[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine (29 page)

He ripped open the condom and sheathed himself, then cupped her ass and lifted her, poising her over his shaft. She smiled down at him, and his lips quirked just a little, sending a shiver of love twirling through her in response. So beautiful he was, eyes closed now, wet lashes against his copper cheeks. She took his penis in one hand and rubbed the head through her slick folds and across her clit, once and then again. He let out a groan and held her still, utterly silent except for his harsh breathing. She positioned him at her vagina. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had sex, I’m going to be tight, go slowly…”

The coils of a serpent surrounded her; its head probed at her entrance. “Tight is good.” He pushed and withdrew, probed again, deeper, deeper, sending little tongue-licks of flame through her belly. Slowly, slowly, he lowered her until he was inside her to the hilt. His aura let go of the remnants of anger and pain and flared with pleasure.

“Your colors are so beautiful,” she breathed, almost on a sob.

He braced her against the cool tiles and began to move. Golden trills of excitement, throbs of crimson lust, purple sensual twists…
his
pleasure flowed into her with every stroke. She dug her fingers into his back and clung to him, reveling in the squish and squeak of her breasts against his chest, the water sneaking past her nipples, his hands, one under her ass, the other cupping a thigh, the slow, teasing thrusts and the answering clench of her sex around him. Higher and higher she climbed, the golden darkness swirling up to flush out all thought, to sweep her into a pulse and throb that went on and on and on, until he came hard and harder, and then held her still against the shower wall.

When he let her down, she slumped against the tiles to let her shaking legs recover. He said nothing, merely ditching the condom and reaching for the shampoo. She watched, sated and yet not, while he shampooed and rinsed his hair. She savored his powerful arms and thighs, the copper-brown muscles of his chest and abs, the penis nestled now in its bed of dark hair.

She wanted to do him again.

“Memorable for sure,” she muttered. “But addictive is a better word for it.”

His aura twisted, flamed. “Don’t even—” He grunted, squeezing out his long hair. “Fucking bird won’t let me get a word in edgewise anymore.”

“What bird? What were you going to say?”

“Some bird, any bird, anything that would stop you from fucking me over and over again.” He reached out of the
shower for a towel and handed it to her, then got one for himself.

“If there’s something I should know, you need to tell me, bird or no bird.” She dried herself and turbaned the towel around her head. “Well?”

“Apparently, I’m not allowed to say it yet.”

“Who’s not allowing you? Don’t say a bird. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Me, then,” he said, shrugging again. “I guess. I never have been able to figure it out.”

What had she said to start this crazy conversation? Her cell phone rang. She padded naked into the living room for her backpack and dug it out.
Lavonia
. She flipped it open.

“Marguerite.” Lavonia sounded absolutely awful. “Please be careful. I’m so scared for you.”

Marguerite stood and moved to the far side of the room for some privacy. “What’s up?”

“My horrible dreams.” Lavonia’s voice was thick with tears. “I had another one this afternoon. Everybody’s dead in it—you and Janie and Zeb—and I’m blind, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

Janie? What did she have to do with all this?

Nothing
, Marguerite admonished herself. She was becoming as superstitious about dreams as Lavonia. “Stop what? I thought you said we were dead.”

Lavonia sobbed at the other end. “Don’t joke, Marguerite. I’m so scared it’s a prophetic dream and I’m supposed to
do
something, but I don’t know what!”

“It’s not a prophetic dream,” Marguerite said. “It’s your imagination running wild.”

“I know,” whispered Lavonia. “But I don’t feel right. Not at all.”

“You and I both know feelings can’t be counted on. It could be something as simple as PMS. You know what that does to the female brain.”

“I’m not PMS-ing,” Lavonia retorted, more like her usual self. “It’s not that time of the month.”

“That doesn’t mean your hormones aren’t out of whack. Have a good strong cup of coffee to perk you up, go eat a fabulous supper, and have a great time at the theater.”

