Wedding Favors (14 page)

He growled.

He pushed his way into the bar, searching for Madison through the dark and the crowd. So many people were out tonight, the weather nice, the weekend in full swing. Girls in low-rise jeans that revealed bits of thong sashayed in front of their men, their cropped tops baring belly buttons with navel studs. Men in jeans and boots, beers in hand, talked with friends or flirted with the ladies.

He saw Madison at the corner of the bar, standing out in her peach froth. She leaned on the bar and toyed with an olive in her drink. As he watched, she lifted the olive to her lips, curled her tongue around it, and drew it into her mouth.

Thomas stopped dead, his cock responding. He watched her lips close around the cocktail stick where the olive had been, mouth pursed as she sucked.

The man standing next to Madison noticed, too. The large, fleshy goon gave Madison a leer and moved closer.

The predator in Thomas got him across the floor in record time. He slid himself between the goon and Madison and leaned against the bar, facing her.

“Hey,
cher.”

She gave him a wary look, but her rage seemed to have dissipated. “Hey, Thomas.”

Thomas gestured to the bartender and asked for a bottle of beer. The bartender nodded and thunked an open bottle to the bar. The goon who’d been ogling Madison looked Thomas up and down and decided to move off in search of easier pickings. Thomas slid out a twenty and told the bartender he’d pay for Madison’s drink as well.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Madison said.

Thomas shrugged, upended the beer, and poured some down his throat. “You all right?” he asked after he swallowed.

“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I’m sorry if I made you mad back at the reception,” Thomas said. “You seemed pretty upset at Girard, and I wanted to help. If he’s harassing you, tell me. I’ll do something about it.”

“Oh, yes? Are you my guard dog now?”

“Girard’s a creep. Steer clear of him.”

“He’s one of the richest men in New Orleans,” she pointed out. “Not to mention Fontaine.”

“That’s true, but trust me, you don’t want to get involved with him.”

“Thomas, I
really
don’t want to talk about Keith Girard.”

“Fine by me,
cher.
Let’s grab a table.”

“There aren’t any. It’s too crowded.”

Thomas took her elbow and guided her away from the bar. Just as he knew it would, a corner table emptied as he walked toward it—it was strange how humans responded to his dominant and predatory stare.

A cocktail waitress who looked run off her feet but still smiled cheerfully gave the table a quick wipe-down, and Thomas assisted Madison onto the tall chair. “I need to talk to you, Maddie.”

Madison took a sip of her martini and set down the glass. “Not about my house.”

“All right.” But if she didn’t want to talk about Keith or the house, he didn’t have an opening. “So what do you want to talk about?”

“You.” Madison moved the cocktail stick around the glass, her brown eyes fixed on him. “Tell me about this business you started with your brother.”

Thomas shrugged, but he picked his words carefully. “Not much to tell. It’s a courier business. We deliver things.”

“By slow ship? You’re gone for weeks at a time.”

The fact that she’d noticed made his heart go thumpetythump. “We do deliveries around the world.” Thomas gave her the cautious line he gave to the curious. He and Marc did do deliveries, domestic and foreign, but they were documents or packages that needed to be guarded at all costs. Sometimes they delivered human beings—escorted wanted men back to the States for trial or helped hostages escape to safety. They did their good deeds and got paid, but they couldn’t step into the limelight for it. That had always been fine with Thomas.

“Interesting,” Madison said. “I’ve always wanted to travel.”

“So why don’t you?”

“I’m broke, that’s why. Plus I have the fall and spring seasons to design for every year, and the charity dinners grandmother always gave that all of New Orleans expects me to continue. You know, real life.”

She was prickly tonight, but it only increased Thomas’s libido. He wanted to lift her into his arms, carry her off to some exotic island, make love to her in the moonlight. He didn’t want simple, romantic sex either. He wanted sexual play that would set his body on fire, and hers. He wanted to give this woman pleasure. He craved to do so.

Thomas moved his hand to where hers rested on the wooden tabletop. He touched the backs of her fingers, finding them too cold. He wanted to envelop her small hand in his, warm it.

Her gaze went to their joined hands, and her chest rose against the satin décolletage.

“I want to apologize,” Thomas said to her.

“For what? The reception? You just did.”

“No, for our date nine years ago.”

As he’d hoped, she gave him a sudden Madison smile. She’d broken his heart with that smile. The one night he’d tried to impress her he’d succeeded in making a complete idiot of himself, but Thomas had grown up a since that night. He wanted to show her how much.

“You mean the cramped front seat of your pickup?” Madison asked, wrinkling her nose. “The gearshift in my ear that nearly knocked me out?”

“That’s the one. I was clueless, and you deserved so much better.”

“For my first time?” Her smile could light a room. “I was sixteen and also clueless.”

“You were pretty pissed at me, I remember.”

“I was embarrassed. And pissed at myself.”

She didn’t move her hand from under his touch. She lifted her fingers slightly and twined them through his.

Waves of heat ripped through his body, and Thomas’s hard-on gave a throb. “We should get out of here,” he said. He could smell the scent of orange blossom again, even more so. He wondered if she’d taste of oranges if he lifted her hand to his lips.

“We could go to my house.”

Thomas looked at her in surprise. “Your house?”

“You want to talk about it so bad, we might as well go there.”

“I thought you were staying at the hotel, like everyone else.”

“I’ll call my roomies and leave a message not to worry about me.” She withdrew her hand and took another long drink of her martini. “Besides, I want to get out of this damned dress.”

