by Ju Ephraime
“Foxx,” Raymond greeted him. This was Foxx? There was no way. The liquor was still playing tricks on her because this man appeared to be Wolfe. But when he turned to her and extended his hand, the smile he gave her was warm and welcoming. There was none of Wolfe’s dangerous look. And, where Wolfe’s eyes were black as obsidian, Foxx’s were hazel-green, giving him a friendly look.
His features were blunt and strong. His wide-bridged nose sat with perfect balance between the distinct planes of his high cheekbones. His overall features were too strong to be considered handsome, but his wide hazel-green eyes, surrounded by extremely long, curling lashes, could only be described with one word—gorgeous!
These were three lethal men she had surrounded herself with this night. Thank the gods Foxx had evidently brought his wife along.
“Foxx, didn’t we agree there’d be no wives?” Raymond asked him, giving him a slap on the back but giving the woman a kiss and a hug.
Turning to her, he introduced the woman. “Therèse, Gabrielle, Gabrielle, Therèse. Foxx’s wife, in case you didn’t already guess. He’s attached to her at the hip.”
“Don’t pay him any mind, Gabrielle,” Foxx chimed in. “If I’m attached to my wife in any way, it’s most certainly not at the hip. Ask her if you don’t believe me.”
That broke the ice, and everyone began to laugh. Foxx helped his wife to a seat on the loveseat next to Gabrielle, and she was soon engaged in conversation with her while Raymond and Foxx continued throwing silly jokes at each other. Therèse spoke fluent French, but with a distinct British accent, so she gathered Therèse was originally from England, though she’d been living on the island for almost a year now.
Gabrielle was curious to know if she ever missed England, but Therèse quickly told her no, she did not. Turned out, Foxx and Therèse had only been married a little over a year, and they were having their first child. She was happy wherever Foxx was, and it happened to be Martinique. They planned on taking their child to visit when he or she is able to walk.
They had decided against knowing the baby’s sex, prior to the delivery. She didn’t plan on having another one for at least four or five years. She hoped Foxx could control himself long enough to allow the baby to get to that stage. She wanted her children to know her home—know where she hailed from.
Therèse seemed cool with the fact that she had gotten pregnant so soon after they were married, but Raymond was not cutting Foxx any slack.
“What’s the deal, brother? Are you so determined to keep your wife barefoot and pregnant that you couldn’t give the woman a chance to get acclimatized to the island?” he said, with a snicker behind his hand.
“These men are like overgrown kids when they get together,” Therèse told her, smiling as she looked at her husband with so much love it was almost painful to watch.
It was very apparent that Therèse loved her husband to death. Just then, as if he felt her looking at him, he turned to her and gave her a wink. She smiled and blushed a bright red as she lowered her gaze. It was very apparent to Gabrielle that, even being pregnant, Foxx and his wife were very much in love with each other. She was again thinking how uncanny that these two men looked so much alike, yet their personalities were totally different. Just then Wolfe walked in.
She soon realized that calling their resemblance to each other uncanny was a vast understatement. She would soon have to conclude that if any two people were joined at the hip it was Wolfe and Foxx. They communicated without talking. She didn’t know how they did it, and she looked.
Their ability to communicate non-verbally with each other became apparent to her during dinner that their waiter began serving the minute Wolfe joined them. They all moved to the large table that took up most of the center of the main room.
*****
The dinner was first-class. Everything was superbly prepared. The first course, the appetizer, was foie gras, perfectly executed and served with green bananas caramelized with rum and pineapple. The main course was a robust and tender beef marinated in cocoa, orange, and cardamom. There was even a roasted suckling pig for those who were partial to pork. There were tiny hors d'oeuvres between the servings and lots of drinks. She stuck to a virgin punch, which turned out to be the perfect choice, allowing her to taste every morsel of this delicious food. The final course was champagne sorbet with vanilla and orange.
All during dinner, she was fascinated with the way Wolfe would look up to reach for something and Foxx would somehow know to hand it to him, and this was the same between Foxx and him. She knew identical twins had a special bond, but this appeared to be a shared brain because they didn’t speak, but each knew what the other was thinking. She thought it uncanny. She didn’t know if she would like it if she were a twin. She wondered if they felt each other’s emotions also. Now that would be freaky.
After dinner, they all returned to the large sitting room, and Wolfe put on a movie. It was an old Western movie with subtitles. It turned out to be a lot of fun, with Raymond and Foxx making her laugh so hard she felt as if she’d know them forever. Wolfe was fun too, but his was a drier, cynical humor. He seldom laughed out loud, but it appeared no one expected it. It was enough when he favored them with one of his devastating smiles.
Soon it was time for them to go their separate ways. She wanted to remind Raymond to get the coat from his brother. She soon found out that was not going to happen that night. It turned out that Wolfe had not gone back to his home to retrieve the coat, and now it was too late to even contemplate doing so. Another delay tactic. This time the coat would have to be delivered in the morning to her hotel. This was a promise from Raymond.
