No Trespassing

by KD Robichaux

  “Can’t breathe, love,” he squeezes out, and I feel the words vibrate against my palms where they hold on to his throat.

  Me neither, I think, as all my attention focuses directly where my core rests against the back of his neck. I feel the heat of his body seep into mine through my jeans, and I pull my lips between my teeth. Dear Lord, I know you have a great sense of humor, usually at my expense, but just this one time, please… please, help a sistah out and don’t let me soak the man’s neck. No wetty right now, okay? Pretty please?

  “Emmy,” he wheezes, and it snaps me out of my silent prayer.

  “I’m sorry! You just took me by surprise. I went from 5’6” to well over eight feet high,” I apologize, loosening my grip around his throat.

  “Can you see it now?” he asks, lifting his chin to look upward, and all that does is rub the back of his head against my lady bits, causing a wave of tingles to run from my clit down to the tips of my toes.

  I unconsciously let out a moan and I have to fight myself not to grind my hips. The sound startles me, and I jump, slapping my hand over my own mouth. Oh, God. Please, don’t let him have heard that.

  “Emmy?” His voice is low and husky, and I cringe at what he might say next.

  “Yeah, Dean?” I whimper.

  “Can… can you see the sign?”

  I can tell by his stutter he wanted to say something else, but had mercy on me instead. I let out a sigh of relief and look up. I can make out that the word has three letters, but it’s still too blurry to read what it says. “Still a little too far away. Hand me your phone,” I tell him, and I feel his right hand leave my thigh as he reaches into his pocket then up to hand me his cell. I flip on the camera and snap a picture with the flash on then pull up the photo and zoom in. “I got it! It says six,” I say excitedly, unintentionally wiggling on top of his shoulders, sending yet another burst of electricity throughout my body. This time, I’m able to stifle my moan by biting my lip, and when I feel like I can speak again, it’s to say, “Okay, you can let me down now.”

  He smoothly lowers us until my feet touch the ground and he comes out from underneath me, and I immediately miss the heat of him against my core. That is, until I see him reach up to rub the back of his neck like he’s wiping something off, which sends me into a mortification that has me crying out, “It’s sweat, I swear!”

  This time, when he tries to hold in his amusement, he fails, and he lets out a chuckle that raises the hair on my arms it’s so gloriously sexy. Almost worth my humiliation to hear that sound come out of him. “No worries, love. Just had a little crick in my neck from lying around in the other tunnel earlier.”

  “Oh, umm… so, yeah.” I clear my throat. “So now we have, three, two, and six. Um, shall we keep looking?” I ask, and to my ears it sounds more like a plea. What I wouldn’t give for the tunnel floor to open up and swallow me.

  A few minutes later, we find yet another sign, but this one is set into the floor and is written out in numerals. 1618.

  “Is it a date?” I wonder aloud. “Three, two, six, 1618. March 26th, 1618?”

  “Maybe, or a couple of other dates if we scrambled up the numbers. But that wouldn’t make any sense down here. New Orleans wasn’t even founded until exactly a hundred years later, in 1718,” Dean says.

  “And the NOLA catacombs didn’t start being built until St. Peter Cemetery filled up in the 1780s,” I add. A feeling close to pride fills my chest when he looks at me with an impressed expression. Yeah, big guy. I know my shit. “So what else could it be?”

  “All sorts of things, but maybe we should keep searching. See if there are any more markers before we go trying to play Word Scramble without having all the missing letters first,” he suggests smartly.

  I nod in agreement, wiping sweaty strands of hair from my face. The deeper into the tunnels we’ve traversed, the hotter and muggier it seems to be getting, and before long, I can’t take it anymore. We’ve walked for ten minutes scouring every inch of the walls without finding another placard. My shirt would probably be dry by now from the Gatorade incident if I wasn’t sweating under my jacket, and if I don’t take it off, I’m going to pass out from heat exhaustion.

  Note to self: start working out to build endurance if I’m going to be doing this the rest of my life.

