Cypress Nights (16 page)

“The instant you want me to, I'll stop.”

She knew what he wanted. Michael had warned her that all men wanted it and they would be even rougher than he was. She shuddered, not knowing how that could be possible. He had been so rough. Once he came home very late and she'd been almost asleep. He'd stripped back the bedcovers, torn off her clothes and had sex, violently, with no finesse. Only minutes later, she landed on the floor, where he threw her before launching himself on top and beating her upper arms and body until she could scarcely move.

“What is it?” Roche kissed her ear and ran his tongue through the folds.

“An old memory,” she said. “I'm not going to think about it anymore.”

“Good. Try to copy what I do. I'm going to turn your back toward me. I'll move a little, my hips, my waist. Spooning isn't given enough credit. I want you to rock and roll with me in this bed, only we don't want to wake the neighbors.”

While he spoke, he rotated her. How easily he put her body where he wanted it.

She stopped herself from saying she didn't have any neighbors, and turned even hotter when she felt his pelvis against her bottom, pushing her forward, then his hand spreading low on her belly, pressing her to him as he rocked his lower body back.

Between her legs, she was wet at once. Wet and contracting.

He was hard, and this was no small man.

The rocking continued, still slow but with more insistence.

“Face me again?” he said, and she didn't give herself time to think before twisting around.

Roche put his mouth against hers. Kissing. He kissed her, moved to flit his lips across hers, his face in one direction, then another, until she started to copy him.

The hardened tips of her breasts met his chest and the faint brushing seared her skin.

Her thighs molded to his, her belly to his, and the restrained undulation of his pelvis into hers amazed Bleu.

Effortlessly, he heated her to boiling.

“Bleu,” he said against her neck. “I care about you.”

She couldn't respond.

“I don't expect you to say anything,” he told her. “I'd like to feel your skin against mine—all over. If you can't do that, say so. If you think you can but then you change your mind, fine.”

He had to feel her trembling. “I can,” she said and closed her eyes tight. She didn't know how she should do what he asked.

“Here goes,” he said and pulled his T-shirt over his head.

She could see him looking at her and edged her top up a few inches. And a few more inches. Bleu exhaled and took the shirt off.

Now he might change, she thought. He could shout and tell her she was bad. He could hit out at her, bruise her skin where her clothes would hide the marks. Convulsively, she folded her arms across her breasts.

Roche took off his shorts.

Her breathing shallow, Bleu scrunched up to work off her pajama bottoms and panties. She pushed all of her clothes down inside the bed in case she needed to get them quickly.

“Now it's trial by fire.” His voice had turned to that gravelly sound. “Come to me.”

Bleu's face tingled. With one hand she tentatively rubbed his chest, threaded her fingers through the hair.

“A bit closer,” Roche said and slid his hands around her waist.

He didn't need to be told how difficult this was for her. He could feel it. But if she didn't want to be with him, she wouldn't be and he held their future together in his hands.

He eased her rigid body tight against him. “You feel so good,” he told her.

Sliding his knees up to grip her hips on either side, he started to move their bodies as one. She reacted by shooting her arms around his neck and holding on. Her breasts flattened to his chest. Bleu gasped when he gently bent her backward, opening her mouth wide with his, grazing her teeth, then reversed the arch of their bodies by pulling her by the back of the neck until her face was above his, her back curved forward.

Bleu settled into his rhythm and had to breathe through her mouth when she felt him spring between her thighs, between the slickness there.

He was smooth, and hot, and hard, and every place his penis touched, her flesh answered.

“You okay?” he said, wrapping her body closer when she'd thought that wasn't possible. “Can you put your leg on top of mine?”

“Yes,” she said. “Are
you
okay?”

She thought he chuckled but couldn't be certain.

“I'm great,” he said.

Aware of how she opened herself to him, Bleu put her top leg over his, curled her knee over his hip.

“So sweet,” he said against her neck, and she felt how his hands weren't as steady as they had been.

“I'm not going all the way inside you,” he said.

Her brain clamored and she thought her blood stopped flowing.

With one hand, he held his penis and slid it over her pelvic bone. Velvet and iron, he encountered her, rocked a small way into her, and slipped out.

