As the sun set over the Crescent City, a quick rainstorm blew through and cleared away the humidity. It lasted about ten minutes and left behind clean streets and crisp air. The tables were removed, and The Hell Raisers Jazz Band set up their sound system and broke out their brass instruments. They played Coltrane and Davis as well as blowing it up with BB King and Etta James and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Blue stood on the edge of the crowd as the last strains of “Don’t Cry Baby” echoed off the houses and the streets. She rubbed her bare arm against the evening’s chill and caught a glimpse of Carolee and Wally brushing against each other as they danced in the middle of the crowd. Before one song ended, another began, with the band launching into Steve Ray Vaughn’s sultry and sexy “Dirty Pool.”
Blue closed her eyes and felt the music slide across her skin. She hadn’t seen Kasper since the rainstorm and figured that, like some of the other wimps, he’d gone home, leaving only the diehards. The badasses. The rebels.
A warm hand pressed the middle of her back, and she felt a whisper of breath in her hair next to her ear. “Come with me,” he said, and for some reason she went, compelled by his voice and big hand, into the street, to be consumed by the dance crowd.
She looked up into Kasper’s dark face and the flash of his white smile. “I thought you left,” he said. He’d put on a gray sweatshirt with a dark emblem on the front. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
He took one of her hands in his while his warm palm found the small of her back. He brought her close enough that her bare belly brushed the front of his shirt. A little tug knotted her stomach and sent those confusing little tingles through her body again. She leaned into the hard warmth of his chest as shivers of sensation, from the chilly air, his hot chest, and the anticipation of more surged through her.
“Are you cold?”
Not really. Not standing so close to him, but how else to explain her shivers. “Yes.”
He stopped and whipped his sweatshirt over his head. She looked up at him as he shoved it over hers, and the smell of cedar and fresh skin surrounded her face. The heat from his body was tapped inside, and she shivered once again as she threaded her arms though the sleeves. “You’re a little on the skinny side. I need to take you home and have my grandmother cook for you. She’d fill you up with gumbo, fried oysters, and okra with grits on the side. Peach cobbler for dessert.”
They both knew he would never take her home, and his grandmother would never cook for her. “I’m not skinny,” she argued. She’d been born and raised to watch her weight and guard against thick ankles like her great-aunt Alma Dee’s, bless her heart.
“All the Toussaint woman are too skinny.” He rolled up the sleeves for her, and his thumbs brushed the pulse on the inside of her wrists. “Probably all those first cousins marrying.”
“Are we going to talk about who’s more inbred again?”
He smiled and wrapped her against him one more time. “No. Let’s talk about the smell of sweet jasmine in your hair.” He lowered his face to the side of her head. “You’ve beautiful hair.”
She felt a little hitch in her chest. “I hate my hair.”
“It suits you. Soft. Wild.”
No one had ever said that about her hair. Or about her, for that matter. She wasn’t wild. Wasn’t a rebel like Thelma or Louise. But with the hitch in her chest growing and aching, pushing and pulling her, she wanted to be. For just a little while. She curled into his chest and smelled his neck. Cool, clean, and so tempting. She laid her head on his shoulder and moved with him to the sexy strains of sax, piano, and steel guitar. His hands moved across her back, up and down. Sliding up and down to the slow rhythm of jazz, and she almost moaned out loud. Maybe it was the heat of his body moving with hers, or his hands, or the sexy beat of the music, but she gave in to the temptation of his throat. She parted her lips and kissed him. Hot. Wet. Right where his shoulder met his neck.
He sucked in a breath and pushed her away. “How old are you, Blue?”
“Eighteen.” He stepped back as if he meant to step away. Away from the warm and the crazy-mixed-up feelings heating up her body and making her feel so good.
He stared down into her eyes. Not quite letting her go. “You’re younger than I thought.”
“I’m an adult.”
“Barely.”