  As soon as I even think about the fact I’m not wearing a bra under my white tank top as I unzip the front of my jacket, my nipples perk up as if I whistled for their attention. Yet survival outweighs embarrassment, so off my jacket comes, and I wrap it in its normal spot around the strap of my purse.

  Just act natural, I chant to myself, but that thought flies out the window when I look up and find Dean’s eyes locked on my chest.

  My breath catches as he walks slowly toward me, towering above me when he finally stops mere inches away. My heart gives one wild thump as he lifts his hand, and I think he’s going to have the audacity to grab my boob, but he traces my collarbone instead.

  “The Atlantis Ring,” he mumbles, as his finger glides across my skin, sending goose bumps downward and tightening my nipples further.

  “Known previously as the Ring of Luxor,” I manage to squeak, knowing his gaze is following the lines of the small tattoo on my left collarbone. Suddenly, he pulls his hand away and unzips his hoodie, and I immediately start to panic. What is he doing? Why is he stripping? Do I need to make a run for it? It’s not like I have anywhere to go. I’m trapped in here if all of a sudden my tattoo has mystical Egyptian powers I didn’t know about that hypnotized him and he’s now about to ravish me without my consent.

  But really, would it be without your consent, Em?

  The teeniest part of me still wants to hang onto my old feelings of contempt toward Dean, but after actually being around him, speaking to him, being on this adventure with him, the rest of me tells that small part to shut the hell up. The real him, not the cocky know-it-all everyone sees on the show, is pretty damn amazing.

  He pulls off his sweater, revealing nothing but a thin, ribbed black tank top underneath, and it makes me realize I've never actually seen his arms before. Not even on the show. He always wears the same outfit every episode: a dark pair of jeans and his signature dark grey hoodie with a brown pair of hiking boots. What stands before me is a man with the sexiest pair of arms I've ever seen in my life. Straight up arm porn. The biceps are huge and the forearms sinewy, corded with muscles I've never seen outside a fitness magazine.

  And wrapped around one of those delicious forearms is the Ring of Luxor, just a much larger version than the one on my collarbone.

  OF ALL THE countless symbols in the entire world we could tattoo permanently into our skin, what are the odds that Emmy and I would choose the exact same one? The Atlantis Ring, aka the Atlantean Ring, and yes, the beautiful, brilliant girl was exactly right, also historically known as the Ring of Luxor when it was first discovered by the French Egyptologist Marquis d’Agrain around 1860 in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

  She reaches toward me with one hand and traces her middle three fingers along the three main long rectangular lines in the center of the six black squares, all bracketed by two large triangles. When she speaks, her words come out hushed but clear.

  “My parents have had this symbol all over our house since I can remember. They live in Egypt now, but seeing this in every room of our house since I was little, it’s always been a comfort, making me feel at home no matter where I am. That’s why I had it tattooed on me—the symbol for protection. I hate crowds, and have anxiety issues. As accident prone as I am, I guess it works after all.” She looks up at me and smiles gently. “I could’ve really gotten hurt back there, if not killed. I was making all sorts of racket, dancing around and singing before I even knew you were down here. That ceiling could’ve come down any time. If it weren’t for you saving me…”

  Her words trail off and she looks away, her cheeks glowing an attractive pink. I love the sound of her voice, whether it’s throwing angry wor
ds at me or making gentle confessions, and I want to hear more of it, so I tell her something I’ve never told anyone before. “The Atlantean Ring is for protection, yes, but it’s also for healing and intuition. I got this tattooed on me after my first episode of the show, the one that didn’t end up being aired because of my fuck-up.”

  She looks up at me, curiosity filling her beautiful green eyes. “I was doing an episode on bridges around the US. We were on day three of filming, on an old bridge in Kentucky they were refurbishing, and I thought I would be a hot shot and walk across one of the beams while I recited my lines. There was no one there besides me and my cameraman, since we’d gotten there early to rehearse first, and little did I know that the beam I chose to use as a catwalk was one that hadn’t been secured yet. My weight on it was just enough to make one of the ends come off its ledge where it was balanced. As the beam plummeted a hundred feet to the rocks below, by the grace of God, I managed to grab onto the ledge, and then with my cameraman’s help, I was pulled to safety.”

