He knew better than to follow Jilly. “I’m sorry,” he said. Visions of a romantic interlude grew paler.
Goldilocks threw herself downward to Guy. She rubbed against his legs and licked his hand, then gave a great sigh and leaned on him, panting. “Good girl,” he said. Poor mutt couldn’t be blamed for her situation. “You’re supposed to be a watchdog, though. You’re no good snoozin’ on Jilly’s bed.” Oh, but he would be real good snoozing on Jilly’s bed—in an hour or so. “And what’s this about you helpin’ burglars put the goodies in their bag? You’re gettin’ fat. Don’t feed her so much.”
“Take your own advice. She’s yours.”
Jilly sat on the top step with the corners of her mouth turned up and a thoughtful expression in those big hazel eyes. Guy had never seen a more gut-wrenching woman. Her hair, too many shades of gold through blond for him to count, shone thick and a little unruly—like she’d got out of the shower and hadn’t dried it.
You are good, Guy Gautreaux. She got out of the shower and didn’t have time to dry her hair because you showed up. Jilly held her knees together, and her toes. Her heels turned out. The little pink cotton robe, cinched at the waist and short enough so he could see a couple of inches at the backs of her thighs looked as sexy as a skimpy bra and a pair of tap pants. He never had gotten past finding tap pants paralyzing—mostly paralyzing.
He had come to be with her, Jilly realized. For no other reason. She’d bet her life on it. And if she didn’t keep a tight hold on herself, she’d be repeating her attack act. Not cool, Jilly. From the way he stayed where he was, she’d say he didn’t have anything physical in mind. He just wanted to talk, maybe to ease things between them.
His head tilted to one side, he regarded her straight in the eye and he didn’t flinch or blink. He did shift his feet now and then—and he put his hands on his hips, jutted his pelvis ever so slightly. Jilly parted her lips to breathe. When a woman’s darkest places almost itched and she knew the only way to scratch that fabulous itch was by taking the only man she wanted inside her, she was the luckiest woman in the world. She was also up a creek without a paddle—that being because the broad-shouldered, tall, all-muscle man looking back at her owned the only paddle likely to do what needed to be done.
Slowly her eyes closed and she heard a crackle, just a little crackle. A bayou night sensation—the kind that happened when the moon went away and the spaces filled up with the snick and rustle of a million invisible critters, and the shush-shush of willow branches dancing a delicate dance in a breeze you hardly felt on hot, moist skin.
“Can I come up, Jilly?”
Hair stood up on the back of his neck. He wasn’t subtle.
“If you want to.” For months they’d managed to be wary buddies, the sex kept under control even though they knew it was there, begging to get out. She’d opened the door and there would be no going back. “There are chairs.” And she wasn’t fooling either of them.
He went up slowly, leaving the dog at the foot of the stairs. At least the critter had the sense to know when she wasn’t wanted. Jilly remained where she was, sitting on the step at the top. “Does any of this scare you?”
“To death,” she said.
Guy stopped. “I don’t want to do anything to frighten you. I’d never hurt you.”
“I’m scared to death a day will come when I find out you’re gone. New Orleans, wherever, but gone and never coming back.”
What was he scared of? He knew the answer and he owed it to Jilly to get over it. “Wanting to be with you the way I do, shakes me up, but I do want it. I couldn’t just drop out.” He tried a smile. “Anyway, you’d track me down and by the time you finished with me, I’d wish I’d stayed put.”
This was going to take more than smiles. Sweat popped out on his brow. He flexed muscles turned stiff with tension.
Once more she extended a hand to him, and he continued up to take a firm hold. When she started to get up, he stopped her and raised her face. One by one, he kissed her eyes shut. Kneeling just below her feet, he raised her left hand to his mouth and rested his lips there.
