Shifters After Dark Box Set: (6-Book Bundle)

by SM Reine

  The only thing that had changed was I could no longer look forward to looking like her when I grew up.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Journey? They’re really breaking out the oldies,” I said with a nostalgic smile. Classic rock still dominated the playlist, and not much had been upgraded at The Pit since my last visit. Best barbecue joint in town and it hadn’t changed in all these years. The walls were the color of the sauce and still decorated with wooden wagon wheels, knotted ropes, and antlers from a dead animal. I never liked staring at animal parts nailed on a wall because the last thing I wanted was to be reminded of what I was actually eating.

  Austin lifted the yellow plates off the tray and set them on the wooden table. I had sent him on a mission to order my dinner because I was curious if he would remember what I liked.

  “I don’t know how you can eat that,” he remarked, wrinkling his nose at my plate.

  I popped the fried okra in my mouth and grinned. “Because okra is good for you.”

  “Deep fried?”

  It was bustling in here. The families had already vacated and the atmosphere changed, becoming more rowdy. Several groups of single teenage girls sat in clusters while the guys spun around in their seats, whistling and flirting with them.

  Some things never change.

  I took a bite of my rib and wiped my hands on the paper towels they put on the table. I tapped my finger against the edge of my plate, looking around the room.

  “Something wrong with your food?” he asked, eyeing my hand.

  Austin had rolled his short sleeves over his shoulders because the ceiling fans did nothing to cool things down. A few of the women were gawking at him, and the tats were working in his favor.

  “I hope you know all the women in here are sizing you up for dessert,” I pointed out while sipping my draft.

  Austin laced his fingers together with a lazy grin spreading across his face. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  On cue, a woman’s black heels clicked on the floor and stopped at our table, just to my left.

  “Well, well, Austin Cole. Been a long time since I last saw you, honey. I hardly recognized you with all the tattoos.”

  There was a soft vibrato in her voice—the kind a woman uses for dirty talk, which must have been on her mind by the way she slowly twirled her necklace between her fingers. I didn’t have a clue who she was, but I wondered if the two of them had been intimate, because his eyes slid up her body and met with hers as if he were remembering something.

  “Life’s treating you good, Bonnie. You still live around here?”

  She jutted her hip in the painted-on jeans that threatened to rip apart if she bent over.

  “Mmmhmm. Just up the road a ways. Where you been hiding all these years?”

  I began to feel invisible, because Bonnie was hitting on Austin like I was nothing more than restaurant décor. It shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did, but I stopped eating and looked out the window.

  “Had to get away and live a little,” he answered.

  “I’d love to hear all about it,” she said with a lift in her voice. “I remember when you used to come in here with those troublemakers back in high school. Shoot, I can’t even remember their names anymore.”

  And then, all of a sudden, Austin’s hand slid across the table and rested on mine. He still kept his eyes on hers, engaged in conversation, but he held my hand and stroked my fingers with his thumb. A flush of heat touched my cheeks and I turned to look at Bonnie and caught her smoky eyes staring at our hands.

  “Did you ever settle down?” he asked. “Kids?”

  Which threw a wet towel on her parade of whoredom. “I married a few times, but I just got the one kid. He’s with his grandma now. You got kids?”

  “Seven,” Austin replied with a straight face.

  “Lord have mercy, you’re kidding me!” She looked horrified.

  “Always wanted a football team,” he said with a wink. “Just divorced the wife, so I’m looking for someone to fill that spot and help me achieve my dream. Are you a team player, Bonnie?”

  I spit out my beer and quickly set my glass down before I spilled it.

  “Good running into you, Austin. I’ve heard of sacking the quarterback, but I think that’s a little bit much for me. Good luck at the playoffs,” she said, clearly not amused.

  Bonnie sauntered off and the heat from Austin’s hand was the only thing that registered in my brain. I don’t even think I heard the music playing until Austin sat back in his seat, shaking his head at Bonnie as she strutted her stuff right out the door.

