Quentin sat back in his chair and gave me that crooked smile of his, his eyes glinting with amusement.
“You don’t miss much, do you, Trix?” He laughed and took a long draw on his beer. “They are as dear as family after all these years, but they ain’t blood. Mama’n’dem passed long, long ago. Now, it’s just us boys… They help us run this here place.”
“Quentin, I’m so sorry…“
The porch door creaked open, and I startled, almost spilling my beer. Two long, tall drinks of water came into the flickering light, each one gorgeous enough to make my jaw drop.
“Now, what do we have here, Bra? Who is dis here buxom beauty gracin’ our table?”
The first man through the door ran his hand over dark stubble, then over his closely shorn hair, grinning at me like a dog spying a juicy bone. His face was similar to Quentin’s, roguishly handsome, but his shoulders were a little broader, his body more corded with muscle, and his scruff and temples showed a hint of salt-n-pepper. An older brother, maybe?
“We leave for one afternoon, and here he be, livin’ high on the hog, courtin’ lovely ladies while we does all the work.”
The second brother clapped the first on the shoulder, laughing and grinning at Quentin and I. The only way I could describe this man was Trouble. He had the same fiery charm as Quentin, but by the way he held himself, all loose gait and wiry muscle, I could tell he thought himself God’s Gift. Or maybe just the ladies did.
He flashed green eyes at me, grinning in the way all the Boucher men did, the sight making me shift in my seat, my body getting hot beneath all that male scrutiny.
“Come on now,” Quentin said, standing up, and pulling them both into a hug. “Don’t be spinnin’ tales in front of comp’ny. These two fools may spend all day out doin’ the tours,” he said to me. “But I’m the one here doing the upkeep. Without me, dis here place would fall down around our ears.”
“Oui, you’re busier than a one-legged mule in an ass-kickin’ contest,” the younger man said, rolling his eyes.
Quentin pulled him into a playful headlock, spinning him around to face me.
“Trixie, please meet mah fool brothers. Dis one here is Felix, the next youngest after me, and the old man over there is Bastian…”
Felix tackled him around the waist, making him grunt as the air was knocked clean out of him. Bastian stepped forward and took my hand, ignoring the pair grappling just behind him.
“He mean I’m the oldest of dis brood, Cher,” he said. “But that don’t mean I can’t get the job done.”
He enveloped my hand in his, his tough rough like his brother’s, then brought it to his lips. His stubble tickled me as his lips pressed against me, hot and soft.
“Anything you need seein’ to, I’m your man,” he said, winking.
I held in a shiver, although my body was singing at his touch. I pulled my hand back and smiled, meeting that sensual dark gaze of his, even though I felt like giggling and turning away like a schoolgirl.
Lord, what these men did to me! I had to get myself together if I was going to be any use at all. I couldn’t hardly be mooning over these brothers with everything that was at stake.
Plus, there was the matter of them being mixed up in all kinds of darkness that was yet to be revealed. Murder was nothing to take as lightly as all that… even if they did all smell like man in a way that made my feminine blood stir, longing to touch and taste and writhe until I found my release in those strong arms.
Felix came up, panting and sweaty, pushing his short wavy hair back away from his forehead, and took my hand in both of us.
“A pleasure, Miss Trixie. You are most welcome.”
I sighed at his touch, unable to help myself after all this stimulation. His was less calloused than his brothers, but his fingers were strong, his hands large. I don’t know if it was the beer, or if I was just plum exhausted, but for one moment, I imagined him, undressing me with those agile fingers… running his hands over my body, as his brothers came up behind me, ready to press up against my eager body and take me for their own…
I hemmed and took a drink, praying none of them had noticed me drifting off for a second.
“The pleasure is mine,” I finally managed.
Felix smiled, those green eyes of his twinkling with mischief, and squeezed my hand, before finally letting me go.
“Our youngest two brothers are away for da time bein’,” Quentin said, pulling out my chair for me. “So we might as well dig in here, before we fill you in on all them gory details.”
