I dig my nails in his ass and drag him in. My lips kiss against the base of his cock. He vibrates through his whole body as a second wave of eruption begins in his pelvis, throbs his hard flesh all the way down my throat, and pumps hot spunk, over flowing in my mouth and out, spilling on his cock.
“Luce, fuck!” he moans.
He shakes as I hold him there, pulsing and twitching. My wet face is red, pressed into his groin. Slathering saliva and sperm drool down my chin and my face and on his hips and his thighs. The animal smell of him and the rich, raw taste mix with the hot scent of my swollen pussy. It’s hard to breathe but I hold on. I don’t want to let go.
When I’ve swallowed all that I can, I drag myself slowly off his still fat pole, licking and sucking all the way. I let out a long, low, “Aaaaaaaah...” as I finally let him pop out of my lips.
He laughs, long and loud and reaches past me to put the take out on a table.
He pulls me to him for a long, wild, sloppy wet kiss. I claw at his pecs and press against his body. Wetness on the tee-shirt soaks onto his shirt and his pants. “Where did you learn that, I like you too much, little wildcat.”
“Now,” I tell him, “Now feed me.”
“What happened, who kidnapped shy, nervous Luce?”
I don’t want to wait. We eat the Shrimp remoulade and the shrimp Creole on the breakfast island, right out of the cartons. He feeds me. I feed him. We laugh and tease each other.
He takes hold of me, with his hand on the back of my head. I look into his eyes and we laugh. He pulls me to him to kiss. Even while we’re eating we kiss and we laugh.
“After we eat,” his voice is thick, “I want to flatten you against the one way glass wall and fuck you from behind.”
“Mm,” I swallow. “Could work.”
I feel like nothing matters. Nothing outside this room. Nothing but the food and him and me.
Then his phone beeps.
Chapter Sixteen
Connor
My phone beeps with a text.
The screen says that it’s Rhiordan.
NICO GOT HIT
It’s like a bucket of cold water.
Luce frowns as I move to the windows. I punch Rhiordan’s number to call him back. Straight to voicemail. I hang up before the outgoing message is finished. She’s looking at me. I don’t want to tell her. Not yet.
Thinking fast, I call Corky. She doesn’t pick up, either. Okay, maybe the demands of partying are keeping her from picking up. I’ll text her. See if she responds to that.
I have to move and I need to be certain that I leave Luce somewhere safe. With someone I can trust.
I send the text.
IF I BRING LUCE TO THE PARTY, WILL YOU BE ABLE TO TAKE CARE OF HER?
Less than a minute later, I get a text back from Corky.
OF COURSE. THE PARTY IS DISGRACEFUL. DIVINE.
SHE’LL LOVE IT. I’LL SEND YOU AN ENTRY CODE.
Then she sends another text,
DID YOU GET MY MESSAGE?
I text back,
I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND IT.
She replies,
YOU KNOW THE GUY THEY CALL ‘SHOCK AN’ AWE’?
And I answer her,
THE URBAN MYTH?
Corky comes back,
HE’S IN TOWN.
I give Luce the news and she doesn’t react.
“There are things I need to do,” I tell her.
“You won’t let me come along?”
I shake my head.
Her lips press together. She takes a breath. Then, “I haven’t got any party clothes.”
She look better than fine in my green tee-shirt, but I’m not keen to leave her at a party in just that. “I’m sure Corky would be okay about you borrowing something. Do you want to text her first?”
While I make calls and send texts, Luce takes a look around.
When she comes out, she has her hair back on one side. She’s in one of my white shirts, open most of the way, with a wide belt, and wearing my shiny bike jacket on top.
“Damn.” I tell her, “I might have been happier leaving you in the tee-shirt.”
Behind tall iron gates, the long driveway takes many bends and curves under the shade of old oak trees, on the way to the circular pool and fountain in front of the Kineghan house. The house is a white, plantation style mansion. The soft glow behind all the tied lace curtains makes it look like a lavish opera house or the set for a period drama.
