PrimalFlavor (11 page)

Her dad passed her, probably more jealous than hungry.
Colette wasn’t far behind, actually running into her dad when he stopped dead
in the doorway of the house. Going to her tiptoes, she peeked over his shoulder
and promptly wished a hole would open up and swallow her. Not that she’d go
very far. If a hole opened on the porch, she’d end up under the house, but that
was preferable to knowing she’d somehow brought this trouble to her family.

Zach stood next to her mom, nodding at her instructions as
he cooked at the battered stove her mom had cooked thousands of meals on. It
was a lot different from the stainless-steel, industrial-quality appliances in
his kitchen, or the unused appliances at her house, but he didn’t seem to care.
He leaned over at the waist to sniff, a lock of hair he’d tucked behind his ear
falling forward to caress his cheek. Colette almost died when her mom reached
out to brush his hair away like the mother she was, especially since it caused her
father to let out a roar of rage and throw himself forward.

She tried to catch him, but there was no stopping a
Robicheaux when he thought someone was flirting with his woman. Colette covered
her face with both hands, not sure she wanted to see something as pretty as
Zach Trahan maimed by an older Cajun man. Especially after the amazing night he’d
given her.

* * * * *

Zach liked it when he entered the house at Mrs. Robicheaux’s
invitation simply because Colette’s scent was stronger in here, as though she
spent as much time at her parents’ house as she did her own. He’d learned the
reason her kitchen was bare was because she ate at her childhood home every
night. And that while she was a tough girl, there were plenty of men interested
in her, none who’d caught her attention though, Mrs. Robicheaux assured him.
There was a sly cast to the matronly Robicheaux’s eyes that told Zach she knew
exactly why he was here and she didn’t mind at all, that she wanted him to win
her daughter’s attention. He hadn’t said a word to deny or affirm her
suspicions, but he found his tiger liked the thought of having Laurette-Marie
Robicheaux’s approval.

Idiot cat.

“We’re nothing like people think,” she told him over her
sons’ howling as she stirred a batch of cornbread. She had a lyrical voice that
spoke of her Haitian descent. “My man taught his children to love the land and
what they hunt. To respect it.” She closed the oven on her pan of cornbread. “My
Colette provides food for the table. She and the others make sure we have
enough meat while they’re busy working the lines or the tour business,” she
stated proudly.

Her words made Zach realize the people of this community
were probably closer to nature than the shifters who claimed to love it. These
people didn’t hunt for sport the way most shifters did these days, making Zach
very aware of how often the predators went on hunts just for the hell of it.
They were living off the land the way their ancestors had, treating it with the
same respect and reverence most people reserved for artwork. They didn’t shun
technology, but used it to aid them without letting it overwhelm them. The
Robicheaux family was a perfect example of how spirituality and science could
work together if balanced correctly.

While she cooked and taught him the secrets of her red
beans, Laurette-Marie chatted about her family who lived in New Orleans, her
sister who married a leopard shifter from Thailand and her niece who danced.
Zach soaked up the information she doled out with the same careful hand she
used to season her food. He learned Colette hadn’t had a serious boyfriend
since she came back from college. He learned that his Cajun woman wasn’t the
first in her family to bring back a shiny college diploma. It seemed the
Robicheauxs had been hiding their intelligence behind stereotypes, which had
probably helped them out several times in their lives. Zach’s tiger appreciated
their sneakiness and even approved of the way they’d used it to their advantage.

The time spent in her kitchen, learning her secret recipes
for creamy, flavorful red beans and listening to her stories of the family
reminded Zach of being young. His grandmother had been the same, more open and
friendly as long as she had her hands occupied with food. It relaxed him
despite the constant complaining and sullen glares thrown his way by Mrs.
Robicheaux’s sons.

And when the door flew open, Zach gave the new roar about
the same attention he’d given Colette’s whining younger brothers. None at all.
And who could blame him? Mrs. Robicheaux, the tiny, round woman had shown him
how to make the perfect pot of red beans. If she wasn’t already married and the
mother of the woman he was interested in, he might have asked her to combine
forces with him to take the culinary world by storm. Instead he closed his eyes
and inhaled deeply, his mind sorting through the spices she’d thrown together,
spices that had eluded him for so long. Cayenne pepper, red peppers, garlic
salt, black pepper and a host of other little touches combined to create a
flavor that made his mouth water for another taste, but the last time he’d
tried to sneak another spoonful, Mrs. Robicheaux had smacked his hand.

