The Lion of Frenchman Street

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  He mentally shook himself. Sometimes it was safer to keep your mind in the gutter. “The skirt’s because they’re playing in a bar out in bayou country. It’s about a half-hour drive, maybe forty-five minutes, and I’m going to take advantage of it.”

  She growled with pleased anticipation.

  Yeah, live for the moment. Kelsey made the moments worthwhile.

  * * *

  Peter had dressed simply for tonight, but still with the retro edge he liked: a teal dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to display his forearms, gray pants, a gray tie and fedora. When she got into Peter’s Ford Fusion—she was always vaguely disappointed he didn’t drive a classic car that matched his look, but the little Ford made more sense in a city—she saw a gray trench coat in the backseat.

  She threw her leather jacket back there with it. At six o’clock, it was still pleasant enough she didn’t need to pop it over her full black skirt and long-sleeved red jersey shirt, at least for walking from the door of her building to the warm car. Winter wear in New Orleans. Why had she even thought about moving back to New England? The application to the Peabody Essex had been the last one she’d bothered to send.

  As soon as they got on the highway, Peter asked, “Do you have panties on?”

  “Yeah.”

  He took his eyes off the highway long enough to fake-glare at her. “I think you meant ‘Yes, sir.’”

  It was going to be that kind of night? Excellent.

  “Yes, sir.” She cast her gaze down demurely for a second or two, but couldn’t resist the urge to look up. He was too easy on the eyes to look away for long.

  “Take them off and stick them in your bag or something. You won’t be needing them tonight.”

  She should have anticipated that when he told her to wear a skirt, she thought as she wriggled and wiggled to free herself of the offending undergarment. She attempted to tug her skirt down after she was done, but he instructed her, “Leave it hiked up. I like the view. So will any truckers we pass.”

  It was dark, so the truckers weren’t likely to see much of anything. Still, she clenched at the notion. Another shockwave of pleasure hit her when he added, “On second thought, flip it down if we’re passing something tall. I don’t feel like sharing you with strangers. But you liked the threat, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” she confessed, “but I’m glad it was only a threat.”

  “This time. And only because I don’t want to show this to the world.” He looked deliciously predatory as he said it. She was definitely in for a wild night.

  He reached into the breast pocket of his dress shirt and pulled out an old-fashioned wooden clothespin.

  He handed to her casually. “Put this right here,” he directed, stroking his finger quickly above her clit. “I’d rather do it myself, but the cops are cracking down on distracted driving and pinning my lover’s labia has to be more dangerous than texting.”

  Her hand shaky, her heart hammering a crazed beat that echoed in her pussy and clit, Kelsey obeyed. Pressure that verged on both pain and pleasure overwhelmed most of her brain cells. The few that were still functional noted that Peter was watching her more than the road. So much for avoiding distracted driving.

  Good thing distracted passengering wasn’t a legal issue. Before long, Kelsey was unable to think about anything other than the pressure of the clip and the sweet ache it created, the slickness building in her pussy. Under other circumstances she’d have been curious about the scenery—not that there was much to see on a dark interstate—but flip-flopping between discomfort and keen arousal didn’t leave her with enough brain cells to care.

  Peter occasionally reached out tease her mound and the slick outer labia without touching her clit or the by now incredibly sensitive area around the clip. Torture, but torture of the sweetest kind.

  She had no idea how long they’d been on the road. More to the point, she didn’t care. There was a clock on the dashboard but the numbers weren’t registering. Everything was about her body and about Peter’s glances, touches, occasional teasing words.

  By the time they turned off the highway, she wasn’t sure whether she was enjoying her condition or enduring it. The clip was starting to get damn uncomfortable, but at the same time, she was turned on to be clipped, caressed, and exposed to the world—though true to his word, Peter reminded her to pull her skirt down when they passed an eighteen-wheeler.

