by Abby Knox
Except they were not there right now. And neither was she. Whoever she was.
Curious.
Even more curious was the fact that he was lying on the grass in the woods. Naked. Alone.
And his belly was full.
He had the taste of fresh blood in his mouth.
So he had shifted to the wolf last night. How in the hell did that happen? It wasn’t a full moon. Besides, no pack of wolves like Ash, Bobby and Vann would ever plan a bachelor party on the night of a full moon. Not unless they all wanted to end up dead or in prison or both. Alcohol and full moons do not mix. Especially not when it comes to shapeshifters.
Sure, he wasn’t always the best at keeping track of his moon cycles, but that’s pack mentality. You depend on each other.
But where was his pack now?
He went through the list. Ash was probably at Rosemary’s flat, sleeping it off. Vann West, their boy who was now a celebrity chef, had just last night come home from a shoot in Seoul, South Korea, for the week of wedding festivities. He was probably off boning his new girl GiGi, whom he hadn’t seen since March. G wondered if that would last, knowing what he knew about them both. He also wondered if those two ever did stuff with icing.
Focus, man. Focus.
Where was Bobby? Bobby was known to get melancholy toward the end of the night, whenever the pack partied together. G wasn’t sure, but it probably had something to do with his past. It was so long ago, but Bobby would carry that cross to his grave. Poor guy. G hoped sincerely that his friend would one day be able to get his mind off of it. Of course, G and Ash and Vann knew exactly the only person who could help Bobby with all of that. The only one who could not see that was Bobby.
Look at yourself, G. Lying naked on the ground in the pre-dawn hours and all you can think about is your friend’s happiness? No wonder you were a virgin until last night.
Get it together. Find your clothes. And then find the girl.
G carefully sat upright. He looked to his left. There was the lake. He and the boys had probably gone for a dip to sober up at some point. Had he brought the girl with him for that? Was she still here?
The next second, the only thought he had was about the annoying pain in his hip. What the…
And then he turned and looked down and saw the bandage. Oh no.
It was exactly the kind of bandage he used at his tattoo parlor to help his customers protect fresh tattoos. But G didn’t have a fresh tattoo on his hip, because that would be ridiculous. Right?
So ridiculous, only a drunk asshole would agree to this. For fuck’s sake. He carefully peeled back the tape and took a look. It was a heart with the letter “C” in it. The heart looked like it had gashes in it and blood flowing out. The way the “C” was inked, calligraphy-style, was the most telling part of all. That was his own ink. As in, G had literally given himself a tattoo.
“That explains how a tattoo artist would agree to do ink on a drunk asshole,” he said aloud.
But the mystery remained, why could he not remember any of it?
He remembered most of the bachelor party. Club hopping all over the French Quarter, then riding the party bus back to their neighborhood. He vaguely recalled running into one of his employees, Manny, at Bobby’s Tavern, but could not recall the conversation. That was about the time things started to get fuzzy in G’s memory.
The upside was, at least he knew his shop and his equipment were clean.
Full marks for that, dipshit. Now go find your clothes.
He stood up and leaned against an oak tree to shake the cobwebs out of his brain.
He looked around, but his clothes did not show themselves.
It wasn’t the first time he’d ended up naked in the woods with no sign of his clothes. Whenever he wolfed out, there was no telling where his clothes ended up. Some shifter wolves, like his friend Penny, always stripped down in an orderly fashion and neatly placed their folded clothes near her favorite tree. That was the difference between men and women, he supposed. He and his boys mostly just got naked, howled at the moon and ran like hell to the rabbit warren, the gopher holes, or to the clearing, or to the water. They just loved to run.
And that’s probably how G ended up passed out, naked and clueless. Best-case scenario, he had felt himself turning, for whatever reason, and decided to run away to keep his girl out of danger.
He followed the trail back out in the direction of the parking lot, hoping maybe he could call someone to pick him up. If not, well, he’d figure it out.
