Etienne (The Shifters of Shotgun Row Book 1) Read online

  “What’s wrong, Tansy?”

  When she looked at me again, a tear brewed in the corner of her eye. “Will you leave me? Will you cheat on me? Will you have me waiting for you by myself in a room while you’re with some other woman?”

  I’d kill the asshole. There was no helping what came out of my mouth next. “Tell me where he is, and you’ll never have to worry about him breathing again.”

  Tansy

  What, for the love of Pete, had I been thinking? That’s right—I hadn’t. He had me so disarmed with his honesty, his openness with secrets as dangerous for them as they were for me that I found myself spraying out my every insecurity like a shaken pop bottle.

  There was zero doubt in my mind Etienne meant every last word. He would end him for no other reason than he turned me into this mess of a person. Protect. Just like a bear would, except he wasn’t a warm, fuzzy bear, was he? He was a gator. That meant…

  “So that gator that nearly had my king-nuts hitting dirt was—”

  “Yeah. I should bite Justice’s ass for almost ruining them. Speaking of them, why did you bring them?” He held me close, almost as if afraid I wasn’t really there. I snuggled right in.

  “Because you like them, and I figured if you were eating them, you wouldn’t be eating me.” I could feel his belly trying to contain his laughter. Only I could turn bringing treats into a sexual innuendo. My face burned with embarrassment. “No…that’s not what I meant. Never mind.” Some things couldn’t be recovered, especially as images of him doing that filled my brain.

  “You came here thinking I was a bear and that your baked goods would protect you.” He held me back a wee bit, meeting my eyes as he asked.

  “I didn’t need saving from you.” I held his gaze, needing him to see the truth in my words. I wasn’t scared of him. Never was. There were moments when how he made me feel had me in a tizzy and times when his bullheadedness had me frustrated, but I was never scared of him. “That was a joke gone horribly wrong. I figured you liked them, and I wanted to see you smile.”

  He stood there for what felt like forever before taking my hand and leading me to the breakfast bar and offering me a seat. Not pouting over the end of snuggle time took all of my energy.

  “Why did you come?” He took the seat beside me and waited for me to answer. It took forever to try to collect my thoughts, and when his reassuring hand settled on my knee, all coherence fled, and all the things I’d been thinking fell out in one fell swoop.

  “To let you see I could be trusted. To make sure I hadn’t ruined all things. And then my Meemaw’s car broke down, Justice got all lizardy, and then it turns out you’re not even a bear, which is great cause, ya know, fleas. But then, there were all these people who may not be people, and mushed king-nuts, and me spilling my guts, and what the hay is Coonass, and am I one? Like is that what the mate thing means?”

  “Anything else?” He was clearly amused. At least my inability to form a sentence had a positive side effect.

  “I may babble when I’m nervous.” I shrugged.

  “I make you nervous?” All. Amusement. Gone.

  “No. That was a bad choice of words. Driving a beater, getting stuck then meeting all new people got me caflustered is all. You don’t. I mean, you do, but in the good way.” The very best way. The close-your-eyes-so-you-can-hold-onto-the-kiss-a-little-longer way. The make-king-nuts-after-you’re-closed-with-the -hopes-of-bringing-a-smile-to-his-face way.

  “The good way?”

  So maybe I hadn’t hurt his feelings, just confused him. I could work with that.

  “You know what I mean.” I waggled my fingers in a teasing gesture. “I’m amusing you, aren’t I?”

  “No, just surprising the fuck outta me. You come in here brave as could be, hold your own in a group of the scariest-ass shifters in the parish—all to confront someone you thought was a bear.”

  The last thing I was, was brave. Silly gator.

  “Sorry about the bear thing. To be fair, it was a logical conclusion.” If being a bear were logical, but seeing I talk to ghosts, I was calling it logical.

  “Can we be done with this now?”

  My stomach fell. I had finally let myself accept this was starting, and now he was calling it done. “Done with what?” I gasped, my voice far from steady.

