Running with the Pack: A Shapeshifter New Orleans Romance (Her Big Easy Wedding Book 4)

by Abby Knox

  “Kiss me now.”

  Bobby took Penny in his arms and hugged her close. Then, he climbed off the bed and held out his hand to her. She took it, curiously, before catching on. Bobby pulled her into his arms and they slow danced as Bobby hummed “No Woman, No Cry.”

  Penny squeezed in close. She laid her head on his chest and her breath was warm and welcome on his skin through his half-unbuttoned shirt. “That was the first time I noticed your shampoo. I liked it,” he said, pausing his humming for the moment as they continued to slow dance. He leaned in and inhaled her scent. Strawberries and cinnamon and ginger.

  She sighed. “I loved young Bobby, but I like older Bobby much better. He’s not afraid to ask for a kiss.”

  Bobby then let out a small growl in her ear, and he felt heat and need racing through her. He took this moment to turn brazen on her. “No,” he said. “The new Bobby isn’t going to ask. He already knows what Penny wants.”

  And with that, Bobby hugged her waist and claimed her mouth. Slowly, deeply. Deeper still until he made her sigh. The tip of his tongue teased her mouth open. He smoothed his hands upward, slowly working his way up until he was fully cupping her breasts through the shirt. Penny caught her breath and let out the tiniest of moans.

  His eyes were dreamy as he gazed into her and said, “What about 17?”

  She licked her lips and dove in a little deeper. She put her hands on Bobby’s chest, caressing the pectorals, and worked her way down and around to grab his ass. Her tongue explored his mouth. The heat was building as Bobby’s hands began to squeeze her tits firmly. Soon he was lifting up the hem of her shirt and rubbing the bare skin of her rib cage. His hand explored upward some more. She was braless, and his hands claimed her velvety breasts.

  “These are mine now,” he said of her breasts. “All mine. To do with as I please.”

  Penny flushed as he teased her tight little buds with his thumbs.

  “At 18 I wanted to tell you I loved you. I was going to tell you, but I waited like a dummy,” he continued.

  “So tell me,” she said with a whisper of urgency.

  “I love you, Penny.”

  “I love you, too, you big dummy.”

  Their hands explored each other’s torsos with need and their lips claimed each other’s until they simply could not wait any longer.

  She unbuttoned his shirt; he pulled the tee-shirt off over her head. And then without warning, Bobby scooped Penny up off her feet, swung her around, kissed her one more time, then tumbled her onto her back on his bed.

  “Finally, Penny LeFleur in my bed.”

  She smiled a devilish smile. “And now I’m in my twenties and I want one thing. Take those pants off and let me see your Little Bobby.”

  She was saucy, and he loved it. But first, he made her gasp by yanking off Gavin’s board shorts and belt she was wearing with a couple of swift moves. Now she was utterly naked in his bed. Bobby gazed down at her and let the vision of his copper-haired queen sink in. It seemed too good to be true.

  He leaned over her and latched on to her rosy pink nipples, making Penny gasp and moan his name.

  “Oh, Bobby!”

  He massaged her breasts and suckled a little while longer and finally said, “Until now, I’ve only heard you say my name like that in my wet dreams.”

  She grinned and took one of his hands and guided it lower. “Well, now you’ve got a very wet reality. Hope you know what to do.”

  He was at first taken aback by Penny’s brazenness, but his mind turned to mush when he felt her soaked pussy in his hand. “Penny, you’re so fuckin’ wet.”

  “And you’re as hard as all get out, mister. What are you waiting for?”

  Bobby replied with simply the word, “This.”

  He attacked her neck and sucked, kissed, and nibbled. He blazed a slow, sizzling trail all the way down her breastbone to her belly. Here, he palmed her lower stomach and took a moment to admire the soft, supple skin and luscious, welcoming curves. “Right here. Damn, woman. I’m gonna put so many babies in here.”

  She was so ready for it, she was now rocking her hips upward toward him, yearning for him to fill her up. “Now. Do it now. I can’t wait another minute.”