Felix and Bastian exchanged a glance as they found their seats, then both looked at me, brows furrowed and eyes deadly serious.
“How much does she know?”
“Some,” Quentin said. “But not enough. Not yet, no how.”
Bastian shook his head, and Felix let out a low whistle.
“Then let’s eat,” Felix said. “I gotta feelin’ it’s gonna be a long night.”
***
I pushed my plate away from me, groaning with pleasure.
Quentin eyed the pile of bones I left, and chuckled.
“If there be anytin' sexier than a woman who can eat, I don’ know it.”
I wiped the last of the barbecue sauce from my fingers with a moist towel and looked up to find all three Boucher Boys watching me, sly grins on their faces that let me know they were thinking about more than just dessert.
I bit my lip, imagining for a moment what it would be like to have their hands on me, all of them, unbuttoning my dress, peeling it away from my heated body… Looking at me, totally naked, helpless, and utterly desperate for them—eager and willing to do whatever bad, bad thing these boys had on their minds.
I shook myself out of my fantasy, and sat up a little straighter in my chair, folding my napkin just to have something to do.
These men might all be insane, for all I know. They thought they were werewolves… werewolves! If they weren’t what they claimed, then they were dangerously crazy, and if they were… Well, that was a whole ‘nother bag of worms, wasn’t it?
“Well, that was one of the finest meals I’ve had in a long, long while,” I said. “I’m not sure who the chef is, but they make a dang fine sauce.”
Quentin patted his older brother on the shoulder, and Bastian frowned, trying to shrug him off.
“Bastian is da mad genius behind that, Beb,” Felix, said, grinning at his two brothers, now wrestling at the end of the table. “He say he don’ love it, but we all know betta.”
Bastian broke free of Quentin’s grasp, and held him back with a huge hand on his chest.
“I just fixed up the sauce. And smoked the meat.”
“Oh, that’s all, den!” Quentin said, pulling his brother’s hand off himself and laughing as Bastian took a playful swing at him and missed.
“Well, it sure made me feel like I’m home again,” I said, almost under my breath.
I hadn’t tasted a tangy mustard sauce like that since I was a girl, and the flavor brought memories rushing back.
I stood and made my way to the edge of the covered porch, away from the low light of the candles, now burned almost all the way down. It was late, and I could feel cool air moving in off the water, cutting through the lingering heat. The mood shifted, and I felt that the time had come.
A hand touched my arm, and I knew from the heat of him, the smell of him, that it was Quentin, standing just behind me. His presence made my body tingle all over.
“You feelin’ ready, Cher?”
I breathed deeply, urging my mind to a place of stillness. The sounds of the night creatures filled my awareness—the cicadas and crickets a background swell to the songs of the frogs, all around in the darkened swampland.
I had so many thoughts swirling through my mind, so many things to distract me, especially after what the brothers revealed to me as we ate our meal.
Bastian and Felix backed up Quentin’s claim that their family was cursed. Quentin said that their father
was the original one who was afflicted with the curse, becoming Rougarou after he was brought before the town’s parish and publicly accused by the local priest of using black magic.
“He was never da same after,” Quentin said, his eyes looking through me as he spoke. “The next full moon, the change came ova’ him, and he ran in da skin of a monster.”
I’d asked how on earth a man could get accused of somethin’ like black magic in this modern age, and the brothers had exchanged knowing glances, communicating silently between themselves. Finally, Quentin spoke up.
“Well, Cher,” he said. “There’s no easy way ta speak dis, so I’m just gonna do it… It was 1812 when the priest done the accusin’. Our papa jus’ turned twenty-three.”
I’d paused, taken aback, before asking the obvious.
“What the hell?”
“Well, Cher, it’s like this. Since he became like he was, he started healin’. Our bodies are stronger an’ knit together like it ain’t nothin’ everytime we get hurt, an’ in the case of our family at least, it done mean we live a mighty long time.”
“I never even caught a cold,” Felix said.
Bastian nodded, looking at his hands, and Quentin continued.