  I chewed off a few bites of my rib and wiped my fingers with the paper towel again, deciding it was better not to ask him why he’d held my hand. Obviously, he wanted Bonnie to think he was taken so she’d clear out. Austin resumed devouring his rack of ribs. Except men didn’t hold theirs daintily like women did, using their fingertips. He held them caveman style.

  Maybe it was strategic so he could sexily turn up his hand and slowly suck off the sauce from his thumb.

  Or maybe I had an overactive imagination and shouldn’t have been noticing such a thing.

  “Seven?” I asked.

  His black lashes winked over his wolfish blue eyes. “Wishful thinking.”

  I was seconds away from bringing up the topic about my boss when I remembered April sitting in a pile of taffy. A laugh began to bubble. Then there was my mother and sister being kidnapped, staying in a house full of strange men, realizing I was a Shifter (and going into heat, no less), discovering my brother was a murder victim, and then my father being a criminal on the run for diamond theft.

  My unbelievable life finally erupted into a burst of maniacal laughter. It graduated only briefly to the infamous Beaker laugh before tapering off into tears. Austin watched me with apprehension, because nothing was funny. He must have sensed it was one of those moments when a person has a very public display of a nervous breakdown. A few people turned to look, but he ignored them.

  “You okay? Shit, I’m really sorry, Lexi. I haven’t been the most sensitive person with everything going on.” He set down his rib and wiped off his hands. “Ivan should be calling me tonight. He said if I didn’t hear from him by midnight, then either he was dead, or Hell had finally frozen over.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “He’ll find her,” Austin reassured me. “And if he doesn’t, I’ll find her myself.”

  “I think my boss is sick,” I finally said, taking a long sip of my glass of beer. “A neighbor said he has cancer and went to the hospital. That’s why the bills haven’t been paid on the store. I didn’t know it was that bad.”

  He sighed, rubbing his clean-shaven jaw. The talisman around his neck was tucked inside his white shirt and he had styled his hair handsomely. He still looked like he could drag anyone in the parking lot and kick their ass, but I didn’t see that side of him when I looked into his eyes. I just saw Austin.

  I still wanted to mess up his hair with my fingers.

  “Don’t worry about the store. I sent the twins over to clean up.”

  “You what?”

  “You shouldn’t be doing all that work yourself.” Austin glanced at his watch. “They’ll be there until one o’clock and then head back to the house. I keep a tight watch on my pack.” He turned his fork between his fingers and set it down. “Don’t look at me that way, Lexi. Just accept my help.”

  And I did. I accepted it because at this point, my only support system was a bra. “Thanks. I hope April knows what’s going on; she might have a problem with two strange men showing up to clean.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, eying my plate. “They took Ivy with them. Women are more trusting when another woman is around.”

  “Lovely. You sent Ivy into a sweatshop environment to scrub a dirty floor? She’s really going to want to stay with you now,” I said sarcastically.

  The coleslaw was just as good as I remembered and I must have cleaned it off m
y plate in five scoops.

  “Never did know where you put it all,” he murmured, setting down his fork.

  “Well, you can probably tell now. I’ve put on a few since you last saw me.”

  He snorted and stuffed a roll in his mouth. “In all the right places.”

  There was that tingle again.

  I wrapped my lips around the prongs of my fork and looked up. Austin wasn’t just watching me, his eyes were glued to my mouth, and I became self-conscious when a piece of cabbage stuck to my bottom lip. My hand flew up to cover my mouth and the awkward moment passed. The music changed over to a song by Pink (“Try,” I think it was), and a paper wrapper from a straw sailed by us and landed on the floor.

  Austin smiled nostalgically and rapped his knuckles on the table to the beat of the song, lost in his thoughts. “This is nice,” he finally said.

  “Yeah.”

  I think I knew what he meant. We were always linked by Wes, and it was getting easier to be together without his ghost hovering between us.

