by Abby Knox
What could a gentleman do but acquiescence?
Her lips were all over his face and her hands and legs climbed him like a cat climbing a tree. “As much as I love your urgency, Chastity, I want to go slow this time and remember everything.”
Gavin took in every ounce of her, every pore, every breath. He buried his face in her wild mane of black hair and inhaled her scent until it was burned even deeper into his soul. When her dark eyes closed in ecstasy at his touch, he seared her exquisite face into his brain. Her sighs melded with his breath. Her breasts pressed into his grip as her breathing grew ragged. He savored the taste of her mouth. Her nails dug into his back, harder with every thrust into her. Chastity was the wrong name for her.
“You’re a wild one, you are.”
She smiled like a feline demon and clamped her sex hard around his shaft.
“Oh my god,” he moaned. She sent electricity all the way up his spine.
“I am a wild one,” she said. “And now I’m also free.”
He claimed her with his mouth and found her clit with this thumb.
She gasped. “Gavin!”
When she tilted her head back, he got a better view of her hickey. “Do you remember if I made you come last night?”
She groaned out with the rhythmic massage he was giving her lady business. “I wish I could remember. Doesn’t matter. All that matters now is that I’m free in your arms. I’m not worried about what anybody thinks anymore.”
“Baby, I don’t imagine you were ever worried about that.”
She giggled, then nipped at Gavin’s neck.
“I feel like it’s all clear now. I was never meant to live this life in pristine, oversized palaces. We were meant to be together. I’m so happy I found you.”
He kissed her deeply and slowly, exploring her sweet mouth with his tongue as he worked between her folds with more intensity, thrusting his cock into her with more urgency.
“I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”
She was beyond words now. Words were totally replaced by her frantic moans. She gave him such pleasure knowing he could do this to her and her alone for the rest of his life. He had had no one else before her and there would never be anyone else. Nobody could tell him that the wolves can’t mix with others, because if this felt so perfect, it could not be wrong. The pull of pure animal instinct could not be wrong.
The ultimate primal force took hold of them both, as Gavin joined Chas in an orgasm that saw them both howling, roaring and yet somehow letting go of all the barriers that defined them.
“Nothing separates us now,” he whispered as Chas came down off the mountaintop. “Nothing.”
Chapter 11
Chas
The purple dress would have to do. If it was good enough for her to wear as a bridesmaid to Rosemary’s wedding, it would be good enough to serve the same purpose at her own modest ceremony.
She didn’t care about the color. Why not get married in purple?
And as her uptight parents had basically disowned her when she and Gavin privately announced their engagement to them at Rosemary and Ash’s reception — not wanting to steal any thunder from the bride and groom — Chas certainly wasn’t going to get her dream wedding anyway. May as well take advantage of a $6,000 ballgown. Why let it go to waste?
It’s not that Chas hadn’t enjoyed every last detail of her cousin Rosemary’s amaze-balls New Orleans riverboat wedding. She had, and Rosemary and Ash were the most gorgeous and happy couple she’d ever seen.
It was as perfect and as imperfect as it should have been. Everyone was a little tipsy by the time the ceremony rolled around, because the bridal party had extended the cocktail hour into two hours while the groomsmen executed their plan to get Uncle Lionel to the ceremony.
When the ceremony finally took place, it was not officiated by a Catholic priest. This came as a surprise to Aunt Betsy, a strict Roman Catholic—and to everyone else who had witnessed a Roman Catholic priest rehearse with the bridal party just the night before. Instead, the officiant has been replaced with a genuine New Orleans voodoo priestess—a “Bomba”—as well as a justice of the peace, just to make it legal.
Rosemary had informed Chas, later on, that the switch-a-roo was all Ash’s doing, as the priestess was a personal friend of his. Ash had paid off the priest to go away by making a huge donation to some underfunded convent.
When Gavin had taken Chas’s arm in his to walk up the aisle, wearing that tailored suit, hair neatly combed into a man-bun, his beard freshly trimmed, Chas thought he looked like a movie star.
It was thrilling to see all the last-minute surprises that the couple had included. But they weren’t the only ones with surprises up their sleeves. When the justice of the peace had asked if anyone had any reason why this couple should not be joined in marriage, everyone held their breath when Uncle Lionel stood up.
But instead of saying what everybody thought he would say, it went in a slightly different direction. But that would be another story for Uncle Lionel to tell for himself.
After all this excitement, Chas was ready for the wedding drama to end and for her new life with Gavin to start. On the dance floor, during the reception, she and Gavin could not keep their hands off each other.
As they slow danced, Gavin had decided to torture her by whispering seriously dirty things in her ear.
“I never told anybody this, but ballgowns make me so horny. I’m gonna suck the juice out of you while you’re still wearing it.”
When Chas could take no more, she finally said, “Big boy, you better make that happen right now because I don’t think I can wait until we get back to our apartment.”
She indeed could not wait, and neither could he.
Chapter 12
Gavin
Just as he’d promised he would while he’d whispered in her ear on the dance floor, Gavin was now fulfilling one of his sexual fantasies he had never dared tell anyone.
