Beauty And The BBQ (The Feminine Mesquite Book 2) Read online

  “Do you think you’ll get called on stage?” asked Addison. She was seated next to Cayenne. The Quincys and Scovilles were ordered by gender and age from house left to house right. The youngest Quincy Sister, Savina, was to Cayenne’s right. Cayenne was between Savina and Addison, who was next to Abigail. Next came Alice and Herb, then the rest of the Scovilles by rank. There was Clove, the beta, then Sage, the gamma. Finally, there was Basil, looking smug as ever even as a delta, and Mace, the wildcard omega of the clan.

  “No frikkin’ way,” said Cayenne. “Why would I? Why not Abigail?”

  “Oh, Alice and I got stamps on our hands,” said Addison, showing Cayenne her hands stamp. “Abigail did, too.”

  “Stamps? For what?” asked Cayenne.

  “The stamps are for people who don’t want to be called on stage,” explained Savina, who was sitting on cayenne’s other side. “I got one, too.” Savina turned her other cheek and showed Cayenne the big stamp on her cheek.

  “I didn’t think to get one,” said Cayenne. “You think I’ll get called up?”

  “Who knows? You might, and you might find your fated mate,” said Savina.

  “Wait, why the heck did you get one?” asked Cayenne.

  “I thought it was just a normal stamp!” said Savina. “Trust me, if I could turn back time and undo it, I would…and yes, I tried to rub it off with soap. Looks like I’ll be sporting this badge for a while.”

  “Oh no, Sav,” said Cayenne. “It’ll be like doing a walk of shame every day.”

  “Walk of shame?” asked Savina. “Kai, girl, no way. It’s a stride of pride. Stride. Of. Pride.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the show is about to begin,” said a DJ as the lights went down. “Tonight, we have a very special show in store for you…”

  The DJ described the schedule of the show in brief, along with some simple club rules, and the first act came out. They were fully clothed, but when they shifted into their bear forms and then left their shifts, they were stark raving naked. After all, when a shifter shifted, their clothes would burst if their animal was bigger than their human form. It was a problem that small shifters, like cat and frog shifters, didn’t have, but bigger shifters had this problem…but at Bear Buns, it wasn’t a problem. It was an asset because by shifting into an animal and then going back into their human form, they could show off their shift and their nude bodies…along with their mate marks.

  Three sets of men came out, and Cayenne thanked her lucky stars she hadn’t been called on stage…but then, the house lights came up a bit.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for our intermission,” said the DJ. “While we get things ready backstage, let’s make things wild out in the audience. We’ll pick a random participant from each table. If you have a stamp, now’s the time to show it.

  A random participant? No, no, no! Waiters went to each table to clear them off. Their table was one of the first to be cleared off. Cayenne looked at Savina and then dipped her napkin in her water and put it on her hand.

  “What the heck are you doing?” asked Savina.

  “Let me copy your stamp to my hand,” said Cayenne.

  “Water won’t take it off, remember?” asked Savina. “Face it, girl. You’re the only one here without a stamp.”

  “Shiz,” cursed Cayenne under her breath. “Frik, frik, shiz, bullshizz, frik.”

  One of the wait staff, a tiger shifter wearing a pair of tiger print hotpants that had glitter stripes, tapped Cayenne on the shoulder.

  “Hey, you’ve been selected to represent your table,” said the tiger.

  “I really don’t want to,” said Cayenne.

  “Come on, it’ll be fun,” said the tiger. “You’re in the VIP section, so your job is to dance on the table.”

  “Dance on the table? No frikkin’ way,” said Cayenne. “I’m here to watch strippers, not be a stripper.”

  “Knock it off,” said a voice.

  Cayenne turned. Was Basil really getting out of his chair?

  “I’ll dance,” said Basil. “No stamp, see?” He offered out his hands. His bear roared. Finally, Basil was taking his advice regarding what to do about Cayenne. Of course, the bear would’ve preferred Basil had gone in for ‘the kill’ and kissed her, but defending her honor from an overly pushy tiger shifter was a start. Basil might be the delta, but he was all alpha when it came to protecting his woman…even if she wasn’t his woman yet.

