Freddie pressed her palms against the desk. “You know, I don’t have the energy to go back and forth with you. If you haven’t noticed, I have work to do.”
“Why are you so upset?” he asked. “Does it have anything to do with your father?”
Freddie ignored his question. Instead of answering him, she turned to the computer and started entering guest information.
“Can I at least get you a Po-Boy? Have you eaten dinner?”
She looked up at him, her face filled with a mix of sadness and annoyance. “Just go,” she said in a weak voice. “It’s been a long night and I . . .” Tears sprang into her eyes and Cleveland knew he wasn’t going anywhere. He headed behind the desk and drew Freddie into his arms.
“Will you stop acting like you don’t need anybody?” he breathed into her ear. “If you want to talk, I’ll listen.”
Pressing her hand against his chest, she looked up into his eyes and shook her head. “I don’t want to talk.”
“What do you want to do?” His lips were inches from hers, she could feel the heat from his breath dancing across her mouth.
Freddie stepped back because being that close to him rendered her unable to think. “My father isn’t who I thought he was and I think my mother was right. All of this searching that I did for him just uncovered a monster. What kind of man kills a priest?”
Cleveland hugged her tightly. “So, you drove back to Mississippi? I would’ve gone with you,” he said.
Freddie shook her head. “I needed to go alone. He probably wouldn’t have talked to me if you had been there,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“So am I. All of these years, I’ve been so angry at my mother for keeping my father away from me, but I see now why she did it. He was so matter of fact when he was telling me about what he did. Then he had the nerve to have an attitude because my mother didn’t drop her world to help him when he first escaped from prison. What was she supposed to do?”
“What are you going to do now?”
Freddie stepped back from Cleveland and wiped her wet cheeks. “I don’t know. I wish I didn’t know about him.”
Cleveland planted a comforting kiss on Freddie’s forehead. “Let’s get out of here. Do you have to man this desk?”
She shook her head. Freddie knew that she wasn’t going to be of any use to anyone tonight anyway. “Let me lock the front door and put the sign up,” she said as she reached for the “Hotel guests use pass key to enter” sign.
After locking up the lobby, Freddie and Cleveland headed out to the party on Bourbon Street. The area was packed wall to wall with people in various stages of drunkenness. The sounds of jazz, blues and R&B became one as the clubs tried to entice revelers to come inside. Cleveland pulled Freddie closer to him so that they wouldn’t be separated by the crowd. Looking at her face, he could tell that she wasn’t in the mood for a loud club. At the end of the street, he found a run-down-looking bar that didn’t have a line or loud music coming from the establishment. “You know anything about this place down here?” he asked.
“Lupe’s Joop Joint? It’s the oldest club down here and very locally supported.” Freddie peered around Cleveland’s shoulder. “I’m surprised it’s even open.”
“Let’s go inside,” Cleveland said, reaching out and grabbing Freddie’s hand. When they entered the dark club, Cleveland and Freddie were happy to see very few patrons inside and the ones who were in the bar were too drunk to notice anything.
They walked to the bar and sat down on the only two wooden stools that were there. The bartender, a burly man with a neck full of colorful plastic beads, grunted as he ambled over to the couple. His gold tooth glimmered in the faint light of a Budweiser sign.
“We serving Hurricanes and that’s it. If you want something else, go someplace else,” he said.
“That’s fine,” Cleveland said. “We’ll take two.”
Freddie nodded, not really looking up at Cleveland or the bartender. Maybe the alcohol would make her forget. Forget her father was a priest-killer and a liar. It wasn’t as if she thought Jacques was some hero. After all, her mother spent years telling her that he wasn’t worth a damn. Still, hearing he was connected to something so heinous....
“Freddie?” Cleveland said. “You want to leave?”
“What? No, just give me my drink,” she said quietly.
He closed his hand around hers as the bartender slammed their drinks down in front of them. “My offer still stands, if you want to talk, I’ll listen.”
Freddie ripped her hand away from his and grabbed her drink and then downed it in three gulps. “You know what,” she said. “These last few months have been a waste of time. That was confirmed when I talked to my father earlier tonight. Looking for him just proved that my mother was right and I’m never going to hear the end of that.”
“He didn’t answer your questions?” Cleveland asked, knowing that he was going to have to tread lightly if he didn’t want her to shut down on him again.
She ran her hand over her face. “He said enough.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Hey, bartender,” Freddie said. “Give me another one.”
The man mixed Freddie another drink and slammed it in front of her. “You must be from New Orleans.”
She nodded and gave him a weak smile. Freddie looked at her drink and thought about the last time she’d had too much to drink and was alone with Cleveland. She pushed her glass aside. “Maybe we should get out of here,” she said. “I don’t think alcohol is going to change anything about tonight.”
“So, where do you want to go?”
“Back to my suite,” she said.
Cleveland smiled but Freddie shook her head. “Just to talk,” Freddie explained. “I don’t want to sit in here and drown in Hurricanes.”
Rising from the stool, Cleveland held his arm out for Freddie. “All right,” he said as he reached into his wallet to pay for their drinks.
