A Haunting Desire

by Julie Mulhern

  His fingers pushed hers aside and the strip of burgundy joined his coat on the carpet.

  Trula yanked his shirt free. Her hands explored, memorizing the chiseled planes of his chest and abdomen. Her tongue danced with his, building heat, building need.

  His fingers unbuttoned the tiny buttons fastening her shirtwaist. Why had she worn clothes so difficult to remove? A button popped, thudding softly to the carpet. The blouse finally fell away and he trapped her, pinning her shoulders against the cool expanse of the wall.

  His lips left hers, his tongue tasted her flushed skin as if she was a delicacy. And then his lips found her breast. Through the cotton of her chemise he sucked a tight nipple into the heat of his mouth. She arched into the exquisite sensation. Into him. If only the morning never came, if this one moment never ended.

  His fingers closed on her buttocks, kneading. The length of his erection pressed into her belly. He raised his head and again their tongues tangled, rasping warmth that spread through her body. She mewled in inchoate need.

  With a choked gasp he pulled away. “I’m sorry.”

  Her breath was so ragged she could hardly find her voice. “For what?”

  “This.”

  She blinked, not understanding. Why had he stopped? She pulled him closer, reached for the hardness pulsing against her. He stilled her hands.

  “You deserve…wooing.”

  Wooing? They had one night and he wanted to waste it whispering lies? She couldn’t help it. A broken laugh escaped her.

  His face darkened in a frown.

  She drew a finger across the length of one of his drawn brows. “You needn’t woo me. You know my past.”

  His scowl was a fearsome thing. “You had no choice.”

  She stroked his cheek. What could she say? True, her grandmother had brokered her sale with the canniness of a gypsy horse trader, but she could have fled to England and begged her father for help. Instead, she climbed into John Dupree’s bed without argument, afraid her grandmother would cast her out unless she obeyed.

  John had never bothered with tenderness. Certainly not with her pleasure. One night of Zeke’s fevered hands on her body, his insistent lips, his clever tongue, and his concern that she enjoy had touched something deep inside her. One night had not been enough.

  She looked into his eyes and saw yearning. Where was the annoying man who bedeviled her? Gone. She’d given herself freely to that man and instead of delighting in the magic between them, he’d offered to make her his mistress. A whore.

  A smile lifted his lips. “You’re doing it again.”

  “What?”

  “Your shoulders. They’re stiff.” His hands skated down her back. His lips barely brushed her cheeks, her eyelids, her forehead. “I want to make love to you.”

  Her heart stopped. When it resumed beating, it couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. It stuttered. If only she didn’t want him so…desperately. She lifted her face and his lips found hers in a slow, purposeful kiss. It was a kiss that demanded.

  When their lips finally parted, he led her to the bed.

  “But…”

  A single admonishing finger brushed her lips. “Don’t speak.”

  He finished undressing her, freeing her arms from the sleeves of her shirtwaist, unfastening her skirt and petticoat, and letting them pool at her feet. He dropped a soft kiss on her bare collarbone before bending to free her stockings from her garters. Then he stood, disappearing behind her to unlace her corset. It fell to the carpet. Her chemise and drawers soon followed.

  She was naked. He was clothed. She watched him, unwilling to miss so much as a second of their last night together.

  Zeke bent his dark head to trace the swell of her breast with his tongue. She shivered with need. Her fingers ached to touch him. Her pulse pounded in her ears, louder than the thunder on their first night together.

  His tongue moved lower, charting a melting course. He dropped to his knees and his lips found the inside of her knee. It grew weak. His fiendish tongue traveled up her thigh and his mouth formed a circle and blew cool air on her clitoris. He wasn’t a man, he was a devil. She shuddered with desire. His hands tightened on her buttocks. She needed this with a desperation that left her breathless. Needed him. Needed his tongue and his hands and his scent and his breath.

  The man kneeling at her feet controlled her. Completely. He’d shackled her with pleasure. She didn’t want to break the chains. As if he could read her thoughts, he stopped blowing long enough to look into her eyes, grin, and raise an infernal eyebrow. He was determined to torture her with pleasure. She couldn’t stop him. Didn’t want to.