  He laughed and kissed her navel. His hands spread her legs wide, and he inhaled a deeper, more musky version of her strawberry scent. “First, a taste.”

  Penny cried out in pleasure as his lips tasted her fruit for the first time. Her juice was luscious, and he was going to have more than a taste. Bobby got drunk on her sweetness as she writhed underneath him. He stroked her folds, savoring every inch of her with his tongue. He found her tight little clit and worked it over with his mouth, then flicked it with his tongue, sending a shock wave of pleasure through her.

  “Fuck me, Bobby,” she moaned. “I’m ready.”

  Instead of heeding her pleas, he continued to stroke her sweetness with his mouth, claiming her most sensitive spots with his lips, devouring her with his tongue and occasionally—ever so gently—with his teeth. His gentle nibbles, combined with the feel of his beard between her thighs, were more than she could bear.

  “Bobby, I think I’m gonna come. I don’t wanna come without you,” she pleaded breathlessly. “I want you inside me when I come for the first time ever.”

  Bobby obliged. The next moment, he was sinking his shaft into her pussy and sharing with her the taste of her juice. He went slowly, proud in knowing he was the first to cross her finish line. She felt amazing around his cock. She whimpered in pain just slightly as he pushed past her hymen. He paused, but Penny was over it in half a second and pulling him in deeper. Her ankles were clasped around his back, cradling him in as tightly as she could.

  “That’s a good way to get yourself knocked up, little lady.”

  “God, let’s hope so,” she moaned. Bobby reached down and thumbed her clit as he thrust into her, ensuring they both came at once.

  The geyser of pleasure blasted through him; he felt Penny contracting around his cock, milking out his semen. The way that wolf shifters come, coupled with her prodigious wetness, she was sure to get pregnant today.

  Glory be.

  The sound of banging on the door woke them with a start.

  Shit.

  Sam the yellow Lab, who had been sleeping in the living room, immediately started barking.

  Penny jerked awake in Bobby’s arms and gasped. She looked up into his eyes with genuine confusion. She had the look someone has when they awaken disoriented from a beautiful dream. “What’s going on?”

  Bobby wanted to kick some asses clear across the Gulf of Mexico for waking up his girl from her rest. He had big plans for her later and she needed sleep: plans that involved her nipples and a jar of Nutella.

  Bobby reluctantly extracted himself out of the bed, away from Penny’s warm, comforting skin. She touched his arm and he nearly had a mind to jump back into bed and hide under the covers until the jerks on the other side of the door gave up and went away. “Don’t answer that, come back to bed,” she whispered.

  Bobby murmured and smoothed her mussed hair into place. “Baby, I would love nothing more than to stay here and slide between your legs and shut out the world, but whoever that is is not going to go away, I have a feeling.”

  She pouted. There was nothing else in the world like the rosy, pouting bottom lip of his Penny. How Bobby fought the urge to claim it with his mouth. “I’m gonna make whoever it is disappear and then I’m coming right back to suck on that lip of yours.”

  Penny’s hand glided toward him under the bedsheet as he sat up, and she gently groped his bare cock. “Just this one lip?”

  A crackle of lust surged through him. The idiots at the door continued banging and Sam continued barking.

  He winked and replied, “Nah, all four of your sweet lips, sugar. Stay here just like that. I’ll be right back.” He kissed her sweetly, then hopped up to throw on some pajama pants.

  But Bobby wouldn’t be right back. Not that da
y anyway.

  When Bobby opened the door, it was the police.

  “Robert Mason Jordan,”

  “Yes,” Bobby replied flatly.

  Bobby heard Penny gasp. He had hoped she had the good sense to stay in the bedroom. But she had seen the cops.

  “I told those other officers everything that happened at the tattoo shop. Bobby wasn’t even there!”

  “Ma’am, I suggest you keep quiet or I will have you arrested for harboring a fugitive.”

  Bobby heard Penny laugh derisively. “Fugitive! This is crazy!”

  But the officer continued, “Robert Jordan, you are under arrest for kidnapping, assault and false imprisonment.”

  Bobby and Penny cried simultaneously, “What?!”