“I’m a big girl, Kasper Pennington.” She didn’t want him to leave. To pull his warmth away from her. She could already feel the loss of heat. “The government thinks that I am old enough to vote and die for my country.” She placed her hands on the sides of his face and looked into his eyes. “I think I’m old enough to be with you.”
“There’s being with me.” He lowered his face and brushed his mouth across hers. “Then there’s being with me.” The tip of his tongue touched the corner of his mouth, and he pulled her against him. If the hard bulge in his pants was an indication, Kasper was dressed left.
“You make me ache,” he whispered against her cheek.
Her too. Right in the middle of her chest. An ache that started in her heart and spread to her breasts and belly and between her legs. It pulled and tugged and turned into a full-blown heart attack. A heart attack that felt good as much as it hurt. A heart attack that tightened her nipples and made her press against his chest. He hadn’t even kissed her yet, and she wanted it. So bad. She slid her hand up his hard, bare arm and over the short sleeve of his T-shirt. She parted her lips and invited him inside. His tongue brushed hers, a soft touch and light sweep, and she moaned deep in her throat. She wrapped her arms around his neck as they swayed to sensual jazz and sultry blues. She sucked him deeper in her mouth, and the kiss turned as hot as the music swirling around them. Blue was not the sort of girl to make out in public at a street dance. She’d never done it before, but she’d never felt this way before. Attractive. Sexual. Wanted by an extremely attractive man. A Pennington. He was forbidden, and she was a rebel.
His lips were so warm and firm, and he tasted like passion. Dizzy, chaotic passion, and when he pressed his erection to her, she let him. She let him because it felt so good. Hot and liquid and intoxicating. He slid one hand down her side and slipped it under the edge of his sweatshirt. His thumb brushed her bare skin just above the waistband of her shorts. The touch of his fingers on the small of her back sent tingles up and down her spine.
She ran her hands over his shoulders and neck, and the kiss got hotter and greedy. A carnal assault of lips and tongue and wet passion. Of hot bodies rubbing against each other and his hand sliding up her bare back beneath her denim shirt.
Standing beneath the full moon. She wasn’t Blue Louretha Dare Toussaint Butler. Raised by her mother and grandmother at Dahlia Hall and recent graduate of an all-girls school. She was an adult. A woman on her way to Tulane in the fall. A woman who wanted to feel what every woman felt. Lust for a man. The touch of a man. Not the tentative touch of boys who had little more experience than she did.
The last strains of “Dirty Pool” floated around them, and Kasper’s assault on her mouth slowed, and he pulled back. His voice was a low, soft growl when he said, “Come with me, cher.”
“Where?”
“Esterbrook.”
She swallowed as her dizzy world tried to focus beyond anything but the liquid passion in her body. “Why?”
He leaned down and peered into her eyes through the darkness. “Because we can’t go any further on a public street without getting arrested. Not even in New Orleans.”
“Oh.” That wouldn’t be good. If she got thrown in the slammer, her grandmother would surely pitch a fit. If she got thrown in the slammer with Kasper Pennington, it would surely kill the woman.
“I know you said you’re a grown woman, but do you know where grinding against a man leads?”
Her throat closed, and she nodded. Yes. She knew. She was eighteen. A virgin, but she knew.
“Then come home with me, Blue. Let me make love to you all night.” He took his hand from her back. “Let me m
ake love until you think you can’t take any more. Then I’ll kiss you all over and make you change your mind.” He took her hand. “Come with me.”
Blue took a step back, and her hand dropped from his. Kissing Kasper Pennington and rubbing against him in the middle of a crowded street was one thing. It was thrilling. Hot. Rebellious. Leaving with him to make love at Esterbrook was another.
She took a step back. “I can’t.”
Kasper turned his head to the side and looked at her. “Go, then,” he said. “I don’t have time for little girls.”
She took several more steps back and blended into the crowd. She turned and raised a hand to her swollen mouth. She didn’t feel like a girl. She felt like a woman who wanted the one man on the planet she could never have.