  Again he grazed her sex with his wicked tongue and she moaned. That clever, clever tongue swirled and circled and flicked. His mouth blew and suckled and two long fingers discovered how wet he’d made her. Pleasure built with each scrape of his tongue and each stroke of his fingers. The muscles in her legs tightened, locked with each sensation.

  Her body strained with the need for release. He was relentless. A wet swirl. His hot breath. A flick. Then his teeth closed on her in a sensation so intense she didn’t know if it was pain or pleasure. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want it to end even as it drove her to a precipice of bliss.

  “Come for me,” he breathed against her.

  And on his command she did. Ecstasy racked her body. A strangled cry escaped her throat. She arched. Rapture washed through her, a tide of sensation, a flood of pleasure. Then her legs gave out. Her muscles, taut as a bow string, collapsed, and Trula fell to her knees.

  Zeke kissed her and she tasted herself on his lips. His arms circled her, drawing her close against his chest. His shirt chafed against her bare skin, delicious and frustrating. She wanted to feel him. His body. No barriers. Skin to skin.

  “I missed you.” He nibbled at her earlobe.

  After this night, he’d miss her again. She’d be gone with the sun’s first rays. The fissures in her heart threatened to crack.

  She could cry, she could rage, but she couldn’t change her mind. She refused to be his mistress. She shoved the unwelcome thought aside. Instead her lips found his. Searching. Demanding. Exploring. Dancing until they both panted for breath.

  He pulled her to her feet. “Undress me.”

  His shirt and pants were gone as fast as her fingers could fly over the fastenings. When he stood naked before her, her heart stumbled on its own beat. He was magnificent. The lean length of his legs, the width of his shoulders, and the proud jut of his cock robbed her of her ability to breathe.

  Trula sank back to her knees. She wanted his cock in her mouth. Her tongue darted out to taste the bead of moisture glistening on its tip. Salty. She wrapped her lips around him. Zeke’s groan thrilled her. She wanted to please him. One of her grandmother’s lessons flitted through her mind. She yawned and took his length deep into her throat. His fingers threaded through her hair and he pulled her away.

  He caught her face between his hands and stared down at her. His eyes blazed with an incendiary desire. Perhaps she would get her untamed coupling after all.

  Zeke effortlessly scooped her into his arms and laid her on the bed.

  “Please.” She needed him. Now. Her knees fell open.

  He joined her on the bed. His body held inches above hers. Not touching. She wanted the touch of his skin. Now. She tilted her hips in invitation.

  A wicked smile played across Zeke’s lips. “Slowly. Your girls tell me you say anticipation can be more enjoyable than the act.”

  He was a devil.

  “My girls talk too much.”

  “Oh…I don’t know.” He kissed her collarbone and a zing of electricity traveled from nerve ending to nerve ending, dancing a slow, heated waltz through her body. He leaned closer, his mouth parted. She waited, her heart caught in her throat. She wanted his kiss.

  When it came, it tasted of mint and scotch and…Zeke. She melted into his lips. Her arms wrapped around his neck. His tongue fed the fires already burn
ing in her body. She groaned.

  The tip of his cock barely nudged between her thighs. Yes. Please. She canted her hips.

  He slid inside her, just one inch. One maddening, tempting, wondrous inch. It wasn’t enough.

  Trula nearly howled in frustration. She wanted all of him. Every nerve in her body sang with raw desire. One of her legs snuck around his back. A sudden shift of her hips earned her another inch.

  “So impatient.” His fingers trailed slow heat across her breast.

  She caught her lower lip in her teeth and whispered, “Please.” She wanted him to fill her. To fill her so completely she forgot about tomorrow.

  “What?” An eyebrow rose. Zeke might tease her, but the sweat on his brow suggested how much his restraint cost him.

  “Please.” She didn’t want restraint. She wanted passion that burned so hot it cauterized her heart.

