Bayou Bishops Box Set: Books 1-12

CHAPTER 3

Beth was happy to be able to cling to Bishop as they drove in the Black Bastard to get her Aunt. Spook and Maggie took his land dragon—Anaconda she learned. She suddenly wondered what the rest of the Twelve’s Land Dragons were called.

Pain returned to lacerate her chest when thoughts of her dad came. She hugged Bishop’s arm tighter and he caressed her head as if knowing. He probably did. He was so sensitive and sweet. And God he smelled amazing. He’d taken a quick shower before they left and now she was having thoughts she should be ashamed of given the circumstances. But the more she went the worse it got. Like sex was her grieving language. Harlotry her body’s ballad. It wasn’t harlotry. Not with him. It was perfect and divine and beautiful.

“Ma Petite,” Bishop whispered when she stroked his jean clad cock.

She opened her legs when he reached under her dress. Holding her panties aside, she held his wrist and helped him finger her. In ten seconds, she was lost in the lust he created, opening wide and bucking for her orgasm.

The engine slowly revved louder as he gave her what she needed while growling with a greedy aggression. “Who’s this fucking cunt for?” he demanded with maddening jabs.

“Yours,” she shot out.

“Rub your fucking clit, Angel.”

She swirled her fingers over it, gasping non-stop as her orgasm teased just in reach.

“Give me your fucking orgasm!”

The blistering words brought it so hard she couldn’t make a sound at first. Then it hit a point where sound was all she could make, loud cries of shock as he mercilessly forced every drop from her.

When she was down to gasps and moans and lifeless limbs, he slowly removed his finger. The groan he gave said she’d committed a grave crime and there would be hell to pay later. The idea was like a grenade in her womb that made her gasp. She worked her way back up and lay her head in his lap this time. He let out a different kind of pained groan, stroking her hair softly.

“My Angel,” he whispered.

Wow, she was exhausted. “So tired,” she murmured.

“I’ll wake you when we get there. Take a nap.”

****

Gracie got all the restaurant brochures lined up on the hotel bed. She walked along the foot, passing her finger over the surface of them then paused. “Hmm.” She picked up the one that gave her a little kick, examining it. “Me-Me’s. Alright, you’ll be first.” She set the card at the top then repeated the step. “I see,” she muttered pleased, at a second. “T-Nonks. Guess you’ll be next.”

She added the card to the top next to the first. “Shit!” she gasped at the sudden knock on the door. She remembered her pizza order and tightened her robe as she hurried to it. She paused in her unlocking, remembering why she was there. Investigating a murder. She got on her tiptoes and peered through the peep hole. She sucked in a breath at recognizing the two girls. “Oh!” she gasped, finally managing to open the door. “Maggie?” she cried. “Beth?”

Maggie lunged on her first. “Aunt Gracie!” she squealed, hugging her so tight it brought tears to her eyes.

“You remember me? Oh my God you can talk?”

“I do and yes, I can!” She pulled away and practically shoved a bearded demi-god toward her. “This is Spook, my husband! We just got married. In the swamp!”

“Holy mother of all that is created on this Earth,” she muttered in astonishment before regarding the other demi-god standing next to Beth. “And who is this swamp deity?”

“My husband,” Beth gasped in her ear when she hugged her next. “His name is Bishop.”

“Oh, my precious angel,” she cooed, her heart breaking when the darling began to sob. “It’s okay, you let it out.” She signaled with a tilt of her head at the Bishop man as she led her niece in the room. “You stalking your Aunt I see.” She swiped all the cards off the bed and sat the poor girl down. “That’s my favorite kind of attention.”

She wagged a finger between the men. “What the hell you eating in these parts? You two could make a devout nun forget the lord’s name on a high sabbath.”

They all found that real funny and she nodded. “Laughter in short order in these parts, is it? Well, Aunt Gracie can remedy that. I’m so damn hysterical I’m seeing a physician for it. Are you the one that called me?” she asked the Bishop one.

“No ma’am, that would be 8-Bit.”

“You need to train that one a little better. Saw right through his falsities and came straight here to see what was really going on.” She watched the Spook man eyeing her cards all over the floor. “I always mix work with pleasure,” she let him know. “Devils don’t scare me,” she also informed. “Especially not those who try to hurt my babies or any babies for that matter. Figured you can use an extra pair of eyes for this mess you have going on here. I also have a list of questions for your 8-Bite.” The Bishop lowered his grin and she wondered, “Did I say it wrong?”

“8-Bit,” he said in that sexy French slash gutter drawl.

“You, sir are a walking distraction. Beth, how do you let him out of your sight?”

She laughed, hugging him. “I don’t.”

“Smart girl. And you got some enemies in this town, I’ll have you know,” she piled on. She regarded her two nieces closely. “Well, I declare. The dangerous swamp life surely suits the two of you.” She hugged both of them again.

“Will you stay with us?” Beth asked, wiping her eyes again.

“Honey, I was ready to tear these swamps apart to find you,” she cried, helping dry her face. “Course I’m staying with you. You’ll have to ship me back to get rid of me. If you can find me that is. I always did want to live in the swamps. No, I’m dead serious,” she assured at their looks of surprise before eyeing their husbands. “And mercy me, if I had known this was hiding here, I would’ve come before becoming an old hag.”

The men shook their heads with chuckles, glancing at each other before speaking in the sexiest language she’d ever heard.

“Normally I don’t give a rat’s ass about what people think of me, but I’ll admit maybe caring a smidgen about what you just said behind my back in my face.”

