Bayon/Jean-Baptiste (Bayou Heat) (19 page)

He growled as he settled her against the mattress. He’d done pretty damn well in stripping her. The bun was no more, and the shirt was gone, pearl buttons no doubt leading a pathway from the living room to the bedroom like opalescent breadcrumbs. All she had on now was her bra and that skirt he’d yanked to her hips on the marble table. The skirt that was nearly ripped from hem to waist.

Shit. He’d get her a new one.

He’d get her twenty new ones.

His eyes clung to her curves, her mouth, her wide, eager gaze as he yanked off his jeans and T-shirt. When he saw her hands disappear behind her back, working the clasp on her pale pink bra, he loomed over her, growling.

“That’s my job, Genevieve.”

Her hands stilled and her eyes flipped up to meet his. “I like that. The way you say my name.”

Something hot and liquid moved through him, and it had nothing to do with sexual desire. Jean-Baptiste dipped his head, slid a canine inside the front of her bra and tugged. There was a quick pop and Genevieve gasped. Both silky pink cups flew to opposite sides, revealing a pair of the most spectacular breasts he had ever seen.

His mouth started to water.

“And I like that, too,” she said breathlessly, her gaze raking over him; his face, neck, his chest. “And these,” she continued, putting her hands on his forearms, moving up, over his pumas, tracing the lines of the water and grass. “Did they hurt?”

He shook his head, jaw tight. He was poised above her, his muscles straining, his skin vibrating, his cock so hard it could drill granite. He’d never wanted anything more. To be inside this female, so deep he lost himself. So wet, he drowned. So enveloped, all thought and anxiety bled from him.

“Maybe I’ll get a tattoo,” she whispered.

Fuck
. He spread her legs with one thigh and demanded, “Where?”

Her gaze slid from his neck to his eyes. “I don’t know. Any suggestions? My back? My hip? My ankle? My inner thigh?”

“Oh, Genny,” he breathed, dropping his head, nuzzling the underside of her breast. “You have such beautiful skin. So perfect.”

He lapped at one dusky pink nipple and she gasped, wriggled beneath him.

“I think the only mark you should have on your body is mine.”

Her eyes slammed up to his. “What?”

He grinned. “You heard me. And you know what I meant by it.”

He dipped his head again, but this time he took her nipple into his mouth and suckled it deep. A groan escaped her throat, raw and hungry, and her back arched off the bed. God, she tasted so sweet. He was never going to be able to forget it, forget her. His cat was right there with him, wanting the same thing. Snarling, threatening to emerge if it wasn’t satisfied.

For one brief second, Jean-Baptiste felt the feline at the surface of his skin, felt the beginnings of a shift, but then Genevieve reached for him—her hand sliding between her bodies, her fingers wrapping around the trunk of his cock—and the puma growled and retreated back into its cage.

While she stroked him languidly, possessively, Jean-Baptiste turned to her other plump breast and suckled that one, too. He drew the fiercely tight nipple deep into his mouth until she cried out, until she squeezed the head of his dick—until pre-come rushed from both their sexes.

He knew the words he’d uttered to her had been impulsive as hell. The offer, the claim to mark her. But it had also been real and true, and had come from deep within his guts. How the fuck had he managed to meet the one female in the world who was meant for him? It was a goddamn miracle—and one he wasn’t about to turn away from. Maybe he wasn’t the best male for her. Not now.
Not yet
. But he wanted to be. He’d find a way to be.

As he circled her nipple with his tongue, then flicked it sharply up and down, back and forth, she moaned and gasped and writhed beneath him. Her thumb played with the pre-come at the head of his cock as he trailed his hand down over her ribs, to her flat stomach, to her hipbones and into the smooth curve of her sex. When he felt the fire, the molten lava between her legs, he nearly came.

“Sweet, Genny,” he whispered against her breast. “You’re creaming,
ma chérie
. Your thighs, your hot pussy and my sheets are drenched.” He ran his teeth over her nipple. “Just the way I like it.”

“Jean-Baptiste, please,” she said breathlessly, wriggling against his wrist, wanting his hand, needing to be filled. And when he thrust two fingers up inside her slick, tight channel, she screamed his name again.

Tight, wet heat gripped his fingers, and he moaned and lifted his head. Her eyes were glassy and large and pinned to his face. Her lips were parted and she was panting.

Shit, he wouldn’t last at this rate. One drive into her pussy and his cock was going to explode.

He took her mouth in a series of hungry, possessive, painful kisses as he growled against her lips, and his fingers pumped inside her slowly and rhythmically.

“Please, Jean-Baptiste,” she murmured, nipping at his bottom lip as she wrapped her legs around his waist. “Please come inside me. I need to know. I need to know how you feel.”

I need you
.

The realization, the absolute truth in that thought, thundered through him, and he eased his fingers out of her, grabbed his stiff cock and pressed it against the plump, pink folds that guarded her slick pussy. He glanced down, saw the way her flesh hugged the head of his dick, beckoned him inside, creamed around him in anticipation.

And then she jacked up her hips, taking him inside her just an inch or two.

Jean-Baptiste felt his mind retreating and his body taking over.

Mine
.

You belong to me
.

He slid his hands beneath her hips, cupped her ass and lifted her, letting her body take him, one inch at a time until he was buried inside of her. Her eyes dropping closed, her face tensing and her throat releasing groan after groan, Baptiste guided her back and forth, her pussy fucking his cock. It was the most perfect feeling in the world, and he knew in that moment that if anyone tried to come between them, if anyone even looked at this female with lust in their eyes, he would attack to kill.

