PrimalFlavor

by Danica Avet

  Her gaze fell to the perfect outline of Zach’s big paw prints in the soil and she hurriedly began kicking dirt over them. She didn’t need her relatives to know she’d just had the most erotic experience in her life with a shifter. They’d shit a brick.

  They weren’t prejudiced against shifters, not with some of their own family members turning furry whenever the urge struck them. No, they were prejudiced against men who might try to despoil her. If she hadn’t gone to college, she’d probably still be a virgin. And since she’d never been stupid enough to bring any of her lovers home with her, her family most likely thought she was on the verge of becoming an old maid, but what they didn’t know about her wouldn’t hurt them or anyone else.

  Unless they found out what she’d been doing. If they knew Zach had just…what? Rolled around on the ground with her, kissing her as though it were his mission in life? Her cheeks heated again. She flipped the safety on her rifle and cradled it in one arm to press her free hand to her cheeks one at a time in an effort to cool them. God, she hadn’t been this giddy since she left home at eighteen. She wasn’t a kid though. She shouldn’t be on the verge of giggling to herself. The man was insane. She’d shot at him, for crying out loud. And he’d kissed her in, what? Retaliation? Was that the appropriate response for shooting at a man though?

  Then her thoughts centered. Oh. Shit.

  Colette’s mind abruptly shifted gears from giggling schoolgirl to possible future inmate. She’d shot at someone. Well, it wasn’t exactly the first time. Three weeks before she’d found the slaughtered carcasses of doe, which were extremely out of season, and tracked the kills back to a couple of shifters. Antoine and Vernon Schumacher, idiotic brothers who lived in Germantown, had tried to intimidate her into forgetting about their little foray into bloodlust. A well-aimed bullet had caused them to turn tail and run. She hadn’t seen them since then, but she had reported them to Wildlife and Fisheries. She shook her head. She was babbling in her brain. And it didn’t matter anyway. The Schumacher brothers didn’t count since they were idiots and everyone wanted to shoot them.

  Zach was a respected member of Pointe-Aux-Chat society. He could go back to Maison Rouge and tell Sheriff Picou what she’d done. What the hell kind of defense could she summon? He turned me on so I was trying to get rid of him. No, that wouldn’t work. She was certain taking potshots at the opposite sex as a means of social interaction was frowned upon. She doubted anyone would believe her anyway. They’d think she was crazy. Which was a way to avoid going to prison, but then she’d end up institutionalized.

  The crashing footsteps of her menfolk arriving had her spinning around. Her dad, two of her uncles and five of her cousins stumbled into the clearing, faces relaxing when they saw her. She knew they had faith in her abilities. They’d trained her well, but that wouldn’t stop them from worrying about her. For once though, she was glad they hadn’t waited for her to send them her all-clear signal. They’d prevented her from doing something stupid. Like stripping naked and taking a ride on Zach Trahan’s joystick, a ride many women before her had taken. Her heart dropped as cold reality and jealousy reared their ugly heads.

  He could say whatever he wanted to. Zach wasn’t coming back. He wouldn’t brave the possible anger of a united Bayou Ange to see her again. Why would he? He could have any woman in the tri-parish area and had, if the gossips were correct. The chances of her ever going to Maison Rouge were slim to none. If her inner schoolgirl threw a tantrum over never seeing him again, Colette ignored the whiny putain. Zach wasn’t the kind of shifter who’d have anything to do with her. More than likely he’d just been trying to charm her out of shooting anything sensitive. And to her ever-lovin’ shame, it’d worked.

  Then her family crowded around her, marveling at the hog, chastising her for not answering them, slapping her on the back for a good hunt and basically distracting her from thoughts of a very naked and aroused Zach Trahan. But Colette knew images of the sexy shifter would visit her at night when she was home alone and trying to sleep. She knew it as surely as she knew her dad would quiz her on what had her so distracted.

