He tightened his grip at her waist, still moving slowly. "Does it still hurt?"
Breathless, she shook her head.
"Good." He reached up and took off the hat and the wig, dropping them to the side before combing his fingers through her damp hair. "Be better if you were under me."
"I can't wait that long," she whispered, bearing down on him until he was lodged impossibly deep inside her. She looked down at the avid faces, wondering how she looked to them. Then he put his arm around her waist and she didn't care anymore. "I need you now."
"I'm here." And he was, his big frame cradling her as he pushed into her body, filling her faster, stroking the ache that was now eating her up alive. "I'll make it better, baby."
He did more than that—he made the Quarter and the tourists and the city dwindle down to a distant hum as he loved her. Every memory that she had carried inside her from their youthful affair paled as well. The boy she had loved had teased and cherished her, but the man he had become gave her more, and demanded the same.
He's going to take all I am this time, she thought, just as her body hurtled up through the darkness to smash through icy-hot waves of wracking pleasure. I'm going to give it to him.
"Say my name," he muttered, his mouth hot on her throat and his hips jerking against her faster.
"Jean-Del." The plastic bag ripped apart in her hands, spilling beads and gold coins down the front of her skirt.
His grip tightened to the point of pain. "You're never going to leave me again. Swear to me."
"No..." She writhed against him, trying to hold on while he buried himself in her, then convulsing as a second volley of fiery delight rushed in, eager to burn and consume her. The golden coins left in her hands bruised her fingers as she closed them tight. "I swear, I won't."
"Isabel." He clutched her as he drove into her one last time, and then shuddered as he pumped his seed into her. "You're mine," he rasped against her cheek. "Mine."
Sable stretched out her arms, scattering the last of the krewe coins to the eager hands below. She was again, as she had always been, his.
Caine walked out of the police station to see Billy and John waiting by the curb for him in front of his truck. His former foreman was grinning like a gator circling a sinking pirogue. Caine could smell the liquor on him before he got within three feet of the men, but that didn't surprise him. Jack Daniel's had been Billy's mouthwash of choice since they were boys, and no amount of threats from Caine had ever persuaded him to give it up.
"Boss." John tossed his keys to him but wouldn't meet his gaze.
Billy, on the other hand, had only a little difficulty doing that, and only because he was drunk. The black eye and bruises Caine had given him were more colorful than ever, but he held out a bottle of beer in an unsteady hand.
"Where y'at, Gantry?" He looked up at the lettering over the entrance. "Oh, right, you been in jail this time. Guess what? My wife left me for a lesbo." He laughed as if that was the funniest joke he'd ever heard.
Caine ignored him and checked over his shoulder before glaring at John. "What the hell is he doing here?"
"He showed up at the pier, looking for you." John shrugged. "I figured, kill him or bring him along."
"What, you think them cops gonna come out here and arrest me? After they done had to let you go?" Billy laughed and weaved a little as he shuffled toward the steps. "Lemme take care this. I tell them how it was. I know all about it."
Caine was familiar with his former foreman's stages of drunkenness, which ranged from rampant outrage to sodden self-hatred. Evidently he'd drunk enough to feel guilty about what he'd done. "Not now, Billy."
"No, I swear, I'll do it right this time." He waved his arm back at them. "You can have all the money. Cee, too, if you want her. She'd no damn good in bed, but maybe the two of them'll go at it and let you watch."
Caine caught Billy around the waist before he could mount the first step. "We're going to see Cecilia tomorrow, when you're sober." He took the beer out of his hand and spun him back toward the truck. "We got to talk about other things first."
The drunken man scowled. "I tried to talk to you and you wailed the tar out of me for it." He peered up at Caine. "You know I was only fixing things like you said you wanted them."
Terri or Garcia could come out of the station at any moment, and Caine couldn't risk them hauling Billy in for more questions. He handed the beer to John and scanned the immediate area for cops. "We got other things to fix now."
