Ruby Read online

  Her face burned. It seemed everyone stared at her. The maitre d’, though he wrung his hands, did not rush up to apologize. The waiter stood by, impassive face hardly showing his titillated interest.

  “You can’t make me leave.”

  “Oh, but I can. You don’t tell me. I tell you.”

  “But—”

  “No, chère.” He pressed a finger against her lips and smiled. “Go away like a good girl. When you’re ready to play my way, come back.”

  He turned his back, waving his hand with the same decisive gesture of dismissal.

  With as much dignity and grace as she could cling to, she stood and picked up her bag. Never let them see you cry. This wasn’t worth weeping over. After dabbing her very expensive and extremely permanent lipstick on the linen napkin, not only to remove the burn of his touch on her lips, she tossed it on the table. It fell next to the abandoned half roll.

  She nearly reached out to take it, but stopped herself with an iron will.

  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  Chapter Two

  The afternoon shoot dragged on, the models cranky and the photographers despotic. It didn’t help that the cooling afternoon weighed on them with oppressive gloom. Just one last job to smooth your way to Paris. Right. Like a Mardi Gras piece would run any time before oh, say, next Mardi Gras. By then she would have made her mark in the new editor’s job—or washed out. This was her pound of flesh to pay for getting the Paris gig. Pain for the prize.

  Absolutely worth it.

  Never mind that her hollow stomach wailed her into dizziness, since she’d had no time to find an alternative lunch. Or, rather, that she’d been too angrily stubborn to find something else. Skipping lunch didn’t normally bother her much—not like she hadn’t done it before. Of course, she’d had more for breakfast those days, not saving for a lovely lunch that got snatched away by some diva of a chef. Even she could not go all day on two egg whites and a slice of tomato—and half a roll, miraculous as it had been.

  She was still mad, yes. But those nearly black eyes and that sultry voice had lit another hunger in her too. She’d been working so hard she hadn’t dallied with a sexy man in...wow, months? No wonder she felt so restless.

  So when the thickening gray that had supplanted the morning sun broke without warning into a drenching rain, even though it was only four o’clock, Dani called a halt for the day. Everyone was so grateful for a reprieve, they didn’t even bitch and moan about the 6:30 a.m. call she asked for. With uncharacteristic alacrity, the entire group was gone in minutes, scattered to their various hotels and amusements.

  She headed toward the B&B, at first hurrying through the rain. As she splashed through the deepening puddles on the uneven sidewalk, her stockings soaked through. In fact, all of her was as wet as if she stood under a shower. Since her pace didn’t matter, she slowed, rain running down her face, sliding over her skin. A pack of squealing tourists hustled by, sharing one plastic rain poncho like a tarp. Prepared locals gave her smug smiles from under the umbrellas they always carried.

  She smiled back. The rain might be cool, but the feel of it sliding on her skin brought the world into focus. A small discomfort, like her hunger, to make getting indoors that much more pleasurable.

  She passed the Court des Deux Pendus without glancing at it, no matter how much she might want to. Up ahead, a man leaned against a courtyard wall, legs crossed at the ankles, an enormous black umbrella protecting his upper half, while his stylish leather shoes—likely Italian—were irretrievably drenched. Idiot.

  “You look like a drowned rat, chère.”

  The familiar voice brought Dani up short before she realized the stranger was speaking to her. Cautiously, she looked over her shoulder to see he’d tipped the umbrella back and was surveying her, an amused twitch behind that neat black beard.

  “Are you following me?” She poured ice into the question.

  “Now how could that be when you just came walking by? I should accuse you. Perhaps you’re a stalker.”

  “Ha!” She barked out the laugh and turned to go, so not in the mood for more shit, all the pleasant sensuality of walking in the rain gone. “I’ll be sure to take a different route in the future.”

  “Are you hungry?” he called out, lightly, mocking.

  “Fuck you!” she tossed over her shoulder.

  “Well, all right,” he said, from close behind her. “Though you’d have to do that my way too. Your place or mine?”

  She spun around and nearly slammed into his chest. Backed up a hasty step and snagged her hair on the umbrella.

  “Goddammit.” She tugged at her wet, snarled curls.

  “You appear to be trapped.”

  “Quit harassing me,” she hissed.

  “In point of fact, you accosted my umbrella. Now, here. Hold this.” He pushed the handle at her and she took it, not looking at him while he used both hands to untangle her hair from the spokes. In her four-inch stilettos, she was nearly the same height, and his breath blew warm against her cheek, the rain drumming around them.

  “Some temper you have there,” he murmured. “I can’t help but think that if you had something in your belly, you’d be a little sweeter.”

  She decided declining to respond to that would be the better part of valor. That had sounded like an invitation. A tempting one.

  “Nothing to say?” His lips whispered against her cheek.

  “Let me go.”

  “You’re free. For now.”

  She started to pull back, thrusting the handle at him, but he wrapped his hands over hers.