  As the two officers handcuffed him, he suddenly realized what this was.

  Lionel DuChamps had called in a favor, and he was having him arrested for forcibly taking him to the wedding. A wedding that the old man had paid for. A wedding in which his only daughter got married. A wedding that was no doubt going to be the talk of the society pages for months and earn him endless compliments at the golf club.

  Lionel himself had cornered Bobby at the reception and implied—albeit subtly—that he had gone willingly and that there had been no way Bobby and Gavin could have dragged his ass out of his house had he not.

  If that old man was such a badass, why was he now calling the cops?

  Bobby breathed deeply. He had to keep himself from “wolfing out” in front of the cops. If he grew fangs and claws at the moment by letting his emotions take over, it would not end well. For anyone.

  This must have something to do with Lionel warning me about his plans to use Penny as some kind of bargaining chip.

  Of course, it wouldn’t work, because this was 2018 and Penny had agency, and this was not a society that employed a bride price, as far as Bobby understood.

  No, this was a power play. Lionel was throwing his dick around, having a temper tantrum because in the mind of a bitter old man who has everything, Jimmy Boudreaux had gained a daughter, and Lionel had lost a daughter instead of deciding he had gained a son in Ashton.

  Bobby turned his head before the officers roughly led him through the doorway. His beautiful girl, loyal to a fault, was standing in the great room watching everything. His New Orleans Saints jersey hung like a dress on her, almost down to her mid-thigh. If she didn’t look so terrified, it would be sexy beyond reason.

  “Baby, it’s gonna be OK. It’s just Lionel being a dick.”

  “I’ll call Rosie!”

  “Don’t, she’s on her honeymoon…”

  “Mr. Jordan, I’m going to remind you that anything you say can and will be held against you in court…”

  Penny stepped toward. “He didn’t do anything wrong. Lionel was in on it! Please!”

  “Ma’am, this is your last warning,” the bigger officer spat out.

  Penny bit her lip as she watched Bobby go. He hated that she had to see him like this.

  Their first day as a real couple — with everything out in the open and no more barriers between them — was not supposed to end like this.

  The last thing he saw before the cops pushed him down into the patrol car was Penny standing in the window on the landing, her fierce eyes boring into his, and her mouthing the words “I love you.”

  Those three words gave him hope. Bobby had never had much hope in life until today.

  Today was not going to end well, but tomorrow would be better.

  He and Penny would be together, this much he knew, to write a whole new ending.

  An excerpt from the next stand-alone in the Small Town Bachelor Romance series

  Walk With Me

  By Abby Knox

  Logan breathed in the desert air and felt as if he was about to have a breakthrough.

  But he only explored these thoughts for about 90 seconds, because suddenly another person's presence cut through the majesty of this incredible canyon vista.

  The sound of the other visitor's lone footsteps assaulted and clouded his mind immediately. Based on his wilderness expertise, he knew right away it was the sound of a female approaching. A woman struggling under the weight of an over-filled backpack and not enough sense to turn back to the safety of the trailhead.

  He sighed to himself and stayed put, determined not to let some stranger interrupt his moment of clarity.

  But... something made him pause anyway. He turned to look, just to check if she was injured or appeared dehydrated and in need of help. His job always came first.

  The hiker who approached him was so far beyond the scope of his job description, however, that he forgot where he was for a second.

  The first thing he saw was her tanned, curvy legs, legs that were a shape more typical of a mid-Century pin-up model than a young female canyon explorer. Oh, but there was so much more going on with her that was not typical of his usual crowd of outdoorsy folks. Her entire outfit was totally inappropriate for this punishing environment.

  Her designer camo shorts had a weird, frilly, lacy thing at the hem, accenting her soft, voluptuous thighs. Above them, there was the midriff top, revealing a navel hoop ring that made his reptile brain wonder where else she might have a sexy piercing. Her hair was all curls of sandy blonde, tied up in a top knot at the crown of her head. She wore huge tortoiseshell sunglasses that hid her eyes. All Logan could see of her face was its heart shape, a sassy little chin and full lips.

