With a whimper, she reached for him, palmed his nape and brought his mouth back to hers, her tongue growing bolder, sweeping in and making him ache. All of a sudden he got it. This was a goodbye kiss.
Everything in him screamed refusal. Despite his earlier one-last-time intentions, he wasn’t ready to let her go. He took control of the kiss, moving over her, caressing her flesh with his hands and following with his mouth. He licked and nibbled at her shoulder, at the sensitive place just below her ear, which made her moan.
His lips and tongue traveled down to the side of her full breast, beneath it, nuzzling all around until she purred and took his head and guided him to her nipple.
He took his time licking and sucking first one then the other, building her up slowly before moving down to her belly. He held her hips still when she tried to lift them and brought his lips to her pelvic bone and farther down through her trimmed curls to the hot wet core of her.
Without him asking, she spread her thighs and guided him to her, her fingers tensing his scalp. She writhed and whimpered while he brought her to the brink. She wanted it now, but he pulled back. If this night was all they would have he was going to make damn sure she never forgot him. So, he soothed her fever, making her wait, until she begged him to finish what he’d started.
He used every skill he had, using his tongue and fingers to bring her once more to the edge and make her plead, and then, this time he watched as she lost control and yelled his name. She dragged in long breath after long breath, as if she’d just run a marathon. Until he realized she’d started sobbing.
Merde. What had he done? As he leaped up beside her, she rolled away from him, trying to hide her face and streams of tears.
Women. He curled around her, reached over and smoothed the hair away from her wet cheeks and tucked her head under his chin. “Shhh, now, cher,” he murmured.
She cried harder, sobbing as if she’d been storing up tears for decades. He panicked, unsure how to help her exactly. He stroked her back and crooned, “Hush, now.” And, “It’s all right, cher.”
After a few minutes she let out a deep sigh. “I’m sorry.” She wiped her cheeks and he grabbed a couple tissues from the bedside table and handed them to her.
“Thank you.”
“Ain’t no thing, cher.”
“It is a thing.” She wiped her cheeks with the tissues. “It’s everything. I guess it’s all finally getting to me. The last several days of being so scared. The things Julia said. Worrying about her still.” She blew her nose.
“She made her choice. The Colony’s not dangerous. She’ll be all right.”
She gave him a skeptical look, but didn’t respond. After a few minutes of silence he thought she might drift off to sleep.
“Julia’s mother was never well. Bipolar, actually.” Claire spoke quietly.
Rafe raised his brows, but said nothing.
“Julia used to come over every night right around dinnertime, and my mom always invited her to eat with us.” Claire chuckled. “She’d always think about it for a second, and then agree to stay like she was doing us a favor.” Claire sniffed and wiped her nose with the tissue. “She had such a fierce pride, despite the fact she was always filthy, her clothes were ragged and her hair so ratted, my mom finally took her to a salon and had it cut into a cute bob. I think that’s when she decided she wanted to become a hairdresser.”
Claire drew a deep breath and took the hand he’d left resting on her waist and twined her fingers through his. “There was no stability at Julia’s mom’s house. Sometimes it was okay. Mostly not. But despite Julia’s tough exterior, she was always susceptible to any guy who paid her the least bit of attention. She clung to boyfriends so tight they’d end up running in the opposite direction.”
Rafe let out a reluctant breath. “She’s not a little girl anymore, Claire.”
She stilled. “I know.”
“You can’t make her leave if she doesn’t want to. It’s her choice.”
She tugged her fingers out from between his. “But she’s been brainwashed.”
Rafe scoffed. “Come on. She may be confused, emotional but she hasn’t been brainwashed.” He rose up on one elbow to look Claire in the eye. “She’s there of her own free will.”
“I told you, she’s always been susceptible to anyone who made her feel special.”
