PrimalFlavor (6 page)

As she drove in front of the bakery, movement caught her
attention. Zach stood at the window, his eyes boring holes through her
windshield, compelling her to look at him. But she didn’t turn her head. Couldn’t.
With a strange new game warden in town, there was no telling what trouble he
would stir up. In this case, family won out over lust, no matter how much her
body wished differently.

The tiger hunted, slinking through the swamp, led by
instinct. It followed a different path from the one it’d taken the previous
week because this time he wasn’t in search of the kind of prey he could eat.
No, this time he was after the female who’d foolishly pretended she didn’t want
him. His ears flattened, a dangerous growl rumbling in his chest that had the
nocturnal animals scurrying for cover.

Yeah, he hadn’t liked the implied disinterest from Colette,
especially after he’d scented her desire for him, kissed her plump lips. Things
couldn’t have changed that drastically in a week, could they?
No.
The
tiger shook the thought away like a bothersome fly. She’d been lying, mostly to
her family, but a part of him worried she was lying to herself for some reason.
It’d taken all his considerable willpower not to storm through the flimsy
barrier of her protective relatives, throw her over his shoulder and take her
to his office where he could paddle her ass in private. Maybe give it a kiss or
two between swats, but whatever.

He planned to teach little Miss Colette Robicheaux a lesson.
If he decided he wanted her, she should accept that as gospel. He was well
aware how arrogant the thought seemed, but he didn’t retract it. He was
practically a connoisseur of women, yet she thought he was, what? Playing with
her? Humoring her? If she only knew. When it came to fucking, he didn’t play.

His upper lip curled over his fangs at the thought. He was
going to spank her cute little ass bright pink for that. The fire in his veins
flared to a scorching inferno as he followed his instincts, searching for her.
He’d driven as far as the first bridge leading to Bayou Ange before shifting
and taking to his paws for the rest of the trip. He didn’t want the entire
community to know there was a predator among the sheep.

Not yet at least.

The scent of the woods here was of natural animals, a
complete change from what he was used to living among so many shifters.
Scenting a fellow shifter was part of life, allowing them to recognize the
animal lurking beneath the human skin, but here there was none of that. Just
the soothing scent of earth and stagnant water mingled with abundant vegetation
and the animals that lived here. It was peaceful and he would have lingered if
he hadn’t had a greater mission.

The tiger’s eyes narrowed against the darkness as he crept
closer and closer to Bayou Ange. Following the directions he’d gotten from
Daisy, he knew he was close, but even if he hadn’t known, he would have by the
smells, the scent of food cooking and the animal musk of dogs. Full dogs too,
not wolf shifter assholes like the wildlife agent who’d arrived in Maison Rouge
the day before.

He snorted in disgust. It never failed to amaze him how,
when a new male arrived in the area, the single females suddenly swarmed as
though they’d never seen one before. Like the human he had his sights on. If
Colette had looked at that wolf any longer, Zach would be sitting in jail right
now for ripping the fucker a new asshole.

He rumbled in displeasure and paused to test the wind. He
was downwind of the dogs and the community that was backlit against the shadowy
night. He didn’t see anything special, nothing that suggested this was a
community of crazy people. The houses sat on nine-foot pillars, which would
protect them in case the bayou flooded, but it was the smaller home set away
from the other houses that caught his attention. The scent emanating from it
belonged to Colette while the truck parked beneath the house looked to be the
same make and model she’d driven earlier that afternoon.
Bingo.
If he
had been in his human form, his smile would’ve made Colette’s knees knock
together with nervousness even as it made her pussy cream.

He sneaked closer, staying downwind of the hounds, and
rounded Colette’s truck, intent on reaching the stairs leading to the house
level when he came face-to-face with a wolf. He and the canine slid to a stop,
staring at each other with growing awareness and, on Zach’s side, mounting
possessiveness. There was no mistaking the frigid blue eyes of the big wolf, or
his pretty red coat. The tiger’s lip curled in disgust, a dangerous growl
rumbling in his chest.

