Chasing The Night: Big Easy Shifters: Book Three

by Knox, Abby

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Gavin.”

  Chapter Ten

  Gavin

  It wasn’t the best opening line. Or, more accurately, re-opening line. They had already done the deed—or some type of deeds—and were well acquainted with each other, even if each of their memories weren’t clear.

  But she must have been okay with that, because the next second she was climbing on top of him and kissing his mouth like they were long-lost lovers newly reunited.

  Which, he guessed, they technically were.

  Gavin closed his eyes as she kissed him, and everything came flooding back.

  * * *

  Gavin had helped her down from the bar where she’d been dancing when Bobby was angrily yelling at her to get down.

  She slurred something to Gavin along the lines of, “Hey handsome, I’m gonna be straight with you. I’m a virgin and I don’t wanna be a virgin anymore. You in or you out?”

  He stammered, “Uh…yep! Same!”

  She laughed and looked him up and down. “Nice try, beefcake. You get points for trying to make me feel less awkward. Listen, if I don’t escape my cousins now, I will turn into a pumpkin at midnight, and my uncle will lock me up tight as a drum after that.”

  Gavin had decided not to quibble over the fact that the time was hours after midnight. In minutes they had been up the street, and he was showing her the inside of his tattoo parlor. Manny was closing up and looked surly as usual. He did not seem impressed by Chastity, nor by Gavin, come to think of it. Eventually, Manny disappeared into the back room, presumably to take care of some last-minute chores and to clock out before hitting the alley where his car was parked. Gavin and Chastity sat in the parlor and talked for a good long while. She had thanked him for springing her from the watchful eyes of her cousins. They talked about careers and about how she had none. She wanted to be an illustrator, but her daddy wanted to send her to an all-girl Bible college to keep her on the “straight and narrow.” She showed him her blog, where she’d posted incredible works of art in charcoal, pencil, acrylics, all forms of media. She told him her life story as a sheltered Southern debutante; he told her his story about growing up being homeschooled by Ash’s parents from middle school until the age of 17.

  Eventually, they had come around to the subject of their supernatural conditions. As they were both drunk, they had no inhibitions about it. He remembered both of them being so excited to learn this about each other—that she was a shape-shifting panther and he was a shape-shifting wolf—and then they had kissed for the first time. It had been instant fireworks. And they both knew it. And then they had decided to get matching tattoos. How he had managed to do one on his own hip, he’d never know. At that point, Manny had popped his head out of the backroom and said something, but Gavin didn’t remember what it was. He did have other pressing issues, such as pressing his lips against Chastity’s.

  After the tattoos were finished, they’d gone up the street, and he showed her the inside of his shabby walk-up apartment above the Pho Palace.

  If Gavin had been thinking ahead, he would have ordered some takeout from that place as a precaution. The best hangover cure in the world was an extra-hot bowl of pho.

  He remembered taking off his shirt and boots on the way up the stairs to his apartment, but he didn’t know why. He didn’t know why his drunk ass did a lot of things.

  And after that, it was a blur of lips, and damp, sweaty skin. Breasts. The smell of her hair. The sweetness of her sex. The delicious friction of their bodies. His hands climbing up her legs and taking hold of her ass, careful not to rub the bandage off her tattoo. And then, the shift. Both of them had shifted. He into a wolf, she into a panther. He’d gotten away, but not before she’d taken a bite out of him. It wasn’t a big bite, and it would heal quickly, especially as magic was coursing through him. But there was blood, and some of it had spilled onto the sheets.

  * * *

  Gavin came crashing back to reality. He was here, with her, in broad daylight, in the fanciest bedroom he’d ever seen. His head was clear, and he could see in her eyes that hers was too. And judging by her response to his last text, she was into him just as much as he was into her.

  Now it was time to get way into her. Again.

  But first, she needed to eat something. “You must be starving. Eat.” He gestured to the night table.

  Her eyes went wide. “That was from you? You’re amazing and also psychic!”