  This road was narrower, winding along by the river. Finally, when she was about to beg for release—and she wasn’t sure if she meant orgasm or simply losing the clothespin—Peter pulled down a dirt side road and stopped the car. He unbuckled his seat belt, leaned over, and gave her a devouring kiss.

  It was almost enough to push her over the edge.

  When he used the distraction of the kiss to slip off the clothespin, the blood rushing back—a pain that was pleasure, a pleasure that was pain—finished the job. She cried out into his mouth as she writhed on the seat, not caring if someone heading down the little lane saw them.

  “Good girl,” he whispered fiercely. “Good girl.” Just when she thought she might be calming down, she shifted in the seat. The movement triggered an aftershock, not quite an orgasm, but enough to make her gasp.

  “That’s right. Ride the waves. I’ve got you and I’m not letting you go.” He pulled her closer. “Lean up against me and breathe.”

  Finally her head cleared. She raised her face for a kiss. He pressed his lips against her forehead, almost like a blessing, before letting their mouths touch, a sweeter, more controlled and less controlling kiss than before.

  “Pull yourself together,” he said, a gentle order, but still an order. “We’re almost there.”

  She’d thought the road off the highway was rural, but getting to the bar involved more twists and turns than she could count. The bar looked like a roadhouse from a movie: tin-roofed, rough around the edges, its parking lot dominated by pickup trucks that had seen serious use.

  “The joint’s packed for being this so far from a town,” she muttered to Peter as they entered.

  “They’re that good.”

  And they were, a raucous good-time band that got her dancing while Peter was ordering their drinks. She wasn’t sure how you were supposed to dance to zydeco—it was a couple’s style that reminded her of swing dancing, which she didn’t know how to do—but she bopped around, reveling in the bouncy music.

  When Peter got back with their Abitas, he set the beers down on someone else’s table with a quick, “Watch these, please.”

  He joined her on the crowded dance floor and flashed her a lopsided grin. “Want to learn how the locals do it?”

  Still bouncing in place, she said, “Sure, but I’m not the greatest dancer. Enthusiastic, yes; graceful, not so much.”

  “For the basics, all you have to do is follow.” He put one hand on her shoulder, the other on the small of her back. “I know you can follow me.” He leaned in and whispered, “Pretend it’s sex.”

  She snorted, but desire zinged through her body.

  As Peter guided her around the dance floor, leading with the pressure of his hands and the look in his eyes, the zings settled into a steady pulse between her legs. Spins dizzied her in the sexiest possible way. When he dipped her at the end of a song, she felt suspended in his arms, floating as if she was in subspace.

  Zydeco dancing wasn’t like inherently sexy like tango. But the connection between Peter and her, the way he moved her around to the insistently charming beat, was erotic as hell.

  And not just for Kelsey. When the band segued to a rare slower piece, something closer to Delta blues, Peter grabbed her ass with both hands and pulled her against his body. No attempt at any fancy steps now, simply swaying back and forth, his thigh between hers, his erection obvious. “You follow so well.” His whisper was smoky, fraught with desire. “Makes me think of all the ways I’m going to direct you once we’re back at my place.”

  Though the band was excellent, they
made it through only one set. They didn’t even finish their beers before Peter hustled them out and they were speeding back to New Orleans.

  This trip, the clothespin ended up on her left nipple—closer to the heart, Peter said—over her shirt. The shirt lessened the pressure a bit, enough that it was more sweet ache than pain, but it amped up the arousal that had already throbbed a steady beat between her legs. In the darkness, her hand on Peter’s thigh and her mind in the gutter, Kelsey lost herself in sensation.

  Chapter Ten

  Peter parked by his house and said, “Brace yourself.”

  Then he leaned in to kiss her, and using the kiss and his body to shield her from passersby, removed the clothespin from her nipple.

  Sensation flooded her as blood rushed back to the compressed flesh, a hot, heady blend of pain and pleasure. More pain at first, but as Peter kissed her and strummed his fingers over the sweetly abused nipple, it shifted to pleasure. Her brain swirled in time to the music pulsing through the car stereo—more zydeco—and the swirling seemed like it was on her clit. She moaned “Please” into his mouth, spread her legs, canted her hips upward, hoping for contact.

