Then he felt Josie shift slightly, lifting back up to her elbows. And that sweet mouth of hers was on him again.
He grasped her bottom and nudged her downward until she gripped his ankles and her swollen flesh was above his stiffening length. He reached for his slacks that were strewn across the bedside table and fished a condom out of his back pocket. Then he was parting the rounded globes of her perfect backside and thrusting upward, entering her in one, long, slick stroke to the hilt.
Josie let loose a moan that made his hard-on double in size. He thrust again, watching the latex glisten with her juices as his erection disappeared inside her, then reappeared again. He placed his thumbs on either side of her engorged labia, coaxing a deeper meeting as he thrust upward again. To his amazement, she found her own pleasure in her awkward position by grinding against him. The friction caused by her pubis against his balls made him grit his teeth to keep from coming again.
Slowly, she sat up so that she was straddling him reverse-cowgirl style. He stroked the long, graceful line of her back, then the swell of her bottom as she braced herself against his thighs and lifted herself off him, then dropped back down again. Then again.
He grasped her hips. “I want to watch you,” he whispered harshly. “Turn around.”
She did as asked, reaching down between them to reposition the tip of his arousal against her portal. Their gazes met as she slid down over him, inch by torturous inch, until he filled her to the hilt. She stretched out her long neck and moaned soulfully, rivaling the sound of the trumpet outside. Drew cupped her breasts as she moved, marveling in the way they filled his hands, the way they trembled with her movements. Then he splayed his hands against her slender hips, at first just letting them rest there as he watched her move against him, then guiding her movements, holding her still as he thrust hard up inside of her.
This enchantress was the most fascinating sight he’d ever seen. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at him from under the fringe of her dark lashes. Up and down…up and down.
Yes, he thought, the word echoing in his mind. Dear God, yes.
This time when he came, he took her with him.
11
JOSIE FELT BLISSFULLY TIRED. After slipping from Drew’s bed somewhere around dawn and going upstairs to her private rooms to take a shower, she went to the kitchen to put on some much needed coffee. She didn’t see the need for an exercise routine because she got enough physical activity from taking care of the hotel. But her thighs and butt and even some aches in the backs of her arms were letting her know that perhaps she should look into at least doing some stretching.
Today was Monique’s scheduled day off, and since Josie didn’t know if Philippe would be feeling well enough to come in, she figured she’d better see to cleaning room 2B before officially opening the doors for the day. All the materials she’d need were in a supply closet on the second floor, so she climbed the back stairs from the kitchen, collected fresh linens and the bucket of cleaning supplies, and used her master key to open the door after a brief knock she knew wouldn’t yield any results. Frederique never stayed the full night.
Josie pocketed the key and used her back to open the door. Normally, at night she would hear every creak and moan coming from this room, mostly because she was two floors upstairs in her room alone with nothing else to do. But last night, she and Drew had given Frederique and her guest a run for their money, at one point earning a quiet knock.
“Hey, keep it down over there. A body’s trying to work,” Frederique had said.
Josie turned to let the door close behind herself and took in the condition of the room. Only her gaze never made it beyond the bed. Because Frederique was draped over the end, face up, her throat cleanly slit from ear to ear. Just as Claire Laraway had been two weeks ago.
Josie dropped the linens and the cleaning bucket and smacked a rubber-gloved hand to her mouth, a sob welling up from the tips of her toes.
It looked like Frederique wasn’t going to have to worry about working ever again.
DREW HAD BEEN DREAMING about Josie rubbing her breasts along the length of his rock-hard erection when a racket made him jackknife upright in bed. His gaze immediately swept the room. Josie was gone. For a reason he couldn’t explain, he felt like something was wrong. He stripped back the sheet, put on his slacks, then pulled open the door to his room just in time to see Josie backing out of the room next to his, her dark eyes wide and damp, her mouth covered with a yellow-gloved hand.
“Josie?”
She jumped when he gently grasped her arms.
“Jesus, Josie, what’s wrong?”
He maneuvered her to get a look inside the room and that’s when he saw exactly what was wrong.
He kicked the door so that it slammed against the wall and then bounced shut.
“Come on.”
Still barefoot and shirtless, he led a shell-shocked Josie down the stairs to the lobby. She seemed to regain her wits, taking the phone he’d picked up and dialing 911.
“Detective Chevalier, please.” A heartbeat of a pause. “Find him…now.”
JOSIE COULDN’T BELIEVE it had happened again. But this time to someone she’d known.
Sitting at a wrought-iron table in the courtyard, she couldn’t seem to stop shivering, despite the heat, aware that Drew stood nearby in the lobby in case she should need him, while Detective Chevalier loudly sipped coffee across from her. Police forensics teams were in and out of the place, trampling up the stairs and gathering evidence while she outlined the morning’s events to Chevalier.
“This guest,” he said, reviewing his notes. He looked even more rumpled than usual, his eyes bloodshot, his hair in need of a comb. Probably the department had woken him from a dead sleep-or a drunken stupor, by the looks of him. “Can you describe him?”
Josie shrugged, her own fingers wrapped so tightly around a cup of coffee she absently wondered if she’d ever be able to pry them free. “I told you, just like any other john.”
He stared at her.
“Look, Detective-”
“Alan, please.” He smiled at her. “I think we’ve known each other long enough now to move on to first names.”
Josie didn’t want to think of the reasons this man was in her life. Not when she couldn’t seem to get the expression of horror on Frederique’s face from her mind. “He looked like every other insurance salesman in town for a convention. Short. Paunchy. Balding. Glasses. With a couple of crisp, hundred-dollar bills to keep him happy.”
“What’s going on here?”
Josie looked up to find Philippe standing in the doorway to the courtyard.
“All right, Miss Villefranche. I suppose that’s all for now.” Chevalier sat back in his chair. “Send Mr. Morrison in on your way to the lobby.”
Josie grabbed Philippe’s arm on the way out, telling him a shorthand version of how she’d found Frederique that morning.
“Holy mother of God. What’s going on in this place?” he said quietly as they both watched Drew walk into the courtyard and take the seat opposite the detective.
“The voodoo’s got you but good.”
Josie swung around to find Anne-Marie in the middle of the lobby as if she had been there for some time, absorbing the atmosphere.
“Ma’am, I’m afraid you have to stay on the other side of the yellow tape,” a uniformed police officer said.
Anne-Marie stared at him. “You can’t keep the bad out with that flimsy piece of tape, Officer.”
The young man rolled his eyes and escorted her nearer Josie and Philippe.
The lobby had been split right down the middle with crime-scene tape, barring anyone access from upstairs or the front desk. Not that it mattered. Josie didn’t think she’d be seeing any business today. Or any other day in the near future for that matter.