  He smiled. “Yeah? Why?”

  “Because I got home so late that Betsy didn’t bring me breakfast. She always brings me coffee and beignets at 7 a.m. She’s been doing it since I was a child, every time I would come to visit. My mother didn’t want me drinking coffee as a kid, but Aunt Betsy said it couldn’t hurt if I wanted to try it. She made it with mostly cream and sugar, and a little bit of coffee. She would always joke that she was pumping me full of caffeine and sugar just to send me back to Baton Rouge as hyper as the Roadrunner. I think she felt bad I didn’t get out much as a child and wanted to spoil me. This time I missed it. But I didn’t truly miss it because you brought it to me!”

  God, she was adorable when she rambled.

  “What is it?” she asked, looking at him curiously. She’d caught him gazing at her with moony eyes while she talked about her childhood memories.

  “Nothing. Eat.”

  She pouted and looked inside the paper bag. “But what are you going to eat?” Gavin ignored this and pointed at the bag, gesturing for her to get on with it. She was going to need the energy for what was next.

  Inside, he was elated that his instincts on how to take care of his girl had been correct.

  She looked from the bag to him, and back at the bag, as if weighing her options.

  He was all ready to wait for her to drink her coffee and eat her breakfast, but Chastity only wanted one thing. She placed one beignet between her teeth and leaned forward, powdered sugar dusting her chin, her chest, and the blankets.

  What could a gentleman do but take what a lady offers him from between her lips? When he bit through the sweet pastry and their lips touched, he heard a faint purring. So faint, he couldn’t be sure it was coming from her.

  He bit off his half of the beignet completely and asked. “Is that you? Are you purring?”

  Her eyes were closed but her lips smiled mischievously as she chewed, and the beast inside her purred louder. When her pink tongue darted out to lick the powdered sugar from her lips, Gavin had to adjust himself due to the ache. Those jeans were becoming too tight all of a sudden as his cock jerked and jerked again with every nibble, every brush of her tongue across her lips, every yummy noise she hummed.

  When she moved to lick her fingertips clean, he cuffed her wrist with his big hand. She gasped, and then whispered curses of pleasure as he used his mouth to clean every bit of sugar off her fingertips, sucking them into his mouth one by one while she watched, eyes wide, lips parted. And then, he cleaned all the sugar off her chest. “Mine,” he murmured, sucking, licking, noticing the hickey he’d left behind. He’d left his mark on her, and there would be more where that came from.

  When he was finished devouring all the sweetness from her chest, Chastity’s face bloomed with sudden heat. Her soft lips attacked him, sucking his bottom lip into her mouth, while her hands and legs clambered over his torso like a cat climbing a tree.

  “As much as I love your urgency, Chastity, I want to go slow this time and remember everything.”

  The pouting of her pretty lips gripped his heart. Gavin took in every ounce of her, every inch, every breath, every pore. Burying his face in her bed-mussed hair, he inhaled the imprinted scent until it was burned even deeper into his soul. When her eyes closed at his touch, he seared her innocent face into his mind. Her sighs melded with his. Her breasts pressed into the grip of his hands as her breathing grew ragged. He savored the taste of her mouth. Her nails dug into his back.

  “We need to get rid of these clothes,” he said.

&
nbsp; She mewled sadly as he forced some distance between them. He hated it too; he didn’t want another moment to pass where they weren’t touching, skin to skin, heart to heart, ever again. He slipped off the bed to ditch his clothes while she tugged off her dress.

  When her eyes flicked down to glance at his cock, the hint of her tongue, once again, peeking out to moisten her lips made the length of him even harder, longer, and needier. Looking at her look at him like that turned him on more than he ever thought possible. The throb, the ache, was becoming unbearable.

  “I’ve never seen one before,” she said. “Well, except in my photos from last night…or this morning.”

  He slowly slid one palm up the underside of his shaft, watching her eyes widen, her nipples harden, as he did this to himself. The reaction of her body, the way her scent changed the more excited she grew, made this self-torment worth it.

