“I can’t,” he said. “Why don’t you give up looking for me?”
He watched as she lifted her chin and smiled as if she suspected he was looking at her head-on and wanted him to see her. “I can’t.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Pretty much at a stalemate.”
“Mmm.”
She turned to look at the cabin. “This isn’t your place, is it?”
“Nope.”
“But you do have one nearby.”
“Yes.”
She scanned the area around her.
“You could stay behind alone and I’ll show it to you.”
“Why? So you can take me hostage again?”
“No, so we can continue what we started yesterday. But this time, as equals.”
He could have sworn he saw her shiver.
“I think the scales would still be a bit unbalanced.”
“Only because you want to arrest me.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You could try to help me prove my innocence.”
He watched her eyes as they squinted, filled with what he could only guess was wariness.
“That’s why I can’t give myself up.”
“Yet.”
“Yes, yet.”
“Why?”
“Because not even you believe in my innocence.”
“I don’t know you.”
“I think you know me better than either of us is willing to admit.”
“Agent Brooks?”
He watched as the detective in the overcoat came up behind her. She raised a hand to ward him off.
“If I stay?”
If she stayed…
Claude thought of the dangerous game they’d begun the day before. Could still taste the sweetness of her flesh on his tongue. Feel her thighs gripping his hips.
“You’ll have to be the judge of that.”
He watched as she slapped her phone closed then turned to face the detective.
Claude closed his own phone, then drifted back farther into the bayou shadows. While he’d correctly read Akela’s attraction to him, he hadn’t expected her to find her way back to the cabin so easily. He’d have to remember not to underestimate her from there on out.
He watched as the three teams of officers began to disperse, two of them with the airboats, the other backtracking toward the road. He suspected they might leave someone behind. He was mildly surprised when it was Akela.
AKELA UNFASTENED the pulls on her flak jacket, then let the heavy protective vest hang from her shoulders, her T-shirt underneath damp. The last of her support team had left about fifteen minutes ago, leaving her behind on her request. Sitting on the porch’s wood steps, she scanned the surrounding area, hoping Lafitte had watched them go, hoping even more that he’d noticed she had stayed.
She didn’t miss the irony of her actions. She’d come out here with every intention of bringing him into custody, where she felt he’d be safer. With her on the job, she wouldn’t have to worry about one of Chevalier’s rookies spooking and squeezing a shot at Claude.
She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Should have suspected it would take more than a few clever maneuvers to arrest the ex-marine.
She’d practically memorized his background check. Knew the details of his arrest at nineteen when he’d been found bleeding from a stab wound in the back—which explained the scar—and left for dead when a black-market sale of small arms had gone bad. He’d been the seller, and apparently the buyer had decided he didn’t want to pay for what Claude had stolen. It had been his first offense, during a time when the laws weren’t as unforgiving as they were now, so the judge had given him a choice: prison or a stint in the military.
He’d chosen the military. Where he’d not only served, but served well. He’d worked his way up to a prime position in Elite Forces, going above and beyond in his duty as scout and sniper in both Kosovo and Somalia. The marines had tried to talk him into staying when his time was up, but he’d taken his honorable discharge, then gone into business with his older brother, buying scrapped watercraft, rebuilding the engines, then reselling them at triple the price. The business had grown over the years to include popular bayou airboat tours and now dealt in new as well as used and refurbished boats.
It was that business that Claude was now in the process of buying from his brother, a deal that would undoubtedly fall through if Claude couldn’t clear his name. And the only way she felt he could do that was by turning himself over to authorities.
She glanced at her watch then ran the back of her hand across her brow. It was even hotter today than it had been yesterday, if that was possible. The very air around her seemed to liquefy. The scent of green and decay filled her nose. And her heart beat so thickly she wasn’t all that convinced that she was physically sound. Obviously, her psychological soundness was already in question.
She shrugged out of the jacket and dropped it with a dull thunk to the wood steps. There wasn’t anything she could do about the pants but roll them up a few times, but she left her boots on.
“Waiting for someone?”
The words came from the porch behind her. She stiffened a bit, but only because, despite everything, Lafitte had managed to get the jump on her.
She released the bullet loaded into her automatic with a quick shift of the mechanism, then put the firearm back into the holster attached to her flak jacket.
“You could say that,” she said.
She heard footsteps and scooted over on the stairs so he could pass. Instead he took a seat next to her. Akela squinted at him, taking in the width of his biceps, the firmness of his thighs in his jeans.
“Some might think that a little dangerous.”
She glanced at where her firearm was well within reach for both of them. “Yes, they might.”
“But you don’t.”
“No, I don’t.”
She felt his finger on the hair above her right ear. Then she felt his breath. “Maybe you should, chere.”
9
SHE SMELLED LIKE ORANGES. Oranges, for God’s sake. Claude leaned closer, breathing in the scent of her.
He almost hadn’t allowed himself to believe his luck when he’d watched the rest of the three teams leave her behind. She’d obviously come out loaded for bear. Yet she hadn’t hesitated to stay behind alone.
