French Quarter

by Stella Cameron

  “I want us to be very comfortable together. This weekend will be the only opportunity we have to get a little used to each other before you move in permanently.”

  Dithery. Α simple question from a mature man to a mature woman, and that woman’s response was to feel like a dithery kid. “Perhaps we should put it off until Amelia’s had more time to get used to the idea.”

  “If things were different, I’d agree.”

  “If things were different, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

  He put his hands in his pockets. “I’m not so sure we wouldn’t eventually have been doing something together, Celina.”

  She had known her share of uncomfortable reactions, but Jack’s ability to make her throb beneath the skin ranked at the top of the intensity scale.

  “Surely, adversity threw us together,” he persisted. “Now. But I couldn’t have remained blind to what you really are forever.”

  “You don’t know what I really am. That kind of thing takes time.”

  “I’m terminatin’ this discussion. We are movin’ on. The front door is locked. There’s just you and me, chère. What do you say? Shall we see how we are together?”

  Celina cast about. She needed to sit down, to think, to regroup.

  “I am too cold,” he told her. “I am an ass. Tell me I’m an ass and you wouldn’t stay with me if I were the last man on earth. Shall we see how we are together? I’m sorry.”

  His frown revealed the vulnerability he usually hid completely. His frown and the worried set of his features, the way he ducked his head to study her face.

  “I’m not sorry, Jack. I’ll leave a message for Cyrus so he’ll know I’m not coming back tonight.”

  Once Jack Charbonnet hadn’t known a moment’s uncertainty with a woman. He didn’t feel uncertain now, did he? Strange, because the situation was strange, maybe, but not uncertain.

  He felt uncertain.

  In a quaint, old-world way, the two-floor apartment delighted Celina. She’d dutifully allowed Jack to show her around—more quickly than she would have preferred tonight—before ushering her into his bedroom. Two small rooms separated the master bedroom from Amelia’s little-girl-feminine domain. Celina had acknowledged to herself that she’d calculated the layout of the rooms because she worried about sleeping with Jack and having his small daughter very near. The rooms between relieved her.

  Sleeping with Jack.

  They’d kissed. Danced in a courtyard in the sun. Held each other a couple of times. He’d “talked dirty,” to shock her—she smiled at that, while she observed how he drew heavy bronze-colored draperies over the windows. Their shared experience was almost nothing, yet he’d coolly asked her to spend the night, and she’d coolly accepted. Not coolly, but she had accepted.

  Jack faced her across the bed and thought that the colors in his room might have been chosen for her. Against the browns, beiges, and dull golds her skin took on a bloom, and the red in her hair became more obvious.

  “I haven’t been sleeping too well, Celina.”

  “It’s hard,” she told him. “We’ve been through so much.”

  “I wasn’t talking about what happened to Errol. I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about him, but you’ve been the one on my mind at night.”

  Her eyes were the kind that held a person’s soul. And if they were hiding a whole lot, he’d be surprised. She was full of hope, hope that they’d pull off a miracle and form a great relationship from the bones of a disaster. She wanted him to care about her, not just for her. And she wanted to care for him. He was sure those were the hopes he saw in her eyes. She’d give this thing her best shot.

  And he was turning into a romantic fool at the age of thirty-seven, when any man ought to know better.

  Romantic? Or had he deprived himself of a woman for long enough to make him mistake hormones for emotions. Dangerous stuff.

  He looked away.

  “I’m afraid to hope for anything,” she told him quietly. “I’m afraid we’re making a horrible mistake. I— From the first time I met you I’ve felt something. That thing you feel when— You took my breath away.” She laughed, and he returned his eyes to hers. “This should be taped and given to women in danger of making fools of themselves over men. It would save them.”

  “If it was taped and given to men who thought they didn’t need or want someone in their lives, it would change their minds.” He was stepping in too deep to climb out, but, hell, he was a big boy. If this was a giant error, he’d survive.

