Dark Lily: Shadows, Book 4 (12 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Gaby slept for forty minutes, and every one of them was riddled with grotesque shapes, murky shadows and sibilant sounds. They stemmed from ghostly sources in many cases, but not all.

Mitchell was there, tall, dark and still so damn mysterious she wanted to pound her head against a wall until the darkness surrounding that mystery either came clear to her or faded to black. But Mitchell’s wasn’t the only enigmatic aura that drifted through her sleeping mind.

She sensed another presence. Someone, not Leshad. Not Phoebe, or CJ Best either. Someone—no idea. At least no firm idea. She focused on the presence itself, took comfort in it. It slipped away, but not before a single, startling word slid through her mind.

Sister.

“Gaby?”

Mitchell’s knock shattered the brushstroke of memory. “Phoebe sent our costumes.” Rather than enter, he tossed a bag from the threshold. “Pack your stuff. As soon as you’re dressed, we’ll lose this place.”

Gaby let her lips twitch. “That scowl on your face looks like it wants to hit something. Or someone.” She rose from the chair where she’d been lounging. “You know, we don’t have to go to this masquerade party. I’m fine with baiting a hook on Bokur if that’s all this really is.”

“We want to set bait for the big one, Gaby, not for more hired sharks. I had the Jeep checked out. It’s good to go. Unless you’ve changed your mind, so are we.”

“I haven’t changed my mind.” Strolling up to him, she slid the back of her finger across his chest. “But that scowl of yours has me a little stirred up. It’s blacker than the storm that’s brewing over the bayou. Also—” she cocked her head, “—I’m a big fan of Sarah Vaughan.”

He trapped her hand before it could stray lower, closed the door with his foot. His eyes were dark and, oh yeah, mysterious as hell in the premature twilight of the second floor. “If you’re thinking this is the time and place for us to have sex, you’d be wrong.”

Setting her tongue on her teeth, Gaby gave him a considering once-over. “As wrong as wrong can be, I’d say. Still.” She lifted her mouth to his, indulged herself in a long, delicious taste of him. “You’ve got a mad on that has nothing to do with me. I’m fine with that. Means you’ll want to direct the adrenaline it’s spawning into something explosive.” She kissed him again, and this time nipped his bottom lip. “Something dark, erotic and hot enough to scorch flesh.”

He squeezed her fingers. That only brought a velvet purr to her throat. “You want an awful lot pulled from the depths of a black mood.”

“I might want more than you can imagine,” she said against his mouth. “Some of it I’ll get, some I won’t, but I figure on having sex with you before this horror of a night unfolds. If that makes me wrong, it won’t be my first mistake.”

Finally, a faint grin skimmed across his lips. “Not your first, and I promise you, honey, not your last.” And capturing her mouth, he set it on fire.

The slide into full heat was a deceptively slow thing. Mitchell grazed his lips over her cheek and along her throat, until the shiver on the surface of her skin reached all the way inside her.

Gaby’s stomach quivered and her knees felt weak.
Fancy that
, she reflected dizzily. They’d barely started the dance, and already she was dissolving into a pool of lust.

Sarah Vaughan’s sultry tones fit every aspect of the dark mood that seemed to have taken on a life of its own in the tiny blues club apartment.

“This is insane,” Mitchell murmured against her neck. “Security’s minimal to non-existent here.”

She tipped her head to the side so he could feast. “Door has a lock, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, the kind a rookie could bypass in under fifteen seconds.”

A smile appeared. “Then I guess it’s down to Billy.”

He drew back to stare. “You knew he was here?”

“Was and still is. In his own way.”

She suspected Mitchell would have snarled if she hadn’t quickly occupied his mouth.

Long, dusky shadows streamed through the room. The dim rays of light between them had a grainy hue. A chill of anticipation coursed through Gaby’s bloodstream. Curling her fingers into Mitchell’s shirt, she yanked him close and let out a breath of anticipation when she felt his arousal straining against the front of his jeans.

“There now,” she said. “See how easy it is to turn a useless mad into something more satisfying?”

She kissed him before he could answer, covered his mouth and devoured the flavor of man and mood. This wasn’t wise, she understood that, but she needed it, both to bolster her courage and as an emotional release.
How clearly
, she wondered,
will either of us be able to see if everything we look at is shrouded in a sexual fog?