  “Not yet,” Peter ordered as he continued to toy with her nipple.

  Part of her wanted to ignore the command. With any other partner, even the ones who’d played at kink, Kelsey would have reached between her legs and given her clit the couple of strokes she needed to get off. Hell, at this point she could squirm her thighs together and it might work.

  No, that wasn’t the game they were playing.

  And whatever they were playing didn’t feel like a game. It was too real for that, too visceral.

  She bit her tongue, using that small, unpleasant pain to distract herself from the erotic kind and push herself back from the edge. Then she said, “Yes sir.” Her voice sounded small.

  “Good girl. Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of you soon.”

  They all but ran to the house. Just as they reached it, cold rain started to fall.

  As soon as they burst through the front door, Peter shoved her against the wall, lifting her onto her toes. He pushed up her skirt to find her sex. “I don’t think you could have made it much longer,” he whispered.

  “No.” A quick thought, or as close as she could manage to a thought with the aching arousal spreading through her body again. “No, sir. Not at all.”

  “Good.”

  Another kiss, dark and deep, then he broke away and started to undress. “Strip, then kneel,” he ordered. “I wanted you out of those clothes ages ago.”

  It didn’t take long for her to be naked and on the floor. Not quite at his feet, because he was still undressing, but close. Finally, with his pants halfway down, he let out a disgusted snort. “I can’t believe I did that. Untie my shoes,” he ordered, “and help me take them off.”

  Part of her wanted to laugh. Guess she wasn’t the only one whose brain was muddled by lust.

  On the other hand, she had to give him mad props for sounding alpha and commanding even at an awkward moment.

  Besides, she was more than happy to help him if it got him naked faster.

  She did her best to fight back the giggles as she dealt with his shoes. Ultimately, though, she failed.

  “You think this is funny?”

  Think fast. “No, sir.” God, she hoped that was the right answer. Except she didn’t think there would be a wrong one.

  At that point, his efforts not to crack a smile failed. “Don’t lie. That was a real horny-teenager move and it was pretty damn hilarious. But you’re still going to pay for laughing, and then pay again for lying about it.”

  She couldn’t decide if the appropriate response was “oh shit” or “thank you,” so she said both.

  This time he made no effort to hide his predator’s smile.

  * **

  She hadn’t known there were suspension points in the music room as well as in the bedroom, but she probably should have guessed.

  She had relaxed during the moments of laughter, lost some of the keen edge of desire. Peter’s hands and the crisp texture of hemp rope roused her again as he wove a complex web over her bare skin. He was careful not to touch her labia or pussy, though his hands and rope went everywhere else. She ached with need but at the same time the embrace of the rope and Peter’s calm touch, a direct yet almost impersonal communion between his skin and hers, sent her into a meditative state. Her spirit soared somewhere outside her body at the same time she was pulled deep into it by the embrace of rope.

  By the time he raised her off the floor, leaving her suspended face-up, lying as if she were on a bed, but held up only by a web of hemp, she felt like she was floating not only above the floor, but above herself and Peter. Rope and lust powered her flight, and curiosity acted as rocket fuel. Now that she was bound, helpless, slick with need, what would he do to her?

  She imagined canes, whips, more clips and clamps…so many wonderful, awful possibilities.

  Instead, he gave her a gentle push so she swung in the ropes as if she lazed in the world’s most erotic hammock, then turned down the light so it was almost dark in the room. He took three steps away and crouched down.

  What was he picking up? She didn’t remember any toys in that area, but maybe he had things stashed away, hidden in plain sight so music students and vanilla friends wouldn’t stumble over things they shouldn’t.

  When he stood, he held his sax.

  She wanted to ask what kinky application he could possibly find for his instrument, but the rich languor made it impossible to speak intelligently.