"Well, shit, if you don't want it, give it to me," Billy said, swiping at the bottle. "I sure as hell—"
"Take a nap, chèr." Caine drove his fist into Billy's jaw with a quick, snapping punch. The foreman crumpled like a dry-rotted net.
John helped Caine drag Billy over to the truck and hoist his limp body into the back of the open bed. "They really drop the charges?"
"I made a deal." Caine went around to the cab and got inside. "Anyone find the cop or Isabel?"
"Lacy said Hilaire Martin got them out to the lake on her boat." John nodded in the direction of Lake Pontchartrain. "Looks like they were at your cousin's cottage on the north shore for a bit, but when Darel and Caleb got there, they were gone."
Caine tried to imagine where Sable could have gone. With the cop helping her, she could be anywhere. "She'll call Hilaire. Tell Lacy we need to know when she does, but from where." He checked the rearview, turned around, and swore.
Billy was gone.
He'd just had her, and all J. D. wanted to do was stay inside Sable and take her a second time. Thinking of that and all the things he wanted to do to her made him hard again. But the parade was nearly at the end of the Quarter, where he knew a small army of reporters waited to film the celebrities on the lead floats. Slowly he slipped from her body and adjusted himself, zipping up his jeans.
"Jean-Del." She reached back for him.
He caught her hand and pushed the hoop skirt back down. "We have to get off this thing."
"I can't—they strapped me in."
He found and released the strap from the support brace, and then had to grab her as she sagged. He'd been too damn rough with her. "How bad did I hurt you?"
"I'm okay, just a little dizzy." She regained her balance but kept a steadying grip on his arm. "Where will we go?"
He looked ahead, and saw an opportunity in a parked delivery truck narrowing the road. They were too far from his apartment, and it was probably staked out anyway. "I'll find us a place for the night."
"Every hotel in town is booked solid," she said, biting at her lip.
He wanted to bite her lip, too, but settled for a quick kiss. "I know a place. I'm going to get down up there." He pointed to the truck. "Wait until I'm on the ground before you jump."
She measured the distance to the ground, and then regarded him. "Don't drop me."
"Never." He touched her cheek, saw the answering flare in her eyes. "Stop looking at me like that."
She smiled a little. "Then stop touching me."
J. D. watched the street performers anticipate the impasse and march ahead to make room. As the procession reached the narrow lane and the float slowed, he dropped down behind the truck. Sable waited until he held his arms out before she did the same, and he caught her in a bundle of velvet.
"Come on." He set her on her feet and led her around the truck, concealing them from the eyes of the spectators and the street performers. "We have to get that costume off you—it's too conspicuous."
"You ripped off my panties," she reminded him. "All I have left on underneath is a bra." Then she looked over his shoulder and gasped.
The driver of the truck, who was balancing twelve crates of fruit on a hand truck, had stopped to listen in.
J. D. grinned at the man. "Couldn't help myself."
The driver eyed Sable from her tousled red hair to the rumpled hem of her skirt and sighed with delight. "Laissez les bons temps rouler." He put down the hand truck and shrugged out of his jacket, holding it
out to J. D. "Here—this keep her warm until you can."
"Merci, mon ami." He quickly wrapped the over-large jacket around Sable before he pulled her through the crowded confines of an open bar to the exit on the other side of the block. From there it was three blocks to the hotel he wanted.
Sable looked around at the darkened streets and stayed close to him. "Are you sure about this?"
"I know somebody." He spotted the neon sign for the Lagniappe Inn, which flashed a red NO VACANCY. "Over here."
"You take me to the nicest places." Her laugh was as soft and husky as her voice.
"Trust me, baby." He stopped for a moment and cradled her face between his hands. "In a few minutes you won't even remember what state you're in."
"You can top making love in the middle of a Mardi Gras parade?" She looked down as he took out his cuffs and jangled them; then she drew in a quick breath. "Okay, I guess you can."
The clerk barely glanced up when J. D. approached the shabby front desk. "We ain't got no rooms, mister."