Nothing good would come of it. She’d be the first Toussaint descendant to fall in bed with a sugar-mouthed Pennington. All those generations of Toussaints would roll in their graves. Probably come back and haunt her.
Come with me, cher, and God help her, if he’d been anyone else on the planet, she might have done it. Might have thrown caution to the wind. But in the end, she hadn’t been raised a rebel.
Chapter Three
The ancient wood creaked beneath Kasper Pennington’s feet as he walked down the warped steps of Esterbrook’s grand staircase. The ten-thousand-square-foot house needed work. A lot of work. At one time, there had been a lot of Penningtons living in the big house. Now there was just him and his grandmother, Miss Sudie. The two-hundred-year-old plantation house had been in Kasper’s family since before the Civil War. The place had been one of the South’s leading sugar producers, but now the big home sat on ten acres of mostly overgrown cypress and kudzu.
Some people looked at the old place, with its massive columns and wraparound galleries, and saw nothing but a money pit. A dinosaur around their neck. Kasper wasn’t one of those people.
Growing up at Esterbrook had been amazing. He’d crawled under acres of kudzu and shot a lot of squirrels. These days, he crawled around in a Gilles suit and shot enemy combatants, but he’d gotten his early training here on the plantation. He’d just graduated Scout Sniper school and was due back at Lejeune in three days. His Hog’s Tooth hung around his neck on a leather cord, and he expected deployment within weeks to Bosnia or Somalia or anywhere bad guys were acting up and needed to be taken down.
The year before, he’d been deployed to Iraq. Thank God the Gulf War hadn’t been a long one because he hated that dust bowl of a county and never wanted to go back. He was grateful, though. Grateful to serve his country and have the opportunity to add a few more medals and ribbons to dress blues. Kasper loved the military life. Loved being a Marine, and had worked damn hard to earn his Hog’s Tooth. His life was exactly what he’d envisioned. Exactly what he’d planned for himself. There’d been a Pennington man in every war since the American Revolution, and Kasper’s feet were firmly planted on a path for military success.
Kasper ate a quick bowl of cereal and headed outside. He worked on the big house whenever he was in town, but that wasn’t often lately. He sent his grandmother money for basic upkeep, but it needed more than the basics. He grabbed his Camp Lejeune ball cap and opened the back door. The old hinges creaked as he moved to a woodpile on the side of the house.
Pulling his cap farther down his brow, he picked up an axe leaning against a stump. He needed to chop enough wood to make sure his grandmother had plenty for when he wasn’t around this winter. He’d tried to talk her into moving into a smaller house, a house much more manageable for a woman in her sixties. Of course she didn’t want to hear a word of it.
The first chop of the axe split the log in half, and the pieces flew to the sides. It was a little after ten in the morning, and a cool breeze fluttered the leaves and Spanish moss on the live oak around the place. It was bound to get a hell of lot hotter. Like yesterday.
He put another log on the stump. When he’d looked across Wally’s yard yesterday and seen a girl with a mass of soft, dark curls, he’d been fairly certain he was looking at a Toussaint. A beautiful, delicate Toussaint.
From as far back as he could recall, he’d been warned to stay away from anyone with Toussaint blood in their veins. The men were thieves, and the women thought they were better than anyone else. As his grandmother always said, “Those women walk around with their noses so high, they’ll drown in a rainstorm.” Then she’d always purse her lips, and add, “But those cats can’t resist a Pennington man.”
The log split with one chop. He should have listened to grand-mère’s warning. If he had, he wouldn’t have gone to sleep frustrated.
He split wood for several more hours before he leaned the axe against a stump and pulled a beer from the cooler. He figured he’d split a cord and popped off the top of a bottle of Budweiser. He tipped it back as a white Chevy turned off the highway and headed up the drive. Likely one of his grandmother’s club members dropping by to share some gossip, but grand-mère was at her “friend” Boots Butaud’s for the day. She would not be home until after dinner.