“I don’t get you, Brooks,” he said quietly.
Her full mouth turned up in a smile. “I’m not getting myself much lately, either.”
He liked that. The fact that she could be honest without fear that he’d somehow use the information against her.
“Aren’t you worried what your detective friends will think of your staying behind alone?”
“They probably think I’m insane.”
“And your answer to that would be?”
“That maybe I am.” She absently scratched her arm under the sleeve of her T-shirt, as if her skin suddenly itched all over. “I just knew that even if we stuck around here all day, we wouldn’t have caught you. And since you’re not willing to give yourself up yet…”
Yet.
Claude’s mind caught and held on the small but important word. Yet. They both understood that eventually he would give himself up. But not until he had the goods with which to exonerate himself.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose there are plenty of other ways I could have chosen to spend the day.”
“Yes, but how many of them include conversing with a known criminal?”
“I wouldn’t say you were a known criminal. You’re a suspected murderer.”
Claude flinched, not finding the description any better. “Who’s on the lam.”
She looked at him. “Maybe I stayed behind so I could convince you to surrender to me.”
Had a definite ring to it, his surrendering to her. Only he suspected they were thinking of two different kinds of surrender. She was talking about jail cells and Miranda rights, while he
would like to think her words had more to do with the bed in the cabin behind them and the cuffs that were still attached to the headboard.
“I think we could work out the terms of my surrender,” he said, running the back of his index finger along the outer part of her arm. He watched her shiver in response.
“Oh?”
“Mmm. Say I put my hands up right now and let you have your way with me?”
“Well, I’d, um, probably have to handcuff you to something until one of the airboats returns to get me.”
“And will they be doing that? Returning to get you?”
“Yes. In an hour.”
“Ah.”
Her expression seemed to indicate she felt the same way.
“There’s a lot we can accomplish in an hour.”
“Fifty-nine minutes.”
He scanned her pretty features.
“All I need is a minute.”
“A little quick, isn’t it?”
“There’s nothing quick about what I do.”
She seemed to think on that one, her pupils dilating in her silver irises. “But that would mean I’d have to surrender to you,” she said.
He gave her a lazy, purely suggestive grin and shrugged. “Well, I figure that’s all I’ve got since you don’t seem to be taking me up on my offer to surrender to you….”
She picked up her firearm and cocked it again.
He twisted it out of her fingers. “How about we leave guns out of it this time?”
“And handcuffs?”
“Your call.”
She stared at him for a long time then leaned in and kissed him, slowly, lingeringly, as if she hadn’t been able to help herself. And Claude was helpless to do anything but watch the fine picture she made, this FBI agent, this beautiful woman, with her wild brown hair pulled back into a French braid, her eyes wide and full of passion and want.
“Cuffs,” she said.
She stood up, twisting his arm in a way that gave him the option of either getting up or listening to his bone snap in two. He chuckled, stumbling up the stairs toward the door.
The police before them had left the door open so he walked straight inside then caught himself when she shoved him toward the bed none too delicately. He’d turned around to sit when she launched herself across the bed on top of him, clutching at his T-shirt, scrambling to free herself of her own. Claude groaned as he filled his fingers with her sweet flesh.
He’d thought of this one moment no fewer than a dozen times in the past hours, ever since he’d taken her from this very bed, driven her into the city and let her go.
He heard her zipper and watched as she kicked off her boots then shimmied out of her slacks, leaving nothing but a pair of red silky underwear and a white bra. He slid the tip of his index finger under one of the cups of her bra, seeking for and finding her engorged nipple. She moaned, tossing her head back even when he fastened his mouth over her through the material and suckled. She slid against him, her skin damp against his, her sex skimming over the throbbing proof of his own need for her.
Akela Brooks was supple everywhere a woman was supposed to be and soft everywhere a man could want. Her breasts weren’t overly large, but they weren’t small, either, fitting nicely into his palms and his mouth.
And her bottom…mon Dieu…
He slid his fingers up the swell of flesh in question, dipping the tips under the elastic until his palms were filled with her lush buttocks. He kneaded the firm flesh, then parted them. She made a low sound as her fingers grasped his right arm and then trailed down to the hand, which she pulled above his head. He heard metal against metal as she fastened the cold cuff around his wrist, her eyes filled with need and challenge and something he couldn’t quite identify.
She kissed him almost roughly. “Whatever happens in this room stays in this room.”
He could deal with those terms. Making whatever was happening between them a matter of public record probably wouldn’t help either one of them.
Then again, at the moment he might possibly agree to just about anything so long as he could feel her tight, wet womanhood surrounding him.
