Rumble of the Crumble (The Rhubarb Effect)

Chapter One

Leonidis

Ricky gave me a sloppy grin over the rim of his mojito glass. “Had a few cocktails.” He hiccupped and clapped his hand over his mouth.

The rhubarb surrounding him giggled, too. They appeared to be as drunk as him.

Cocktails? Now? Was the stalk high? “Why aren’t you at home with your mate and your babies?” I was not pleased to be sent on a mission to the bar to find the errant father.

“He told me to go away.” Ricky stared mournfully into his glass. “He said I was annoying the babies.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “Your mini-bull, who wants to spend all his time climbing you like a pole, even when he’s the size of a small house, and could squash you like a bug–”

“Are you going to get to the end of this sentence?” Ricky was so drunk, it surprised me he was even keeping up. “And my Burke is not that large.”

“Man, I love Burke like my brother, and he can cook like an angel, but he’s a bull.” That was more diplomatic than what I’d been about to say. “And he was screaming for you to get your ass home. I’m here to make sure you do that.”

Ricky flapped his hand like it was unimportant. He had to be drunk because I could never see him dismissing Burke like that. “Your mane is all floofy.”

I resisted the urge to tamp down my hair. I was in my human form, not my lion. No matter what he said, it wasn’t floofy, no way. My hand still crept up to check, though. I sighed. He might be drunk, but he wasn’t blind.

“It gets all floofy when you see your sheriff.”

I glared at him. The last thing I needed was him talking about Sheriff Butch and he absolutely wasn’t my anything. “You’re talking out of your drunk ass. Drink up. You’ve got a passel to cuddle, though I’d suggest you don’t breathe on them.”

Ricky obliged by falling off his seat.

I groaned in complaint and bent down to haul him off the floor. I held him as his legs decided to do some sort of weird dance while working to hold him up. It would have been funny if I wasn’t the one getting booted. “How can you be so graceful on the pole and a total klutz now?”

He turned to look at me, but his eyes went in opposite directions. “You wanna learn to pole dance? I can teach you.”

His breath hit me and I was convinced another hit would get me as pissed as him. I made a scoffing noise in the back of my throat. “I’m a lion. We don’t climb poles like a panther.”

“You just want to climb our local law enforcement,” Ricky mumbled, failing at side eye.

I ignored him as I gripped his bicep and steered him to the door. “This is not about me. This is about you evading your baby daddy duties.”

Ricky tripped over his feet. I caught him before he face-planted the asphalt. “I love my babies and my ballsy-bull.”

Dear gods, I don’t need to hear him loving on Burke’s balls. It was bad enough having to listen to it every night, or in the day when they couldn’t seem to figure when to stop.

I shoved him into the pride’s van. “Come on.”

Then he started singing. My ears rang with the god awful racket.

“Oh, hell no,” I muttered crossly, grabbing for my noise-canceling headphones, because I went nowhere without them these days. A lion couldn’t be safe anywhere. I ignored the wannabe Tim in the back of the van. One yodeling stalk was definitely enough.

Not ten minutes later, I opened the kitchen door and pushed Ricky into Burke’s arms, leaving him to be scolded and loved at the same time, their stalks squashed between them.

The pride house kitchen had turned into a creche. Tim nursed his lion cub, and Maximus, the pride alpha, sat next to him at the kitchen table cuddling their stalks to his chest. The mini-bull calf was currently fast asleep in Apollo’s arms, resting on his slight bump.

Apollo had just gotten over his morning sickness, to everyone’s relief. Constant hurling had been miserable for all of us with how he liked to project the sound, bouncing it around the whole damn house. Pregnancy was not fun!

Maximus looked over at me. “The sheriff’s looking for you.”

Every hair on my body stood erect at his words.

“See, I told you,” Ricky crowed and slurred. “Any mention of the sheriff and you go floofy.”

I scowled at them. “I don’t know what you mean.”

After the recent run in, which I wasn’t ever thinking about, I’d hoped they’d all get with the programme and just drop it.

Apollo chuckled smugly. “You look like you’ve stuck your finger in an electrical socket.”

I snarled at him and stomped toward the door as they all laughed at me. As I reached for the handle, the door flung open and smacked me in the face. I staggered back, ending up on my butt, staring up at a gruff stalk in a baseball cap I didn’t want to see. One who wasn’t getting the message. This would not work.

Liar! Of course I wanted to see him, the mating pull was undeniable, despite how much I refused to acknowledge it.

Sheriff Butch regarded me with dark, smouldering eyes, framed by really long inky-black eyelashes. He wasn’t pretty, far from it. His features were too strong and his jaw too square for that. He was ruggedly handsome with a drool-worthy body. The T-shirt he currently wore hugged him like a second skin, revealing not an ounce of unwanted flesh.

Some folks had all the luck.

My gaze dipped to what he was packing, but his chuckle brought my gaze back to his dark, bemused eyes. “Why’re you on the floor?”

“Because you put me there,” I groused back, working on making it sound like he was stupid for asking.

I held out my hand because the urge to touch was too much to resist, and he hauled me to my feet. I gasped and staggered back. It was as if I’d received a bolt of electricity from my hand to my cock. Sheriff Butch grabbed me before I butt-planted once more.

He looked amused and I flushed, knowing I was making an idiot of myself. “Thanks,” I muttered.

“You’re welcome.”

“Could you guys just get on with the mating instead of staring at each other? It’s painful,” Tim said from across the room.

“We’re not all dancing queens,” Drew said as he wandered into the kitchen. “What is that smell?”

Drew was the biggest drama llama going, but no one was stupid enough to say it, especially with his huge alpha stalk right behind him. I swear Goliath was so huge, he could make mincemeat out of Maximus.

“What smell?” Tim questioned, going back to the question Drew asked.

“I can’t smell anything,” Apollo said.

I wasn’t focused on the smell. Butch was still holding my hand. I tugged at it, but he didn’t let go. A warm, disconcerting feeling was creeping through me.

“We need to talk,” he said, breaking the spell. From his somber tone, that wasn’t a euphemism for ‘let’s get jiggy’.

“I don’t want to talk,” I muttered. “I’m done talking.”

I’d had no choice but to bare my soul to the stalk that was supposed to be my mate, and I hated it.

“You two need to go on a date,” Drew said brightly. He leaned back against Goliath, who wrapped his arms around him and buried his face in Drew’s hair.

“Like you two did?” I snarked back, knowing they’d done no such thing.

Goliath had declared Drew was his and llama-napped him from the doorstep. I didn’t see any dating involved.

“It’s a good idea,” Maximus said. “Take Leonidis out.”

Butch looked as happy as I did about being ordered to date on command. But then he turned to me and pressed my hand to his heart. “Would you like to come out for dinner with me?”

I gave him a dubious look. “This is a small rhubarb town. The only restaurant is vegan.”

Butch grinned at me. “Let me cook for you. I have a grill.”

He still didn’t let go of my hand.

“Say yes,” Tim hissed.

I sighed. Like I had a choice? I ignored the obvious answer when no mate would force another to do anything they didn’t want. “Why don’t we share? I’ll bring the meat.”

Of course someone had to snort, but I ignored them, focused only on Butch’s smile.

“Perfect,” Butch declared. “Are you ready?”