by Abby Knox
And then in the morning, my private jet will be waiting for me, because though the military plane is a fine craft, it’s not what I would call my personal taste.
I will take a long, hot shower on that private plane and think of you, Sweet Thing, while the water washes over me. I’ll imagine you’re in there with me, your hands on my ass. You’re looking up at me, your deep brown eyes seeing the real Lionel that nobody else sees. Your soft lips call to me. Your blonde hair, wet and clinging to your neck…the neck that I’m going to be kissing again soon. I imagine you soaping me up with that spicy stuff you like for me to use…you’re letting your sharp little she-panther claws out to stroke my chest and my back. Gently, but not too gently, you know what I like. Kindly remember to retract once again before having your way with my dick…is that kind of rough talk too much for you, my love?
I know you were raised with good society manners by good Catholic parents, but I know the real you, as well. You are a good girl when they need you to be, but I’ve seen the real Betsy, and she is the wildest little hellcat there ever was.
I’ll probably get hard in the shower at the thought of you touching me, the thought of your sweet breasts, your little pink nipples, soaked in the steaming shower, fully exposed to me and only me. I’ll be all worked up by the time I get home, so get yourself ready, Betsy.
Don’t worry about what might be happening while I’m gone, but by god, be ready. In my mind, I’m already on my way back home and I’m coming straight for you.
With love,
Lionel
April 5, 1982
Lionel,
I just found your letter on my pillow this morning. That’s a fine goodbye for a gentleman. How did you get into my bedroom again? Don’t answer that. You shimmied up the drainpipe. Silly boy. But Daddy had my window sealed shut after the last time, so it’s a mystery how you got inside and out again. Doesn’t matter. The world knows nothing can stop old Lionel DuChamps when he sets his mind on something. I supposed if you aim to sneak into my room at night, there’s not a thing to stop you. Least of all me.
And here’s where we have the difficult conversation. Imagine I’m stammering, because I’m a little afraid of your reaction. Here it is: I’m not sure I want you sneaking into my room anymore. Mama and Daddy had the priest come and talk to me at dinner last night. After talking to him, I feel really bad, Lionel. You and I have been doing things that I know I shouldn’t do. I just can’t help myself around you.
It’s hard enough being 19 and trying to get through college, and still figuring out how to control the panther inside me. But then to be told that not only am I a sinner for sneaking off with a boy, but that even letting the panther out into the world is a sin? It’s too much to handle.
What I’m trying to say is, I love you, Lionel. But I need some time to think. To pray. To be alone.
You might think I’m a coward for not saying these things to your face, but goddamn. See that? See what you do to me? Surely I’m headed straight to hell.
Every time I’m around you, all you have to do is put your lips close to mine and I swoon. I forget my own name. Never mind the endless speeches I’ve prepared in hopes of reasoning with you.
Like I said, there’s no stopping my Lionel.
But now that there is physical space between us—and yes, I can see through your bullshit, Lionel…this is not going to be a short trip, I have a feeling—I can say what I need to say.
Give me some space. Please. I don’t want to break up, but let me at least finish college before you get me pregnant.
I know your family doesn’t feel shame when it comes to these things, but put yourself in my shoes. Think of my sweet mother. My aunt, who is a nun! They would be scandalized in the community.
Don’t lose hope. Whatever happens, I will wait for you, and I will marry you. But when you return, we should be married as soon as possible.
I can’t do the things we do anymore without a ring on my finger.
I know you think all this guilt is silly, but this is the girl you chose. And do you not imagine there is some kind of a higher power? With all the voodoo that’s had a hold on our families for so many years? All the shifting between beast and human? That’s magic, is it not? And if magic is real, then where does it come from?
These are questions I can’t wait to explore with you once we are married, Lionel.
Just try to be patient.
In the meantime, I don’t suppose I’ll go to hell straightaway for enjoying an impure thought about you from time to time.
Just so you know, my favorite impure thought is the one where you climb through my window while I’m asleep in my four-poster bed. You slip inside with the silence of a panther and hover over my bed as I sleep. You crawl under the satin sheets and slide between my legs and wake me with your mouth. I open my eyes, surprised, and yet, not so surprised. I have to bite down on the lace sashes of my bed to keep from crying out with the pleasure you give me. I am terrified we will be caught in the act, but at the same time, that terror just heightens all my senses. You build me up higher and higher. Your mouth, your tongue. It’s all so much. Your hands on my belly. And then I think, my god, I’ve got Lionel DuChamps, the world’s most amazing half-man, half-panther, and one of the country’s most sought-after bachelor’s between my legs—at my beck and call—and that’s more than enough to push me over the edge. When I crash, the waves of pleasure hit me and it’s so good that I have tears in my eyes. I finish, and next thing I know I am in your arms, shuddering, and you’re kissing me back to sleep. Oh god, I shouldn’t write these things, but you bring it out of me. Everything about you touches me. The invisible skin particles left behind on your letter, and knowing you were here and that you touched my pillow, arouses me.