“We were all born after he got de curse in his blood, so, Trix,” he said, “We got all the good, along wit da bad.”
I took a deep breath and looked upward, steeling myself for answers I didn’t know if I could handle.
“So, if what you’re sayin’ is true… Just how old are you?”
“We been livin’ on dis land since before the Civil War.”
I sat back, gaping at him like he’d just declared that he was Elvis come back from that big Graceland in the sky.
“I was born in this very house, in 1818,” Quentin said. “Bastian two years b’fore, Felix the year after, an’ them twins come two years after that.”
I put my face in my hands, blocking out his handsome face for just a moment, my mind racing.
“So you’re trying to tell me that y’all are 200 years old?? And no one’s noticed? No one in town’s wondered why in blue blazes those Boucher men keep on lookin’ young forever?”
“Hey naw,” Felix said. “Ain’t none of us 200 yet…”
“Oh, I’m sooo sorry,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Forgive me, Felix, for aging you like that. How god-dang rude of me!”
“Cher,” Quentin said, taking hold of my hand, beneath the table. “Come on, now.”
I sat there, chest heaving, angry for no good reason, except I was sure these men were pulling my leg. It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to pull one over on me after they heard tell of my Gift, and there was nothing I hated more than someone thinkin’ that just because I was a sweet, smilin’ woman, that I was a damn fool.
That chapped my ass somethin’ fierce.
“Let’s finish the meal, and after, you do whatever you do to prove what we sayin’, alright? I understan’ why you don’t believe such a yarn at first sniff, I really do. But we gon’ need you to give us a chance, honey, or we’re all in some real deep-like shit, ya hear?”
I stiffened at his words, but at his touch, his hand rubbing my knee, I felt myself melt. Something about him got under my skin, and I just couldn’t ignore the gut feeling that he was someone I should trust, as crazy as that seemed.
Now, standing there in the flickering candlelight, looking out into the darkness, I prepared myself for what I needed to do.
I took one more deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly, feeling my mind steady and my fears melt slowly away. I was centered. It was time.
“I’m going to need a space we can sit where I can touch all y’all at the same time,” I said. “Also, kosher salt, if you’ve got it, and candles. Big ones.”
I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye, then heard chairs scrape behind me. I followed the men into the house, wondering what in tarnation I’d gotten myself into.
***
I moved around the library in a wide circle, pouring salt out of the canister to mark the edge of my sacred space. The guys moved a leather ottoman to the center of the circle as I poured, setting cushions around it for seating. I reached the end, pouring salt until the line of granules met the line where’d I’d started—a perfect outline.
“Don’t move outside this circle,” I warned, glancing over my shoulder. “Now that it’s set, we don’t cross this line until the ritual is complete, understand?”
“Oui,” said Quentin.
“No prob, Cher,” Bastian said, smiling at me.
Felix nodded. “What’s it for, Trix?”
I turned and began placing fat pillar candles at each of the four points of the compass, inside the circle.
“Protection,” I said. “Now sit down, and hush up.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Felix muttered, under his breath.
I began by going into my mind and filling the circle I just drew with light. Pure, white light to clean anything nasty out of the safe place I’d just created. I imagined it pushing the darkness just outside that line of salt, moving below the floor, and above the ceiling, hemming us into a perfect sphere of warmth and safety.
I leaned down and lit the first candle.
“North, please protect us,” I intoned. “Please add your power to this ritual.”
I felt a little shiver inside me as the wick caught and the candle began to burn, just like I always did. I smiled to myself and thanked the North point, moving to the next candle.
“East, please protect us and add your power to this ritual… South, please protect us and add your power to this ritual… West, please protect us and add your power to this ritual…”
The last candle lit, I said a brief thanks, and moved to the center, where the three gorgeous men waited, watching me with widened eyes in the dimness.
“The circle is cast, the power contained,” I said, feeling a faint pop inside my mind, as if the sphere of protection just burst into being, pushing everything else out as it formed all around us, me in the center.