As Cleveland and Freddie hit the streets, it seemed that most of the other clubs were turning out their guests as well. But no one was going home, the party had just moved to the streets.
“This is madness,” Freddie said as the crush of humanity enveloped them. Instinctively, Cleveland pulled her into his arms. With their bodies pressed against each other’s, he captured her lips and kissed her with an ardent passion that made her knees quake. His hands roamed her back, slipping down to her ample bottom.
Gasping, she pulled back from him and they exchanged heated looks. “Why—why’d you do that?”
“I couldn’t help it, been wanting to do that all day and . . .”
She cut him off with a kiss of her own, which was hotter than before. Hip to hip, they kissed as if no one else were on the street. Cleveland’s body sprang to life as he grabbed her buttocks and pressed her against his throbbing manhood. Breathlessly, she broke off the kiss, knowing that if they continued kissing, she’d want to strip his clothes off in the middle of the street.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
The couple dashed down the street, half running and half walking through the crowd. Freddie hoped being with him tonight would erase the day. Erase the revelation that her father was really the monster that people said he was. This, she thought as they arrived at the hotel, was just mindless sex and it didn’t mean anything else. Because she was not falling for Cleveland Alexander.
Chapter 13
Once they got to the hotel, Cleveland and Freddie were all over each other. In the stairwell, he pressed her against the wall, not really caring if someone saw them. Kissing her neck, he unbuttoned her blouse and slipped his hand inside, cupping her breast. Freddie moaned as her nipple hardened against his fingers. She lifted her leg and wrapped it around his waist, pulling him closer to her sexual core. Freddie was throbbing between her thighs at the thought of Cleveland ripping her pants off and giving her pleasures that she’d craved since the first time he touched her at Lillian’s wedding.
Freddie grabbed his waistband, fumbling with the button and zipper. She needed him, wanted him right now. Cleveland grabbed her hands, lifting them above her head and broke off the kiss. He looked at her, drinking in her image with lust-filled eyes. “We’d better walk up these stairs before we get even more carried away,” he groaned.
Freddie nodded, unable to speak because she was so hot, so primed to receive Cleveland. When he scooped her up into his arms, she buried her lips in his neck, kissing and licking him, eliciting throaty moans from him as he took the steps two at a time, rushing to Freddie’s suite.
Cleveland put her down once they reached the door to her suite so that she could unlock the door. Freddie fumbled with her purse, looking for her room key. She shook like a leaf as she put the card in the electronic lock.
Once the door was open, Cleveland spun Freddie around. “Do you know how beautiful you are?” he whispered.
She didn’t want to hear sweet nothings and didn’t want him to make promises of devotion. Men, especially the ones she knew, didn’t keep their promises.
“Don’t talk,” she said as she closed the space between then and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Don’t talk.”
Cleveland captured her lips and she kissed him with a passionate furor that made him quake. She leapt into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. Breaking off the kiss, Freddie pulled at Cleveland’s T-shirt, lifting it above his head. Then she ran her hand down his smooth bare chest. His skin felt like silk underneath her fingers. Cleveland looked as if he wanted to say something, but Freddie cut him off with another kiss. She caught him off guard and caused him to stumble onto the bed backwards.
Freddie landed on top of him and continued to strip him, unbuttoning his jeans and sliding them down his narrow hips. As she eased down his body, Freddie let her tongue guide her. Cleveland moaned as he felt the heat of her breath above his crotch. His penis sprang to attention. She ran her tongue across the tip of his manhood and he released a guttural groan that came from his core. As if she was feeding off his reaction, Freddie took his tool into her mouth, licking and sucking him to a near climax. Cleveland’s hips rose as he pulled back from Freddie. Now it was his turn to taste her as he flipped her onto her back. He removed her clothes in short order, but left her ruby red thong on as he parted her thighs, raining kisses on them as he explored her wet valley with his finger.
“Ooh,” Freddie moaned as his finger found her throbbing bud. “I-I.”
“Thought you didn’t want talking,” he said before replacing his finger with his tongue. Freddie screamed out in delight as Cleveland lapped her flowing juices. She pressed her hips into his kiss, silently begging for more. Gripping the back of his neck, Freddie pressed him deeper between her thighs. Over and over she moaned, “Yes, yes, yes.”
With her chest heaving and her breathing staccato, Freddie felt better than she’d felt all day. Her mind was closed from thoughts of her father and his tale of murder. She had a singular focus: pleasure. All she wanted was to have an orgasm and fall asleep in Cleveland’s arms while listening to his heartbeat.
No, she thought as the first ripple of climax flowed through her. This is just about sex. Cleveland isn’t any better than my father.
Her body language changed and Cleveland noticed her stiffness as he kissed her navel. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I need you inside me,” she said, masking the real thoughts in her head. How could she let good sex with this man fool her into thinking that there was something between them? He had a life in Atlanta and when he returned there, would she be forgotten?
“Not just yet,” he said as he straddled her body, his throbbing member against her thighs. Cleveland took her hardened nipple between his lips, circling it with his tongue as she writhed underneath his kiss. With his free hand, he stroked her other breast. Freddie’s body was on fire and there was only one way to put it out. She locked her legs around Cleveland’s waist.