Anger seared a path to his gut. “She still chose to leave you, Claire.” He rolled off the bed, shoved his legs into his jeans and paced to the kitchen. Twisting to face her, he jabbed a finger toward her. “Wake up and notice the real world. Everyone looks out for number one. You think she’s worried about you? Hell, no. You saw how she treated you back there.”
He pulled the coffeemaker out, began filling the carafe with water. “That’s the way the world is, Claire. People leave you and you can’t count on anyone but yourself. The sooner you learn that, the easier life gets.”
* * *
CLAIRE BLINKED. THAT’S THE way the world was? My God, he was so bitter. Were they even talking about Julia anymore? She didn’t think so. She sat up and scooted to the edge of the mattress, thinking about his words, people leave you. “Your parents were in a car accident, Rafe. They didn’t choose to leave you.”
He jerked his gaze to her, narrowed his eyes. “Right.” He grabbed a can of coffee from the fridge.
She sniffed and dabbed at her nose again with the tissue. Maybe he would talk about it now. “What happened after they died? Did you have family to take you in?”
He scooped coffee grounds into the filter. “Sure. I went to live with my dear old pappy. My mother’s father. After a year of that I finally understood why my mother got pregnant with me at sixteen and married my dad.”
Claire swallowed. Did she really want to hear this? “Did your grandfather abuse you?”
He glanced at her, his expression cold, unrelenting. “I just got tired of being his nursemaid.”
“He was sick?”
“Sick?” He scoffed. “You ever seen a man so drunk he pisses himself?” He jabbed the start button on the coffeemaker and turned his back to her, leaning his palms on the counter’s edge.
“So you ran away. Lived on the streets.”
He didn’t answer. She stood and wrapped the sheet around herself, then moved close to him. “How did you come to own your own business?”
“Same as anyone.” He smirked. “Got arrested. Swore I’d never be locked up again. Found work on an oil rig in the Gulf.” He shrugged. “Saved my pennies and the rest is history.”
Claire hadn’t thought she could admire him any more than she did. She was wrong. “You beat the odds.”
He reached for mugs from the cabinet, slammed one down at her last words. “Yeah, that’s me. One in a million.” His jaw tightened before he turned away from her. “And I sure as hell didn’t need or want anyone’s help,” he ground out between clenched teeth.
A chill ran down Claire’s spine. Meaning he didn’t need her. But she knew that already. So why did it hurt deep in her chest? Had she really thought their lovemaking had been something special to him?
The coffeemaker gurgled in the otherwise silent apartment.
But she still wasn’t leaving without Julia. And she wasn’t going to leave here without telling the great loner a thing or two.
“Did you know there are over thirty-thousand motor vehicle-related fatalities every year in the U.S.?”
He turned to lean his back against the counter, folded his arms and threw her a bewildered look.
“And I believe the number of alcoholics is something like twelve million.”
“Where do you get this stuff?”
Yes. She was a statistics geek. “I told you. I just remember data easily.” She pushed her glasses up self-consciously. “But my point is, it’s illogical to take what happened to you personally.”
Rafe jerked his gaze to hers. “It sure as hell felt personal.”
Claire bit her lip. “Yes. You’re right. I’
m sorry. I—I didn’t mean... That is, I only meant that we live in an imperfect, random world. The whole human race could’ve been one molecule away from never becoming more than an amoeba. I know it’s tempting to ask oneself, Why did this bad thing happen to me? But that’s like wondering why Homo sapiens lived and Homo erectus became extinct. Who knows?”
He squinted. “So everything is just chance and nothing really matters in the end?”
She frowned. “No. We all matter. We can make the difference. There is an indefinable quality, an unknown factor in the equation that I believe can’t be understood.” She mimicked him and leaned against the counter’s edge beside him, adjusting the sheet around her. Her feet were cold on the linoleum floor. “It’s one of the big questions humans have been struggling to answer ever since we could reason. Why do we exist? Some find comfort in a higher power. Others are always searching.” She shrugged again. “But no matter what the answer, I believe we have a choice.”
“About what?”