The Bishop man laughed real big at that. “She is just like Ma Petite,” he said, kissing her niece right on her ever-loving mouth. Mercy yes. Yes, that’s how it was done. “I just said you were another northern angel blind to her own beauty.”

She gasped at such a compliment. “Normally, I would correct you and say I’m a Cali girl but…no sense in squabbling about petty details. How do you stand being around a man with such a laugh?” she cried to Beth.

“It’s brutal,” she said, making her Aunt laugh this time.

“Oh honey, I imagine it is. Are you all here to steal me away this night? I mean…seeing as this town loves stealing things,” she said, realizing she’d only made her poor choice in jokes worse. “Did I mention I have a talent for saying the wrong things at the wrong time?”

“Must be where I get it from,” Beth said, raising her hand with a shy grin that she didn’t seem one bit sorry for.

“It’s one of the things I love about Ma Petite the most,” the Bishop hunk said.

“Ma Petite,” Gracie murmured, fanning her face dramatically. “Please tell me you have a twin. Or you,” she said, looking at the one called Spook.”

“There are plenty!” Maggie gushed. “And they all want to get married!”

Gracie’s eyes popped before she regarded Beth. “Is she joking?”

Beth’s head shook with smiling raised brows. “They’re called The Twelve.”

“Well, there’s not twelve anymore,” Spook said.

“How many are there?” Gracie needed to know, her heart palpitating.

“Four are taken but one is our Seer,” the Bishop said. “He makes number thirteen.”

“Seer,” she wondered, her heart beating in reverse somehow.

“He touches people and sees things,” Maggie said, all lit up about it.

“Is that a fact,” Gracie muttered.

“And his father is also gifted like this.”

“His father? Is he…part of this twelve buffet too?”

She waited patiently through the laughs, her nerves in a tizzy now. “He’s not,” the Bishop informed.

“He was hiding in the swamp,” her precious tell-all-at-once Maggie said.

“From who?”

“From his son.”

“The one you called the Seer?”

She nodded. “To protect him.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t…divulge their personal information,” Beth injected in a way that made Gracie sure she’d been given a silent prompt from the Bishop.

“Sorry,” Maggie said. “You’re right. Ruckus or Seer should be the one to tell that.”

“Ruckus?”

“That’s his father’s name,” Maggie gushed before putting the brakes on her run-away mouth again. Poor child.

“Don’t apologize with me,” Gracie said to Maggie. “I was a lot like you. First to be ridiculed, never understood and the last to be picked by the guys. Too strong for them, I say. I was intimidating. Most men want weak women.”

“Not the swamp men,” Beth whispered with that giddy smile on her face that brought a strange song and dance in her guts.

“Well…that’s good to hear,” she said, while being surely sure it wasn’t. Truth be told only to herself, she was all talk when it came to the whole…sexual attraction part. “I guess I’ll get ready to go. Pack my things.”

“I’ll help!” Maggie said, stepping forward with an eager bounce.

****

Ruckus sat up in the small bed, listening. The sound of a distant motor pulled him out of the bed, his hand on the butt of his short blade strapped to his thigh. He’d lost track of time in his trance as he concluded the boat stopped at his location. Would be Spook and the Maggie woman.

He opened the small window facing the little house and rested his forearms on it, waiting to confirm. The shack was comfortable. Similar to his, only slightly smaller. The bed was proving difficult to endure. He was a ground sleeper. His furs and hides had always been the only kind of bedding he rested on. He had vague memories of sleeping in an actual bed before he left the coven, but he didn’t recall a thing of what it felt like. Didn’t want to either.

Female laughter rang out and he angled his head, making out two distinct sounds. Was it Maggie’s sister?

He returned to the small bed, ready to get back to his trance. If he was going to be there for more than a day, he’d need to change out his sleeping furniture.

“No don’t wake him!” a woman barely said. “I’m not ready to meet a man at this hour. Look at me. I’m a mess.”

Ruckus lay there toying with the puzzles being presented by the whisper walkers along the pier. Who didn’t they want to wake? He was the only person there that would be sleeping. The Belle Eveque had already met him which meant the other female wasn’t her. Who was she and why did Maggie want her to meet him? Was he a side freak show?

“You’re not a mess, you’re beautiful!”

He recognized Maggie’s voice while wondering who this other woman was and why so much concern was being given to the topic.

“I’m sure my hair looks like I’ve been shot out of a damn canon,” the woman shrilled not so quietly while her description put Ruckus in touch with something he hadn’t experienced in years. Humor. He tried to recall the last time he found anything funny regarding humans. Vague childhood memories rose up like blurry, voiceless ghosts he couldn’t quite hear or see before he let them float on by.

“Last thing any man needs is to deal with a woman with no brakes on her tongue at an hour when the rest of the world is resting.”

“You do too have brakes,” Maggie went on, their voices fading. “I’m the one without the brakes.”

“Well, I never told you,” the woman said, their distance requiring Ruckus focus. “When it comes to men, I’m all talk.”

Where was Spook?

“I don’t believe it,” Maggie shot back. “You were great with Spook and Bishop!”

“Because they’re married and taken,” he barely heard.

“You just need practice. So does Ruckus.”

He realized their voices were no longer moving like maybe they’d reached the house and were waiting.

“I’m not supposed to tell you, but he’s been alone in the swamp for forty years!”

Ruckus barely shook his head. “Thirty-nine,” he called out, getting immediate gasps then the sound of stifled laughter. A door shut indicating they entered the house and he let out a breath. Humanity. It was the one thing he never missed during his exile in the swamps.