Possession

  Praise for Tori Carrington…

  “One of the genre’s most beloved authors.”

  —Rendezvous

  “This author sure knows how to create convincing characters with real-life drama. The highly potent emotionalism of all the characters adds to the powerful chemistry between these two, making for a dynamically charged sensual tale that’s good for more than one read.”

  —Rendezvous on Forbidden

  “A smash hit! Don’t miss this one! These characters sizzle and have a chemistry that turns their weaknesses into strengths. A real winner!”

  —Romantic Times (4½ stars) on Just Between Us

  “Tori Carrington is an unparalleled storyteller with an imagination that is absolutely matchless. These authors are extraordinary and have a true gift for putting their own special brand on anything they touch.”

  —Rendezvous on Private Investigations

  “Tori Carrington’s latest, Red-Hot & Reckless, is an edgy, erotic fantasy nicely balanced by solid conflict and strongly drawn characters.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Laced with intense emotion, humor, and some of the sharpest dialogue ever written.”

  —Rendezvous on The P.I. Who Loved Her

  Dear Reader,

  DANGEROUS LIAISONS…the series name alone brings all sorts of decadent images to mind, doesn’t it? Now add New Orleans’ French Quarter and the sultry Louisiana bayous to the mix and, well, you end up with a recipe base that’s guaranteed to be hot, hot, hot.

  In Possession, sexy Cajun and ex-marine sniper Claude Lafitte appears every bit the gentleman pirate like his rumored ancestor…until beautiful FBI agent Akela Brooks wrongly suspects him of murder, sending him on the run and forcing him to rely on his bayou roots in order to clear his name. The two match wits at every turn. Only, Akela is completely unprepared for the doors of sexual wonders Claude opens up to her. But as the story unfolds, Claude begins to wonder exactly who is possessing whom.

  Ooo-wee! This one nearly scorched our fingers just writing it. We’d love to hear what you think. Contact us at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612 (we’ll respond with a signed bookplate, newsletter and bookmark), or visit us on the Web at www.toricarrington.com for fun drawings.

  Here’s wishing you love, romance and hot reading.

  Lori & Tony Karayianni

  aka Tori Carrington

  TORI CARRINGTON

  Possession

  Some like it hot! We wholeheartedly dedicate this book to fellow readers who like a little—or a lot!—of spice with their romance novels.

  And, as always, to our editor Brenda Chin, who is our third collaborator in all of our Harlequin endeavors. Thank you!

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  1

  HEAVEN TO CLAUDE LAFITTE was a night spent in the arms of a beautiful woman. And, given his past, that was probably as close as he was ever going to get to the pearly gates guarded by St. Pete.

  He lay across the old iron bed, the particular beautiful woman he’d met the night before asleep next to him, her curved hip bare, his tanned hand contrasting with her pale flesh in the hazy late-morning light streaming in from the window. When dawn had arrived, he pondered whether to slip from the rented room in New Orleans’s French Quarter like a shadow, or wait and bid his partner the adieu she deserved.

  He sighed contentedly, taking in her flowing lines, her blond hair, the scent of her, of them, filling the small room. She’d said her name was Claire. No last name. Just as he’d simply been Claude—at least to her. The small hotel’s personnel, on the other hand, was very familiar with him, because he came here often, preferring the simplicity of the hotel over his own apartment if only because a hotel room seemed to suit the temporary nature of his occasional liaisons.

  Women. Once, a long time ago, he’d taken great relish in counting how many he’d seduced into his bed. Now he merely enjoyed their company, the pleasure he found in them as varied as the women themselves. It didn’t matter where they came from, if they were natives or from foreign countries, each of them provided an enticing escape.

  Escape?

  Claude removed his hand from Claire’s warm skin and rubbed his face. There was nothing from which he needed to escape. Life was good. No, life was great. A little more red tape and he would own Lafitte’s Louisiana Boats and Tours outright. And while money would be tight for a while, his current circumstances were far removed from the humble upbringing in which he and his brother, Thierry, had been raised. While life in the bayous held a certain wild appeal, your surroundings didn’t much matter if your belly was empty and your opportunities scant.

  The woman next to him sighed in her sleep and rolled toward him, her breasts pressing against his side. Claude pushed strands of her white blond hair from her face and watched as she smiled and sighed again.

  He glanced at his watch. It was Sunday. He didn’t have to be anywhere. Maybe he’d pay for the room for a few extra hours and treat her to breakfast. Beignets and café au lait.

  Then maybe afterward they could pick up where they’d left off….

  AKELA BROOKS’S plain navy-blue suit was too heavy for this October morning in the Quarter. Now that she’d relocated to the New Orleans FBI field office, she’d have to do some shopping for suits of lightweight material: breathable linens, more generous cut cotton blends, skirts, rather than the slacks she preferred.

  While the thought of shopping might brighten others’ day, it made Akela frown. Something she’d been doing a lot of since Friday when she’d been given her first assignment at the field office. Correction. She hadn’t so much been given an assignment as she’d been buried with follow-up work on cases that were otherwise closed.

