Love in the Cards Page 5

  “Jake. Sorry, not so good with the social stuff.”

  She laughs. “Thank goodness for icebreaker games then. What card do you have?” She holds hers up so I can see it. Three of Cups.

  “Sorry. Two of Wands.” I shrug apologetically.

  “Oh well!” She grins back at me. “Kinda funny though, a gay guy getting the Two of Wands.” She giggles at the innuendo.

  “You either have the best gaydar on the planet or I know you from somewhere.”

  “Nah, I saw the bartender fail to close, but it didn’t look like it was because he was a dude. I’m a people-watcher.”

  “So, do you know anything about these?” I hold up the card. I don’t buy into all that fortune-telling business. After six years in New Orleans, I’ve seen some strange shit, but none of it made a believer out of me.

  “A little. I mean, this is New Orleans, who hasn’t seen a tarot deck? Three of Cups is about family, being in tune with the people around you. Your card is a little more interesting. It’s about choice. Courage. Two paths before you, and once you go down one, the other is closed forever.”

  “Cool.” I smile. “Well, guess I should…” I wave the hand with the card around.

  “Yeah. Have fun.” A flash of the fey smile and she disappears into the crowd.

  I wander through the house, trying to push aside my ennui and get into the game, but I can’t quite get my head into the right space for this. I didn’t even want to come to the party, I just couldn’t stand the idea of turning Pierre down. Coming to a party like this by himself, he could be hurt, or taken advantage of, or…or he could go home with someone else.

  I need to get out of here.

  I set my long-empty glass on the nearest horizontal surface and head for the door. If I could just clear my head. I don’t want to leave Pierre alone at the party, but suddenly the house feels oppressive and the music is too loud and the shrill laughter of a woman in the next room is piercing.

  Outside, the air—or my mind—is a little clearer. I wrap my feathered wings around me like a jacket and head across the street for the cemetery to walk off some of my angst. Something seems fitting about walking between the crypts when you’re in a shitty mood on Halloween.

  It’s a clear night, if a little cold, and moonlight silhouettes a figure sitting on a bench outside a huge crypt. I would recognize that shape anywhere, even without the leather epaulettes. I trudge over.

  “Hey.”

  Pierre looks up and smiles weakly.

  “Don’t you look like an avenging angel?” He gestures at the seat next to him, and I sit.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t, Jake. It’s my fault. I know you don’t like parties. Our history with Halloween is shit, and it was super selfish of me to impose on our friendship by inviting you to come with me.”

  “If it’s a real friendship, your company is not an imposition. I shouldn’t treat you like it is. The thing is, Pierre—”

  Oh God. I’m really about to end a decade-long friendship. I swallow hard. Courage.

  “Don’t say it.” His eyes glitter in the moonlight. “I don’t think I can handle hearing you hate me. I know the only reason you’re friends with me today is because we were friends yesterday. I don’t want to hear we wouldn’t be friends if you met me tomorrow.”

  God, he doesn’t even get it. I shake my head.

  “We wouldn’t be friends if I met you tomorrow, Pierre, but not because your friendship isn’t important to me. Your friendship is the most precious thing. But we wouldn’t be friends if I met you tomorrow, because I’d be trying my damndest to make you my lover.”

  His little gasp sounds loud against the thud of my heartbeat in my ears, but he doesn’t say anything. He just stares at me, his lips open in shock.

  Slowly, slowly…so fucking slowly I could cry, he reaches up and traces the planes of my face with soft fingers. This isn’t the touch of a friend. For the first time ever, Pierre LaVoie is touching me as a lover.

  “I thought I wasn’t your type,” he whispers.

  “You’re exactly my type.” I catch the side of his thumb with my teeth, then draw it into my mouth with a hard suck.

  His eyes flutter closed, and I’m struck by how perfectly fucking gorgeous he is. I let go of his thumb. He surges into my lap just as I reach for him.

  Our first kiss isn’t tentative or quiet or even playful.

