Double Jeopardy

By Liliana Hart

Copyright 2011 by Liliana Hart

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com
and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of this author.

Chapter One

New Orleans, 1925

Secrets could never be kept from the
maid.

Chloe Monroe found this out first hand as she
stood in the darkness of the servant’s stairs behind the master
bedroom wall, a small lantern at her feet. She was no stranger to
the sounds of passion—the soft moans, rustling sheets and whispered
words—she’d been a widow for more than a year, but that didn’t mean
one forgot.

The folded linens in her arms went forgotten
and her pulse leapt in anticipation. Lucian Deveraux was the master
at
Vieux Coeur
,
an estate his
great-grandfather had built during the early eighteen hundreds.
Chloe had never seen anyone as handsome as Lucien. With his gilded
hair, sinful blue eyes and rakishly good looks, it was no wonder
that women frequently found excuses to visit the house. She’d felt
the same pull of attraction dozens of times, but Lucien was a busy
man who had no time to pay attention to his servants. And that’s
all she was now. A servant. Her days of glamorous parties and a
staff of her own were long over.

The servant’s stairs ran all through the
estate, from the basement to the third floor. Legend was that the
elder Mr. Deveraux had had dealings with Jean Lafitte himself and
used the passageways to smuggle contraband to the canal. It was
most likely true because she knew for a fact that Lucien used the
same passageways to smuggle bootlegged whiskey out of New
Orleans.

Shafts of light gleamed into the dark
passageway through wood that was riddled with wormholes, and it
glittered upon the dust dancing in the air. There was a small tear
in the silk wallpaper from the inside of the room and it gave her a
perfect view inside Lucien’s private domain. A faint glow of candle
flame flickered from somewhere and the scent of sex was stronger
than the earthiness of the corridor where she stood. Her eye roamed
lazily around the room, over plush chairs and a low-banked fire, to
the massive four-poster bed that was the focal point of the room.
Crimson sheets pooled over the edge and onto the floor like
blood.

The muffled sound of a grunt pulled her
attention to the center of the bed. Her eyes widened as she saw
Lucien in naked splendor. His skin was tanned from the time he
spent on his ships, and his torso and thighs were muscled
impressively. A fine feathering of light hair covered his chest,
and the sheen of perspiration matted the hair at his temples. He
knelt behind his lover, his buttocks flexing with each thrust, and
he threw his head back in ecstasy as his rhythm sped to an
impossible tempo.

But it wasn’t the sight of Lucien that
brought a small gasp to her lips. It was the man who knelt before
him. She’d never seen him before. She would have remembered.

The man’s swarthy skin and black hair
contrasted against Lucien’s fairness. And he didn’t seem the type
to kneel before anyone. Even now, his head was thrown back in a
defiance that warred with his moans of pleasure.

Moisture pooled between Chloe’s thighs,
soaking the thin cotton of her bloomers. She watched the man’s
face, the mixture of pleasure and agony, as Lucien’s thrusts became
even more rapid.

“You love my cock, don’t you?” Lucien asked.
“You can’t be around me without wanting my cock up your ass.”

“Fuck you,” the dark man answered.

Lucien’s lover held onto one of the massive
posts at the end of the bed, his legs spread far apart and his
muscles taut. His thick prick stood at attention, almost to his
bellybutton, so hard it looked painful. It was wet with the
beginnings of his come, the tip swollen and ripe like a plum.
Lucien took hold of the man’s hips and each thrust made the bed
creak.

Chloe let the fresh linens she held fall to
the dusty floor. She’d have to rewash them in her off hours, but
she couldn’t help the sudden need that came over her. She hadn’t
felt a man’s touch in so long, and her fingers had been her only
satisfaction for the last year. She inched the dark gray skirt and
slip she wore up over her thighs until it was bunched at her waist.
Her fingers found their way to the soft folds of flesh, slicked
with desire, and she found the tiny nubbin hidden within.

“No,
mon noir
,” Lucien answered. “It
is I who is fucking you.”

My darkness
.

Chloe thought the endearment terribly
appropriate. She couldn’t take her eyes from the erotic picture
they made—both of them so strong, so muscular—one taking, the other
being taken. The sounds of their flesh slapping together, the scent
of their sex, the gentle touches and demands they gave as they
neared completion.

Chloe rubbed her swollen flesh, wishing she
could join them on the bed—to feel a hard cock penetrate her once
again. Her nipples were rigid and rubbed against the coarse fabric
of her dress. She breathed in shallow pants as a heaviness gathered
at her core. Her hand braced against the raw beams of the
passageway, and she ignored the splinters as she delved her fingers
into her neglected channel.

Lucien caressed a finger down the dark man’s
back, bringing a chill to his lover’s skin. Lucien then slid his
hand around, teasing his lover with his fingers as they barely
touched the tip of his rigid cock. The dark one’s rod jumped at the
touch, and Lucien laughed at his lover’s predicament. Lucien
finally decided to torment no more and grasped his lover’s rod in a
hard fist, pumping him with every thrust.

“Harder, harder,” Lucien’s lover panted
against the assault.

Chloe knew they were both close to
fulfillment, as was she. The moans grew desperate. The air lay
heavy with tension until Lucien gave a final thrust and plunged
into the dark man’s ass further than before. Chloe watched as a
white stream of come shot from the stranger’s prick, thick and
copious, and landed on the crimson sheets. Lucien stiffened and
screamed out his own pleasure. She couldn’t contain her own moan as
an orgasm hit her with the strength of a wave crashing on the
shore.

