Taking the Belle: Big Easy Shifters: Book One

by Knox, Abby

  Sometimes he truly was a typical guy. Complete selective hearing.

  So she repeated herself. His face fell when Rosemary went over everything so he would fully absorb what she was saying to him. His brows knitted together when she slowly explained that it was not a joke.

  Ash gritted his teeth and leaned forward in the booth. “You’re telling me you showed up in that dress and you’re not even gonna let me take a bite out of that tonight? I don’t like this.”

  Rosemary sat forward, face level with his. “Then don’t ever talk about the possibility of leaving me. Especially to other people. I don’t like it,” she hissed.

  He thought for a moment, his expression that of wheels and cogs struggling to turn the thoughts over in his mind. “So tell me the rules exactly.”

  “Just what I said. You’re giving up pussy for Lent.”

  Ash laughed incredulously and tried to keep his voice just above a whisper. “We’re already not having the full-on peen-in-vee sex until our wedding night.”

  Rosemary nodded. “No more watermelon sugar for you until Easter.”

  “Sweets, like I told your parents, I ain’t no Catholic. And I ain’t converting, so you can forget about a church wedding.”

  Rosemary sat back and crossed her arms. “What are you then?”

  He flashed her his most boyish grin. “I live only to worship you.”

  This caught her off-guard, but it pleased her. She forgot all about being hungry for food and let this feeling wash over her. Nobody had ever said something like that to her before in her life. As corny as it was, she could tell he meant every word.

  He pressed on. “Can I at least play with your melons until you come?”

  She giggled. “Yeah, but that’s not likely to work.”

  “We’ll see about that,” he said.

  “And…I can still go down on you,” she replied.

  Ash nodded. “Hell yeah, you can. Oh, you’ll be going down. Tonight, in fact,” he said.

  She smiled wickedly. “I’m hungry already.”

  The server arrived to take their drink order while both of them sat there with heated blood in their veins.

  Ash looked up. “I’ll have a whiskey sour. And a Southern Comfort for the lady. Make it a double.”

  The server nodded and quickly disappeared.

  “Oh, sweetie, I don’t think I need any more booze tonight,” Rosemary purred.

  “Yes, you surely will,” Ash said. “'Cause tonight, your ass is mine. Literally.”

  Rosemary’s face felt flushed at the idea of another new experience in the bedroom with her fiancé. “Fine,” she said. “But we should stop for some lube on the way back to your place.”

  Chapter Nine

  Rosemary

  The night after Mardi Gras, which this year also happened to be the night before Valentine’s Day, the wolf pack surprised Rosemary and Ash with a surprise engagement party on the roof of his building overlooking Bourbon Street.

  That is to say, everyone in the wolf pack was there, except for Pen.

  “… I think I messed this friendship all the way up,” Rosemary was saying to her cousin GiGi, who was nodding sympathetically.

  “Well,” GiGi replied, “just try to enjoy tonight. Look at this place! Your fiancé has the best view in the entire French Quarter.”

  Rosemary nodded and followed GiGi’s gaze. She was right. It was a gorgeous night, and the parade tourists were mercifully sparse. Bourbon Street was a dull roar of hungover revelers mixed with jazz music. On the rooftop, the partygoers ate fresh crab, gumbo, jambalaya, and some insane appetizers that GiGi and her staff had made. Rosemary took one bite and had intended to give the catering job right there to GiGi.

  “GiGi! This is incredible!” Rosemary said through a mouthful of appetizers. “You need to—”

  Just then, as if parting the Red Sea, a celebrity was in their midst and headed their way.

  Vann West strode through the parted crowd, and Rosemary watched him make a beeline for Ash.

  “Is that…?” She turned back to GiGi. Her cousin was not half as impressed as everyone else at the party.

  “Yeah,” GiGi said. “Did you know they were friends?”

  Rosemary nodded. “Not just friends. Pack mates.”

  Ash, with his arm around Vann, dragged his friend over to meet her. “Sweets, I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

  Rosemary smiled. “Oh, I know who you are.” She held out her hand and let this new wolf put his paw on her hand, but only briefly.