He knew about turning her soft with his sweetness, Jilly thought. His dishwater hair, bleached at the ends by the sun, stood up where he’d run his fingers through it. She smoothed it absently—the center of her attention hovered where his mouth rested on her hand. Starting at the back of her ankle, he smoothed her skin, moving inch by inch to the touchy place behind her knee. With his fingers curled around, he slid the pad of his thumb back and forth. Her bottom shifted forward on the step and she tried to close herself up tight. She was wet and feared for a moment that she might climax. Sitting there, with Guy at her feet and doing nothing more than passing her hand from his mouth to his cheek, and smoothing that erogenous little place on her leg he seemed to know all about, Jilly felt the building pressure. She sucked her belly in tight and held back.
“Jilly,” he said. “We fight like pros, but I think we could love with just as much…you know what I mean.” Her eyes were closed again, her lips pale and parted as if she couldn’t breathe. Carefully, he shifted his hand to the back of her thigh and felt her jump. “You do know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She leaned over him and pressed his face to her breasts. “When I’m with you I hardly know who I am.”
“You’re Jilly Gable. One sweet, sexy woman, and the things you do to me—I don’t want you to stop doin’ them.”
With his palm under her leg and his fingers curled between her thighs, he moved on until he felt her panties and the sensation of thin fabric moving over hair—and dampness.
He had to hold on. Pulling his head away from her, he sucked on her bottom lip, nipped at it, and massaged between her legs. Her cry was filled with pleasure.
The robe gaped. Except for the panties, she was naked underneath. Loathe to leave her begging for release, but drawn on to take her as high as he could, Guy spread the robe open, and weighted her full breasts. When he stroked around and around, never quite touching her nipples, she arched her back and panted.
Only the picture of pure sexuality that she made kept him from losing everything right then. He wanted to watch her like this for as long as he could hold on.
“Guy,” she whispered. “Come to bed.”
Wonderful words, lady. “Do you have to go anywhere soon, cher?”
“Not unless you’re with me. Do you?”
“No. We’ve got all night and I think we can use it up, don’t you?”
At last he closed his mouth over one of her nipples and she cried out. At the same time, he returned to the hot place between her thighs, slid his thumb inside her panties, along slick flesh, and stroked her there, long and gradually harder.
“Guy!” Her hands fell away from him. She held the edge of a stair and her hips reared up. “This isn’t right.”
“Oh, yes, it is.” He replaced his thumb with his tongue and played out the parody until her release. With his face on her belly, he blew into her navel but stopped long enough to say, “You were ready.”
“Oh.” She lay flat on the landing with her legs resting on the edges of the stairs. “I don’t know what you think of me. I guess I’m a frustrated old maid, huh?”
“Mmm.” He started pulling down her panties.
Of course he needed more. Jilly unsnapped his jeans but couldn’t make more progress with them. She whipped the buttons on his shirt undone instead and he shrugged it off. He raised her bottom and shifted her legs around until he had her completely naked. Laughing, he got rid of his jeans, rolled them up and pushed them beneath her head and shoulders.
“You look like something I ought to eat,” Guy told her. He already had the taste of her on his lips and tongue. His elbows beside her shoulders, his knees somewhere or other, he brought the end of his penis to the opening of the place it wanted to go and poked, just a small poke, and withdrew, and poked again, farther this time.
“You get the tease prize,” Jilly said. She still t
hrobbed, but she was ready for him. “C’mon, please. ”
“We’ve got to savor these moments.” He laughed and said “ouch” when she managed to pinch his butt.
He bounced in and out of her, never going so far he couldn’t retreat.
“Ooh. Guy! Dammit, my back hurts.”
“Romantic,” he told her, chuckling and hurting with his own need. “Okay, you asked for it.” And I want it.
Jilly gasped, and shrieked. Guy picked her up by the waist and ran the last step to the landing, turned and took the steps to her bedroom at a run, almost falling forward with her as he went.
He was afraid he’d kill them both, but what a great death. Turning on a light wasn’t an option. Tumbling with Jilly onto her bed, he drove into her. Two strokes and she pushed at him. “On your back,” she said, and on his back he went.
With her breasts swaying over him, she finished what he’d started far too quickly. “Jilly,” he said, gripping her arms. “Don’t move. Please stay right where you are. Just gimme a little time. Just a few seconds.”
“Long as you want,” she said quietly. “Let me lie on your chest.”
