Longarm and the Voodoo Queen (10 page)

Longarm didn't expect to go to sleep right away, but he surprised himself by dozing off almost immediately. He slept lightly, though, so he was instantly awake when he heard the soft scrape of the door opening sometime later. He was unsure exactly how much time had passed, but it was pitch dark in the cabin.

Quiet footsteps came across the room toward him. From the confidence with which the person was moving in the darkness, Longarm felt fairly sure it was Claudette. He wasn't sure why she was sneaking around like this; if she had wanted to harm him, she'd had ample opportunity before now. But he reached down and silently wrapped his fingers around the butt of his holstered Colt anyway.

He could hear her breathing as she knelt on the other side of the bed. Suddenly, something touched his chest, light as a butterfly, and he realized she was stroking him with her fingertips. She trailed her fingers through the thick dark hair that curled on his chest, moving them ever lower. She reached his waist and then moved even lower, flattening her hand to press the palm of it against the rapidly rising bulge at his groin. Through the fabric of his trousers, her fingers closed around his hardening shaft.

"Custis, I know you got to be awake," she whispered as she squeezed him lightly. "Either awake or dead, you."

"I ain't dead," he told her, his voice sounding strangely hoarse in his ears.

She squeezed harder. "Good, 'cause I need a live man tonight, me."

Longarm let go of his Colt and reached up toward her. His hand encountered soft, yielding flesh and closed around it. He could feel the pebbled ring of her nipple prodding against his palm. He squeezed her breast for a moment, then ran his thumb over the erect nub of flesh, plucking at it like a guitar string and drawing a low note of pleasure from her throat.

"Afraid you got a shameless hussy here, you be Custis," she said. She unbuckled his belt, and then he felt her fingers go to work on the buttons of his trousers.

"That's just fine with me," he told her, reaching up to cup her other breast.

She finished with the last button and reached inside his trousers to free his shaft. As it bobbed up, she wrapped her hand around it and began sliding her palm up and down.

"Oh, you be plenty-plenty big," she said, breathless with anticipation. "Goin' to feel so good inside me."

He slid his hands from her breasts along her flanks. As he had thought, she was naked, having shed the old dress she had been wearing earlier. He reached down and moved his hand between her thighs. He probed her with a finger, and found her hot and wet. She moaned and pressed her pelvis against him as he explored her slick femaleness.

Then she leaned over and planted a kiss on his chest. She tongued each of his nipples for a moment, then moved down his torso, her lips and tongue leaving a fiery trail of sensation behind them. She lifted herself over him so that she could reach his manhood, and a second later, her lips closed around the tip of the throbbing pole of flesh.

Longarm's hips wanted to surge up off the bed and drive his shaft deeper into her mouth, but he controlled the urge and let Claudette set the pace. Her tongue swirled around the head and toyed with the slit at the very tip, licking up the moisture that welled from it. After a few maddening moments of that, she moved on down the shaft, kissing and licking until she had it wet all over. It was all Longarm could do not to explode in her mouth.

He caught hold of her hips and pulled her onto the bunk with him so that she lay with her thighs straddling his head. As she took his manhood into her mouth again, sucking it deeper this time, he reached down and tangled his hands in her thick dark hair. The musky scent of her femininity filled his nostrils as he lifted his head and thrust his tongue into her. She groaned around his shaft and clenched her thighs on his ears.

There was a limit to how much of this Longarm could stand without losing control, and he reached it after a few minutes. Claudette seemed to be totally willing to move on to the next step too, as he pulled her around so that she faced him. She reached down to guide the long, thick rod of flesh into her, and they were both so wet that he slid inside with no trouble. Claudette put her hands on his chest and pushed herself upright so that she was sitting on him, so stuffed with his manhood that they both felt it hit bottom. Or top, as the case might be. Claudette gasped and began to rock her hips back and forth.

"Oh, fill me up so good, you, Custis!" she cried.

He held her hips to steady her as he began thrusting up from the bunk, meeting her movements with his own. Urgency crept over him, making him drive into her harder and faster. She was caught up in the grip of passion just as he was, and she said, "Oh!... Oh!... Oh!" as he made love to her. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness inside the shack by now, and in the faint glow of moonlight and starlight that filtered through the trees and into the cabin, he could see her throwing her head back and forth, her hair whipping around it. Her fingers dug into his chest, holding on for dear life.

Finally, arching his back, Longarm drove the bar of flesh that was both velvet and iron as deeply into her as it would go, and held it there as his climax exploded from him. Spurt after spurt of the thick seed boiled from his manhood and filled her to the brim. Her own climax burst at the same time in a series of shudders that rolled through her. Longarm threw his head back and groaned through clenched teeth as the last of his juices welled out of him.

Claudette collapsed on top of him, her breasts flattening against his chest. Both of them were breathing heavily, their bodies slicked with sweat from the humid heat of the bayou country--and the heat of their lovemaking. She nuzzled her face against his shoulder for a moment. Then Longarm cupped her chin and turned her toward him so that he could kiss her. His lips brushed hers with a tenderness that might not have been possible had he not already been sated. In fact, as he tasted the sweet, hot wetness of her mouth, another throb went through his shaft, which was still buried within her. The reaction made her give a throaty little noise almost like the purr of a cat.

"I am so happy--happy I find you in that marsh, Custis," she whispered.

"You and me both, Claudette," he told her. "You and me both."

CHAPTER 8

As Claudette had predicted, Longarm was able to hitch a ride into New Orleans the next morning with a farmer who was taking a load of produce into town to the market near the docks. That put Longarm close to Gallatin Street too, so he was able to walk to the Brass Pelican. The door of the gambling club was locked when he got there, however, so he pounded on the panel and waited to see if anyone was going to open it.