She had too much of a good time with them to show her annoyance, but she caught both Wolfe and Foxx giving her strange looks, so she thought she had better appear as if the coat was not important to her. These two were like bloodhounds and would probably soon sniff out her secret. And she didn’t want that. She liked Raymond a lot and wanted to get to know him better. If he found out her secret, he would soon part ways with her, and she wouldn’t blame him. Who’d want to be friends with someone with her secret? She was so not worthy.
Chapter Ten
It was 1:30 in the morning before they left the restaurant. They all left at the same time. Wolfe said he would be leaving soon after them, but he had to talk with his manager about the next day’s menu before he left.
The night was calm with a cool, soft breeze blowing off the ocean as they drove back to her hotel. Her thoughts were all over the place. Although, she was grateful for the companionable silence, she liked talking with Raymond.
“Why are you so quiet?” she asked
Raymond was dreading the long drive back to Gabrielle’s hotel. He wanted to spend some time with her, but he was a bit reluctant with that coat hanging over their heads. What was it with that coat? Why was it so important to her? Why had she taken his coat with her and left hers in the taxi? Had it been deliberate?
These troubling thoughts kept going through his mind, and on top of that, he wanted so badly to continue from where they’d left off in her hotel. This was a situation if ever there was one. Wolfe and Foxx had told him to be careful until they got some information they had sent for from one of his contacts in Paris. It should be arriving in the morning, and by then, they would have gone over the coat again, a bit more thoroughly this time.
He felt like a heel. He didn’t want them to find out any derogatory information about her, and he was certain there was a perfectly good explanation about her desire to get her coat back. After all was said and done, it was her coat. But, if it was anything illegal, and she had used him to bring it into or out of the country, then that made it his business.
God, what was he to do? He couldn’t even work up the energy to make small-talk with her. That coat was like the proverbial elephant between them. This was by no means what he wanted between them. He wanted to feel himself sinking into her hot sheath and hearing her calling his name as he made sweet love t
o her. They were almost halfway to her hotel, and he didn’t know how to break this barrier that had sprung up between them.
It made for an awkward drive, but God forgive him, he was at a loss until she broke the ice by making a statement about Foxx.
“Foxx seems to be crazy about his wife,” she said.
“No kidding. Crazy is putting it mildly. He almost lost his mind when she refused his offer of marriage and went back to her family in England. I wasn't here, but to hear Wolfe tell it, that man suffered for two whole years. And you know if Foxx suffered, then so did Wolfe.”
“But they're together now. What happened?”
“Therèse returned for her man. It turned out there was a big misunderstanding between her and her friends who had initially accompanied her on the trip when she’d met Foxx. They didn’t want her to stay on the island with him. One of her friends had the hots for Therèse.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“I’m afraid I kid you not. When she’d turned down his marriage proposal, poor Foxx didn’t have a clue. Before he could recover from her rejection, her friends had wasted no time in getting her out of the country. They had her on the next flight out of the island.”
“Oh my, that must have been devastating.”
“Don’t feel sorry for Foxx. He gave her a merry dance when she returned and tried to pick up where they’d left off. He got his pound of flesh from her and then some. Wolfe had to talk to him to get him to see reason.”
“This is fascinating. I know he listens to Wolfe. They seemed unnaturally close.”
“That they are, but as much as you think he appears to be easy going, he can be as stubborn as a mule.”
“You don’t say. That’s why they say nothing is as it seems.”
Thinking about her and her coat, he had to agree, whole-heartedly.
“So what made him finally accept her?”
“It would have been funny had it not been Foxx. The friend who had the hots for Therèse followed her back here and threatened to kill her if she couldn’t have her for herself.”
“Stop it, Raymond, this is too much. It sounds like something out of the movies.”
“I can assure you it’s not. It all happened. You should get Therèse to tell you the entire thing one day. That’s if you’re still here. Talking of which, where are you going from here?”
“I told you, back to St. Barth. I have to complete my assignment there and, from there, back to good ol’ Paris. I was only able to put in one shoot before I had to leave to come and get my coat.”
“I must show you a good time before you leave,” he said.
“I'd like that very much,” she told him, with a laugh. “I can’t get over the drama with Foxx and Therèse. She seemed like a nice, easygoing person. She invited me to her home for lunch tomorrow. I didn’t rent a vehicle, but I can still do that tomorrow morning.”
“Why? I’m available to take you wherever you want to go. I’m at your disposal for the duration of your stay here. Being on vacation and renting a vehicle is no fun.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“You have no idea what I’d do for you,” he said, staring at her intensely.
*****
She was happy he appeared to be back in his old flirty mood. She liked him better that way. She suspected the fact that she kept asking about the coat was causing him to be suspicious of her, and she didn’t blame him. She would have felt the same, used. Granted, when she had entered into the coat thing, she had never met Raymond. Now that she had, she felt she was not deserving of his friendship, but she might never see him again and would like to pick up from where they’d left off earlier. Just thinking of the way he’d made her feel was enough to have her feeling flush all over.