Only the lewd, pumping techno beats that sneak out from the house give away the character of the party inside. A small army of attendants on the driveway all wear black evening suits with white dress shirts and red sashes. Luce seems unfazed, but it’s hard not to be impressed.
At the top of the steps, beneath the portico, high, black double doors are manned by six men. All of them are my size at least. They ask politely for an entry code. I show the message on my phone. A man scans the image, and the huge doors click.
The big door swing open. I wave my arm ahead of Luce. in my shirt and jacket, she looks like an angel of sin.
She giggles and says, “I feel like someone should announce us.” Inside, pink and purple neon and laser lights reflect on crystal chandeliers. A sea of bodies moving like waves, flowing through the grand entrance hall and into the high doorways that lead off.
Luce’s eyes are wide. She says, “This is what Burning Man would be like inside a club in Ibiza.”
Corky dances on a high balcony over the sweeping staircase. I call out to her. She’s entwined with three girls wearing glitter and UV neon body paint. She waves, then disappears. I take Luce up onto the staircase so we can get a view and so Corky can find us easily.
A cocktail waitress dressed like an alien witch passes with a silver tray. I lift two glasses.
Corky gives Luce a hug and a warm welcome. Calls her ‘Ladybug.’
“Glad you found cocktails, Hoss. Mixologists from Manolito fashion the Sazeracs. You like them, Ladybug?”
Luce says that she does. Corky asks me, “So, Hoss, what else can we do to slip you into the party vibe?”
“Take really good care of Luce. Seriously, okay? No more, no less. I’ll be back soon.” I give Luce a kiss and squeeze her ass. I hate to leave her here, especially looking the way she does. I need someone I can trust watching over her, though. I can’t leave her on her own. Not now.
“Luce,” Corky says, “You pose divinely on the stair. Do not move a muscle. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve shown this ruffian to the door.”
I’m about to tell her there’s no need, but I can see that she wants a word.
As we reach the door, Corky lowers her voice to tell me, “It was Daddy who arranged for you to be sent here from Boston. Apparently. He brokered the deal. I didn’t know that before.”
“Ok. Good to know.” I’m turning to go. Her hand holds my forearm.
“Wait, Hoss. He was asked by the same party to get the other guy sent.”
“Other guy?” then it clicks. “Oh, you mean the myth? Probably nothing. I appreciate the heads up, though, Corky. I owe you one.”
“Probably not nothing, Connor. The guy they call ‘Shock and Awe’ is not a myth,” she grips my forearm. “I believe he definitely is in town.”
Chapter Seventeen
Connor
I wait in the fragrant moonlight outside on the steps while the valet fetches the Mercedes, and I text Gabriel.
WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
I’m getting in the car, he comes back,
I WAS ABOUT READY TO CALL YOU
I text the name of a corner coffee shop in the Quarter and,
15 MINUTES.
I need to get to Sharkie’s, so I have to move fast.
I park the Mercedes a couple of blocks from the coffee shop. A heady, tropical tang of exotic flowers mixes on the hot night air with sweet and dank barroom aromas. Idly, slowly I walk on the other side of the street. Live music spills out of every window.
When I get near to the corner, I see Gabr
iel. He hangs around, about half a block away, also nowhere near the coffee bar. Good to see that he’s got the Secret Squirrel side of the game. But he’s a kid. I remember how much I loved that shit when I was his age.
On opposite sids of the street we walk, aimless, meandering, No eye contact or recognition. When we’re three bocks from the coffee shop, I cross to his side of the street and head into a café.
I take a seat at a table in the back, facing the window. After a minute, Gabriel strolls in and casually joins me.
He says, “I know something. What’s it worth?”
“In this world, Gabriel, you need friends. That’s worth everything.” He scowls. I tell him, “One way you know who your friends are, they’re not constantly hitting you up for money.”
“Another way is they take care of you.”
Hustling. Always hustling. Still, kudos for that. Give him time and he’ll learn to turn it up and down.