She was captured by gray eyes so intense she thought she’d never escape their scrutiny. And why would she want to? “We can choose to let what happens to us defeat us, or we can fight and make something good come from it.”
“How could anything good come from what happened?”
Claire looked at him. Really looked at him. Who was she to try to make sense of anything? Maybe she would just make things worse. All she had—like her microbes in her lab—was the truth she’d observed. “You were left alone, to fend for yourself. Living on the fringe of so-called normal society. And yet you persevered. You’ve created a place for others like yourself. The people who don’t fit in, the individuals that society might call freaks can come to Once Bitten and know there are others like themselves, and not feel so alone.”
She realized that she’d always felt like an outcast, too. A painfully shy, socially awkward, fashionably backward nerd. But Rafe had made her see herself differently.
He stared at her, the creases of bitterness and torment between his brows and around his mouth slowly fading. He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. Then he brought his hands to either side of her face, tilted it up and lowered his mouth to hers.
The kiss was gentle and full of wonder. Something deep in her belly ached for the joy of it. He pulled away, stared at her again and then took possession of her mouth with a fierceness that made her knees lose strength and her chest surge with emotion. She let go of the sheet and wrapped her arms around his neck, returning his kisses, whimpering with need.
In one swift move he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the bed, the sheet trailing behind. Her back hit the mattress and hot male body covered her. She opened the sheet and wrapped it around his back, cocooning them both inside it, hiding from the world and all its mysteries and complications. All she cared about right now was how his skin rubbed against hers, how his body was hard where hers was soft. How the hair on his chest and legs tickled and warmed her.
He kissed her nose, her eyes, her temple, then down her jaw to her neck, his stubble rough against her sensitive throat. He used his knees to spread her thighs and slipped inside her. He groaned her name and set up a rhythm that called to the ancient female in her. She dug her fingers into his back and met him thrust for thrust, encouraging him with guttural sounds that might have been the word yes in some primal language.
And when she needed him to go faster and harder he seemed to read her mind. He obliged until she was fighting to breathe and reaching a zenith and then tumbling down, and he froze above her. Then he shuddered and gradually relaxed.
Still marveling at the phenomenon of her blinding orgasm, Claire caressed his back, his shoulders, his neck. Never again would she question whether she was frigid or unfeeling, or undersexed.
But at this moment, she couldn’t imagine that any other man would make her feel this way.
11
RAFE WAS DREAMING. He was surrounded by warmth, wrapped in loving arms. He felt safe. Being held so tightly his chest felt compressed.
Then the weight on his chest shifted and a female sighed, and Rafe awoke slowly.
Claire half lay on him, her cheek on his chest, her breasts pushed against his side, her leg crossed over his. Beneath his hand her back rose and fell with her steady breathing. He smiled and felt a surreal sense of peace.
Her warm skin pressed against his as weak light filtered through the blinds. Almost morning.
He’d actually slept several hours. With someone next to him in his bed. Hearing her breathing. Feeling her warm body snuggling against his. He slid his hand up her spine and she moaned and arched, murmuring a satisfied hello.
“Hey,” he muttered.
She stiffened, rose up on her elbows. “What time is it?” Her eyes were wide, frantic. Even so, their deep brown color reminded him of the chicory coffee he loved so much.
“You have an early flight?”
“Um.” She blinked. “Yes.” She rolled away from him and grabbed her glasses off the bedside table. As she slipped them on, he rolled toward her and slid his arm around her waist.
“Cher.” He pressed a soft kiss to the small of her back and began nibbling his way to her hip. “Stay today. I’ll take you to the airport tomorrow.”
She covered his hand with hers and squeezed. “I—I can’t.”
A sharp pain lodged somewhere between his throat and chest. And she...shot off the bed and into the bathroom as if she couldn’t wait to put as much distance between them as possible. Evidently she wasn’t feeling the same warmth.
Last night he’d practically opened a vein for the woman. He never talked about his past. But he’d thought they’d...connected.