  We talked about old times and I asked stupid things like if he still had his old leather jacket and why didn’t he join a rock band with Jericho. Austin could carry a tune, but he said it wasn’t his thing. Now that he was a Packmaster, his responsibility was maintaining stability within his family and the Shifter community. They would get jobs and help bring in money as well as assisting other packs as needed, but Austin had acquired a lot of money from his jobs over the years. Evidently, his work paid well. Money wouldn’t last forever, so he encouraged them to find something they enjoyed doing. Jericho sang, Denver worked as a bartender four nights a week, and Reno… well, Austin didn’t mention what exactly Reno did. Ben and Wheeler were out of work and looking.

  After another tall glass of beer and a few sips of Austin’s root-beer float, I decided it was time for us to head home.

  “Big girl’s room,” I declared with an impish grin.

  Austin chuckled and stretched his arm across the seat, watching me get up. He might have been sly about stealing glances, but I noticed his eyes sliding down to my ass. As I walked by him, I bent over and squinted. My face was numb, one of the telltale signs I’d had too much to drink.

  “You have something… right here,” I said, tapping my chin with a lazy smile on my face.

  A sexy smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Then lick it off,” he teased.

  Never one to turn down a dare, I bent forward and sucked on his chin. In my defense, I was drunk. I would never have done anything like that in a sober state of mind, but the tingly feeling of beer slid through my body and made me lose those inhibitions. It also shocked the hell out of Austin because I felt his entire body tense up, which I noticed because my hands were resting on his hard biceps.

  I moved my mouth slowly, swirling my tongue over the dab of sauce, and suddenly there was a moment, even if only a brief second, where something fired up between us. His bristly chin had the first hint of stubble, the tang of barbecue sauce awakened my taste buds, and his shallow breath heated my cheek.

  Had a sharp wolf whistle across the room not snapped me out of it, I might have even slid my lips over to his… just to see what would happen.

  Austin was real smooth about it, too. When I pulled back, he lifted his left arm and touched my nose, dabbing a dollop of sauce on it. Maybe he was being funny, or maybe it was a dare on his part, but I wiped it off and left the table before discovering what base I could get to with Austin and a bottle of barbecue sauce. He laughed and stretched back in his seat.

  Damn. He still had a great laugh.

  I went to the restroom for a very long pee and decided okra and beer got along. In fact, they were so in love they were doing the tango and making me queasy. The bathroom also served as a temporary hiding place since my slutty behavior planted serious doubts I could ever look him in the eye again. I never behaved that way with other men, but something about Austin drew out a sexually aggressive side that made me want to slap myself.

  I’d never felt so conflicted with a man as I did with Austin. Part of that had to do with the fact our relationship was wrapped up in years of history, combined with years of separation.

  Still, it was a fantastic dinner and had almost felt like a date. He took my mind away from all the worry and stress about my mother, and somehow I just knew he would make sure everything turned out okay. The strange part was how quickly my perception of Austin was beginning to change. He continued stepping up to help through every situation and never asked for anything in return.

  Not a kiss, not a check, not a single favor.

  He’d matured into the most selfless man I’d ever met.

  I emerged from the restroom marked “Cowgirls” and stared at our empty booth. Then I spotted Marcy Robertson, the former head cheerleader at my old high school. I hid my face and dashed toward the front door before she noticed me. Those chance meetings were so uncomfortable because I had to explain what I did for a living. It was like a competition to see who had succeeded in life. Most of the girls knew who I was back in high school, even if I wasn’t the most popular, because they all used to crush on Wes.

  The balmy June air smelled clean compared to the heavy aroma of grilled meat from inside the restaurant. I glanced around and wondered where he parked the car, because when we got here, Austin had dropped me off at the door so I could get a good table.

  I stepped down on the curb and took a seat—my beers had been served in tall glasses and I had always been a lightweight when it came to drinking. My eyes were losing focus and God, how embarrassing was that? Here was Austin, trying to show me a good time, and now I was sitting on the curb because I couldn’t hold my liquor.

