Wedding Favors (5 page)

She started to shake her head, then all at once she halted, looking astonished. “I’d almost forgotten, but yes, I have! When I was young, visiting the French Quarter with my parents.” She gasped. “My God. It was
that
fountain?
That’s
why the old courtyard looked so familiar!” Her wide eyes met his. “How on earth did you know?”

He tamped down a flare of disappointment. “You really don’t remember me?”

“You?”

As she struggled to dredge the memory of him from the murky depths of forgotten experiences, he shifted and drove his cock farther up into her. A reminder to himself that the past didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he had her now, here, tonight. “Do you recall anything else that happened that day ... ?” he prompted, despite an overwhelming irritation with himself for giving a
foutu
damn. What did it matter if she’d forgotten him?

It was her turn to study his face. But his cock play was distracting her. She closed her eyes when he rammed up into her again. “My God, the boy!” she breathed. “In the courtyard. The one who tried to kiss me. It was
you!”

He rubbed his cheek with a thumb.
“Merci Dieu,
you did not have the same reaction tonight as you did back then.”

She made an embarrassed noise. “Oh, damn. I slapped you, didn’t I?”

“More like sucker-punched. You’ve a wicked right hook, you.” His lips curved as he grasped her jaw in his palm and held her for a thorough, drowning kiss. “I may just have to punish you for that.”

Her consternation melted to an undulating whole-body purr. “Promise?”

They’d been fucking like minks since closing the French doors earlier; explosive but fairly conventional stuff. He’d been gradually initiating her into the role of his submissive, and she’d been a quick study, more than willing to please him.

“Mais,
yeah,” he promised.

Excitement spurted through him. His gaze sought the array of restraints and other equipment hanging next to the headboard, standard equipment in all the
maison’s
pleasure chambers. Because of her relative inexperience, he’d been holding back from what he really wanted to do to her.

He lifted her up off his cock and ordered, “Turn around.” They untangled their legs, and she obliged with her back. “Raise your arms.” She did, and he grasped her wrists, bent her forward, and quickly manacled her low to the headboard.

She gave a little cry and met his eyes in the large mirror hanging behind the bed. “What’s going on?” Her bottom was in the air, enticingly displayed.

“What do you think?” he drawled.

“But I don’t ...” She swallowed, pulling at her bonds. “What are you going to do to me?”

Pleased that she hadn’t stopped his actions, only questioned them, he ran his hands down the sides of her torso and over her backside. Instead of answering, he asked, “Do you know the legend of the
Jaillissement de Plaisir?”

“What does that have to do with tying me up?”

He drew back his hand and gave her ass a sharp smack.

“Ow!” She tried to jerk up, but the fur-lined cuffs prevented it. “What the—!”

He smacked the other side.

He rubbed over her plump flesh, feeling the heat of the sting and her growing arousal, drawing it into his hands. “When I ask you a question, you must answer me.”

“That—”

He raised his hand again, along with a brow.

“Okay!” she rushed to say. “I’ll answer! Um, what was the question again?”

“The legend.”

“Right. Yes. I’ve heard that throwing a coin in it and making a wish is supposed to grant the supplicant endless sexual pleasure. If you do it with your true love, you’ll be forever fulfilled and in love.”

He watched her reflection carefully in the mirror. “Is that what you were doing there earlier? Hoping for a magic spell?”

“I suppose.”

You believe in voodoo, then?”

“God, no. I told you, all this was my friend’s idea. I didn’t make a wish, anyway.”

He pursed his lips. “Not this time,” he murmured.

“Not—” Suddenly her eyes widened in consternation. “Oh, my God. You and I ... back then, we threw coins!” she said on a rush of breath. “I remember. They landed in the fountain!”

“A complete accident. And we didn’t throw them,” he refuted. “I was running to buy an ice cream for my little sister. When you and I collided, the coins merely flew from my hand.”

“I was about to make a wish with mine,” she said, her gaze turning dreamy as she dipped into the past again. “I wanted a kitten for my birthday.”

He moved forward, took her hips between his hands, and spread her knees wide apart with his.
“Et voilà.
Nothing to do with us. Or love. Or this attraction we feel. The fountain nonsense, it’s just a silly superstition.”

Her gaze came back into focus. “Of course it’s not real.”

“There’s no such thing as voodoo. Or endless pleasure,” he stated unequivocally and thrust into her.

“Or someone loving you forever,” she gasped as he withdrew and thrust in harder.

That’s what he told himself as he hammered into her over and over, drawing moans and gasps of pleasure from both of them until they exploded in a mind-bending climax. Crazy that he’d been thinking of her all these years.

Crazy, he told himself as he spent the rest of the night exploring her body, teaching her to touch him in ways that drove him mad with desire. Crazier still, he told himself as he gently introduced her to the many pleasures of submitting to a man’s will, that he’d even think about blaming his troubles with the building permits and his unfulfilling love life on some absurd voodoo magic. Craziest of all, he told himself firmly as he now stared at the dimming shadows creeping across the ceiling as pink sunlight peeked into the room, that he’d thought fucking this woman for a single night would exorcise her from his dreams, along with the winds of discontent that had blown through his life for the past fifteen years.

Putain de merde.
He knew damn well
voudoun
wasn’t real ... but it sure as hell felt like he’d been caught in some kind of black magic spell that refused to relinquish him. How could he possibly have thought having sex with her would break him free?

“Shay?” she whispered. She’d been dozing in his arms for the past hour, the two of them sprawled across the pillow-strewn, sheet-tangled bed, emotionally replete and sexually sated. For now...

