by Abby Knox
Bobby looked around again and homed in on her. There Penny was, chatting with some blond trust fund case with a preppy haircut, on the other side of the dance floor. She was laughing and looked as if she was having a grand old time. Jealousy reared its head.
Maybe he could not have Penny, but he’d be damned if he was going to let her hook up with some spoiled, old-money brat she just met at this wedding.
Unrequited love was a bitch.
Watching her flit around like a social butterfly in a silver ball gown like a damn princess, flirting with the social elite and looking stunning, was beyond a bitch. It was the absolute fucking worst.
Chapter 3
Penny
Penny was nodding and smiling and politely laughing on the outside.
On the inside, she was absolutely trembling with lust.
Not for the guy in front of her. This blond haircut was clearly on the lookout for birthing hips and a submissive, passive female to take home to his rich daddy to get his parents off his ass about one poor life choice or another.
No, she was trembling with lust for Bobby.
She had thought tonight would be the night.
She had thought he would make his move; but so far, he hadn’t.
As she listened to the blond boy tell the thunderingly boring story about deciding whether to buy a sailboat or a speedboat—a sailboat has class and beauty, but a speedboat has a big advantage: “It’s right there in the name, hahaha!” he was saying—Penny could feel Bobby’s eyes on her bare back. She knew he was watching her, as sure as she had memorized how he looked: dashing in his morning suit, the sunshine lighting up his auburn mane of hair, his shirt was unbuttoned down to mid chest, his bow tie hanging loose. Her throat dried up at the thought of that chest.
Bobby was not what you would call slim. He had the chest of a lumberjack. He ate like a lumberjack, too, never could turn down a dinner at JB Chicken, probably never ate a salad in his life. He was broad and strong and physically imposing. He was the biggest of all the shapeshifting wolves in their little pack, and also the best-looking one, in Penny’s opinion.
Good-looking was an understatement. He was a god. He was big, hot and deeply burned into her soul. No, not burned. Welded.
These thoughts teased her lady bits to life as sailboat/speedboat guy droned on. “And then Dad took one look at my vessel and said, ‘Son, you’ll have to take sailing lessons.’ As if I’d be steering the boat myself! Isn’t that hilarious?”
Penny was laughing and nodding but ready to explode. She was of a mind to tell this spoiled brat in front of her to fuck off, but as she owned a small business that relied on rich clients—which was how she’d met Rosemary DuChamps—Penny had to live her life making nice with the upper class. She genuinely loved Rosemary, but most of the time, she wanted to dropkick these silly rich people.
One thing she never had to worry about was putting on a good face for the wolf pack. They had been friends since middle school, where she and Bobby had first bonded at a field trip to Ashton’s daddy’s flagship restaurant, JB Chicken. After the tour from Jimmy Boudreaux himself, the class was treated to a massive spread. She and Bobby had fought over the chicken neck, while most of the rest of the class had stared, aghast.
Turns out, that was one way the Boudreauxs determined which school children were wolves, ergo kids they could trust to be around their son, Ashton. That field trip was one of the happier memories.
After nearly 15 years of friendship, her stomach still did a little flip every time she caught him staring at her.
She knew the physical side of their relationship was like a ticking time bomb. After what they had been through together as children, there was just no way they could be together without all the painful memories resurfacing.
Penny could still see the scared, brooding look in his eye at parties when nobody else was paying attention. He put up a good front. He took care of everyone. Everyone but himself.
She suddenly felt silly in this dress. She felt awkward around all of her beautiful new feline shapeshifter friends—panthers, wildcats, and who knows what else—who had mated with her wolf pals.
She was the lone member of the wedding party who had not found someone to go into a closet with to make out tonight.
It was definitely not going to be sailboat guy.
Nothing and nobody could compare to Bobby. She turned and caught a glimpse in her peripheral vision. There he was, alone at the table on the deck of the boat, his chest and hair and oozing masculinity just out there for everyone to see.