  Still, I’d had fun. Hanging out and talking with Austin was so effortless now. He could spin a good yarn, and he attentively listened as I filled him in on some of the things I’d done in the past few years. While we still felt like strangers, an indefinable intimacy existed between us—one that happens with those who have seen you at your worst and remember you before all the big events in life happened.

  A car engine prowled closer from the street entrance, growing louder by the second. My eyelids drooped and I closed my eyes, deciding I was going to crash on the sofa when I got home.

  And then I blacked out.

  ~ ~ ~

  The minute Lexi closed the bathroom door behind her marked “Cowgirls,” Austin slid down in his booth and rubbed his face.

  Holy shit. He hadn’t felt so alive by a woman’s mouth on him since he kissed her seven years ago. All that time he wondered if he had built up their kiss in his mind to something it wasn’t. Even the brief interlude in Jericho’s bed didn’t confirm anything because he’d just woken up and wasn’t thinking straight.

  No, now he knew it was more than the kiss. It was her.

  Austin had thought it was going to be tough going back to The Pit—facing all the old memories of him and Wes bonding the way friends do. Losing Wes nearly broke him. But it felt good going back to their old hangout, like he was putting to bed all that anger he had carried with him over the years. Everyone has that one place from their youth that transports them back to an earlier time. The Pit was that place. It’s where they’d scoped out girls, talked about muscle cars, and where they fell in love with old-school rock instead of the current stuff on the radio. It was a rustic joint with personality, ambiance, and initials with hearts surrounding them carved on the wooden tables. It was the kind of place you could smoke a cigarette and no one would say anything as long as you kept it hidden.

  After cleaning their plates, he decided to bring the car around front and save Lexi the walk of drunken shame. Austin smiled, thinking about how she had asked him to order her dinner. “I trust your choice,” she’d said, which was code for, “I want to see if you really remember a damn thing about me.”

  Of course he did. He even knew she liked a cup of sauce on the side to dunk her roll in. Why he remembered stuff like that was crazy, but he’d thought
about her a lot over the years.

  Except in those thoughts, he’d imagined Lexi had already settled down with a man and had kids. Her being single made no sense to him. Then again, it was for the best considering she was a Shifter. He also noticed nothing had changed in regards to how men’s eyes were all over her. Lexi had always possessed a natural beauty and he didn’t think the Shifter allure was behind every roving eye.

  When Lexi rose from the table and bent over to mess around with him, Austin’s eyes skated to the left and caught a guy checking out her ass. That’s when a possessive feeling took hold, but it didn’t make him want to pound the guy’s face in like he might have ten years ago. Austin wanted to grab her ass and claim her as his woman, just to rub it in.

  Funny how being around her made him feel young and stupid again.

  He even let her talk for five minutes with a piece of coleslaw stuck to her cheek because he thought she was too damn cute to spoil the mood by embarrassing her. He was afraid she’d eventually discover it and scold him for not telling her, so he’d cleverly pinched her cheeks in the middle of a conversation about how Wes used to call her chubby cheeks when she was a toddler. The topic was a diversion that allowed him to brush the coleslaw away without her knowing.

  Austin wouldn’t allow their night to be tainted with bad memories. He remembered all too well an incident when she was a young teenager that left her crying on the curb outside The Pit. Some of Wes’s friends were real dicks and teased Lexi a lot, but what she didn’t know was that they did it because they liked her. They just didn’t want Wes to find out.

  Austin twirled his keys around his finger as he walked out of The Pit. He thought about how amazing Lexi’s slim legs looked in those Capri pants and liked that casualness about her. Not once during their talks did he think about Wes, and wasn’t that a strange thing?

  When Bonnie had come up to their table and hadn’t mentioned Wes, it had become the elephant in the room. He knew damn well she remembered who Wes was because she dated him for about a month. It must have stung Lexi to hear that. Everyone knew those two were best friends. When he saw her gazing somberly out the window, he reached out and took her hand. Maybe she didn’t understand why, but he wanted to console her. It felt instinctive.