Chasing The Night: Part 3 of Her Big Easy Wedding Read online

  But instead of saying what everybody thought he would say, it went in a slightly different direction. But that would be another story for Uncle Lionel to tell for himself.

  After all this excitement, Chas was ready for the wedding drama to end and for her new life with Gavin to start. On the dance floor, during the reception, she and Gavin could not keep their hands off each other.

  As they slow danced, Gavin had decided to torture her by whispering seriously dirty things in her ear.

  “I never told anybody this, but ballgowns make me so horny. I’m gonna suck the juice out of you while you’re still wearing it.”

  When Chas could take no more, she finally said, “Big boy, you better make that happen right now because I don’t think I can wait until we get back to our apartment.”

  She indeed could not wait, and neither could he.

  Chapter 12

  Gavin

  Just as he’d promised he would while he’d whispered in her ear on the dance floor, Gavin was now fulfilling one of his sexual fantasies he had never dared tell anyone.

  But maybe it wasn’t so weird to dream about eating out his girl while she wore a ballgown. Maybe that was normal. He didn’t much care for normal, so fuck it.

  As soon as Chas had told him to take her right there during the reception, they had gone on a hunt all over that damn riverboat for a private place to get dirty. Hilariously, they had opened a broom closet only to come across his buddy Vann and Chas’s other cousin, GiGi.

  They had finally found an empty bathroom on the lower deck that had a separate lounge area with a small settee. It was a pretty damn fancy riverboat. One heavy armchair pushed against the door to keep it closed, and they were in business.

  Turns out, giving oral pleasure underneath that ballgown was just as hot as Gavin had always imagined. His fingers gripped the top of her thigh-high stockings as he knelt in front of her. Her crinolines and silk that got in the way just made it all that much better, serving as a reminder of how inappropriate it was to be shoving his face in someone’s pussy in the middle of a wedding reception. Damn. This was working for him. The garter belts and thong and all the other contraptions he had to push out of his way to access her sweet lady bits were no match for his hunger. Holy shit, she became hotter, sweeter and more wet with every nip, every squeeze. He could not believe how lucky he was to own this delicious female for as long as he wanted. And he wanted forever.

  “Gavin, nobody’s ever done this to me before. I’m so happy it’s you. I can’t tell you how good this feels, how right this is.”

  She was not mistaken. The lips between her legs were made for his kisses. His tongue.

  His hands were built for creating beautiful art, but nothing he had ever drawn could compare with how beautiful she was between her legs. He smiled as he brought her all the way through the roof, arching her back with spasms of bliss. He wondered for a moment if she would be opposed to him tattooing an image of her pussy somewhere on himself. It may be a ridiculous idea. But weren’t they already pretty ridiculous?

  Chapter 13

  After ditching the end of the reception—they’d stayed long enough for a piece of GiGi’s amazing cake—Chas and Gavin held hands as they drove to the tattoo shop. They were both exhausted and happy and satisfied. But Chas really wanted to change out of her ballgown now.

  “You don’t have to stay at my tiny apartment for the rest of your stay in New Orleans. I can get you a hotel room if you don’t want to go back to your uncle’s place. I’ll get your luggage,” Gavin said.

  Chas chided him. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m moving in.”

  Gavin frowned a bit and said, “Babe, you’ve seen my place. I don’t have room for all your clothes in my closet. I assume.”

  She laughed. “No, you don’t. But fuck that. Mama and Daddy can keep all my shit. I’m starting over. I’m moving in, getting a job, going to art school and living with you above the Pho Palace.”

  “Well, babe, you can’t wear that dress to work at the tattoo parlor, you’ll scare the customers. Fortunately, I also sell clothes.”

  At the tattoo shop, which Gavin had closed for the day even though it was Saturday, he was surprised to see Manny there.

  “Dude, what’s up? Hey, it’s a good thing you’re here, ’cause we need to talk. Remember yesterday when I asked you if you’d seen me in here the night of the bachelor party? Why did you lie? And why did you lie to her?”

  But Manny was staring creepily at them in the dark.

  “Because my plan didn’t work.”

  Gavin’s stomach suddenly tied into a knot. And then the truth started to dawn. A memory came back. The needles. When he and Chas were drunkenly getting prepped for their matching tattoos, Manny had said something like, “Here, boss, use these needles, I just cleaned ’em.”

  “Manny? What did you do?”

  Manny scoffed. “You know what I did. I saw all of you and your panther hussies at the bar. You know the clans are not supposed to mix. I did what I had to do.”

  “You poisoned us? How?” Gavin was dumbstruck.

  Manny laughed. “You’re so naïve, man. Keeping the clan pure is all I talk about. You should have known to be careful around me. I put a hex on the ink so you would lose control and turn on each other. So you would show yourself to her and then the wolf would do to the cat what a wolf is supposed to do.”

  Chastity laughed out loud. “That voodoo stuff isn’t real! And for the last time, I’m from Baton Rouge! I’m a wildcat! Remember, asshole?”

  Manny pointed a finger at her.

  “You think you’re a shapeshifter but that voodoo isn’t real? I bind you, little girl.”

  And with that, Chas sat down in a nearby chair, as if being pushed down by an invisible force.

  Gavin felt the knot in his stomach grow to a full blown urge to kill Manny with his bare hands, but at the same moment, Manny was faster. Gavin’s arms and legs were not responding, but moving as if controlled by magic.