  Zeke slid inside her and she gasped at the size of him, the sensation of being filled, of being stretched. He gave her a moment to accustom herself to the feel of his cock buried deep in her heat and then he moved his hips, a slow, sensuous stroke. She clenched her sex around him. They moved as one.

  “Harder.” She needed to lose herself in physical contact, the rub of his cock, the graze of his teeth on her shoulder as she plastered herself against his chest, the intoxicating taste of his tongue. If she concentrated on their bodies, she could forget tomorrow. “Harder.”

  He drove into her. Her nails dug into his shoulders as ripples of pleasure lapped at her.

  His hand found its way between their bodies and his fingers played devilish games between her legs. She gasped as he squeezed her clit, sudden pain giving way to building pleasure.

  Their rhythm changed, transporting her. She clutched him closer and the waves of pleasure crested in an explosion of consuming sensation. She drowned in the feelings, gasping for breath, writhing in fulfillment she hadn’t known was possible. And before it ended, Zeke called her name.

  He collapsed on her, his face nestled against her hair. She trembled from her toes to her nape. Nothing she’d ever experienced, nothing her grandmother had told her, had prepared her for this. Her tongue tested the sweat on his neck. Its saltiness tasted sweeter than pralines. It tasted of him.

  It might kill her to leave him. It would kill her to stay.

  “You’ll like Washington,” he whispered into her hair.

  She closed her eyes to hide the pain in their depths. She’d never see Washington. She couldn’t accept what little he offered. She wanted more. Mistresses were easily put aside, easily forgotten in favor of a wife. She knew it all too well. Pain nearly consumed her and she stiffened her shoulders to hold it at bay.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I want you to kiss me.” That at least was the truth.

  He did. The kiss deepened. An impassioned promise that masked a lie. Their bodies moved together slowly. Skin lingering against skin, each touch lasting long enough to mean something more. He entered her in an unhurried claiming, as if they had all the time in the world. She loved him. She had to leave him.

  The sky outside the French doors lightened from deepest purple to lavender shot with lemon clouds. Next to her Zeke Barnes slept. She’d remained awake, unwilling to waste a moment of this last night in sleep. She’d committed to memory the way his face relaxed in slumber, the way his lashes brushed his skin, the small sound he made as he burrowed closer to her. And now it was time to go.

  She slid out from between the sheets and slipped into her clothes. She had what she came for. A second night of passion. Memories to keep her warm in the lonely years stretching before her. Her jaw ached with the effort to hold back her tears. She wouldn’t see him again. And she didn’t dare kiss him good-bye, not even a brush of her lips across his cheek. She didn’t dare wake him. If he opened his eyes, if desire swum in their depths, her resolve might falter.

  She brushed a lock of hair off her face and was surprised to find her cheek wet.

  Why had he asked her to be his mistress? Nothing had ever hurt her more. She’d given him her heart and he’d turned her gift into a transaction. A house, an allowance, and a full jewelry box in exchange for access to her body. Jagged pain left her breathless.

  She reached into her handbag for a handkerchief and her fingers closed on a bill. A fifty.

  She studied the bill in her fingers as if the answers to her problems were written upon it. Zeke wanted a transaction? Wanted to put a price on the passion and emotion they shared? Fine. Fifty dollars was the going rate. She dropped the bill on Zeke’s dresser, took one last look at the man she loved, and slipped out of his room.

  …

  Zeke’s arm stretched across an empty spot in his bed. Empty. Why wasn’t Trula curled next to him?

  He opened his eyes to the soft yellow light of morning and a room denuded of gown, petticoats, and ridiculous hat. He sat up. Where the hell was she?

  Calculating the time it would take to find her and return her to the tangled sheets and downy comforts of his bed, Zeke growled in annoyance. He got up, yanked on a pair of pants, jammed his arms into a shirt, and scanned the room for his discarded tie. He didn’t find it. Instead an item on his dresser caught his gaze and held it.

  A fifty dollar bill.

  Fifty. The exact amount it cost to spend the night with one of Trula’s girls. She’d left it. For him. She’d taken something pure and real and shining and tainted it with the tawdriness of money.