He’s going home with somebody tonight, even if it’s not me. He could take his pick of any one of Rosemary’s hellcat cousins or nieces. Or aunts for that matter. They had all been staring at him all damn day.
She turned some more and sipped her Cosmo, and watched Bobby fingering the maraschino cherry in his low ball glass. He looked every bit as glowering and tempting as he could possibly look. Weirdly, Lionel DuChamps was walking away. She wondered what on earth those two . Guys and booze, they’ll always find something to talk about. She had a good mind to go over there, grab his cherry stem, and do something dirty with it in her mouth. And follow it up with unspeakable things involving her mouth and Bobby’s other…stem.
Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. Penny turned to blond sailboat guy and patted him on the shoulder. “It was lovely speaking to you. Good luck with the rape charges.”
He reared back, confused. “I don’t have any rape charges.”
As she walked away, she said over her shoulder, “You probably will before the night’s over.”
Chapter 4
Bobby
He watched in surprise as Penny flounced—there was no other way she could have moved in that giant, hoop-skirted, over-the-top bridesmaid dress other than to flounce—over to his table and asked, “Why didn’t you ask me to dance?”
Bobby looked up, confused. “Excuse me?” Penny’s chest was flushed. She was nervous. Her energy was making the hairs on his arm stand on end, but in a good way. His inner beast was telling him to grab her and get to humping. Right away.
Instead, he let her continue saying what she had to say.
“You know that I love that song more than I love most people on this earth, and yet here you are. Sulking.”
“I ain’t sulking, I’m brooding, Penny,” he said with a sulk.
Penny huffed and rolled her eyes. “I was trapped in the corner listening to that blond haircut yammer on about speedboat engines, for fuck’s sake. I was throwing up the bat signal like my life depended on it—for you to come over with some fake emergency—where were you?”
Bobby sneered. “I don’t know, you looked like you were having a pretty good time without me. Besides, I was talking to Lionel, and I thought he was gonna kick my ass for the way we nabbed him this morning to get him to the ceremony.”
She glared and crossed her arms. She wasn’t buying it. Holy shit, she was sexy when she was mad at him. Her eyes flashed and her ears were red. He really wanted to grab her shoulders and suck those hot little earlobes.
“I don’t know what is up your ass, but you better pull it out,” she said, but it barely registered with Bobby, who was examining her dress to determine which was the quickest way to pull it off of her body.
Then, a commotion interrupted her speech and she turned to look. The bride and groom, Ash and Rosemary, were leaving the reception, and everyone was forming a human tunnel to send them off with bubbles, bird seed, and, of course, Mardi Gras bead necklaces.
Penny sighed and reached out her hand. “Come on, time to say goodbye to the happy couple and then we can get out of here and take a break from each other.”
Bobby took her hand, and electricity shot through him at her touch.
They joined the long lineup to wish Ash and Rosemary safe travels on their honeymoon. Without warning, and probably because he was slightly plastered, Ash picked up Rosemary and slung her over his shoulder, caveman style. His signature
move. Everyone laughed. Bobby was so bound up with frustration and angst and jealousy, he was on the verge of tossing Penny over his shoulder, too.
Chapter 5
Penny
She felt her heart pang a little bit. She was far too tall to be carried around like that by most men. And besides, she would never let herself be so undignified in public…but just one time, she might like Bobby to sweep her off her feet without notice. To put all of their baggage aside and just grab her up in his arms and take her to bed.
Maybe it would ruin their friendship. But it probably wouldn’t.
As Penny instinctively scanned the crowd, she noticed something was wrong. Wrong in the air, in the scents that were present. Her wolf senses took over and she set aside her melancholy feelings for the moment. GiGi and Vann were missing, but their scents were still on board. Word around the boat was those two were holed up below deck, making up for lost time with each other as Vann had recently returned from a television shoot overseas.