“So.” I lean forward. “I need information. You want to be my friend? Take care of me, Tell me what I need to know.”
He nods. Looks around. Both ways. “It was a huge guy. He came to Nico’s in a dull black Hummer. Armored, like in a real war zone.”
“Wait, you saw him arrive? Did you get his number?”
He says, “Sure,” like I’m the novice. “But listen. Before he went into the club, he pulled out two long, silver automatics. Shot the doormen, kicked the door and walked in slow. Both guns drawn. People came running out. Then I heard shots. Five shots, I counted. And the big guy walked back out. No fuss, no hurry. Climbed back in his car and left.”
“Anybody else hurt that you know of?”
Gabriel shakes his head.
“The red-haired security guy, was he hit?”
“Rhiordan? No. A couple of minutes after the big guy left, I saw him run out..”
“You know where I can find him?”
Gabriel say, “Hmm,” and his lips pinch.
“Okay,” I tell him, “Fifty bucks if you can get me to him. How’s that?”
“I don’t see how I can. No way to know where he went.” He rubs the cleft in his chin. After another pause, he says, “I can tell you where to find the other guy, though.”
“The shooter?”
I drive by the bar. A dull black Hummer sits across the street.
With my phone out, my shirt loose and a goofy grin, I step into the bar. Swaying as I shamble through the crowd and the upbeat blues, I wind my way to the bar. While I wait for a beer, I lean loose against the bartop and fumble with my phone.
After I finish the beer and tip the bartender, I wander back out, swinging my shoulders and hips, rolling to the music. My head bobs as I look down at the phone.
Outside, I slip the phone in my pocket and take out a burner that I’ve wrapped in black tape. I peel the backing off the strip of hi-tack adhesive on the back of the wrapped phone. Without stopping I pass the Hummer and stick the burner up inside the back wheel arch.
Back in the Mercedes, I’m aware that I need to get to Sharkie’s. I swipe through the photos on the phone of the man they call, ‘Shock an Awe’.
He wasn’t hard to spot in the bar. I knew he would take the farthest table from the door, with clear lines of sight in all directions. There were only two choices and he had picked the better one. He had a shot glass and a muffaletta sandwich, and he was working a laptop and a phone.
Even if I hadn’t figured out where he would sit, he was unmistakable. He wears a black combat jacket and a black round-neck shirt. Even sitting, he’s obviously tall. I’m guessing six and a half feet at least. He must be two hundred and forty pounds.
He’s also bald and he has no eyebrows.
Across the street from Sharkie’s a green Cadillac Escalade is parked on the far corner.
Inside the club, I take a table in a dark corner. I call Garrett. He answers after one ring. I don’t hear his ringtone in the club. But at a table on the far side of the room, the light of the screen comes on. Garrett answers.
I tell him, “I’m at the place.” Like I don’t know he’s sitting thirty feet in front of me. “But the guy’s not here.”
“What are you going to to?”
“I’ll get into the back. Wait for him in the office.”
“Good idea,” he says, “I’ll come with you.”
“Are you sure? Seems an unnecessary risk.”
“Thanks for the advice. Next time, if I need it, I’ll ask.” He cups the phone with his hand and hunches, “I need this to go down right. Alright?”
“Fine.”
He tells me, “Meet me at outside, at the back entrance.”
He’s getting up. He brought the two security goons from the office with him.
Watching warily as the four of us approach, the doorman at the back door doesn’t look happy. Can’t say I blame him. He reaches for a phone. Garrett steps forward so fast, it’s almost a lunge. He puts a hand on the guard’s arm to stop him. “Our little party will be a surprise for Danny.”
Reluctant but plainly outnumbered, the doorman shows us inside. He takes us to a door. It opens to an iron staircase, headed down.
Garrett is not happy. “Since when was the office in the basement?”