  Facing her, but with his eyes closed in musical ecstasy, he began to play Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady.”

  He seemed lost in the music, almost as if he’d forgotten she was there, but she didn’t think so. For one thing, he kept opening his eyes for a second or two. It looked like nothing, a twitch, but she suspected he was checking on her, making sure that she was safe if not exactly happy.

  For another, and this seemed more important, it was one of the songs he’d played at The Dubious Connection the night they met.

  When he segued into “Summertime” and then to “Walking After Midnight,” both also songs he’d played that night, she knew. He might be pretending to ignore her—she guessed it was part of the “punishment” to let her stew for a while—but she was the center of his attention, second only to the music itself.

  If she hadn’t already been turned on, having him play for her naked would have done it. As it was, it drove her lust to an almost unbearable intensity at the same time it pushed her deeper into the dreamy, yet heightened state known as subspace.

  The haunting notes washed over her, caressed her. She’d fallen for him while he was playing, and there was a shattering intimacy in having him play for her all alone. Although he was pretending she wasn’t there, he swayed toward her as he played, leaning in as though that would bring the music closer. His eyes were closed most of the time, but he faced her. Naked, focused, and gorgeous, he played jazz in the dim room, accompanied only by the sound of rain lashing the roof.

  The longer he played, the harder his cock became.

  The longer she enjoyed the visual and aural feast and the torment of suspension bondage, the wetter she got.

  “Walking After Midnight” ended and he started to play something she couldn’t place, something both dark and sexual, with a hint of melancholy. The notes danced on her skin, a palpable caress, sure and warm as Peter’s hands. Danced on her nipples and her clit, arousing her almost past bearing. She bit her lip, trying not to come from rope and music alone.

  Then she realized it was the new piece he’d been noodling with on their first night together.

  That realization pulled her out of her reverie, let her think about something other than being so hyped up the air against her skin was almost too much. “You finished it!” she exclaimed. “Peter, it’s beautiful.”

  He opened his eyes, nodded at her with a wink, but kept p
laying for a while. The song didn’t so much end as fade out.

  Only then did he move the sax from his lips. “Thanks. It’ll be better when I figure out how to wrap it up. It wants to go on forever, but a song can’t do that.”

  “Does it have a name yet?”

  With a sly smile, he said, “I was thinking ‘Kelsey, All Tied Up.’” She thought he was teasing, but she shivered with pleasure at the thought he might be telling the truth.

  Would he announce it that way if he ever played it at The Dubious Concoction?

  It would be the real-life equivalent of one of those dreams where you ended up naked at work. She might as well strip down behind the bar, because even if most of the audience didn’t know her name, the staff and the owner certainly did. At the same time, she loved the fantasy of it, the idea that he would claim her that way in public.

  And she liked the way he’d told her the song wanted to go on forever. Maybe it was Peterspeak for wanting things between them to last. Maybe he didn’t even realize it himself, but the song did.

  Or her lust-saturated brain was reading something into his words that wasn’t there. More likely, he literally meant that he hadn’t yet found a good conclusion to the music.

  He set the sax down. “I think you’ve been left to stew long enough. And even if you haven’t—” he gestured at his hard cock—“I have. The wait was for laughing at me, by the way.”

  “I’m not sure it qualifies as a punishment. I love hearing you play, and rope makes everything better, even if I’m about to explode with lust.” She was surprised by how coherent she sounded, because her brain was ninety percent focused on skin sensitized by rope and on the need to be touched.

  “That’s because it wasn’t a punishment. You teased me so I teased you. Teased both of us, more like.”

  Lowering her to the floor took longer than raising her had. Years, maybe. And the process of getting her untied was best measured in geological time, especially since he paused part way through to put on music: Chet Baker, she thought. She’d asked him one time why he listened to so many trumpeters in their intimate moments. He explained saxophone could be distracting. He’d get lost in analyzing technique and that wasn’t what he wanted with a beautiful woman in his bed.