“Well, wench, how do you plan to pleasure me?”
“What?”
“Mayhap you will give me a private dance.”
“Dancing is not my strongest talent.”
“I noticed.”
She made a growling sound that seemed to startle him.
“If not dancing, dost have some special talent in the bedsport to pleasure me?”
“I’m not here to pleasure you.”
“No? Why are you here then?” He undid his belt and removed his sheathed sword, laying them both on a low chest. “Am I to pleasure you?” He shrugged. “That works for me. Me first, then your turn.” He heeled off first one boot, then the other, and raised his tunic up and over his head, gracing her with a most impressive chest. And shoulders. And arms. Jeesh! Did men really have waists that narrow?
She shook her head to clear her vision. “Hey, hey, hey, stop taking your clothes off.”
He arched his brows. “How can I tup you if my cock is covered?”
She had a pretty good idea what a tup was. “No need to be crude. Just keep your pants on. I can’t think with all that skin. This is a dream, you know?”
He rolled his eyes. “Why do I always get the barmy ones?”
“We need to talk.”
“Ah, sex talk. I can do that.” He stretched out on the low bed, his back to the wall. “The scarves are nice, but time to lose them. One at a time, please.”
“I am not taking off my clothes.”
“Then I am not talking.”
“Oh hell. Okay.” She took off one of the leg scarves and shot him a glare. “First off, we know each other already.”
That surprised him. “Really? It could not have been too memorable a swiving if I do not recall it. Was it in that bawdy house in Jorvik? Or that time in Byzantium when the emperor sent all those women to us Varangian guardsmen? Methinks I was beyond drukkinn at the time.” He waved for her to drop another scarf.
Crap! The lech must have screwed women from one end of the world to the other. That’s right. He did tell me he was guilty of the sin of lust “in a big way.” She dropped another leg scarf. “Not that kind of knowing. Listen, you’ve got to help me get out of here.”
“I have no intention of leaving this country for at least a sennight, and if you think I’m going to steal a houri from the sultan’s harem, you are barmier than I thought.”
“Whore-ee? You son of a . . . I’m no whore.”
He rolled his eyes. “Houri, not whore. One of the harem.”
“I am not part of the sultan’s harem,” she said through gritted teeth.
He folded his arms over his chest, waiting.
With a pfff! of disgust, she removed the toe rings and some bracelets.
“You jest!” he snarled, apparently not satisfied with a bit of jewelry.
With another pfff! of disgust, she removed a sheer sleeve.
“Why do you want to leave Baghdad? I would think you lead a pampered life here. Ah, women are always wanting more than they have. Does not matter if they are in the Norselands or in the Arab lands. Where are you from, by the by?”
“America.”
“Dost mean that land that Erik the Red has discovered? Nay, do not answer. It does not matter.” Without asking for her permission, he raised his hips and shrugged his pants down to his ankles, and then tossed them to the floor.
For a moment, she was speechless. Holy moly! Were men really built like that? Apparently, he wasn’t as unmoved by her appearance as he led her to believe, but maybe blondie had primed his pump, so to speak.
“I didn’t mean that I want you to help me leave this place . . . Baghdad, or wherever this is. I meant that I want you to help me get out of this dream.”
“How would I do that?” he asked, waving peremptorily for another scarf.
She dropped the second sleeve, which didn’t leave her with much else to drop. “How? I don’t know how! You’re the one to blame for this . . . mess.” She hadn’t meant to shriek.
He pounded the heel of one hand against the side of his head as if to clear his ears. “Mess?”
“Dream.”
“I daresay many women dream about me, but you are the only one who ever complained about it.” He smiled at her, a slow, lazy smile that was probably intended to be seductive.
It was, actually, especially with the standing sign of his interest, which, unbelievably, seemed to be growing.
“I have no intention of having sex with you,” she said.
“Oh? I see. You want to be seduced. I can do that.” He stared at her pointedly now, his silent message loud and clear: Lose the rest of the clothing.
Oh hell! She turned her back to him, undid the bra-type scarf garment, and tried to rub off some of the rouge with the fabric, to no avail.
