The Lion of Frenchman Street

By Teresa Noelle Roberts

On Kelsey’s first night tending bar at a New Orleans jazz club, she catches the eye of handsome saxophonist—and Dominant—Peter Lyons. He sweeps her into his world of music and kinky sex, introducing her to fierce pleasures she’s always dreamed of. As they explore the crazy, romantic city she comes to love as much as he does, she’s falling hard for Peter, too. Even though he claims “true love” is for songs, not real life, it’s hard to resist his rope skills and his vintage movie star looks, his passion for life and the hints of pain in his blue eyes. 

But Kelsey’s only tending bar as a stopgap. When she’s offered a dream job out of town, Peter’s old scars break open and everything goes out of tune. Can music, passion, and the magic of New Orleans get them back in harmony? 

This novella originally appeared in the boxed set NOLA NAUGHTY NIN9. This version contains new material.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teresa Noelle Roberts
• Release date: Mar 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386631934

Book preview

The Lion of Frenchman Street

Teresa Noelle Roberts

Copyright © 2016 by Teresa Noelle Roberts

This novella originally appeared in the boxed set NOLA Naughty Nin9 (Boundless Tales, a subdivision of Lust Bites Magazine; 2016).

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by: Teresa Noelle Roberts, Mansfield, MA

Inquiries should be addressed to Teresa Noelle Roberts

mailto:teresanoelleroberts@verizon.

http://www.teresanoelleroberts.com

Cover photo: © Bezik/BigStock.com

The

Lion

of

Frenchman Street

––––––––

Teresa Noelle Roberts

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Dedication and Acknowledgements

About the Author

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On Kelsey’s first night tending bar at a New Orleans jazz club, she catches the eye of handsome saxophonist—and Dominant—Peter Lyons. He sweeps her into his world of music and kinky sex, introducing her to fierce pleasures she’s always dreamed of. As they explore the crazy, romantic city she comes to love as much as he does, she’s falling hard for Peter, too. Even though he claims true love is for songs, not real life, it’s hard to resist his rope skills and his vintage movie star looks, his passion for life and the hints of pain in his blue eyes.

But Kelsey’s only tending bar as a stopgap. When she’s offered a dream job out of town, Peter’s old scars break open and everything goes out of tune. Can music, passion, and the magic of New Orleans get them back in harmony?

This novella originally appeared in the boxed set NOLA NAUGHTY NIN9. This version contains new material.

Chapter One

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KELSEY NEVER IMAGINED the bartending she’d done in grad school, not the graduate degree itself, would support her in New Orleans. But her job in the education department of the Aquarium of the Americas lasted less than a month before funding upheavals meant she was cut to fifteen hours a week.

Her parents had figured she’d pack up and move back to Massachusetts, but she was determined to stay. She told herself it was part of the New Orleans experience, since practically everyone she’d met in her adopted city needed a side gig to get by.

As of tonight, hers was tending bar at The Dubious Concoction on Frenchman Street, a restaurant and jazz club known for creative cocktails.

And, apparently, jazz musicians who dressed like updated versions of Frank Sinatra. The men of tonight’s group, the Lions of Frenchman Street, all wore sharp suits, ties, and fedoras, and played an enticing mix of jazz classics and popular songs from her grandparents’ youth.

The vocalist wore a snug-bodiced, full-skirted vintage style dress that accented her lush figure; its tropical colors set off her dark complexion. The suited men were a diverse bunch: an elderly black man on piano, a wiry young drummer who appeared to be part black and part Asian, and an Italian-looking trumpet player about Kelsey’s parents’ age.

But the long, cool drink of red-headed sax player—he had to be the one who gave the group their name, with his fierce, contained, feline grace—was the one who made her pulse quicken and her panties threaten to catch on fire at any moment.

Which would be impressive considering how damp they were.

That man was inspiring some seriously dirty thoughts. He seemed to make love to the music he played, to control it and at the same time let it flower, shaping it gently but firmly. After one song, she wanted him to make love to her in the same way.

Tender but kinky, that was how it would be.

In her wildest dreams, that is.

He hadn’t even made eye contact. If he ever did, she’d risk spontaneous combustion. His eyes were blue, she thought, but that cool blue could set her aflame.

She was going to have to stop gawking at him. She had to focus on something other than wanting him to tongue her more sensitive body parts the way he did his mouthpiece. Otherwise she wasn’t going to be able to tell an Old Fashioned from a gimlet, not to mention dredge up the recipes for local favorites such as the Sazerac, drinks she didn’t have memorized because they weren’t common orders at her last bartending gig in Providence. And she’d be totally lost on the night’s complicated cocktail specials, which more and more people were ordering as the evening went on.

She marveled that the audience could tear their attention away from the music and the visual feast to order more drinks. Her wallet was glad they were, of course. But how could they not stare at the sax player and lose themselves in music and fantasy? Granted, a good percentage of them wouldn’t appreciate a good-looking man the way she did, or respond to that kind of controlled intensity with Pavlovian predictability. Even vanilla people who preferred their eye candy female, though, should recognize this as seriously fine jazz while they were enjoying the vocalist’s flamboyant curves. Yet they were talking to each other over the music.

She winced, thinking of all the times live music had been a soundtrack to a night out with friends. She’d like to think it had all been mediocre but inoffensive background noise.

She suspected, though, she’d missed some fine music because no one in the group had been as drop-dead gorgeous as Mr. Saxophone.

Unfortunately—make that fortunately for everything but her concentration—he was in her line of sight a lot of the time because the stage was front and center in her end of the club. When she turned away to grab bottles, she’d see the musicians in the antique mirror on the wall behind the dark, tastefully battered vintage walnut bar, and her gaze would go straight to the sax man.

The club buzzed with conversation and drink orders poured in from the waitstaff and customers who came directly to her bar. But the noise, except for what she needed to hear to do her job, faded, drowned out by the delicious music.

Even when she was busy trying not to poison anyone by screwing up an unfamiliar cocktail, the sound of that sax encircled and enticed her. All the musicians were good—the piano and trumpet players were old-school excellent, the drummer talented without trying to take over, and the vocalist’s big, silky voice was well suited to songs made famous by women like Ella Fitzgerald. But the sax player often took the lead, leaving the vocalist to take a break and the others to offer a quiet underlayer of sound.

By the end of their second set, she was pretty sure she’d want to take the sax player home even if he looked like the north end of a southbound horse.

But he had the cool and the wicked blue eyes of Sinatra, cheekbones that could cut glass, and tousled red-gold hair that was the only messy touch in his cool elegance. She wanted his long hands moving over her body the way they moved over the keys of his instrument. She yearned to strip off that pale gray linen suit and see if he was as elegantly built as he appeared. Then she’d kiss that talented mouth.

If she was being honest with herself, she wanted a lot more than that, but if she let her fantasies get too detailed, she’d spill expensive whiskey or put ten splashes of Peychaud’s Bitters into a drink that needed only one.

All her nerve endings proclaimed she needed the man with the sax, but her brain knew she needed this job more. Sure, there were plenty of bartending jobs in New Orleans, but since she already had the one at The Dubious Concoction, she’d prefer to keep it.

The end of the set brought a great rush of customers to the bar, each one wanting a more