  “The talking.” He tilted my chin up with his thumb, his eyes heated. “I have better plans for my lips.”

  I so misinterpreted that one. Before I could babble a rebuttal in an attempt to I didn’t even know what…his lips are on mine, and I am home.

  Etienne

  “She didn’t run,” Justice said from the driver’s seat while I tinkered with Tansy’s car, trying to get the damned thing to start again.

  “Just start it up.” He turned the key. It sounded like the thing had been smoking cigarettes since it was six months old. Maybe since birth.

  “I don’t think you’re gonna get this running again.” I looked at the engine. It hissed and let out some steam, agreeing with Justice.

  “She can just use mine until we get her another one.” I shut the hood and leaned against the car, wiping the grease from my hands. Justice came to lean next to me. “You sure it’s her? I was convinced we were too big a pair of assholes to actually get mates. Fuck, if you’d asked me last week, I would’ve told you it was a punishment for any female actually to be mated to one of us.” He nodded to where Tansy was laughing and carrying on with Loic, who was stirring a huge cast-iron pot of jambalaya. Her hip cocked out, and she was holding a bottle of strawberry Abita that looked like it was made for her. I loved a woman who drank her beer from a bottle.

  Just as I was looking at her, she looked up, winked at me, and frowned, pointing to her car. I would make it a point to kiss that frown off her later. She still had questions, and probably more once I started answering, but for now, we were content, somehow knowing we belonged together.

  “Me, too. I know better now. I never imagined.”

  “Maybe there’s one for me, too.”

  I elbowed Justice in the ribs. “Doubt it.”

  “Dickhead.”

  “Asshole”

  “Rat bastard.”

  “Fuck face.”

  I looked over at him. “That doesn’t count. You lose.”

  “Yeah, well, your girl is giving you that come-hither look. You better come for her.”

  Justice was right. Loic was running his fucking mouth a hundred miles an hour, but Tansy’s eyes were on me. I looked down to follow the trail of her gaze. I had grease all over my stomach.

  “What?” I mouthed to her, teasing her from afar.

  “Sexy.” She nodded toward my shirtless torso.

  I waggled my eyebrows at her.

  “I’m gonna gag. Can you two take that elsewhere? Fuck.”

  I wiped off what I could of the grease and threw a Johnny Cash T-shirt on before walking over to her. “You like the view?” I asked in her ear, making her giggle.

  “Very much. Did you give up?” She ticked her head at her car.

  “I think her time is up. I’m sorry. I know she was Marie’s. You can use my truck until you get another. I can drive the cruiser.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” She bent over, reached into the ice chest, and grabbed a Budweiser. My gator forced me to look around, making sure no one was looking at her.

  Possessive bastard.

  “Here.” She lifted a bit of the bottom of her skirt and screwed the top off. It was sexy as fuck.

  She tried to hand me the beer, but I couldn’t look away from where she’d just flashed me a bit of thigh.

  “Hey, eyes up here.” She thrust the beer into my hand and with her crooked finger made my chin rise.

  “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.”

  She laughed. “Well, at least try. Loic here was just telling me this is mystery meat jambalaya, and it would be best not to ask what the mystery meat was.”

  It was raccoon. Nasty little beast, but
in jambalaya, it was like the best pork.

  “Better we don’t tell you.”

  She shook her head and took another swig of her beer, the last one.

  “Another?”

  “That depends. Am I driving? Is there somewhere I can spend the night?”

  Fuuuucccckkkkk…. “Not if you don’t want to. Ladies’ choice.” It was nearly impossible to stay cool around this female. She did things to me that turned me into a horny teenager.

  “I’ll take another one, please. And what the hell does Coonass mean?”

  Loic choked on his drink. “It’s like the name we call ourselves. We don’t go around asking Grandma to give us her Cajun recipes. We ask her for the Coonass recipe. When someone puts mustard in their grits, they are a Coonass, not a Cajun. Does that make any sense at all?”

