Obsession (7 page)

D
REW HAD WANTED TO MAKE
a beeline straight for Josie when he’d returned to the hotel, but was thwarted by the presence of a woman who had to be around Josie’s age but looked at least thirty years older. It was more than the colorful turban and the loose-fitting long dress. Her haunted eyes were older than her years.

Josie sat with the dark woman in the courtyard, tiny coffee cups between them, the other woman’s many bracelets jangling as she gestured with her hands while she spoke. Josie sat back, seeming amused by what her companion had to say, but also paying attention.

Drew stepped into the courtyard.

Josie looked at him, and the woman she was with studied him with a guarded expression.

“Drew,” Josie greeted.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Come. I’d like you to meet an old friend of
mine. Anne-Marie Paré, this is Drew Morrison. He’s a…guest at the hotel. The only guest actually.”

Anne-Marie extended her hand toward him. Drew took it, noticing the cracked red nail polish she wore and the ashy appearance of her skin.

“A pleasure,” he said.

“Hmm,” Anne-Marie responded, her dark eyes intense as she looked him over. “I’d say Mr. Morrison here is more than a guest.”

Josie smiled. “Anne-Marie is a voodoo priestess.”

“Ah,” Drew said, extracting his hand from the uncanny woman’s bony grasp.

“Miss Villefranche?”

Josie looked over his shoulder to where a man stood wearing a wrinkled gray trench coat and holding a fedora.

“Detective Chevalier.”

“Do you have a moment?”

Josie excused herself, leaving Drew with Anne-Marie and her unsettling eyes.

“Please,” she said, indicating the chair across from her with a jangling motion of her hand. “Sit.”

“I’
M GOING TO GO NOW
,” Chevalier told Josie. “But my men will be upstairs for a little while longer.”

“Fine.”

He regarded the small notebook he held and squinted at her. “Is there anything else you’d like to add to what the responding police officer reported last night?”

Josie dropped her gaze then shook her head.

“No unusual characters hanging around?”

“No.”

“It says here you heard sounds?”

“Yes. And when I came back downstairs after investigating—” she left out that she’d had her unregistered, illegal sawed-off shotgun with her “—I found the back door to the alley open when I had already closed and locked it for the night.”

Alan made a check mark on his pad. “Okay. I guess that’s all for now.”

It was far from all, but Josie didn’t know what else she could do—until she thought to ask a few questions of her own. “Do you think the incident is connected to the murder?”

Chevalier looked at her. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

She looked toward the stairs, remembering the morning two weeks earlier when Monique had found the body in the same room where the ritual had been performed. “Has any progress been made on finding the killer?”

She hoped an arrest of the murderer would set things back to right and send customers her way.

“No.” He didn’t look pleased.

Seeing as Josie didn’t feel pleased, she figured they were even.

He handed her a business card, a twin of which she had tucked in a drawer somewhere from their earlier encounter. “When your guest Mr. Morrison returns, tell him to give me a call.”

Josie resisted the urge to look into the courtyard where the man in question was now sitting with Anne-Marie.

“I will,” she said instead.

He began walking toward the door.

“Detective?”

He turned around.

“A rain check on that tea?”

For what had to be the first time since they’d met over two weeks ago, he cracked a smile. Surprisingly, the expression made him look younger and almost attractive. “I just might take you up on that.”

F
OR THE NEXT TWENTY MINUTES
, Josie hung on the fringes of the courtyard, listening in on Anne-Marie’s conversation with Drew. Although it wasn’t a conversation, really. Rather, Anne-Marie had taken out her ever-present tarot cards and was
doing a reading for Drew. He looked to be taking it all in stride, although there appeared to be a bit of tension around his handsome mouth.

At one point, he caught Josie’s gaze. She half expected him to give her a “help me” look, but instead he grinned at her as if just seeing her made him happy.

“You’re not what you appear to be, are you, Mr. Morrison?”

Anne-Marie made the declaration, snapping both Josie’s and Drew’s attention back to her.

“Pardon me?”

Josie identified the tower card Anne-Marie had just turned over across the knight of swords. “Mystery shrouds you and your intentions aren’t what you make them out to be.”

Drew blinked.

“That’s enough for today,” Josie said, stepping to the table and turning over Anne-Marie’s cards, then handing them back to her.