His thoughts went back to Claudette. She had awakened him that morning when dawn was just beginning to gray the sky, and a mighty nice way of waking up it had been. She had been kneeling beside the bunk, her head bobbing up and down over his groin as she sucked on his manhood. He had caught hold of her shoulder and tried to pull her up onto the bunk with him, but her lips and tongue had ceased what they were doing long enough for her to say, "No! You leave him where he is. That what I want, me."

Longarm didn't argue. He let her continue with the French lesson--appropriate enough name for it, he considered, since she was descended from those Acadian settlers who had once called France home--and after a few minutes he felt his climax nearing again. Claudette seemed to sense it too, because she gripped his stalk firmly with one hand and tightened her lips around it, as if to make sure that he didn't get away from her.

That was the last thing he had in mind. He poured out his seed into her mouth as she swallowed eagerly. She had reached down between her legs to rub herself, and her hips were pumping back and forth in a frenzy as she drained him, using her hand to squeeze out the last drops so that she could lap them up. Longarm flopped back on the bunk and reflected that if he didn't get back to New Orleans pretty soon, this lusty Cajun gal was liable to just about love him to death.

After that she fed him breakfast, showed him the road she had mentioned the night before, and gave him a sweet kiss of farewell. He had walked along the road only about a mile when a farmer came along with a wagon loaded with produce, and now here he was standing in front of the Brass Pelican, lifting his hand to knock once more on the door.

Before he could do so, the panel swung open, and a man with a narrow, pasty face peered out at him, blinking from the mid-morning glare. The man looked like the sort who didn't often actually see the sun. Longarm recognized him as one of the bartenders he had seen in the club a couple of nights earlier.

"Yeah?" growled the man. "What the hell do you want?"

"You must not recognize me, old son." Longarm put his shoulder against the door and easily shoved it open, stepping inside as the bartender stumbled back a couple of steps. "Is Millard here?"

"Mr. Millard!" yelled the man as he reached behind him to jerk something from behind his belt. Longarm was expecting the little pistol he saw in the bartender's hand, and he reached out to close his own hand over the cylinder so that the gun couldn't fire. With a quick wrench, Longarm plucked the pistol from the bartender's fingers, twisting one of them in the process. The man yelped and jumped back again, sticking the injured digit in his mouth to suck on it.

Jasper Millard appeared in the doorway at the end of the bar, a shotgun in his hands. He had the greener cocked and ready for trouble, no doubt thinking that Royale might be staging another attack on the club. Longarm held up his hand, palm out, and said hurriedly, "Hold on, Mr. Millard. It's just me, Custis Parker."

"Parker!" exclaimed Millard in surprise. He pointed the double barrels of the greener at the floor and carefully lowered the hammers. "Damn it, I didn't expect to see you again. I was afraid that if Royale's men didn't get you, the swamp would."

Longarm shook his head. He tossed the pocket pistol back to the bartender, who glared at him even though it was obvious Longarm wasn't one of the enemy. Longarm ignored the man and strolled along the bar to join Millard.

"Reckon I was lucky. I see you were too."

"I know my way around those marshes. I grew up down there."

"You don't sound like a Cajun," Longarm pointed out.

Millard shrugged his brawny shoulders. "I was gone for a long time before I came back to New Orleans. Suppose I lost the accent somewhere along the way. But I never forgot how easy it is to bring in goods through the Delta." He turned and inclined his head to indicate that Longarm was to follow him. "Let's go back to the office."

Longarm followed the bald-headed man down the hall, and once they were in the office, Millard waved at the chair in front of the desk. Longarm sat down and cocked his right ankle on his left knee. He was still wearing the mud-stained clothes he had worn the day before.

"You look like you've been through the wringer," said Millard as he sat down behind the desk. "Help yourself to one of those cigars." He nodded toward the humidor.

Longarm reached into his pocket for a cheroot. "Reckon I'll smoke my own."

Millard frowned across the desk at him. "What's the matter, Parker?" he asked. "You're acting like somebody shoved a burr up your ass."

Longarm flicked a lucifer into life with an iron-hard thumbnail and held the flame to the end of his cheroot. When he had it burning to suit him, he shook the match out and dropped it on the floor beside the chair. "You sort of disappeared yesterday after we ran into Royale's boys."

The frown on Millard's face deepened. "What the hell is this?" he snapped. "You're mad because I didn't stay around to pull your fat out of the fire?"

"I got the notion we were working together."

"Well, you got the wrong notion!" Millard said with a snort. "You're working for me, Parker. We ain't partners." His eyes narrowed. "I warned you about getting too ambitious."

Longarm sighed. He had pushed this mock resentment about as far as he was going to. But he had figured that a man as tough and amoral as he was supposed to be ought to say something about being left behind to face a pack of vicious killers.

"You're right, Boss," he muttered. "Sorry. To tell you the truth, I'm just glad we both got out of there with our hides in one piece."

Millard grunted, seeming to accept Longarm's apology. "Yeah, so am I. The way things are going, I expect Royale to pull something else any time now."

"Maybe since his boys failed the last couple of times, he'll think twice about starting more trouble."

Millard shook his head. "I'd like to think so, but I doubt it. I got a feeling Royale's not going to let up until either him or me is dead." He looked curiously at Longarm. "How'd you get away from his men anyway?"

"Pure dumb luck," said Longarm with a grin. He wasn't going to mention Claudette. "My horse got sucked down by quicksand, and I knew I couldn't take off across those marshes on foot without winding up the same way. But I found an old pirogue and started paddling around those bayous, and that kept me from getting sucked under. Royale's men were hollering at each other while they looked for us, so I just steered clear of them as much as I could. Didn't hear any more shots, so I was hoping you'd gotten away too."

"How did you get back here to New Orleans?"