“Christ, I want you,” Mitchell said in a near growl. “It’s off the scale how much. I’m not even sure if I locked the damn door downstairs.”

She kept him looking at her when he would have turned to check. “It doesn’t matter.” She spoke the words clearly, then set her mouth back on his. “Right now, only this matters.” And she closed her hand on the front of his jeans.

Desire fueled hunger and created an urgent need for more. Gaby knew part of what she wanted lay buried in her past. She’d tried and failed before to exorcise the demons inside her. The worst one had its claws in her even now. It was fear, pure and simple. Of what she might do, what she could do, what she’d almost done in another place and time.

She wanted Mitchell to shake those demons up, then shake them loose. She believed he could and would take anything she threw at him, whether by accident or design.

His gaze glittered into hers. “You’re not the only one with demons, Gaby. You’re letting me feel the dark thoughts inside you, but you need to feel mine right back. We’re all of us products of our pasts.”

“Unfortunately, some of us have more to worry about in that regard. I’m a product of my grandmother. I only hope I can control that part of myself.”

Mitchell got her moving toward the bed. “I can take a lot, on every level. I just want your word on one thing. That wherever the hell Billy is, he’s not currently in this room.”

The bed bumped her legs from behind. “I won’t let him in,” she promised. “He wouldn’t want to watch anyway, but I won’t let him or anyone in.” The inevitable tease swirled up, and she whispered, “Not even your resident poltergeists, Jasper and Bruce.”

“Not a problem.” Her chemise flew into the blue-lit shadows. “They’re in the storeroom smashing glasses. Jesus, Gaby.” Mitchell stepped back. “You’re incredible. Beautiful, exquisite. Damn near perfect.”

“No, I’m not.” She placed a finger on his lips. “I’m not even close. You have moods, and so do I. Coupled with a temper I try really hard to lock away.”

Chuckling, he went to work on the clasp of her lace bra. “Because if you didn’t?”

A tremor of remembered fear rippled through her. “The one time I didn’t, the only time I ever lashed out, it made a scar. There.” She touched her finger to the left side of his chest. “An angry, jagged scar the man I was with will carry forever.”

“Consider me warned,” Mitchell said, scooped her off the floor and deposited her on the iron bed.

Gaby lost all sense of time and space after that. She let her mind flow into the approaching night, into the music that continued to drift upward from the club. A different kind of music—the Quarter during its lazy transition from day to night—seeped into her, swept over and through her, until the play of shadow and light felt as alive as she was.

Mitchell’s mouth plundered hers. His hands explored her body. What had been anger, raw and undefined, transformed into a swell of hunger and need.

He stripped off her shorts. Rolling him over, she unzipped his fly and tugged his jeans down. Clothes fell to the floor. He ran a finger under her lace bikinis. Then suddenly they were gone too. Everything went somewhere, except Gaby’s anklet and the stardust-silver earrings Tallulah had given her before she’d left California.

Mitchell’s hands and mouth were magic on her skin. His thumbs grazed her nipples, making her gasp as fiery stabs of pleasure raced through her.

She dug her fingers into his arms, needing something to hold, to keep herself from being sucked into that vortex of heat gone mad inside.

“Touch me, Gaby.” He raised his head so his eyes stared into hers. “Don’t be afraid of what might happen. Just let it be. Let us be.” And taking her hand in his, he showed her where he wanted her to go.

The last threads of fear snapped. She let him in, all the way in, let her feelings fly. The greed, the hunger, the breathless cruise to the high peak on the roller coaster.

The cruise became a flight as Mitchell’s mouth closed over her breast, and she arched up into him. Sinking her fingernails into his back, she pulled him closer.

Everything in her body felt liquid. Molten. Wildly aroused.

Fear spiked, threatened to consume her. He ran a hand between her legs, and she clamped around him, more than ready.

He had a condom. No idea where it had come from, but thank God he’d thought ahead.

She wouldn’t hurt him, she promised herself. No matter how overwhelming the sensations were that gripped her, she would not scar him.

Desire was a drug in her brain. Her mind and body trembled. She wanted him to fill her up. No more teases, no more previews, just the full, hard length of him emptying into her and blanking her thoughts. Blanking everything except the two of them, in this room, on this bed, driving each other into a sexual frenzy.