  It didn’t help knowing that she’d expected it. She hadn’t requested to be reassigned to the New Orleans office because of advancement opportunities, but because she’d wanted…no, needed, to be closer to her family. It was time—long past time if she was truthful. But she wasn’t much into delving into the past. Now was now and if you spent all your time looking backward, you might trip over a stone in front of you. And then where would you be aside from facedown on the asphalt?

  Her low heels clicked against the sidewalk, the sights and smells on Bourbon Street abundant, but the people noticeably scarce this early on a Sunday morning. Early? It was past eleven. But here eleven was early. The cry of a trumpet came from a jazz bar a couple of doors up. Someone swept debris from the curb. A car—allowed to pass at this time of day, but barred access later on when the street teemed with tourists—cruised by filled with a family probably headed to church.

  Akela shrugged out of her jacket, folded it over her arm, then straightened her white, sleeveless blouse. While New Orleans was her home, this New Orleans—the Quarter, jazz, drink and decadence—wasn’t. The Brookses lived uptown in the Garden District and pretty much stayed there, venturing out only to attend charity balls in swanky hotels and to go to the opera and the museum and various art gallery happenings.

  Oh, she’d come to the Quarter a few times. Everyone in New Orleans eventually did at one time or another. One occasion, in particular, stuck out in her mind. She’d been sixteen and Mardi Gras had been in full swing. She’d gotten sick from too
much liquor and had woken up on the front porch of her parents’ estate, her neck draped in beads, and under her shirt someone had drawn red smiley faces around her breasts with lipstick that had been hell to get off.

  It hadn’t been so much what had happened that rowdy night that had scared her off returning to the Quarter. Rather it had been that she couldn’t remember what had transpired. Not being in control of her actions frightened her in a way few things could.

  Of course, it helped that she’d never been much for rebellion. No, she’d saved that for one single whopper when she was twenty and going to Tulane University: Namely she’d broken from tradition and sought a career in law enforcement.

  Her society-conscious mother had yet to forgive her for that transgression. Strangely, in Patsy Brooks’s eyes the move even overshadowed Akela’s marriage and divorce to a fellow agent that had resulted in her now four-year-old daughter, Daisy. Patsy was of the school convinced that impulsive acts, like the one that had inspired Akela to apply to the FBI, were not allowed. A lady of a certain standing did not go around brandishing a gun. She should achieve a well-rounded education and work in the legal or medical field until she married and bore children, and then her family would become her priority, along with certain charitable endeavors.

  Her mother’s staunch and unforgiving beliefs were what made Akela seek posts as far away from New Orleans as possible—Quantico, then Boston.

  Now it was her daughter’s need to be surrounded by family that loved her that had brought Akela back home. And if Akela longed for the same, well, she wasn’t ready to consider that right now.

  Her heel caught between bricks and she stumbled.

  “Careful, cher,” a man said as he caught her, keeping her from twisting her ankle.

  Her gaze shifted from the large, dark hand on her arm to the warm green eyes of the man it belonged to. A Cajun. Had to be. A big, hulking, stunning example of a Cajun.

  She took in his suggestive grin and the confident way he stood, as if there was no doubt his chivalry would be well received. And, Akela realized with a shock of awareness, it was. Something swept from him to her and back again, a current of something fundamental, primal, that brought heat to her cheeks and made her blood thicken.

  “Thanks,” she said almost breathlessly.

  He murmured something that was probably the equivalent of “you’re welcome” and continued moving past her in the opposite direction, breaking the connection.

  Akela watched him go, drinking in the casually snug black T-shirt and the bunched muscles underneath, the athletic tightness of his rear end, the tousled look of his dark blond hair, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. She filled her lungs with the heavy air, noticing the tingle of restlessness zinging along her nerve endings. It was all too easy to imagine herself stretched across crisp white sheets, a man like him nudging her bare thighs apart with his knee. At the thought, she became aware of the heavy New Orleans air dampening her skin and the delicate wings of butterflies teasing the inside of her stomach, making her feel weightless and light.

  She swallowed hard, her throat tight, her heart beating a little bit faster.

  Turning she headed toward Hotel Josephine, a small structure, likely an ex-bordello, on the edge of the Quarter.

  Yes, there were going to be a lot of adjustments she’d have to make. New Orleans was worlds away from Quantico, and Boston, where she’d been assigned for the past six years. Here, time moved at a slower pace, probably more because of the thick humidity that was always present in the air than due to any conscious decision. There was a pervasive haze that seemed to mute human morality, making lazy decadence not only acceptable but the norm.

  In Virginia and New England, women expected to be wined and dined. And sex…well, sex was never a foregone conclusion. Here in New Orleans it was understood that when a man of the type she’d passed in the street asked you for a date, he was asking if you were interested in sex. If food or other entertainment was a part of the package, well, that was an extra.