Her friend appeared none too happy. “Now look what you’ve gone and done, girl. You’ve messed with my mojo.”

Hojo, mojo
, Josie thought. Just as she’d never put much stock in the voodoo rituals, she didn’t read much into Anne-Marie’s visions, either, whether they were conjured from her tarot cards
or from out of thin air. If you could see it and touch it and smell it, then it was real. Otherwise, it was all a bunch of hokey BS.

“That’s all right,” Drew said, surprising her. “I’m curious to hear what your friend has to say.”

Anne-Marie had encircled her hands as Josie had tried to give her the cards and now the voodoo priestess stared at her hard, as if trying to see beyond Josie’s intentions.

Anne-Marie finally blinked, then released her hands. “No, no. Josie is right. I’ve said far too much already.” She gathered the remainder of her cards then slid them into the small, red velvet pouch she kept them in.

Drew rose at the same time as his tablemate. “It was a pleasure making your acquaintance, Miss Paré.”

Anne-Marie extended her hand and allowed Drew to give it a polite shake.

H
OURS LATER, BACK IN HIS ROOM
, Drew sat on his bed with his briefcase open, reading some papers. He’d already done most of the preliminary investigating for the job he wanted next.

He sat back on the bed, the springs giving a low squeak. As hard as he tried to concentrate, his mind kept going back to what the tarot-card reader
had said: “You’re not what you appear to be, are you, Mr. Morrison?”

That was all right. He supposed that many people in her profession used the same line. It could apply to everyone who had ever told a white lie, much less a black one, at any point in their lives.

But the follow-up comment about mystery shrouding him and his intentions not being what he made them out to be had struck home with an accuracy that left him wanting to explain himself.

Though justifying his actions was becoming less and less a possibility.

The sound of a trumpet playing a bluesy tune drifted on the hot air from the open doors. He dropped the papers in his briefcase and stepped to the balcony, watching a black man in a multicolored knit cap playing solo on the corner, most of the passersby ignoring the case spread at his feet for change. Not that the player noticed. He appeared to be playing for himself, no one else. At one with his instrument, which gleamed in the dim light from the street lamp.

Then his eyes opened and he seemed to be looking directly at Drew, even though he stood well in the shadows and a constant herd of people was walking by in front of him.

Drew backed up farther into the hotel room, a
strange feeling of being exposed filling his gut. He ran his fingers through his hair. But that was ridiculous. Just as there was no way Anne-Marie could know the true nature of his visit to the city and to Hotel Josephine, surely no street performer could identify him and his reason for being there.

“He’s blind.”

Drew turned around to find Josie standing behind him.

She blinked, apparently seeing something in his eyes that startled her.

“I’m sorry. I knocked, but you didn’t answer. And the door was unlocked.”

Foolish of him.

Even more foolish was the way he wanted to envelop her in his arms.

“Who’s blind?”

She gestured toward the street. “The trumpet player. Clarence has been blind all his life.”

If the man was blind, then there was no way he could have been looking at Drew.

Just the same, Drew sensed that not only had he been spotted, but also that he’d been seen. The same way Anne-Marie had seemed to see him.

The same way Josie saw him now.

He found it difficult to swallow as his gaze swept over her beautiful face.

Damn, but the woman did strange, unfamiliar things to him. The instant she came into view, everything else disappeared, leaving only her and him.

His desire for her was so strong it seemed able to bridge whatever gap lay between them. Only there was no gap between them now, at least not physically. She stood near enough to touch. And he wanted to touch her with an intensity that set him off balance.

“Is Philippe watching the desk?”

Josie’s gaze lingered on his mouth. “Philippe never made it in today. Sick.” She licked her lips, her eyes shifting to look into his. “I put the Closed sign out.”

He remembered hearing the sound of other voices a little earlier. “Are we the only ones in the hotel?”

She slowly shook her head. “No. Frederique came back with another…friend. I, um, told her to close the door when she leaves.”

Drew reached out and stroked her silky cheek. “Now that the police are gone, it’s back to business as usual?”

“No. I mean, yes, but…”

Drew was as drawn to her as she apparently was to him. He could barely force himself to think of anything or anyone else. Only Josie, and how
much he wanted to stroke her amazingly supple body. Lose himself in the feel, smell and touch of her.