  Celina felt light-headed. Not the kind of light-headed she’d come to dread, but the kind she’d only read about. He didn’t have to say these things. “We won’t be the first couple to decide to make a marriage work, Jack. We’ve both got good reasons, the best reasons.” She refused to examine all her own too deeply. A pregnant woman was known to be susceptible to her emotions, and hers were trying to lead her around.

  “I don’t have anything to wear to bed.” An instant flush suffused her entire body. She blushed entirely too easily these days. “Perhaps I could borrow something?”

  The brilliant twinkle in his eyes only intensified the heat she felt. He spread his arms and said, “What’s mine is yours. Anythin’ that appeals, just appropriate it, chère. I don’t expect anythin’, you know. Just your company, to hold you, and feel you. I’ve become a very lonely man and I didn’t know it until I suddenly knew I was going to have you.”

  Either he was the most talented seducer in the world, or he was saying the only things she needed to hear to feel she could be in love with him and like it. “You’re being very kind to me. she said, plucking at braided piping on the quilt. “We both know you don’t have to be lonely for one second unless you want to be.”

  “A warm and willing body doesn’t guarantee you aren’t lonely,” he said, and he blessed the words that came to his aid so easily tonight. The right words, or so he thought from the gently accepting expression on Celina’s face. He would have to be very careful with her. She was so damn fragile. “Would you feel more comfortable if I slept on the couch?”

  She glanced at the couch in question. Books and magazines covered one end. Dull marks on the table in front of it were evidence that he’d spent hours reading there with his feet propped on the wood.

  “A reading man,” she commented. “You already told me that. I wouldn’t hear of you disturbin’ your books. I can tell you know exactly where every one of them is.”

  He chuckled. “I surely do.”

  They had fenced long enough. She went to the open bathroom door and looked inside. The brown marble was probably original. It was rich. Towels the color of chocolate were heaped on a low rattan cabinet.

  “There’s a new toothbrush in the top drawer on the left,” he said behind her. “Do you want a T-shirt, or one of my regular shirts?”

  “I don’t like being restricted when…anything.”

  “I’ll pull out some things for you to choose from.”

  He could have made a crack about what would offer the least restriction in bed. She admired his sense of the appropriate.

  Appropriate? Her life was the most inappropriate life imaginable, yet she was dissecting this man’s behavior?

  “Would you like to take a warm shower? It might relax you.”

  “I showered before I left Royal Street.”

  “Well, I’ll put out the shirts. I should check some things out before I come to bed.”

  Come to bed.

  The simplest comments took on intense significance when you were about to…She wasn’t an innocent kid anymore. “You mean you think you should go away and give me a discreet amount of time to get ready for bed. It’s not necessary.”

  Deliberately avoiding eye contact, she turned back to the bedroom, where he was tossing shirts on the bed. “That’s enough, thank you. Anything will do. Just throw me one.”

  He shouldn’t feel so triumphant that she didn’t intend to procrastinate. He shouldn’t feel so damnably turned on e
ither, should he? She’d been right when she said this was a convenience thing. “Will a long T-shirt work? It’s huge, which should mean it’ll be comfortable.”

  “Great. The bigger the better under the circumstances.” She laughed.

  Jack didn’t.

  As she’d suggested, he threw the shirt to her and she caught it one-handed.

  Celina Payne put that T-shirt on the end of the couch and commenced to strip. She kicked off her brown sandals, stripped off her baggy white gauze pants, took her loose white top off over her head.

  She obviously had no intention of looking at him while she executed her brave performance, and he identified it as brave. This woman might have been Miss Louisiana—and that was no surprise right now—but he was increasingly certain she was shy in some ways.

  And some bastard raped her.

  He took a deep breath and forced away the images he’d started having, images that made him sweat with rage.

  Her belly was more than gently rounded, her legs very long and perfectly shaped. She folded her pants and put them on the couch cushion that wasn’t covered with books. Then she folded the matching top and added it. The sandals she placed precisely beside each other.