  Here in the Quarter, sex—more specifically hot, sweaty, multiple-orgasm sex—was its own reward.

  And for the first time in a very long time, she found the idea of allowing more primitive instincts to control her and her body appealing. More than appealing, she felt as if she pulsed with the need to feel a man’s hands on her, stroking her, coaxing to the surface emotions and needs she had long buried.

  Akela stood outside the high, narrow double blue doors to Hotel Josephine, pondering how, when set against the backdrop of the Quarter, her life in New England emerged dull and colorless.

  A couple walked leisurely through the doors to the hotel, the woman wearing a slinky slip dress and clinging to her partner in an undeniably sexual way. Akela couldn’t help but watch them, both fascinated and curious about them and the uninhibited lives they lived.

  She shrugged back into her jacket as she walked through the airy hotel lobby, noticing the green courtyard beyond, thinking the place needed a good paint job and thorough cleaning. Then again, she didn’t think the clientele came here for the atmosphere. Or maybe they did. The place seemed to reek of forbidden affairs and passionate trysts.

  She flashed her ID at the pretty woman sitting fanning herself on the other side of the check-in counter, the whirring ceiling fan doing little to ease the heat.

  “Agent Brooks, FBI,” Akela said, clapping the ID closed then slipping it back into the pocket of her jacket. “I’m here to talk to Pierre Deville.”

  The provocative, slightly dark-skinned woman regarded her through half-lidded eyes as if visits from FBI agents were the rule rather than the exception. “Room 2B.”

  “Thank you.”

  Akela began climbing the curving staircase edged with wrought-iron railings. A shrill scream stopped her cold. A woman’s scream of fear.

  Akela took the steps two at a time, reaching for the firearm that was strapped into a holder inside her jacket. She emerged onto the second floor, gun in hand, safety off, spotting a young woman in a maid’s uniform holding fresh linens. She was standing outside an open door, staring inside.

  “FBI,” Akela said. “Move to the side.”

  The maid didn’t appear to hear her so Akela physically shifted her away then positioned herself where the maid had been standing. Inside the room a woman was sprawled across the mattress of a double bed, her eyes staring unseeingly at the ceiling, her throat cut.

  CAFÉ AU LAIT AND BEIGNETS. Breakfast of champions. Walking up Bourbon Street, Claude carried a bag with two covered cups and another with the sugar-sprinkled French doughnuts. The neighborhood was just beginning to stir to life. Where earlier, musicians had tuned their instruments, now full bands played, trying to entice tourists and locals alike into the air-conditioned depths of their places of business.

  “Bonjour, Claude.”

  He glanced over at the scantily clad woman standing in the doorway of a popular strip club and grinned, giving her a half salute with a finger to his eyebrow. “Morning, Janette. You’re looking particularly beautiful today.”

  His mother, Olivie Lafitte, bless her heart, had taught both her boys that while compliments cost them little to give, they could be priceless to the person receiving them. Paying Janette one came as easily to Claude as his leisurely stride.

  Her smile widened. “Let’s hope that means some good tips.”

  He chuckled. “I’m sure it will, ma chérie. I’m sure it will.”

  He was familiar with Chantal and her girls, sometimes bringing visiting associates by to help contribute to the private school tuition of Janette’s daughter, and the college fund of the younger prostitute.

  The sound of a siren turned his head in the other direction and he stepped back up onto the banquette, watching as an NOPD patrol car sped by, lights blazing, then skidded to a stop outside Josephine’s.

  Claude slowed his steps. Another thing his mother had always taught him and his brother was always to be leery of the law.

  He wasn
’t entirely sure of the motivation behind that advice. Perhaps it was Cajun custom that justice be doled out by their peers. Or maybe the belief went even further back, to Jean Lafitte, who was rumored to be his great-great grandfather. Of course, every Lafitte claimed the same connection to the notorious gentleman pirate.

  A part of his wariness toward officers of the law also stemmed from the trouble he’d gotten into when he’d left the bayou at fourteen and survived on the streets of New Orleans for the next several years any way he could, which had included illegal activity. He’d used his knowledge of the bayous, combined it with the criminal education he’d received on the streets, and at nineteen had ended up being stabbed in the back, both literally and figuratively, left to bleed to death in a dark alley after a deal gone bad. A judge had given him a choice: five years in prison or a stint in the military.

  He’d chosen the military.

  Those days were behind him now, but never far—which was what prompted him to go around to the rear entrance to Josephine’s. He climbed the back stairs to the room he’d rented until later that afternoon. He stopped when he reached the hall, finding the door open and the woman he’d bumped into on the street earlier tucking a gun into her jacket.

  Claire…

  The stranger in the door turned and their eyes met. As on the street, he was caught off guard by the dark grayness of her eyes, the fullness of her mouth, her innate sexuality in stark contrast to the severe cut of her suit and her stiff demeanor.

  He was aware she was moving, reaching back inside her jacket. He watched as she hauled out her firearm and pointed it in his direction, both hands braced against the weapon.