He stretched and ran a hand along his unshaven jaw. What the hell was he thinking? Had he thought he might actually get involved with her? As in...a relationship?
Who’d have guessed it? Raphael Moreau, the king of the tourist fling, had feelings for a woman. How had that happened? How could he have been so stupid? The woman lived in Boston. She had a PhD, for crying out loud. This was good that she was leaving. She’d disrupted his life enough already.
He crawled out of bed and padded to the bathroom, knocked on the door she’d closed. “Claire?”
“Just a sec.”
“Claire, give me a few minutes to shower and shave and I’ll take you to the airport.”
Silence.
He knocked again. “Claire.”
The door opened and she emerged fully dressed. “Thank you, but I need to go now.” She crossed to the table and slung her purse up onto her shoulder.
“Cher. There’s no way you can get a cab here before I get out of the shower. Give me ten minutes.” He spun toward the bathroom.
“No!”
He turned back.
She closed her eyes and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “What I mean is, I arranged for a cab to be here this morning when I booked my flight last night.” She gave him a smile so false a blind man could’ve seen through it. “Thank you for everything.” She extended her right hand.
What the—? He glared at her. A stupid handshake? After last night? Well, fine. If she wanted to pretend there was just sex between them, he could do that. He damn sure could do that. He clasped her hand, raised it to his lips. “Take care, cher.” Dropping her hand, he gave her his back as he headed into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the shower.
* * *
CLAIRE BIT HER LIP, HARD, as she made her way down the outside stairs of Rafe’s apartment. She refused to cry, but her stupid vision was blurry even with her glasses on. Digging in her purse for her cell phone to call a cab, she stood at the base of the stairs, wishing she really had thought to arrange for a cab to pick her up.
“You’re up early.”
Claire jumped and spun to look behind her, her heart rate tripled.
Ro leaned against the back door to the bar, smoking a cigarette under the stairs.
“Ro, you scared me.” Claire
tried to catch her breath.
“It’s Rowena.” As she blew a stream of smoke from her mouth, Rowena raised a brow, threw her cigarette down and ground it out with her boot. “You have a good time last night?” Her gaze traveled up the stairs to Rafe’s apartment door and back down again.
For the briefest instant Claire thought she saw pain in the woman’s eyes. She certainly didn’t blame Rowena if she’d had to work all night because Rafe had been...preoccupied with Claire. She suddenly felt embarrassed. “Have you been here all night?” She tried to smile.
Rowena shrugged. “Sometimes that’s the way it goes.”
“I’m—I’m sorry.”
Rowena raised a disbelieving brow. “Where you going?”
“To the airport.” She held up her cell. “I was just calling a cab.”
Now both brows rose. “And Rafe knows you’re leaving New Orleans?”
Claire nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“Cool. I’ll take you.” She dug a key from her jeans pocket as she strode toward a pale yellow pickup.
“No, that’s okay. I’m sure you’re exhausted.” Now what was she going to do?
“No, really.” She narrowed her eyes. “I want to.”
Claire scanned the small gravel parking lot as if she’d find an answer there. What reason could she possibly give Ro for not wanting her to give her a ride to the airport? “I, uh...”
“You’re not really going to the airport, are you?”
“Um... Please don’t tell Rafe. But I have to try to get my friend away from that cult.”
Rowena cocked her head, speculation in her eyes. “And you’re not going home until you succeed?”
Claire lifted her chin. “No.”
“Then I should tell you. Someone came in last night with a message for you.”
“For me?” Claire didn’t know anyone in the area except Sergeant Mulroney. “Was it a policeman?”
“No. He was a vamp. He said to tell you that Julia will meet you at the St. Luis cemetery as soon as possible.”
Joy spilt over Claire. “Julia? Oh, Rowena, that’s so wonderful. Thank you!” She opened her cell and brought up the cab company’s number. Julia must have sobered up by this morning and realized the danger she was in.
Relentless Seduction Page 10