  But maybe the cutest thing about her was that when her gaze connected with his through those sunglasses of hers, she straightened her posture under the weight of her ill-fitted backpack and sucked in her tummy.

  It pierced his heart a little bit to see that. The fact that any woman, especially this woman, felt shamed enough by her body to adjust her soft appearance around him was too much to handle.

  Keep it in your pants buddy, and do your job, said his rational brain.

  The woman spoke first.

  "Can you even handle it? We're in the canyon! Actually inside it! Fucking amazing, am I right?"

  Well that was that. Her voice could be compared to that of a cute cartoon animal. She was like Minnie Mouse with the vocabulary of a sailor on leave. Her entire demeanor was pure and feminine and joyful beyond reason. And also wrong, wrong, wrong. She should not be here. She should turn back immediately, and Logan opened his mouth to say so.

  "I work here."

  Inside, he kicked himself over his lack of charm.

  "Wow, a park ranger! Cool! Then you must be totally overwhelmed by the views every single day. And this desert air! You're so lucky. All I get to see is the inside of a cubicle and let me tell you, it doesn't smell particularly great, either. My crime reporter is a hoarder and I think there's a flat-cat under his stacks of old newspapers."

  Logan did not register anything she had said, but his ears and his libido sure enjoyed the sound of her voice.

  "Hello? Flat-cat got your tongue?" she said, one full, questioning eyebrow arching above the top of her sunglasses.

  "Excuse me?" Logan replied, embarrassed.

  "That was a joke. Nevermind, park ranger. Here." She took his hand in hers and he thought for a moment she was making a move on him. His rejoicing was immeasurable for that split second, until he realized what was happening. She pushed her phone into his palm and then dumped her backpack on the ground.

  "I need to you take a photo of me on the overlook, without that ridiculous backpack. Thanks, buddy, I appreciate it."'

  Logan would do whatever this woman asked him to do. He suspected that was the case with any man in his right mind.

  When he aimed the camera lens at her, she asked him to count down when he was ready.

  He cheated. He snapped several of her before she could suck in her tummy, fix her hair, fix her smile, do the typical things. She was perfect the way she was and she didn't even know it. And he wanted her to see what he saw.

  Even watching her through the camera screen, Logan wa
s toast. "Ok, ready. On three..."

  In the screen, he saw her turn on her bright smile, stand with one juicy, child-bearing hip jutting out. "Oh, hang on," she said. She removed her sunglasses and he could finally see her baby blues. Eyelashes for days.

  Since when had Logan cared about child-bearing hips? Why would he want to bring children into this world after the mess he’d made of his life?

  But there was something primal speaking to him, through her. He didn't even know her name but ... something was inside her, reaching out to him. Was this just basic chemistry or something else?

  She rolled her shoulders back and stuck out her ample chest for her photo shoot. Game over.

  All Logan could do was think of lifting her down off the overlook boulder, sweeping her down to the ground and grinding himself against every delicious curve of hers, under the wide open sky for every passing hiker and mule caravan to see. This was it. She was his, and that might as well be the end of the story for him. Too bad he was an extreme dork with a lack of vocabulary. No doubt she had zero interest in taking him to pleasure town.

  The reality was, he would have to commit the sight, sound and smell — vanilla and cedar — of her to his spank bank. He could hardly stand the idea that he would be alone in the ranger station that night at the bottom of the canyon.

  Yeah. Nothing about what was happening here was in his job description. But it was human nature, calling him to obey. And who was he to resist?

  Sex is a powerful motivator, so Ever had managed to stay within sight of this sexy stranger all morning without him noticing. It was sort of like a guided hike, but much cheaper.

  Now, standing on a boulder on the overlook, this incredible man was actually holding her phone in his beautiful, experienced hands, looking at her and taking her picture. She felt self-conscious and sucked in her belly, stuck out her hip to one side, fidgeted, took off her sunglasses, stuck out her chest, adjusted her chin. Ever did everything she knew how to do to hide her fleshy bits and accent her nicer bits.

  Up until now, this park ranger had only been a momentary sex object. But now that she was watching him stare at her image in her phone's screen, something else was happening.