The Chevy rolled to a stop, and Kasper immediately recognized the mass of dark curls on the driver’s side. Blue Butler cut the engine to the car and got out. She wore a silky white blouse, and he could see the lacy straps to her slip beneath. A conservative striped skirt hugged her hips and legs to her knees, and her curls bounced as she moved toward him. She held his sweatshirt in one hand and a big straw hat in the other.
“Hello,” she said as she stopped in front of him. “I accidentally took off with your shirt last night.”
She handed it to him, and he tossed it on the stump. “You didn’t have to drive it over.” She probably thought that the shirt she was wearing was all proper, buttoned up to her throat like that. It wasn’t. One dunk of water, and it would be totally see-through.
“I was in town, and it’s not exactly out of the way.” She shoved her hat on her head and looked around. “I’ve never been here.”
If she expected a tour, she was doomed to disappointment. She was a tease. A gorgeous tease, with soft skin and a softer mouth. He was not about to sign up for a repeat of the night before.
“How long are you home?”
Why so chatty, and why did she care? Beneath the brim of her hat, her blue eyes looked up into his, and he begrudgingly answered, “I leave day after tomorrow.”
“Well, maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”
He dropped his arms to his sides and tapped the bottle against his hip. “I doubt it.” Lord, she was beautiful. All pale skin and blue eyes and bouncy hair. Wearing a shirt meant to be modest but wasn’t. That skirt might be on the conservative side, but he’d had a real good look at her legs the day before.
“Too bad.” She pulled her pink lips into a frown. “I thought we could be friends. Maybe end this silly thing between our families.”
“I’ve never had a female friend.”
She smiled and pointed at herself.
His gaze followed her hand pointing at her breasts beneath that thin blouse and lacy slip. Last night, she’d pushed her breasts and crotch into him, and he’d about gone off in his pants like he was fourteen again. “I don’t want a female friend.”
Her smile fell. “Any female or just me?”
He didn’t want to relive that, nor did he want a friend who he was dying to get naked. “Just you.”
“Oh.”
One corner of her lips pulled down, and he heard himself explain, “I can’t be friends with you after last night.” He took a drink and purposely elaborated so she’d get back in her Chevy and go before he tossed her on the hood of her car and crawled on top. “I had to masturbate three times to get rid of my hard-on.”
Beneath the brim of her hat, her pale cheeks flushed. “I’m really not a tease, you know.”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s just that …” She lifted one hand with a slim watch on her thin wrist. “I’ve been warned off you my entire life. ‘Stay away f
rom the Pennington men,’ over and over, and I just …” She dropped her hand to her side. “I got scared. I’ve never …” She looked down at the toes of her white pumps, hiding her face with her hat.
He raised the bottle to his lips. “You’ve never?”
“Gone all the way before.”
He choked on a mouthful of beer.
“If my first time was with a Pennington, I think generations of Toussaints would come back and haunt me.”
He swallowed and wiped drops of beer from his chin. “Jesus. You should have told me instead of going on about how you’re a woman.”
“I am a woman.” She peeked up at him from beneath her hat brim. “I just don’t think I should be the first Toussaint to get sexually involved with a Pennington.”
A virgin. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. “You think you’re the first?”
“Yes.” She raised her face and blinked. “I’m not?”
He shook his head, and said, “Follow me.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.” He set the bottle on the stump, then took her hand. “Watch your step. There are all kind of bricks from covered wells and old cooking pots. This used to be a working sugar plantation, and some of the old equipment is hidden under weeds and vine.”
Blue smiled as she looked at the old plaster covering the house and big columns. His big hand engulfed hers as he pulled her along and pointed out overgrown fields with his free hand. “Some of the old slave quarters are over there. Just dangerous piles of wood nowadays, but I crawled all over them as a kid.”
There was pride in his voice. A pride that she understood. No matter how old, no matter how bad the wiring and horrible plumbing, Esterbrook was his home. It was a part of his heart and his soul, just as Dahlia Hall was part of hers.
Blue By You Page 3