  “Ash,” she said, gesturing to GiGi, “this is my cousin GiGi, a local chef here in New Orleans. She’ll be catering for the wedding.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw GiGi shooting her a look.

  Ash looked shocked and embarrassed. “Baby, I’m so sorry. But uh, Vann has already asked to take on the catering as part of his wedding gift to us, and I said yes.”

  “Without checking with me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Ash said, looking stricken that he might have committed a major faux pas against the family even more profound than offending Lionel.

  Vann flashed a charming smile at GiGi. “Weddings are so stressful. Wouldn’t you rather simply enjoy the wedding?”

  GiGi spoke up. “I would wager the last time you catered a wedding you were one of the servers. I’m sure television keeps you very busy these days. But that’s all right. You go on ahead and take the catering and leave the big pressure job to me. People are very forgiving about the food, as long as the cake is good.”

  “Great,” Vann said. “It’s settled then.” He winked at GiGi. GiGi, it seemed to Rosemary, bristled at the cocky chef’s flirtatiousness.

  The details were hashed out, and Ash, sensing a cat and dog duel in the making, dragged Vann away to get a drink, shooting an apologetic look at his soon-to-be bride.

  Rosemary pivoted to her cousin. “My mild-mannered kitty cat cousin is finally showing her claws. You ought to do that more often.”

  GiGi put up her hands in surrender. “I’ve catered enough weddings to know it’s all about compromise between the bride and groom. A mixed shifter wedding? This is going to be a first, and if I can do my part to keep the drama at a minimum, then I’m more than happy to do it. And honestly, I’d love to bury myself in the simple task of making your cake and nothing else, if it’s all the same. I don’t want to get in the way of that Saint Bernard of a chef, because you know he’s going to be poking around my kitchen as this date gets closer.”

  Rosemary embraced her cousin. “You are the best. But don’t go calling my cake simple, you hear me? I mean, we have met, right?”

  Aside from the competing chefs at the same party, this was also the first time that the Boudreaux clan and the DuChamp clan had ever been seen together in the same room publicly. Big Daddy Jimmy Boudreaux was there, as was Betsy. The absence of Lionel, who had closed himself in his office for the night—again—was felt by everyone.

  Betsy gave the toast in his place. When everyone had raised their champagne glasses, she said, “To my Rosie and Ashton. May this be the beginning of change. The beginning of a friendship between the DuChamp clan and the Boudreaux clan. There can be only good things that result from love. Our differences make us interesting, and when we combine the best of us—and my Rosie and her Ash are certainly the best of us—we can only make each family that much better.”

  Rosemary was bawling. Ash put his arm around her, but she could tell he was holding back a hard little knot in his throat.

  Then it was Jimmy B’s turn. He scratched his silver goatee thoughtfully before he addressed everyone in his shy, soft-spoken manner. “I have to admit, when Ash told me he was going to marry a DuChamp, I thought that there would be no better way to stick it to my least favorite business rival than to give her the last name of Boudreaux. But revenge and petty rivalries are no way to live one’s life. And then I met Rosemary. She is a fine young woman and a good person. Rosemary, welcome to the family. I wish o
nly that my sweet Charlene could have been here to meet you. Charlene would have fallen in love with you immediately.”

  Ashton’s siblings all raised their glasses and shouted, “Hear, hear!”

  Rosemary knew then what had to be done. Ash’s father was right, and so was her mother. She turned to Ash with a tear-streaked face and said, “Ash, you have to get my daddy to this wedding, come hell or high water.”

  Chapter Ten

  Ash

  He liked to think of himself as a modern fellow, but Ash had seen the way some of those reality TV shows liked to insert grooms into the planning of a wedding. When Ash watched those shows, to him it looked as if the grooms had been coached to throw a hissy fit sometimes almost worse than the brides, or they looked like a deer in headlights with absolutely zero interest in the hubbub around them.

  Ash fell into the camp of giving exactly zero shits other than making his bride happy. And that made him happy. His one job apart from showing up for the ceremony was harrowing enough: make Lionel DuChamp show the fuck up for Rosemary.