“Shush,” she said and all the noise in the room came to an
abrupt end.

Zach glanced over his shoulder curiously, his gaze colliding
with Colette’s. And just like that, his thoughts turned from food he wanted to
sample to the woman he needed to taste again. His body came to abrupt, painful
attention. He straightened slowly, the distance between his nose and the pot
bringing the other scents of the Robicheaux home to him.

The woman he couldn’t get out of his mind stood staring back
at him from a face red and sweaty from the heat. Strands of hair had fallen
from her baseball hat, sticking to her cheeks and the sides of her neck. She
wore another sleeveless shirt, this one sporting a vintage New Orleans Saints
logo that was pasted to her torso. Sweaty, dirty from whatever she’d been
doing, Colette Robicheaux was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. His cock, which
had thankfully behaved itself from the moment he walked into her mother’s
kitchen, suddenly hardened. Because he recalled her looking nearly exactly like
this sans clothing last night as he tasted her.

If he had been alone with her, he would’ve tackled her to
the ground the way his tiger urged him to. He would’ve torn her clothes from
her to get to her deliciously satiny skin and licked her from head to toe the
way he had the night before. But her father popped up between them, violet eyes
sparking with rage Zach suddenly understood. The older man was the patriarch of
this small clan, had given the Robicheaux family their first female in several
generations and was understandably protective of her.

The tiger understood the father’s feelings, knew that if he
had a daughter who shared her mother’s white-blonde hair and pretty purple
eyes, he’d eviscerate any male who came sniffing around her. The hair on the
tiger’s scruff lifted at the thought, a grouchy snarl curling its upper lip.
His daughter would be locked up until she was fifty. Or he could send her to an
all-girls’ school, then a convent. He gave a mental nod. That sounded better.

Zach broke off his staring contest with the elder
Robicheaux. Holy fuck, what was he thinking? He was here because… Because he
wanted to fuck Colette a few times. Maybe feed her because the jeans she wore
sagged on her lean hips. She definitely needed to be fattened up. He’d noticed
that the night before as he carried her to bed.

And that’s when Zach frowned.

“I can hear your stomach growling from here, woman. Why didn’t
you eat today?” he asked, cutting off her father’s tirade about guns and
neutering and a whole bunch of other shit Zach didn’t want to hear.

The sudden silence in the kitchen, punctuated only by
Laurette-Marie’s quiet chuckle and the soft sizzle of pork in the pan, could’ve
been cut with one of her professionally sharp knives. Colette’s jaw dropped and
her cheeks flushed a deeper shade of pink. Her dad, who was starting to get on
Zach’s nerves, looked between them, a frown furrowing his forehead. The loud
boys, her brothers, snorted before breaking into laughter.

Since he’d been taught to respect his elders, even when they
irritated the ever-lovin’ fuck out of him, Zach turned his attention to the
kids. “What’s so funny? She’s too skinny.” Colette spluttered, earning a glare
from him. “You need to eat more or you’ll waste away to nothing.”

Without waiting for an invitation, Zach grabbed one of the
knives from the butcher’s block and opened the cake he’d brought. He cut a
slice of the moist dessert with practiced ease, placing it on the saucer Mrs.
Robicheaux handed him. He’d cut a much larger piece than he normally did when
he was doling out cake, but his woman obviously needed it. He shot her father a
hard glare as he thrust the dessert in her face.

“Eat. Supper won’t be ready for a little while.”

Her wide-eyed gaze traveled from his face to the cake and
back again, but she made no move to take it from him. Frustrated beyond belief
because he couldn’t take the insistent growling of her stomach, he forked up a
big bite and held it up to her mouth.

“Open up.”

Fire sparked in her eyes, a mutinous line firming her lips
for a moment before she opened her mouth. Zach knew she wasn’t opening for
food, but to deliver what would no doubt be one of her scathingly frigid
retorts. But he and his tiger weren’t without sneakiness. He shoved the bite of
cake in her mouth first.

