Possess Me (4 page)

Rousseau pressed his finger against her clit, regaining her attention with a jolt of pleasure. “Who do you want,
cher
?”

“You. I want you, Rousseau.” She was out of her mind with the need to come. The air around her filled with groans and cries of carnal delight. Rousseau’s body felt like a furnace behind her, and she turned in his arms, rubbing her breasts against his chest, her nipples scraping the cool metal as she licked his neck. Salty. Delicious. Male. “Please, Rousseau. I want you.”

He jerked in her arms, jarring her with the strength of his reaction to her touch. He pulled back, his jaw tight, eyes nearly glowing with golden lust and restrained power. “Call me by my other name. Tell me you want Bone Daddy. Say it out loud, and I can fulfill your every desire. Do it now.”

“I see you, spirit. Back off.”

Allegra heard Michelle’s voice, but the words didn’t make any sense. She said something else in Creole and a wave of dizziness washed over Allegra. A crash of the cymbals, the music and overloud buzz of the crowd resumed.

She looked around the room. The young male couple was still dancing awkwardly on the floor, smiling proudly at each other. The men and woman in business suits at the table were still deep in discussion, no sign of what they’d been up to only moments before. Had she just imagined the whole thing?

She looked up at Rousseau’s pained expression. “What was that? What happened?”

He opened his eyes. Hazel. Full of regret. “I’m sorry, Allegra. I didn’t mean to offe—”

Michelle was suddenly beside them on the dance floor. “We need to go now. I brought your purse and cane. Come on, Allegra. Trust me, it’s time to go.”

Where was Ben? Hadn’t she just been with Ben? Allegra was still confused when Michelle took her hand, nearly dragging her away from a solemn Rousseau, standing silent in the mass of writhing bodies. Not doing anything to stop her from leaving.

It wasn’t until they’d left the club that she stumbled, sharp needlelike stabs of pain shooting from her knee up to her left hip. She stopped on the corner, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her cane hard. “Chelle, my knee. It didn’t hurt when I was dancing with Rousseau. I didn’t even realize . . . How could that be?”

She’d lived with the pain for so long, it was hard to imagine she wouldn’t have noticed it was gone, even for a moment.

Michelle looked over her shoulder, watching the door to the club, as though worried they would be followed. “I told you, Allegra. That man is trouble.”

Allegra limped behind her, mind racing. She would suspect Rousseau of slipping something in her drink but she hadn’t had one. Maybe he was a hypnotist. That might explain the illusory orgy she’d just witnessed. Participated in. Explain why his eyes had seemed to glow with an unearthly light.

Whatever the reason, she had to know. Her desire to have a mad affair with the café owner hadn’t changed, but now her curiosity was as strong as her need. “Define
trouble
.”

“More like Whoopi Goldberg in
Ghost
possessed. Sort of. Look, voodoo is my family’s religion, not mine. It’s hard to explain.” Michelle had her feet propped on the desk by the window, blocking the view of Rousseau’s apartment and twirling a letter opener in her hand.

Allegra sat on the fat, soft sofa bed in the living room, a book open in her lap, unable to keep her lips from twitching at her friend’s announcement. “You
really
don’t like him, do you? Only you could come up with something this creative. It’s those paintings you’ve been doing lately. All those ghosts and graveyards and demons. Maybe the paint fumes have gone to your head.”

Michelle made a face. “Laugh it up, but I’m serious. Mama gave me that book when I . . . a while back. She knows about Rousseau’s case. He even came to her once, but she says she’s not the one who can help him.”

Michelle’s mother was Mambo Toussaint, a voodoo priestess who ran a small shop on Royal Street, selling charms and special oils, giving the occasional reading. She was the genuine article, a fascinating and loving woman. She’d given Allegra an oil to put in her bath that worked better than all the strange liniments her therapists had tried on her knee.

But possessed? They thought Rousseau was hosting a spirit called a—she looked down at the book—a Loa? “Rousseau believes it, too? So the nickname Bone Daddy is actually . . . ?”

“The name of the Loa, yes.”

“A
sex
Loa.”

Michelle shifted, getting up from the chair and picking up her workout bag. “I know it sounds crazy. There isn’t a day that goes by that I wish I didn’t know any of this existed. But it does.” She took a step toward the door. “I have a kickboxing lesson to get to. Just read the book. Mama put notes in the margins.”

“Michelle?” Allegra tilted her head to study her roommate. “Are you okay? I mean other than being stressed at my recent crush.”

“I’m fine, Allegra. Just busy. Thanks. Read that book, especially chapter eleven.” She walked out the door, and Allegra fell back onto the pillows with a sigh.

Her friend was lying. Allegra wasn’t so caught up in her own turmoil that she couldn’t see Michelle had changed lately. Distracted, edgy, keeping herself so busy she never had time to breathe, let alone relax.

She understood Michelle’s dedication to her job. Her work for New Schools for New Orleans, and her help rebuilding the charter program’s art department, had been amazing.

When Allegra had first known Michelle, she’d just been getting a degree to escape from a town full of interfering family and bead-craving tourists while she worked on creating the perfect masterpiece. Now she was a leader in the education community. Allegra couldn’t be prouder of all she’d accomplished. But it didn’t seem to satisfy her. Chelle had to keep moving.

All those defense classes. Kickboxing. Karate. She’d even been learning capoeira, a Brazilian form of martial arts that looked like dancing. She envied Michelle’s energy, but though they lived in the same two-room apartment, she barely saw her.