Bleu wound her wrists together, ground bone on bone behind his neck.

He started to enter her, only to rotate partway out again, and again.

She kissed him and he used his tongue, in and out at the same slow pace as his penis massaged the entrance to her body.

He was different. This was different.

The sensation she remembered from the other day, only so much more intense, began to pulse. Their hips rolled together, her breasts brushed over his chest, she reached between them to hold any part she could, and the pulse took over. Thudding, swelling.

She tried to clamp him close, then to force him into her. He continued to guide the rhythm.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Bleu heard her own cry. It whirled with the wind and rain, and her release was a fierce, fabulous dart throughout her. Wide, spreading.

Roche didn't stop moving and her climax blossomed again. She curled into him, dug her fingers into his buttocks, and the muscle didn't give at all.

“More?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

He lifted her, turned on his back and settled her in his lap. “Hold my shoulders.”

She held on and he pushed her legs behind her until they lay thigh to thigh, belly to belly.

He pushed her hips higher until her breasts touched his face.

“Roche!”

He ran his tongue in circles over one breast. Bleu tried to find something safe to hold on to and only found his hair.

Somewhere deep, she thought it was in her head, lurked fear. She would be punished for this. Enjoying what Roche was doing with her. Michael said only sluts enjoyed anything to do with having a man close to their bodies.

She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to close her thoughts away.

Roche's tongue wound around her nipple and she barely stopped herself from shrieking again.

He sucked and Bleu felt boneless. She curled heavily over him.

Tipping his head back, he kissed her mouth, long and slow. While they kissed, he lowered her, breast to chest, belly to belly, and, finally, pelvis to pelvis.

“Now you take charge,” he whispered. “I won't let you fall.”

Bleu planted her knees either side of him, found and held him with both hands and slipped his smooth flesh over that frontal place where the sweet pain began for her.

This time she was weak in his arms. He entered, once, twice, three times, with long, slow strokes.

He forced his head into the pillow and Bleu saw the veins in his neck distend, the sweat shimmer on his skin. He felt slippery, but so did she.

Again, her body opened to him and she felt as if little pieces of herself flew away, leaving her revealed and vulnerable.

Four, five. Roche's hips swung while his back arched away from her, and he held her breasts. He emptied the substance of his sexuality into her.

Very early the following morning

J
ustice was not always patient.

He had misjudged his entry into the house, heightened his excitement by waiting, but waited too long. The little trick to throw her off balance had amused him—especially watching the chicken run and flap after he'd severed its head. He would have gone in soon afterward, before Roche Savage was due to arrive, only a call to the clinic had confirmed Justice's suspicions. As he'd suspected when he saw her pass a window wearing pajamas, Roche had changed his mind about coming.

He wasn't supposed to come at all after that, damn it. Tonight, he should have been staying at the clinic. Instead he had showed up late, almost at the moment when Justice would have let himself in through the kitchen door for the second time. The first time had been with the carcass and the cat. He had scratches as mementos.

How much longer could he wait while Savage fucked
Bleu's brains out? The shrink's first morning appointment at his place on Cotton Street was at six. The good doctor accommodated those coming off a night shift. “Such a lovely man,” an assistant had told him, Justice, on the phone. “He doesn't like a patient to go to bed all in a muddle.”

Come on, come on.
The man would have to go to Rosebank before he saw patients, wouldn't he? Surely that had not been a miscalculation.

What if they were still at it, sweating and banging up there, the time forgotten? Once it got light, the plan would become too dangerous.

He, Justice, had learned all about Roche Savage.
Dr.
Savage's history wasn't mentioned locally. Because of one act of bravery, the town had made him a hero. They all spoke of how Roche had saved the lives of both his brother and his brother's wife. Only a handful knew about their
hero's
cruel perversion. Just one had witnessed an exhibition that revealed he could be an animal when he was with a woman. The woman in question was dead now. How convenient. Although, of course, Roche Savage had no part of that death.

But Roche had to get out of Bleu's place
now.

Come on, boy. Enough for one night. Thanks for warming her up. It's my turn now.