  “You think you can compete with the dancers at Bear Buns?” asked the tiger.

  “You scared of a little competition?” asked Basil, taking off his jacket. His bear roared. Were they going to get in a fight with a frikkin’ tiger? America really was a melting pot and a strange place for a shifter with Viking blood. Basil hushed the bear. There were ways to settle this without a fight. After all, it wasn’t as if the tiger had attacked Kai. He’d only made her feel a little uncomfortable, which the polar considered a grave crime, but which the man assured the polar was not something worth shifting over. Polar bears might look cold, but they ran hot and were hot-headed. Basil’s inner bear was no exception.

  “By all means…if you think you’ve got the stuff, show it off,” said the tiger. “We just need one dancer per table.”

  “You’ve got your dancer,” said Basil, getting up onto the table. Around the club, various women were getting on tables, and every table except for their table had a woman on it.

  “It looks like we’re witnessing Bear Buns history in the making,” said the DJ as the lights went down and spotlights hit each table. “Someone better call the zoo, because there’s a wild bear on the loose. We’ve got what looks like a polar dancing for the VIP section. Anyone tell this guy it’s not Amateur Night? Every dancer gets a bag of Bear Buns goodies, but I have a feeling that this polar isn’t about to be satisfied with a participation trophy. I think he’s trying to go home with a trophy wife. That’s not my problem, though. Let’s see if he has what it takes to win tonight’s trophy. That’s right. We’ve got a trophy for the winner of tonight’s dance competition, and the winner gets a one thousand-dollar gift card to the Bear Buns merchandise store…so let’s see you shake those bare buns!”

  The DJ put on a standard electronic music track that was slow and suited for stripping. A few ladies chickened out before the contest had even started and had sat back down, so their tables were bare. Nobody really noticed that. All eyes were on the polar gone rogue, the one wearing a black shirt, rolled up to his arms, and a pair of forest green velvet suit pants along with a gold vest that shimmered under the white spotlight.

  Basil moved to the beat. His bear roared and started to dance inside of him, dancing to the beat and helping Basil move his body. Basil let the bear take over a bit and start moving to the beat in a more primal way, not as stiffly and as poised as Basil was used to. This wasn’t the frikkin’ Scoville Manor. This was Bear Buns: Denver, and there was no way that he was going to do ballroom dance when what the club wanted to see was his balls, cock, and ass.

  Basil used the pole and spun, careful not to kick anyone on accident. It was a simple spin, but he made it spicy by thrusting his pelvis to the beats, moving his hips in a circle that was slow and sensual but ended with a pop of his groin toward the audience. His bear roared and told him to direct his advances toward Cayenne instead, but Basil reminded the bear they’d already tried it and they needed to make Cayenne want them.

  The DJ’s song transitioned into another song. This song was a rock and electronica hybrid. The women in the audience either took a seat, too tired to dance a minute longer, or went even harder than before. When Basil saw one woman take off her shirt, he didn’t gawk. He just knew he had to up his game. He started to unbutton his vest.

  “You know you don’t have to do that,” Mace said to Basil.

  “Dude, you’re one person who should get this,” said Basil. “I’m a frikkin’ Scoville. In for a penny, out for a pound.”

  “Ah, the sunken cost fallacy,” said Herb, tou
ting his MBA.

  “Who cares about the sunken cost fallacy when there’s a hard phallus to see?” said Basil. “Close your eyes, Herb. I’m about to get alpha up in this joint.”

  The DJ put on an R&B song, and things got real. Each of the spotlights turned a shade of deeper, darker blue, nearly navy, and Basil started to give the room bedroom eyes. He unbuttoned his gold vest and flung it out into the crowd. Two women at another table fought over it, but everyone else was busy watching Basil tease and tantalize them. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt and moved his finger under his collar. Was he going to undo the rest of his buttons, and reveal the mate mark on his chest?

