I was right, but it turned out that I didn’t get to look around much, because as soon as the door closed behind us, Gage turned around and pushed me up against the door for the second time in our short acquaintance, covering my mouth with his in a kiss like I’d never had before. And when he slid his muscular thigh between my legs, pressing it against my rapidly hardening cock, I thought I might just melt into a puddle at his feet. I’d always felt that kissing was an art form that not many had mastered, but the man pushing me against that door certainly had. He slid his tongue between my lips and explored my mouth and I thought I might come right then.
He reached between us and rubbed his hand across my hard cock and I heard a sound I realized was a whimper and that it was coming from me. He put both arms around my waist and pulled me away from the door. Turning me around, he started walking me slowly backwards across the room while our lips remained locked in a kiss that set me on fire. I’d never been a fan of kissing before, but I’d apparently never been kissed by someone who knew what they were doing. I mean, fuuuck, I thought I was going to spontaneously combust right there in his arms.
I felt the back of my legs hit something solid and I knew he’d been walking me backwards to his bed. I was definitely on board with that. He gave me a slight push and I fell down onto the bed. Gage followed me down and we began pulling at each other’s clothes in an effort to get naked as quickly as possible. Pretty soon we were skin to skin with him on top of me and our stiff cocks rubbing against each other.
I hadn’t even compelled him to do any of this. Of course, the way the spell went, it did help along any impulses the victim, um, I mean the receiver, actually had. Just sort of removed inhibitions. This was all Gage, even though he may have been suppressing his urges until now.
I looped my legs over the backs of his thighs to pull him as close as possible increasing the friction of our dicks moving against each other. It felt so good that it took me a minute to realize he’d gotten one of his hands between us and was holding both of us and slowly stroking. When he brushed his thumb over my slit, I felt a familiar tingling at the base of my spine and knew I was about to come. I moaned, that being the only warning I gave him, and came all over his hand and our stomachs. He continued to stroke our shafts, but it only took two or three more before I felt the warmth of his release on my stomach. He leaned in and gave me one of those soul-sucking kisses he was so good at and I knew that I’d never felt so satisfied or content in my life.
We lay there for a few minutes, neither of us saying a word, before he got up and went to the bathroom. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he walked across the bedroom. He really was gorgeous. He was tall, his body toned more than muscular, and his ass was truly a work of art. I found myself getting hard again just watching it as he crossed the room.
He was in the bathroom for a few minutes before he came back out, carrying a washcloth. I lay on the bed and watched him coming toward me and, damn, I didn’t think anything could be better than watching his naked ass as he strolled across the room, but I was wrong. The full-frontal view had my dick jumping to attention again. He had black curly hair on his chest—not too much, just enough to have my fingers itching to run through it. His abs were a sight to behold, not to mention the treasure trail and the V pointing to the nest of curls surrounding a really nice size cock.
When he reached the bed, he handed me the washcloth and sat down. He still hadn’t said a word. “Thank you,” I said. He still didn’t say anything, just nodded. I made quick work of cleaning myself and he took the cloth from me, hanging it over the edge of a small trash can beside the bed. I got on my knees on the bed and crawled behind Gage, draping my arms across his shoulders and running my fingers down his chest. I really loved the feel of his naked body. “That was wonderful,” I whispered in his ear, hoping he’d realize that I was up for another round as soon as we’d both rested for a bit. “Lie down here beside me for a minute.”
I gave his shoulder a little tug as I fell back on the bed. I could feel his resistance for a second before he gave in and lay back on his pillow. I had a feeling that he wanted to say something and was trying to figure out how to phrase it, so I just waited. Before he said a word, though, I heard his breathing change, becoming heavier and more even, and I knew he was asleep. Listening to him must have lulled me to sleep, too, because when I woke up, several hours had passed and I was draped over a hard, naked body. A subtle change in his breathing let me know that he was awake, so I said, “Good morning.”
He was quiet for a minute before he said, “Morning. Uh...we need to talk.”
Uh-oh. In my experience, those words were not only not a good sign, but were usually followed by the words, it’s not you, it’s me.
“About?” I asked, a little chill slipping into my tone.
He slid sideways on the bed, removing my arms from around him and turning so he could look at me. “About the fact that what happened last night was a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“Yes, a mistake. A serious one. And I’m sorry, but it just can’t happen again.”
All my soft, mushy feelings, all the afterglow, vanished in the blink of an eye. I was furious. I stiffened and crawled off the bed to find my clothes that seemed to be scattered all over the room. “Well, thank you for that!” I said tersely, gathering up my shirt, my pants, everything, as fast as I could. Gage stood up and walked over to me, trying to stop me by taking hold of my arm, but I was having none of it and jerked away.
“Wait a minute. Look, that didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean for you to go.”
He took my arm and tried to turn me toward him, but I jerked away. “You’re damn right it didn’t come out right.” I saw my underwear next to the bed and went for it.
“Stop for just a minute, will you? Let me explain.”
I shook my head. “Hey, there’s nothing to explain. It isn’t hard for me to understand—I was a mistake.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, will you be still for just a minute?”
“No. Fuck you.”