“Yeah,
cher.”

“So, about that kiss at the fountain...”

Dieu.
Was she a mind reader as well as an erotic sorceress? “Mm-hmm?”

“What made you do it?” she asked. “Why would a boy like you”—she turned in his arms and peered up at him—“try to kiss an awkward, gangly girl like me?”

He avoided the pitfall. “You were far from gangly,
cher.
And a boy like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

She smiled. “Older. Cute as hell. Probably a bit of a bad boy, too, I wager.”

He cringed. “Cute?
Merde.”
He grinned. “But I’ll give you bad. Yeah, definitely bad.”

“So, why?”

“Ah, Tessa. You were young and sweet and on the verge of blossoming into a real beauty. Even a clueless boy like me could see that. When I ran smack into you and those coins went flying, you looked so damn upset that I’d spoiled your little wishing ritual ... I couldn’t resist giving you something else to remember instead.”

Amusement danced in her eyes. “No ego there or anything.”

He chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to apologize. It was just an impulse. Honestly, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“You didn’t. I was just surprised. I’ve always regretted smacking you. After you’d gone, I wanted to kick myself.” She nestled closer to his body, extended her tongue, and licked at his nipple.

He fought a moan and, amazingly, his body stirred. They’d indulged in nonstop, down-and-dirty fuck-me sex all night, and still he craved more. He couldn’t get enough of the woman or her body. It was insane how much he wanted her.

In a well-practiced motion, he rolled on top of her, gathered her wrists in his hands, and pinned them above her head again. He’d learned through delightful experience how much she enjoyed being restrained. And he liked nothing more than being in total control. Especially of a beautiful woman.

“Did you wish you’d let me kiss you?” he crooned. He pressed a kiss into her hair, then her temple and her cheek, breathing in the feminine scent of her. The smell of his own sex spiced her lips as he kissed them. It aroused him even more. “Do you wish you’d given your very first kiss to an unknown boy in a deserted courtyard? A stranger?”

“Yes,” she admitted softly. “I wanted you to come back and make me kiss you.”

His cock went hard. “Do you wish you’d let me push you down on the grass and touch your soft, virginal body? Awaken you to the pleasures of young love? Is that what you wanted,
cher?”

She looked up at him, and he knew it was true. His heart crowed.

“Yes,” she whispered. “God, how I wanted you to come back and touch me.”

“I was sixteen, and you hadn’t even begun to be a woman, but I dreamed of you,” he admitted, the years of frustration rushing back through him as he reached for another condom. “For years I watched that courtyard, waiting for you to return.” He slid into her. She pressed her thighs around his hips.

“When I learned to pleasure myself,” she confessed, “it was always you I imagined doing it to me. I may not have recognized you right away tonight, but I’ve never forgotten your face as it was back then.” She gazed at his features, stalling on his mouth. “So handsome, so temptingly sexual. You
did
awaken me to the pleasures of my body, Shay,” she whispered.

Back then, he couldn’t understand why he’d felt those things for a girl so young. He blamed his obsession on that
foutu
voodoo tale and the gentle teasing of those who believed in it. Not that he ever did. Raging teenage hormones. That’s all it had been.

But now they were both very grown-up.
Merci Dieu.

“Show me,” he urged, pulling out of her and lifting her up against the pillows. He spread her knees wide and held them apart. “How did you touch yourself?”

She blinked, her cheeks coloring. “Really?”

“I want to see.”

Her lips parted a fraction. Hesitantly, her hand went to her pussy. Her fingers spread her folds, exposing her clit. His mouth watered as the fingers of her other hand sought out the glistening nub. She sucked in a breath as she made intimate contact. His cock lengthened in an aching lurch.

Not letting go of her knees, he scooted down and lay between her legs, putting his face close enough to lick her. “Don’t stop,” he admonished when her fingers faltered. Tentatively, they started up again.

He drank in the sight and the scent and the bloom of her desire for him. Watched her clit swell and weep as she coaxed it to stiff arousal. Finally he couldn’t take it any longer. He extended his tongue and joined her fingers with it. She moaned low, and he tasted the spurt of passion clear to his balls. He dragged his tongue down along her valley and filled her wet passage with it. Her back arched. She was close, he could tell.

So was he
. His taut, quickened body reminded him painfully of how much he’d wanted her all through the years. Desperation surged through him. Doing this was
not
going to banish his need for her! But what could he do?

He couldn’t ask her to stay. It was nearly morning. And as much as he wanted to, he could not linger in bed with her for much longer. He had somewhere to be today. Somewhere important.

But somehow, he had to find a way break this erotic spell she had him under.

Suddenly, he had an idea. That damned fountain had started his misery, this whole
foutu
curse. Surely, it could end it, too. Did you have to believe in the magic for it to work?

He put his hands over her fingers, stopping their movement.

“Shay, what are you doing?” she gasped, trying to pull them free.

“We need to finish what we started,” he told her.

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” she said, her voice strangled.

“No. I mean at the
Jaillissement.”
He raised up to his knees, grabbed her hand, and pulled her along as he rolled off the bed.
“Vien
. Come with me. It’s time to end this accursed nonsense!”

“Wait.
What?” Alarm filled Tessa as Shay hustled her toward the chamber door.

“We need to get this voodoo bullshit out of our systems once and for all,” he said. “Show ourselves that there is nothing to it. Just a foolish legend.”

Her body throbbed with unsated lust. God, not
again!
Why did men insist on leaving a woman unfulfilled? “But, Shay, I already know it’s foolishness! Can’t we just—”