Gaby watched in fascination as his irises went completely black. Then he slipped inside, and she stopped seeing anything. There was only Mitchell and a blur of light as her body bowed off the mattress.

The need for more of him sliced through her, white hot and razor sharp. She matched him stroke for stroke, felt the pulse and throb of his body and hers, heard the roar of blood in her ears.

She cried his name, gripping the sheet and sucking in a quick breath. Her neck muscles constricted as she rose to meet him.

Skin glided, slick and smooth, over skin. Steel pressing into silk. Sarah Vaughan’s seductive voice continued to float up from below. No eyes could see them here. No ghost’s or human’s or voodoo doll’s. When the orgasm shuddered through her, Gaby seized it and rode it all the way through. Then, with every muscle in her body on fire, she let it slip away, let herself tumble into those satin and velvet notes of music.

She knew Mitchell was right there with her. She felt his presence in her mind, in the weight that held her captive on the bed. Or mostly captive. He’d collapsed just far enough to the side that she could breathe and marvel and slide her finger up under his hair.

It was heaven to drift, to bask in the lingering ripples of wonder and relief. They might have almost killed each other, but even letting herself go, she hadn’t lashed out.

Had she?

Suddenly unsure, she wriggled out from under him. Mitchell’s face was buried in her hair, and he seemed disinclined to move.

“If you have energy to spare, honey, you didn’t experience the full impact of the storm I just lived through.”

Pulling her hair free, she pushed on his shoulder and arm. “Roll over, Mitchell.”

“Unless there’s a big man with an even bigger gun aimed at my back, not a chance.”

“Mitchell!”

“You’re seriously dampening the afterglow I’ve got going here.” He flopped over to regard her through dark, bleary eyes. “You look amazing.”

“Thanks.” Distracted, she ran her palms over his torso. “Are you bleeding anywhere? Hurt anywhere?”

“What? No… Ah, right, got it. Jagged scar.”

“First blood, then a scar.” She worked her way down, breathed out in relief when she reached his hips. “Okay, so no visible damage.”

“Except to my ego.”

“That being the most fragile part of the male psyche.” Laughing now, she climbed onto him so her knees straddled his thighs. “Talk about amazing.”

His eyes sparkled, and he grabbed her hips. “What say we make a point of not talking about anything, past, present or nebulous future?”

“Oh, now there’s a positive remark.” She set her hands on his shoulders. “Lucky for me, I see another steamy bout of sex in my future. Beyond that, well, life’s a changeable mix of surprises.” Leaning down, she kissed his ear. “If it eases the doubts that seem to be creeping into your head, I sense more than Sarah Vaughan downstairs. Billy’s in your storeroom. I can see him in a hardback chair. He has a clear view of both entry doors. And a full rack of knives on the counter beside him.”

* * * * *

Mitchell believed her about Billy and the knife rack. More disturbing on several levels, he believed Billy could and would use those knives should the need arise. What he wasn’t entirely sure of was whose ghost he’d been talking to earlier. If it was the one he suspected, how the hell had she transported herself from Bokur Island to his New Orleans blues club?

Gaby had no problem with any of those questions. Billy was what he was, and he did what he did. Simple as that. Same went for the ghost in her opinion.

“If it was Celia paying me a visit, and I’m ninety-five percent on that, why didn’t she introduce herself?” Propped against the headboard, Mitchell sat with one knee raised, wearing his jeans and an open shirt. “Pass the wine, Gaby. And don’t tell me she’s shy. That’s bullshit.”

“No bullshit.” Gaby refilled his glass from a bottle of burgundy he’d discovered in the galley kitchen across the hall. “Did you introduce yourself to her?”

“She knew who I was.”

“There you go then. Turnabout’s fair. I bought her shop. I’m thinking of buying her house. I store—stored—some of my overstock in her shed. How many other ghosts am I likely to be as close to as Celia? What’s a given doesn’t necessarily need to be stated.”

“Okay, so Celia. She thinks I should bring you back to Bokur. It’s where Twila and Tallulah wanted you to be and where both Celia and Phoebe believe you’ll be safe. Celia gave me the very strong impression that you have an extensive support system there.”

“Do I?”

He swallowed a mouthful of wine, raised a brow. “You didn’t know that?”