To her mind, this was no coincidence. It was proof that she and Justin were destined to find the killer together.
“I’m such a hell of a private investigator,” he muttered, “that I had to be hit over the head before seeing the similarities between their deaths.”
“But you didn’t know Erica and Sophie were connected in any way.”
“But I should have been the one to make the connection,” he insisted.
Justin’s expression grew dark once more and it was obvious that he was turning in on himself. Lucy imagined the pain he must have felt when Erica Vaughn’s body had been found.
The guilt…
“You can’t blame yourself,” she said gently.
“I can. And I do.”
Feeling his agony, Lucy leaned forward on her stool so she could wrap her arms around Justin and she nestled her forehead against his collarbone. The gesture was meant to comfort him, and perhaps for a moment it did.
Then heat began to penetrate her. The heat of his body. The way he stirred against her, she guessed their closeness was affecting him in exactly the same way.
“Oh, Lu-u-cille,” Justin murmured, as he caught her mouth in a sweet, savage kiss.
Part of her knew this was wrong. That she should back off before they got caught in something they couldn’t stop. Before she did something irreversible, something that would get him killed.
But another part of her couldn’t help herself. One kiss, she thought. Just one kiss. Surely that couldn’t hurt. Surely that was making her feel good, better than she ever remembered feeling before.
She couldn’t stop, not now, not while his tongue plunged deep inside her mouth, the rhythm making her think of him plunging deep inside her.
He swept his hands over her breasts and it was all she could do not to jump him. Her nipples hardened and the soft flesh ached for more. The ache spread outward and lower—especially lower to her most tender flesh—and she wondered if just one kiss wasn’t just one big, fat mistake.
Before she could end it, he pulled her out of the chair and up against the length of his body. And then she felt him, hard and long, throbbing through their clothing against her leg. Hands cradling her bottom, he repositioned her before him so his erection pressed low against her belly. Oh, the sensations that spread through her like wildfire! Her hips moved of their own volition so that she could touch him to her center, and she wanted more than anything to rid them both of all garments so she could feel him deep inside her.
Closing her eyes, she could imagine it—her straddling him, dancing her bottom over his belly and thighs, teasing his cock with her wet flesh, then plunging down its length.
She moaned and he swallowed the sound as if he were having the same fantasy.
As if he’d had the same dreams.
Dreams!
Good grief, what in the world was she thinking? This was supposed to be just a kiss, not a prelude to the world’s best sex!
Lucy slid her palms against Justin’s chest, and pushed at him. He didn’t give over easily, though, and allowed her no more than a little breathing room.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered in a sexy voice.
She looked into those bedroom eyes, and knew exactly what he wanted. It was what she wanted, as well. It was what they couldn’t have, at least now. Maybe someday, after the killer was behind bars, maybe then.
In the meantime, she couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t admit she’d seen him shot because of her.
Feeling bad at having to do this, she murmured in return, “We’re allowing ourselves to be distracted.”
“We deserve a distraction.”
“But not at the expense of our concentration. Erica and Sophie deserve to have their killer caught. By us. We owe it to them.”
Lucy figured her sounding so reasonable was what made Justin back off. But then his expression closed as if she’d shamed him. Now she felt worse.
“You’re right, of course.” He checked his watch. “We have some time. Maybe I’ll go online, see if anything new has happened in the Vaughn case since I’ve been gone.”
“Sure. And I have a couple of calls to make. If you don’t mind, that is.”
“Not a bit.”
Now they were playing at being polite strangers, Lucy thought, hating the pretense. Her body was screaming at her, telling her that she was an idiot, that she should take pleasure while she had the opportunity.
But the opportunity was already missed. Justin had already turned his back on her and was at his computer. Not knowing what else to do, Lucy climbed the steps up to the loft bedroom where she could make those calls in privacy.
But to do so, she had to lie across his bed. The bed. The one in her dreams.
Nope. She wasn’t going there. Instead, she hunkered down on the floor and made her first call.
IF THEY DIDN’T get Lucy Ryan and permanently shut her mouth soon, not only would his career be ended, but he would see the inside of a cell at the very least. He didn’t intend for that to happen. He’d never intended to commit multiple murders in the first place, but what was done was done. He couldn’t go back and change things now.
It was all that little bitch Theresa Vaughn’s fault.
He stared at his bodyguards. They both stood there, unable to face him. Walter was checking his nails, while Phil was wiping some invisible speck of dirt off his damn shoe.
“What do you mean, you can’t find her?” he demanded, trying to keep his blood pressure from rising sky-high. “I got you the name and address that goes with the license plate number, didn’t I? Do I need to draw you a map?”
“We found the place, boss,” Phil said. “I’m telling you, she took a powder.”
Walter added, “She was gone when we got there. Her roommate, too.”
So they’d just given up and come back here to report to him. He poured himself a bourbon and tossed it back. The liquor burned its way into his gut, calming him some.
“Did it occur to you that she might return?” he asked, trying like hell to keep his voice reasonable.
His bodyguards looked at each other and shrugged.