He eased her hips to the mattress, released her, only to spread her legs wider. He placed his hands on her inner thighs and started thrusting.

She cried out. “Yes! God, yes!”

“Your pussy is milking me, Genny,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s like blisteringly hot ocean waves all the way down my cock,
ma chérie
. I don’t know how long I can last.”

She was gone, her head thrashing from side to side on the mattress. Jean-Baptiste pulled out, just partway so he could see her, him, their connection. Her dusky pink lips were wrapped around his cock, coating him in her sweet juices. Christ, if he could lick her and fuck her at the same time, he would.

His head dipped and he closed his lips around one luscious tit. As he pumped inside of her, he drew on that nipple, flicking it with his tongue. Inside her pussy, the honey sweet walls were spasming, electric currents and waves of wet heat.

“Jean-Baptiste!” she cried out, stiffening beneath him.

He battered her womb, suckled her nipple deep, as she came. With every thrust, he growled. With every new wave of orgasm, he cursed. With every roll of his hips, he claimed what had belonged to him the moment she’d walked onto that porch and eyed him warily, that goddamn blouse buttoned up to her chin.

She wasn’t buttoned up now, he mused, fucking her so deep she cried out again. She was bare. Skin glistening with sweat, stomach muscles flexed, ripe breasts bouncing with every thrust, neck and jaw tense, lips parted as she breathed heavy and lustful.

She was his.

And when her slick channel convulsed for the third time that night, when she reached up, ran her fingers over his nipple, and tugged at the metal running through it, he exploded.

Pounding into her with utter and complete abandon, his body shaking and his balls tightening, he came, so hard and intense he felt something impossible overtake him.
No
. Not overtake him. Retreat inside him.

The cat
.

He thrust up inside her one last time, and stayed there, buried against her womb, her warmth. Then he rolled them both to the side, and, breathing heavily, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. His heart was slamming against his ribs; his mind going nuts. He found her gaze. Her eyes were the bluest he’d ever seen them. And soft and satisfied and…dare he say, happy?

But inside himself, a miracle was taking place. The out-of-control, barely caged cat that he’d been trying to keep hidden for so long was purring.
Fuck
. The feline was nearly asleep. His tats and his piercings, and the malachite had never even come close to making him feel like this. Like her.

Genevieve
.
 

His beautiful, sweet, and debilitatingly sexy Genny.

She controlled his cat.

* * *

Genevieve ran her hand up his arm, over the bulging muscle, over the growling pumas to his shoulder and neck. He was too beautiful.

Oh, god. What had she done?

What blissful, amazing, mind-bending act had she given into? Begged for? Wanted again, even now.

Jean-Baptiste was right. Seduction was a lie, an excuse—something you used to protect yourself from the vulnerability of asking for what you wanted.

She released a breath, her eyes connecting to his under the haze of moonlight streaming in through the window. Here she was, curled around this spectacular male, his arms protecting her, his gaze fiercely possessive, his cock still stiff and pulsing inside of her. And she never wanted to move again. Her throat felt suddenly tight. How was she ever going to walk away and forget this, forget him? How was she going to continue her quest and her mission when the sun rose the next day? Make sure Isi remained where she was, and then return to the Wildlands and a life that could never include him? Them? This…

His brows moved together in a frown of concern. “Genny?”

She pulled eye contact and buried herself deeper against his chest. “Don’t go,” she whispered into his skin. “I want to stay like this a little while longer.”

Jean-Baptiste chuckled softly, his hands running down her back to cup her ass. “A little while? Oh,
ma chérie
. We have all night.”

No, Jean-Baptiste
, she thought sadly, letting her eyes drift closed and her breathing soften.
We only have one night
.

Chapter 6

Leaving the warm bed and sweet, soft body of his female had been the hardest thing Jean-Baptiste had ever had to do. But it would pay off. In a grand surprise he hoped would please her, and show her that her first impression of him—
bad news
—was inaccurate.

Even at two a.m. the French Quarter was packed, in full party mode everywhere he looked—brimming with revelers. Everywhere but Isi’s shop. Jean-Baptiste slid the Jag into a vacant spot in front of the house and killed the engine. Black and quiet. This wasn’t like her. Midnight to five a.m. were her prime working hours. Either she was avoiding certain customers, or straight-up avoiding him.

She’d have known he’d return, that he wasn’t going to accept one quick shut down about coming to the Wildlands. She’d have known he’d try again. And she’d be prepared.

Jean-Baptiste evaded the front door, and circled around to the back. He wanted the window that led straight into the body art room, the one they’d spoken in earlier. The room he knew best.

He swung himself up into a nearby tree, then silently crept to the edge of a thick branch and reached for the latch on the window. But before his hand even made contact with the chipped white paint, the scent of something pungent shot into his nostrils. Whatever it was stung like hell, and made his brain go slow and fuzzy.

“Was this head trip meant for me?” he muttered with irritation. “Or someone else?”

For anyone who wishes me harm
.

The words blasted into his head, a near explosion of sound, and Jean-Baptiste whirled around, hissing as he reached for the red powder he carried in his pocket. She was somewhere above him, high in the tree, and though he couldn’t see her, he could scent her. Granted, if this had happened a few days ago—shit, a few hours ago even, before Genevieve had eased and stroked his feral cat—Isi’s magic would’ve pulverized him, made his cat so insane he’d have been debilitated. He’d have fallen out of the tree, clutching his head and begging for the pain to stop.