bourbon Street she might have walked away forever. She might have decided not to come to Autre to try to find him. Josh felt his heart starting to race and he took a deep breath and then gathered her closer.
“Thank you for coming back to Louisiana. Thank you for coming to Autre,” he said, his voice gravelly.
She laughed softly. “I might not have come to find you at the bayou if I hadn’t accidentally kissed Andrew.”
Josh worked on not squeezing her too tightly at her words. She might not have. What the hell would he have done then?
But then she wiggled her butt against him and gave another of those long, contented sighs, and Josh decided that instead of thinking about what could have been—or what might not have been—he was going to enthusiastically embrace his family’s love for destiny and soul mates.
Because he was not going to be thankful to fucking Andrew for anything.
“WE DON’T REALLY LOOK that much alike, do we?” Josh asked Owen. “I’m more muscular for sure, right?”
“Yes, Princess, you’re prettier than him,” Owen said, lifting his glass of sweet tea and rolling his eyes.
“Fuck off,” Josh grumbled, pushing his fork through his seafood pot pie.
They were sitting in Trahan’s Tavern, just off of Jackson Square, sixteen hours after Tori had fallen asleep in his arms.
In those sixteen hours, he’d slept, snuck out of bed early to meet Leo downstairs to get the sweet grits and chicory coffee Ellie had sent, been not at all surprised to find Owen delivering breakfast, driving the bus and playing chauffeur for the city tour of New Orleans instead of Leo, fed Tori grits that she’d loved and coffee that she’d been okay with once he added cream and sugar—she’d come around to the chicory, he was sure—and bundled eight people from Iowa onto a tour bus and shown them the Big Easy.
“I think you’re more muscular than him,” Gabe Trahan said to Josh.
“Thanks, man.”
“You’ve got better hair too,” Gabe decided. He’d taken a seat with Josh and Owen after he’d gotten the group’s dinner served and was now studying Andrew.
Josh shot Owen a look. “See? That is how to be supportive.”
“But he’s taller,” Gabe said. “And he looks smarter than you.”
“Excuse me?”
Gabe looked back at Josh and shrugged. “It’s probably just the glasses, but he kind of has a polished, college-boy look.”
“He is a college boy,” Owen said. “And a law school boy.”
“Fuck off,” Josh told them b
oth.
Gabe chuckled. “I think you’re okay. After all, his balls are in Paisley Darbonne’s pocket, so you’ve got that.”
“Why do you think that?” Josh asked, surprised Gabe even knew who Andrew was engaged to. Of course, it was possible it had been in the local papers, he supposed.
“Andrew and his buddies were in here the other night and I heard them talking,” Gabe said with a shrug.
“They were in here?” Josh asked. “When?”
“Mardi Gras.”
“They were here on Tuesday?” Josh had been running in and out of the bar, completely distracted by thoughts of Tori, so it was very possible he’d missed seeing Andrew. Then again, he hadn’t known who Andrew was on Tuesday. He could have seen the other man, but not really seen him. He could have pushed the groom-to-be a beer or two and never really looked at his face.
“They were. Nice big tab and good tippers,” Gabe said.
“But he was bitching about Paisley?” Owen asked.
“Just that she was pissed off about how things were going and that he needed to figure out a way to smooth it all out. And one of his groomsmen asked when anything was going to be about Andrew and Andrew said, ‘When Paisley tells me it can be.’” Gabe and Owen laughed at that.
Josh just continued to watch Andrew and Tori together. Andrew was disgruntled with the wedding planning? He hadn’t known that.
“So you’ve been showing them the sites, huh?” Gabe asked. “You know your way around on concrete and not just swamp water?”
“Oh hell,” Owen said. “You give this guy a captive audience and some stories to tell and he’s in heaven. Doesn’t matter what the vehicle is or if the stories are true or pure bullshit.”
“I like to fall somewhere in between those,” Josh said with a grin. He couldn’t deny that he’d had a great time showing this group around.
“You showed them Preservation Hall and the Cathedral and the streetcars?” Gabe asked.
“Yep.”
“And you handed out pralines and told them why we call it Canal Street?”
“Yep.”
“And you took them to the World War II museum?”
“Took ’em by it,” Josh said. “That’s a whole day thing to really appreciate it. But we did stop in at Mardi Gras World.”
Gabe grinned. “And they fed them King Cake?”
“You bet.”
Mardi Gras World was one of the big old warehouses where they created and stored a lot of the Mardi Gras floats. It was a little bit cool and a little bit crazy. The amount of work that went into the floats was amazing and seeing them up close was always fun, especially for people who hadn’t ever been to a real Mardi Gras parade. The sampling of King Cake was a part of the tour at the facility and again, was often a first for out-of-towners. The Iowa group hadn’t really understood the whole bit about the plastic baby being hidden somewhere in the cake, but they’d liked their samples.
“We went up and down Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue,” Josh said. He’d showed off the mansions of the Garden District, talked about the streetcars, and they’d done a loop through Audubon Park where he’d told them about the insectarium and the aquarium and the Tree of Life, the old oak estimated to be between one hundred and five hundred years old and that had a spot in its branches with a view of giraffes. The ones in the zoo not too far from the tree.
“But we gave them a…unique tour too,” Owen said.
He and Josh shared a grin.
“What’s that mean?” Gabe asked, lifting a brow.
“Well, we told them all about Katrina and a bunch of the stories we know and have heard in here,” Josh said. He’d only been fifteen when the hurricane had ravaged the area, but everyone knew someone who had a story and a lot of people loved to tell those stories. The first responders who frequented Trahan’s from Engine 29, the firehouse just a few blocks away, had a trove of stories, some that they’d experienced themselves and some they’d heard from others.
