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  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 cak
e 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.

  Because she thinks you want forever with Colette, his conscience told him. The tiger didn’t know what the big deal was. It wanted forever with Colette. Expected it. Mate, it growled in his mind as he watched her laugh with her brothers, taunting them with bites of the cake he’d made. She glanced over at him, some of her laughter fading as awareness crept into her eyes again. The scent of her desire called to him, but so did the spice of her uncertainty and a dash of fear. It pissed his tiger off because it knew she wasn’t scared of him so much as what he wanted from her.

  Zach’s world tilted on its axis. He could do exactly as he’d planned when he first saw her and get her in bed, fuck her the way his body demanded. It would be great, beyond great really. She’d enjoy it too. He’d make sure of that. But suddenly sex didn’t seem like enough. Oh, he would get it. He just had to figure out how to make it a permanent kind of thing. Which meant he had to figure out some way to win her father over.

  I told you so.

  Zach growled at his tiger.

  Chapter Nine

  It was the strangest dinner Colette had ever shared with her family. Not because they had a guest, but because of who it was. Zach should have looked out of place at her mom’s table, his stunning good looks enough to make her forget about food a couple of times, yet he appeared completely unfazed by the glares her dad threw his way. He and her mom chatted about recipes as though they’d been friends forever, while her brothers bugged him about the rock stars living in Maison Rouge.

  Colette hadn’t been able to think of a single thing to say to him after he’d fed her the most decadent cake she’d ever tasted. She cast a wistful glance at the box on the counter. Her mom had taken the cake away from her, declaring it would spoil her dinner. Whatever. Everyone in Bayou Ange knew Colette ate like three grown men. She couldn’t help it. If she didn’t burn so much energy working and hunting, she’d be as big as a house and she didn’t care. Food, especially the Cajun-Haitian-fused cuisine her mom made was her biggest weakness. But desserts were her other weakness, something Zach’s bakery had proven to her again and again. How could she have purposely cut off her sweets supply? She had to be some kind of idiot because God Himself would’ve loved that cake.

  That cake. She purred in the back of her throat at the memory of the silky chocolate melting on her tongue. Zach shot a look her way, no doubt his sharp ears able to pick up the small sound she made over her brothers’ loud talk. Her cheeks heated, her pussy giving a hungry little quiver that had her squeezing her thighs together. God, horny in her mama’s kitchen. It was blasphemous, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Not with him here in her territory, his big body sprawled in the chair as though he’d visited her mom’s house all his life. But there was no forgetting who or what he was. It was there in the way he studied them, the predator studying her family in turn before watching her with a hunger she knew was all about sex.

  And suddenly, even though she knew she was still in her mom’s kitchen, Colette was right back there on her sofa with Zach’s heavy frame pinning her down. Back on her kitchen table with her pussy riding his mouth as she took his cock between her lips. She experienced it all over again, the close intimacy of him feeding her, their faces only inches apart. Her gaze dropped to his lips as he smiled at something her brother Daniel said. Those lips had tasted and sucked at her, his tongue had lapped at her until she thought she would die. Until she thought she had died. Heat speared her pussy, leaving her soft and wet for him all over again.

  His nostrils flared, drawing her gaze upward. He watched through hoode
d eyes, the glinting gold reminiscent of what he’d looked like the night before. She knew he could smell her over the food. Knew he was probably hard as a rock beneath the fly of his jeans, the crown of his dick slick with desire. Colette’s breath quickened at the thought. There were many things she regretted about the night before.

  She hadn’t let him kiss her again. Why had she turned away from him? Because she feared him even as she wanted him. Zach could hurt her badly. His reputation as a free spirit, a male who enjoyed sex and none of the ties that went with a relationship had preceded him. And yet she didn’t care. Sort of. Despite his possessive, demanding words the night before, claiming her as his, she knew it’d been lust talking. Not him. And he hadn’t exactly fought to kiss her, to claim her lips. Her cheeks burned. Well, not the lips on her face at least.

  She reached for her glass of ice water and gulped it down. It didn’t help, the same way it hadn’t helped any other time she tried to cool herself from the inside out. The quirk of his sexy mouth suggested he knew exactly what she was trying to do, just as he knew it wouldn’t work worth a damn.

  Colette dropped her glass at that quirk, the heavy glass sliding from her fingers to hit the table. It drew the attention of her family who all stared at her as though she’d lost her mind. Well, the men stared at her. Her mama gave her a knowing smile before looking back down at her plate. Following suit to avoid drawing more attention her way, not in the least bit interested in food for the first time since she could remember, Colette pushed her beans around.

  Another thing she regretted about the night before was that she hadn’t felt what it was like to have Zach’s dick spread her pussy wide, stretch her inner muscles and slide home with one hard thrust. Her fork almost slid from her hand as her fingers set up a tingling that had nothing to do with lack of sensation and everything to do with the remembered feel of his bare skin. Golden satin stretched taut over muscles that flexed as he moved over her, the slick glide of his cock along her stomach, the wet trail of her pussy on his stomach. She wanted to be in charge. She wanted to have him beneath her, at her mercy, her body—