I stopped what I was doing, but kept my back turned toward him. I heard him take a deep breath and slowly let it out, but I stood my ground. I couldn’t believe it when I heard him chuckle. I slowly turned and gave him a killing glare.
Finally, he began to speak. “God, you’re kind of excitable, aren’t you? Listen, I didn’t mean that you were a mistake, just that the situation was. I’m the lead investigator trying to solve your grandfather’s murder. Sleeping with one of the prime suspects in the case is definitely a conflict of interest. Can’t you see that?”
I whirled around and got in his face. “Prime suspect? Me? Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Of course, you’re a suspect—family always is. And your brother and sister and her husband are as well. What the hell? You were the only people in the house at the time of the murder, along with the servants, who live in another house on the property. Until we can determine if someone else had a way of entering the house, that’s how it’ll be.” He paused. “I was trying to explain how any personal relationship between us would be a major conflict of interest right now.”
“Oh, I get it.” I did get it, but I was still mad and disappointed. I’d never felt an attraction as strong to someone as I did to him. I wanted more and I’d never been good at self-denial. Yeah, I might be a little emotional, but so what? There may even have been some people who had called me high strung, but fuck them! And fuck this detective too. I shrugged and began putting my clothes on. “Whatever you say, Detective. I’ll leave as soon as I get dressed, Detective. Anything else you need before I go? Do you need to frisk me to see if I stole anything? I don’t want you missing something after I leave and blaming me because I was in the fucking apartment.” I knew I was just being belligerent now, but I didn’t care.
“God, you’re acting like a child. Don’t you think I wish things could be different? Last night was wonderful, really, but
….”
I was dressed by that time and I held up my hand to stop whatever he was about to say. I looked at him and tried to muster as much coldness and dignity as I could. “Save it. Thank you for an entertaining evening. I promise that I won’t be bothering you again.”
He looked as if he was about to say something, but I put my nose in the air and walked out of his apartment and slammed the door behind me. Never let it be said that I didn’t know how to make a dramatic exit.
Chapter Four
Gage
Time flies whether you’re having much fun or not. But that’s getting a bit ahead of the story.
It had been almost a year since Rafe had left my apartment in a huff, because I told him I couldn’t be involved with a member of the Delessard family. In that time, a lot of things had happened. First and probably most important, the murder of Abel Delessard had been more or less solved. The bodies of Abel’s elderly housekeeper Camille Dubois and her son Emmanuel were found by his tomb, which had been broken into. His coffin had been destroyed, and his burnt corpse was found lying in the middle of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. There was evidence at the scene that indicated Camille and her son had been using voodoo to “raise the dead.” Obviously, something had gone seriously wrong and both Dubois had wound up murdered.
Camille Dubois’ neck was broken, and her son died from blunt force trauma, when his body was picked up and thrown on top of a vault nearby.
Of course, the Gaudets and the Delessards denied all knowledge of the incident, though Rafe did make a cryptic little comment about “order” being restored or some bullshit. It was more than obvious they knew more than what they were saying. But as they all had alibis, and it was later determined through interviews with her friends that Camille Dubois had been the one to desecrate Abel Delessard’s body, the deaths of her and her son were still listed as “unsolved.”
It turned out that Mr. Delessard had a long and contentious relationship with Camille; again, according to her long-time friends, and Emmanuel Dubois was also his illegitimate son. I suspected that she and her son Emmanuel killed him that night in the cellar and then stole the diamonds and the book of spells, but so far we hadn’t been able to prove much except that the murder weapon—a butcher knife—came from Camille’s kitchen. And her fingerprints were all over it. Not a shocker, but what was surprising was that Emmanuel’s prints were on it too.
No one had actually found the so-called blood diamond yet in the Dubois’ house or in any of their possessions, nor had they found any book. But according to Nic Gaudet, the smart-ass New Yorker and “friend” of Thibeau Delessard, who had insinuated himself into my investigation, Camille and her son were the ones who’d killed Abel, who’d been down there in the basement with him, and who had complete and unfettered access to the loot. At least that’s what Nic told us when we interviewed him in our offices a few days after the bodies were discovered. He said it was pure conjecture on his part. Yeah, right. Since we had no proof, we had to let him go. He was a too-handsome, way too slick son-of-a-bitch, and I didn’t like him one damn bit.
We were still investigating.
Frankly the whole damn thing was fishy as fuck. Thibeau Delessard had told me the first time I met him that Gaudet was an enemy of the family’s. Then the next time I saw them, Nic was acting very possessive of Thibeau, and they were obviously very much together. As for Thibeau, who had always been gorgeous, he was now looking more and more like his younger brother, with that sparkle and shine back in his eyes.
Shortly after the bodies of Camille and her son were found in the cemetery, the brother-in-law disappeared into thin air and hadn’t been found yet. Something was really strange about that. His parents hadn’t seen him or heard from him either, and everybody seemed worried. His wife, Sophie, who was the sister of Rafe and Beau, had a nervous breakdown and had been taken to some fancy hospital. When I first went to see Nic Gaudet about it, none other than both the Delessard brothers were in his living room and acting very chummy with him and his brother, Gabriel. I found I didn’t like Rafe being there with them and obviously up to his neck in something he had no business being involved in. I didn’t like it one bit. I decided it had been a damn good thing I hadn’t gotten involved with the gorgeous Mr. Delessard. He was nothing but trouble, even if I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of trouble that might be.