But maybe it wasn’t so weird to dream about eating out his girl while she wore a ballgown. Maybe that was normal. He didn’t much care for normal, so fuck it.
As soon as Chas had told him to take her right there during the reception, they had gone on a hunt all over that damn riverboat for a private place to get dirty. Hilariously, they had opened a broom closet only to come across his buddy Vann and Chas’s other cousin, GiGi.
They had finally found an empty bathroom on the lower deck that had a separate lounge area with a small settee. It was a pretty damn fancy riverboat. One heavy armchair pushed against the door to keep it closed, and they were in business.
Turns out, giving oral pleasure underneath that ballgown was just as hot as Gavin had always imagined. His fingers gripped the top of her thigh-high stockings as he knelt in front of her. Her crinolines and silk that got in the way just made it all that much better, serving as a reminder of how inappropriate it was to be shoving his face in someone’s pussy in the middle of a wedding reception. Damn. This was working for him. The garter belts and thong and all the other contraptions he had to push out of his way to access her sweet lady bits were no match for his hunger. Holy shit, she became hotter, sweeter and more wet with every nip, every squeeze. He could not believe how lucky he was to own this delicious female for as long as he wanted. And he wanted forever.
“Gavin, nobody’s ever done this to me before. I’m so happy it’s you. I can’t tell you how good this feels, how right this is.”
She was not mistaken. The lips between her legs were made for his kisses. His tongue.
His hands were built for creating beautiful art, but nothing he had ever drawn could compare with how beautiful she was between her legs. He smiled as he brought her all the way through the roof, arching her back with spasms of bliss. He wondered for a moment if she would be opposed to him tattooing an image of her pussy somewhere on himself. It may be a ridiculous idea. But weren’t they already pretty ridiculous?
Chapter 13
After ditching the
end of the reception—they’d stayed long enough for a piece of GiGi’s amazing cake—Chas and Gavin held hands as they drove to the tattoo shop. They were both exhausted and happy and satisfied. But Chas really wanted to change out of her ballgown now.
“You don’t have to stay at my tiny apartment for the rest of your stay in New Orleans. I can get you a hotel room if you don’t want to go back to your uncle’s place. I’ll get your luggage,” Gavin said.
Chas chided him. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m moving in.”
Gavin frowned a bit and said, “Babe, you’ve seen my place. I don’t have room for all your clothes in my closet. I assume.”
She laughed. “No, you don’t. But fuck that. Mama and Daddy can keep all my shit. I’m starting over. I’m moving in, getting a job, going to art school and living with you above the Pho Palace.”
“Well, babe, you can’t wear that dress to work at the tattoo parlor, you’ll scare the customers. Fortunately, I also sell clothes.”
At the tattoo shop, which Gavin had closed for the day even though it was Saturday, he was surprised to see Manny there.
“Dude, what’s up? Hey, it’s a good thing you’re here, ’cause we need to talk. Remember yesterday when I asked you if you’d seen me in here the night of the bachelor party? Why did you lie? And why did you lie to her?”
But Manny was staring creepily at them in the dark.
“Because my plan didn’t work.”
Gavin’s stomach suddenly tied into a knot. And then the truth started to dawn. A memory came back. The needles. When he and Chas were drunkenly getting prepped for their matching tattoos, Manny had said something like, “Here, boss, use these needles, I just cleaned ’em.”
“Manny? What did you do?”
Manny scoffed. “You know what I did. I saw all of you and your panther hussies at the bar. You know the clans are not supposed to mix. I did what I had to do.”
“You poisoned us? How?” Gavin was dumbstruck.
Manny laughed. “You’re so naïve, man. Keeping the clan pure is all I talk about. You should have known to be careful around me. I put a hex on the ink so you would lose control and turn on each other. So you would show yourself to her and then the wolf would do to the cat what a wolf is supposed to do.”
Chastity laughed out loud. “That voodoo stuff isn’t real! And for the last time, I’m from Baton Rouge! I’m a wildcat! Remember, asshole?”
Manny pointed a finger at her.
“You think you’re a shapeshifter but that voodoo isn’t real? I bind you, little girl.”
And with that, Chas sat down in a nearby chair, as if being pushed down by an invisible force.
Gavin felt the knot in his stomach grow to a full blown urge to kill Manny with his bare hands, but at the same moment, Manny was faster. Gavin’s arms and legs were not responding, but moving as if controlled by magic.
“Gav, buddy, just because you hired a wolf doesn’t mean you hired a friend. If you want to prevent a dark practitioner from coming in to your space and using the magics to protect the clan, then you really are not seeing the big picture. It’s too bad the hallucinogens didn’t work on you two, but this is better. It will be so much more of a tragic story. The chaste debutante of Baton Rouge and her forbidden lover found dead in murder-suicide pact.”
“You’re demented,” Gavin spat out.
“And you’re almost dead,” Manny said. “You won’t listen to reason, and spells don’t seem to work. So now I do what I have to do. Say your goodbyes, lovebirds.”