But then, also missing were Chastity and Gavin, the other remaining members of the bridal party. Chastity was Rosemary’s cousin from Baton Rouge who had gotten so drunk at the bachelorette party, she was dancing on Bobby’s bar. Gavin had paired up with her at the end of that night and that’s as much as Penny knew or cared to know about it. But Chastity and Gavin were not just missing from the human tunnel and shirking their bridal party responsibilities.
Their scent is not even on this boat, she thought.
Penny sniffed the air again. Something else canine was in the air though. Actually, full canine, not shapeshifter canine.
Has someone brought their service dog to this wedding?
But no, that wasn’t it. It was a disturbed, determined energy.
After Rosemary and Ash had disembarked the riverboat and hopped into the classic car to speed off to the hotel, Penny turned to Bobby. “Take a whiff. Gavin’s not here on the boat. He left.”
Bobby looked around and sniffed. “You’re right. Think he sneaked away with that chick from Baton Rouge?”
Penny shook her head. “I don’t know, but I think we’d better find out.”
Again Bobby took Penny’s hand and sparks seared into her.
His stare warmed her soul. Bobby’s eyes came to life again, now that he didn’t have to talk about himself.
And then, looking down at the dock, they watched as a stray Labrador retriever was running toward them. Its eyes were locked on to the two of them and then it stopped short of the gangway and started barking right at Bobby and Penny. And it looked filthy and its fur was matted. It was clearly a stray dog off the street.
“What the hell?” Bobby muttered.
Penny turned to her friend. “I think he wants us to follow him.”
Her paws were light on the earth, her eyes trained on the stray Lab, as they all ran full tilt, like they’d never run before.
Penny’s coppery fur stood on end, knowing she was headed straight into trouble. The air in New Orleans on that June day was virtually pea soup, but the matter at hand had the wolf friends speeding along as if the wind was at their back. As if they were together on a hunt in the woods, carefree and fierce.
The wolves were anything but carefree at the moment—she was certain she and Bobby were not going to like what they would find at the end of this scent trail—but part of her was happy to be running beside her dearest friend again.
The wild, boisterous hunts in the woods, lakes and swamps had taken a backseat these last few months. A lot of wedding drama had taken over their lives. The normally life-giving hunts had become a quick inconvenience every full moon, only to be squeezed in between dress fittings and endless wedding-related parties. There was another inconvenience: with all the pairings-off lately between wolf shifters and feline shifters—that would be Rosemary’s people—the monthly hunts were including more and more participants. Outsiders were working their way into the pack. Penny was trying to keep an open mind, but it was hard.
She loved Rosemary, so she had to keep an open mind. Last January she had become a client at Penny’s design studio, and the two of them hit it off immediately. They liked each other so much they even worked through their differences in their packs. Rosemary was a shape-shifting panther, and Penny was a shapeshifting wolf. But Penny figured if her pack mate, Ash, could overcome the fact that his true love was a shifter of an entirely different species, so could Penny.
She had even grown to accept Rosemary’s cousin GiGi, grudgingly, after she’d morphed into a panther and accidentally injured Penny’s wolf pack member Vann.
Penny had told herself to just deal. Because why bother living in New Orleans if you could not be free to love who you loved, or could not throw a party at every turn for no reason?
But the wedding was over now. There would be no more chatter about flowers or dresses or place settings. Penny was simply running beside her best friend Bobby and not talking.
It was primal and perfect.
She had discarded her gigantic silver bridesmaid’s dress in a lonely, crumbling cemetery on the edge of downtown. She and Bobby had hidden there to quickly shift from their human to wolf forms. Funnily enough, Penny noticed before they sprinted away that her dress was entangled with Bobby’s custom-tailored morning suit on the ground among the tombs. The two garments looked like they were getting the kind of action Penny and Bobby should have been enjoying.
But for now, she put the thought of bedding down with Bobby out of her head. Chas and Gavin were missing and likely in trouble.