  She read it in his eyes, recognized the interrogation to come because he didn’t miss a thing. While her cousins began preparing the hog for transport out of the swamp, her dad studied the ground around the kill. Colette knew the instant he realized a bigger animal had been in the area. His body tensed, his shoulders going rigid as he caught sight of Zach’s bare, human footprints mixed with the tiger’s paw prints. He studied the ground more, his sharp gaze following the tracks away from her, his LED lantern granting him a better view of the area. His lips thinned when he saw the furrowed gash her bullet had left in the ground and its proximity to Zach’s footprints.

  Colette cursed herself for not doing a better job of clearing the area, even as she realized she’d been distracted by her pussy. She lowered her eyes when her dad looked her way, pretending to be interested in what Cotton and Beau were saying. She wasn’t sure she was ready to answer any questions he had for her and prayed he would wait until they were alone before he began to grill her.

  “He’s got to weigh a good three-twenty,” Cotton said with obvious pride in Colette’s abilities. “And she got him with a clean shot.”

  Beau gave him a shove before leaning over to truss the hog’s legs together. “Of course she did. I taught her everything she knows.”

  That caused everyone in the group to laugh, earning Beau some good-natured ribbing since he consistently shot three inches higher or lower than where he aimed. Colette was thankful for the distraction, laughing along with them. Once the hog was ready for the drag back to the trucks, her bigger cousins each grabbed a rope and began to pull the kill along the ground.

  Colette followed behind with her uncles and dad, who were congratulating themselves on a good hunt. Each group had taken down one of the nuisance hogs, which would provide them all with plenty of food. With alligator season starting in a couple of weeks, they’d needed some meat for their freezers since none of them would have time for a hunt before then. She felt her dad’s eyes on her several times, but he didn’t approach her until they finished the two-mile trek to the trucks. It took nearly the entire group heaving and pulling to get the hog in the back of her Uncle Tudu’s pickup.

  “We’ll see y’all at the house,” her dad’s youngest brother called out as his sons piled into the cab. “Good job, Collie girl. We’ll have this pig butchered before you get there.”

  He tore out of the clearing, spitting dirt behind him to his sons’ laughter. She waved after them, determined to pretend everything was normal. But as soon as the taillights disappeared down the trail, a tense silence fell over the clearing. She’d ridden to the hunt with her dad and her Uncle Frog, the eldest Robicheaux brother, something she now regretted. It would’ve been nice to tell them “see y’all in a bit” and take off in her truck instead of riding back with them.

  When her dad cleared his throat, she flinched.

  “Colette, what the hell is goin’ on out here?” he asked in a tone that clearly said he expected a rational explanation.

  Ugh. This was not going to be pretty because she had no rational explanation to give him.

  Chapter Four

  Zach glared at the roux he was stirring, the sounds of his junior chefs bustling around the kitchen barely a blip on his radar. He hadn’t been able to find out jack shit about Colette Robicheaux other than rumor and gossip, neither of which he gave much credence to. He seriously doubted her Haitian-descended mother had conducted a voodoo ritual just so she could have a daughter. Nor did he believe she was the anti-Christ, or a mutant, or a foundling.

  He shook his head and added more flour to his roux. Even Father Bryan, a rational man who’d been known to give sound advice to any and all who approached St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, hadn’t been able to shed much light on the people of Bayou Ange. Zach hadn’t even known priests could swear that way, but apparently Father Bryan had been told very firmly and
politely that they didn’t require his services. The very small, family-built chapel called Our Lady of Angels had its own deacon, who happened to come from one of the founding families of Bayou Ange.

  It was as though they were taboo, which was weird. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to make a trip to Germantown since he met Colette. Between dinner parties he had to cater and a sudden surge in birthday parties and weddings he had to bake cakes for, he hadn’t had time to do more than jerk off to fantasies of having her on her knees, ready to take everything he had to give, all because memories of her kiss haunted him.