He would make her beg for him. Soon enough, she'd tell him he was the best she'd ever been with. And she'd be right. Why have an enthusiastic amateur when she could have the consummate professional?

He laughed quietly, looking toward the front of the townhouse through a knothole in the carport siding. Rain hammered the roof over his head and sliced through light from that single fixture outside the townhouse front door.
It would have been better to break the bulb when he'd loosened it, but he had wanted to see her jump when it came away in her hand.

She would have been so perfectly off balance if he hadn't hung around to build the thrill.

Using the tiny beam from a laser light, he had found a storage room at the back of the carport and shut himself in. Around him were remnants of hardware left by the landlord. A step in the wrong direction could bring mismatched boards crashing around him. Tools hung by hooks from pegboard on one wall, and paint cans glinted in an uneven stack.

The aroma of dust, rust and oil from a metal drum didn't make him any happier.

Shit.
Was that…no, the sky was not lighter yet, or only very faintly. The front house light cast a brightening aura and the rain reflected its shine. That house was as dark as it had been for the last hour, since a downstairs lamp finally went out.

The carport roof leaked. Not a lot, but enough to land the occasional splat on his head, or into the big open drum beside him. More water seeped in around a badly fitting door in the back wall.

He put a hand into his pocket and massaged the soft, sleek Italian knife he loved more than he'd ever loved anything. If things went well, she'd feel the blade. Marks for all time, that's what he'd make. Even if that time was very short.

Bleu Laveau was small. He would stab deep, again, and again. Her screams would come when she saw what he intended to do to her. The first slice would shock her into gurgling despair. The second might kill her, but why should he let that stop his fun?

How long he spent with her would be up to the sunrise.

Predawn the same day

P
ropped against the wall, Bleu watched Roche roll onto his back, his face turned away from her.

The night had become an unreal memory.

A sheen from water on the uncurtained windows swirled across the white sheet around the man's hips. His skin gleamed.

She didn't know how long she had slept, but it couldn't have been long.

She had fished her pajamas from inside the bed and slipped into them, careful not to awaken Roche.

The clothes made her feel safer.

Good women don't flaunt their naked bodies.
She held her throat, and tried to relax her tightening muscles. Michael had insisted she be dressed in bed, even if he had torn at her nightgown and bruised her skin each time he reached for her in the dark.

Never in the light. She almost smiled and the tune,
“Never on a Sunday,” roamed her mind. That had been true, too. When she had been married, she'd craved Sundays and daylight because Michael never approached her at those times.

“Hey, green eyes.”

She started and looked at Roche's shadowy face. Her tummy turned and she felt jumpy. “You slept,” she said. “You seemed peaceful.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, his voice rough.

Roche reached for her. She wouldn't let herself refuse him. He pulled her down into the bed until he could hold her against him and wrap the sheet over her, too.

“Little pajama miss,” he said, ranging a hand over her back. “A kiss, please.”

Bleu watched his face while they kissed. His eyes were shut tightly. She couldn't close hers. She was fragmenting again, freezing up as faint light crept into the room. They kissed, and Roche turned her to her back, rested on his elbows and held her still with his fingers in her hair.

He wrapped a naked leg over both of hers and she felt how hard he was again. Awkwardly, she patted his back and smoothed his hair.

“Come with me,” he said against her cheek.

Roche didn't give her any choice. For a big man, he could move very fast. Almost instantly on his knees, he scooped her up by a hand under her shoulders and another under her knees.

“Put me down,” she said, pushing against his chest.

He ignored her but went only as far as a large, wall-mounted mirror and set her down. “There,” he said. “You're down. Now stay put until I tell you otherwise.”

“Ew,” she said, catching sight of herself in the rumpled
pink pajamas. “This is mean.” Her hair was tousled, her face too pale and her eyes so dark they seemed all pupil.

“Look at yourself,” Roche whispered into her ear.

“You're mean.”

“I know a good thing when I see it. Look. Now.”

She raised her gaze to the mirror again and trembled. Standing behind and slightly to the right of her, Roche's entire naked right side was visible all the way from his intent face, past broad shoulders, slim hips, the dark shadows at his groin and down his muscular leg.