When this was over and all her friends were safe, Penny decided, she was not going to waste any more time wondering when Bobby was going to come around.
She was done watching everyone else fall in love. She was going to fix this thing between them, once and for all.
Chapter 6
Bobby
He should be nailing Penny right now, he thought, as they ran toward danger.
But he had blown it. At the reception, he’d had his chance to ask Penny to dance to her favorite song, and he hadn’t. When the band had struck up “No Woman, No Cry,” Bobby had looked up from his glass of straight-up aged Kentucky bourbon and thought he saw Penny glance briefly in his direction.
He should have taken that as a signal right there.
Instead, he had sat and brooded. And then got sidelined completely by old man DuChamps.
Wasting time. It was what he was good at. Bobby was the ring leader, chief party thrower, the least serious of all of them, but it was all a diversion. He had been in love with Penny LeFleur since middle school, and now literally everyone else in the pack was paired off with somebody, except them.
As he and Penny ran, led by the stray yellow Lab up Bourbon Street, he knew exactly what was holding him back. But he had no time for the therapy he needed to get past their childhood trauma. He was too busy spending his life making sure everyone’s drinks were full and the music was turned up.
It seemed neither Penny nor Bobby had remembered to care about all the gasps and screams and stares from humans watching the two wolves barreling through the streets of New Orleans. As far as Bobby was concerned, it was kind of a relief to have a mission to focus on other than kicking himself over romance.
Just when he thought maybe that filthy stray Lab had lost the scent, it turned down an alleyway and stopped.
Bobby looked up and realized they were in the alley behind Gavin’s shop, Howlin G’s tattoo parlor.
He recalled Gavin mentioning he was leaving his employee, Manny, in charge of the shop for a few days while the wedding activities were ramping up.
From the alley, Bobby heard muffled whines. His fur stood on end, this time in a very bad way.
He went to the door, but it was shut. Without opposable thumbs, there was no way he could open the door. But if he shifted back into human form, he would risk being too sapped of energy to shift back, and if there was real danger in there, then he would need to be at full strength. As a wolf, he was more power
ful than three ’roid-raging body-builders.
He looked at Penny, and she understood. She checked the entry points to the alley; there was nobody around but the two of them and the Lab. She shifted back into human form and opened the back door, slowly and silently. Stark naked, of course.
Yep. There was the object of his lust, his best friend, the love of his life, the person he thought about when he woke up and last thing before he slept, standing right there, naked. Bobby being Bobby, he had to kick himself to stay focused. He would not be Bobby if he didn’t sneak a peek. He could still see the indentations in her skin from her corset contraption that she’d worn under that ridiculous dress all day. The sight of those tender red lines made Bobby want to shift, scoop Penny up and softly, slowly run his tongue over her aches, tracing kisses down her rib cage, across her sweet belly and reminding her she never had the need for a corset.
“No female of mine is allowed to wear a medieval torture device to hide her perfect body ever again,” he would say, just before diving into her folds with his tongue while stroking her long, soft thighs. He couldn’t help it. The sight of her naked made his pulse pound and his skin crackle with life. How could it not?
Bobby grudgingly led Penny and the stray Lab into the back room of the tattoo parlor.
There was an open box of promotional tee-shirts in the small storage room, so Penny helped herself. Bobby was not thrilled to see her cover herself up again, but who could blame her?
Soon enough, he’d get her naked again. And hopefully their sordid history wouldn’t crop up to ruin the moment.
Looking around the nooks and crannies of the storage room, Bobby and Penny found something extremely strange. There was an altar to some unfamiliar idol, with flowers and candles. There was a jar of moonshine. There was a weird, dusty old book laid open next to the altar. Its pages had strange diagrams and pictures that Bobby did not recognize. Not that he was much of a book person. Penny whispered, “Nobody leaves a grimoire lying open unless they’re in the process of spell-casting.”
