Chasing The Night: Big Easy Shifters: Book Three by Knox, Abby (best novels to read for students TXT) 📗

Gavin walked around the bar with the mug of stale ale and shook his head. “I don’t care, I just want to hang for a minute to wait for Bobby. I need information.”

“I haven’t seen him since the party ended last night. I’ve been cleaning, and I’m getting ready to leave,” she said.

“Have you seen any women in here? Young, I think? Cute? Smells good?”

The barmaid looked at him like he’d grown a second skull. “Dude, go home and sleep it off. There was a crowd of tight-ass bitches in here last night after that bachelorette party merged with the bachelor party at about 1 a.m., and I have no idea what happened after that.”

Gavin nodded and pulled out his wallet, digging for a stack of twenties, about to ask her a favor. “Shit. No worries, just a shot in the dark. Hey, do you think you could fire up the fryer and make some beignets real fast? I know Bobby’s got some dough back there in the freezer. I need to suck up to a girl. I just have this feeling she likes those.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I just cleaned. You wanna make a mess? Be my guest. But clean up after yourself. Also, it’ll mean more if you make them yourself.”

As he was about to fold up his wallet again, he saw a glint in it. He moved around some receipts. He needed to clean out his wallet. There it was. A key. He reached in and picked it up. It was a brass house key. Had he scored a key to this girl’s house or apartment, with no clue where it was? He gripped the key in his hand, closed his eyes, and concentrated. She was still all over him, but now he could see something.

A memory from last night surfaced into his mind. He could not see her face, but he saw hair, a curvy little body. Smooth, flawless skin that responded with heat to his touch. And breasts as beckoning as her scent. She had dark rosy nipples that pebbled at the touch of his hands, his lips. Everything about her was soft and inviting and intoxicating. He felt a woman’s fingers in his hair. Legs wrapped around him. And her sex was unbelievably hot and wet for him, his lips diving in for a taste. He’d kissed and tasted her everywhere, and everywhere was softness and velvety perfection.

Everywhere except her fangs.

Wait. What?

Of course. How could he be so stupid? Of course, she had fangs. She was one of Rosemary’s cousins. Had to be.

This was not going to go over well with some of the wolf shifters he knew, but at least he had the pack to back him up. Ash was marrying a panther shifter. Vann was imprinted on another one. That Band-Aid had already been ripped off. But there were some, especially in his tattoo shop, who didn’t approve of all this mixing of the different breeds of shifters.

Well, they’d just have to accept it and move on. Plenty of shifters had already married non-shifters, or Normals, as they called them. The bloodlines were already dwindling. And who cared? Maybe the more they mixed, the less chance there would be of kids carrying the cursed genes to the next generation.

His thoughts wandering into the future gripped his heart. He knew he was in trouble. Gavin never thought about the future, never cared about what came next.

All he could think now was finding her as soon as he could and claiming her for himself. He didn’t know what she looked like, but he knew she belonged to him body and soul.

He was now getting hungry—for her and for beignets—and knew he had to find her. Fast.

But first, he had to conjure up a memory of learning how to make homemade beignets.

* * *

Charlene, Ash’s mom, had been the best substitute mom he could have hoped for growing up. She’d taught all the young wolves how to cook and bake, and was the person that their chef pack mate, Vann, credited for inspiring his love of all things food.

These weren’t the best beignets, but they were the best that Gavin could do at the moment.

And then, his guts turned to mush as a memory of shifting came back. Yes, that’s right. He had started to shift right there in front of her, and that’s why he’d found himself alone, naked, in the woods, without her. He had somehow lost control of his emotions and fled, for her safety.

Just then, the rumble of the GTO came within earshot. Gavin looked up and saw Ash parking right outside the bar.

Gavin decided he’d better make nice with Ash. Because if his girl turned out to be a feline, then Ash would be his only ally on that front. As much as Gavin appreciated expanding the gene pool of eligible mates, it would be a hard sell for some people in the wolf clan. He shoved the key back into his wallet and stood up.

“Find Bobby?” Gavin asked his friend.

“No. And listen, I’m sorry for being a douchebag back there. I’m just super freaking out about the wedding. Rosemary’s got me…well, I am not going to go into details, but let’s just say blue balls don’t help my attitude.”

Gavin put up his hand. “Too much information about your balls.”

Ash sighed. “Fine, no more talk about balls. I just came here again because I’ve been everywhere, and I can’t find him. But I’m glad you’re here because I’m gonna ask one more time if you’ll come with me to the brunch. I need at least one dude from my wedding party there, or Rosemary and her mama are gonna freak the fuck out. I don’t need yet another hoop to jump through before my wedding night.”

“The fuck are you talking about, brother?” Gavin asked. Now he was genuinely curious about what was going on between Rosemary and Ash.

Ash shook his head. “Forget it. Will you come?”

Gavin