She stepped into his arms, her smaller body somehow fitting perfectly against his larger frame. The move chased all air from his lungs. Not because of the impact, but because of her nearness. Up this close, he could smell the subtle scent of night-blooming jasmine that emanated from her skin. Absorb the welcome heat of her body. Feel the way her breasts pressed harder against the wall of his chest with each breath that she took.

She didn’t play coy. Didn’t ask questions or make nervous comments. She merely acted on an instinct that was purely primal, that made him respond in kind.

Drew smoothed his hands over her slender back then reached to tip her chin up so he could kiss her.

Damn, but she tasted better, sweeter, than anyone he’d ever met before. Like freshly picked fruit. Like cayenne pepper and milk-laced coffee and sugarcoated doughnuts. Like heaven and sin all at once.

The sound of the trumpet continued outside the open doors, and the squeak of bedsprings in the room next to his spoke of their neighbors’ activities. All of it a backdrop to the steady thrum of
blood through Drew’s veins as he kissed the woman in his arms.

And prepared to make love to her for as long as she’d let him.

N
O MATTER HOW HARD
Josie tried, she couldn’t seem to draw in a breath deep enough to clear her mind. Then again, air probably had nothing to do with her light-headed state. She suspected Drew was completely responsible for that. The gentle way he held her. The soft, knowing stroke of his hands over her back and her face. The growing hardness against her stomach.

He gripped her chin in his hand and kissed her deeply, stealing the bone from her knees and rendering her helpless to his sensual onslaught.

Yesterday had been all about urgency. By closing the hotel for the first time in its recent history, she’d guaranteed that tonight would be all about slow and sure.

Drew’s tongue stroked hers. If she’d harbored any doubts about coming to his room, they all but disappeared. She wanted this. Needed to feel grounded, real, and in control. It was strange that
she should feel that when she seemed to have no control over herself the instant Drew touched her.

Everything in her life was spiraling out of control. She stood on the brink of losing her hotel. Someone was taking extreme measures to try to frighten her. And out there somewhere was a killer who could strike again anytime.

Drew’s hand rested at the base of her neck, his index finger caressing as if monitoring the quickening of her pulse there. Then he was working that same index finger under the thin strap of her slip dress, doing the same with his hand on her other shoulder, so that the light material whispered down over her breasts and hips and then puddled around her ankles. Josie stepped out of the circle, gloriously aware that she was completely exposed while Drew was fully dressed.

She was about to remedy that when he swept her up and carried her to the bed. Whatever he’d had on top thudded to the floor and then he was laying her down, only momentarily breaking their long, leisurely kiss.

He climbed onto the bed with her, positioning himself between her legs then prying open her knees with a slow nudge. His thigh slid against her throbbing womanhood, causing her back to come up off the mattress. He took full advantage of her
momentary distraction and ran his tongue along an engorged nipple before sucking it into his mouth.

The bed beneath Josie was soft and cool, while Drew above her was hard and hot. She reveled in the contrast as he lifted to kiss her again. At the opportunity, she went to work on the buttons of his shirt, tucking her fingers inside the edges so that they brushed against the warm steel of his stomach. She reached the bottom and pressed her palm flat against his abdomen, just above his erection. She savored his low hiss before pushing the material from his wide shoulders. There. She wanted to kiss him there. She placed her lips against his shoulder, swirling her tongue against the salty, manly taste of his skin. And there. She kissed his collarbone. And there…

Everywhere she kissed him left her wanting more.

Drew moved so that both his knees were between hers. He lay against her so that his long, rigid hardness was cradled between her legs. She grasped his hips, holding him there, swimming in the anticipation that shuddered through her.

The slow burn was quickly turning into something more powerful. Josie braced her hands against his shoulders then turned him over so that he was lying on the mattress and she was above him. She kissed him long and hard, her right hand
slinking down over his torso toward his slacks. She popped the fastener then tugged down the zipper, dipping her hand inside his boxers so she could cup his silken length. So long…so thick…so hard. She pulled her mouth from his, her breasts swaying as she repositioned herself between his knees. She caught him watching the movement. She grazed her nipples against his chest, first one way, then the other, rubbing them against his. His eyes darkened and he grasped her hips, shoving down her panties to bare her fully to his gaze. She dragged her breasts down the remainder of his abdomen, then pressed them against his hard ridge before lifting to rid him of his slacks and boxers. But rather than returning to kiss his mouth, she straddled his leg. Sitting straight up, she cupped her breasts in her own hands, squeezing her nipples, knowing he was watching her raptly. Then she wantonly rubbed her wetness against the prickly hair covering his thigh, nearly causing herself to climax right on the spot.

