by Sandra Hill
Sylvie looked at each of them in turn. “Maybe Celine doesn’t even like pirates.”
“Honey, there ain’t a gal alive that doan get wet in her panties when she sees Johnny Depp,” Tante Lulu told them.
None of them disagreed with her.
It wasnʼt the Olympics, but there were games . . .
Her late afternoon appointment had run ’til six. It had taken another hour to return to the office and write the article. By the time she got home around ten, Etienne and her grandfather were already asleep.
She ate lukewarm leftover jambalaya and the heel of a loaf of French bread, standing at the kitchen counter.
She barely had the energy to shower and brush her teeth before donning a sleeveless pajama top that hit her mid-thigh. Not that her attire mattered. She would have worn a hair shirt if it had been hanging on the bathroom door.
Walking into the dark bedroom, she flicked on the ceiling fan, started to set her alarm for six, but then stopped herself, remembering that tomorrow was Saturday. With a loud yawn, she crawled into bed and was almost instantly asleep. Zonked out by eleven, she observed sleepily. Some life for a single girl!
It couldn’t have been more than an hour later that she heard an odd rustling sort of sound. Her eyes fluttered open. Seeing nothing in the moonlit room, she figured it must be the overhead fan. It had needed oiling for days now. She went back to sleep.
After awakening a second time, she stretched her arms overhead and wondered dimly what had disturbed her now. She should get up and turn the stupid fan off.
That’s when she realized that she couldn’t get up.
Her eyes shot open.
Her arms were restrained above her head in a pair of handcuffs attached to the wooden rods in her headboard.
And the noise which must have awakened her was the soft sound of a man shrugging out of his clothes. She was about to scream . . . ’til she saw who it was.
“John LeDeux! What are you doing here?”
John stopped in the middle of taking his clothes off and looked at Celine. Luckily, she’d slept through his cuffing her. “You’re awake. Good.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I didn’t come up the drainpipe, that’s for sure.” He’d tried and almost killed himself. “Nope, I came right through the front door.”
“I locked the front door.”
“I unlocked it.”
“Where did you get the key?”
“No key. Just my trusty lock picker.”
“Good grief! That’s breaking and entering.”
“Not technically.”
“You’re a police officer. That’s probably a double crime of some sort. And using handcuffs for non-police work, that has to be practically a felony. Whoa, whoa, whoa! What do you think you’re doing?”
Man, she talked a lot. Just like her son. But maybe that was a good thing. Keep her talking ’til he was in position to give her mouth something better to do. He was down to his briefs. That’s probably what prompted the whoas.
“Luc says you and I need to go into mediation before I can file a lawsuit. I’m here to get your okay.”
“And you couldn’t call me for that?”
“You never answer my calls.”
“That’s because you always threaten me.”
“I’m not threatening you now. I’m here to plead my case.”
She tried to laugh, but it came out as a gurgle. He took that as a good sign. “You have a strange way of pleading your case. Is this a joke?”
He shook his head. “I’ve tried being polite . . . well, semi-polite. I’ve tried threats. This time I’ll try to convince you with my old tried and true methods.”
“Handcuffs?”
“Nope. I figure it’s time for you and me to have some fun, sugar. And by the end of it, we’ll be in mediation, or I’ll have died trying.”
“You and I have already had all the fun we’re going to have.”
“Hardly.”
“Just for the record, have you been having any ‘fun’ with Eve lately?”
“Not at all.”
She looked skeptical, but pleased.
“Have you been having ‘fun’ with David?”
“Not of the sexual kind.”
He was definitely pleased.
“Release me, John.”
“Not a chance.”
“Why?”
“Why haven’t I been getting it on with Eve? Because I don’t want to.”
“That’s not what I meant. God, your ego is enormous. I meant, why not release me? I’m not opposed to mediation . . . provided certain conditions are laid down first.”
“Too late for conditions, baby. And I don’t want to hear any more about Eve. Or David. Or any other freakin’ person in the world. Just you and me. We’re gonna duke it out, my way.”
She turned her head as he shimmied out of the briefs. Then she yelped when he flipped the sheet off the bottom of the bed and began to crawl under the sheet up and over her body, like a cat. A lusty tomcat. When he got up to eye level, he tossed the sheet off both of them, looked down, and said, “Hi.”
“Hi yourself. Get out of here.”
“Not a chance.” He wiggled his hips against hers to show her why not. The “why not” was pressing against the vee between her legs.
“I could scream.”
“You will eventually.”
“Your ego is remarkable.”
“You’re repeating yourself, honey. Sexual arousal will do that to a person.”
She sputtered.
He rolled over to his side and began to unbutton her pajama top. Every time he undid a button, he looked down at her and grinned.
She bit her bottom lip in an attempt to resist him.
A losing battle, he could have told her. The mood he was in, a block of ice wouldn’t be able to resist his efforts, and Celine’s skin felt far from cold.
“Etienne could walk in here any minute.”
Oh, so now she’s trying the kid ploy. “I locked the door.”