  “Gav, buddy, just because you hired a wolf doesn’t mean you hired a friend. If you want to prevent a dark practitioner from coming in to your space and using the magics to protect the clan, then you really are not seeing the big picture. It’s too bad the hallucinogens didn’t work on you two, but this is better. It will be so much more of a tragic story. The chaste debutante of Baton Rouge and her forbidden lover found dead in murder-suicide pact.”

  “You’re demented,” Gavin spat out.

  “And you’re almost dead,” Manny said. “You won’t listen to reason, and spells don’t seem to work. So now I do what I have to do. Say your goodbyes, lovebirds.”

  Gavin watched helplessly as Manny sauntered over to Chastity, who was struggling to move away from him, fighting against invisible restraints. Manny pulled out a .22 pistol from inside his leather vest. He pressed the cold steel against her temple, then traced it down toward the lower back side of her skull. She whimpered and tears fell as she made eye contact with Gavin. Gavin grunted and kicked against the invisible restraints.

  “Don’t worry,” Manny said, his voice flat with the tone of a sociopath. “I’ll make it quick.”

  Gavin finally stopped his fighting and snarling and just stared into Chastity’s eyes with as much tenderness as he could muster. He did not want her last memory to be of him acting like a mad, caged animal.

  If this was going to be their last moment on earth, he wanted her to feel calm and loved. Gavin could lay Manny flat as a pancake in a fair fight. But this was not a fair fight, and unless the voodoo spell wore off soon, this was the end of everything.

  Chas looked back at him and seemed to understand. Gavin and Chas shared their last moment together by making it their own. They both understood that no matter what happened, there was no Manny, there was no pistol, and there was no invisible magic holding them apart. It was just them, and that in the end, that’s all that mattered.

  And then, something strange crossed over Chas’s face.

 
It started with a smile.

  Gavin was not sure what this meant, but he was sure of one thing:

  He had hope.

  An excerpt from the fourth book in this series…

  RUNNING WITH THE PACK

  Part Four of Her Big Easy Wedding

  Penny

  Penny LeFleur couldn’t take all this tension in the air a second longer. She strode over to Bobby’s table, where he sat sulkily staring into his cocktail and asked, “why didn’t you ask me to dance?”

  Bobby looked up, as if he were confused to be finding himself at a wedding dance, where the bridal party was expected to, in fact, dance. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m your best friend. You know that I love that song and yet here you are. Sulking. For what? I don’t know what is up your ass, but you better pull it out. This is not about you, Bobby. This is our friend’s wedding.”

  Then, a commotion interrupted Penny’s train of thought and she turned to look. The bride and groom, Ash and Rosemary, were leaving the reception, and everyone was lining up to send them off.

  “Come on, time to say goodbye to the happy couple.”

  Penny reached out her hand and Bobby took it.

  Electricity shot through her at his touch, and she didn’t know if it was the seven “red-headed-slut” cocktails she had drunk or whether there was a genuine pleasure overtaking her annoyance at Bobby.

  They lined up to say goodbye to Ash and Rosemary, standing across from each other and tossing bird seed. Just for laughs, Ash picked up Rosemary and slung her over his shoulder, cave-man style. His signature move.

  Penny felt a her heart pang a little bit. She was far too tall to be carried around like that, and besides, she would never let herself be so vulnerable in public. But just once, she might like Bobby to lose his cool and claim her like that. To just put all of their baggage aside and just sweep her up in his arms and take her to bed.

  It would be such a relief.

  As Penny scanned the crowd, she noticed something was wrong., She set aside her melancholy feelings for the moment. Their fellow bridal party members were missing. All of them: GiGi, Vann, Chas and Gavin.

  She watched Rosemary and Ash disembark from the riverboat and then turned to Bobby. “Where is everybody?”

  Bobby, slightly slurring his words, said, “Vann’s doing it in a closet below deck with GiGi. Don’t ask me how I know that. Gavin and that chick from Baton Rouge, I’m not sure what happened to them.”

  Well, GiGi and Vann could take care of themselves. But she had a bad feeling about her friend Gavin and Chas from Baton Rouge. “Take a whiff, Bobby. Gavin’s not here on the boat. They’re gone,” Penny said.

  Bobby looked around and sniffed the air. “You’re right. Where’d he go?”

  “I don’t know but I think we’d better find out.”

  Again he took Penny’s hand and sparks seared into her. His brown eyes, sobering up with a mission at hand, warmed he soul. Bobby was back. Whenever there was something or someone to take care of, there Bobby would be.

  About the Author

  Abby Knox lives a dual life. Fantasy Abby would love to either live on a farm with Ryan Gosling, where she could raise goats and chickens; or be a professional baker and adopt wolves as pets. Reality Abby desires neither to muck out stalls nor to stand on her feet all day perfecting pie crusts for angry customers. So, the ever-pragmatic Reality Abby keeps Fantasy Abby happy by putting her into sweet little works of romantic fiction with her pretend hobbies. Both Abbies hope you enjoy this brand of sweet, sexy — and sometimes weird — storytelling. This is Abby’s eighth book.

  For more information and to sign up for the newsletter:

  www.authorabbyknox.com

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  Also by Abby Knox

  From the Small-Town Bachelor Series

  Take Me Home

  Game Face

  Written in the Stars, a special Christmas edition

  Walk with Me (spring 2018)

  Her Big Easy Wedding

  Part One: Taking the Belle

  Part Two: Having his Cake

  Part Four: Running With The Pack, March 2018

  Stay up to date on these titles and more through Abby’s newsletter!