Her lips automatically closed over the tines of the fork and
he forgot his ire, the sudden surge of desire washing everything away. He
thought for certain she’d spit the piece of cake back at him, his heart
pounding with nervousness as he waited for her reaction. He hadn’t felt this
self-conscious about his cooking since college. He wanted her to love it even
as his body reacted to the eroticism of feeding her, his tiger purring as he
imagined the food energizing her for the play he wanted to do later. It was
similar to how he’d felt last night with her on his lap. He’d thought nothing
could be better than that moment, but he was proved wrong. The anticipation
causing his heart to beat as he waited for her reaction was so much more.
Because it meant more to him now. She meant more to him.

Zach scanned her face, waiting for the blend of dark, milk
and white chocolate to hit her taste buds. He knew the instant it did, the fire
in her eyes banking beneath a tide of pleasure that softened her expression to
one he’d kill to see over and over again. She made a strangled sound in the
back of her throat, her eyelids sliding shut. The breath caught in Zach’s chest
and his tiger growled softly, realizing this was what she’d look like when he
was buried to the hilt inside her. She would soften around him, the hard woman
melting beneath her desire to accept everything he had to give her.

He’d already seen her pleasured to exhaustion, had seen her
body twisted with the agonizing torment of orgasms so intense they left her
screaming for mercy. But he hadn’t seen her like this, relaxed. Open and calm,
accepting what he would give her. This is what she’d look like as he rocked
into her slow and easy, taking his time to enjoy the hot clasp of her body. It
wasn’t sex, or just about sex. It was about connection and caring.

She opened her eyes again, slowly this time, as though the
lids weighed a ton. They stared at each other over the mound of cake Zach held,
awareness heating the air between them. His cock twitched, pressing against the
fly of his jeans, wanting at the wet silk of the pussy he smelled. Hunger of a different
kind filled him. He wanted to taste her again, to just dive back into her cunt
and gorge himself on her salty-sweet flavor.

Then she smiled at him. It was the first time he’d ever seen
it, watching the way her face lit up, a little crease in her cheek that could’ve
been a dimple flashing at him. When she reached for him, Zach nearly dropped
the cake at their feet and threw her over his shoulder. It probably would’ve
resulted in his balls being crushed by her knee because his woman didn’t reach
for him. Colette snatched the saucer out of his hand and proceeded to eat it
like a woman starved.

“You obviously don’t know Collie,” someone said, the words
buzzing around his head, annoying the tiger since it’d forgotten they weren’t
alone. Her youngest brother Alcide approached. “The only time Colette isn’t
eating is when she’s sleeping.”

“Yeah, try being a growing boy with an older sister in the
house who fights with you over food,” the other brother said. “Can we get a
piece of this cake, or—”

Colette snarled, “Mine” around a mouthful of food. It wasn’t
the most attractive sight Zach had ever seen, but that might have had more to
do with the fact that she shoved him out of the way to protect the cake. “He
brought this for me,” she told her brothers with the kind of protective snarl
his tiger appreciated even as he hated that it wasn’t directed at him.

The two boys, who were probably in their early twenties,
turned to their mom and started the whining, bellowing thing again with Colette
grumbling at them from her spot at the table. Mrs. Robicheaux jumped into the
fray with the long-suffering look of a mother who’d been wrangling children for
years. Zach watched in amazement and a touch of longing. He had no siblings and
his mom had dropped him off to his grandmother when he was a cub. While his
grandmother had tried to be a mother to him, she’d been too old and set in her
ways for a rambunctious boy. He’d never experienced the kind of easy affection the
Robicheaux family had.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” the Robicheaux patriarch
muttered beneath the boisterous argument happening only a few feet away. “My
daughter deserves better than to be used by some cookin’ tiger, y’hear?”

Zach dragged his gaze away from the quartet at the table,
the woman who had drawn him here laughingly huddled over the cake like a hen
with an egg as her brothers tried to tickle her ribs to get her away from it.
He looked over at the man who had given that woman life and knew he was the
biggest obstacle to being with Colette. Braving the possible dangers of Bayou
Ange had earned him Mrs. Robicheaux’s respect. Cooking with her and feeding her
daughter had solidified it. She would accept him, even seemed to encourage his
pursuit.