Voodoo Burning

by N. M. Catalano

  She levels her gaze at me. “Don’t you find it odd that the two of you are working on these crimes?”

  The question surprises me. “Why would I find it odd?”

  “Dominique, do not pretend you have not had any déjà vu.”

  Oh my God, the dreams, the feelings, the sensations, the whispers. All of it, yes, I have. But they can’t have anything to do with Ignatius…can they?

  “You were always superstitious. One thing has nothing to do with the other.” I wave her off.

  Hattie tsks me. “Girl, we are the embodiment of superstitious. Do not lie to yourself, because they,” she waves her hand in the air at nothing at all, “have a way of proving their points.”

  “Hattie, don’t be ridiculous,” I dismiss her. Again.

  This time she makes an mm, mm, mm sound. “I’m gonna hate to say I told you so.”

  A nagging feeling tugs at the back of my mind, but right now is not the time to dwell on it. I’ve got a case I’m working on. One that I did want to speak with Ignatius about.

  “About the crimes, do you think Ignatius will be coming in? I would like to discuss them with him.”

  “Honestly, mon cher, I’m not sure.” She scribbles something on the pad she’s holding. “But you can go to his house.”

  I almost choke on the coffee as she heads toward the kitchen. “I cannot go to a man’s house unannounced and uninvited.”

  She slaps the swinging door to the kitchen and steps through on an in-swing. As it’s still moving, she comes back out without missing a beat. “Did you not tell him yesterday you wanted to discuss it with him?” She refills my coffee.

  “Yes, but-”

  “Did he not agree?”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Then you were invited. Besides, it’s official police business, wouldn’t that be correct?” She arches an eyebrow at me with a gleam in her eye.

  “Yes, but-”

  She rolls her eyes. “Ignatius lives where the Beauchamp’s have always lived, Dominique. In the bayou, outside the swamps.”

  Oh, my God, no.

  “Don’t you worry, sha bebe.” She unclips the chain she’s wearing around her neck and leans toward me to place it around mine. “I’ll send Iggy’s favorite with you as a peace offering. The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

  I finger the pendant Hattie placed around my neck. It’s the Evil Eye, a symbol to deflect evil.

  “I’m not interested in his heart, or his stomach,” I comment.

  “I know, mon cher, it will be for after what it is you are interested in.”

  And just like that, the image of Ignatius Beauchamp that had been burned in my mind flares to life. As my eyes had traveled over his lean build, I could almost feel it beneath my palms, each dip of muscle and every curve of his physique. My mouth had watered to taste him. I am absolutely sure he’d taste like a bad decision.

  I’m also sure it would taste so good.

  Four

  Plantation Heir

  The women tormented me. I couldn’t get them out of my head. Last night was different, though. The screams and wails still echoed in agony, but this time it seemed they were trying to say something coherent, however, I couldn’t make it out. I couldn’t comprehend anything except the torture they endured.

  I sensed everything, their horror and pain, their anguish and terror, all of it was a scene straight out of hell. And the heat was unbearable. I saw the inferno that engulfed them as they’d writhed in agony after the butchering they’d lived through. Even in the dream I tried to save them. No matter how much I hacked and plowed my way through the flames, I never got any closer.

  I know it made me angry, because I was furious when I woke up. I distinctly recall hearing my own labored breathing inside my gas mask in the dream, phsshhh, sssshhhh, psshhh, sssshhhh, I woke up soaking wet, saturated in sweat, while my heart pounded a hole through my chest. I could still smell the scent of death with every breath. That was at three in the morning. I couldn’t go back to sleep, and quite frankly, sleep was the last place I wanted to be, not after the nightmare. I decided to go for a run, just me and the things that lurked in the dark of the bayou.

  The sun had long since risen by the time I arrived back at home. It seems I’ve been spending less and less time there because when I am there, the walls close in on me. I’ve thought about staying at the firehouse full time, at least until after the nightmare of the serial killings is over.