  It’s reckless and hot and explosive. He thrusts against my hip, grinding his cock into me and biting my lip.

  God, the things I want.

  I grab his legs and pull them apart around mine so he’s straddling me, and then I place a palm on his bare chest and push him back enough to look in his eyes. Ellen’s words come back to me in a rush. Choice. Courage.

  “We do this, we can’t go back. We go down this road, the other is closed to us,” I warn.

  He nods, his face serious. “I don’t want to go back.”

  I kiss him again, drawing him out, making him mine. I run my hands down his back and palm his ass, kneading it hard until a shudder runs through him and into me. His hands seem to flutter around me as if he can’t decide what he wants to touch first. So when they land on my chest and rub hard across my nipples, it’s a shock. A delicious, achy shock that lights me up from inside out. It runs down my body and sparks at the base of my cock.

  Pierre grinds against me and rubs my chest again. It’s a hard touch, a claiming touch. It’s not something I’d have expected from him, but it feels good. How many times had I fantasized about him over the years? How many times had I wanted him to touch me just like this?

  I thrust up against him, knowing the base of my cock is pushing up behind his balls and knowing exactly what it will feel like to him—the pressure, the little ache which isn’t quite pain and isn’t quite pleasure, but somehow desperately wants to be both. He shudders again and tears his mouth away from mine to suck in a deep breath. His eyes are closed and his chest heaves. I can’t remember ever wanting another person like this.

  “If you have something against public sex, we need to get a cab right now.” His voice shakes, but his eyes open and the lust I see there hits me straight in the gut.

  I can’t answer him, and fuck if I’m going to stop what we’re doing to call a cab. I unzip his jeans and pull his cock out. It’s beautiful. It’s darker than the rest of him, intact, the glans peeking out of the foreskin. The very appearance of it makes me greedy. I want to taste him.

  “Up,” I murmur, using my hands to urge him higher. He moves over me, bracing his palms on the back of the bench. I wrap my fist around his cock and push the foreskin back to expose him. I run my tongue around the sensitive head, teasing at the frenulum and drawing a whine out of him.

  I open my mouth and take him inside, sucking with a slow, steady rhythm as he rocks forward into my mouth. I love the weight of him on my tongue, the salty-bitter taste of his skin and pre-come. He moves one of his hands from the back of the bench to cup my face and strokes his thumb along my jawline, urging me to open farther. I take him as deep as I can, letting him take my breath for just a moment before he draws back. I pull off him, still working my hand over his shaft, pulling the foreskin over the head and then pushing it back.

  I’m rewarded by a hot, throaty noise and a visible shiver down his spine. It’s a gift, seeing him like this, knowing I’m making him this hard, this aroused. I put that tremble in the hand that grips my hair and guides me back to his cock. When I suck him deep again, I’m the one who makes him shake and groan.

  “Oh, God, Jake, cher…” His hips snap forward more aggressively, and I want to make him come. I want to see his face. I tilt my head so I can look up along his body as he thrusts into my mouth again, and the sight of him is perfection.

  His skin, so much darker than my own, shines under the moonlight. His nipples are drawn up hard. Leather epaulettes add a strength to his shoulders, and the cloak made of feathers and tulle flows back from his shoulders like a mantle
.

  But his face, his face is magic. His head thrown back, his features contorted in the grimace of lust, he looks like a gladiator claiming victory as he shouts out his climax with another vicious thrust. Tears spring to my eyes as his semen spurts onto my tongue. My Pierre, my best friend, is coming in my mouth, and I’m the one who made this happen. He might look victorious, but this is my celebratory moment.

  When he draws back with another shudder and sinks back onto my lap, I claim his mouth in a salty kiss. I run my thumbs along his cheekbones, wiping away tears. I shush against his lips.

  “Why tears, Pierre?”

  “Mais… oh fuck, Jake. I’ve wanted this for so long.” He’s boneless in my arms, a warm, solid weight, and I want to protect him from the whole world.

  “Me too.”