Josh knew that some, or even most, of those stories had grown over the years since the storm and that there were some urban legends mixed into the recounting of the hurricane and the aftermath. But the destruction had been very real, the lives affected had been countless, and the effects could still be felt around the city. It was easy for him to get impassioned about it.
“Then to lighten things up, we made a stop at the Museum of Death and the Voodoo Museum,” Josh said with a grin. “And ended up outside the LaLaurie Mansion.” The famously haunted mansion had a grisly history, and the story of the socialite, Delphine LaLaurie, who tortured and killed slaves in her lavish French Quarter mansion in the mid-1800s, was always good for shock factor.
Gabe laughed. “Good lord, these people are never coming back to N’Awlins after all that.”
Josh’s eyes went to Tori again. She had to come back. Had to. If she had to leave at all.
“And then you brought them in here?” Gabe said, looking around. “If their stomachs are queasy, they won’t eat as much.”
“They’ll drink though, to try to get all that crazy shit outta their heads,” Owen said.
“Guess I won’t tell them the bar is haunted too,” Gabe said, pushing back and stretching to his feet.
Owen chuckled. “Good call.”
Josh shook Gabe’s hand as his friend, and technically his boss, headed back behind the bar. It never felt like he was really working for the Trahans though. It was more as if he was helping run a business he loved and cared about.
“And we’ll take ’em to Café Du Monde after this and they’ll forget all about the nasty, horrible stories,” Owen said, popping a crawfish into his mouth.
“Thank you for not telling Gabe that plan,” Josh said.
The famous café sat kitty-corner across the square from Trahan’s and yeah, the Iowans needed a beignet before leaving New Orleans. He’d be shirking his responsibilities as a tour guide if they didn’t have one. But the brown butter pecan pie at Trahan’s beat beignets hands down. Though Josh would never deny a tourist a plate of beignets and a café au lait at Café Du Monde. And he’d never tell them that Café Beignet was even better. Or that his own grandmother could make beignets so good that they could make a grown man cry. Café Du Monde was simply a must-do.
“So why don’t we like Andrew?” Owen asked, taking a huge bite of his blackened redfish, one of the many amazing things on Trahan’s menu. Owen was eating for free since he was driving the bus—a deal Leo had hammered out with Sawyer and Tommy long ago—and was taking advantage of it. “He’s Tori’s best friend, right? Shouldn’t you be tryin’ to get on his good side if you want back in her panties?”
The mention of Tori’s panties made Josh shift on his seat as heat shot through him. “What makes you think I’d be goin’ back? As if I’ve been there?”
Owen chuckled. “Because that girl’s glowing.” He pointed his fork in Tori’s direction.
To where she was sitting and talking with Andrew at the end of the bar. Just the two of them. Andrew had been trying to get her alone all day but Josh had kept them moving, spurred on by Tori’s obvious interest and delight in the tour as much as a desire to keep them apart. She asked Josh a million questions and was the last one back on the bus whenever they got off. She’d even wanted to go inside the LaLaurie Mansion. Which got a big hell no from Josh. Not even a guy who dealt with gators on a daily basis had big enough balls to go inside that place.
Josh watched Tori with Andrew for a moment. “Glowing, huh?” She looked gorgeous to him. He’d been itching to kiss her all day. But he kind of felt that way constantly around her.
“Well, that and the fact that she was looking at you all gaga all day.” Owen shook his head. “No one thinks your explanation of why we bury people above ground and your history Holt Cemetery is that interesting. Trust me. She was thinking about your cock and all the dirty things you did to her last night.”
Josh coughed and shifted on his chair. In the middle of the cemetery
? But he’d wanted to kiss her there, too, so maybe.
Oh yeah, they’d gone to a cemetery too. The unique below-ground-burial cemetery in New Orleans. Of course they’d found that interesting. It had been a burial ground for the indigent population back in the day and because of the high water tables there were times that caskets would float up. The cemetery was unique for sure and Josh had always found it charming. The grave markers were homemade—PVC pipe, painted wooden posts, and a variety of other things—and trinkets like beads, photographs, stuffed animals and even beer and bottles of liquor could be found in the branches and roots of the huge oak in the middle of the cemetery.
What could he say? There was a lot of morbid-but-fascinating shit in New Orleans.
“But honestly, she doesn’t just seem well fucked,” Owen went on, as if they were discussing the tour schedule for tomorrow or who’s turn it was to scrub the dock. And as if there weren’t several other people within earshot. “She was looking at you like you were the most amazing person she’s ever met. Like she actually likes you. Even in the middle of the murder museum. Which is not hot or romantic in the least. That’s something.” He shook his head. “Freakin’ place makes my skin crawl.”
“It’s the Museum of Death,” Josh corrected, thinking about what Owen had said.
“Yeah, well, it’s got letters from serial killers in it.” Owen shuddered. “That’s fucking freaky no matter what you call it.”
Yeah, it was. Josh grinned. Tori had clearly enjoyed the whole tour but some of the fun of it—and the inspiration for the stop at the Museum of Death—was how queasy Andrew had looked at the cemetery and the voodoo museum.
Okay, so Tori had been aptly listening to everything he said, but that was kind of just Tori. Wasn’t it? Or maybe not. Maybe she did think he was amazing and interesting and charming. Lord knew that standing up in front of newcomers to Louisiana and telling them cool, if slightly twisted, stuff about his home state was one of his favorite things in life.
But man, he loved the idea of Tori being enamored with him.
My Best Friend’s Mardi Gras Wedding: Boys of the Bayou Page 19