“You cover yourself up,” he said quietly. “Why is that?”

She opened her mouth but couldn't make herself tell him.

“It's okay,” he said, softly rubbing the sides of her neck. “I think I know. When you're naked you feel vulnerable, is that it?”

Her heart beat harder but she gave a single nod.

“Have you been humiliated in the past?”

She nodded again.

Roche slipped a hand beneath the front of her pajama top and stroked her ribcage. He slid just inside her pants to smooth her stomach and massaged upward until he stopped a breath away from her breasts.

“You're beautiful. You never have to feel self-conscious about your body. Let me show you.”

She stiffened and Roche kissed the spot where her neck met her shoulder. “You're okay,” he murmured.

Unerringly, he undid the buttons on her top and slowly separated the front. She tried to turn in his arms. Roche wouldn't allow it. He held her still and revealed her breasts.

High and very white, they showed clearly in the mirror.
He flattened his palms over her nipples and made circles until the little muscles at the entrance to her body jerked tight and she flinched at the sensation.

Cautiously, she put a hand on his thigh and her breath shortened when Roche groaned.

Slowly, he pulled the pajama top from her shoulders and let it fall. Bleu made fists to stop herself from grabbing for cover.

“Who told you it's wrong to enjoy your body?” he asked.

Bleu shook her head.

Her back rested against his chest and he cupped her breasts. She tingled and burned, and she trembled. His thumbs, circling her nipples, did what he intended them to do. She dropped the back of her head against his shoulder and pinched her eyes tight shut.

Roche kissed her neck. He dropped gradually to his knees, kissing her spine again and again with firm, parted lips. And he ran his flattened hands down her body, catching the waist of her pants and pulling them to her feet.

He kissed the little dip at the base of her spine, licked and nipped her there and Bleu wobbled, tried unsuccessfully to grab him.

His fingers between her thighs, delving into the slick folds there, made Bleu glowing hot. She allowed herself another look in the mirror, and her skin flamed. The sight of his moving hands, tanned against her pallor, turned her blood to water. She breathed through her mouth.

She stared at herself, at him curled around her, pleasuring her. The woman in the mirror seemed a stranger, the man a dark and powerful force.

A climax began its shooting arch. She tossed her head
and body and flailed to touch him wherever she could reach.

“It's good,” he murmured. “You are so good. Go with it. There's so much more.”

He spun her to face him and she moaned. “Don't stop, please.” She couldn't bear it.

Roche didn't stop. At once he reached to part her again, and stroke her again, and when she could barely hold back a scream, he bent his legs then slid himself hard inside her, lifted her to ride his hips.

The strength of each thrust bounced her on his hips. She clutched his hair. He sucked on a breast.

And they both gave in to spasm after spasm until Roche lowered her to lie on the floor and covered her, still sending himself deep inside, slowly now, grunting, then catching her moans in his mouth.

They lay there, wrapped so close they were one. Bleu kissed his face. She panted, locked her ankles behind his buttocks and reveled in the sensations of having him as connected to her as she could get him.

“Did Michael make you think you should keep yourself covered?” he asked very quietly.

Bleu held him even tighter. “All that's over,” she said. “I'm better now.”

Was she?
he wondered. She was wonderful. He felt more sated that he could have imagined on any dark night filled with lone sexual longing. This woman would change him. She already had. But she wasn't “better now,” just improving. God, was she improving! He bit the lobe of her ear and she batted weakly at him.

With effort, he stood and pulled her to her feet. And he kissed her, amazed at the tenderness he felt, tenderness that didn't mask how his body began to quicken again.

Her arms raised high and surrounding his neck, her breasts, belly and thighs molded to him, she kissed him back with almost ferocious determination.

“Look again,” he told her, easing her face toward the mirror. “Tell me it's a good idea to cover a body like yours.”

She did look, her eyes just clearing an upraised arm. “Yours should never be covered,” she said, and laughed. For a moment she stared at their naked, intertwined bodies, but then she pressed her face against him and held on tight.

“You're so sexy, Bleu.”

“Only with you. See how we are?”