I sat on the ottoman, and reached my hands out on either side of me.
“I need you to touch me,” I said, my voice almost a whisper, as I looked up into Quentin’s dark, soulful eyes. “All of you.”
I looked to my left to Bastian and Felix, nodding to them. Quentin took my right hand in both of his, and Bastian took my left, Felix moving behind me to touch my shoulders.
“I need you to touch skin, Felix,” I said, hating myself for blushing, even now.
I needed a skin-to-skin contact for the best reading, was all. It’s not like I wanted this. I was just doing my job.
Felix’s laugh was low, his breath tickling my neck. He reached up and put his right hand on my exposed throat, his thumb caressing the back, his fingers relaxed as they clasped the side, just above the neck of my dress. It felt oddly erotic, and I wondered why he didn’t just touch my upper arm, but I also didn’t move his hand away.
“Now, I’m going to enter your thoughts,” I said, breathing deeply, “So don’t be alarmed if you feel me there… inside… I need you to open yourselves up—relax and agree in your minds to let me come in. Let me see what you know is true.”
I heard Bastian suck in a breath, but he didn’t protest. Quentin’s hands stiffened, but he nodded, urging me to go on.
“I will know if you lie or try to hold back,” I said. “So please don’t try.”
And it won’t work, besides, I thought. But they don’t need to know that.
“Are y’all ready?”
“Oui,” Quentin breathed. “We won’ hold back.”
“Go on now,” Felix said.
“You’re welcome, Cher,” Bastian said. “Come on in.”
I smirked at that, and closed my eyes, feeling the men’s heat all around me. I breathed deeply, feeling the pump, pump, pump of my pulse and theirs, all beating at different times, then slowly, beating as one drum as I began to draw them to me, to draw myself to them.
; I felt a pressure in my mind, then the familiar tingle as I pried into their minds. This time, I couldn’t put my consciousness into just one of their heads like I did with Quentin—that was just a quick look around, and wouldn’t work with all three, much less get me to the deep stuff like I wanted. The secret things they kept behind the closed doors of their psyches.
For that, I needed to breathe them in, and breath myself out. I needed to fill them and let them fill me until we weren’t sure where one began and the other ended. I relaxed, expanding my mind around myself like an aura, flowing outward until I felt myself blending into them, merging with them, opening myself up to them even as they opened to me.
Images unfolded inside me, sweeping me along into memories that were not my own. I saw the moon, as if I were looking up at it, then felt a tremor of dread rush through me, hating the pale light as if it were an old enemy. I was running, clawing at underbrush, moving beneath the shadows of the vine-bedraggled Cyprus, my heart pounding as I tried to get to safety.
I felt that, as clear as day. There had been a Safe Place, but now it was no more. It couldn’t hold me, and now, I needed to run, as fast and as far as I could. I thought of the lights of Cattail Creek, just a mile down the winding road, and screamed, a searing bolt of pain dropping me to my knees.
In that moment, I felt myself… change.
I felt the men tense around me, their fingers stiffening on my body.
Let me feel this. Let me in…
My thought filled the air, and they relaxed, Quentin rubbing my forearm.
Careful now, Cher. This ain’t pretty.
I mentally hushed them, and felt myself scream again, through another’s voice as a second wave of pain crashed over me, burning me from the inside out. My skin was stretching, rending, bubbling beneath a monstrous presence growing, writhing, ready to burst me open like a blister in its need to be free. I looked down at my hands in time to see claws shredding flesh as they stretched out into the night air, and wailed as my chest ripped open, my heart hammering like a wild thing as the beast pushed itself outward; growing… seething. My eyes clouded over, blood flowing over my vision, blotting out the hideous moonlight. My voice broke into a bone-shaking howl, and I felt myself slipping away into a fog as something else took over my mind. Something primal. Something that craved and craved and craved, and was never sated.
Fed to the Wolves, Part 1: Bad Moon Rising: A Southern Werewolf/Shifter Romance (Cattail Creek) Page 3
