Three Southern Beaches: A Summer Beach Read Box Set (24 page)

“Is this your last test?” I demanded.

“For the moment.” He grinned and shrugged.

He sucked so bad I wanted to smack him. He would have an advantage if I were in boots and jeans. The simple fact that I was far more competitive than rational had not served me well in life and I was about to prove that point again.

“Fine. Turn around.”

“Has living in the big city made you self-conscious?” he asked, standing his ground and watching me intently.

“No,” I insisted quickly. Nudity meant nothing to Werewolves. A body was a body. We stripped to shift in large groups—it was natural. I wasn’t at all self-conscious about my body…it was him. No, it was me. I didn’t trust myself and that infuriated me. He meant nothing. So what if I was still attracted to him? He was pretty and built like a Greek god, but he was a cheating loser and I was better off without him. He wanted me to strip? Then I was gonna strip. Slowly.

Turning sideways so I could avoid his eyes, I eased my jeans off my hips and then down my long legs, slipping my cowboy boots off as I went. The air in the gun range was cool and tiny chill bumps covered my body. What was my problem? Well, my inner wolf was one of them. She wanted me to bang him and was making no bones about it. I shoved her down and she pouted. I quickly shed the rest of my clothes. A striptease was going to backfire in a big bad way. I knew his eyes were on me and I yanked on the obscene booty shorts and bra. My fury at myself and him built to a point that I was ready to kick some ass—his, to be more specific.

“I’m ready. Let’s go.”

I was delighted he found the need to adjust himself in his sweats. His erection would be a disadvantage and even though I didn’t care, it meant I still affected him. Considering he was the deadliest fighter I’d ever seen and had at least a hundred pounds on me, I’d take any advantage I could get.

“This isn’t going to work,” he muttered and stared at the ceiling.

“You chicken?” I taunted.

He was on me so fast I didn’t see him coming. Pinned underneath him on the floor, my inner wolf hooker was ecstatic. His hard body pressed against my softer one brought back memories that needed to stay buried. His scent mingled with mine and I closed my eyes and tried to think about the time my third grade teacher threw up in the lunchroom. Oh my hell, that didn’t even work. The need to taste him was overwhelming. I was not going to bang him. I was not going to bang him. I was not…

“Why did you leave?” he questioned as he pushed his knee between my legs. “Why?”

His lips were a breath away from mine. It would be so easy to trace them with my tongue. Maybe if I banged him just once it wouldn’t count. I didn’t have to tell Dwayne. No one needed to know. I’d just bang him and ignore him and then I would…

“Was there someone else?” he demanded.

“Are you high?” I hissed and tried to roll out from under him, but he had me right where he wanted me. Actually, if I was being honest with myself,
which I wasn’t
, I was exactly where I wanted to be. “You have some nerve asking me that, you assbuckle.”

“Assbuckle?” He chuckled and pressed his body closer to mine, making it difficult to form thought. “You treat me with no respect whatsoever. I’m your alpha.”

“I’m no longer part of the Pack,” I said. “You’re just some random guy now.”

His eyes were lit with amusement as he lowered his lips to mine. I jerked my head to the right, inadvertently giving him access to my neck. Of course he knew from experience that it was the most sensitive part of my body. Crapballs. His lips brushed the sensitive skin lightly and my body shuddered with delight in response.

“I could mark you, Essie. Bite you and make you mine forever,” he said softly.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I said in a breathy voice that sounded a little phone sex operator-ish.

“No,” he agreed. “When I mark you, it will be because you beg, but I will leave a little gift.”

His mouth was on my neck and he sucked. The sensation shot through me like a bullet and went straight to my girlie parts. Thoughts were cloudy, but there was a small part of my brain that knew this was a bad idea…why? Why was this bad? How could something that felt so amazing be wrong? OMG. I knew why this was bad.

With every ounce of strength I had, I raised my knee and introduced it to his man jewels. His grunt of pain was music to my ears as he rolled off of me and curled into a ball.

“I am not yours to play with anymore,” I huffed and got to my feet. He was still on the floor. I backed away in case he was bluffing. I knew I’d nailed him, but…

“You are going to explain very soon why your body says one thing and your knee says another,” he snapped and got on all fours. “I don’t buy that you don’t want me and god knows I want you.” He continued to breathe unevenly as he worked through the pain I’d inflicted.

I was fine with that. He’d caused me more pain than I’d ever known I could handle. I was glad to give some back.

“You are unbelievable. You either have amnesia or you’re the smarmiest buttwank I’ve ever known. I owe you nothing. I’ll be at your office tomorrow morning before I register at the modeling agency and then we can talk on a need only basis. Period.”

He was still on the floor and I actually felt a tiny bit bad. However, I was glad he was down and I left before he could come after me and get his payback. This job was sucking so bad and I had a feeling it was only going to get worse.