  His research had taken him to the one place he’d wanted to avoid at all costs, but the need to know about her had him sucking back his pride and common sense to approach the Pointe-Aux-Chat Parish Sheriff’s Department. He’d had to know exactly where Colette lived and that information sure as hell hadn’t been in the phone book or on the internet. The only address he could find for any Robicheauxs in Bayou Ange had been for Bayou Ange Swamp Tours. And the tour company was run by Colette’s family. Something he’d found out by bribing the very cranky, pregnant deputy Daisy Reinhardt with a box of beignets.

  He frowned down at his roux as he remembered that meeting. He’d have to start being more of a badass and less of a sap for pregnant females because she’d been rude. Of course, when he’d arrived she’d just been escorting some Orleans Parish Sheriff Detectives out of her cubical. He’d overheard them talking despite the noisiness of the station and their attempts to speak quietly. It seemed they were extending professional courtesy by sharing information about a woman who went missing a couple of weeks before.

  Daisy hadn’t been in the best mood after that and when he voiced his question she’d stared at him for several long minutes.

  “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” she’d asked, even as she snatched the box of beignets out of his hands.

  Left with nothing to hide behind, not that he was hiding per se, Zach had stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I just want to…” Drive to Colette’s house as a man instead of sneaking in like some kind of stray. “I’m thinking about offering them a business proposal for the tourists who take their swamp tours.”

  That hadn’t been on his mind at all, but now that he thought about it, his tiger liked the idea. It would get his foot in the door. If, however, things didn’t work out the way he wanted, Zach wasn’t opposed to sneaking in the back door. Nothing, but nothing was going to come between him and finishing what he and Colette had started in the woods that day.

  Daisy had squinted up at him over a fluffy, powdery mound of beignet, giving him the cop look, but Zach wasn’t worried about Daisy even if she was the most miserable pregnant woman he’d ever had the misfortune to know. She’d put her beignet down, not seeming to care that she had a powdered-sugar mustache, and pulled herself closer to her desk. He’d barely kept himself from asking if she needed a wireless keyboard since her large beach ball-sized baby bump meant she had to strain her arms to reach it.

  He turned his attention to a bulletin board boasting easily two dozen pictures of women, all young and human, bolted to the wall. Nothing tied the women together as far as his untrained eye could tell, except their human status. They had disappeared from different parts of south Louisiana, worked different jobs and ranged in ages from eighteen to thirty-eight. That was all. And yet they’d all disappeared, one a month for the past two years.

  Daisy mumbled to herself, her fingers tapping at her keyboard. When he had time, which wasn’t often anymore, Zach liked to watch cold criminal case shows and documentaries about prolific criminals. If what he’d learned on television was correct, the women all disappeared before or during a full moon. He glanced at the calendar to see the next one was in a couple of weeks. He filed the thought away as Daisy’s printer began to churn.

  Zach snatched the page off the printer to see she’d printed Colette Marie Robicheaux’s house address. Thanking her, he’d left without a backward glance. If the black bear deputy had known he was planning to go to Bayou Ange to possibly start World War III, she would’ve taken the beignets and locked him up for his own safety. Because he might not know a lot about the Robicheaux’s, but he’d gotten the gist of their protectiveness toward their women.

  Words like “crazy”, “possessive” and “jealous bastards” had been thrown around with wild abandon by more than one male. It seemed the Robicheaux men made some shifter males look like slackers when it came to taking care of what they considered theirs. And Colette, as the only born Robicheaux female, was definitely theirs. Sticking his nose in Bayou Ange because of a kiss seemed like a stupid thing to do. It was just too bad he couldn’t forget about her or that kiss.

