Chasing The Night: Big Easy Shifters: Book Three, Knox, Abby [book series to read .TXT] 📗

“Well, she was the one dancing on the bar, if that gives you any clues.”

Ash rubbed his eyes in frustration. “Look, man, everyone took turns dancing on the bar last night, it was a whole thing, I think.”

“Where are we going then?”

Ash smiled. “To get you some coffee and then an ass-whooping.”

Chapter Three

Chastity, 9:15 a.m.

So how had she made it to 22 with her virginity intact?

Coming from a family of shape-shifting panthers did put a damper on dating. Few “normal” people were aware of the curse of the DuChamp clan, and the ones that were aware of it were bound to secrecy. Overprotective fathers notwithstanding, navigating these tricky conversations with prospective dates was not something any young panther looked forward to. One slip up, one accidental magical shift while in the middle of an aroused or emotional moment, and everyone could end up injured, at worst. At best, such an encounter could mean a date being coerced into signing non-disclosure agreements at an attorney’s office. None of these scenarios encouraged much romance.

The DuChamp clan elders would probably still be arranging their children’s marriages to their second and third cousins once removed, if that kind of thing weren’t so frowned upon these days. That had been the case with her daddy and mama. Oh, it hadn’t been anything illegal, but her grandparents wanted to keep the panther blood in the family and had to go back in the family tree about three generations to find a distant cousin from a feuding branch of the family to be a suitable match for their son.

Chastity’s father, Theodore DuChamp, and his brother Lionel, the daddy of the bride-to-be Rosemary, when they weren’t monopolizing the shipping industry all over the Gulf Coast, spent most of their energy trying to use their daughters for the benefit of their businesses. Or so it seemed to their daughters.

And there was another barrier entirely to Chastity’s dating life: the purity ring. She didn’t like wearing the ring; she’d been coerced into it as a young girl. Chastity and her daddy were the poster people for the city’s annual Purity Ball. Over the years, it had become as much a rite of passage for young girls as the coming-out parties. Much like the old-fashioned country club debutante balls, the Purity Ball involved fathers presenting their daughters to the public at a dance. However, instead of handing their daughters over to a suitable boy of good breeding, the Purity Balls involved no boys at all. Instead, daughters would receive a ring from their father. The ring served as a symbol of his protection and as a symbol of the girl’s promise to save herself for marriage.

As she had gotten older and wiser, she’d once asked what would be the point of a Purity Ball full of girls if some of the girls were lesbians? Also, what about the trans folk? Where did they fit in the whole purity culture? She never got any answers about any of that.

As a young girl, Chastity had loved these daddy-daughter dates in the beginning. Besides new moons—on which the Baton Rouge DuChamps would gather in the woods to shapeshift into their panther form and hunt together—the Purity Ball was always a day she could count on her dad being there for her. Otherwise, Theodore was a very busy man.

In this way, Chastity was jealous of her cousin Rosemary. Uncle Lionel was also busy and ruled with an iron fist, but he was always around.

Over time, Chastity started to hate the Purity Balls. Especially as she grew older and desired nothing more than to raise hell with her friends and chase boys. But every year until she was 18, she put up with this promise to remain celibate and attend the ball, just to keep her daddy happy.

She still never dared to have actual sex, however. Fear of pregnancy, STDs, magical curses, and damnation all loomed large in a young girl’s life.

Instead, Chastity’s outlet took the form of drawing and illustrating comics, which she secretly published on an anonymous blog. She had exactly 65 adoring fans and counting.

And now, here she was, doing a bona fide walk of shame. Except she wasn’t sure where she was walking from or walking to.

If Chastity was grateful for one thing about her strict debutante upbringing, it would be learning to walk in high heels with ease. She might not have her sunglasses, she might not have a working phone. Chastity also was hungry, thirsty, and barely functioning under the weight of a raging hangover. But it was a gorgeous June morning, and no inaugural walk of shame was going to make this girl stumble down the streets of New Orleans. She was going to strut, goddamnit.

Well, not precisely strut. Maybe she would shamble a little bit.

On the way out of that drab apartment, she had come across this mysterious guy’s shirt and motorcycle boots on the stairs. She knew instantly they were his; they had his scent all over them. That scent, the one she’d picked up all over her body, all over the bed, all over everything. She had brought the shirt and boots back up and neatly placed them on the mat in front of his door.

Chastity arrived at an unknown street corner in an area of New Orleans she’d never been to before. She looked around and swallowed down the nervousness creeping up, that panic she remembered as a child when she’d once lost sight of her mother while shopping at the mall. Everything looked strange and desolate.

You’re okay, Chas.

Now she just needed to focus on getting herself a coffee and some juice for her phone, and she could call Rosemary’s driver for a ride back to the mansion.

Spying a hip little storefront with an incredible aroma wafting out through the door, Chastity found her bearings. She still had no idea where she was, but she at least had something to take off her to-do list in her