And what she did see concerned her. Allegra turned her head to the wall lined with Michelle’s canvases. The nearest and most recent was disturbing. Three men, their features distorted and grotesque, their faces covered in blood. All three had ghostly figures behind them, figures whose arms thrust inside the men’s bodies, as if guiding them toward the screaming woman curled up against the alley wall in front of them.

It was a dark piece. A scary piece. Especially since the woman looked an awful lot like Michelle herself.

Allegra picked the book up and rolled onto her right side, propping a pillow beneath her arm so she could read. It was a well-loved book, the cover lined with ragged threads. It was so old and worn smooth she could barely make out the title, but inside was everything she could ever want to know about voodoo.

An idea for a lifestyle article came into her mind, and she pushed it aside. She couldn’t think about her old job now, her old life. She was too distracted by the present.

She flipped the yellowing pages until she found the right chapter, and read. The researcher in her was fascinated, lost in all the information.

Voodoo was an unusual mix of Catholicism and tribal ancestor worship. Loas were like saints or angels, intermediaries with the divine. But they all seemed to have their own unique personalities, and some less-than-angelic cravings and desires.

During rituals, the priests and priestesses of the religion, the houngans and mambos, were “ridden” by a Loa, possessed for a short time, giving body to the spirit and allowing them to revel in the joys of the flesh. Food. Drink. Sex. In return the Loa would heal, advise, and carry prayers with them when they returned to the other world.

Allegra sat up, wincing at the pain that ran like a current down her leg. How did this connect with Rousseau? She turned another page and saw writing in the margin beside a long list of Loa names and descriptions. “Bone Daddy. First arrived at peristyle, the ritual space, in the eighteen hundreds. Associated with sexual satisfaction, desire. Unknown origin, unknown family. Mischievous and magnetic.”

Bone Daddy. There it was. That name. But no matter how interesting the topic, she knew she had just as hard a time believing in voodoo spirits as she did in vampires and aliens.

She’d been all over the planet, learned about so many different kinds of rituals and cultures, even different forms of voodoo in other parts of the world. She respected the beliefs of others, but that didn’t mean she shared them. Allegra believed in what she could see. What she could prove.

She was back to square one. How did she explain Rousseau’s behavior? Ben had convinced her she would have to be the aggressor. That she would have to tell Rousseau that she wanted him. But he’d turned the tables on her. He’d been the aggressor. More than that. He’d mastered her. Owned her. Surprised her with his overt sexuality.

Or had he? How much of that dance was real, and how much had been in her mind? She’d be the first to admit she had an overactive imagination, but it wasn’t
that
good.

Her nipples scraped against her tank top as she remembered what she’d seen. Last night had revealed an aspect of herself she hadn’t been aware of. She loved to watch.

Real or not, that peek into the inner fantasies of others had been
her
fantasy. And he’d given it to her. Or . . . she imagined that he had.

Her fingers reached up to graze her sensitive breasts, the way his had. It had felt so real. His lips teasing hers, his hand between her thighs. Unfortunately her hallucination, or whatever it was, had ended before she’d had the orgasm she’d been right on the edge of.

The air in the apartment grew warm and she pulled off her shirt, both hands reaching for her small breasts, desperate to ease the ache.

She closed her eyes, and an image of Rousseau immediately appeared behind her lids. He was smiling, watching her. She wanted him to watch. Wanted to show him what she needed. She tugged hard on her nipples, biting her lip at the sharp sensation.

One hand slid inside her shorts, beneath her panties. The pink ones. He’d mentioned loving them on her. Had he seen her through the window? Had he watched her, touching himself?

She let her fantasy Rousseau nod. Yes. Yes, he’d been looking. Yes, he’d stroked that thick, beautiful erection at the sight of her.

“Oh God.”

Was this magic—the way the mere thought of him made her feel? She wasn’t this woman. This over-sexed, crazy stalker. She hadn’t acted normally since she’d met Rousseau. Maybe he’d put her under some sort of a spell.

Her fingers slid through her arousal, her right leg bending so she could thrust deep, fucking herself, imagining it was him.

Two fingers, three, but she knew he was bigger. She’d felt him against her. She’d have a hard time taking him, it would be so tight, so full.

Four fingers. He’d stretch her wide, not stopping until every long, hard inch of him was inside.

She’d have to take it, take him. He’d torture her with slow, dragging glides, refusing her pleas to hurry.

Her body would cling to his, muscles tightening around him until he lost his control. He’d take her nipples between his teeth, tugging as he groaned against her flesh, his hips pumping her across the bed with the power of his need.

His eyes lit with an eerie golden glow behind her closed lids as she came.

 

 

Monday was the only day Café Bwe was closed. It had been that way since his coffee shop had first opened.

She was hell on his schedule.

Rousseau walked down the dirty side streets that led to his mother’s apartment complex, thinking about Allegra Jarrod’s fantasies. She’d surprised him. He hadn’t had any idea she was that passionate, that open-minded.

“No, you didn’t. Not until you touched her mind.” If he had, Rousseau wouldn’t have been able to keep the Loa at bay for so long.

“We have to do this first.” Bone Daddy grew quiet, understanding Rousseau’s family obligations. He should. He was one of them.

Guilt swamped him. He was using his mother as a convenient excuse to get away from temptation. She’d asked him to stop by for weeks but he’d told her he was busy, even when it wasn’t true.

He knew his reputation was as bad as his father’s had been, that she’d heard the rumors about his sexual exploits. New Orleans, for all the tourists, was in many ways a tight-knit community. And he had no wish to bring his mother more shame, though she never asked him about what he did. Never acted as though she was anything but proud of her son.