“Well, why am I surprised?” he muttered to himself. “I want that place watched 24/7, do you understand? One of you is to be on it at all times.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Phil said. “We’re gonna be right on it now.”
“Good. Don’t let her slip through her fingers again or—”
“Or what?” Walter asked with a glimmer in his eyes that looked like a counterthreat.
“Or we’ll all suffer the consequences,” he said. “We were seen together, so we’ll all be held responsible. Don’t forget that.”
It wouldn’t do to rile Walter, especially. He had a vicious temper. Plus, he needed them to cooperate, to help him find Lucy Ryan.
He needed them to finish her off.
He wouldn’t rest until they did.
10
ZEKE MONTPLAISIR was indeed a good-looking Creole boy, just as Emile had described the bartender at Music of the Night. Heck, Zeke was probably the prettiest thing going in the place with his perfect café-au-lait skin, a burnished buzz cut and smoky eyes.
Lucy took a long look around the club.
There seemed to be as many threesomes as couples, and they weren’t simply engaged in talk. Sitting with her back to the bar, Lucy watched a woman who was dancing between two men. The one in front seemed to be plunging his tongue down her throat and not-too-subtly cupping her breasts, while the one behind her was pressing up against her bottom so intimately he might as well be…
Then she realized they were imitating a scantily clad threesome dancing on the other side of the room.
Actually, a lot of the customers were scantily dressed.
“What have we walked into?” Lucy murmured, spinning her stool toward Justin.
She made the mistake of leaning close enough so they wouldn’t be overheard. Immediately, his heat drove into her, making her want to get even c
loser. Justin dipped his head so his breath laved her cheek, and longing washed over her.
“Looks like a professional meet-and-greet,” he murmured in her ear. “Or you could simply call this a sex club.”
“No wonder the cover charge was so high!”
Indeed, the customers in the club appeared to be interested in one thing, and it wasn’t the music. Everyone seemed to be coming on to someone—or several someones—in every imaginable combination. Dotted around the club were alcoves with velvet-upholstered booths and curtains that could be pulled for privacy. Some of the occupants should already have pulled them, Lucy thought, getting a load of the action.
“Do they rent rooms upstairs, as well?” she asked, only half-joking.
“Why?” Justin arched an eyebrow. “Want to try one out? We can ask Zeke here.”
“Ask Zeke what?” The bartender set a beer and a glass of wine in front of them. “That’ll be twenty.”
When she got a closer look at Zeke, Lucy realized he was wearing eyeliner and eyeshadow that had been artfully smudged to give him that smoky-eyed look.
Justin gave him a twenty and another five for a tip, but he didn’t put away his wallet. “Actually, we do have a couple of questions for you.”
“Shoot.”
“About a woman who was here three or four weeks ago.”
“I’m not sure my memory is all that good.”
“Here’s some encouragement.” Justin slipped him a fifty, which Zeke quickly pocketed.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he promised.
“Her name’s Sophie Delacorte. She reads tarot at Jackson Square.”
“Sophie, yeah, sure I know her. She’s a regular, tries picking up new clients who want their own psychic. Haven’t seen her recently, though.”
Not surprising, considering Sophie was dead, but Lucy wouldn’t volunteer that info. Nor Justin, either.
“On the night in question, she was with a woman,” Justin said. “A tall blonde named Erica Vaughn.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Think back hard.” He slipped the bartender another fifty for his effort.
“Maybe you’ll remember the ring she wore,” Lucy said. Zeke looked like the type who would appreciate an eye-popping piece of jewelry—he wore enough gold himself. “Big ring, middle finger. topaz and gold inlaid with rubies and emeralds.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember that ring, all right. And the woman,” he added.
“What is it you remember exactly about Erica Vaughn?” Justin asked.
“Only that she was looking for someone.”
“Her sister?” Lucy asked.
“Could be.”
“In this club? Her sister’s only eighteen—”
“Whoa! We check identification carefully. We can’t afford to let underage kids with fake IDs in here. She wasn’t here, so don’t get your shorts in a twist.”
“But Erica did meet Sophie here, right?” Lucy asked. Maybe she thought Sophie could give her answers through the tarot cards.
“No, the blonde came into the club with Sophie. They already knew each other.”
“Did you get any feel for the type of relationship they had?” Lucy asked. “I mean, was it personal…or something else?”
“Now that I wouldn’t know. Do you mean did they act like lovers?” Zeke shrugged. “They had this private thing going on between them, but I wouldn’t presume to define it.”
She was wondering if another fifty would make a difference when Justin asked, “Did they come in together often?”
“Only that once. Well, that I know of, that is. I do have days off. Listen, I got to get back to work before I get my butt fired.”
“Here’s my card,” Justin said, slipping one across the bar to Zeke. “If you think of anything else, call me.”
Zeke shoved the card in his pocket, saying, “You bet,” before greeting a customer who’d just taken a stool at the other end of the bar.
Justin took a swallow of beer and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Nodding, Lucy finished her glass of wine, then slipped off the stool.