He released her arms and she did as she’d said she would, her breasts flattened to his chest, her damp face tucked into his neck. She stayed closed tight around him and he let his arms spread wide on the bed.
Those seconds he’d mentioned passed, tick, tick, tick, and he was going to show her he didn’t make hollow promises.
“Mmm,” she said, stirring. “I’m getting a message.”
“I’m sending you one. I need to get closer to you, Jilly.”
She rose up and started to move.
“Hold it, cher,” he told her. “Keep still and let me do the work this time. Just don’t let go of me down there. Er, yeah, let me go.”
“But—”
“We’ll both be glad you did.”
He moved fast, diving for the other end of the bed. He arranged Jilly on her side, lifted her upper leg and wriggled until they lay threaded together, a leg in front and a leg behind each other’s body. Guy smoothed her foot, kissed her toes, reveled in feeling their most sensitive parts rubbing together. “Hold my hands,” he said.
She started to giggle but took hold of his hands. “Why are you down there?” she said, choking on her own words. “Oh, man, Guy.”
End to end, literally, nothing stopped him from doing his manly best to reach her throat with his penis from a long, long way down. They ground their entwined fingers together and pulled, rocking, moaning.
He filled her up. The man knew a thing or two and so far she liked whatever he chose to share with her. In the semidarkness, with her head on the pillow and his somewhere beyond her feet, they rocked and pressed, released a fraction, and pulled and drove again. Her heart beat so, she heard it inside her head.
She burned up. He touched inner places with sensations she’d never known of, never hoped to feel. She heard his breathing speed up. They banged together.
“Guy!” Again she climaxed, and in the mad, thundering tumble she heard his voice but not what he said.
He dropped her hand but stroked her stomach and gradually maneuvered himself beside her. “Jilly, sweets, we have wasted a lot of time.”
She turned her head and looked into his shadowy face. “You’re right.”
“I don’t want to waste any more.”
“No.” But she wasn’t foolish enough to think their lives were about to become idyllic. “I’m glad you came tonight.”
He buried his face in the pillow, surrounded her with an arm and pulled her close. “I’m cold.”
Jilly pulled the quilt over them.
“There’s more than sex for us,” he said. “Not that the sex wouldn’t be enough for most people.”
“It would never be enough for me. Let’s leave it there for now, shall we? Wait and see?”
He raised his head and looked at her. “Okay. Of course.” He should feel relieved, so why didn’t he?
13
“Are you stiff, Guy?” Nat said when they’d parked the Pontiac in the closest spot they could find to the address they wanted on Chartres Street. “You hurt somewhere?”
“Hell, no,” Guy said, and he lied.
Delivery trucks clogged the streets in the Quarter. Drivers yelled at anyone and everyone to get out of their way, just as they did every day—not that startled tourists knew the bad banter was just part of the ritual.
Warm mist pressed down and with it, the sweet and not-so-sweet scents of the place. Guy took in a deep breath and coughed. Moisture filled his nostrils and his lungs felt wet.
They were just around the corner on Conti, and a five-minute walk would get them to Jack and Celina Charbonnet’s home on Chartres. “This guy used to be part of the mob?” Guy said. “The Giavanellis?”
“No, no,” Cyrus said. He walked a little ahead of Guy and Nat, probably in a hurry to see his sister, Celina, and the kids, of course. “His father was, and his father was taken out when he tried to quit the family.”
Nat barked out a laugh. “Listen to yourself, Father. Those words roll off your tongue like you say ’em every day.”
“I’ve been around,” Cyrus said, but his grin gave him away. Cyrus wore his collar today and seemed oblivious to the attention he got from females he passed.
“D’you think women just have a thing for priests?” Guy said. He was stiff, dammit, and he had pulled a muscle or two. What he needed was a lot more practice.
Nat elbowed him and drew a hiss. “You are hurtin’, bro. But I guess I’ll leave that alone. Priests are mysterious.” He raised his voice. “Aren’t they, Father Cyrus? Women find priests mysterious, and sexy.”
“Shut up,” Guy said under his breath.