“Are you touching yourself? Wonderful! Turn so that I can watch.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Dammit!” she said, spinning on her bare heels. “Because some fool painted my boobs.”
His eyes went wide at first. Then he smiled. “It’s not so bad.”
“Puh-leeze!”
“Your breasts are nice. Lift them for me.”
“What? Oh.” She lifted them from underneath.
“They look like cherries in small pools of cherry juice. I wonder how they taste. Sweet or tart? Methinks I should lick them to see. Then mayhap I should suck on the cherries themselves. To see if there are pits. Then little nibbling bites.”
She couldn’t think for a moment, so intense was the pleasure that emanated from her aching breasts and rippled out to every erotic zone in her body, especially between her legs.
“Dost weep for me, wench? Between your legs. Check and see.” His compelling eyes held hers, persuading.
As if hypnotized, she dropped the remainder of the harem pants, leaving her bare to his scrutiny. Bare? She glanced downward. Oh my God! She had no hair down below. Someone had plucked out all her pubic hair. She tried to cover herself with both hands.
“That’s the way, sweetling. Touch yourself.”
“I wasn’t touching myself. I was covering myself. This is so embarrassing! I look like a plucked chicken!” She dropped her hands.
His eyes went wide. “Your woman’s fleece is gone.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“My name is Ivak. Not Sure-lock. And best you curb your sarcasm and foul tongue, wench, lest you taste the flavor of my wrath.”
She rolled her eyes. This was the strangest experience of her life. Had she eaten funny mushrooms, or something?
“A fucked chicken?” Ivak just barely bit back a burst of laughter.
“Plucked, you idiot. Not fucked.”
“It has a certain attraction, after the initial shock,” he said, but he was grinning.
“If that was an attempt to make me feel better, you failed.”
“I must admit, I like a bit of mystery, but betimes a change can be exciting. Is that moisture leaking from your nether folds? A sign of your arousal?”
“Well, it’s a not a leaky bladder?” Definitely an idiot! “It’s not polite to remark on things like that.”
“I was ne’er considered very polite. Come closer. I want to tell you something.”
“Why can’t you tell me from there?”
“Come. Here.”
Somehow, she found herself standing by the bed. When had she moved? Why had she moved? Then, before she could blink, Ivak reached over, picking her up by the waist, and lifted her up and over, straddling him.
“Take me,” he urged.
And she did.
Holding his massive erection in both hands, she placed him at her opening, then lowered herself inch by inch ’til he filled her. Immediately, her body began convulsing into an intense, never-ending orgasm.
She screamed then.
That’s when she heard a female voice say, “Wake up, Gabrielle. Wake up. You mus’ be havin’ a bad dream.”
She sa
t up and turned on the bedside lamp, realizing dazedly that she was still in modern times, in the bayou cottage.
Tante Lulu looked at her and smiled. “Forget bad dreams. Yer face is all flushed. I may be old as time, but I remember that look. This ol’ bed ain’t seen that much action since Tee-John was a teenager.”
Alone again later, in the dark, Gabrielle could only wonder what real sex would be like if fantasy sex was so hot.
Thirteen
Some days start out bad and go downhill from there . . .
It was a week before Gabrielle was given permission to return to Angola and visit her brother.
In the meantime, she worked on her caseload at Second Chances and returned to Tante Lulu’s cottage on Bayou Black every night. Nights that were filled with horrible—or wonderful, depending on the perspective—erotic dreams.
There had been a lockdown at the prison to investigate the disappearance of a number of prison employees and some elderly or terminally ill inmates in the prison hospital. To say that Gabrielle was worried was an understatement, even though there had been no new disappearances, or escapes, or whatever this past week.
She had to wonder if it was related to the story Ivak had told her about demon vampires being around or inside the penitentiary grounds. Investigators had come up with no leads, according to the news media, but visitors were being allowed back in, under tighter security.