Thomas’s heartbeat felt thick as he imagined her unzipping the bodice, sliding the dress from her shoulders while he watched. Yep, leaving was a good idea before anyone else saw his cock rise up out of his pants.

Thomas held his arm out for her as he had when they walked down the aisle in the church. As before, she slipped her hand through the crook of it, leaning a little on him. He liked the feel of her pressed all along his side as they made their way through the crowd.

Near the door, they passed a dark-haired man he recognized from the wedding. A friend of Demitri’s, he remembered. A man of dark good looks who’d kept to the background, a little mysterious. He wore a tux but had loosened the tie. Alexi, Thomas remembered his name was.

The man was giving Madison the once-over. Dark eyes traveled down her body to her legs that were lusciously sexy in her high heels. It was a longing look, a covetous look.

Thomas tightened his hold on Madison’s arm and led her from the bar.

Behind them, Alexi watched them go, his body tight with need. After they exited, he rose to his feet, poured the last of his drink down his throat, and followed.

Madison’s
house was in the Garden District, a stand-alone that hadn’t been turned into high-priced condos or a bed-and-breakfast. The façade was pink stucco with black wrought-iron railings on the front porch and second-floor balcony. Shutters lined the tall windows. Despite the fact that the house needed much work, Madison tried to keep it nice-looking on the outside, sacrificing her weekends to painting and keeping the yard trimmed.

She said nothing as Thomas helped her out of the taxi and paid the driver himself. She felt so cheap letting him pay that plus the eleven-dollar martini she’d ordered on stupid impulse, but she hadn’t lied when she said she was broke. She barely had enough left over for toothpaste.

She walked up onto the porch that had been the scene of so many childhood play days, Thomas’s tread heavy on the stairs behind her. Madison fished in her little purse for her key, her hands clumsy. Thomas took the purse, plucked out the key, and unlocked and opened the door.

The double scent of beeswax and sandalwood met them. Madison kept the inside of the old place as clean and sweet-smelling as she could. Thomas looked around in appreciation at the soaring hall, the twisting staircase with its wrought-iron railing, the big open double doors leading to the parlor on the left, the dining room and kitchen behind it.

“You could bowl in here,” Thomas said, looking down the length of the hall. The house ran a long way back into the property, like a shotgun house, with rooms on one side of the main corridor.

“My grandmother would have a conniption,” Madison said, dropping her purse on a table. She winced as she pried the pumps from her feet. “Don’t think I didn’t try it.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s old and falling down. Do you want a tour? Or to try to talk me into selling? You can tell me how stupid I am to try to keep it from being sucked up by developers, and then offer me a lowball figure that you think I’ll be desperate enough to take.”

Thomas folded his arms and leaned against the open doorframe to the parlor. “People are really shitting on you, aren’t they?”

“They say Felice Lefevre was a crazy old woman. She sat on this gem until it was too run-down to be worth anything.” She sighed. “Maybe she was. My grandmother was always saying that the house would take care of me, but I don’t know what she meant. And now I’m following in her eccentric footsteps.”

“I don’t want to buy your house, Madison.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Her sarcasm bled through. “Then why are you so interested?”

“I want to know why Girard wants to buy it.”

Madison shrugged. “Hell if I know. I think he wants to be a man-about-town, lord of the manor, married to the Lefevre heir, that kind of thing. My grandmother always regarded the Girards as white trash that got above themselves.”

“Your grandmother was right. But I’m white trash from the swamps, so I can’t really talk too much.”

Madison shook her head. “Grandma always said the Duprees had a bit of class. Good people, she said.”

A smile touched Thomas’s mouth. Damn, didn’t he look good leaning there in his tux, with his tie loose? Like a male escort getting ready to make sure he fulfilled all his required duties.

“You know,
cher,”
he said slowly, “there’s another reason I brought up our date nine years ago.”

Madison’s heart tripped at his sexy tone. “Our only date. We were still using pimple cream. It hardly matters now.”

“I made you unhappy that night. I didn’t fulfill you, and that’s what I’ve wanted to do from the beginning.”

Warmth snaked through her. “I still liked kissing you,” she said, voice soft.

“Your unhappiness made me want to remedy my skills.” Thomas switched his hands to his pockets, his rumpled suit and his dark eyes making him look like a sex god. “So I did remedy them. Marc and me, we joined a club.”

Madison tried a grin. “A club for survivors of disastrous virginity taking?”

“I’ve learned a lot about pleasure over the years, Maddie. About discovering what a lady wants, even when she doesn’t understand herself. And then giving it to her. Pure pleasure. A lady puts herself into my hands, and I give her what she most desires.”

A dark feeling spread from her heart. “Is that what you want me to do? Put myself into your hands?”

“I do. If you wish it.”

“To make up for one bad date nine years ago?”

Thomas shrugged, a nonchalant gesture that rippled muscles under his suit. “Why not?”

“I’m not really into casual sex.” To be honest, she rarely had the chance for it, hence the wish at the fountain.

Thomas lifted himself from the doorframe. “Let me give you this pleasure as a gift.”

She held up her hands. “When you say ‘club’ ... I’m not really into S&M kink, either.”

For answer, Thomas gave her a slow smile. “Neither am I. It’s not what you think, Maddie. It’s trust and pleasure. I want to give that to you.”

“Why?”

“So many reasons.”

Madison went silent, feeling the cool floorboards through her stocking feet. She wasn’t sure she truly knew this Thomas Dupree. The Cajun kid Thomas, yes. The sexy businessman with the orgasm-inducing smile, not so much. She didn’t know much about bondage except what she heard in jokes, and she never watched porn. Why spend time watching people getting what she couldn’t have?