Chloe slumped against the wall, her breathing
heavy and her pulse racing. It had been too long since she’d come
like that. For the last year her climaxes had been a necessity, a
way to relieve the body of sexual desire the same way one might
relieve a headache by rubbing at the temples.

She let her dress fall back to her knees and
tried to straighten her appearance as best she could. She’d have to
go back to her rooms and wash and change clothes. Her panties were
soaked and her clothes were wrinkled and damp with sweat.

Chloe bent to pick up the linens that had
fallen to the floor and spared one last glance at the couple on the
bed. Lucien was hunched over his partner, his breathing beginning
to slow and the sweat on his back beginning to cool. But it was the
other man, once again, who caught her attention. He rested
comfortably on his elbows, his head up and his posture relaxed
despite the man who lay heavily on his back.

His dark gaze stared at the wall, as if he
could see through it. As if he could see her.

Chloe shivered and used the passageway to go
back to her room, assuring herself that the direction of the
stranger’s stare was only coincidence. But she knew it would be him
she saw in her dreams from now on. Not Lucien.

Chapter Two

Rain splattered against the window pane in
Chloe’s small bedroom and the sky loomed black when she woke the
next morning. The air looked bitter and cold, and the trees and
shrubs slanted to the ground with the force of the wind.

She frowned as she thought of a day cooped
inside the house. She always took her lunch out in the gardens and
walked to do her errands instead of relying on the trolleys. The
house was too cold, too sterile to be trapped within its walls all
day.

In her opinion,
Vieux Coeur
needed a
woman’s touch. Badly. Four generations of Deveraux men had lived in
the house. The ladies of the manor had never stayed long enough to
make their mark—they’d either died too young or escaped to find a
man who didn’t like to control things quite so much.

Thoughts of control reminded her of Lucien
fucking the dark man the day before, controlling him just as he
controlled his household and his businesses. Lucien was not a cruel
man, but he had certain expectations that came from being someone
of great importance. His potency never failed to draw her notice,
and being shut in the house with him on a rainy day was nothing
less than torture to her overly ripe libido.

She rose from the twisted covers on her bed,
thinking of the sleepless night she’d had and the orgasms she’d
brought herself to over and over again, just by replaying the scene
of the dark man’s seed spewing onto the crimson sheets.

Chloe dressed in clean bloomers, a slip, and
a chemise, and fastened her stockings to her garters. She pulled on
one of the three dresses she’d been given when she’d been
employed—a gray frock that fell to just above the knees, shapeless
and dowdy, and a white apron that tied around her waist.

A Cheval mirror stood in the corner of her
room and reflected a woman who was too thin, too pale and too sad.
Her features were arresting, presenting an intriguing package if
not a beautiful one. Her mouth was too wide, her eyes too large.
Her black hair was cut short in the latest style—the cook had a
handy way with a pair of scissors. Her blue eyes stared back at
her, washed out and tired, not at all like the vibrant cobalt
they’d been before her husband’s death. She was twenty-six years
old and she felt forty. When was the last time she’d laughed? Or
cried even? It was as if her emotions no longer existed.

They’d been rich. The Monroe’s had been to
South Carolina what the Deveraux’s were to Louisiana. She’d married
Samuel at seventeen, he almost thirty, and she’d been naïve in the
ways of a woman. But she’d been desperate to leave the small
farmhouse that housed her eleven brothers and sisters, so she’d
moved to the Monroe mansion at the top of the hill and become his
wife and hostess, throwing lavish parties and spending a fortune
redecorating the estate. His parent’s were dead and he had no
siblings, so it was just the two of them. She’d welcomed Samuel to
her bed and learned how to please him. How to please herself. She’d
shown no reservations in bed, becoming a student to the arts of
pleasure. And in return he’d treated her like a queen.

How the mighty had fallen. It was greed that
had killed her husband. When the Volstead Act of 1920 went into
effect, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol, Samuel saw
an opportunity to make money. He was nothing if not a good
businessman, and he already owned several distilleries, so he
continued production in secret and sold his barrels to the highest
bidder. And one of his buyers had been in New Orleans.

That day was like any other. Spring ripened
the air with sweetness and the plants and trees were lush and
thick. She and Samuel followed the truck that carried the banned
substances all the way from South Carolina, using the trip to make
love in every hotel they stopped in each night. And if there wasn’t
a hotel, they slept in the car. She remembered fucking Samuel to a
mind blowing orgasm in the back seat of their Ford, the car
bouncing as she rode him, his body almost glowing as the moonlight
washed over him through the windows. They’d driven into Louisiana
the next day. Right into a trap. She still didn’t know who his
buyer had been, who the traitor had been. Only Samuel had that
information, and he’d carried it to his grave.

His buyer had turned him over to federal
agents who had been waiting to ambush them. They’d shot Samuel in
cold blood and left her on the side of the road like garbage,
stealing the truck for themselves in the name of the law. When
she’d tried to find passage home she’d been told that other federal
agents had raided her home, taking what they could to sell and
burning the rest to the ground. She’d been left with nothing but
the clothes on her back and a dead body to dispose of. She hadn’t
even had the proper funds to bury her husband. A small church had
let her bury him at the edge of their cemetery with only a cheap
wooden marker to show that he’d ever existed at all.