She groaned. “Why are you doing this?”
“Are you kidding? Because I want to.” He separated the sides of her pajama top and stared down at her breasts. His cock did a little happy dance at the mind-blowing view. “Have I told you how much I like your breasts?”
“Only about a dozen times.”
He touched the tip of one with a forefinger. She jerked up so violently she would have flown off the bed if the handcuffs weren’t restraining her. She whimpered then, which was almost his undoing; he loved how sensitive her breasts were. He loved her whimpering. He loved . . .
“Unlock these damn handcuffs. Now.”
“Why?”
“So I can hit you.”
He chuckled. “Maybe later. Gotta keep those cuffs on ’til I’m done.”
“Done what?”
He gave her an incredulous look. “I’m not sure what, to tell the truth.” Believe that, and I’ve got a bayou bridge to sell you.
“Is this about my not answering your phone calls?”
“No. Not entirely. This is about provin’ somethin’ to myself.”
“Like?”
Talk, talk, talk. “Hell if I know. Just lie back and enjoy, darlin’. I’ll figure it out eventually.” He laid a palm on her belly, which retracted instinctively, and it felt so frickin’ good, he did it again.
“You’re acting crazy,” she gritted out.
Tell me about it.
“Why the handcuffs?” she asked breathily, probably because he was tracing an imaginary X with his finger from the bottom of one breast to opposite hip, then doing the same with the other side of the X. She gasped at the end when he blew into the center of the X, aka her belly button. “Surely a smoothie like you doesn’t need coercion.”
“A smoothie like me is smart enough to know you’re not going to let me do all the things I want without a little . . . uh, light bondage.”
What things? she probably wanted to a
sk.
He’d like to know himself.
“Here’s the deal. We’re gonna play the park game.” He leaned down and pressed a light back-and-forth kiss on her lips. Then he grazed her chin with his mouth and moved on up to her ear, where he wet the whorls with his tongue, blew them dry, then inserted the tip of his tongue. A couple of those exercises and she was keening her pleasure. Only then did he explain, “I spent an afternoon with Etienne at the Lilypond Park, as you know. We did ice cream cones, the merry-go-round—you know, the kind where you push it ’til it goes faster, then jump on—then the sliding board and the monkey bars and exploring the woods. Over and over.”
“You want to play a kid game with me? Oooh, you’re torturing my ears.”
Of course I’m torturing your ears. That’s the point. Later you can torture me, if you’re good.
Hell, even if you’re not good. “Sugar, there are kids’ games, and there are kids’ games.”
“Huh?” She was still reeling from the ear sex.
“First, let’s try the merry-go-round.” He traced increasingly small circles on first one breast, then the other, starting at the base, up to the areola, but never any higher. And the circling got faster on the up curve, slower down below.
At the beginning, she was giggling, despite her best intentions. But then, she wasn’t giggling anymore.
“I’m hungry now. How about you? A little ice cream? Oops, you’re dripping. With wide sweeps of his tongue he again made paths from the base to the areola of her breasts, never higher. Her always puffy areolas were more swollen, and the small nipples stood up with neediness.
“John,” she pleaded.
“Tell me.”
She did, in a throaty whisper.
“Ah, you mean the cherries on those ice cream cones.” He suckled her then, and a whole lot more.
Teeth, tongue, lips, and fingers played her skillfully.
She was writhing from side to side. Her teeth were gritted, and she made a shhh sound of pleasure-torment.
“I could bring you to climax just by playing in this part of the . . . um, park, but, honey, there’s lots more to show you.”
“Then show me, dammit.”
“Patience, patience, chère. Did I tell you that in between rides and climbing, Etienne showed me how to explore?”
“Okay, Marco Polo, show me your stuff. And forget the patience baloney.”
He laughed. Meanwhile, his hands started exploring . . . her thighs, her hips, her flat belly and navel. “We even explored the forest around the park. It was a dark and mysterious place.” With those words, he began to trail his fingers along a path through her “forest.”
Arching her hips up off the bed, she silently urged him to enter her. If her hands had been free, she probably would have grabbed hold of him and made him do it.
“Ah, I see you’re ready for the slide.” When he plunged inside her hot, slick slide, her inner muscles contacted around him in a series of incredible spasms.
“I’m tired of games,” she said.
“Me, too.” He unlocked her cuffs and made love to her then, not with the expertise built up over years of experience, but with a passion engendered by her, and her alone. And if her response to him was any indication, she felt an equal passion.
It was incredible sex. The best. Each time he made love with Celine it got better. And that surprised the hell out of him.
Once their heartbeats had slowed down, and they were no longer panting, she rested with her head on his chest and one leg draped over his thigh, the knee pressing up against his defeated explorer.
He kissed the top of her hair, which was mussed in a dozen directions from the hard writhing. He kind of liked it. Sex hair. “So, are we gonna get into mediation?”
“I suppose, but, John, I’ve been a single mother for five years. It’s hard for me to give up any control.”
