Possess Me (25 page)

As long as she had a good seat for that, and didn’t have to talk to too many strangers, it sounded like fun to Bethany. She wondered if Isabel had celebrated the day. Or her M.

“He’s pretty excited. I think he’s found it.” Michelle smiled at Bethany. “That was really clever of you. I never thought to ask him where he was buried. I wasn’t sure he knew.”

Bethany felt her heart quicken. Families were usually buried close together. Though there was no record of Isabel, she was sure there would be some clue, something that would help her discover what had happened to the young woman. Emmanuel might be the key.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Michelle sounded shocked.

Bethany turned the corner, her eyes on a lovely miniature mausoleum. It was beautifully preserved, but Michelle was looking on the ground beside it, her mouth open.

Allegra shouted in surprise. “Holy hell! Is that guy dead?”

Michelle whirled around. “Wait,
you
can see him? Tell me what you see.”

The redhead squinted, looking carefully before she answered. “A hot naked man, hopefully just passed out, lying on the ground.”

Michelle looked at Bethany, who was having a hard time lifting her gaze away from the most perfectly formed male ass she’d ever seen. “I see him, too. I think it’s safe to say he’s not a ghost. Yet.”

Michelle knelt beside him, feeling his neck for a pulse. “He’s breathing. You don’t understand.” She rolled him over and the women all gasped. He was beautiful.

“This is Bone Daddy.”

“No way.” Allegra joined her on the ground, studying the perfectly sculpted face, the full lips, and long, velvet lashes. “This is Bone Daddy? He looks so young. So—”

“Alive?” Michelle rubbed her temple. “I have no idea how this could happen. This is no possession. It’s really him, in physical form. I need to talk to my mother. And Ben.” She slid her hand into her jeans pocket and pulled out her cell phone with shaking fingers.

Bethany was having a hard time catching her breath. He looked just like the man in her dreams. Marcel. Had the Loa been visiting her in her sleep? Making all her fantasies come true? Fooling her?

She took Michelle’s place at his side, needing to get a closer look at his face. Allegra took off her shawl and covered his hips, which helped. How was a woman supposed to concentrate when such a perfect specimen appeared at your feet, naked and hung like a . . . Well, superiorly endowed.

“I know him.” She didn’t know she’d whispered out loud until Allegra gripped her arm.

Bethany looked up to see Allegra’s confusion. “How can you?”

She blushed. “I’ve dreamt about him.”

“Well, damn.” Michelle was standing over her, phone in hand.

“I was wondering where he’d been keeping himself. Ben’s on his way over to help get him into the car, and Mama is coming over to the house right away.”

Allegra chuckled, making the other two women turn her way with worried expressions. “Don’t you see? It’s perfect. He’s here. Bone Daddy is human. On mine and Rousseau’s wedding day.” She clutched Michelle’s hand. “It’s perfect.”

Bethany looked down to watch those long dark lashes flutter open, revealing stunning amber eyes. Oh God, it was him.

He tried to focus, swallowing a moan of pain as he turned his head and caught her gaze with his own. He blinked. His tongue came out to wet his dry lips, and she leaned closer, riveted.

“Not quite ready for three of you yet,
cher
. But if you find me a bed, I will give you a morning to remember.” His eyes rolled back in his head and he was gone again.

“Priceless.” Allegra fell on her butt as her laughter overtook her. “That is definitely Bone Daddy.”

Michelle chuckled at Allegra’s mirth. “Without a doubt.”

Bethany bit her lip hard, resisting the urge to give that perfect nose of his a good punch. Bone Daddy, huh?

Great.

SOMEONE MUST HAVE GOTTEN DRUNK LAST NIGHT. THE
hangover was so bad even
he
could feel it. He tried to separate himself from the pain, as he had in the past, but it wasn’t working. In fact, the harder he tried to focus, the more it hurt. The throbbing convinced him that he wasn’t in Rousseau or anyone else. He was in his own body. Human.