  The mate mark. It seemed so ridiculous to Cayenne. Shifters got marks on their bodies that told them who they were meant to be with. For most bears, including polars and even koalas (hence why some people called them bears), the mark showed up on their chest around age eighteen. Somehow, it was supposed to be a clue from Fate about who their fated mate was…but Cayenne wasn’t sure about all that. To be fair, she was the furthest thing from a tan, tall, toned shifter. She was a little short but made up for it with her curves, which were always flattered demurely in her business casual clothes. She made them look a little sexy, not frumpy, but still looked serious…but right now, she was seriously curious about what Basil’s mark was.

  Maybe it was all bullshizz. Maybe not. But, like people’s downstairs parts, the marks were kept secret, private, for the most part. That’s why it was such a big frikkin’ deal that a club like Bear Buns existed at all, and why the club had spread to Denver. Would Basil, a Scoville, really bare his mark to all the ladies in the audience?

  Basil moved his hands down his shirt, running his fingers over the buttons but not unbuttoning his shirt. The ladies shouted for him to take it off, but he had run his fingers over his designer belt instead. He undid the belt and ladies oohed and aahed. Was he going to flash them his twig and berries, or even…his bare buns?

  Basil did something different. He took his belt off and looped it before taking the loop and snapping it using both his hands, causing a whip crack sound to fill the room. It was like the sonic boom from a jet. It got abso-frikkin’-lutely everyone’s attention and a few of the remaining dancers got off the table to watch the show, while the others were pretty much paralyzed, hypnotized by the antics going on in the VIP section.

  Basil dropped the belt and then turned, grinding on the pole, before he dropped his pants and boxers with his free hand.

  Firm. Shapely. Toned. A little pale, but that could be fixed. There was no denying that what was in front of Cayenne was Basil frikkin’ Scoville’s bare buns. She never would’ve thought that one of the heirs to the multibillion Scoville fortune, a future billionaire, would be stripping at her sister’s graduation party, but stranger things had happened. The only thing weirder was the fact that Cayenne was smiling. Basil had made her smile, and she put her hands up to her face to hide her glee at seeing such a ridiculous sight. She never in a million years would’ve thought that Basil would’ve stripped, or that he’d take it this far.

  She had no idea what would happen next.

  Basil’s bear roared. The bear wanted to play, and Basil thought it only fair to let him. After all, Basil hadn’t let the bear do anything fun that night. Basil pulled up his pants and leaned down to whisper something to Herb.

  Everyone started to scoot their chairs back a few feet from the table, starting with Herb and Alice and the Scovilles, so of course, Cayenne followed suit. Luckily, the VIP area was huge, so there was room for everyone.

  Basil pulled his pants down again, but he didn’t pull them back up. Instead, Basil started to shift, starting, of course, with his butt, which grew a coat of white fur and a little tail that he wiggled, looking over his shoulder at the audience before he did a twirl around the pole, kicking off his designer Italian leather shoes.

  All he had left on his body was his socks, underwear, pants, and shirt, which burst as Basil shifted into a big white bear. He got real big, expanding in size as his skeleton and muscles changed into a form that could only be described as ‘predatory.’ White fur, a dark nose and dark paws, and an impish grin completed the look. He had turned into the one thing you didn’t want to see running at you at the North Pole where nobody would hear you scream. The very word that described him in his language, isbjørn, Norwegian for ‘ice bear,’ was more than accurate. It was a veiled warning. There was a theory that bjørn, ‘bear,’ and other words for the animal were all words that came about because the animal’s true name was bad luck to speak, taboo, forbidden. Looking at Basil in his ferocious bear form, which was as primal and animalistic and fierce as Basil’s human form was debonair and suave, made it obvious why the word bear may have been forbidden to say. Would someone want to tempt Fate and speak the unspeakable animal’s now long-forgotten original name and risk summoning it?

  Cayenne ‘Kai’ Quincy was becoming one of the many women around the world who was starting to not only believe in Fate, but tempt it.