He saw—again—and braced against a raw jolt. “Back to bed.” Without giving her a chance for an opinion, he slid them both beneath the sheet and kept on holding her. “Are you as beat as I am?”

“Mmm.”

Stroking her hair, he dropped his head onto her shoulder and said, “I'm afraid to ask what time it is.”

“I'm not sure. The alarm on the radio doesn't work. I don't sleep a lot, so I don't need one.”

“Is it getting light?” He kept his eyes hidden.

“Yes.” Shades of gray grew paler and paler, chased darkness out of the corners. “You've got to be somewhere?” She couldn't bear for him to go.

“I don't want to leave you.” On his elbows again, he looked down into her face. “Are you sick of me now?”

“What?” She swallowed. “Yes, absolutely sick of you.” If she had ever seen a man in her dreams, Roche would have been that man. Why couldn't she have met him a long time ago, before Michael?

His hand on her breast felt too good. There were reac
tions that had lives of their own. Bleu arched her back toward him. Those shades of gray were disappearing and she saw the concentration in his very blue eyes. Beard darkened his jaw and showed even darker where the shallow cleft dipped in his chin.

There should be curtains at the windows. She hadn't bothered because they cost a lot and she had no neighbors. The landlord had insisted the place was unfurnished and he didn't have to provide window coverings.

“Bleu,” Roche whispered against her breast. He took her nipple between his teeth and shook lightly before he sucked.

The result was electric.

“Roche,” she said, combing his mussed hair with her fingers, convulsing at the sensations he made and holding his face hard to her breast.

“Mmm?”

Bleu responded elsewhere.

She shouldn't let this happen again, not yet. They needed a little space first.

“I think you're getting late,” she said.

He continued, deeply engrossed in what he was doing.

If the sky weren't overcast and rain falling again, much more light would have come into the room.

Bleu breathed hard, but she turned her head sideways to look at his watch. “It's well after five,” she said.

He burrowed his face into her neck and grew heavy on top of her. “It can't be.”

“It is.”

He sprang to sit on the edge of the mattress. “Hell,” he said, and stood up, naked and breathtaking. “I've got to go, sweet.”

“The shower—”

“I can shower and change at the office,” he said. “Fortunately, I have my own entrance into the building.” He had started dressing.

When he'd pulled his shirt over his head, he stopped and stared at her. “Don't you forget last night. Or this morning. You understand?”

“I couldn't,” she said honestly.

He didn't smile. “Good. I need to see you tonight.”

Bleu nodded and felt herself blush. She couldn't have said no.

“It'll be a longer night this time,” he told her. “I'll come and get you. What time do you get home?”

“Around six, unless work keeps me.”

“I'll be here at six, unless you call me. But if it has to be later, I'll wait for you,” he said.

“You'd better go.”

“Bye,” he said, sticking his feet into his shoes and stuffing things into his pockets. “Later.”

“Later.”

By the time she heard the front door close, Bleu had sneaked from the mattress to retrieve her pajamas and put them on. In bed once more, she closed her eyes, even though she didn't expect to sleep.

 

Scared shouldn't be the first thing that came to mind when a man left a woman he'd made love to, and wanted to make love to many more times.

But he was, Roche thought, scared sick. The sex had been amazing, but he'd planned the way it would go. He hadn't even known if he would be able to hold on and stay cool. Cool hadn't happened, but he had kept himself in check.

If he told himself he wouldn't try to educate her a little
more each time they were together, he'd be a liar. Educate? He lengthened his stride to reach the bottom of the cul-de-sac. What he had in mind wasn't taught in any course he knew of. You had to be a natural to get it right.

Damn, she was like honey, sweet and sexy-sticky, and she was supple. He could bend her body wherever he wanted it to go.

Watching her in the mirror had driven him wild. And he felt wild all over again.

He aimed his key at the BMW. A more serviceable vehicle was what he should have around here. This week he'd look for something. That car of Bleu's was living on borrowed time. Maybe she'd accept the BMW.

Sure, she would.
He could tell her he wanted to wait to sell it until he could be somewhere with a good dealer. Make it a loaner.