  He scowled at the perfectly golden roux at the bottom of his pot, absently reaching for the “Holy Trinity” of seasonings—chopped onions, bell peppers and green onions, dumping them into the pot. He stirred, trying to ignore the hard-on that threatened to desecrate his kitchen. He’d tried to stop thinking about Colette, about her using that little rosebud of a mouth on his dick or running the slick crown across her pert tits before he came all over them. Zach cursed under his breath, glad his heavy chef’s coat hid his erection. He’d damn well done his best to put her to the back of his mind while at work, but thoughts of her invaded when he least expected it. Like now. He’d already traumatized half his junior chefs with his bad temper. He didn’t want to make the rest faint like the maiden aunts he didn’t have.

  Casting a dark glare over his shoulder at the younger chefs he could practically feel watching him, he sent them back to work without a single word. They jumped back into the fray, preparing the food on the menu for a wedding the following day. He muttered under his breath and added water to his roux. Once he’d filled the pot as much as needed, he threw in the crab claws, boiled crawfish tails and stepped back.

  He turned his attention to the poor sucker who’d lost the toss to work as his personal assistant for the day. He would’ve much preferred to have Dwayne, his catering assistant, on the gumbo, but the man was too valuable to waste on something so easy. “Let this come to a full boil before you add the shrimp, then add more water and let it come to another boil.” He pointed to the combination of seasonings he’d carefully measured out before he began the roux. “Then, and only then, do you add the seasonings. And if you so much as think about adding your own flavors, I’ll break your fingers. Got it?”

  The shaking, quaking fox shifter nodded, the stench of his fear filling Zach’s nose. His tiger let out a rumble of discontent. It didn’t want to be around these shifters who were so scared of him they couldn’t look him in the face without nearly pissing themselves. It amazed him how Colette managed to do that and make it seem completely natural. Most females, even the ones who had only enough bravery to approach him for sex, never went toe-to-toe with him the way a fragile human had. The way one elusive, sexy gun-toting Cajun woman had.

  His dick gave an eager lurch, ready for them to indulge in yet another naked-Colette-being-fucked fantasy. He bit back an annoyed groan and marched away from the catering prep area of his kitchen to the bakery at the front of the building. His workers here, while more seasoned and familiar with him than his catering crew, refused to look at him as well. Okay, so maybe he shouldn’t have thrown that whole wedding cake out, but what good was it being a chef if he couldn’t throw an artistic tantrum now and then?

  Even Emily, his baking assistant, refused to look his way and she’d been with him almost from the time he took over the business after his grandmother’s passing. He bit back an annoyed sigh and made a mental note to foot the bill for yet another night out for his kitchen crews in apology for his bad temper. Some people are so goddamn sensitive.

  Annoyed, horny and frustrated beyond belief, Zach was about to enter his office to return the five million fucking messages left for him when a sudden hush throughout the building made him pause with his foot in midair. He glanced at his workers, who weren’t even looking at him, but had th
eir stares fixated on the doorway leading to the customer area.

  He hadn’t seen them look that attentive at the last shop meeting. Wondering what could possibly hold their attention so thoroughly, he glanced over his shoulder and nearly lost his balance. Cold violet eyes in triplicate glared at him from leathery faces lined by the sun and time. Three men, brothers he assume, by their close resemblance and the almost exact same shade of silver hair covering their heads, stood in the doorway to his kitchen as though they belonged there.

  Even over the sweet tang of various fruits, the slightly bitter scent of chocolate and the underlying mouthwatering smells of gumbo, jambalaya and stew cooking, Zach could make out the acrid scent of gun oil and metal. The men were packing, which might have accounted for the sudden dearth of activity in the entire building, but somehow he didn’t think his people or customers were worried about weapons. No, it was the cold, menacing look on the humans’ faces that had his workers smelling as though they were about to run for cover.

  His tiger roused itself from a boredom-induced sleep long enough to figure out which one was his female’s father. The one in the middle. There was an unholy fire burning in his eyes that could only come from the father of a woman he feared was about to be completely defiled. And he had every right to be scared because Zach planned to thoroughly enjoy Colette’s body from the top of her head to the bottoms of her feet. Several times because once wouldn’t be enough.