You are so good and so bad for me. You have me turning in circles.
Does that answer your question about “rough talk”?
Please.
Words of love and pleasures of the flesh don’t hold a candle to being told I’m headed to the lake of fire in a handbasket. That, my darling boy, is rough talk.
I suppose calling you “boy” is funny, considering I’m 19 and you’re 35 and a captain of industry. I promise to keep my pet name for you in the bedroom once we’re married.
Continue to be sweet, my love, and give me the space that I need to clear my head.
Don’t be alarmed. I have no intention of taking holy orders, but I’m going to be talking about our situation with Sister Catherine, my aunt, for advice. I simply want her to help me pray. For myself, for my soul, for you, and for us. I fear there is much more danger in store for you in the coming days than you realize, or that you are willing to reveal to me.
Stay safe, darling boy.
Betsy
Chapter 2
April 10, 1982
Lionel
The helicopter pilot did not introduce himself, but Lionel could see from his stripes he was a captain. He did not tell Lionel where they were going, but it was clear they were headed south.
Way south. As in, dense-mountains-and-rainforest south.
There were no other people on board the chopper, and only one duffel bag, which belonged to Lionel. It could either mean this was a day trip and he and the pilot were going to drop in, have some kind of rendezvous and head back home, or it meant the pilot would be dropping Lionel off and heading back out again, alone.
Lionel had a pretty good idea which it was.
The forest canopy over which they flew was an intense green and wild with mystery. No clearings or buildings for miles that he could see in any direction. He was far away from the familiar comforts of the Mississippi Delta, that’s for sure.
And it had been a long time since he’d graduated with honors from the Citadel.
In fact, nobody, not even his handler at the military base, had given him much to go on and hadn’t even given Lionel so much as a physical exam before whisking him off to this mystery assignment in Central America.
&
nbsp; His life until this day had been perfectly laid out before him. He’d inherited the family shipping, trucking and oil businesses, overseeing and growing an empire that nearly nobody could compete with in the American South. He had the means and the drive to conquer anything and anybody who stood in the way of the DuChamps empire.
And if they continued to stand in his way, he would simply buy them out.
In less than a decade he had doubled the size of the company’s holdings while scaling back its workforce. Today, it would run without him like a well-oiled machine, with oil refined by a subsidiary company of DuChamps, obviously.
This massive corporation ran so well, Lionel was starting to realize he actually had free time on his hands. That’s when Betsy came along. It was perfect timing.
His company had sponsored a cotillion for a local Catholic charity; and that’s when he first laid eyes on her. She was a 16-year-old kid in a white lace dress covering her all the way up to her neck and sleeves down past her wrist, and Lionel had not thought of her in any other way than a charming and bright little thing. She had only caught his attention that day because he picked up on her scent. She was a beast like him.
Lionel was a gentleman. He put her out of his mind as best as he could, figuring he was far too old for her. When she turned 18, he was in his thirties. His rational self told him he didn’t stand a chance.
But the beast called him out, and he obeyed. So, one day, he walked into the Holy Family Catholic Church and converted, not knowing if young Betsy was already spoken for or even if she still lived in New Orleans. He just did it based on a gut feeling.
He figured if he saw her again, and she was not married, things would be far less complicated if he were already Catholic.
Did he really believe any of that mumbo jumbo? Well, a man of Lionel’s business acumen does not become that much of a success without learning to become a chameleon.
For instance, Lionel hated golf in his heart of hearts. Yet, he learned to play well, because 90 percent of business deals and building permits were verbally hammered out on the golf course.
He hated social clubs with a passion, but certain contacts could be made nowhere else but at an old-fashioned schmooze-fest at the most exclusive social and country clubs.
Lionel could not stand cigars, and yet did he sometimes grease the wheels of politicians with offerings from Cuba and pretend to be an aficionado? And did he learn to smoke them without vomiting? Why yes, he did.
A boring little detail like religion certainly wasn’t going to stand in Lionel’s way.
As with all of his business decisions, Lionel’s gut feeling was correct; the very day he was privately baptized as a Catholic, he ran right into Betsy Granger.
As in, literally ran into her on the grounds of the church.
She’d been visiting her aunt at the adjoining convent and they were strolling the grounds when Lionel had come around the corner and nearly knocked her over.