  I picked up a newspaper at the corner convenient store on the way home. The headline stopped me in my tracks.

  VOODOO BURNING

  SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE

  A third fire took place in an abandoned home in the Ninth Ward. The gruesome scene found inside involved another slaughtered unidentified female. No suspects have been arrested. This is the third incident in six months.

  An expert criminal investigator has been called in, a local of New Orleans, Dominique Chavelle.

  Anyone with any information is encouraged to contact the New Orleans Police Department.

  “What is wrong with people?! Dominique should sue them for printing her name, for fucks sake!” Jesus Christ, they as good as put a huge bullseye on her chest! I smashed the paper into a tight ball and shoved it into the first trash can I came across.

  I’m still furious when I get out of the shower a couple of hours later to someone banging on my door.

  No one ever comes out here. I live almost an hour from New Orleans. The property has been in the Beauchamp family since the area was settled. Most of the land had been sold off over the years, and all that remains is the ancient main mansion and a couple of small outbuildings. It’s a monster to keep up with everything, but I just can’t bear to sell it.

  With a towel wrapped around my waist and still dripping wet, I stomp barefoot to the door and fling it open, ready to rip the head off the person on the other side.

  “I hope you like pain,” I growl because whoever it is did not pick a good day to come here.

  Dominique is standing there wide-eyed and surprised. She’s got a white paper bag clutched tightly to her chest, like a shield protecting her from me. “Um, depends…?”

  Realization sinks in it’s Dominique…and I didn’t scare the shit out of her. First, surprise rushes in. Then, her reply to my greeting registers.

  “Well, in that case, please do come in.” I take a step out onto the front veranda and wrap a hand around the back of her neck. I’m so close her hands still clutching the bag graze my bare chest. “How did you know what I needed?” My lips crash against hers in a kiss laced with the residual anger that has been pumping through my body all night and all day.

  My tongue sweeps across her lips demanding she open for me. She does. She tastes fucking delicious, like heat and sunrises, wrapped up in secrets. Her taste seeps into my veins and blends with the darkness brewing inside me. She is exactly what I’d been craving. A low rumble escapes from deep within my chest as everything I’ve been battling comes rolling over me like an avalanche. I pull her closer and try to suck everything out of her, whatever it is she has that I need, that I crave, the only thing that seems to quell the storm growing within me.

  Visuals of Dominique on all fours with her wild hair wound around my fist as I thrust into her over and over again make my entire body tense and my dick throb. The darkness swells as I kiss her roughly and dig my fingers into her flesh.

  I have to pause to check myself

  There’d always been a simmering fury inside me. I’d managed to keep it contained, avoided anything that would cause that tether of control to snap. Maybe that’s what fascinates me about fire, the power and intensity, and how easily it could destroy you.

  Dominique is like playing with fire, my own personal flame stoking the inferno inside me. She ignites the dark fury I’ve kept locked up, awakening something primitive. Something ravenous.

  With my mouth still locked on hers and still holding her to me, I guide us into my hous
e and slam the door shut. Inside, I break the kiss and stare down into her face. She’s intoxicating, and I want to do very bad, very dirty things to her. “This is the only chance you have to tell me you don’t want this, Dominique. Say it now, because I’m not giving you another opportunity.”

  She blinks slowly as the lust clears from her eyes. “Depends on what it is?” A coy smile plays at the corners of her succulent mouth.

  I take the bag from her hands and place it on the table behind her. “Everything.” Because, son-of-a-bitch, there isn’t anything I don’t want to do to her.

  She arches an eyebrow at me as she dares me with those ice blue eyes of hers. “Seems a bit impossible.”

  Primal hunger roars through me at her dare. “Then I’ll just have to show you.”

  I lift her up and wrap her legs around my waist, the heat from her sex presses against my abdomen, my mouth consumes hers again dying to get a taste of her. My dick twitches with the knowledge I’m going to have my face planted between her thighs in just a few minutes. With my hands holding her by her ass, I carry her up the stairs to my bedroom, my towel left on the floor somewhere along the way.