Chapter 5

“If I told you once I told you twenty times, Blood Sucker. If you hold your needles like that it’s gonna be lopsided,” Granny chastised Dwayne as they knitted up a storm.

“You’re just pissy because I’ve already knitted twelve scarves to your nine, Fido,” Dwayne huffed, knitting like the Devil himself was on his heels.

The living room was a disaster. Yarn, needles and patterns littered the overturned furniture. My BFF and Granny sat on the floor in the middle of the calamity sweating up a storm. Well, Granny sweated. Vampyres didn’t have pores. The scarves were hideous—all holey and messy and weird, but there was a ton of them. Completely unable to piece together any probable story of what had happened I stood in silence and gaped.

“Close your mouth. You’ll catch flies,” Granny informed me, not even glancing up from the fuchsia thing she was creating.

“Did you bang him?” Dwayne asked while still completely absorbed in his puke green masterpiece. “I have money riding on it.”

“No, I didn’t bang him,” I yelled. “What in the hell happened here?” I hoped my volume and quick change of subject would throw them.

No such luck.

“I say the hickey on your neck proves my bang theory,” Dwayne said, held up the horrific scarf and dropped his needles in exhaustion. “I win, Furball.”

“Bull honkey,” Granny snapped. “My quality is far superior.”

“There was nothing in the rules that implied quality,” Dwayne stated calmly, secure in his victory.

“What happened to the living room?” I asked as I began to right the furniture.

“Well, we had a little debate,” Granny said, eyeing the pile of crap they’d created.

“It turns out Granny has sharper fangs and a slightly better right hook and I’m faster and have a far superior sense of smell,” Dwayne informed me.

“That ain’t nothing to brag about, Vein Eater,” she sniffed indignantly. “Fangs trump smell any day of the week.”

“She has a point,” I added.

Dwayne laughed and wrapped a pink scarf around his neck. “I can smell species.”

This shocked and silenced both me and Granny. I was totally unaware that Vamps could identify species by scent. That was huge. I could scent a shifter and I knew if it was a wolf, but it took more than just smell to correctly identify what kind of shifter.

“I call bullshit,” Granny said and wound a baby blue scarf around her neck.

“That was a rabbit that delivered the pizza,” Dwayne said and handed me a shiny silver scarf. “You’ll need this to cover the welt on your neck.”

Ignoring the comment and the ugly, holey neckwear, I zeroed in on Grandma. “You ordered pizza? From Juju?”

Juju was a rabbit shifter and made the best pizza known to man. It was so damn good that every wolf in the surrounding area had voluntarily given up eating rabbit in their animal form. No one would take the risk of accidentally eating Juju. No one.

“Yes, I did and apparently Bat Boy isn’t joking. You knew he was a rabbit?” she demanded.

“Of course,” Dwayne answered smugly. “And he’s boffing a weasel.”

“Juju and Sara Mary Munchouse are doing the nasty?” I gasped and dropped down on an upended plaid ottoman. That was too much to stomach. Juju was five feet tall and weighed a hundred pounds sopping wet and Sara Mary was six feet tall and came in at a conservative three hundred. The physical mechanics were mindboggling. Shoving the images into the far recesses of my brain in the “never pull those up again” section, I got back to the more important issue.

“There’s Juju pizza in this house and you didn’t tell me?”

“I was a little busy kicking your dead friend’s ass,” Granny said. “Go help yourself.”

“I will,” I muttered and hauled tail to the kitchen. It had been a full year since I’d eaten Juju’s pizza and my mouth watered at the prospect.

“Junior came by and left you a stack of files,” Granny said as she snagged a slice. “He gave your buddy the evil eye till Dwayne asked him if he’d had butt implants and wanted to touch them to make sure they were real.”

I choked on my pizza and asked myself yet again why I’d let Dwayne come with me.

“I really wish I’d known he was Hank’s older brother. I would have mentioned impaling you on a regular basis,” Dwayne said earnestly.

Again, I choked.

“Looks like Hank the Hickey Maker struck again,” Granny stated gleefully with a mouthful of double pepperoni.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. Juju’s pizza suddenly tasted like cardboard in my mouth as the reality hit. I had thought they were joking. “Did that hairy dork leave a mark?”

“A big one,” Dwayne gushed. “You so banged him.”

“I did not bang him. I racked him.”

“Whoa,” he said, bending at the waist in sympathy. “You’re really mean.”

“You know what?” I shouted. “I’m not mean. He’s mean. Mean and stupid and full of himself and wanky and fat and ugly and mean and dumb and…”

“And you want to bang him?” Dwayne added unhelpfully.

I dropped to the floor in defeat. Pizza wasn’t going to help. The only thing that would help at this point was running again, but that was out of the question. I had a job. Maybe I got it under false pretenses, but I was a good agent and I knew it. I would find out what was happening here, end it and then I was gone. I had to leave or I would fall back into a trap that would tear my heart to shreds from the inside out. “Yes. Yes, I want to bang him, but I won’t. I have a small amount of self-respect left and I plan to hang onto it for dear life.”