“That’s what Al said.” She heaved a huge sigh. “And I agree with him that you need to stay away from that rock star. He’s not safe.”

“Since when?” Marguerite demanded. “This morning you said you liked him.”

“That’s why he’s dangerous. He overrides a woman’s common sense. You need to go someplace where he’s not so you can think straight again.”

With difficulty, Marguerite refrained from pointing out that Lavonia was the one whose thinking had gone distinctly wonky. Marguerite was doing just fine, considering she was dealing with attack birds and a lunatic lover.

Oh,
God,
what a lover. Why was he so conflicted? Why shouldn’t they make love again and again?

“Can’t you go someplace else for a few nights?” Lavonia pleaded. “Get away from here until this all blows over?”

Not a chance. She had better things to do tonight, such as trying Constantine out in a bed. She was utterly ravenous for more. She’d never been like this before. It might not last, but it was way too good to waste.

“I can’t go anywhere. I have work tomorrow,” Marguerite said, and then said it a couple more times before finally hanging up. She took off the turbaned towel. “My friend Lavonia thinks I’m in danger associating with you. She wants me to leave town.”

Constantine sat naked and cross-legged on the carpet, combing out his long hair.

“Some part of you agrees with her, the same part that’s been keeping me at arm’s length,” Marguerite went on. “On the other hand, your bird, whatever that is, or some part of you that identifies with the bird, wants me to stay and sleep with you again.”

He watched her from under hooded eyes, and her nipples hardened instantly. “And again and again,” he said.

“I want to do that, too,” she said. “But apparently some part of you doesn’t think it’s such a good idea, the same part that avoided it in the first place.”

“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, babe. It’s a real turnoff. Let’s just do it.”

She wrapped the towel around herself and dug in her purse for a hair pick. “Your weird, secretive approach to things is a turnoff, too. If you can go around acting like a nutcase, I can ask questions and try to figure out why.”

He cast his eyes heavenward, as if looking for inspiration. Or asking permission from some bird.

“I don’t care what the bird says,” she said, tugging the pick through her tangles. “If it wants me to sleep with you, it has to let you talk to me.”

He laughed. “Good luck ordering the bird around. Stop attacking your hair, girl.” He stood—a fluid, graceful cat- serpent-river—and took the pick. Gently, he worked through
the snarls. How relaxing to be ministered to like this. She closed her eyes and sighed, and desire crept silently into her belly.

No.
No way would she let him seduce her into abandoning her questions. “I glanced through that book about you. I’ve read articles, too. There’s never much on your early years, except that you lived with your mother on the Navajo reservation. You gloss over it as if nothing happened, but you were eight years old when you left there. Your life didn’t start in New Orleans. It started out west. Why don’t you talk about it?”

“It’s not a pretty story,” he said. “What I recall of it is mighty unpleasant.”

“You don’t try to suppress all the other unpleasant stories about you. Why this one?”

“It’s over and done with, and it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It does,” Marguerite said. “It made you who you are.”

That struck a chord; his aura flared. “It’s not just my story. It reflects badly on my mother and on the Navajo people, too. I’ve already done enough harm. I don’t want to do any more.”

Memories of what she’d read about the Navajos flooded her mind. “You carry a lot of violence and anger. I bet you could use a healing ceremony.”

Now his aura was majorly annoyed. He moved behind her, combing the hair at the back. “Not going to happen, babe. I don’t belong there anymore. I have to find my own way.”

“You’ll feel much better if you get it off your chest. Anything you clutch to yourself like that literally weighs you
down.” She huffed. “It’s in your aura—guilt and shame and misery all wadded up together.”

He rolled his eyes but moved to her other side as if he hadn’t been trying to hide anything at all. As if he was cool with being so vulnerable, which he wasn’t.

“You know I have this gift.” She hated this. “Just believe me, damn it. You’ll feel much better if you let some of it go.”