  Upstairs, I lower her to the bed. As I stand over her, my eyes outline her curves, my gaze catches the flush of her face, and my mouth relishes the taste of her kiss.

  Rage and fury from last night’s nightmares and the newspaper article earlier still hum through my veins, lighting my blood on fire and burning me from the inside out. I know when I touch her, I’m going to scorch her. “I’m not going to be gentle, Dominique.” The warning comes out low and dangerous. That’s how I feel.

  “You’ve already asked me if I like pain,” is her reply.

  Jesus Christ, this woman.

  The darkness unfurls inside me and fills me with the need to see my mark all over her mocha skin. What she doesn’t realize is, in my mind I’ve already slipped a butt plug into her pretty ass and spanked her, and each time my palm landed on the plug, it brought her that much closer to the edge. One flick of a fingertip on her clit would make her shatter.

  Lowering myself, I cover her body with mine. I curl my fists, my fingers pressing into her soft flesh, trying to quiet the images racing through my head. Thoughts of tying Dominique to my bed, burying my dick in her pussy while I played with her ass until she came so hard, she’d squirt everywhere.

  Instantly we become a blur of mouths, tongues, hands, nails, spit, teeth.

  Somehow, her clothes are off, I don’t remember removing them, but here she is in all her fucking beauty, lying naked beneath me with her satiny flesh rubbing against mine. The sight of her breasts makes my mouth water, needing to taste her. Lowering my face, I glide my tongue around the dark discs of her areolae as they get firmer and the peaks harden, first one then the other. I take one tight nipple between my teeth and flick it with the tip of my tongue. “Where did you come from, Dominique?” I growl as I slip a hand under one of her knees and lift her leg to open her up to me.

  “Nowhere,” she pants.

  I believe her. She’s a dark mystery that cannot be explained, like the smoky wisps that haunt the bayou. But right now, she’s real, she’s here, and she’s mine.

  I go lower, down to where I’m going to lose myself in her and settle between her thighs. Her scent is rich and heady, like a drug made especially for me. I trace a finger through her folds, then dip the tip inside her. She’s slick, so slick, and warm and ready. I delve deeper, first with one finger, then two, as I trace circles around her swollen nub with my tongue.

  “Ignatius,” she pants and rises to meet me. Her fists close around handfuls of my hair when I nibble along her mound. “Don’t tease me.”

  “You had your opportunity to speak. That’s passed,” I twist my fingers in her channel and find that spot inside her. Her back arches off the bed as she lets out a long moan. With her legs spread open, I leave a trail of love bites up and down the insides of her thighs as I rub that magic spot inside her walls. I want to taste her everywhere. I want to feel every inch of her body. But first, I want to make her scream.

  Taking her clit with my mouth, I work it, sucking, flicking, nibbling it, while I bring her closer to the edge with my fingers inside her, until she shatters. I don’t stop, but I force myself to slow down, to drag this out as long as I can, let the embers simmer before the final explosion. I want to relish her heat, let the fury inside me feast on her as long as I can.

  I rise to my knees and position the crown of my shaft at her entrance. I ask, because I’m a southern gentleman like that, “I want you bare, Dominique. Is there a problem with that?” My words are tight because I’m barely containing my need to be inside her.

  “No, I want to feel you.”

  I lower my gaze to where the tip of my cock kisses the opening between her plump lower lips. My balls tighten in anticipation as a satisfied breath leaves me. “You’re going to feel me, mon doux, my sweet, but not yet.”

  I slowly slip just the head in.

  She is tight and so fucking smooth. I don’t move, I let her settle around me. It’s pure torture, but worth each agonizing glorious second of it.

  “Dominique, your pussy is heaven,” I tell her honestly. “This view est magnifique, is magnificent.”

  “I’m so glad you like it,” her words are breathy and drunk from her orgasm.

  The sight of the head of my cock wedged inside Dominique is the beginning of my destruction. It is the match that lights the fuse that runs down my spine straight to the well that sits in the fiery pit of my loins.