  “Oh. Wow. Okay. So as I was saying,” she said, tearing her eyes away and looking down at the mattress in shyness, “I should delete those off of my phone now that you…and your penis…have been correctly identified.” Chastity ended with a breathy giggle that sent his delight in her to another level. His heart fell deeper, deep enough to match the wolf’s obsession.

  Gavin cupped her face to draw her eyes up to his. “Don’t be embarrassed at wanting to look at it. That’s for you. I’ve been walking around this city all morning with a tent pole in my drawers, looking for you.” She bit her lip and laughed, then looked up at him and back down at his thickness. “It’s all very new to me. I mean, I know we did it last night or this morning, or probably most likely did all the things. But I don’t remember much of it. Do you?”

  Gavin seated himself next to her on the bed, his eyes admiring the slope where her neck met her collarbone, the way her chest rose and fell with her shallow breathing. Why the hell they had agreed to ass tattoos he couldn’t guess. He could only swear off alcohol at this point. After this, he would promise to fix that ugly tattoo with something more befitting the tiny queen that she was.

  He cupped one of her breasts as he talked. She gasped again as he gently stroked, memorizing the way her bare skin warmed to him, the way her pulse increased and her blood called out to him. The sensuous woman and the dangerous panther inside of her woke up every one of his cravings. “I remember waking up feeling like a new man. And then the next moment, all I knew was I needed to find whoever it was that made me feel that way.”

  She bit her lip. “And when you found out I was a panther shifter just like Rosemary and GiGi?”

  Gavin shook his head and pressed a wet kiss against her mouth, smoothing his tongue over her lip where she’d bit it. No more of that; her lips were his to bite from now on. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t know why anybody cares about any of that in the first place. Listen,” he said, threading his fingers through her hair, “there’s now three of us who’ve imprinted on another breed of shifter. It can’t be a coincidence, and it can’t just be because we’re all near each other because of the wedding. There has to be more to it than that.”

  Chastity quirked an eyebrow, looking as if an idea was occurring to her. Gavin’s kisses pampered her neck, collarbone, and shoulder while she spoke, one hand still cupping her head and the other moving from her breast to the small of her back, pulling her closer. “You think this has something to do with the curse? Like, maybe this is how we get rid of them? Become totally human, all of us together?”

  Gavin gave a noncommittal grunt. “Maybe. Maybe just your uncle’s blessing will be enough at the wedding tomorrow. A blessing’s the opposite of a curse.” He had no basis for this theory, but he was enjoying the way Chastity’s mind never stopped working even as he continued to kiss her and stroke her everywhere.

  Goose flesh blanketed Chastity’s legs when both of his hands went to her thighs and squeezed, hard. The exploring, the fondling, was becoming a much firmer manhandling. “Uncle Lionel has not agreed to come to the wedding.”

  Gavin chuckled and provoked a moan from her with his mouth on her breast. “Oh, he’ll be there.”

  “How—oh, wow, that’s…wow—I mean, how do you know that?”

  He lightly grazed his teeth over her nipple. Her body jerked, and he smiled. He had to focus on forming words as he alternated his efforts equally between each nipple. “Ash had two jobs for this wedding. One, show up. Two, get Rosemary’s father to be there. Trust me, the DuChamp patriarch is for sure going to be there to give his daughter away.”

  She was silent for a time, and Gavin sat up straight to check in with her.

  “My daddy would never.” Her eyes transformed from slightly sad to worried. “Oh God, he and my mom are driving down here today. He’ll know as soon as he sees me that I’m not…that I’m not…”

  Gavin’s mind reeled with guesses as to what she was getting at until she blurted out everything. Everything about the Purity Balls, her promise to remain a virgin until he’d found her a suitable husband, all of it.

  “And if he finds out, he’ll disown me. Goodbye trust fund, goodbye art school, goodbye world. I’ll be locked up in my room in Baton Rouge and I’ll never see you again.”