  “Let me make it up to you.”

  “What?” Oh yes. Definitely tempting.

  He returned her gaze, steady, calm. His eyes weren’t truly black, but a deep brown, framed by thick lashes any of her models would have killed to come by naturally. The gold hoop glinted in his ear and she was seized by the random desire to take it in her teeth. “I’ll make you something to eat. Something fabulous.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “No?” His gaze fastened on her mouth and the moment felt oddly intimate, with the curtains of rain falling around the umbrella. “Let me feed you.”

  “I’m not going to a strange man’s place—for any reason.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “I am stranger than some, it’s true. I’ll take you somewhere then. Buy you a meal. Maybe a drink. All safe and public.”

  “You threw me out of your restaurant.”

  “You deserved it.”

  “You don’t know what I deserve.”

  “Oh, but I’d love to find out. You come to my place, you play my way. If you give yourself over to me, I will show you pleasures that will keep you fed for life. A different extreme.”

  Something about his tone, the heat from his body, sent arousal rippling through her. An image of the manacles on the courtyard wall slipped through her mind, taunting, compelling.

  “Are we still talking about food?” She tried to sound flip, but his eyes glinted and somehow she knew he heard the desire in her voice.

  “When it comes to the sensual delights, it’s all the same. Come with me for now. Let me give you a taste.”

  She studied him, definitely tempted. Keeping professional distance was important, so she’d stayed in a different B&B than the rest of her colleagues. But it made for lonely evenings at times. In a week, she’d be in Paris, where sh
e knew no one. Who knew when she’d meet another man this alluring?

  “What else will you do?” he asked, as if he read her mind. “A rainy night in New Orleans is for sharing good food, a little booze, a lot of nice company.”

  “I don’t know why I’m agreeing to this.”

  White teeth flashed in a smile, outrageously sexy. “Because you can’t resist me, chère.”

  “You wish.”

  “Yes, I do. Can you walk a bit in those sexy heels?”

  “What’s a little pain, in the face of what you’re promising?”

  “Exactly. C’mon, New York.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Let me show you my city.”

  * * *

  He took her to a place that wasn’t on her lists, well off Bourbon Street but still in the Quarter. It smelled of old wood and rain drying under the heat lamps. They sat at a little wooden table in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, the glass closed against the heavy rain that kept all but the most intrepid inside. A woman strolled past in a yellow satin ball gown. She held the skirt high to keep the hem out of the puddles, and two young men flanked her, shielding her with a canopy held between them. The dress was cut so low, and her breasts pushed so high by her corset, that her rouged nipples peeked through the lace at her neckline. The woman caught her looking and sent a long, slow wink.

  “Anything goes during Mardi Gras,” her companion drawled, swirling his wine and watching her.

  “It’s still weeks away.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Everyone has caught the scent of it now. It just gets wilder from here.”

  The woman turned a corner, but not before Dani caught a glimpse of a chain hanging down her back, seeming attached to the silver torque around her neck.

  “Hard to imagine much wilder than this,” she observed in a dry tone.

  “You don’t have to imagine—I’ll show you. I think you have the scent of it also. Tempting, yes?”

  “Right now all you’re going to show me is this fabulous meal you’ve promised.”

  He smiled, slow and sensuous. “It’s on the way. Don’t fret. Drink your wine, like a good girl.”

  “You already ordered?”

  “The owner is a friend. He knows what to send out.”

  She folded her arms and leaned on the table. “You know, I’ve never been into this men-ordering-food-for-women thing. Does nothing for me. It’s not gallant, just controlling. And I’m not a girl.”

  He leaned in also and stroked her forearm with an idle finger. “But this is the game you agreed to, yes? You play my way. Just for tonight. All night. Until dawn.”

  “I thought this was about you buying me dinner.”

  “I’m talking about the nice company part of our evening. Spend the night with me. Revel in the delights my city has to offer you.”

  She could. Not like she hadn’t had one-night stands before. They were satisfying in their way—and certainly less complicated than dating. Especially for her. Especially now.

  “I have to be at work at 6:30 a.m.”

  “Then it’s lucky dawn is right about then.”

  “I couldn’t show up in these same clothes.” It didn’t do to telegraph one’s overnight escapades to colleagues. Makeup she had in her purse, but a fresh outfit? Not so much.

  “Okay.” He agreed to that far too easily.

  She sat back, tasted the wine while she contemplated. It was excellent—full and deep-bodied, with hints of wood smoke and cinnamon.

  He watched her drink without comment, toying with the gold hoop in his ear.

  “I don’t know you well enough to agree to carte blanche on playing it all your way, however.”

  “This is how you get to know me. And how I learn about you. All of you. Tell me your name, chère.”

  The wine, the scent of tropical flowers in the rain, candles and old wood combined to swirl in her mind. A wild recklessness surged through her. She could be anonymous. Have one last adventure before she would be in the spotlight again, straitlaced and ever correct.