  She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She thought she’d been hallucinating when she’d seen Basil’s butt turn into the butt of a bear, but when she saw him transform into a huge, hulking white predator with gnashing teeth and scary big paws with claws at the end, she had almost jumped out of her seat. She’d never seen any of the Scoville Brothers shift before, and while she’d met shifters at her college in Georgia, she hadn’t seen any shift. Things were different down South, where walking around scantily clad or nude after shifting was more frowned upon, even in a city like Atlanta or Orlando. Of course, places like New Orleans were the exception, not the rule, and the winds of change were a-blowin’. There was no telling what the future might bring…or if, back in Fallowedirt, Texas, the Quincy hometown, Cayenne would see Basil enter his bear form again that summer. She had a feeling this bear was not about to be kept inside all summer. This bear could handle the heat, but would Cayenne need to get out of the kitchen?

  “Holy shiz,” said the DJ. “I don’t know how anyone’s gonna beat this…so we better put on the right beat for this bear.” The DJ did a record scratch and switched to another song, a Viking-themed heavy metal song that was very rock influenced and retro, by an American band. Everyone in the audience knew the song and pounded their tables, which meant the remaining dancers had to get down so they didn’t get knocked off. They were all good sports about it. After all, each participant was given a special bag of Bear Buns goodies just for trying. Who cared about dancing when there was a hot, sexy polar bear shifter in his shift spinning on a pole and shaking his bear buns?

  Basil had excellent control over his shift. Unlike Clove, who considered his bear a beast until Abigail and her inner beauty had tamed him, Basil and his bear were bros. That meant that Basil could stop the entire bear from coming out, able to still maintain control in his bear form, and he even had the ability to transform certain parts of his body at will. Clove had that to some extent, able to transform a single arm at a time at will, but Basil could even transform his butt on command, as he had done during his routine. He wiggled his little tail again for the audience and then did another spin over the pole before he used the pole to scratch his back adorably. He got on all fours and roared out to the audience before getting on all fours, turning to wiggle some more. Finally, he turned back so he was facing the audience and stood on his hind legs, finishing his set by beating his chest and roaring.

  Before Basil could shift back into his nude human form, the song ended. The lights went low on all tables except the Quincy-Scoville table, where the lights got brighter.

  “There’s only one dancer left standing,” said the DJ. “Y’all saw Bear Buns history get made tonight. Trust me. This wasn’t staged. We’ve had Amateur Nights, we’ve had dance competitions, but we’ve never had a shifter win the dance competition. Congratulations, polar. You won the trophy and the gift card!”

  The same tiger shifter that had hassled Cayenne before came over and gave Ba
sil his prize. Basil picked it up with his mouth. The trophy was hilariously tacky. It was rose gold with a mix of all types of animal prints engraved on its surface, and the prize read ‘Bear Buns: Denver’ and the date. Inside was a gift voucher for a thousand bucks.

  Cayenne couldn’t stop staring at Basil as he gracefully got off the table. He had defended her honor and gone up there and danced his butt off just to save her a bit of embarrassment, putting himself in the limelight. Had he done it so that she could stay comfortable? There had to be another reason he’d done it, maybe to show off, but for the first time, Cayenne found herself truly unable to question Basil’s motives.

  Basil headed out of the dance hall with Mace, who carried the trophy for him. Cayenne wondered where he was going, but when he came back wearing a pair of Bear Buns branded sweat pants that read ‘BARE’ on the back in diamond-like rhinestones, glittering against the black velour fabric, the reason for his leaving became apparent. He’d gone to get more clothes, and he managed to make the baby pink shirt that read ‘Bear Buns’ in gold foil script on the front look good. He made it look real good.

  The last three sets of dancers went on stage and danced, but Cayenne was still distracted by thoughts of Basil twisting and turning on the table and found herself wondering what the heck was underneath his shirt…and why she cared so much and wanted to find out. After the show, Basil gave Abigail the rest of the gift card as a graduation gift. Ever the gent, he had politely only used the card to buy things from the sale bin. There was still over nine hundred bucks left on the card. Of course, the gals all picked out their new summer pajamas from the new stock at Bear Buns. As they sorted through the sweatpants and large but light sleeping shirts, Cayenne couldn’t take her eyes off Basil. Maybe she was wrong about him. Maybe she was wrong about herself.