“Please,” she moaned. “Need you. Inside.”
He looked up at her, still sampling the taste of her breast. Cleveland smiled and stopped kissing her breasts. “I want to be inside,” he whispered as he reached down for his discarded jeans. Cleveland pulled a condom from his wallet and placed it on Freddie’s flat stomach. She reached for the sheath, but Cleveland moved it from her reach. “Slow down, I want to take my time with you,” he said. “We have all night, there’s no need to rush.”
“Make me forget,” she said in a voice Cleveland didn’t hear. Freddie reached down and stroked Cleveland’s throbbing member as she kissed his neck. His groans alerted her to how good she was making him feel. With strength that Freddie didn’t know she possessed, she flipped Cleveland over.
Straddling his body, she ground against him, exacting a little revenge as she teased his chest with her tongue. Cleveland’s hands trembled as he tried to open the condom. Freddie took it from his hands and made short work of putting the sheath on his member.
Grinning, he said, “You like being on top, don’t you?”
“You like having me on top. What’s with all the talking?” she asked as she guided him to the center of her sexual being. It amazed her how Cleveland fit her, knew just where to go and how to make her come every time they had sex. And that’s all it was about: sex. Freddie gripped his shoulders and started to ride him like a prized steed. Her breasts bounced up and down, causing Cleveland’s mouth to water as he tried to grab them. When he took hold of them, sucking and squeezing her nipples, Freddie’s pace slowed. Her movements became more fluid and Cleveland matched her stroke for stroke, thrust for thrust.
“Oh yeah,” he moaned as Freddie arched her back, pulling him in even deeper. “You feel so good.”
Freddie closed her eyes and for a moment she felt as if this was more than sex. This was the union of two souls, this was special. This was a man that she could love, someone who would take care of her.
Stop thinking like this, she thought as she felt herself again beginning to climax.
“Look at me,” Cleveland commanded, his own orgasm building in his shaft. “Look at me, baby. Come for me.”
Freddie bit her bottom lip, holding back a scream as she stared deep into Cleveland’s eyes. Could he tell, she wondered. Did he know what she was feeling and thinking inside?
She collapsed on his chest and buried her face in Cleveland’s chest. She allowed him to hold her. And for a moment, she ignored all of the emotions that she was feeling.
It felt right being in his arms. It felt as if he was a man that wouldn’t let her down.
That thought startled her, shook her core and she pushed out of his arms.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing, I just need to use the bathroom,” she lied. Freddie bolted from the bed. Once inside the bathroom, she wet a washcloth and ran it over her face. She didn’t like what she was feeling. The episode with her father had confused her enough, adding Cleveland to the mix had been a mistake.
Pull it together, she thought as she looked at her reflection.
“Freddie,” Cleveland called out. “You all right?”
“Yes, I’ll be out in a minute.” Her voice sounded more confident than she actually felt.
Seconds later, she climbed back into bed, still engulfed in a storm of confusing emotions. Inching away from Cleveland she attempted to go to sleep, but it didn’t take long for his arms to wrap around her waist and pull her closer to his hot body. His lips rested against her neck.
She shrugged out of his embrace, it was too comforting and easy to believe that this was more than what it was.
“I stink or something?” he asked.
“What? No, I’m just tired. Trying to go to sleep.”
“And I’m stopping you from doing that?” he asked, once again pulling her into his arms. Freddie leaned against his chest, despite herself. She didn’t close her eyes, instead, she stared at the ceiling.
He glanced over at her. “You know
, my offer still stands.” “What offer?”
“You talk, I listen,” he whispered.
“I told you I don’t have anything to talk about,” she replied, snaking out of his arms. “Maybe I could get some sleep if you left.”
“That’s how we’re playing it now?” he said without making an effort to move.
“Didn’t you pay full price for the suite across the hall? Don’t expect a refund because you’re not sleeping there.”
Shaking his head, Cleveland laughed. “You’re something else,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve never met a woman like you. You’re hot and cold like a faucet. You let me turn you on, but I never know what’s going to come out.”
“You know what,” she said. “It’s easy for you to sit here and pretend that you have some feelings for me, but what happens when you go back to Atlanta? You’re going to forget all about me and . . .”
“Wait, wait, what are you saying?” he asked. “Do you really think that I’m the kind of man that would just leave you without a second thought?”
Freddie hopped out of the bed. “Why wouldn’t you? Atlanta is a long way from New Orleans and I’m sure you have plenty of women willing and ready to jump into your bed.”
“You think this is about sex?” Cleveland said as he sat up in the bed.
“Isn’t it?” she snapped. “What else could it be?”
Climbing out of the bed, Cleveland crossed over to her. “If this was just about sex for me, I wouldn’t be breaking my neck to get in here.” He placed his hand over her chest. “You do something to me that’s more than physical. I’ve never wanted anyone the way that I want you.”
Freddie slapped his hand away. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why’s that?”
“Will you just go? It’s late, it’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”
Cleveland shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere and if you were honest with yourself, you’d admit that you don’t want me to leave.”
She pressed her head against his chest and in a small voice she said, “You’re right.”
More Than He Can Handle Page 11