About a tenth of a mile down the trail he saw his undies and jeans, but there was no sign of his shirt or shoes. The good news was, his smartphone was in his jeans pocket. Score! Surely, there would be some clues about his girl in his phone.
He unlocked the screen but did not see any text notifications. He felt himself become a little bit disappointed but not at all surprised. Drunk people were not the most reliable in letting their friends know where they were.
At the top of the list of text conversations, there was a contact just called “C.” Perhaps the “C” who was inked on his hip? Strong possibility, Einstein.
Tapping on the convo, he saw it was all 100 percent from him to her, no replies.
Huh.
He looked at the messages he had sent to this C. The first one was sent at 2:34 a.m.
Hey, this is Gavin. Friend of Ash. I heard you were a bridesmaid. I think you’re cute.
Fuck, what kind of a dork had he become? “I think you’re cute”? He may as well be passing notes in the fourth grade asking girls to “check this box if you like me-like me.” Reading his drunk missives made him cringe, so he skimmed them only for clues.
Then came this charming one about five minutes later:
I saw you dancing on the table. Do you need a ride home?
OK, points for being a gentleman. And at what point did the sex happen?
He figured it would have been at some point between 2:37 a.m. and 4:30 am. because the third and last text he had sent to her said,
Had to take off. Better for your safety. Be back as soon as I can. DO NOT MOVE. Please reply that you’re OK.
He looked at the time. It was now 8:45 a.m. Gavin trudged up the trail and eventually came to the parking lot. No car. No keys. No shirt. Not even any shoes anywhere. How had he gotten here?
He sent her a text just before calling for an Uber.
“I feel like a jackass. I’m not totally sure what happened, but I need to see you so we can sort this out. Please stay wherever you are. Are you at my place? Let me know.
And then before he could pull the trigger on Uber, he heard a low rumbling sound and the squealing of tires. Ash’s GTO was roaring across the lot and screeching to a halt right in front of him.
“Get in.”
“Listen, man, I blacked out and I need to find this girl.”
Ash cut him off. “Get in the car.”
Gavin obeyed. What choice did he have? He must have reeked of blood and alcohol. And also: no shirt or shoes.
Ash, however, looked freshly showered and was as chipper and charming as ever. How did he always manage to do that?
“Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“I do not and it does not matter. We gotta go find Bobby.”
“Bobby’s not at his place? Dude, the party ended at his bar. He lives above the bar. Why would he not be there?”
“I already checked, he’s not there. He took off kind of surly last night… this morning…whenever it was. I’m just worried about him, you know how he gets.”
Gavin was getting frustrated. Bobby was a grown-ass man who could take care of himself. “OK, look, let’s just get to my apartment and see if this mystery girl is there. Then we’ll go find Bobby.”
Ash shook his head. “No, man. If she’s out there, she’s hungover as shit. Give her time to pull herself together. No girl wants to see you first thing in the morning after a bachelorette party.”
“Where are we going, then?”
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Ash smiled. “What else does Bobby like besides making girly drinks? Same thing we do. Coffee.”
Chapter 3
Chas, 9:15 a.m.
So how had she made it to 22 with her virginity intact?
It helps to be a sheltered shape-shifting wildcat with an overprotective daddy in Baton Rouge. The DuChamps clan elders would probably still be arranging their children’s marriages to their second and third cousins once removed, if that kind of thing weren’t so frowned upon these days.
Theodore DuChamps and his brother Lionel, daddy of the bride-to-be Rosemary, when they weren’t monopolizing the shipping industry all over the Gulf Coast, spent most of their energy trying to use their daughters for the benefit of their businesses. Or so it seemed to their daughters.
Chas had to give her daddy the benefit of the doubt, though, when it came to her protection. A girl can’t just date anybody who doesn’t already know she is a shapeshifter. If the non-shifters don’t know the situation, all kinds of drama can unfold, resulting in unwanted attention from the community and then the media. All of that would be bad for their family, not just for business.