  He kisses me again, and I can’t help but thrust up a little. I can’t fuck him now, not so soon after he’s had an orgasm, but God, I want him.

  “I got you.” He reaches between us, cupping me hard. It’s my turn to whimper as I thrust into his hand. I close my eyes, enjoying his possessive touch. I feel his weight moving off me, and I open my eyes to watch him sinking to his knees. I scoot forward to the edge of the bench as he opens my jeans, then shoves them and my briefs down. The bench is cold on my ass, but his lips and hands are warm as he takes me into the haven of his mouth.

  “God, yes.”

  He pulls off as quickly as he took me in. “Go ahead and just let go. I don’t mind if you get rough, but don’t pull my hair.”

  That’s all he says before he starts sucking hard. My hips roll up and my eyes drift closed. I take him at his word and fall into a lusty, rutting rhythm as he takes me completely apart with his lips and tongue.

  He slides one of his hands under my legs to tickle and tease and push at my taint. I lose all thought beyond seizing the orgasm looming right fucking there for me to take. He groans around my cock, and that’s the moment I lose it. Pleasure rolls over me in a great huge tsunami of a wave. I feel him swallowing, and I can’t help but thrust a little harder, wrenching a grunt from him and another spurt from my cock.

  He pulls off me slowly. Now it’s his turn to pull me into a rough celebratory kiss, his turn to feed my own taste back onto my tongue, and even though that’s never been my kink, I love the taste of both of us mingled together.

  “We just had sex in a cemetery, cher.” He buries his face in my neck and giggles.

  “We just made love in a cemetery,” I correct.

  “Made love.” He agrees. “I do love you, Jake. I’ve loved you for a long time. I was scared to do anything about it.”

  His eyes are serious and sad as he pulls away from me. Is he mourning the friendship we’ve forsaken tonight, or is he mourning the time it took us to figure out we loved each other?

  We straighten our clothing and zip up. As we stand on shaking legs, I take his hand and kiss the back of it, offering him my reassurance. “I love you, too, Pierre. Love you so much.”

  This time our kiss is sweet, unhurried. He rubs my chest again, not in possession, but in exploration. As I slide my tongue into his mouth, I frame his face with my hands and skate my thumbs along his cheekbones.

  I pull away. “Can we go home? I don’t want to go back to the party.”

  “Your house? My roommates are home.”

  “Yeah.” My house. Maybe he’d consider moving in and then it could be our house. I’ll talk to him about it in the morning over coffee.

  “Hey, Pierre?”

  “Cher?”

  “Your invitation … what card is on it?” I don’t know why I’m curious, but for some reason, I just want to know.

  He pulls it out of his pocket. “Two of Wands. Stupid party game.”

  I take his card from him and pull my own out. Sure enough, they’re the same card, cut in half. I feel all warm and happy, like the afterglow of our lovemaking has been given some sort of blessing. “I’m going to take these home, tape them together, and frame this fucker.”

  “A souvenir from your hoodoo Halloween hookup?” he teases.

  “A souvenir from the first time you said you love me.”

  “It won’t be the last,” he promises.

  “Prove it.”

  “Jake Forrester, I love you.” The declaration isn’t any less poignant for having been demanded.

  “I love you, too, Pierre.”

  About the Author

  Vanessa North was born in New England but moved to the South as a teenager, where she learned to appreciate biscuits and gravy, bluegrass, and that most welcome of greetings: “Hey y’all!” She has a degree in Mass Communication but has long since abandoned journalism in favor of writing romance. Instead of telling the news, V would rather tell stories.

  Vanessa has a voracious appetite for books and loves all kinds. She writes obsessively: every day brings new ideas and stories to tell. When she’s not buried in a book—hers or someone else’s—you can find her taking thousands of photographs of the people she loves.

  She lives in Northwest Georgia with her handsome husband, not-quite-civilized twin boy-children, and a very, very large dog.

  V loves to hear from readers!