So far the experience wasn’t going exactly as he’d planned.

He shifted his legs beneath the thin sheet that covered him. He was in a bed. That was a step in the right direction. Better than a cemetery for the things he had planned.

Had he only dreamed that Allegra and Michelle had found him? And the other female, who was she? Blue eyes like the deepest ocean. A sharp, stubborn chin he wanted to bite. He hadn’t seen the rest of her but he was sure it would be just as delectable.

“He must be thinking good thoughts.”

“Very good.”

Bone Daddy kept his eyes closed, fighting the urge to smile. Michelle and Blue Eyes. He knew it was her. His erection grew thicker and he breathed out slowly, enjoying the sensation of blood and need filling his cock. It ached, but it was a good ache. He was also enjoying the knowledge that she was watching him, watching his growing arousal push against the sheet toward her.

Come closer,
cher
. You know you want to.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay alone? Someone needs to keep an eye on him, but I really want to find out what Mama has to say about this. Plus, Allegra’s dress needs—”

“I’ll be fine, Michelle. I’ll just read. Honestly, I’m not sure what all the Bone Daddy fuss is about.”

“What about those dreams you were telling Allegra about?” Michelle sounded amused.
He
was not.

“They were just dreams. Reality is something entirely different. Unfortunately.”

“So you’re saying you don’t find him irresistibly attractive?” Good girl, Michelle. She sounded dubious. As she should, Bone Daddy inwardly huffed, waiting to hear the answer.

Blue Eyes paused, hesitating as though studying him again. “He’s too . . .
pretty
, don’t you think? I can’t imagine wanting to date a man that pretty. Ruggedly handsome, yes, even large and adorable—but truly pretty? You’ll always wonder if he’ll like your new lace panties more on
you
or on himself.”

He held himself totally still through Michelle’s sobs of laughter. Didn’t move a muscle until he heard the door shut behind her, heard the chair creak as Blue Eyes leaned back with a sigh.

And then he pounced.

He heard her breath rush out of her lungs and felt his own body throb in pain when her knee jammed into his side, but he got her beneath him. He stared into her shocked bottomless eyes and smiled.

“Too pretty? Blue Eyes, you have no idea what kind of trouble you’ve gone and gotten yourself in to.”

Those blue eyes darkened, pupils dilated, and he knew she was feeling the heat of his erection pressing between her thighs through the sheet and her black cotton pants. He pressed the full weight of his hips against her, his body reacting to her softness beneath him, the smell of her.

“Oh,
cher
. You have no idea how good this feels. Just give me a minute to enjoy it, and then I’ll prove to you just how rugged and adorable I can b—
Oomph
!”

He landed between the bed and the chair, the hard drop to the wood floor jarring him from his tailbone to his teeth. “Fuck.”

Blue Eyes leapt off the bed to kneel beside him, the concern in her expression slightly gratifying. Slightly.

He smiled through gritted teeth. “Are you always so friendly,
cher
?”

She flipped her long, raven-colored braid over her shoulder and pursed her lips. Damn she was cute. “Only when I’m physically accosted by a sleeping Loa-turned-human with a penchant for canoodling with anything that moves.”

His bark of laughter surprised him, along with her wit. “Canoodling? I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use that term in . . . let’s see . . . actually, never. At least, not in relation to me. They prefer words like: pleasured, satisfied, fucked like they’ve never been fucked before.”

“And humble. So I’ve heard.”

She jerked to a standing position, crossing her arms over her lovely breasts. She was trying to distract him, but he could tell she was blushing. And trying, unsuccessfully, not to look at his naked body.

“You should get back in bed,” she said severely.

“Only if you join me,
cher
.”

Her expression wasn’t amused. Tempted. But not amused. He started to stand up and cringed, more than he needed to, he admitted to himself, but it
did
hurt. Had he gotten a bad body? It was already mid-morning. He didn’t have time for all this laying about.