I had seen Rafe once more during that time. I’d gone to see Gabriel Gaudet on the chance he might know something about some voodoo or hoodoo related murders. One of the bodies had been dumped in our parish. Outside his hotel, I had run into Rafe, who was coming out of the hotel restaurant with some guy. He’d immediately whispered something in the guy’s ear and came over to me. I tried hard not to show how jealous I felt.
He asked me what I was doing there and then insisted on going in to see Gabriel Gaudet with me. In the end, I didn’t learn anything helpful. They both were as cryptic as always. I left as soon as I could get away and sincerely hoped I’d never lay eyes on either of them again.
Still, imagine my surprise all this time later when my phone rang, and it was Rafe Delessard. The last time I saw him, I had a long talk with myself and felt that I had some very good reasons for not pursuing a relationship with him. Nothing about that had changed.
It was a Saturday night, and I was sitting in my apartment alone, watching a ballgame on TV, drinking a beer and kicking my own ass for that decision because I’d never been able to get him out of my mind. Anyway, I was on call for work that weekend, so when my phone rang, I didn’t even look at the caller ID, I just picked it up and said, “Arceneau.”
“Gage, I hope I’m not disturbing you. This is Rafe Delessard. Were you busy?”
Rafe. My heart sped up. I hated to admit it, but it did. “No, just watching a game on TV.” I waited for him to say something, to tell me why he was calling, but there was silence on his end. “Rafe, is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. I was calling to ask you a question.”
“What’s that?”
“I know that you told us Emmanuel Dubois had been found dead, but were they absolutely sure?”
“Sure of what? That he’s dead? If not, he’s going to be really pissed off about that autopsy they performed on him. Of course I’m sure, Rafe. The coroner made a positive identification. Why are you asking me that?”
“Because I’ve uh, I’ve seen him a couple of times. Once he was standing at the edge of the woods behind the house and the next time he was sitting on the porch of Camille’s cottage.”
“That’s impossible. Maybe it was just a vagrant that wandered onto your property from the woods—someone who looks like Emmanuel.”
“It was him, I tell you. And it wasn’t a ghost either. At least, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.”
I snorted. “Well, I’m pretty sure of that too.”
“No, I mean I think I’d know if it was a ghost.”
“Oh, really? And how would you know that? Have you ever seen one?”
“Of course, plenty of times.”
Great. I finally meet a guy I can really get into, and he’s batshit crazy. I bit down on my tongue and tried not to laugh.“O-kay. Listen, Rafe, you’ve been under a lot of stress in the last few months, what with your grandfather being murdered and your former housekeeper Camille and her son probably being the ones who killed him, so…”
Rafe interrupted me. “Don’t patronize me, Gage. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen ghosts before, and I don’t think this was a ghost. And it wasn’t some homeless person that just happened to look exactly like Emmanuel either.”
“Okay. Okay. Don’t get yourself in a twist. Is he uh, there now?”
“No, of course he’s not here now. What kind of question is that? I’m not imagining this, Detective.”
“Okay. When was the last time you saw this person?”
“Yesterday evening. It was about dusk, I guess.”
“Where were you when you saw him?”
“In
my bedroom. My room faces the back of the house, and I was just standing there looking out, and there he was, looking back up at the house.”
Fuck, that had to be creepy as hell.
“You were just standing there staring out the window?”
“It’s not like it costs anything. Yeah, I was just standing there, thinking. You know, about everything that’s happened and what I’m going to do now. Beau’s gone to New York to be with Nic, and Sophie is probably going to have a long hospital stay, according to the doctors, so I’m here alone.”
“Christophe never came back home?”
“Uh, no. He never did.”
So, he was all alone in that old house all by himself. That would make anybody feel a little nervous. “Well, see now, like I said, you’ve been under a lot of stress, and you were mulling everything over in your head, and maybe your mind and eyes were playing tricks on you. I see that kind of thing happen all the time.”
“Dammit, Gage I know what I saw! I’m not crazy, and I wasn’t hallucinating. I saw something. Someone.”
I opened my mouth to ask if he wanted me to come out there and have a look around, and I was going to tell him—well, hell, I don’t know what I was going to say to placate him, because I knew for damn sure he wasn’t seeing Emmanuel Dubois. It didn’t matter what I was going to say, though, because he hung up on me. I tried to call him back several times, but he wouldn’t answer the phone.
I decided to give him a couple of days to get over his tantrum and realize that I was right. Then, we could talk like rational human beings. Merde! He was so full of drama.
I shook my head. Luc and I had done background checks on all the Delessards and the Gaudets right after the murder of Abel Delessard. Both families were clean as a whistle. None of them had so much as a parking ticket. In my experience, nobody was that squeaky clean, and it bothered me. There was just something there that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but they’d all been extremely cooperative, even though the Gaudets had irritated me.
Haunted (Witches of the Big Easy Book 3) Page 4