  “Kind of.”

  Tansy

  I’d not laughed like that in so long. Who knew eating mystery meat jambalaya outside with the guys, drinking local beer, and watching them razz each other could be so fun.

  Not that they had me fooled on the meat. I was a trained chef. I knew pork when I tasted it.

  When I basically announced I was spending the night, like no respectable woman should, I felt freer than I had in ages. No pressure as to what was coming next, no “I should be leaving” or watch checking. And with the drinking, sex was off the table. Etienne was no doubt less than an angel, but he’d never take advantage of a drinking woman. It just wasn’t in his makeup.

  The guys were so crass and bold and naughty, everything I wasn’t. I envied them a little. They unabashedly said what went through their minds. In a way, they almost felt like brothers.

  We didn’t talk about their animals or my ghosts, if they even knew about them. We talked politics and movies and told all the dirty jokes I thought were ever written.

  “I think I need a blood transfusion after tonight,” I grumbled as I scratched a bite on my leg when we finally said good night to the other guys and went inside.

  “The bugs will eventually start ignoring you.” He held a bottle of vinegar and a cotton ball out, “May I?”

  “May you what?” I looked to his hands again.

  “Cold white vinegar takes out the itch.”

  I nodded, and he proceeded to pat the vinegar on all my bites.

  “If they ignore ya after a while, why do you have the vinegar?” I challenged.

  “For salads?” He shrugged. I pictured him as a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. Thinking of him sitting there making his own salad dressing was shockingly hot. Who knew basic domestic skills did it for me?

  “I’m not havin’ sex with you tonight,” I blurted, out of nowhere and for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom. It wasn’t like he even asked. Or hinted. Or made out with me. Dying right then and there wasn’t a bad plan.

  “Of course not. We’ve been drinking,” he announced, getting up and putting the vinegar away as if I hadn’t just blurted something so completely embarrassing.

  “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Because you didn’t want there to be misunderstandings.” He was beside me faster than I thought possible, but he was part animal, so maybe that was a thing. “Always say what needs sayin’. That’s the only way this’ll work.”

  “I’m afraid.” Because, apparently, I was saying all the things tonight. I wasn’t even drunk. I’d had three beers over the course of hours. But out the words came.

  “Because you have been hurt before,” he clarified before taking my hand as I leaned into him. This was nice, just being near him, snuggling into him, our secrets in the air. Well, most of them, and now felt like the time to share my last one, the one that could scare him away.

  But that was the thing. I knew it wouldn’t. Something happened over the course of tonight, and for the first time, I felt like he could be the one, and even if he turned out not to be, he was worth a bazillion times worth the risk.

  “He was married. I didn’t know. I swear it. And then he said stuff, and I got kicked out of school, and here I am. You sure you want an uneducated naive fool?” I spat it all out at the speed of light to avoid chickening out.

  “I absolutely do not.” I went to pull away, only to find his other arm pulling me in closer in a complete hug, his lips caressing the top of my head before he continued. “I want you. All of you. Your ghost-talking, king-nut making, best-ass-in-town self.”

  “Did you just talk about my rear?” And, more importantly, why did his crass comment make me giddy? I should be appalled at the sexist nature of it, but instead I wanted more compliments.

  “I was guessing it was too soon for titty compliments.”

  Be careful what you wish for? I laughed.

  “Maybe just a little bit.” I yawned before I could stop myself. It had to be near midnight, and I’d been at the bakery at four. Thankfully, we were closed tomorrow, so I could sleep in.

  “I need to get you to bed.”

  “Do you need to get up early?” Because if he didn’t, I planned to fight sleep, but if he did, that was a different ball game.

  “Nope. Third shift tomorrow, which I normally hate, but seeing as it means I can spend the day with you, I hate a lot less than normal. Bakery is closed tomorrow, right? You keepin’ your grandma’s old schedule?”

  “I am. And I would love to spend the day with you.”

  He gave me another squeeze before offering his hand, which I greedily took, and leading me to his bed.