And there was another barrier entirely to her dating life: the purity ring. For that, she did not give her daddy the benefit of the doubt. Chastity and her daddy were basically the poster people for the city’s annual Purity Ball. Over the years, it had become as much a rite of passage for young girls as the coming-out parties. Much like the old-fashioned country club debutante balls, the Purity Ball involved fathers presenting their daughters to the public at a dance. However, instead of handing their daughters over to a suitable boy of good breeding, the Purity Balls involved no boys at all. Instead, daughters would receive a ring from their father. The ring served as a symbol of his protection and as a symbol of the girl’s promise to save herself for marriage.
Chastity had loved these daddy-daughter dates in the beginning. Besides new moons—on which the Baton Rouge DuChamps would gather in the woods to shapeshift into their wildcat form and hunt together—the Purity Ball was always a day she could count on her dad being there for her. Otherwise, Theodore was a very busy man.
In this way, Chastity was jealous of her cousin Rosemary. Uncle Lionel had no interest whatsoever in the more religious traditions of the family.
Over time, Chastity started to hate the Purity Ball. Especially as she grew older and desired nothing more than to raise hell with her friends and chase boys. But every year until she was 18, she put up with this promise to remain celibate, just to keep her daddy happy.
The rest of the year she did nothing but cause her mother heartache by staying out all night, drinking, dancing and not giving two licks about school. She still never dared to have actual sex, however. A glowering, judgmental daddy can still hold that power over a girl for a long, long time.
Instead, her outlet took the form of drawing and illustrating her own comics, which she secretly published on an anonymous blog. She had exactly 65 adoring fans and counting.
And now, here she was, doing a bona fide walk of shame. Except she wasn’t sure where she was walking from or walking to.
She was grateful for one thing right now about her strict debutante upbringing: learning to walk in high heels with ease. She may not have her sunglasses, she may not have a working phone. Chas may have been hungry, thirsty, and barely function under the weight of a raging hangover. But it was a gorgeous June morning, and no inaugural walk of shame was going to make this girl stumble down the streets of New Orleans like a drunk-ass hussy. She was a good girl, dammit.
Well, not really. But she had manners. On the way out of that apartment, she had come across this mysterious guy’s shirt and motorcycle boots on the stairs. She knew instantly they were his, they had his scent all over them. She had brought them back up and neatly placed them on the mat in front of his door.
She came to a street corner and looked up at the signs. She was at Freret and Upperline. Now she just needed a coffee and some juice for her phone, and she could call Rosemary’s driver for a ride back to the mansion.
“First, coffee,” she said aloud, spying a funky little storefront with an incredible aroma wafting out through the door, catching her at just the right moment.
She plopped down her daddy’s platinum on the counter with confidence. Theodore may be a prude and weirdly obsessed with protecting her virtue, but damn if his money didn’t come in handy whenever she was in a bind in New Orleans.
Chas glanced around the place. There were band posters on the walls, tattooed and pierced customers sipping small cups of very black coffee. The music playing over the speakers sounded to her not at all like the jazz and blues she would hear at any of her favorite spots in the French Quarter. Where in the hell was she? Was she even in New Orleans at all? Well, soon she’d be caffed up and juiced up enough to find out. And then, wafting in and out of the coffee aroma was something else. She could nearly taste the rejuvenating shot of caffeine already. And, there was something familiar among all of the unfamiliar things that surrounded her. A scent. A man’s scent.
Her breath caught in her throat and her heart rate picked up. This scent was triggering a memory. It was him. The same scent that was stuck to her skin.
Chas closed her eyes for the briefest of seconds. She saw tanned flesh, pressed against her bare breasts. She could almost feel her face nuzzling against a man’s neck. It was a brown-haired, bearded man. It was G. He felt so close and real when she closed her eyes, it overshadowed anything that had happened at Rosemary’s bachelorette party. Had there been a stripper? Maybe. Burlesque show? Likely. Comedy show? Bar hopping? Probably. It all seemed like an insignificant dream compared to the passionate hours that had followed, and not just because of the alcohol. She popped open her eyes and looked around but did not see anybody who resembled this G from her photos or her memory. But G was definitely here, or had been here recently.