The warden was trying to paint this as a picture of faulty paperwork at the prison, but no one was buying that. People living within fifty miles of Angola were taking extra precautions to lock up their homes, and some were even buying firearms to protect themselves from what they perceived as escaped convicts, including those in the prison medical facility.
Yeah, right, a seventy-year-old convict with congestive heart failure was going to tramp through the swamps outside the prison grounds. Or the one-legged inmate reliant on insulin for his diabetes. Or the AIDS prisoner so thin he resembled a Holocaust survivor.
The news media were going wild with all the conjectures, and not just the tabloids. With the media not being able to enter the prison grounds or contact anyone inside, the reports were wide-ranging, all quoting unnamed sources. The usual alien abduction theory. Government experiments on bodies deemed expendable. Convicts enlisted for covert terrorist operations. A mass prison escape masterminded by a Houdini-type escape artist. Bribery of guards. Hit men within the prison population. Not surprisingly, none of the stories mentioned demon vampires.
Leroy had been permitted to call her collect for the first time yesterday. He’d informed her that Little Eddie Hebert, the only man who stood between his exoneration and a lifetime in prison, had been diagnosed with late stage colon cancer. She was able to tell Leroy that Tante Lulu was working on Little Eddie’s mother, trying to get her to persuade her son to tell the truth. And Leroy told Gabrielle that Ivak was working his angel magic on the convict, too.
Oh God! Are we placing all our trust in a magician? A magician who is driving me wild every night in my dreams.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Leroy said, “but Ivak says everything will work out in the end.”
Gabrielle wouldn’t know about that. After the remarkable day she’d spent with Ivak last Saturday, she’d heard not one single word from him. Apparently, the charmer wasn’t as charmed with her as he’d claimed to be. Apparently, the dreams weren’t having the same impact on him as they were on her.
Well, screw him. Not literally. Except for the dreams. Just no more wasted energy on a womanizer like Ivak. And that’s exactly what he was, she decided. A man who could charm a woman silly, then not call . . . well, who needed that? Not her. From now on, she was keeping her distance.
Gabrielle was driving Tante Lulu’s car to Angola today with the old lady riding shotgun. René, who had a job up that way, was going to meet them there.
The top was up to preserve the old lady’s hair, which had been styled that morning by Charmaine . . . a light brown pageboy that fit perfectly under her cowboy hat that went with rodeo gear: a long-sleeved shirt with snap fasteners and a fringed vest with jeans and tooled leather boots. A dwarf version of Dale Evans. If the old lady thought that anyone was going to let her get on a horse—or God forbid, a bull—she was crazier than she acted sometime.
That was mean, Gabrielle chided herself. Tante Lulu had been nothing but kind to her. Interfering and outrageous, but kind.
In any case, the top was also up because Gabrielle was being cautious in case there were any demons flying around. The only scary thing she’d seen so far, though, was the decrepit truck she’d been tailing for the last five miles with two side-by-side bumper stickers. One read “This Truck Is Insured by Smith & Wesson.” And the other: “Keep Honking. I’m Reloading.” She had to remind herself at times that she was in the Deep South, which was a law unto itself.
“I still think you shoulda gussied up more. You coulda worn that sundress Charmaine brought for you.”
“Tante Lulu! It was pink! And it had sequins!”
“So? You gotta embrace yer inner floozy, hon. Doan mean you gotta go skanky. Nope. Not many gals kin pull off bimbo with a brain lak Charmaine does. In yer case, jist a little bit slut and a little bit librarian would do jist fine.”
Good Lord!
As a compromise, Gabrielle had let Charmaine do her hair into a chic French braid, and she wore a knee-length denim skirt with a short-sleeved, scoop-necked, multishaded blue silk top. She’d even agreed to a manicure and pedicure so that her stubby fingernails were now a rose color, along with her toenails that peeked out of a pair of bone sandals. She’d adamantly refused sculptured nails.
Tante Lulu slanted Gabrielle a sly look now, from her perch atop two cushions so she could see over the dashboard. “How you gonna land yer fish if you doan throw out any bait?”
“What fish? What bait?” she made the mistake of asking.
