CHAPTER 13
Sahvrin signaled his Mah-Mah to the laundry room next to the kitchen, recognizing that look. She had it every time they tried to set him up with a pretty face, convinced he just needed to meet the right girl and he’d get over his obsession with celibacy. He wasn’t obsessed with it, he’d just adjusted to that life after fifteen years. The idea of a relationship with a woman had been an alternate reality. And now, that reality was right there in His Petite Ange.
The problem with his Mah-Mah was her uncanny ability to read his mind. Already he could see by the look on her face that she knew everything he felt about her.
“You are okay that she stays here while we meet at The Weigh Station?”
“Of course!” she cried, like that was a stupid thing to ask. Her face suddenly softened with a huge smile. “She’s so beautiful, Sahvrin.” She put the tips of her fingers over her smiling mouth. “And she really likes you!”
“How could you know that,” he said quietly, shaking his head at her. “That’s not what we’re here for, Mah-Mah.”
Her face went serious. “Pah-Pah has told me everything and I’m sure there will be no problems hunting these devils down. We’ll be here cooking up a celebratory feast for when you all return from your meeting. Oh Sahvrin, she’s different!”
“Yes, she is.” He wouldn’t argue that.
She shook her head with a slow severity. “She’s more different than that,” she said, squealing in excitement.
“And she’s recovering from being beat half to death. While defending another child,” he added, wanting her to know that for some reason. All that got him was more joyous nods like he was proving her point instead of focusing it on the right thing.
“You have anything to add, Mah-Mah?”
“No,” she said, going aloof.
“Show her around, make her feel like family.”
“Oh, I will,” she said, back to huge smiling plans. “Before I’m done, she’ll want to live here forever. Watch.”
“I don’t want you doing that,” he ordered, getting mildly pissed. “I do not want that forced.”
Her grin said she thought otherwise, and he gave up. “I always have your back,” she assured, scratching the light beard along his face with both hands. “She looks so cute in the dress we sent.”
“Mon Dieu, she got second degree burns,” he remembered. “She fell asleep sunbathing. You have ointment?”
“Of course!” she said, like he were dense.
“See that she has everything she needs?”
She whacked him on the shoulder. “I will!”
“She may want a bath,” he remembered. “To soak her deeper injuries. She tries to hide the pain, but I see it.”
She nodded slowly and smiled like he was again proving all her cupid points. “Pah-Pah said she has spunk and is very strong spirited. This is good?”
“It’s good for her, yes. In this life, she’ll need it.”
“And good for the swamp life?”
He hugged his mother and kissed her on the cheek. “Yes, Mah-Mah,” he said, deciding for once not to crush all her stubborn dreams. “She’s perfect for everything, are you happy?”
This earned him giddy clapping and light jumping up and down. “But before you leave, talk to her?” his Mah-Mah said. “She is very nervous! Make her at ease.”
The sharp look his Mah-Mah gave wasn’t one he’d ever cross even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. And he had every intention of talking to her before leaving.
“Why don’t you show her around before you go?” his Mah-Mah cooed, hands clasped dreamily under her chin. “Your brothers are getting ready, you have time!”
****
Sahvrin found Beth in the living room with his aunts all around her. He waved to get her attention and the moment she looked at him, the need to kiss her slammed his gut. Yes, she was fucking perfect. Nobody had to tell him that. But he really needed to keep everything reigned in until she spent more time there.
He signaled she come, and he watched her smile and politely make an exit like she did this kind of thing every day. Maybe she did. He never did learn what kind of circles she ran in. Given her father’s wealth, no doubt high ones. Highly civil. The only civil thing about the swamp life was right here at this house. Everywhere else, including his shack on the water, was the kind of life most women from a city would consider a wrong turn. Especially women from a northern city. She’d bake out there, just as she did yesterday. And his position in The Twelve and what that entailed added a challenge to any favorable odds. Her angelic ways would be the biggest hindrance. She’d sacrifice herself to please others and he wouldn’t let her do that, not for him or anybody else. She deserved what she wanted, not what he wanted and he’d cut his own balls off to make sure she got that.
“Mah-Mah wants me to show you around,” he said to her.
She gave half a smile before worry stole it away. “You don’t have to if you need to go.”
That was the sweet angel he had to protect with all that he was. Before he’d had one touch, one taste of her, she’d owned his soul without question, and every time she said something sweet like that, she owned it that much more.
He gave her the grand tour, showing her the homestead, watching her reaction the entire time. He’d meant to look for red flags that said she could never live such a life, but instead he’d gotten saturated by the many facets of her, particularly the stuff beneath her silky skin. “And this is the soap house,” he announced, ready to bathe her.
“A soap house?”
She hurried up the five wide steps, her gasps flowing non-stop along with giddy laughter. “I cannot believe you have a soap house! I had no idea that was even a thing to do? Of course it is, somebody has to make soap!” she answered herself with a contagious exuberance that made him laugh.
He followed as she race-floated from one room to the next. “The areas are separated by the various soap-making processes,” he explained as they went.
“The smells are heaven!” She spun to him with wide eyes. “Is this where you shop for your yummy soap?”
“It is. This was my favorite place to visit as a child,” he confessed, watching her smell and touch everything until his hunger boiled.
“I can see why! And you should know that the smell of your soap makes me drool. Must be formulated to attract females.”
He grabbed her as she raced to see another room, pulling her to him. He groaned, kissing her perfect mouth with great restraint before pressing his forehead to hers when his pulse fought to beat out of his veins. “Ma Petite,” he whispered with eyes closed.