  “Oh, my God,” she breathes, and I have to wonder if she realizes she’s grasped my arm, her little hand searing my flesh.

  “I got this tattooed soon after. In a book I read about it, it said, ‘The one who wears the ring becomes sensitive to certain communications that he would never have been aware of. It increases one’s intuition and ability to connect with higher levels of consciousness and Spirit guides.’ I just really liked the thought of that, like putting a magic spell on myself that would let me talk to dead people,” I whisper the last part and give her a mischievous grin. “I don’t know. I guess I just hoped it would make me smarter on my excavations, keep me out of trouble and from doing stupid shit like that again.”

  “And the healing part?” she asks.

  I feel myself wanting to open up to her and tell her all the pain of my past, but I pussy out. “Uh…” I rub the back of my neck with the hand not connected to the arm she’s still holding onto. “That’s a story for another time, love.”

  She lets go of me and rubs her palm up and down her thigh. “Oh, um, sorry. That was kinda nosey of me, huh? Well, uh… yeah. So. Should we look for more markers?” She pulls her hair down from her messy ponytail and uses both hands to smooth her damp tendrils out of her flawless face, tying it back up into a knot on top of her head. The act is unintentionally sexy as hell, as it lifts her breasts high against the white cotton of her thin tank top and shows off the feminine line of her graceful neck.

  “Yeah. There’s gotta be something else here that will shed more light on what we’ve found so far,” I agree, and open up her shiny-ass backpack to stuff my hoodie inside, when I see it’s full of enough junk food to feed a small country. I glance back up to her with a raised brow, and she has the most adorable sheepish look on her face.

  “Well, uh… you see, what happened was…” She starts to giggle nervously. “Ugh! Okay, I was super pissed off at you for thwarting yet another one of my discoveries—”

  “Thwarting?” I interrupt with an amused smirk.

  “Yes, thwarting. To thwart, or spoil, or in your case steal my goddamn glory,” she huffs, but thankfully, I can see she’s fighting her own smile, as opposed to being genuinely angry with me like before. She crosses her arms, pressing those amazing tits of hers together, as she continues with her story. “So I went to my pub and shot back fifteen dollars’ worth of three-dollar tequila shots. Then, I was chatting with Calvin and Ricky in my bathtub and—”

  Instantly, an unfamiliar boiling rage fills me, and I cut her off once more. “You were with two men in your bathtub?” I growl, the thought filling me with a possessiveness I’ve never felt toward a woman before.

  “Huh? Oh—No! Calvin and Ricky are married. And we were Snapchatting. They live in like, Ohio or something.” Her cheeks flame red, and it settles the beast that snarled inside me. “Anyways, the combination of Patron in my system and them telling me I needed to break out the big guns, which in my case was doing something illegal for the first time in my life, I jumped out of the tub, threw on my clothes, and ran out the door to come sneak in, stopping only long enough to grab some food for my drunk munchies. You were supposed to be gone!” she whines.

  I shake my head and grin. “And if I had been gone as planned, how exactly had you intended on breaking in?” I inquire, reaching down to adjust my cock, stiffening at her haughtiness.

  “I came armed with a bobby pin and a credit card, thank you very much.” A pause. “And why the hell do you keep doing that?” she asks, waving her hand in the direction of my now fully inflated dick, exasperation lacing her voice.

  “I can’t help it, love. Something about you yelling at me just does something to me. I guess I’m just not used to anyone in the female population giving me shit,” I tease. But her response isn’t what I expect out of a sexy-as-fuck woman such as her. Instead of coming back at me for the cocky comment about my vast choice of women, she looks almost mortified.

  “Oh, I uh… I didn’t know men…” She trails off, but what she did sputter intrigues me.

  “Surely you know your hot little temper is sexy as hell, love,” I prompt, raising an eyebrow.

  “Um… so…” She fidgets with the strap of her purse, untying and retying her jacket. “Shall we?” she squeaks, and hurries past me deeper into the tunnel.