She was all of 18 and had grown up to be a beautifully filled-out female panther shifter. Although she looked prim in her modest twin set and pearls, he could see the wild fire in her eyes, whiff the scent of the beast all over her. Her platinum hair and striking eyes exuded a kind of unspoken promise of being the most shockingly beautiful panther these parts had ever known.
And every curve of her body, down to the untouched valleys underneath that unflattering floral skirt, called out for him to touch her.
Which he did.
After the initial accidental collision, Lionel put a hand out to steady the girl, and his fingers grazed the arm of her pink cashmere sweater.
“Pardon me, miss…” he said, just to be doubly sure it was the same girl, but everything in his body was recognizing her immediately.
“Granger,” she said primly. In the next instant, as she adjusted her cardigan that needed no adjusting, he saw the familiarly flash in her eyes. “Do I know you?”
He held out his hand. “Lionel. I’m sure we’ve met before.”
“I know you,” chimed in Sister Catherine. “You’re Lionel DuChamps. You’re the one they named that park after.”
Lionel kept shaking hands and maintained eye contact with Betsy. “That was my granddad.”
He refused to take his eyes off Betsy as he waited for a signal. Anything at all that told him he might have a chance with her.
She kept her good-girl expression, but he could see other things happening. His panther self could see the pupils dilating. The plumping of her lips. He could hear her heart beginning to beat faster. Best of all, he could smell her need. Then she looked away to introduce her aunt, and Betsy’s cheeks were as red as fresh-boiled lobster.
That was all Lionel needed to see.
She was as good as his.
Present-day Lionel snapped back to reality as a clearing appeared in the distance and the chopper began a gradual descent over the tops of the trees.
He could just make out a small building and some smaller outbuildings. He could not see any vehicles, let alone roads in or out.
His best guess was that they were in Nicaragua. Not the nicest place to be if you were an American in the 1980s.
For the first time in his life, Lionel felt unsure of what was about to happen and had no idea how to escape if negotiations went awry.
He breathed in and steadied himself. He wasn’t going to let anybody see him sweat, despite the jungle climate outside these doors once they landed.
There was no need to sweat, after all. Betsy, he knew, was waiting for him on the other end of this trip, and that would see him through.
Chapter 3
Betsy
“Miss Granger, you have a visitor.”
Betsy had been staring at the wall of her bedroom, thinking of Lionel. She thanked the maid and told her to let the visitor in.
But nothing was clicking. She had been staring at her crucifix on the wall for hours, but no words were coming to her.
All she could think about was Lionel. Her Lionel. On his way to god knows where. Was he safe? Had he arrived? Were they treating him well? She had no way of knowing anything.
She had sent the letter to the address he had included, but she did not have much faith in it arriving. He was definitely keeping some secrets from her. She had a feeling he was encouraging her to write him letters to keep herself sane as much as for any other reason.
After placing the letter in the outgoing mail, Betsy had taken a walk to see her aunt at the convent. There, as she wound around the corner of the garden behind the sacristy, she remembered the day she had bumped into Lionel.
It had been about a year ago. She had pretended not to recognize him. But the truth was, she had first laid eyes on him when she was 16 years old. She’d been attending her coming out party as part of a cotillion that his company had sponsored.
She sensed him before she ever saw him. Something in her loins told her that her mate was in the room.
Her human self, the one who had been raised in a proper, pious home by authoritarian parents, knew this to be entirely inappropriate.
Which made the whole thing that much more exciting to a teenage panther shifter who had received no guidance on her bizarre condition.
Her parents were not shifters. Betsy had somehow been born with it, and ever since the Grangers learned of this condition, they and the church officials had done everything they could to counsel it out of her. Instead of teaching her to control the beast, they simply discouraged it.
But that day of the cotillion, something else was happening that she had been unprepared for. There was another panther in the room, and she could feel it. And, she already felt herself falling for him.
And then, she saw him.
Betsy would never let him know this: she saw him before he saw her. He was as tall as she’d heard, and as commanding a presence—for everyone in the city knew of Lionel even if they didn’t know him personally.
His three-piece suit was exquisitely tailored to his broad shoulders. His
light brown hair was wavy but close-cropped, like a military man.
His brow was furrowed, like he would rather be any other place than here, or that he was scouting for something…or somebody.
Betsy secretly hoped he was scouting for her.
She took a deep breath in, and his feline scent was in the air. Not just in the air but all up in her nostrils like perfume. But instead of sneezing, Betsy felt her body do other involuntary things. Shameful things for a teenage body to be doing in front of a dozen or so nuns, priests, moms and dads, while wearing a dress that had all the sex appeal of a caftan. Her nipples went hard. Her heart pounded. Her palms began to sweat. Her breathing took on a life of its own, and she was worried for a second that she might let the beast out if she didn’t get her anxiety under control.