  I pull out just a little and slip back inside. Still just the head. Again, out, then back in, just the head. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, holding myself back, ignoring the howls to take her hard and rough, to use her mercilessly, to take everything from her, until she’s limp and unconscious at my feet.

  Her moans fill the room as her hips begin to circle, her sweet scent making my mouth water, and her wetness dripping from her channel, around my shaft, and down her ass cheeks.

  I clench my jaw, tighten everything in my lower body, and take her clit between a finger and thumb, and pinch.

  Dominique’s back arches off the bed as her eyes roll to the back of her head and she lets out a long guttural sigh, “Oh, my God, Ignatius…” Her entire body planks from the stimulation.

  I thrust into her and, God help me, it’s complete bliss.

  Being completely inside Dominique is fucking magical, like nothing I’ve ever experienced and everything I’ve wanted. Each glide is another shot of the drug that is her. Thrust after thrust is better than the one before. We’ve gone from two separate bodies to one ravenous being, taking and giving, pounding and yielding. My hips crash into her, our bodies slap together, trying, needing to get closer. We fuck hard and furiously, like animals, clawing, and biting, scratching and sucking.

  Lifting from her, I turn her over onto her stomach and cover her body with mine again. With my mouth at her ear, I whisper roughly, “I love how your cunt feels wrapped around my cock, Dominique.”

  “Oh, God…” she moans again.

  I slip a hand to her front, past her abdomen, to the juncture of her thighs, and keep going until the heel of my palm is rubbing against her clit and my fingers are scissored around my thickness as I penetrate her again and again. “Feel this, mon cher?”

  “Yes,” she pants.

  “How does it feel?” I drag my tongue around the curve of her ear.

  “So good. So, so good.”

  “When you come, I want you to scream.”

  I slide the hand that’s tucked beneath her upward until the pad of my finger is at her clit. Then I begin to fuck her hard and deep, pressing her further into the mattress and my hand, so I’m fucking her, and she’s fucking me as I rub her.

  “Ignatius, PLEASE.”

  “Non, ne t’arrêtez pas,” no, don’t stop.

  She begins to chant in French as her body planks beneath me. I feel the tightening of her walls around m
e. A tremor ripples down my spine straight to my balls and shoots right into my cock. I bite down on the back of her neck. Then she screams long and loud as she pulses around my shaft and pulls my climax right out of me. I come so fucking hard, so deep inside her, I think I might pass out.

  We lay spent, our breaths loud and heavy. I roll to my side and pull her with me, my arm holding her close around her middle and my leg curled around hers.

  When the air-conditioning cools our bodies, I pull the covers over us. It suddenly dawns on me I have no idea why she showed up at my door. I acted like a damn barbarian and took her. I’d fucking do it again. “Maybe I should have asked if there was a particular reason you came to visit me.”

  Her body shakes with a chuckle. “Do you always greet your visitors that way?”

  “Only the ones I’ve thought of how sweet their pussy would taste. And yours was better than I imagined.”

  “You are bad, Ignatius.” I hear the satisfied grin in her voice.

  “But I’m good at it.” I nibble along her shoulder again, simply because I can’t not do it, then lick a line over the curve. “Tell me why you came, Dominique.”

  I have a nagging suspicion I’m not going to like this. Which makes me even more pleased that I fucked her first and talked after.

  Immediately, her body tenses in my embrace. I knew I wasn’t going to like this.

  “I wanted to discuss the fires.” Even her tone is hard and devoid of everything that just happened.

  Fuck my life.

  I let out a deep breath. It’s bad enough I haven’t been able to sleep in months. I do not want to have this conversation in my bed. Nor do I want to taint what just happened here between her and me.

  “All right, but did you bring something from Hattie’s in the little white bag you came with?”

  “I did. It was her idea.”

  Thank you, Hattie. “How about we go downstairs for this conversation?” And I can pretend I’m eating because I sure as hell won’t have an appetite for this.

  “Good idea.”