Running With The Pack: Big Easy Shifters: Book Four by Knox, Abby (best book club books TXT) 📗

to get back at me for the part I played in kidnapping you, I’d love to watch your drunk old ass try.”

Lionel countered, “I’ll have plenty of chances ’cause as far as I can tell, you’re a drunk, cowering little chicken shit.”

Bobby shook his head and said, “You don’t know our history. It’s complicated. And I’m too drunk to try to explain PTSD to a privileged old man who never suffered a day in his life.”

Bobby met Lionel’s eye. There was deep darkness in the old man’s gaze, and something told Bobby he had said the wrong thing.

Lionel leaned in close to Bobby’s face. His voice was low and sharp. If words could take form, he could have stabbed Bobby in the throat with them. “Boy, you do not know trauma.” Lionel pointed to his chest and gritted his teeth as he spoke. “I escaped the Sandinistas, barefoot, in the jungle, after my own government left me for dead.”

That shocked Bobby silent. He hardly knew this man, who happened to be the richest in New Orleans. He would have thought Ash might’ve shared that exciting detail about the father of his bride before enlisting Bobby’s help in wrangling him to the wedding by any means necessary.

“Are you telling me that my buddies and I kidnapped a former prisoner of war?”

Lionel straightened himself. “Technically, it wasn’t a war. Which made what happened to me all that much shittier. Don’t cross me, boy. You don’t know what you’re getting into. The things I did for love…nothing, got in my way. Not a damn thing. The life I’ve lived would scare the piss out of your coddled, bony little ass.”

“My ass ain’t bony.”

“Nah, but you’re acting like a little candy-ass. We would have eaten you alive in Ranger school.” Lionel laughed, reached out, and snatched Bobby’s glass, downing the bourbon.

“And you’re a drunk, mean, bullying, old son of a bitch,” Bobby said.

Lionel cackled. “You gonna cry now ’cause the old bully drank your drink? Ah, the hell with it. Suit yourself.” And with that, Lionel sauntered off, slightly unsteadily, probably to find the restroom.

Bobby decided he liked that guy a whole lot better when he was under the influence of magic voodoo spells.

Pen’s favorite song ended. And the moment had passed.

Bobby looked around again and homed in on her. There Pen was, chatting with some blond trust fund case with a severe side part, on the other side of the dance floor. Laughing, having a grand old time, she was. Jealousy reared its head.

Maybe he could not have Pen, but he’d be damned if he was going to let her hook up with some spoiled, old-money brat she just met at this wedding.

Unrequited love was a bitch.

Watching her flit around like a social butterfly in a silver ball gown like a damn princess, flirting with the social elite and looking stunning, was beyond a bitch. It was the absolute fucking worst.

Chapter Three

Pen

Pen nodded and smiled and politely laughed on the outside.

On the inside, she was absolutely trembling with lust.

Not for the guy in front of her. This blond haircut was clearly on the lookout for birthing hips and a submissive, passive female to take home to the approving gaze of his society parents. If only he knew that just this morning, she was a wolf, baring her teeth at the richest son of a bitch in New Orleans, helping to kidnap his ass and bring him to his daughter’s wedding.

Pen’s body trembled with lust for no other creature but Bobby Jordan: the big, black-haired, bearded half-wolf that could light up the room at a party when he wanted to one minute, then retreat inside his dark, tortured soul the next.

She had thought tonight would be the night he finally made his move.

So far, he hadn’t.

As she listened to the blond boy tell the thunderously boring story about deciding whether to buy a sailboat or a speedboat—a sailboat has class and beauty, but a speedboat has a significant advantage: “It’s right there in the name, hahaha!” he was saying—Pen could feel Bobby’s eyes caressing her bare back. He watched over her; she felt it just as sure as she had memorized his look today: dashing in his suit, the lights from the dance floor highlighting his mane of hair. She could see the fuzz of his chest, too; his shirt was unbuttoned down to mid-chest, his bow tie hanging loose. Her throat dried up at the thought of running her fingers through the fur of that broad, masculine expanse.

Bobby was not what you would call slim. He had the chest of a lumberjack. He ate and drank like a lumberjack, too. He never could turn down a dinner at JB Chicken and probably never ate a salad in his life. Unless you consider corn liquor a vegetable. He was broad and strong and physically imposing. The biggest of all the shape-shifting wolves in their little pack, he was also by far the best-looking one, in Pen’s opinion.

Good-looking was an understatement. He was a god. But more importantly, he cared deeply for his pack mates, was fiercely protective. Her soul burned for him as if they were fated mates. She didn’t know if she believed in the lore of wolves imprinting on each other for life. If what she’d been told was true, and Bobby felt the same as she did, she wished he would get on with it.

These thoughts tormented her mind and teased her lady bits as the sailboat/speedboat guy droned on. “And then Dad took one look at my vessel and said, ‘Son, you’ll have to take sailing lessons.’ As if I’d be steering the boat myself! Isn’t that hilarious?”

Pen gave a half-hearted chuckle but felt ready to explode. She was of a mind to tell this spoiled brat in front of her to fuck off. Still, as she owned a small business that relied on wealthy clients—which was how she’d met Rosemary DuChamp—Pen had to live her life making nice