  Or had she?

  He’d treated her as if she wasn’t essential to his happiness. She’d returned the favor.

  Zeke grabbed the offending bill, crumpled it in his fist, and resisted the urge to hit the wall. Instead he hurled the offending money to the floor.

  An innocuous dark green wad of paper on a cream carpet, it told him things he didn’t want to know. He’d treated the woman he loved like a whore.

  He loved her.

  She’d left him.

  He’d find her. He’d get her back. He had to. Spending the rest of his life without her was unthinkable.

  A tell-tale outline shimmered in a sunbeam. “You’ve got to come. Now.”

  Zeke located his tie under the bed. “Not now. I have to see Trula.”

  “This is about Trula. She’s gone to catch the murderer. By herself.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Trula slipped through the front door without anyone the wiser. It would be too humiliating to face anyone this morning. Hattie would know she hadn’t been home all night, would know what she’d done. Hattie would read it in her eyes, and the housekeeper’s mouth would purse as if she’d sucked a lemon. How could Trula explain she’d wanted one more night before she faced the future? She couldn’t. Pity on Hattie’s face might bring Trula to her knees. Pity was not allowed. It didn’t feed girls or educate children or give a woman the strength to carry on.

  She hurried to her room, changed her dress, and pinned her cabbage rose hat onto her curls. Trula’s mouth twisted into a smile that hurt her face. Once she’d met with Eulie and discovered who’d murdered those men, Zeke Barnes would go away and she’d put the pieces of her heart back together.

  Trula slipped out of her house as quietly as she’d entered it. No one noticed her.

  Her feet tapped a rhythm on the banquette. A countdown to the moment Zeke left New Orleans for good. She’d lived through worse things. People far more dear to her than Zeke Barnes had broken her heart. She’d lived twenty-six years without the Yankee agent. Obviously she didn’t need him. She was better off without him. Her steps faltered and she bit her lip, ignoring the searing pain that clutched at her.

  The cemetery stood empty except for the stone denizens who graced its tombs and the usual ghostly inhabitants, weak and transparent in the sunshine. Like butterflies in a garden, they flitted between tombs. Trula heard one whisper, “Don’t go.” She shook her head at such fancy. The ghosts of Saint Louis Cemetery never spoke. Not to her. Why would
they begin now?

  Eulie crouched in front of Marie Leveau’s tomb, her faded skirts pooling in the dusty path. She spoke without turning her head. “I warned you he was coming.”

  “Who?” Trula wasn’t in the mood for Eulie’s riddles.

  “An angel of death.”

  Trula rubbed at the tension gathered in her nape. The angel of death was the murderer? Eulie had told her the Baron simply followed in the murderer’s wake. “What do you mean, Eulie?”

  Eulie bobbed her head, and the clink of the bones in her hair sounded eerie in the quiet cemetery. “Ezekiel, he destroyed Jerusalem. You’ve been callin’ him Zeke. He’s the one done emptied your eyes.”

  Zeke? Did Eulie mean that Zeke was the murderer? Trula shook her head against the idea. It was impossible. He’d been with her the night Andrew Farchmin was murdered. “Zeke Barnes didn’t kill those men.”

  “No. I reckon you’re right. But he hurt you.”

  How could a blind woman see so much? “That’s hardly the same thing. I’ll recover.”

  Eulie clutched her walking stick, stood, and beat the dust off her clothes with a gnarled hand. “Diddy said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “You borrowed cornmeal from Willa Rae the night Andrew Farchmin died.”

  “And?”

  “There was a cornmeal vevé in the alley.”

  Eulie’s sightless gaze slid away. “Did you bring any of Earleen’s biscuits? Earleen sure makes good biscuits.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t. We can go back to my house and I’ll have her make a fresh batch.”

  “She makes good corn bread too. I soak it in milk.” Eulie smacked her lips.

  Trula reached out and took Eulie’s brittle fingers in her own. “Please tell me about the vevé.”

  Eulie shook her head and the bones in her hair rattled. “Those men deserved to die.”