The Wolven (14 page)

His lips traveled slowly down the length of her neck while the tip of one finger teased her hungry lips below, pushing past them, but barely, only enough to drive her mad. Her moans became a constant, her breathing nearly non-existent. She dug her fingernails into his back, lifted her hips. His finger slipped inside her just a little, as he slowly licked his way to her breasts, down her stomach…

By the time his mouth and tongue replaced the fingers between her legs, it took but a second for her body to unleash a massive orgasm that felt as if it had been building since the beginning of time. She screamed from the force of it, bucked her hips against him, and his tongue deftly lapped all she had to offer.

Everything became a blur except him—he stood, and in less than a moment he was naked, and the thick hardness between his legs visibly throbbed, revealing his own need. She reached for him, ravenous, took him into her mouth, her tongue tingling with delight at the taste of
him. He groaned loudly and she could tell by the swell of him that he was trying to contain the explosion desperate to leave his body.

It wasn’t long before he pulled her away, leaned over and kissed her hard. Then his body was stretched over the length of hers, his hands on either side of her head, keeping the full weight of him off of her. She felt the bulk and length of him, hard and hot, rub against her, and she wrapped her legs around him possessively.

She cried out when he finally entered her, thrusting against him. Their bodies quickly fell into a fast, hard rhythm, neither able to control the fire raging inside of them any longer. His lips found hers, and his tongue moved in tandem with his long, deep thrusts, muffling her cries of pleasure. Her release sent her bucking wildly against him, contracting around him. He lifted his head, let out a loud groan, and she felt his hot release filling her.

Then he shifted his body carefully, slowly, until he was lying beside her in the narrow space. He held her close, both of them sweating, panting, trembling.

She closed her eyes, relishing the utter satisfaction washing over her.

Then, without thinking, she pressed a hand to his chest over his heart. Its soft, steady rhythm pulsed beneath her palm, and she marveled at how familiar it felt. As though she had known the beat of him for many lifetimes and would treasure it for many more.

D
anyon had made some stupid decisions in his life, but deciding to walk down Bourbon Street the night of Nuit du Dommage with Shauna in tow, weighed in at the top of the list. There were so many people walking the streets, he could barely turn in any direction. Had Shauna been any shorter than five foot eight inches, he would have had to tether her to make certain she wasn’t swept away by all the pushing, shoving, and stumbling.

Even worse was the noise level. There was music, voices, shouting, car horns, police whistles, even the clop-clop-clop of horse hooves as the rental carriages went by. All of the sounds rose and fell in pitch and volume, and it pained his ears.

Danyon knew Shauna was having the same problem with the noise from the way she flinched from time to
time and lowered an ear to her shoulders as though to block the sounds. He was surprised to find her so vulnerable. But lately, he often found himself surprised by her. He found his thoughts drifting back to her apartment, where they were only a couple hours ago, to the feel of her body, her lips… Before long, he had to literally shake his head to get his mind back on track.

He forced himself to think about Banjo Marks, and all Shauna had told him about the drugged out vamp. How his senses appeared to be heightened when he’d gone into A Little Bit of Magic, demanding cookies and claiming that he had smelled them from across the street. Danyon also remembered what Shauna had told him about a woman named Mattress Mattie, and how she had fought with Banjo in front of the shop, then punched a heavy metal lamp post instead of the vamp, and dented it.

If August was right about anyone being able to ingest a were’s claws and fangs simply by pulverizing them, and through that ingestion, they would gain certain were attributes, like speed, heightened senses—strength, then was it possible that Banjo—and Mattie—had stumbled on to a supply? If they had, that meant a supply source—a supplier—the murderer? He had to question Banjo to find out more.

But how were they supposed to search him out in this chaos of people?

Being a natural tracker, Danyon’s first instinct was to use his sense of smell to find Banjo. He didn’t have a direct link to his scent, like a jacket or shirt, but he
wasn’t too concerned about it. A vampire gave off an acrid odor that he could usually smell a mile away. The same held true with a drug addict. Even if they had just stepped out of a shower, their bodies emitted a chemical scent, similar to gasoline. Since Banjo was both vamp and addict that narrowed his scent range considerably. But it still didn’t make it easy.