Then she realized the barista, a female with dyed white hair and ice-blue eyeshadow, was staring at her quizzically. “Ma’am, this card has been declined.”
Chas blinked herself back to reality.
“Excuse me? What does that mean, declined?” Batting her eyelashes and playing dumb usually worked. Evidently, this did not work on college-age students with no interest in getting her coffee.
“Declined? It means I’m supposed to call…”
Chas snatched away the card and ran out. No fucking way was anybody calling the credit card company.
But now she was back on the street with no coffee and no money.
There was nothing for her to do but close her eyes and try to find that scent again. G’s scent.
Finishing school, beauty pageants and high teas will not teach a girl how to follow the scent of a man. So it was a good thing she had one other thing nobody could take away: the animal instincts of a wildcat that never really left her when she was in her human form.
Chas was going to find her man.
And then, she was gonna slap him upside the head for getting himself a coffee and not getting any for her.
Chapter 4
Gavin, 9 a.m.
“Ash, you seem like you’ve already had enough coffee for ten people.”
Ash nodded as he strode into their favorite coffee shop on Freret. “I have.”
The young barista behind the counter said, “Oh goody. A Boudreaux and a shirtless dude.”
She seemed more sarcastic than overjoyed to see the shop’s most frequent customer and biggest tipper.
Gavin ordered himself a large black coffee with an extra shot of espresso.
The barista cocked her head. “Red eye?”
Gavin stared back at her. He did not know technical names for coffee. He knew technical things about tattooing and that was about it. “Sure,” he said. “That.”
The barista sighed audibly and got to fixing his beverage. He and Ash scanned the place and there was no sign of Bobby. “Hey, darlin’, you seen Bobby in here this morning?”
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bsp; She stared. “No. And I told you to stop calling me that.”
Ash looked hurt. “Darlin’, all I did was call you darlin’, ’cause you are a darlin’!”
Gavin grunted. “Ash, come on, let’s go.” His friend may be a modern fellow, but his manners needed some work.
Ash persisted by opening up his phone and showing her a photo of Bobby. “You do remember him, don’t you? Reddish hair, tall? Boyish good looks.”
The barista sighed. “I heard you were getting married. Are you marrying Bobby, because you sound pretty sweet on him.”
Ash puffed up his chest. “And so what if I am?”
Gavin had half a mind to bolt and abandon his friend, but then he had a brain storm. His phone. Shit, of course!
He quickly took it out and opened the photo app. But no dice. No photographic evidence in his phone of last night’s girl whatsoever. Not a single selfie. On one hand, maybe that was a good thing, as it cut the chances by half that there might be compromising photos of himself out on social media without his knowledge. But who could say what last night’s partner was like?
Still, he had a good feeling about her, and believed she couldn’t be too far away. He ordered a coffee for her, whoever she was.
Then Gavin texted her as he waited and while Ash continued to banter with the unamused barista.
“I got you a coffee. I’m just guessing here, but I’m assuming you like lattes? I got you one with whole milk. I hope I guessed right. You seem like a whole milk kind of girl, I don’t know why.”
He finally dragged Ash out of there and left a large tip for the barista.
“Listen, man,” Gavin said when they were out on the street. “Bobby can take care of himself. Leave it alone. Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the brunch today at the mansion?”
Ash laughed. “Dude, I showered like two hours ago, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. I do need to make sure Bobby’s at the brunch, and also Vann. We were all supposed to sleep at my place last night and go over to the mansion together. Including you, nitwit. I can make excuses for Vann. People will excuse celebrities for just about anything. But the rest of you are making it pretty damn hard to keep me in good graces with this family.”