“It’s gotta happen. And, by the way, don’t you think it’s time we told Etienne that I’m his father?”
“Not yet.” She was panicking, he could tell. “He needs time.”
“Bull! Etienne doesn’t need time, you do.”
“You’re right.”
“We get along, Celine. At least in bed. Maybe we should . . . uhm . . . date and see where things go.” I can’t believe I said that. Luc would laugh.
“No.”
Ouch! “You sure know how to hurt a guy.”
“Puhleeze, you could care less.”
“That’s not true.”
“I do like your games, though. In fact, I know a few games myself.”
John knew she was trying to divert his attention away from the question of a possible relationship for them, outside of bed, but he’d gotten her agreement to mediation. That was a start.
She slanted her eyes up at him, meanwhile drawing little circles around his belly button. “Wanna play?”
You’re asking a player if he wants to play? “Let the games begin!”
Later, John could swear he’d won the gold.
And he had to wonder if the key wasn’t in seducing Celine, but in her seducing him. What a concept!
Chapter 22
Roommates with benefits? . . .
Late afternoon, the following Wednesday, he and Celine interviewed mediators in a conference room at Luc’s office. They each got to eliminate two candidates before being forced to make a mutually agreeable choice.
He was gung ho for the first one, a psychologist sex therapist with minimal legal education. Celine was not.
When Dr. Epstein left the room, Celine turned on him. “I am not getting counseling from a woman who wears fishnet stockings.”
“I didn’t notice.”
She laughed.
“I liked her tongue piercing, though.”
He objected to the next one. A man. Dr. Samuel LeBlanc, Esquire. Yes, he’d actually used the word “esquire.”
“I like him,” Celine said.
“I don’t. He looked at me funny.”
“Funny?”
“Yeah, I think he was prejudging me for having abandoned you and Etienne all these years.”
“He didn’t say a word.”
“He gave me a look.”
The third one was gunning for John, as well. Turned out the guy was a geek computer friend of Celine’s from high school, now a lawyer who supplemented his legal aid work with mediation services.
“He’ll probably be calling you for a date later.”
“You’re delusional.”
“Wanna have a quickie in Luc’s storage room?”
“Really delusional.”
Celine didn’t like the fourth one, a blonde-haired recent law school graduate.
“All she did was smile at me. Jeesh!”
Finally, they settled on retired lawyer Judy DeWitt, who looked a little like Dr. Ruth, except she had short bobbed hair dyed an unnatural pitch black.
After an hour of questions, the mediator asked them to consider a possibility and report back to her at their next meeting the following Monday: “How would you feel about living together in a non-sexual sense, with Etienne?”
“Like roommates?” Celine asked.
“Exactly.”
“Without benefits?” he asked.
“Exactly.”
As he walked Celine back to her house where he’d parked his car, he said, “Well, that was a wasted couple hours.”
“Do you think?”
“You can’t seriously believe we could live together without sex.”
“I could.”
“Don’t even dare to tempt me into proving you wrong.”
“We could even date other people,” she offered.
“Oh, that would be cool. I would sit there twiddling my thumbs, watching cartoons with Etienne, while you go off to boff David.”
“That was so crude. Besides, you could always have Eve come over and entertain you.”
He stopped walking and just stared at her. “You wouldn’t mind my dating someone
else? Because I sure as hell wouldn’t like your in-my-face dating.”
She stared back at him, then admitted, “Yeah, I would mind.”
“Maybe . . . maybe we should consider living together . . . really living together to see how that goes?” He’d never lived with a woman before. Too confining. Too serious. And he was having trouble breathing, just making the suggestion now.
She shook her head.
What? He’d actually made the offer of a lifetime, and she was turning him down?
She laughed, and he figured it was because his mouth was hanging open in incredulity. “It wouldn’t be a good example for Etienne, and if it didn’t work out, he would be devastated.”
“There are no guarantees in life.”
She blinked several times, then put a hand to his face. “John, I’m going to be honest with you. I’m a little bit in love with you. Probably always have been, even when I’m hating you. Oh, don’t go all pale and nervous. I don’t expect you to reciprocate. But that’s why I’m not living with you. I am not going to open myself up to that kind of pain.”
She walked off then, leaving him still standing, stunned and, yeah, a little bit scared.
She loves me. A little bit.
How do I feel? Am I in love? Even a little bit?
What is love?
I need some advice.
He pulled out his cell phone and punched in some numbers.
“Luc, I’m in trouble.”
Can you say “Arg”? . . .
Charmaine was no prude.
In fact, she had been known to do some outrageous things in her bimbo life. But this stretched even her limits. Rusty was gonna kill her if he ever found out.
In fact, Luc, Remy, René, and Jake were going do a bit of killing, too, if they discovered what Sylvie, Rachel, Val, and Ronnie were up to. Which they were bound to do when this Pirate Ball was announced to the public.
Sitting in front of them, on Tante Lulu’s back porch, were four Hells Angels pirate buffs who were going to help them pull off the LeDeux extravaganza to beat all others. And there had been some doozies.