Everyone walking the streets carried their own scent. Mix that with spilled alcohol, a little blood, piss and vomit, and the combined odors overwhelmed his sense of smell. It had made his nostrils flare, then constrict—flare, then constrict, as if they were confused and trying to sort and decipher the smells, so they could be placed in appropriate categories. It hadn’t taken long for them to give up and roll all of the odors into one huge ball and label it “sour.” Now, no matter which way he turned, hoping that a different wind direction might disintegrate that ball, it was all he smelled.

Shauna suddenly tugged on his left arm to get his attention, then pointed to a lamp post on the opposite side of the street.

“I know her,” she yelled over the music blaring behind them. “She might know where we can find Banjo.”

Still holding on to his arm, she took off for the other side of the street.

Danyon didn’t know which woman Shauna was talking about. There were hundreds strolling Bourbon Street and at least a dozen clustered around that lamp post. Shauna seemed confident in her direction, though, so he just kept his mouth shut and followed.

He was a little surprised when she finally walked up to a large creole woman. The woman was dressed in leopard print tights and a bright orange dress or blouse— Danyon couldn’t tell the difference. But he didn’t have to be a clothes designer to know that if the woman raised her arms, she’d flash the entire state. Topping off her ensemble was a wide, gold lamé belt that she had cinched around her very thick waist. She had an arm wrapped around a tall, well-dressed, black man, who was looking down at her with unabashed pride.

The woman broke into a huge smile the moment she spotted Shauna.

“Girl, whatchu doin’ here?” the woman asked. She disconnected herself from the man and planted both hands on her hips. “Since when you be out partyin’ like—? Whoa, uh-uh, hol’ up…girl, who that good lookin’ hunk you got wit’ you? That’s your man?”

“This is Danyon Stone. Danyon, this is Lurnell Franklin. She’s a regular at the shop,” Shauna explained.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I is a reg’lar. I goes there all the time, sugah. See her? That’s my people right there, that be my girl.” She waggled her head at Shauna. “Now what be up wit’ you? All the time I go down to the shop, and you never even told me nothin’ ’bout no Mr. Hunky. Where you been hidin’ him, girl?” Lurnell’s eyes suddenly widened. “Hol’ up. Looka here…”

Lurnell turned, grabbed the arm of the man she’d been standing next to, and pulled him up alongside her. “See here? This be my man, Tyree Johnson.” She leaned closer to Shauna. “He’s pretty, huh?”

“He sure is. You might want to hang on to this one.”

Lurnell snapped her fingers. “Girl, that ain’t nothin’ but a thing. I gots that man on lock.” Grinning, she straightened and tugged on Tyree’s arm. “Look here, Tyree, this be my girl, Shauna, from down to the shop on Royal, and that be her man, Darrin.”

“Dan-yon,” Shauna said louder, enunciating his name.

Lurnell’s brow wrinkled. “What’s wrong wit’ you? You los’ you hearin? That’s what I said—Darrin.”

Shauna glanced over at Danyon and winked. Then she turned back to Lurnell. “We’re looking for Banjo. Have you seen him around here?”

“Whatchu want with shrimp bait?”

Shauna shrugged, as though it really didn’t matter to her if they found him or not. “Just want to talk to him about coming into the shop all drugged up, like he was the last time he came in.”

“That boy went down to you shop waxed?” Lurnell asked. “I didn’t see nothin’. Where I was at?”

“You were on the phone, remember?”

“Oh…yeah,” Lurnell said, then grinned up at Tyree. “I was on the flip talkin’ to you, baby.”

He smiled and rested a hand on her shoulder.

Lurnell shivered hard, like a dog shaking off rain water. “Lawd, look at you givin’ me the want-tos like that.” She fanned her face with a hand and refocused on Shauna. “So what shrimp bait do to your store? Mess it up?”

“Not really. Freaked a few customers out, though.”

“That little, scrawny motha f—” Lurnell slapped a hand over her mouth, then dropped it and said to Danyon, “You gots to ’scuse me, Darrin. Sometimes I get a bad case of potty mouth when I has too much to drink. Know what I’m sayin’?”

Danyon grinned. The woman was loud and brassy, but he couldn’t help but like her. “No problem,” he said. “So have you seen him? Banjo?”

“Oh, hell no. With all the people trashin’ ’round here, that piece of shrimp bait could of run up my damn nose, and I wouldn’t have knowed it.”

“Any idea where we can find him?” Danyon asked.