"Ronnie around?"
The clerk turned his head toward the open door behind him. "Ronnie! Man out here to see you."
Ronald Porter, a short black man with a woebegone expression, wandered out. "J. D." His gaze flickered over Sable. "Hey, I didn't know she was a working girl."
"She's not." He nodded toward the mostly empty key rack on the wall behind the clerk. "I need a room for tonight."
Ronnie's face went from sad to agonized. "Man, you gotta be kidding me. I got a busload of coeds due in any minute."
"Have a couple of them double up." When he still hesitated, J. D. added, "I do a floor-by-floor and find out you got more than coeds doubling up in here, you go back for a six-month vacation behind bars."
"No need for that." Ronnie grabbed a key from the rack and slapped it on the desk. "But you gotta be out by nine a.m., or take in a coupla roommates."
"Thanks." J. D. nodded toward the back room. "Let me see your lost and found."
Ronnie brought out a cardboard box full of clothes and turned to Sable. "You lose something, honey?"
She smiled politely. "You could say that." She glanced at J. D. "But I'm hoping to get it back where it was real soon."
J. D. nearly dropped the box. "You will." He rummaged through the pile until he collected what Sable would need for a change, then handed the perspiring man a fifty. "Order us in some dinner from Tailor's Dance. Call me when they deliver—I'll come and get it." He guided Sable back to the door leading to the first-floor rooms.
"What y'all want?" Ronnie called after him.
Sable reached up, putting her lips next to his ear. "You don't want me to tell him." Then she sucked lightly on his earlobe.
His head spun, his blood roared, and his zipper was about to castrate him. "Whatever stays hot for a while," he called back to Ronnie.
They made it inside the room, and he had enough sanity to throw the dead bolt and turn on the television. Then he dropped the borrowed clothes on top of the rickety dresser and took her in his arms, filling his hands with emerald velvet. "How much you think this outfit is worth?"
"I don't know." She pressed herself against him. "But I'm a good seamstress."
"Thank God." J. D. tore until he got to her skin. "I have to see you this time—all of you."
He backed her toward the bed, working her bra straps down the sides of her arms, watching as the satiny cups peeled away from her breasts. They were slightly fuller now, but just as smooth and firm as when he'd first put his hands on them ten years ago. He brushed his fingers over her pretty, dusky pink nipples and hissed in a breath when they tightened and darkened for him.
"Jean-Del." She tugged at the bottom of his T-shirt, trying to drag it up. "I want to see you, too."
"Later." He pushed her back on the bed and tore off his shirt before dropping down on top of her. If he didn't get back inside her in the next minute, it wouldn't be for lack of effort.
"So shy," she mocked softly, curling a leg around the back of his and rolling until he was on his back and she lay spread-eagled on top of him. With a beguiling smile she propped her hands against his chest and slid back until the heat between her thighs rested against the rigid bulge under his zipper. She shimmied against him. "I want to see you now."
He pushed a hand into his front pocket. "Where are my cuffs?"
"You mean these?" She dangled them over his face, then snatched them out of reach when he grabbed at them. "Be good or I'll use them on you."
"I'll be good." He pushed his hips up, grinding himself against her. "Good and hard and deep for you."
"Oh, yes." Her eyelids drooped as she undulated against him for a moment. The cuffs fell somewhere beside them on the bed. She leaned down, brushing the hard tips of her breasts against his heaving chest, then slid back again. "Later."
Later, hell. "Baby, if s now or never."
"Now there are other things I have to do." She reached down between them, popping open the button at his waist. "Things that need my immediate attention." She tugged at the zipper, easing it open over his erection, and then slowly pulled his jeans and shorts down to the middle of his thighs. His cock sprang up, full and still damp from taking her on the float, and as her warm breath touched it he curled his hands into the bedspread. "Wouldn't you agree?"
"Touch me."
"Touch you... like this?" She watched his face as she ran her fingertips in a feathery caress from the fluted opening at the top down to the base of his shaft. "Or like... this?" She bent her head, and did the same with her tongue before lifting up to look at him again.