JUSTIN REALIZED they were going to have to make their way back across the crowded dance floor—there were now so many people on the sidelines ogling the dancers that they had no choice. Thinking to protect her from being clunked by one of the gyrating bodies, he slipped an arm around Lucy’s waist and pulled her into him. She felt so good, so right pressed up against him, that he never wanted to let her go.
As they inched across the dance floor, the music pulsed at him—a jazz number with a woman singer doing vocalizations that sounded like she was in the middle of having sex.
Glancing down at Lucy, he wanted to hear those sounds coming from her sweet lips. Just not yet. Not until the case was resolved. Until the murderer was behind bars. He’d let his guard down once before and had let a client be killed.
But when a couple knocked into Lucy, sending her flying against him, he couldn’t hang on to his resolve.
“One dance?” he asked.
One dance would give him some kind of satisfaction without hurting anything. Without hurting her.
“One dance,” she agreed, slipping her arms up around his neck.
Justin groaned as her body stretched along his, teasing every inch of his quickening flesh. Not that this was a new sensation. He’d been hot for her ever since the night in the bayou, when he’d pulled her out of sight of those thugs.
Around them, strangers were making sexual liaisons. They kissed. They touched. They didn’t try to hide their desire for one another.
But he had to, and he knew it. For Lucy’s sake.
Not that Lucy seemed to mind being in his arms. Her cat stretches against him, the sexy little sounds she made that were almost lost against the orgasmic music, the tips of her nails cutting into the back of his neck—all told him she was as aroused as he. As ready for anything, maybe even a room upstairs, assuming they really were rentable.
Getting a grip, Justin danced her toward the front of the sex club, toward the door that would take them out of this hedonist’s den. Lucy looked up, her features filled with a hunger they shared.
Her body slid upward…her lips seduced his mouth to open…her tongue darted inside.
The first thrust of her pointy little tongue almost got him off, right there, without any preliminaries.
God, he wanted her!
The jazz piece was winding to a crescendo, and the vocalization was, as well. The singer’s mouth was pressed to the mike as her mating sounds rose to a fever pitch. When she moaned as if coming—the music abruptly ending—so came the room. It sounded as if they were part of the biggest orgy ever, with the most simultaneous orgasms.
Some couples and other pairings held each other and remained on the dance floor, some fled to their alcoves and drew the privacy curtains, a few found a discreet door—the one that led upstairs?—while others rushed to the exit, no doubt determined to find some secluded spot away from the club where they could orgasm for real.
If they hadn’t already.
Lucy almost looked as if she had. Though the light in the club was dim, she seemed to have color in her cheeks and her eyes were sexy-sleepy.
Justin couldn’t stand it. He was going to have her. And then he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. She would have his full protection. Nothing would happen to her, he promised himself.
But as they approached the door, stuck in the crush of bodies he heard a familiar complaint just ahead.
“They stepped all over my shoes. And someone spilled a drink on one of ’em. Just look at ’em! You know these are Italian—”
“Honey, get me back to my place, and I’ll lick your shoes clean myself. Naked.”
The man groaned. “Baby, you gotta deal. Let’s get outta here!”
Lucy grabbed onto Justin’s arm and when he looked down her expression had nothing to do with the pseudo-sex they’d had on the dance floor. She’d heard the exchange, too. The t
hug with the shoe fetish who’d tried to kill her was in the crowd now exploding out the exit door.
“Let’s follow him,” Lucy said, and Justin didn’t disagree.
This might be the break they needed.
LUCY FELT LIKE she was in the middle of a detective movie. A film noir, dark and gritty. This was New Orleans at its most decadent—sex clubs and women willing to lick men’s shoes. Now here they were tailing a bad guy in hopes that he would lead them to someone even worse.
Like Sophie’s murderer…
The horrible thing was that she was still subtly turned on. Lucy was mortified that she’d had so little control of herself on the dance floor. Even knowing she couldn’t carry through with the promise, she’d engaged in hot and heavy contact at that club. And she had started it. Guys had a name for girls who made promises they didn’t fulfill.
Prick tease…
At least she wasn’t vibrating with the need to orgasm as she had been earlier, but her skin seemed to be alive enough to split if Justin touched her just right.
Or maybe it was simply the night.
They were driving with the windows half-open and the lingering heat and increasing humidity made her skin dewy. It was the kind of night that reminded her of sex—hot and sweaty, a natural musk permeating the air.
Good thing they were in a car, and there was no possibility of anything more happening between them, Lucy thought, the responsibility of Justin’s safety pressing down on her as brutally as the night itself.
She had to concentrate on something other than sex, Lucy told herself.
“What if he’s armed?” she asked.
“I don’t intend to get close enough to find out.”
“Good intentions often go astray,” she said, realizing Mr. Shoe Fetish was headed for the bridge that would take them across the Mississippi.
“I’m not unarmed,” Justin stated.
She hadn’t felt a gun on him—and they’d been so damn close on the dance floor that she was certain she would have known if he were carrying. “What do you mean?”
“Glove compartment.”
In Dreams Page 10