  Jack came close to commenting that he hadn’t noted her being particularly tidy in her own bedroom.

  Standing before him in only her white bra and panties, she caused the kind of erection that wasn’t going away without some satisfaction. His question about red hair was answered. He could see the triangle clearly through thin nylon. “You are the stuff of wet dreams,” he said, and looked at the ceiling. “I’m losing it. That was unforgivable.”

  Her laugh made him smile. She said, “I don’t think either of us has rehearsed this particular scene too many times. Some of the lines are coming too smoothly.”

  “Thank you,” he told her. “For bailing me out.”

  Her smile disappeared. “I thought I might—I thought this might be hard after what happened to me. So far, so good.” She reached behind her to undo her bra and take it off.

  “I would never force you, Celina—do anything—or hurt you.”

  She nodded.

  Jack couldn’t look away from her breasts. Large, undoubtedly larger than usual, they were round, the big, honey-colored nipples just a little uptilted. A faint tracing of blue veins traversed very pale skin.

  He unbuttoned and took off his own shirt. And he didn’t decide to approach her, he just did. Approached and framed her face, turned it up to his. “Are you still okay?” he asked her quietly. “I don’t ever want to do something to frighten you—or put you off.”

  “I’m okay, Jack. Very okay.”

  Restraining the fierceness that would have made him wild, he kissed Celina. With his tongue he eased her mouth open, then tasted the moist flesh inside.

  She kissed him back, stood on tiptoe, slipped her arms around his neck, and kissed him as if she needed the kind of meal he had in mind.

  Still he held himself back. The time to let go would come, but not tonight.

  Her breasts pressed his chest. He felt each nipple, hard and more erotic than anything he ever remembered. His breath started to come in shorter bursts. He moved his hands from her waist, upward between their bodies until he could spread his first fingers and thumbs on the undersides of her breasts. Not enough. He pushed them upward.

  Celina gasped, and he remembered. “Tender, still? I’m sorry.”

  “No,” she murmured. “It’s so great. I didn’t think …”

  He pulled his head back and looked down into her face. “You didn’t think pregnant women were supposed to be interested in sex. Yeah, you already said somethin’ like that. And I told you this was the way it would be. At least, I think you may not mind.”

  He looked down at his hands on her breasts. Tanned skin on white flesh that never saw the sun. He would have to control himself if he was going to last. Very carefully he plucked at her aroused nipples, and she moaned.

  “Did you want to clean your teeth?” he asked, fighting for a shred of composure. “I don’t want you to think I’m a complete animal”

  Her eyes were glazed. Slowly they cleared. “Come with me,” she whispered. “I want you with me.” She surprised him by taking his hand and tugging him into the bathroom with every sign of not caring that she was all but naked in front of him.

  Jack found her a toothbrush and took it from its package.

  And all the time she touched him, his shoulder, his chest, a nipple, his jaw, his mouth. He was dying a great death, but dying nevertheless. And loving it.

  He let her go on touching him and put toothpaste on her brush before handing it to her. She turned to the sink and turned on the water, and looked at him in the mirror when she bent over.

  Her panties were cut high and showed off a firm bottom that punched the wind out of him yet again. Jack’s attention went back to her breasts. They were incredible.

  “Hold them,” she said.

  Α liquid sensation hardened the muscles in his thighs. He was hard everywhere that mattered, everywhere that had nerves he particularly valued.

  “Jack?”

  Praying for self-control, he traced her spine vertebra by vertebra, stroked her sides, tucked his fingers under her bottom, and ran his thumbs down the cleft while her muscles tensed and she jerked upright.

  “Sorry,” he said, not sorry at all. When she bent to brush her teeth some more, he put his arms under hers and obeyed her command to hold her breasts. “Such a sacrifice,” he managed to mutter. “Oh, chère, I must have been waitin’ for you.”

  With her mouth full of toothpaste, she couldn’t answer him, but she grazed her bottom back and forth over his distended penis. He squeezed her breasts in automatic reaction, and she strained to rub him harder.