He jutted his hips upward, forcing a meeting between his jean-covered erection and the apex of her thighs. She sat up and rubbed her silk-covered mound over him, forcing him to tense against the sensations that swelled within him. Reaching down, she slowly undid the buttons at his fly, then slid down his legs and freed him of the heavy denim. If she was surprised he didn’t wear briefs, she didn’t indicate. She merely climbed her way back up his legs, flicking her tongue over his hair-covered thighs, then up farther to tease the skin around his throbbing arousal. Meeting his gaze, she drew her long, pink tongue up the length of his erection. Claude’s hips bucked instinctively and she smiled, fingering the bead of moisture on the knob. Then she set about tasting him more thoroughly.
He closed his eyes and yanked against the cuffs, needing to touch her. He’d have to make do with his left hand. He grasped her under the arm and hauled her up so they were face-to-face and kissed her hungrily; at the same time he sought the back catch to her bra. The stretchy fabric gave and her breasts sprang free. He wasted no time fastening his mouth over her right nipple, sucking deeply.
Akela gasped, stretching her head back as she switched his attention to her other breast, then back again, seemingly unable to get enough. He curved his hand around her back and down to grasp her bottom, then positioned her so that only her panties separated his flesh from hers.
He watched her lick her lips restlessly. “Do you have…anything?”
Claude grinned wickedly. “How do you mean?”
Her answer was a provocative rub against him.
“In my jeans pocket.”
She reached for his discarded pants and fished in his pockets until she came up with a foil-wrapped packet. She made quick work of opening it then held it out to him.
“You’re going to have to do it.” He yanked on the cuffs for emphasis.
He was curious as to her hesitation. Up until that moment she’d been bold bravado and wanton sex kitten. Now she looked between the condom and his hard-on as if she didn’t know how the two fit together.
Claude gently grasped the hand holding the rubber and moved it to his turgid flesh. He fitted the condom over the top, then guided her fingers to smooth it down the length of him. When she reached the root, she gave a squeeze that made him grit his teeth against coming.
He grasped the crotch of her panties and tugged hard, listening to her gasp as the material gave, baring her to his hungry gaze. She was as beautiful as he knew she would be. Her curls were neat and springy, pink flesh peeking out. She scooted up so that she was directly above him and he guided the tip of his erection between her slick folds, reveling in the hot feel of her against him. She jerked her hips, trying to force penetration. He denied her the immediate satisfaction, instead moving his head to the top of her shallow channel, finding the bit of erect flesh there and rubbing himself against it. As a result, he was rewarded with her deep shudder.
Also as a result, she wrested control of his manhood to reposition him, and then she slid slowly down his long length until he was completely filling her.
He watched her shivering breasts, her hard nipples, her impossibly straight back, as she took him in. Then she rocked against him, sliding back and forth, her deep-throated moan nearly ending it for him.
Claude found few things more pleasurable than having a beautiful woman sitting astride him, riding him. But Akela Brooks was more than just another beautiful woman. What she represented, what her surrender to him and to her desires symbolized, brought a uniqueness to their lovemaking that fascinated him. He watched her expressive face. Saw the sweat shimmering on her elongated neck. Took in the sheer bliss on her pretty face. And felt as though he’d been transported somehow, to a place he hadn’t visited in a long, long time—if he’d ever been there before at all.
He grasped her hip with his free hand, stilling her so he
could thrust deeply upward. Her moan wrapped around him and she shifted to give him better access. He bucked up again, and yet again, her slick womanhood feeling so damn good around him he wanted to burst.
And when he did finally give in to that urge long minutes later, he felt that he’d been changed in some irrevocable, mysterious way.
AKELA COULDN’T HAVE felt more outside herself had she been wearing someone else’s skin. She lay against the cool sheets, her body heated, her muscles sated, the mere act of trying to catch her breath enough to occupy her entire energy reserve.
She’d never felt so thoroughly sexed and so utterly spent.
She lazily ran her fingernails against Claude’s back, over the puckered scar there near his buttocks, the sheen of sweat on his skin. Her sex throbbed with a life of its own. Her breasts were so tight she was filled with the urge to cry out from the sensitivity of them.
Had she really just spent the past forty-five minutes having sex with a man wanted for murder? Only sex seemed such an inadequate word somehow. What she and Claude had shared transcended the mere physical coming together of two people.
Or did it?
She pushed her damp hair back from her face and considered the fan working in lazy circles on the ceiling. She couldn’t say, really. Oh, she’d had sex before—with three different men over a period of ten years. But none of those experiences had left her with the bone weariness she now felt. And none had left her wanting more when by all rights she should be holding up her hands and swearing surrender.
She felt Claude’s fingers on the swollen folds of slippery flesh between her legs. She threw her head back and moaned, sure she couldn’t stand another moment…certain that she’d go crazy if he didn’t take her again right that minute.
“Your boat should be returning for you anytime,” he murmured, sliding a finger through her shallow channel then tweaking her hooded flesh.
“Screw my ride.”
“But won’t they come looking for you?”
“I told them to wait for me at the junction five minutes away.”
“And if you’re not there within an acceptable amount of time?”
She wanted to groan for an entirely different reason. “They’ll come looking for me.”
Possession Page 7