“Absolutely,” Cyrus said. “It gets to be a chore fightin’ them off all the time.”
Nat made explosive sounds and Guy thumped his back. A tall black woman in a rich red robe that showed glimpses of four-inch red heels as she walked, paused in front of Cyrus and said, “Good mornin’, Father,” in the kind of full and deep voice a man never forgot.
Cyrus said, “Good mornin’ to you.”
A beauty with fine features, she wore a red turban and looked, Guy thought, like an exotic goddess. Not that Cyrus would appreciate that idea.
“Father, I’m an honest woman and I got to tell you, I ain’t never seen a better-lookin’ man than you.”
Nat hooked his arm through Guy’s. “Let’s see him get out of this one,” he said.
“I try,” Cyrus said. “But we all have to struggle to please the Lord. Could be I look better than I really am. I’m the pastor at St. Cécil’s in Toussaint. If you’re ever out that way, I hope you’ll celebrate mass with us. Good day to you, friend.”
With a nod and smile, on he walked, leaving the woman to first gawk, then break into the kind of laughter that might come from a perfectly tuned trombone.
“Sheesh,” Nat said, “and I thought she’d manage to embarrass him. Okay, we must be about there.” He dodged a kid on a glitter-covered skateboard. Green glitter. The sidewalk being so narrow meant the three men walked almost in single file.
“Some of these places are worth a fortune,” Guy said. “What am I sayin’? They’re all worth a fortune.” Flats, some with wrought-iron-fronted galleries, stacked above ground-floor shops. Massed petunias overflowed from pots and trailed between railings.
A man in silver shoes, baggy jeans held up by his very round butt and no shirt unfolded from where he’d been curled up on the sidewalk, and danced.
“Man, I love this town,” Nat said, tipping his straw fedora over his eyes.
The dancer twirled, tapped, rose to the tippy toes of his shoes and walked like a cat-man on the prowl. Damp air gave his body a shiny glow.
Nat tossed the guy a bill and Cyrus immediately followed suit. Guy looked heavenward, but added to the man’s purse.
“This is it.” Cyrus stood before a shiny black door with a brass, drago
n-shaped knocker—which he used. “Dragon Prince. Named after a stuffed animal. Two years ago Jack and Celina bought the place next door and made two flats into one. They’ve got three kids now, Amelia is Jack’s, Deck is Celina’s, and Leah is Jack and Celina’s. They’re ten, five and two.”
“You’re sure Jack will be here now?” Guy asked, digesting the idea of stuffed dragons important enough to warrant effigies on door knockers.
The sound of footsteps running downstairs came from inside.
“He will,” Cyrus said. “Most nights Jack’s on his riverboat till late. In the daytime he writes and helps run a major charity with Celina.”
Once bolt and chain were taken off, the door opened and a girl looked out. She didn’t waste time on Guy and Nat but launched herself at Cyrus, leaped from the ground and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Uncle Cyrus,” she said, covering his face with kisses. “I’ve been waiting for you since I woke up.”
“And I’ve been waiting to see you since I woke up, Miss Amelia,” Cyrus said, hugging his niece back. “Maybe we should be quiet if Leah’s asleep.” He set the child on her feet.
Amelia’s black curls reached her shoulders and she had very green eyes. For ten, she was a small girl, all sharp joints and slender limbs—insubstantial. She was also a striking child with the promise of becoming a knockout woman.
“Quit hogging the company,” a woman’s voice called from above. “Cyrus? Get up here, Brother.”
“Leah’s at the park with Tilly.” Amelia looked at Guy and Nat and said, “Tilly is our helper. Uncle Cyrus, sometimes it gets hard with little kids around. We got a break today, though. Deck wanted to stay home, too, but he’s got to practice for a play at school. He’s in kindergarten.” When she said “kindergarten,” she wrinkled her nose.
Cyrus took the child’s hand and walked inside, indicating for Guy and Nat to follow. They climbed steep stairs that turned at the top of the first flight and carried on to where a woman with red hair stood, smiling and beckoning to Cyrus. They wrapped each other in a tight embrace.
A Grave Mistake Page 14