"Christ." He tangled a hand in her hair, urging her lips toward the swollen, straining head. "Put your mouth on me."
Her breath caressed him again for an agonizing moment before her lips parted and she drew him into the incredibly soft, wet heat of her mouth. It took every ounce of his self-control not to thrust himself deeper as she gently sucked on him.
"Sable." The way she used her tongue made him groan and wrap her hair around his fist. They'd never tried this back in college, and from her tentative touch he suspected she hadn't much experience with it since. "Have you done this before?"
"No." She met his gaze, concerned now. "Am I awful?"
He wanted to laugh, but settled for a tender smile. "No, baby. You're doing fine."
She drew back and reached for his other hand, then brought it to her face. She stared up across his knotted abdomen at him as she rubbed her cheek against his palm. "Show me how."
His eyes narrowed to slits as her mouth took him again, and he guided her head up and down. "Don't try to take too much. Tell me when to stop." Pushing into her lips this way, inch by slow inch, was sheer torture—but he wouldn't hurt her this time.
She wasn't stopping, though. She kept taking more and more of him, sucking at him and rubbing her tongue along the sides of him as he glided over her tongue and deep into the slick, tight pleasure of her mouth. He heard and felt the sounds she made—a low, yearning, eager hum that spilled from her throat and caressed him as much as her lips.
"Isabel." He didn't want it to end, but he felt his balls drawing up and tightening and knew he was only a minute from exploding. He tried to urge her away. "Baby, stop, I'm gonna come."
She wouldn't let go of him—if anything she drew him deeper. Seeing her mouth sliding over him, feeling the wet heat and the rhythmic tug, and hearing the sounds she made pushed him over the edge. J. D. held her head as the first surge shot out of him, and still she sucked and swallowed, taking everything he gave her.
When he had shuddered out the last, she closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his hip, letting him slide from her lips to the gentle cradle of her fingers. For a long time he lay like that with her, waiting for his heart to stop trying to jump through the wall of his chest.
"Jean-Del?"
He rubbed his hand against her hair. "Hmmmm?"
"Why didn't you teach me to do this before?" she murmured, stroking him.
> "I don't know. I think we would have gotten to it eventually." He drew her up into his arms, turning so that they lay on their sides, and brushed a tangle of hair back from her misty eyes. "Oh, baby, don't cry on me now."
"Can't help it." She blinked. "All these years, and I never stopped missing you. God, we've lost so much time."
He caught the first tear as it beaded on her lashes, then transferred it to her bottom hp, spreading it across the slightly swollen curve before he kissed it away. "But we found each other, and I'm never letting you go again."
She kissed him back; then she went still and raised her head. "Look."
The late news broadcast was on the television, and a photo of Caine Gantry was featured beside the anchorwoman. J. D. reached for the remote on the side table and raised the volume.
"—charges against the commercial fisherman have been dropped. Officials refuse to comment, but a source inside the NOPD claimed lack of evidence as the reason Gantry was released."
Chapter Twelve
As Cort pulled up the old Crowley parish arson case files, one of the task force investigators looked around the edge of his door. "Marshal, I got some guy on the phone, says he wants to talk only to you."
"Take a message."
"He said he has some real good lagniappe for you."
Cort's head snapped up. "I'll take it. Close the door." As soon as he did, he picked up the phone and punched the blinking hold button. "Porter?"
"Nah, this is George. I work for Ronnie." The voice was oily-smooth. "So I hear you lost a brother. Any money in finding him?"
"Depends. How do you know if s my brother?"
"He's diddling the pretty redhead who got her picture in the paper."
Cort heard someone arguing on the other side of his office door. One of the voices was Terri's. "Where?"
"What's in it for me?"
"Fifty."
"Maybe you got something extra for the redhead?"
Christ, the asshole wanted to bargain with him. "A hundred and I won't kill you."
Hall, Jessica Page 20