  He could see she was starting to panic about the future, and Gavin was not about to let that happen. Gripping her face, he quieted her with a deep, sensuous kiss until her breathing slowed, her whimpers turned to sighs, and her sighs turned to soft purrs. When he broke the kiss, he said, “If it’s already happened and the promise was bound by magic, then he already knows. Listen, he doesn’t own you or your virginity. He can take away your trust fund or any other material thing, but he can’t take you away from me, okay? You’re mine now. I’m taking care of you from now on. And when I say ‘take care of you,’ I’m talking about you and the baby I’m gonna put inside you. You are it for me, sweetheart. I don’t want to waste a single day.”

  When his words drew a tear from her eyes, he kissed it away. “Understood?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes, Gavin.”

  The bed creaked as he settled her back on the mattress and towered over her, caging her in with his arms. “You were mine since the second I saw you dancing on the bar last night. There’s no going back now.”

  She raised her head and kissed him hard. “I don’t ever want to go back.”

  “You’re never going anywhere without me again, Now spread your legs,” he said, and nestling his cock in between her warm, wet folds.

  Her chattering had been delightful, but now she was quiet and wide-eyed, her sighs driving him to the point of madness. Adjusting herself underneath him, Chastity inadvertently teased his shaft with her movements, causing a surge so hot in his blood he nearly shifted right then and there.

  His next words could easily have been mistaken for nothing but a feral growl through gritted teeth. “Lock your legs around my hips, angel. I’m about to jog your memory.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Chastity

  “Wait a minute, what’s that?” Gavin’s brow knit together as soon as the tip had slid in. She wanted more of him, all of him, but he’d met a wall of resistance.

  The truth finally hit her. “We didn’t…last night, this morning, whatever…we didn’t actually, y’know, break it.”

  “That means…that means your dad isn’t on his way to kill us,” he said, looking more than a little relieved.

  “It also means now I’m going to have the memory of the pain of it,” she said.

  Gavin pulled out, the bed creaking under the weight of him once again as he lay himself down next to her. His huge arms gathered her body flat against his in a tender but firm embrace. “Listen. We don’t have to do this now. We have nothing to prove to each other. We’re together and that’s that. You’re mine. It doesn’t matter if we do this today, tomorrow, or next week.”

  The gentleness of this man, the care he was taking with her. She felt it so deeply, she blurted out exactly what she was feeling.

  “Oh my God,
I love you, Gavin.”

  His arms stilled their caresses against her bare back. She waited, squeezing her eyes together, wincing at her forwardness. Too soon, Chas. What are you thinking?

  What was likely to come next would be a serious talk about how to proceed with caution, how to keep a level head. But that’s not what happened. Instead, her man squeezed her tightly and said, “Shit, I can’t believe I let you say it first. I love you, Chastity, in case that wasn’t clear.”

  All of her tensed muscles released in happiness, and she surprised Gavin by forcing him onto his back—recognizing that he wasn’t putting up any resistance—and climbing on top of him. She could tell he would never forgive himself for causing her pain, no matter how much she insisted, so she had to take charge.

  Straddling him, her knees planted on either side, she guided him in. Then, letting go of all inhibitions, she allowed gravity to do the rest of the work.

  She cried out, squeezing her eyes closed. She breathed through the brief, sharp pain, and then felt everything yield to this newness, this fullness.

  “Baby,” he murmured. He reached one hand to touch her face, and she barely had to lean down to meet it. “talk to me.”

  Her eyes watered just a little, but she smiled through it. “I’m good, I’m really good.” She was; this was not a lie to make him feel better. The fullness of him inside her, the thickness, the depth, seemed to touch her everywhere. She felt him everywhere in her physical body and in the magical soul of the panther, who was starting to get riled up by all these runaway emotions. She felt a growl bubbling up inside her diaphragm.

  “I’m…I’m not sure what to do next,” she said, once again embarrassed at her inexperience.