A struggle went on in his aura. Her own chest tightened in response, but she sat quiescent while he finished with her hair. Finally, he said, “I’ll tell you about my wife, but if you really want to have sex with me again, we should do it first.”

He eyed her from beneath heavy lids again, sending her tantalizing images of what they would do together, visualized the blood pounding languidly through her body, pulsing in her pussy, moisture gushing to welcome him.

She blushed but scowled. “Stop that.”

“Are you going to fuck me or not?” He winced and telepathed:
Would you prefer romance? Touch me, sweetheart
.

She closed in on him, took his penis in her hand, ran her fingers lazily up and down. He shuddered. “I don’t expect you to fall madly in love with me,” she said, letting him go again, “but I also don’t want to feel lousy about myself afterward.”

“Talking about my wife will make you feel lousy for sure, without the benefit of any good physical stuff. It may turn you off for good, and I’d like to get laid again first.”
Sorry about the lack of finesse.
He went to the window that looked out over the rooftops of Bayou Gavotte. Denser clouds were building overhead; soon a shower would break the tense Louisiana heat. “Something bad is going to happen tonight.”

Marguerite came up beside him, put her arms around him, and stretched up until her lips brushed his. “Not between you and me.”

Zeb downed four iced coffees in a row, staying awake to reassure Zelda that he wasn’t planning to kill himself. It wasn’t doing any good. She knew something was wrong, and she wouldn’t let go. Sweet, persistent little bitch. He wanted a lifetime of friendship with her, but how likely was that?

He stood, yawning. “Give it up, Zelda. I’m not suicidal, but I might become that way if I don’t get some sleep. I’ll walk you to your place, and then I’m going home to crash.” He said the last sentence loud enough for the cop a few tables over to hear him.

The cop, who looked wet behind the ears, was a friend of Zelda’s mom. She’d greeted him and they’d exchanged some small talk, and then he’d got a free coffee and pastry and taken a little table in the corner.

Usually cops took a short coffee break and then left again. This dude had been sitting in the corner doing Sudoku puzzles for half an hour. Maybe lack of sleep was making Zeb paranoid, but he didn’t think so. He was pretty sure people had been watching him ever since this morning at Hellebore U. First a guy he thought was one of Constantine’s roadies; then an old lady who’d sat beside him on a park bench followed slowly behind him until he’d begun to run. When he’d turned to glance back at her, she was on a cell phone. After that, one of the waiters from the Impractical Cat, a big, tough-looking dude, seemed always to be
close by, even when Zeb had gone to the supermarket to get sugar and chocolate for his dad. Fortunately, Dad hadn’t been home when he’d dropped them off, so he’d escaped… and now he was being watched by this cop.

Sure, the cop’s too-casual glances their way might be meant for Zelda, or maybe he thought he was playing knight in shining armor, protecting the cute little vampire from statutory rape.
Sorry, man, I’m way too stable for that
. Zeb had wondered all day if he should go ahead and screw Juma as a sort of last meal, just in case, but… no. If he was going to do Juma, he’d do her right.

Zelda’s cell phone chimed, and she held up a hand. She read the text. “Can you walk me to the Cat instead? I’m meeting Juma for peach cobbler and ice cream.”

“Sure, why not?” He hadn’t been able to make a decision anyway, so why not tempt fate?

“Maybe you can talk to Constantine if he’s there.”

“Maybe so,” Zeb said. More and more, this truly was a temptation: to lay his burdens on an experienced pair of shoulders, especially since the possessor of the shoulders had absolutely no emotional investment in Zeb’s dilemma.

“Really? Yay!” Zelda trotted along beside him, talking nonstop about how fabulous and what a great friend Constantine was.

A patrol car turned out of the coffee shop parking lot even as he and Zelda headed down the main drag toward the Impractical Cat. Aw, fuck. Constantine would probably just shunt him over to the police. Maybe he already had done so—otherwise why was he being shadowed by a cop now rather than some bodyguard-in-training?