Gavin watched helplessly as Manny sauntered over to Chastity, who was struggling to move away from him, fighting against invisible restraints. Manny pulled out a .22 pistol from inside his leather vest. He pressed the cold steel against her temple, then traced it down toward the lower back side of her skull. She whimpered and tears fell as she made eye contact with Gavin. Gavin grunted and kicked against the invisible restraints.
“Don’t worry,” Manny said, his voice flat with the tone of a sociopath. “I’ll make it quick.”
Gavin finally stopped his fighting and snarling and just stared into Chastity’s eyes with as much tenderness as he could muster. He did not want her last memory to be of him acting like a mad, caged animal.
If this was going to be their last moment on earth, he wanted her to feel calm and loved. Gavin could lay Manny flat as a pancake in a fair fight. But this was not a fair fight, and unless the voodoo spell wore off soon, this was the end of everything.
Chas looked back at him and seemed to understand. Gavin and Chas shared their last moment together by making it their own. They both understood that no matter what happened, there was no Manny, there was no pistol, and there was no invisible magic holding them apart. It was just them, and that in the end, that’s all that mattered.
And then, something strange crossed over Chas’s face.
It started with a smile.
Gavin was not sure what this meant, but he was sure of one thing:
He had hope.
The End
Epilogue
Ten years later
Chastity
Chastity was overwhelmed.
The new house was taking too long to be built. The tattoo shop — which now also housed a comic book store to showcase Chastity’s art — was too much to handle on her own, but Gavin was taking his time as usual with an indecisive client. Just as she was getting settled in to drawing a new comic, she had to leave the shop and go pick up the kids from school.
Their oldest was approaching middle school age, and they had begun to talk about whether to home school her until they figured out what kind of shifter she would become once she hit puberty.
On top of all that, Chastity was seven months pregnant with their second baby and obviously could not drink. Gavin had given up drinking and any other recreational drugs completely, going total straight edge for the sake of their family and the family business
After all the trouble that drugs and alcohol had caused in the formation of their relationship, it seemed like a no-brainer.
Right now, though, Chastity really wanted a drink.
Her solace was Gavin himself. He was a fantastic husband and father. Her other was her art. She was just settling in to sketch a new character when she heard an alarm sound. It was Gavin’s phone.
“Oh, it’s time to pick up Cory from school, babe.”
“I know it is,” she smirked.
Gavin smiled over at her. “Well, are you gonna go, or do I have to piss off a paying customer right now?”
She cocked her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Gavin’s smile fell and he shook his head. “Nothing.”
Chastity arched an eyebrow at her husband. “No, do go on with your super-important self. I’m curious why money is the major concern here and not my art.”
Gavin put down the binder of tribal tattoos he was showing his client and rubbed his hand over his face. “Fine.” Then he turned to the client. “I’m sorry. We’re going to need a minute to get some stuff done here. Come back tonight and I’ll give you 50% off.”
The client shrugged and obligingly dashed out, obviously not wanting to get in the middle of a marital crisis.
Gavin locked up the shop and grabbed his keys. Before he headed out the back door to dash down the street to Cory’s school, he marched over to Chastity’s art easel and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“I’m gonna make this work. I promise.” He planted a kiss on Chastity that surprised her and set fire to her cotton panties.
She was kind of hoping this meant he would call a grandparent or a car to pick up Cory from school so they could have some alone time, because she was suddenly very turned on.
Alas, Gavin had only meant that Chastity could keep working on her art for the rest of the afternoon while he took care of Cory.
They would have plenty of time tonight for her to say thank you. And when the new house was built and they could all move out of Gavin’s small wa
lk-up apartment above the pho restaurant, there would be even more space to make their own. As it was currently, they often waited until Cory was visiting her second cousins at the lake house to have sex.
Chas could not wait to get out of this apartment, get this baby out, and get her body back.
Gavin
“You heard me right.”
The general contractor stared aghast at Gavin. “Do you know what you’re asking? I would need to triple my crew and work through the night.”
Gavin was deadly serious. “Make it happen.”
The contractor nodded, then got on the horn.
Gavin and Cory hoofed it back home to do her homework. She slipped her adorable preteen hand in his. “Daddy, can they really get the house done in five days?”
Gavin smiled. He loved it that Cory didn’t feel too old or cool to hold hands with him or to call him Daddy.
“They better, because your Uncle Ash has already put up the money to make it happen.”
“I hope you haven’t promised Mom this, because you know she’s going to make heads roll if you tell her about this and don’t deliver.”
Gavin hugged her from the side as they walked. “That she will. But our time in Phuket last week sort of got me thinking. I need to take more leaps of faith that things are going to work out. We have to make them happen, but there’s no need to freak out about the unknown.”
“Gavin Weisshunt, tattoo artist, philosopher.”
Gavin piped in, “And don’t forget, maker of the world’s meanest Belgian waffles.”
Cory cleared her throat awkwardly. “Well, as long as Auntie GiGi’s strawberry sauce is on top, then yes, the meanest.”