  “Finish the teeth,” he said through his own. “They’re as clean as they need to be.”

  She rinsed her mouth, still bumping and enticing him with her sweet derriere.

  Jack took a hand from her breasts, rested it on her belly for a second, then slipped inside her panties to find the wet, distended spot buried in springy little red curls. He stroked her clitoris softly, insistently, and smiled—with his teeth still gritted—when she let out a keening sound and locked her elbows to gain some stability.

  He kissed her back and kept on stimulating her. Her breasts swayed against his hand, and her pelvis moved rhythmically, making sure his fingers didn’t err. He dipped into the slick essence inside her, and continued his task—his pleasure, and hers.

  “I’m.. . Jack, I can’t say what I am. Or what I want. Ah! Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

  “Oh, I’m not stoppin’, darlin’. Give yourself to me. Just let me take you where you want to go.”

  “I’m going. Yes, yes, I’m going!”

  “Coming.” He smiled against her smooth back. “Come, sweet thing. Come to me.”

  The intensity of what he made her feel ripped through Celina. He slid his fingers inside her repeatedly, making the entry a prelude to stoking the fire that hovered ready to explode.

  His penis pressed against her bottom. She wanted her panties off. Holding on to the counter with one hand, she worked them down but couldn’t get them off entirely.

  She climaxed. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her head back against his shoulder. And she shuddered, and abandoned herself to voluptuous wanting.

  They had only just begun this night.

  Celina turned in his arms and brushed her breasts slowly from side to side on his chest. The grazing of his hair on her nipples was an exquisite torture. Her tentativeness when she went to touch his crotch surprised her, but she quelled any remaining fragment of hesitation and slipped both her hands under him. His scrotum was drawn up, tight and hard and heavy. Squeezing, she watched his face. He nodded, and Celina squeezed him again. She was overwhelmed with the need to give him as much pleasure as he’d given her.

  Her fingers dealt with his pants as if she undid men’s clo
thes every day. She didn’t even fumble. Sliding around to test the hardness of his buttocks was irresistible. She found the intensity of his stare, the repeated flexing of muscles in his jaw, a total turn-on.

  There was danger in that stare, the most irresistible danger. “Okay,” she told him. “You’re impatient. I can take a hint. Your turn, Jack.” She pushed him away enough to allow her to kneel, and she tugged his pants down far enough to let him spring free. He made a sound she thought was a protest, but she shut it out and took him deep into her mouth.

  Lust. She lusted for him. It sang in her ears and pulsed in her veins, this lust for a man, something she’d never guessed herself capable of experiencing.

  “Celina, I’m goin’ nuts, chère. Oh, God, you’re drivin’ me mad. Oh…oh, yes.”

  She clung to him when he would have bucked her off with his pelvis, and swallowed, and couldn’t believe she was this kind of woman—without inhibitions—with this man.

  He could have fallen to the floor so easily. She’d sucked him dry while she revved him up at the same time. There had never been anything like this for him. He couldn’t even summon another experience of any kind at this moment.

  “Now, lovely lady,” he said when he could speak. “Now we have played enough. You will allow me to decide on the rest of our entertainment, yes?” He heard his own tendency to summon up more of his French roots when he was close to losing all control. And he was close in the best possible way.

  “Jack,” she said, her face turned up to him.

  He bent to kiss her, and used the advantage of her upraised hands to capture and sweep her into his arms.

  “I’m heavy,” she protested.

  “You weigh nothing.” Not that he’d notice if she did. “I’m going to settle for lamplight.”

  “Lamplight?”

  “You probably didn’t notice there’s no sun at the moment.”

  He kicked aside his trousers and shoes and carried her, pushing against him and making sounds of protest, into the corridor outside his bedroom.

  “Jack! We’re naked. What if someone comes?”

  “They’d have to break down the door. I’d hear them. Or they could fly up to the gallery. I don’t believe in flying people.”