  “I don’t think I want to tell you my name.”

  He smiled, appearing delighted by the mystery. “Then I shall call you Ruby Tuesday. No one will hang a name on you, right?”

  “And you?”

  “You shall call me sir.”

  Her heart gave a thud and her mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious.”

  He reached out and caught her hand, tugging her closer. “Yes. You will play this my way, if you want to play at all. Those are the rules.”

  “Is this a BDSM thing, then?” She’d read erotic novels that leaned that way. Maybe fantasized a little. Okay, a lot. And they might be her hottest fantasies. But to do it in reality, with a man she just met? Reckless indeed.

  Exciting too.

  He stroked the inside of her wrist, holding her gaze. “Call it what you wish. Tonight, you give yourself to me, to do with as I please.”

  “What if I don’t like what you do? Do I get a safe word?” A near-hysterical giggle welled up as she spoke, feeling silly, aroused, tempted.

  “Ruby—that is your safe word.”

  “How do I know you’ll abide by it?”

  A goth waitress came up to the table, sliding bowls in front of them. Her sleek cap of black hair ended in feathered points around her sharp cheekbones. Studded black leather bands clasped her wrists, and rings pierced her arched brows.

  “Thank you, Charity, darling. Now would you tell my companion here whether I can be trusted?”

  The waitress looked her up and down, pursed her black-painted mouth. “She looks too sweet for you, Prejean.”

  “Don’t let that angelic face fool you—she’s all stubborn devil behind those pretty gray eyes. With a wicked temper.”

  “Is that so?” Charity held out a hand and, when Dani shook it, she held tight. “This one, he’ll take you on a wild ride. Buckle your seat belt and let go. Never once has he ignored a safe word. But guard your heart well. Lord knows he broke mine.”

  “You wound me, Charity.”

  She winked at him and bumped her hip in the air. “You need humbling. Now eat those shrimp before they get cold. Have fun, sweetie.” She blew a glossy black kiss at Dani. “A lot of girls would kill to be where you are.”

  “So much for humbling you,” Dani said as the girl sauntered off.

  Prejean grinned at her. “It’s true. I don’t do humble well. So?”

  “Convenient—that our waitress happens to be a ‘friend.’”

  He shrugged. “Small community. More than the food brings me here. In or out?”

  She should be cautious. Walk away. Not succumb to the lure of anonymity and fling herself into some wild kinky affair.

  She poked with her fork at the prawns swimming in what looked like a buttery barbeque sauce. Two thick slices of what was certainly the famous New Orleans sourdough bread accompanied the huge bowl. The calorie-counter in her head spun while her mouth watered. Suddenly she didn’t want to think about the price of anything—the calories, the safe thing to do. She wanted to feel. To just enjoy for a night. And when would she get another invitation like this one?

  At least she didn’t have to worry about a guy like this, a real player, getting too attached.

  She glanced up to find him watching her with quiet intensity—and more than a hint of challenge glinting in his eyes. “Okay, I’m in.”

  “Good. Take off your jacket.”

  “
What? Why?”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Let me explain the rules to you. For the rest of the night, you do as I tell you, when I tell you. Unless you safe word out. If you refuse or hesitate, that grants me the right to punish you. That’s one punishment, right there.”

  “Punish me how?”

  He looked her up and down. “However I want to, of course. Do you understand the game now?”

  Mouth dry, pulse pounding, she nodded. And took off her jacket, praying the rain had washed any sweat stains away. Her silk shirt was still wet and likely somewhat transparent. Maybe mostly, given the way his eyes gleamed. Fortunately her white lace bra was demure enough for public display.

  “Now undo a couple of those buttons and roll up your cuffs.”

  How two buttons could feel like stripping, she didn’t know, but the way his gaze followed her fingers, dipping into the crevice between her breasts, sent heat pooling in her groin. Once she undid the tight cuffs and rolled them up, she waited.

  “Take down your hair.”

  She’d tried to tuck the curls back into the pins after the umbrella incident, with little success. “It will be wild and all over the place.”

  “So will you, if all goes as I have planned.” His teeth gleamed white against his tanned skin and glossy black beard when she fidgeted at the suggestion. She pulled out the hair pins, tucking them in a zippered pocket of her bag and finger-combing the damp curls as best she could, constantly aware of his gaze.

  “Now what?”

  “You’re not going to call me sir?”

  “Do I have to say it every sentence?”

  He pursed his lips. “Perhaps not. But you will say it, yes?”

  She pressed her palms flat on the table. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Maybe you’ll have to make me.”

  His eyes glittered, calculating. For a moment she thought he might grab her and do something right there, in the restaurant. He wanted to. The moment hung in the balance. Shifted as he decided to wait, shaking his head. “Ah, my luscious Ruby, we have a long, lovely night ahead of us. You might consider that when you bait me. Eat your prawns.”