He grasped her wrists and groaned. “Come here.”

She stretched and grasped his hands, then drew his arms above his head.

“Shhh,” she said, kissing him deeply as she rubbed her breasts against his chest again.

She curved his fingers around the wrought-iron
headboard, then slid back down again, running one of her nipples over his exposed length, then the other, before taking his turgid flesh in her hands. For long moments she visually examined the example of prime male virility, aware that his breathing was shallow and that he hadn’t moved a muscle. She met his gaze as she licked the thick knob, then licked again to taste the bead of moisture there.

“Sweet Jesus…”

Drew threw back his head and gripped the headboard so tightly the entire bed shifted.

Josie went down on him, enjoying the salty taste, that he was watching her, that she knew exactly what to do to please a man as she fondled his soft, hair-covered sac.

When she sensed he was on the threshold of coming, she moved her other hand up and down the base of his shaft and increased the suction, thirsty for proof of his desire for her.

Instead, he growled and grasped her shoulders. She thought he was going to pull her away. But instead, he repositioned her so that she still had complete access to him…and he had the same access to her.

She carefully balanced her knees on either side of his head against his shoulders, then took him
back into her mouth. When she felt his thumbs probe her engorged flesh, opening her to him, she nearly climaxed.

And moments later, when he fastened his mouth over her tight bud, she did come.

Drew marveled at the power he had over Josie as he breathed in her musk and absorbed her spasms and shudders. She not only smelled like fruit, she tasted and looked like it, too. He cupped her bottom, spreading the fleshy, split peach of her womanhood farther, drawing out her crisis by alternately suckling her then blowing on her, feeling her breasts crushing against his stomach and her fingers grip his thighs as she rode the wave of sensation.

When he was about to edge her bottom down toward his aching member, he felt her mouth take him in again. He was so unprepared for the move that his hips bucked involuntarily and he found himself coming with an intensity that made his balls ache.

For long, breathless moments he lay back, his mouth against her soft inner thigh. The room was dark but for the shaft of red light shining in from the club across the street. The ceiling fan whirled, blowing hot air against their moisture-covered bodies. He didn’t know if he could continue their
lovemaking. His climax had been so all consuming, he didn’t think there was anything left for him to give.

Then he felt Josie shift slightly, lifting back up to her elbows. And that sweet mouth of hers was on him again.

He grasped her bottom and nudged her downward until she gripped his ankles and her swollen flesh was above his stiffening length. He reached for his slacks that were strewn across the bedside table and fished a condom out of his back pocket. Then he was parting the rounded globes of her perfect backside and thrusting upward, entering her in one, long, slick stroke to the hilt.

Josie let loose a moan that made his hard-on double in size. He thrust again, watching the latex glisten with her juices as his erection disappeared inside her, then reappeared again. He placed his thumbs on either side of her engorged labia, coaxing a deeper meeting as he thrust upward again. To his amazement, she found her own pleasure in her awkward position by grinding against him. The friction caused by her pubis against his balls made him grit his teeth to keep from coming again.

Slowly, she sat up so that she was straddling him reverse-cowgirl style. He stroked the long,
graceful line of her back, then the swell of her bottom as she braced herself against his thighs and lifted herself off him, then dropped back down again. Then again.

He grasped her hips. “I want to watch you,” he whispered harshly. “Turn around.”

She did as asked, reaching down between them to reposition the tip of his arousal against her portal. Their gazes met as she slid down over him, inch by torturous inch, until he filled her to the hilt. She stretched out her long neck and moaned soulfully, rivaling the sound of the trumpet outside. Drew cupped her breasts as she moved, marveling in the way they filled his hands, the way they trembled with her movements. Then he splayed his hands against her slender hips, at first just letting them rest there as he watched her move against him, then guiding her movements, holding her still as he thrust hard up inside of her.

This enchantress was the most fascinating sight he’d ever seen. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at him from under the fringe of her dark lashes. Up and down…up and down.

Yes,
he thought, the word echoing in his mind.
Dear God, yes.

This time when he came, he took her with him.