“The Viking fish, thass what fish. I cain’t be matchmakin’ fer you, if you doan cooperate.”
Gabrielle rolled her eyes.
“I saw that. If you cain’t see that the Good Lord wants you ta light up that boy’s life, well, you mus’ be blind.”
There were so many outrageous things in that statement that Gabrielle didn’t know where to start. “I thought you worked with St. Jude, not God.”
“Same thing.” Tante Lulu waved a hand airily.
“As for lighting up Ivak’s life . . . I’m not interested and neither is he.”
“Yep. Blind as a bayou bat on a moonless night.”
“We spent some time together last Saturday, a late lunch, then a trip out to that old Heaven’s End Plantation. He’s probably going to be associated with Angola for some time to come, and I want nothing to do with prisons once Leroy is out. Ivak can’t have children; I want bunches. Oh, I don’t know. We’re just too different.”
“Pfff! Details! When the thunderbolt strikes, details are like farts on the wind. Soon blown away.”
What an image! “What thunderbolt?”
“The thunderbolt of love. I tol’ you ’bout that before, dint I?”
She hadn’t but Gabrielle wasn’t about to give her that opening. “There hasn’t been any thunder, lightning, rain, storm, or anything else. Ivak is a man who’s hopefully going to help us free Leroy. That’s all.”
“If you say so!” Tante Lulu said. “Did I ask if you want a tablecloth or place mats fer Ivak’s hope chest?”
“Aaarrgh!”
Tante Lulu smiled as if she’d achieved some victory.
They’d just turned onto Snake Road, the only way a person could travel to the prison. There was an old yellow converted school bus ahead of them bringing indigent visitors to the penitentiary. The road was bordered on each side by gullies so deep that the foliage visible above ground level was actually the tops of trees. It was an untamed area kept that way to discourage prisoners from ever trying to escape.
“Are you a virgin?” Tante Lulu asked all of a sudden.
Sometimes it was hard to keep up with Tante Lulu’s popcorn brain.
“No. Are you?”
“Goodness sakes, no! ’Course it’s been a long time fer me. I lost my fiancé in the Big War. Had a few beaus after that, but none that could compare to my Pierre.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Tante Lulu dabbed at her eyes with a St. Jude handkerchief.
“Now, if Richard Simmons had ever come ridin’ down the bayou, I woulda jumped on his pirogue any day. What a hunk!”
Gabrielle had to smile at the old lady’s fixation on the exercise guru, who was a hunk only in her mind.
“Didja ever find yer G-spot?”
Whaaat? “Uh, maybe.”
“I ain’t never found mine. Do you s’pose it dried up lak a raisin inside my va-jay-jay? Thass what Oprah calls female parts.”
“Uh . . .” was all Gabrielle could come up with.
Didn’t matter. Tante Lulu was off on another subject. “Didja say Ivak took you to see that old Heaven’s End Plantation? It’s a cryin’ shame how run down it’s become. Thass what happens when there ain’t no chillen or granchillen to take over a family home. You gots the right idea having a bunch of youngins. If Pierre hadn’t died, betcha we woulda had at least five. Mebbe six.”
“Uh . . .”
“Why did Ivak take you all the way out there? Is he thinkin’ ’bout buyin’ it?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
Tante Lulu nodded. “I could give him lotsa advice. Some good friends of mine, Angel and Grace Sabato, jist renovated a plantation house not far from my cottage. Betcha they could help you and Ivak.”
Angel and Grace? That figures. “Ivak and I are not a couple.”
“How many bedrooms they got at Heaven’s End?”
“I have no idea. The roof is caving in, and it was unsafe to go inside.”
“Mus’ be at least eight, not countin’ the rooms in the attic where the slaves and servants usta live. Golly, it sure is hot t’day. Gonna have a storm t’night sure as shootin’.”
“You can tell that by the heat?”
“Nope. Mah knees and Useless growlin’ up a storm . . . tee hee hee, do you get the joke? The twinges in my hinges are actin’ up t’day. Oh Lordy! Look how the traffic’s backed up at the gate?”