  He needed a plan, even if it meant he had to do it by force. Hell, he wasn’t even sure of the date. He was just trying to make it through Lent without thinking about his girl’s lady parts. Parts with a scent he could track for miles.

  In the meantime, since he wasn’t getting the kind of action in the bedroom he really wanted, he did some digging into shapeshifting panthers in the southern Louisiana region.

  He was stunned to find, when he went to his favorite commercial voodoo shop in the French Quarter, that this history was widely known. The shop owner, Lucy, was shocked that this was news to Ash.

  “Oh yes,” said Lucy, a dear family friend who knew the wolfs’ secret. “The panthers go back many generations.”

  “How did that happen?” Ash asked, leaning forward in his wingback chair in interest. He had been doing what he always did whenever he would visit Lucy—lounging around her reading room and sipping on a cup of her specially brewed yerba mate she always made whenever he showed up.

  Lucy was unpacking a box of supplies while she explained. “An unscrupulous witch named Clarice tried to make Beauregard DuChamp suffer a mysterious and magical death. It did not end well.”

  Ash sat up. “The DuChamps had enemies from the beginning of time, it seems.”

  Lucy chortled as she unwrapped a bulk order of sage and divided it into portions to be weighed. “Of course. Someone hired her to do it. And every real practitioner knows if you take money to practice your powers, you’d better make sure the motive is pure. That spell was born of jealousy and greed. On top of that, old Clarice wasn’t a very good practitioner, because she got her spell all wrong. Instead of causing the bloated Beauregard to die by a wild animal attack on his nightly walk, he only got bit. Because the big cat was under Clarice’s spell, the black magic was passed on into the blood of the DuChamp family. Beauregard DuChamp himself was not a halfling or a shapeshifter, but his children ended up carrying the magical gene. They were doomed to a life of feline proclivities. They were prone to disappearing for hours every so often, whenever the urge to shapeshift came over them. Eventually, they learned to control the beast. Why do you think those rich folks send their daughters off to finishing school?”

  Ash shrugged. “To learn how to use a shrimp fork?”

  Lucy laughed. “That’s where they learn to tame the beast. Over the generations, they’ve developed the ability to only let the panther out at will. All except on the new moon. To this day, every new moon, they run off to the woods to hunt.”

  Ash sat back in his chair gobsmacked. “How did I not know about any of this? And whatever happened to Clarice?”

  She smiled and handed him a sack of crystals. “Because you never asked. Forget vampires and zombies. This city is shifter central. As for the practitioner, well my great-great-great-grandma Clarice went on to study harder, did her penance, and here we are.” She ended the story with a small flourish and a curtsey as Ash looked on, totally surprised.

  “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy, it’s like I don’t even know you or the slightest thing about what goes on around this town right under my nose.”

  Lucy, herself a high priestess, simply shrugged and said, “Well, the more you know. Here.” She handed him a small paper bag of crystals. “Crush those when you get home, and then just before the ceremony, burn them with some sage.” She dropped a small bundle of sage into the bag.

  Ash laughed. “Am I supposed to smoke that too?”

  Rolling her eyes, Lucy told him if he did smoke it to watch out for popcorn lung. “And just know this, do not expect this spell to make anybody do your bidding. It only makes people more open to suggestion. You still gotta be convincing.”

  Ash took a whiff of the contents of the bag and gagged. “Rosemary’s not going to hate this aroma at her wedding. Not at all.”

  He paid Lucy and drank down his tea before leaving. When he called Rosemary outside the shop to tell her he wanted to meet with her to discuss the plan to get her father to the wedding, she replied that she was feeling under the weather.

  “Aw, baby, what’s the matter?”

  She explained, “Sorry. ‘Under the weather’ is code for my time of the month.”

  “Oh, okay,” he replied. “But I still want to see you, that doesn’t gross me out or anything.”

  “I meant the other time of the month. The new moon. When I shapeshift and I have to go hunting with the family.”