The wolf, the game warden, had the nerve to return Zach’s
warning growl as though he had every right to be here at Colette’s house. The
sound caused the tiger’s hackles to rise and his body to tense. It, along with
Zach, wasn’t happy to have this ball-licking, tail-chasing canine at his female’s
house. The wolf didn’t belong here, sniffing around Colette, and the tiger
would make damn sure the dog knew he wasn’t welcome.

* * * * *

Colette stepped out of the shower, shivering at the cooler
air in the bathroom and reached for her towel, her hands shaky. Rivulets of
water streamed over skin gone rosy from a combination of scalding-hot water and
a powerful orgasm aided by her detachable showerhead. Her heart slammed against
her rib cage as she dried herself, patting at her sensitive skin rather than
rubbing briskly the way she normally did. God, she had to stop thinking about
Zach or she’d never leave her house. This intense and insane hunger she had for
him was not helping her.

She wrapped the towel around her torso, tucking the edge
under her arm to hold it in place while she finished the rest of her nightly
ablutions. After piling her hair up on the top of her head, she brushed her
teeth. Once done, she opened the container of very expensive moisturizer her
cousin Kanda had recommended. It would probably surprise the people of
Pointe-Aux-Chat to know just how much time she spent moisturizing her skin.
With as much time as she spent outside in the elements, she needed as much moisture
as she could slap on her face. The constant humidity in the area helped a lot,
but it only did so much.

Once she finished basting herself with the moisturizer and
then her favorite lotion, she grabbed her brush and strolled out of the
bathroom and down the hallway. The house was silent. A welcome change from the
way it’d nearly rocked off its pilings earlier. Colette bit back a groan as she
flopped on her sofa to brush her hair. Her dad and uncles had called a powwow
at her place to discuss the game warden and the baker. She smirked. It sounded
like some kind of weird book title, but her smile soon faded because both men
were bad news. Just in very different ways.

She pushed thoughts of Zach from her mind, concentrating on
a stubborn tangle as she pondered the newest trouble in Pointe-Aux-Chat Parish.
The game warden was the bigger threat. There had been pointed interest in the
way he watched her and her family, a calculating speculation in his gaze that
had nothing to do with suspicions of illegal hunting. With the Schumacher
brothers at his side, it just gave her the
frissons
. And not the kind of
frissons
she felt when she thought of a certain sexy tiger shifter.

“Dammit.”

She bounded off the sofa, the brush falling to the floor as
she hurried to her eat-in kitchen and the pitcher of ice-cold water she kept in
her fridge. Her water bill was going to be outrageous this month from the
number of hot, and cold, showers she’d taken and the gallons and gallons of
cold water she’d consumed in the hopes it would douse the fire in her blood. It
never worked. She suspected the only thing that would cool her off would be
having a certain man between her thighs. Pounding away at her with that big
dick. Her pussy gave a slow, hard clench at the thought. It didn’t matter what
she did, or didn’t do, her mind always circled back to Zach and how he made her
feel.

Colette hefted the pitcher out of the fridge with a groan.
She should pour it over her head and be done with it. A couple of droplets hit
the tops of her feet and she shivered, some of the desire fading. No, that was
okay. She wasn’t
couillon
enough to douse herself with ice like one of
those polar bear club swimmers. She reached for one of her insulated mugs when
she heard a low snarl.

The heat between her legs was forgotten at the dangerous
threat in the sound. She carefully placed the pitcher on the counter and crept
across the house to the front door, not wanting to alert the animal making all
the noise. It wouldn’t be the first time a cougar had found its way to her
house, or one of the natural black bears that roamed the woods and swamps, and come
looking for something to eat. But it didn’t mean she wanted any of them rooting
through her trash, tearing shit up.

Colette grabbed the BB gun she kept next to the door. She
had no intention of killing anything that might be scavenging for food, but she
sure as hell could make its ass hurt. She opened the door, giving silent thanks
to her brother Anton who was nearly obsessive-compulsive when it came to
squeaking doors. He’d gone after every hinge in her house earlier that evening
with a can of lubricant, spraying and spraying until they all opened without a
sound. She did a quick check left and right to make sure the animal wasn’t on
her porch. As she suspected, it was all clear.