He looked to see desire and worry flit across her face, making him need to feed the first and erase the other. He kissed her again, opening himself more when she moaned in his mouth, like a secret confession of what it all meant to her. He stroked her tongue with awe, adoring her.
The front door opened with, “You in here, bro?”
Sahvrin broke the kiss, winded but glad for the interruption. He was in the process of thinking his gut instincts were right enough, she was the one, and what better time and place to make love to His Petite than now, in the soap house? “Coming,” he called, stealing one more kiss. Then another. And another, making her giggle.
“You can’t get enough of me?” she mouthed with a bright smile that wrecked the darkness in his mind.
“Ma Petite, you have no idea.” His answer lit her up more somehow and he realized he wouldn’t see her for the rest of the day. He wrapped her in his arms and lifted her up in a tight hug, burying his mouth in her neck until she squealed with laughter.
“Later, when I get back, I will show you the bath house.”
“The what house?” she wondered with her dramatic incredulity that made him chuckle.
“A house for bathing. I was saving my favorite places for last.”
Her mouth hung open with wide-eyed disbelief. “A whole house? Just for bathing?”
“Well, not technically a house, but we call it that. The soap house and bath house were always a hard choice for a favorite,” he said, leading her out the door. “But I hated baths growing up and it didn’t become a favorite until later.”
“You preferred bathing in the bayou?”
“I did. And I bathed every day and more than once in the summer. But Mah-Mah said she wouldn’t have her sons smelling like alligator shit.”
She gave him a big laugh and the sight and sound made him crave to have her with a la passion, consume that magical stuff bubbling out of her, but especially murder in cold blood anything that threatened it.
“I will also show Ma Petite my childhood bedroom later,” he announced as he pulled her down the stone path.
She suddenly jumped in front of him with a sparkling look in her eyes. “Your childhood bedroom?”
Her slow smile gave him an instant hard on.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I am now,” he muttered, staring at her mouth while knowing his thoughts were a lot more vulgar than hers. “We can spend the night,” he said, his logic born of pure lust. “Mah-Mah would be delighted. She may secretly have a priest over to marry us while we sleep.”
She threw her head back and laughed before leaning up and pecking him on the lips. “I would immediately file for an annulment!”
“I would tie you to the bed so you couldn’t,” he teased back, testing the marriage talk with her.
A different light entered her eyes with that, one that made him go serious. “I might fight you,” she countered.
He lowered his mouth to hers, kissing it with reverence. “I would win,” he warned softly.
“Because I would let you, Mr. Bishop.”
Mon fucking Dieu. He plowed his tongue in her mouth, gripping her jaw in hunger until her frantic, delicate moans filled his mouth.
“There’s the love birds!”
Sahvrin pulled away at hearing his Mah-Mah, fighting to catch his breath. Of course she wore a giddy joy on her face, wrapping her arms around him for a tighter than usual hug. “My beautiful son,” she murmured against his chest before pulling back and holding his face in both hands. Then she pointed a finger at his nose with raised brows and a nod. “I’m taking over from here. Your brothers are ready and your Pah-Pah is antsy. Us women will be over here making a feast. I was hoping Beth would join us for the fun?”
“I would love to!”
He watched her leave as every letter in those words and the way she spoke them resonated in him. He’d always believed words had this kind of force, but he’d never seen it so potent outside of evil. She’d had it when he first met her in town, he realized. He’d stupidly mistaken it for overcompensated pretense. Like an artist oversaturating a real-life scene, making it cartoonish. But her perception of reality and life was that vibrant color. He’d wanted to correct it, show her that she was going about living all wrong, that the world was colored by evil and she needed to play by those rules.
She suddenly glanced over her shoulder twenty feet away, and soaked him with her sunny yellow smile. Mon Dieu, she was the master artist. She colored reality as she saw it or wanted it and didn’t hold back. Even when life dumped black goopy paint onto her canvas, her gift turned it into another outlandish work of genius. He was fucking riveted by it. Needing to touch and feel its texture while playing in it. But he especially needed to protect it. Because if there was anything he’d learned, it was that the most beautiful things in a person broke the hardest of all.
****
The first odd thing Sahvrin noticed was not a word was mentioned about Beth once they were on the boat. Instead, they talked speed French about gathering the small passe to comb the swamp for traffickers. He’d prepared himself for the mocking at least. The great and terrible bishop had finally fallen.
Surely, the burning stake His Petite had him on was worth any amount of sibling torture.
“I think all we need is Spook and Big Rex,” Jek said. “Next to us, they know the swamps the best. We divide up and crank open the eyes on every waterway they could possibly use.
“What are these eyes you speak of?” Zep asked.
Sahvrin turned when it got quiet, finding them looking for his input. “The ones we installed last year to monitor the main waterways. I just need to reset a couple of boxes and hit the switch for a live feed.”
“So we have to just let the women get trafficked meanwhile?” August said, pissed.
He didn’t like it either. “I think the arms shipment is our best angle for leverage. We drive that blade in deep then every move they make is in our control.”
“I just wanna skin em, then make cracklins with their filthy hide and feed it to their prez.”
Everybody turned to August, finding a dark bloodlust in his gaze.
“May as well grind up their brains and balls too,” Jek said, staring ahead as he steered. “Some juicy links of boudin dick.”
August nodded with a satisfied grin. “Now that’s a menu.”
Nothing but the hunting and capturing, judging and sentencing now. After long and heartfelt confessions. And of course, the First Bishop’s blessing.