  Ash thought about this for a second. He wondered what she would look like as a panther. Would she recognize him? He would’ve loved to know all about her culture.

  “Can I watch?”

  Rosemary scoffed. “I’d rather you didn’t see me that way.”

  “Baby. I’m going to marry you, I’m going to see it sooner or later. Might as well rip off that Band-Aid.”

  The sigh on the other end of the phone reminded him of her honeyed breath against his skin when they were close together. He wished they were having this conversation face to face. “It’s just that it can be a little bit jarring the first time someone sees it. It’s pretty gruesome. I am a lady, after all. It feels like someone asking me about my weight and body fat measurement index. And the way we hunt is pretty ruthless. I can’t even stomach the memories of it after I shift back into my human self.”

  Ash was gobsmacked. “You have memories of it?”

  “Yes, don’t you?”

  “Hazy, at best,” Ash replied.

  “Interesting. Well, listen, buddy. Whatever happens, do not—I repeat, do not—show yourself to me or any of the other DuChamps when we’re in our panther forms. It won’t go well for you.”

  Ash laughed. “Baby, come on. What’s a little kitty gonna do to me?”

  Rosemary clapped back, “Try a 300-pound feline with fangs as long as your index finger. We aren’t a bunch of puppies howling at the moon. I might have memories of it, but please don’t make those memories of me or my daddy tearing you to bits. He’s the pack leader, and I won’t be able to stop him. I’d like to leave the tearing you to bits for his wedding toast.”

  The thought of what that pompous asshole who was soon to be his father-in-law might say at the wedding toast was truly more gruesome than anything Ash could imagine happening on the new moon.

  He hung up already knowing what he was going to do. The wedding planning had kept them apart for weeks. The new moon was coming up, and he wanted to put his eyes on his soon-to-be wife.

  On the evening of the new moon, Ash waited in a rideshare outside her flat. He watched her exit the building, along with her cousin GiGi, who had been helping to plan the wedding. Rosemary looked nothing like her usual self. He realized he had never seen her in yoga pants and a T-shirt before. And running shoes. He had to do a double-take. The two women got into the back of a black town car and he paid the rideshare driver extra to follow it.

  They drove away from the city, on and on for almost an hour. They finally stopped at a distant nature preserve,
tucked-away on a remote bayou he’d never been to before. The setting sun sent long shadows of the eerie trees that grew out of the water. When Rosemary and GiGi exited the car, Rosemary paused and looked around, then nodded to the driver, who left.

  Ash waited for the two women to disappear into the wilds before following them. He had no problem catching up, as Rosemary’s scent was doubly strong that night. He stayed hidden in the shadows as she stopped under a gigantic bald cypress and looked up. For a moment, it looked as though she was going to climb it. When he inched closer, looked harder, he saw that in the trunk of the tree was carved a set of stairs. He watched Rosemary and GiGi disappear up the stairs as if they were going inside the center of the tree. Ash moved quickly and quietly, holding his breath. He got as close as he dared, and looked up. Beyond the tree with the stairs was a cleverly disguised treehouse. He would have missed it if he hadn’t been tuned in to the trail of Rosemary’s scent. The treehouse could not have been bigger than a ten-person tent, blending in perfectly with the surroundings.

  He held his breath and waited. Moments later, when the sky turned black, she appeared at the foot of the tree-trunk staircase. She was only recognizable by her scent. Her little human body was not there; it had been replaced by something the size of a lioness. A panther, but with golden fur, and a long, whipping tail. She was the most elegant creature he’d ever seen.

  He watched by starlight as she silently climbed up the tree and mounted a branch that overlooked the woods and the water. The world was so dark, he needed his wolf eyes to see. Just giving the beast that much power made the rest of his senses heighten that much more. Ash had to breathe deeply, calling on his training to control himself. The sight of her prowling in the starlight called out to his blood.

  The cat he assumed was GiGi followed soon after, bounding down the stairs and joining her cousin on the thick branch. The two cats roared at their reflections below, proud and majestic in their power, with the same energy with which they carried themselves in real life.