He cringed again. “Damn.”

Small, strong arms wrapped around his waist as Blue Eyes helped him back to bed. She liked him. A little. He could tell.

When he was sitting up, the sheet safely draped across his persistent erection once more, he held out his hand. “Since we have yet to be formally introduced, you can call me BD. And what can I call you, Blue Eyes?”

“Bethany.”

“Beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”

She smirked at him, and his brow furrowed. What was wrong with her? Wounded, dominant, gallant . . . did nothing work on her?

“Do you like men, Blue Eyes?”

Her laughter stung his pride, but at least she wasn’t leaving. She relaxed into the chair beside him, allowing him time to study her. It was subtle, her beauty. As though she worked to hide it. No makeup, hair pulled back in a braid, oversized T-shirt. But she couldn’t hide the intelligence in her eyes, or that full, sensual upper lip. He wanted to suck it into his mouth.
Merde
, he hoped she liked men. She did say he was pretty.

“I suppose I’ll have to forgive your arrogance. If only because you were there for Michelle when I couldn’t be.”

The
djab
. Michelle must have told her. And she knew about him as well. This Bethany grew more fascinating by the second.

“You are a friend of Michelle Toussaint? Not from around here. Not with that accent. New York?”

Bethany leaned closer, curiosity making her careless. “Don’t you know? Can’t you read my mind?”

He shifted carefully, not wanting to startle her, and smiled. “Alas, for today at least, I am without any of my regular abilities. Simply a flesh and blood man.”

“So you have no idea what I’m thinking right now?”

He leaned forward until his lips were one breath away from hers. She didn’t move away. “No, Blue Eyes. But I’d like to think I can guess.”

Bone Daddy held himself back, willing her to cover the small distance between them, to kiss him. He wanted, rather desperately, to feel her lips against his own. Those unusual lips.

She stared into his eyes, her curiosity turning to wonder. “Marcel.” She pressed her lips to his and he moaned, so intent on his need for the kiss that it took him a moment to register what she’d said.

Marcel?

She’d come. He hadn’t wanted her to come here. Not here. She’d shown up at his door, a cloak covering her tear-stained face from the curious ladies of the evening that were his neighbors.

Shame filled him. He lived in a hotel-cum-brothel, no place for a young lady of social standing. No place for Isabel.

“I told you I’d meet you at our spot in the park tomorrow. Do you know what could happen if anyone found you here? What they would do to me—to you?”

“Catherine said she saw you with one of the Devereaux sisters. I just thought—”

He lifted her off his rickety bed by her shoulders, frustration making him rougher than he usually was. “And I saw you at my father’s soiree last eve, Isabel. Dancing every dance with my half brother, Antoine.” The man who was determined to run him out of New Orleans and steal Isabel merely because he knew Marcel wanted her. “Yet,
I
trusted
you
. Knew you were acting according to expectations, knew you were faithful to me.”

She struggled against his hold, not to pull away but to pull him closer. “I trust you, Marcel. You know that I do. You are my world. I’m just so afraid my father will force me to marry before you say we can go. I couldn’t live that way. I couldn’t live watching you find another, letting another man touch me. Tell me it will be soon, my love. Please.”

He wrapped her in his embrace, pushing off her cloak to bury his face in her sweetly scented hair. He had done this to them. Taken advantage of her innocence and ruined her future, merely because he could not live without her.

He’d asked his mother for advice, but she just pushed him, the way she always had, toward his bastard father. “This town is the only place I know you wouldn’t be shot on sight for associating with a non-negro woman,” she’d told him. “You need capital. The fancy French school your daddy sent you to don’t mean nothin’ in this world. Ask him for his help. He still owes me. I let him out of our agreement so he could marry that heiress. He promised he would take care of you. If he says no . . . I will just have to remind him who he is dealing with. Maybe tell him a thing or two about that pasty weasel Antoine.”