  Email: vanessa@vanessanorth.com

  Website: http://www.vanessanorth.com

  Blog: http://vanessanorthwrites.wordpress.com

  Facebook: http://facebook.com/authorvanessanorth

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/VanessaNWrites

  GoodReads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6436063.Vanessa_North

  Other Titles Available by Vanessa North

  Now Available:

  Two in Winter

  Fight or Flight

  Jackson’s Law

  Hostile Beauty

  The Ushers

  Amazon

  United

  Cracked

  The Wiccan Haus

  Shifter’s Dance

  Shifter’s Song

  Coming Soon:

  The Dark Collector

  Two of Cups

  Parker Kincade

  Dedication

  To the ladies of Love, Lust and Laptops. Thank you for your friendship—it’s nice to have company in the madness!

  To our readers. You are the reason we do these anthologies, and we hope you enjoy them.

  Mason hated the desert.

  Other than being hot as the devil’s ass crack, he swore he’d never be rid of the sand that had worked its way into his skin. From the tiny grains that snuck into his boots each day to the dusting he swallowed off his coated lips each time he’d managed to stop long enough to eat. Hell, cut him and he’d probably bleed the shit.

  One thing was for sure―he’d never long for a vacation on the beach again.

  Under the cover of darkness, Mason dug in his heels and pushed himself up and over the jutted rock formation. He rolled to his belly and snaked around until he could see the roof of the compound below.

  It had all come down to this.

  He’d given up his life, his future, the woman he loved beyond measure—all because of the evil fuck bedded down in the building below.

  Omar Travinskov was the scum of the earth as far as Mason was concerned. He traded in drugs, women, and children, and used all three at his leisure. Each time Mason, and the team of special operatives he’d been assigned to, had caught up to Omar, the bastard would slip through their fingers. Over and over.

  For eight fucking years.

  Slippery motherfucker had connections all over the world. Men and women who were either too stupid to care, or too scared to say no. The fact that Omar had run here, to the middle of the Afghan desert, had caused Mason’s bosses some concern. With the financial backing Omar could provide, he could prove to be real trouble in this part of the world.

  Omar had probably believed the war in this area would render him invisible, thought no one would bother with him here. He was about to get a rude awakening.

  Literally.

  Mason felt no guilt fo
r what his team was about to do—what he was about to do―because it was his job to get the ball rolling, so to speak. The only life Omar valued was his own, and Mason was more than willing to rid him of that miserable asset.

  “Yo, Steele. You taking a nap over there, bro? We go in five.”

  The voice in Mason’s comm link tickled his ear. He raised his middle finger into the air, knowing he’d be seen through the scope Jace, the team’s spotter, used. “Bite me, slick. We could go in two and I’d be ready.”

  Mason was an expert in explosives. Setting the charges had been the easy part. The hard part would be holding his position while the others went in. He wanted to be down there, protecting the backs of the men who’d become his brothers, but his job was no less important than theirs. He’d placed several of the small, lightweight demolition devices he’d developed over the last eight years. Timing was everything with these little babies, and he had to be the one to detonate.

  “Let’s finish this, boys,” came the voice of their team leader, followed by a round of various whispers of affirmation. The sense of closure in the air was palpable. They all knew this was it. They had him. Dead or alive, Omar was theirs tonight.

  Then they were going home.

  Mason was more than ready to see if he could salvage the life he’d left behind.

  My beautiful Kenna.

  Eight long years.

  His lip twitched as he pulled a device from his pocket; he caressed the warm, plastic cover with affection. This little baby would be his salvation, in more ways than one.

  “Let’s do this.”

  “Miss Blackwell?”

  Mac paused from dipping amaretto-soaked cherries in white chocolate and glanced over her shoulder. “Yes?”

  “Delivery.” The young man indicated a garment bag draped over his arm and large envelope in his hands.

  She shook her head. “I think you have the wrong—”

  “Makenna Blackwell? Owner of Private Nights Catering?”

  She nodded slowly. “That’s me.”