  I chase after her, getting in front of her, and turn to walk backward so I can look at her while I press further. “Finish your sentence, Emmy. You didn’t know men what?”

  She tries to dodge around me, not meeting my eyes, but I duck in front of her once more, stooping down to hold her shifty gaze. “You should know, I don’t give up when I want something. So you might as well go ahead and give in so we can continue on our little adventure.” I stop abruptly, and she crashes into me, just as I’d hoped. Her softness molds to my front for a moment before she bounces back, and I reach out and grab hold of her hips to keep her from falling on her ass.

  God, just that split second of full-frontal contact, and my cock throbs behind my zipper. My hands burn into her hips through her jeans, and all I want to do is tear through her clothes and have my way with her, right here on the catacombs’ ground. The closeness must have an affect on her as well, because her eyes are no longer darting away, but gazing deep into mine, the green orbs seeming to stare straight into my very soul, making me hold my breath to hear what she might say. What started as joking curiosity has now turned into a dire need for her answer.

  “I… I didn’t know men could get turned on so easily, and at something I did unintentionally,” she admits quietly.

  My eyebrows pull together. Such an innocent and honest statement from a woman who looks like she could eat her fill of men for breakfast. Something so innocuous could only come from someone who doesn’t have much experience with the subject in question. But certainly… no. No way. Not with a body that would be a siren’s call to any man within a mile, and the face of an angel, prompting even the most closed-off male to want to open up to her. Not to mention a brain that would give the most intellectual guy a boner at the thought of mentally sparring with her in between fucking her on every surface within reach.

  The thought of any man fucking her on any surface causes the beast inside me to snarl once again, and my hands unconsciously squeeze her full hips, pulling her closer to me. But then it also has me questioning my original thought. How innocent is Amelia…? Jesus, I don’t even know her last name. How can I feel this possessive over a woman, when I don’t even know her full name? Just that she’s named after her mother’s hero, that we have matching tattoos—one she couldn’t have seen on my show and copied, because I purposely never showed it on camera, not wanting anyone to know even the smallest personal detail—and that she has more of an effect on me than any other woman in my twenty-nine years.

  This close to her, with her looking up at me with those eyes, her innocence glaringly clear in their depths, it all makes sense. She’s the female version of me. Headstrong toward
one thing—her love of archeology—she probably hadn’t spent any time worrying about the opposite sex, focusing on her education so she could live out her dream, the same as I did. Only she’s just starting out on her journey, and obviously hadn’t gotten the big break I had.

  Feeling her kindred spirit, I have the fleeting thought that maybe my Atlantean Ring tattoo’s intuition property is working its magic, because I feel like I can see right down into this beautiful woman’s pure soul. And with that thought, I lower my head and capture her perfect, pouty lips with mine, feeling her stiffen slightly before melting against me. In that kiss, with her shuttered breaths and tentative movements, her hands lightly pressing to my cotton-covered stomach, I just know she doesn’t have much, if any, experience with being intimate, so I happily yet gently take the lead.

  One of my hands travels up her back and cradles the back of her head as I take her fully into my arms, holding her close as I mold her front to mine while my mouth dances lazily across hers, teasing it with my lips until she smiles slightly at the ticklish touch. I take advantage and lightly nip her bottom lip before sucking it between mine, running my tongue over the plumpest part of it. She gasps at the sensation, and I dip my tongue in to tease hers out to play. She doesn’t seem to know quite how to move it against mine, so I whisper, “Just do what I do,” before running the tip softly down the center of hers, lapping at her mouth until she lets out a whimper. After a few moments’ practice, she gets the hang of it, and soon, we’re battling for dominance as her control visibly snaps.

  I’VE KISSED BOYS before. My first kiss was by a boy dressed as Batman while we were out trick or treating when I was eight and he saw that I was dressed as Catwoman. No clue who the little guy was. He just ran up and gave me a smooch right on my lips before hustling on to the next house for more candy. I can remember our parents giggling with each other after the quick-as-lightning exchange took place more than the actual kiss itself, since it happened out of nowhere and was over before I even knew it began.