“Honey child, what happened?” Granny asked as she slid down the wall and plopped down on the floor next to me. “What could have been so awful?”

Dwayne got comfortable on the other side of me. Usually being sandwiched by people made me itch, but these people loved me…warts and all.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled.

“Sometimes talking about painful things helps, Essie,” Dwayne said gently. “I’ll go first. About two hundred and fifty years ago during a great famine there wasn’t enough food for the humans and they got really skinny and tasted like burnt peas and rancid hummus—it was harder than hell for a Vampyre to eat. I accidentally killed a lovely fellow from my glee club and I just felt awful about it, so I started drinking pig’s blood and let me tell you—that was gross. Pigs are cute—well, piglets are and all I could find were damn piglets. They would stare at me with those little piglet eyes…I love
Charlotte’s Web
. The book is waaay better than the movie. Don’t you think? Anyhoo, I got so upset, I moved on to sheep. Several Vamps I knew were even…wait, what were we talking about?” Dwayne asked.

“I honestly don’t remember,” I whispered fearfully as I prayed he wouldn’t continue his bizarre confession.

Granny was quiet. She was either contemplating Dwayne’s story or trying to come up with one that would top his. I shivered as I realized she would go to her standard fare and regale us with anecdotes from her stripping days, which could easily morph into a demonstration…I had to stop the madness before it began.

“I have to read files tonight,” I explained as I un-wedged myself. “You should take Dwayne out and show him the town—maybe go to the beach or stroll down Main Street.”

“She’s got that covered,” Dwayne squealed. “We’re going to a drag show!”

“In Hung?” I asked Granny. “There’s a drag club in Hung?”

“Three,” she replied. “And two Shifter strip clubs.”

How did I not know this? I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. If she was still disrobing in public, I didn’t want to know. There wasn’t a therapist alive that could wipe that image out of my brain.

“Okay, um…you guys have fun, and Dwayne, if you’re going to eat you need to be discreet. We’re used to a variety of Shifters down here, but not Vamps.”

“Don’t you worry about nothin’. I’ve got his back,” Granny said. “Anyone calls him a blood sucker or homo will answer to my fist, my boot and my Taser.” With that lovely nugget she left the room to get gussied up.

“Oh my god, if I were into women, I’d marry your granny so fast.” Dwayne preened in front of the mirror.

“Um…awesome,” I gagged. “If you say anything that foul again, you’re walking back to Chicago. Tonight.”

“It would be a little weird to be your grandpa,” he mused.

“Do you do it on purpose?”

“Do what?” he asked, confused.

“Leave me with images that no amount of psychotherapy could remove? Burnt peas and rancid hummus are now seared into my brain along with you and Granny and the fact that you clearly sang in a glee club.”

“Those were difficult times, Essie. You think you have problems? Try running naked through coals while being pelted with boar’s teeth.”

Nothing. I had nothing.

“You ready, Dead Boy?” Granny asked.

Oh, hell to the no…She was dressed in a boob tube, peasant skirt and sequined kitten heels. Weres did not look their age. Granny could easily pass for mid-forties even though she was in her eighties, but a boob tube was wrong on anyone over five.

“Granny, I really don’t think you should…”

“You are smokin’ hawt,” Dwayne yelled as he fist bumped my elderly grandma.

What the hell was I thinking? He had more than two hundred years on both of us. Weird was my new normal—accept and continue.

“Okay then, try not to get arrested and be home before sunup,” I muttered and grabbed the stack of files.

“You sure you don’t wanna come? Bennett Pombell does a mean Cher,” she explained as she twisted her hair up and shoved three chopsticks into it.

Bennett Pombell was an upstanding panther Shifter with seven kids and a shrew of a wife…accept and continue. “I’m good. Got work to do.”

“Does anyone do Gaga?” Dwayne asked as they walked out the front door.

“No, maybe you should,” she suggested.

“Do you think I’d be good?” he gushed.

“You’d be wonderful. I have some wigs from my stripping days in the garage. You wanna see?” Granny asked a deliriously excited Dwayne.

“Lead on, my Queen. Lead on.”

***

The files were meticulous. I had assumed Hank was good. He was an alpha of a large and very happy pack, but I had no clue what an amazing detective he was…not that I’d tell him. Ever.

I’d spent the better part of four hours poring over the files before Granny and Lady Gaga,
aka Dwayne in full on drag,
got home. Apparently Dwayne was the new star of the Hung drag circuit and Granny was now his manager. They were booked solid for the week.

After seeing a replay of Dwayne’s performance on Granny’s phone and then watching him perform the highlights in the kitchen, we went to bed. Dwayne was a truly amazing Gaga. They both made me swear on a stack of Bibles I would catch a performance this week. I promised I’d try.