Four more men appear out of the shadows behind us. They’re heavily armed,
Chapter Eighteen
Luce
Corky sticks to me like glue. So do four huge men she said she’s assigned to ‘stay close.’ They surround me, tracking me wherever I go. They keep no more than a couple of arms length away. She says they’ll be my sentinels. My ‘Praetorian guard,’ whatever that is.
“You want anything, Ladybug,” Corky sways to the beat as we walk and talk, “Ask me or one of these hunks. Anything.”
The party is amazing but all I want is to get back with Connor. I’ve got a bad sense, deep in my gut. Corky leads me up the sweeping staircase and along the galleries and balconies on the first floor. I have no appetite, but the sweet and spicy scents of jambalaya call to me. Corky steers me through the mansion, showing me incredible artworks, dancers on podiums, rooms full of sleek revelers.
She shows me where the bars and the buffets are, and says, “If you want to just sit down, get something to eat, I’ll give you a private room. Have the executive chef pull something together. Seriously, girl. Anything.”
We pass through a huge ballroom, bathed in colored lights. The room pulses with dance music and the floor is packed with elegant ravers. Then we’re in a salon with polished wood floors, people in lace and brocaded frock coats make a slow, formal dance in Venetian masks to a string quartet.
After that, she leads me outside, past a full-on jazz orchestra on a terrace. People dance like by a floodlit ornamental pool. They move like they practiced for years to the epic big band era tunes, just for this night.
As we step back inside, I ask Corky, “Why are you being so nice? You hardly know me.”
The sentinels flank us as we cross a tiled hallway lit by candles, “I told you I like you, Luce.” she squeezes my arm and pulls me close to her, “And I have great instincts.”
She’s still hard for me to read, but I believe her.
“So, spill.” her eyes gleam with a wicked spark, “What’s the deal with you and Hoss?”
By reflex I say, “I could ask you the same thing,” but I keep it as light as I can.
“Ooh!” Her eyes widen, “I can tell that it’s moved on from when I left you two alone in the apartment.”
“You are sharp.”
“Ladybug, you grow up in a family like mine, you’re watching out for signals all the time. It’s second nature.” A twang of some bitter experience in her voice resonated with me. When she squeezes my arm again, I squeeze back.
“I can’t imagine.”
She looks into my eye. “Oh,” she says. “I think you can.”
I’m not hungry. Not until Corky insists that I take a tiny beignet from a passing waiter’s silver tray. “My chef would be sorely offe
nded,” She makes her voice haughty, like a crisp old Southern dame, “If you absolutely refused to try one.”
After that impossibly light, sugar-dusted nibble of choux pastry, I want more.
We weave through crowds, and we dance in every room, all the time guarded from a distance by the four watchful, stone-faced men. Each room, each new style of music gets a little deeper into me. My body loosens and sways. Soon, we’re in a red velvet-lined salon and I’m moving, dancing freeform with Corky to some wild be-bop jazz.
My arms shake and wave in the air, my hips swing and I feel lighter. Softer. Freer.
In the salon, the party crowd has a muscular, friendly, sophisticated energy. An inclusive alertness that feels very New Orleans to me. For the first time in a long, long while, I don’t feel isolated or alone. I feel like I’m among people like me. Our backgrounds may not be the same, we may have nothing else in common but the dance.
I get a feeling that all have tough spots in our history, we all struggle for who we are, and we all love the music. I never felt this kind of a rave vibe dancing to jazz before and it makes me smile.
“That’s better,” Corky says, with a twirl.
I look around for our sentinels. The first one isn’t where I expect him to be. I turn, twirling in a move like Corky’s. I don’t see the second Praetorian, either.
Then I spot them both. All four of them are moving away, converging and headed for the door. I touch Corky’s shoulder. She follows my eyes.
Beyond the door is a disturbance. I hear shouts. But not party whoops.
Bursting through the crowd is a huge, bald, grim faced man without any eyebrows.
Chapter Nineteen
Connor
The four heavies urge Garrett, his goons and me down the steps. At the bottom of the stairs, a short hallway leads to a single door.
Break Her Free: A Curvy Captive Romance Page 8