Carefully, using the stealth she’d honed after years of
hunting, she eased down the first few steps leading to her carport. The
snarling was much clearer now, but as she crept down the stairs, BB gun at the
ready, she realized it wasn’t one animal down there, but at least two. Her
heart pounded and her palms grew damp as she prayed two bears weren’t about to
start fighting. That would require more than the BB gun.

She approached the carport level of her house and her mouth
dried. The snarls were interspersed with growls and what sounded like
scrambling claws. Fuck, they were fighting. She paused a moment, trying to
decide if she should just head back up and get a bigger gun. Then something
reddish brown rolled across her line of sight, appearing out from beneath the
house and crossing the ground-level landing to her stairs. A wolf. Not
indigenous to the area. They had coyotes and sometimes a stray red wolf would
pass through, but both canines were half the size of the big fucker she’d just
seen.

And that meant only one thing. It was a shifter.

She shook her head, confusion taking over some of the fear. What
the hell was a wolf shifter doing at her house and what was it fighting? Then
she saw a familiar striped body charge after the wolf. She lowered the gun, shock
and anxiety swirling inside her. The two shifters disappeared under the house
again, a massive ball of fangs, claws and fur. Whatever they were fighting
over, it looked as though they had every intention of killing each other.

She eased down one more step only to see the wolf latch on to
Zach’s throat, his teeth sinking deep. Her breath caught. They
were
trying to kill each other. Colette forgot everything but the desperately stupid
crush she had for Zach. It didn’t matter that he’d only been amusing himself at
her expense, or that her daddy would root for the wolf to finish the tiger off,
or that he was being attacked by a strange shifter. It only mattered that she
put a stop to it somehow.

She lifted the BB gun and aimed, but they were moving too
fast for her to get a good bead on the wolf. She couldn’t kill him and not just
because her BB gun wouldn’t do any good. Although the wolf was hurting Zach, he
was still human. Sort of.

“Shit,” she whispered, the sound not breaking into the
intense battle going on beneath her house.

The two males—she could tell that much when the wolf flipped
over to go after Zach again—rolled right into her truck, which groaned beneath
their combined weight. She winced. But before she could shout to get their attention,
they rolled in the opposite direction and slammed into one of the beams
supporting her house, making the entire structure shudder. Colette’s eyes
widened as she stared at the beam that now listed to the side. They were going
to destroy her damn house.

Outrage replaced some of her fear. It was fine for him and
whomever the damn wolf was to have some kind of pissy shifter fight under her
house. What did they care if they were destroying everything she worked hard
for? They’d trot back to Maison Rouge and leave her with a disaster. The more
she watched them rolling around, hitting her truck, bumping into her boat
trailer and repeatedly wrapping each other around the pilings of her home, the
angrier Colette grew. But it wasn’t until they knocked over her crab traps,
crushing the fragile wire beneath their heavy asses that she finally had
enough.

She stomped back upstairs, muttering under her breath, no
longer caring if they heard her or not. She almost hoped they did hear her,
because then they’d know they were in deep shit.

“Goddamn arrogant shifter men,” she mumbled to herself as
she stormed into her house.

Her eyes shot around the somewhat clean space, looking for
something, anything to teach them a lesson. She was so tired of shifter men
thinking because they were “alphas” they could just trot right over everyone,
shifter and human.
Smug bastards.

She could get a shotgun and scare the hell out of them, but
she didn’t want to alert her family about their unexpected visitors. For
whatever reason, she wanted to keep Zach’s appearance beneath her house a
secret and it had nothing to do with the curl of arousal that returned,
stronger than ever now that she knew he was here.

The house shook again and she became a little more desperate
to find something that would stop the fight. Then the pitcher of ice-cold water
snagged her attention.

Colette didn’t need a mirror to know her grin was evil
because she could feel it. It was full of an unholy glee that would’ve made her
cousin, and Our Lady of Angels’ Father François make the sign of the cross and
call for an exorcism. The Bayou Ange church might not be as big and fancy as
St. Patrick’s in Maison Rouge, but her cousin took his duty to his
congregation, and family, seriously. She marched across her house and snagged
the sweating pitcher. It worked to break up fights between domesticated cats
and dogs, didn’t it? The ice cubes she’d thrown in before her shower clinked
softly against the sides of the pitcher as she carried it across her kitchen
and out of her house.