Lurnell blew out a raspberry. “Piss-ants like him they stay over to the weird-ass bars down to the other end over there. They got Under the Stairs—that be on the other end of Bourbon, then they got a place called Rush. That one’s a couple more blocks down the same side of Bourbon. If shrimp bait ain’t in neither one of them, then he probably be stuffin’ his beak wit’ batter, you know what I’m sayin’? Either that or the po-po done got him.”

Danyon leaned over to make sure Shauna heard him. “Batter? Po-po?”

“Cocaine,” Shauna explained. “And po-po means the police.”

“Oh, uh-uh,” Lurnell exclaimed. “You don’t know what batter and the po-po is? Don’t tell me somebody pretty like you is slow on the uptake, huh?”

Shauna intercepted quickly, cocking a finger at her. “Girl, he’s not slow on nothin’, you hear what I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah, you right!” Lurnell said, with a huge grin and slapped her hands together.

The two women laughed, and Danyon had to smile at how easy it had been for Shauna to fall into rhythm with Lurnell’s street talk.

“Hey,” Lurnell said. “We goin’ down to the Cat’s ’cause I got to do me some karaokin’. Y’all wanna—what the hell…?” She suddenly stood at attention on tiptoe, gawking at something over Shauna’s shoulder.

“Well, I’ll be damn. Looka that sumabitch.”

Danyon and Shauna turned and looked in the direction she indicated. All Danyon saw was a sea of people.

Shauna evidently caught sight of what Lurnell was talking about, because she glanced back and shouted over the crowd noise, “I’ve never seen him out at any of these things. You?”

“No, me neither. But that dog sure steppin’ out to night.”

“Who are you talking about?” Danyon asked Shauna.

She took him by the arm and pointed straight ahead.

“See the man in the purple shirt?”

“Yes…”

“And the woman to his right dressed all in red?”

“Yeah?”

“Look between them and to the right a little. See the big guy standing a few feet in front of them, the one in the white shirt? He’s got a—”

“The heavyset guy with the boa constrictor hanging around his neck?”

“Heavyset?” Lurnell said. “That man be dressin’ four-fifty on the hoof for sure.”

“Right,” Shauna said to Danyon. “That’s Papa Gris Gris. He owns the voodoo shop next to Sistah’s, which is Lurnell’s store. They’ve been competitors for years.”

“Any idea what would make him come out tonight?” Shauna asked Lurnell, who was now standing beside her.

“Hell, yeah, I got a idea. Look at that skank rubbin’ up against him.”

Next to the man Shauna had identified as Papa Gris Gris, Danyon saw a very skinny younger woman rubbing her nearly exposed breasts across the fat man’s left arm.

Shauna must have spotted her, as well, because she asked, “Who is that?”

“Girl, that be Trish I-gots-the-crabs Deveraux. She work down to the Hustle Club, and that skank be heavy on the batter. She out there doin’ the nasty wit’ Gris Gris ’cause he gots some blow, you know?”

“You mean he deals cocaine?” Shauna asked.

“There be only one reason why she’d be be hangin’ on that fat man. He either got the blow or the dough. She tryflin’, that’s what she be doin’. Now that’s said, yeah. She already don’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.”

It was easy to see that the woman was putting the moves on Gris Gris, and that all four hundred plus pounds of him thoroughly enjoyed it. She was playing the tease, and he had jumped into the game with both feet.

Danyon turned away. He needed to get out of here. Not that any place else would be any less crowded, but at least moving would help circulate the air around him. They needed to move on with the night and find Banjo.

He inched forward through the crowd with Shauna still holding on to his arm and glanced back over his shoulder just long enough to say, “Nice meeting you Lurnell—Tyree.”

“Oh, you, too, baby. When you down to Rampart Street, you come to Sistah’s and see me. I’m gonna give you a good discount to whatever be up in my store.”

Danyon gave her an obligatory thank-you, waved, then pushed ahead through the crowd. Shauna was evidently still watching Gris Gris because her head was still turned in that direction and she hadn’t said goodbye to Lurnell.

Inching ahead, he detoured around a guy in a clown suit and was about to detour left, when Shauna suddenly dug her fingernails into his arm.

Something in the way she gripped him told Danyon that it had nothing to do with controlling the direction he was heading or stopping him.

It felt more like a reflex, and judging by the look on her face, what prompted it was fear.