Phantom of the French Quarter

MARCUS SAW SHE WAS STILL TREMBLING as he sat beside her on the bed and pulled her into his arms, unable to resist the tidal force of the impulse washing over him. Because against all odds, Caitlyn seemed to see him, the man behind the fugitive. She sighed against him, her body relaxing into his embrace.

It was more than anyone had done in years, and though he’d meant only to comfort her in her obvious distress, the result unleashed a passion that had him tipping back her head and slanting his mouth over hers. The shock of contact, the warm, full wetness of her mouth beneath his, sent raw desire spearing through him.

Yet he pulled back when she froze like a fawn. Pulled back to whisper, “You never need to fear me. To fear this, Caitlyn. Never…”

Half expecting her to scream or slap him, he waited, his breath held with the worry that four years punctuated only by the most fleeting and unsatisfying liaisons had cost him the ability to read a decent woman’s cues. Had the connection he felt been a mirage formed out of loneliness and need?

Heat bloomed in her green eyes an instant before she closed them, leaning forward a bare fraction of an inch—but just enough.

In the gritty gloom of that small, cramped space, their kiss became all the world’s light, focused to form one perfect, concentrated beam. A beam too bright to look at, too hot to bear for long.

Overwhelmed, he pulled his mouth from hers, only to dip his head to slide softer kisses along her neck, behind her ear, as, reverently, his hand skimmed along her ribs and waist, then found the sweet flare of her hip.

Her breaths were coming faster, as hard and quick as his own. Her soft fingertips feathered light caresses at his jawline.

With their bond a starved man’s sustenance, Marcus could have feasted all night, feeding at the subtle notch beneath her pulsing throat, the willing heat of her mouth. But his impatient body had its own imperative, and before he knew what he was doing, he was untying and loosening the bodice of her peasant blouse.

Caitlyn pushed his hand away and sucked in a startled lungful of air. Jerking back, she fixed wide eyes on him, with passion, confusion and regret all playing staccato-swift through her expression.

“No.” She slipped around him to clamber out of the bed. “No, I can’t. This isn’t me, for one thing. And Reuben’s waiting, worried. I have to go. I have to.”

With each word, she backed farther out of his reach.

“Caitlyn, it’s all right,” he said, though his body grieved her loss already. “There’s no need to be upset.”

Beyond listening, she turned from him, scrambling to unfasten the door’s cheap chain and deadbolt.

“Don’t go,” he said. “I’ll call a cab, like you told Reuben, and then I’ll see you to it. You have a head injury, and this neighborhood’s not safe for—”

But it was too late. Door swinging wide, Caitlyn blazed straight through it, not hesitating for an instant before she raced out into the sultry Crescent City night.

Chapter Five

Caitlyn slipped around a corner and ducked behind a trashcan, her heart a snare-quick drumbeat in her chest. She strained her ears to hear past the muted thump of a bass from somewhere nearby, her breath held until she heard footsteps pounding past. Marcus’s footsteps, she was certain, even before she heard him calling her name. He sounded frantic, as worried as Reuben had been on the phone.

“What am I doing?” Her whisper echoed in an alley that reeked of garbage and a pungent smell she didn’t dare risk considering too closely.

Though the rain had finally stopped, recriminations bounced back at her off wet brick and concrete: Reuben’s and the detectives’ warnings about Marcus, along with Jacinth’s scolding that she was too quick to think the best of all those she encountered.

In every other way, you’re brighter than anybody I know. In Caitlyn’s memory, her sister’s dark eyes gleamed with worry as she spoke. But you’re going to end up hurt if you keep dragging home strays and feeding strangers.

Caitlyn sighed, realizing they’d all been right. She’d been dangerously naive, and kissing Marcus, a man who’d carried her beyond the help of Reuben and the police, proved it.

It proved, too, that she had gotten over her boyfriend in Ohio, who’d waited only three days after her move before texting that he guessed he wasn’t cut out for long separations. Apparently he’d never been cut out for monogamy, either, according to her friends.

As devastated as she’d been, when she tried to picture Tony’s face now, all she could see was Marcus, looking at her the way a lion looks at a gazelle. At the thought, her stomach quivered, though less with the fear she should be feeling than with the longing to call him back and offer herself up for his dinner.

Scowling at her own foolishness, she shook it off and moved on. As she crept back toward the streetlight, her head ached and her nausea reawakened.

A door swung open just ahead of her, blocking her escape from the alley. Loud music and cigarette smoke poured out of what she supposed must be a bar. An instant later, three men followed, each one bigger and louder than the last. With nothing taller than a small forest of discarded beer bottles for cover, she pressed her back against the wall and trusted to the shadows, her instincts warning her that she mustn’t make a sound.

“Come on, how ’bout a taste here?” a jumpy outline wheedled. “Hook me up, bro—c’mon.”

“Screw that,” said a hulking figure. “You show the green and we’ll deal.”

“Ain’t jerkin’ us around, are you?” a third voice demanded. “’Cause if you’re wastin’ our time…”

A palpable threat hung in the air, and Caitlyn winced at the realization that she’d stumbled onto a drug deal. Icy terror twisting in her belly, she waited, holding her breath and praying they would finish their transaction quickly and ooze back inside. Oblivious as they were, it might have happened that way. And probably would have, had the edge of her skirt not caught a standing longneck and tipped the bottle over.

In the narrow space, the clatter of glass echoed loudly.

Caitlyn turned and raced toward the alley’s opposite—and mercifully open—entrance.

Almost immediately, footsteps followed, accompanied by a man yelling, “Hey, sweetie! Come to Papa!” and a roar of coarse laughter.

And then more footsteps, hard on her heels, closing in with every step.

SWEAT WAS STREAMING down Marcus’s face by the time he heard raised voices and men’s shouts of excitement.

Tell me it’s not Caitlyn. But he didn’t allow the wish to slow him as he rushed toward the disturbance.

He was quick to realize he wasn’t the only one hurrying to find out what was happening. In this seamy collection of strip clubs, last-call dives and liquor, lottery and po’boy sandwich shops with bars on every window, young men, transvestites and a few hard-looking women tended to mill around at midnight, many of them up for anything to ease their squalid boredom.

Especially the kind of “anything” involving a fresh-faced, beautiful young woman who clearly didn’t belong.

By the lurid glow of a neon sign alternately flashing the messages Girls, Hell Yes! and Clothes, Hell No! he spotted at least a dozen lowlifes stumbling in the same direction. Not caring who he pissed off, Marcus pushed his way through oily clumps of humanity, parting them with such speed that only a handful of curses and one fist caught him—a glancing blow he barely felt.

His thrumming heart in his throat, he finally spotted Caitlyn as she threw open the door of an older silver car and called to the driver, “Oh, thank God it’s you.”

Marcus wanted to shout to her but didn’t, deciding she was safer with a friend—even her damned pit bull—than she could ever be with him. The door closed and the car zoomed off, leaving him standing there alone, staring after her.

At least for the few seconds before the drunken bikers he’d shoved caught up.