  “Here, you take the bed.” He pulled down the covers before reaching into the small dresser beside it, pulling out one of his T-shirts, and handing it to me.

  “Thanks for the shirt.” He turned his back to me dutifully while I put it on and climbed into bed. “I was hoping you’d sleep with me. Not sex, as we already discussed, but sleep?”

  Because the thought of him not being there with me while he was in the same building was just too much for this girl to bear. Or gator, as the case might be.

  Etienne

  She didn’t know what she was asking. And I sure as fuck didn’t know how to say no to the redheaded female now tucked into my warm bed, surrounded by my smell.

  “Are you scared a gator or a bear or a panther will snap you up in the night like a little snack?”

  She laughed, but it sounded far away. She was already falling asleep when I shucked my jeans and shirt and climbed in next to her.

  “No, I know you wouldn’t eat me. Wait, which one is the panther?”

  The panther was Callum, but I didn’t think she would remember even if I told her.

  I brushed a chunk of hair from her face. The bayou moon was coming into my window and caressed the other side of her face.

  “I’m glad you came into my life, gorgeous.”

  Her eyes flew open. “I am, too. I’m not tired, Etienne. Tell me more about being your mate.”

  She was a filthy no-good liar about the tired part. Her exhaustion was in the air around me like a film. But I would oblige. She could just about ask me for anything here in my bed in the night, and I would do it for her.

  Anything.

  “Mates are like marriage on crack. It’s not that we vow never to cheat, we physically cannot cheat. My body is yours and yours alone, now. It’s not that we try not to lie. You will know when and if I lie and be able to call me on it immediately. I don’t promise to honor you in sickness and in health because, how could I not? Your needs come before mine. We will be bound in a union a marriage certificate can’t touch. But I know you’re not shifter, so if you want to do the wedding thing, I would do that for you. Basically, you’re stuck with me for a long-ass time.”

  One of her hands lazily trailed up the side of my torso from my hip to my shoulder, and she kneaded the muscle there. “I want to be stuck with you for a long time. Isn’t that too soon? Isn’t it weird? I’m not a shifter.”

  I shrugged. “You’re not a normal human, either. Maybe that has something to do with it.”

  “You
won’t tell them until I’m ready?”

  My eyes closed. Even now, as I explained to her she was my mate, she still questioned if she could trust me. It made me want to strangle whoever that other man was—and by strangle, I mean choke with my gator teeth.

  “I would never tell my brothers anything you don’t want me to. I hope you like them. They are family to me.”

  She laughed again. “Lazare offered to take me on a run in the woods. Said it would be like Tarzan in the trees.”

  Apparently, the thought of Lazare hanging through the trees was a trip wire for her giggle box because after she said that, it took a full twenty minutes before she stopped laughing.

  “You’re tired, Tansy. Get some sleep. Otherwise, you’re going to be too sleepy to enjoy me in the morning.”

  Yes, that sounded the way I wanted it to.

  “Okay. Rub my back. I will pass right out.” She flopped onto her stomach.

  “Here?” I asked, rubbing right above that glorious ass of hers.

  “All over my back.” Her voice was fading again. It was already working. I loved knowing this part of our new mating—discovering all the things that made her tick.

  Her breaths went from deep to deeper until the rises and falls of her back were from a sleeping form. “I already love the fuck out of you, Tansy. Sleep well, darlin’.”

  Tansy

  Etienne’s kitchen needed help. It was clean and organized, but that was the extent of the blasted thing’s positive traits. What he lacked in cookware, he more than made up for with even less food. I started out wanting to become a gourmet meal for the man who had just proclaimed his love for me not to get me into bed, but because he felt the emotion. I ended up making scrambled eggs with white toast. Not even good eggs, either, because he only had tub butter, and his one spice was salt, and I used the term spice lightly.

  He probably thought I was too tired to have heard and remembered his words, but I heard them all. Every last one, and I was going to hold onto them with all I had.