The problem was she didn’t want to invite him back to her hotel and have him refuse her. She didn’t think she could handle the humiliation of his rejection. On the other hand, what did she have to lose? She made up her mind. If he showed no signs of going up to her room with her, she would take the bull by the horns and ask him directly. He could only say no, but somehow she doubted he would.
Fully focused on enticing him back to her room, she had no idea her body temperature had risen and, with it, her pheromones, triggering her natural scent, with its overtones of wild orchid. Sitting this close to her in the vehicle, the scent of wild orchids hit him in waves, the scent of her filling his lungs. His body was on fire as his erection sprang up, as painful as it was hard. This was the second time in one night he was so violently aroused by that woman, and his body didn’t handle being aroused and not being satiated too well. He had to have her tonight. He didn’t give a damn about her coat. He would worry about that afterward.
The urgency building in him was that of a man deprived of water for days and now suddenly hearing the sound of flowing water. There was no way he could resist it. He wasn’t strong enough. God help him.
As he crested the hill and the light of her hotel came into view, he thought his cock had developed a life of its own, thick and hard, demanding to be sated now. He’d never had such an extreme reaction to a woman in his life. He would be in deep shit if she did not want to play like she had earlier.
He hoped to God this didn’t happen because he knew he’d be sick the next day. As a rule, he didn’t tease his cock and leave it unsated. He paid for it later with a massive headache. But this reaction to her was not something he was initiating. It was as if this woman had some type of venez à moi, come to me, on her, and one whiff of it was enough to set him off like a dog after a bitch in heat.
He had to get a hold of himself if he didn’t want to scare her away. The way he felt right now he could take her in the car, now. Deep breaths, deep breaths, he told himself. He was so focused on staying calm he was not aware he was repeating the chant loud enough that she heard him, even if she didn’t understand exactly what he was saying and why.
“What are you reciting?” she asked.
That shook him. “What? I’m not reciting anything.”
“Yes, you were muttering something, almost like a chant. I thought it was a tune you were humming, but then you didn’t appear to be enjoying it. So I asked myself, why would Raymond be humming a tune he doesn’t appear to be enjoying?”
He was saved from giving her an answer. They had arrived at her hotel—phew! That was a close call.
He accompanied her from the car to the hotel, and not giving her the opportunity to change her mind, he offered to walk her to her room.
“Come, let me see you to your room.” Taking her hand and not waiting for her to answer, he accompanied her to the elevator. When the elevator closed on them, he reached for her at the same time she reached for him. They came together like two starved animals. There was no holding back, no restraint. He wanted her, and she, in turn, wanted him. What was not to love?
When the elevator door opened, they were almost already out of their clothes. The short distance from the elevator to her room was covered at a run. He was all over her the moment the door closed behind him. He devoured her mouth, giving her no time to breathe or change her mind. His tongue demanded entrance. It was not time for the gentle, probing kisses he’d given her earlier. He scraped his teeth along the seam of her lips, and she opened for him. He was in, and boy, he felt the relief pulsating through his entire body. He was practically panting in his frantic desire to have her naked in his arms.
It was obvious she was just as frantic. She slid her hand under his shirt, and before he knew it, it was off. She was making whimpering sounds in her throat, and it was driving him wild. He was debating whether or not he should take it all the way, but the sound she was making was wearing down his defenses. All rational thoughts flew out of his head as he lifted her and took her into the bedroom. Throwing her onto the bed, he followed her. Her dress was half off, and he slowed down enough to get the back undone so she could wiggle out of it. The bra and panties followed. When she raised her head from removing her pa
nties, he was naked, having made short work of his shoes, pants, and underwear. He had long since lost his shirt.
He couldn’t tell who was breathing more raggedly, him or her? She was so beautiful lying there like an offering to the gods that he wanted to have that image impressed on his mind forever. He crawled over her, his mouth moving over soft, succulent flesh, his tongue blazing a trail as he licked and sucked his way up to her gorgeous breasts. Covering the right breast with his hand, he applied slight pressure to the nipple while his mouth closed on her left breast, drawing deep.
She moaned and writhed under him, holding his head to her breast, and she arched her back to give him more of it. Opening her legs, she wrapped her legs around his waist, and the heated dampness of her pussy was exposed to his hungry flesh as she ground herself against him, driving him further out of his mind.
He fed on her breasts, first one then the other, tugging and rolling her nipples between his teeth, his tongue licking at them to ease the sting. She was so responsive to his every touch, to his mouth and hands on her body. He needed her to want him with the same intensity that he wanted her. He needed her on fire.
He couldn’t get enough of her. He was consumed by the taste of her, the wild, exotic, spicy scent that seemed to drive him even higher than he already was.
Moving down her body, he positioned his shoulders between her thighs and prepared himself for a feast. The first swipe of his tongue through her hot, slick folds had her bucking, almost throwing him off her, but wrapping his arms around her hips, he kept her still as he continued to feast.
*****
Gabrielle thrashed her head from side to side against the pillow as her breath slammed out of her lungs. Her sheath spasmed as the need to feel him inside her overrode all sense of decency. She tried to reach down and guide him inside her, but he held her down easily, resisting her attempts.