Hunt Me! I Crave the Chase (Spooky Boys #3)

“Where is the ‘grocery’ store?” I asked, suddenly regretting not going with my brothers on the tour they’d taken the first night we’d come to town and Harry had offered to drive us around till we knew where everything important was.

“Uhhhh,” Butters pursed his lips, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He hadn’t gone on the tour either. “Not sure?” He shrugged. “Betcha I could sniff it out though.”

Sniff it out.

Yes.

That was a great idea.

“Or Google it.” He scrounged around in the couch cushions for a couple minutes, grunting and groaning, his blond tail swaying with his movements where it poked out of the hole he’d cut in his sweatpants. Butters, like me, didn’t like losing all of his senses when he was in his two-legged form. “Dropped my phone on my face earlier,” he explained. “And it pissed me off. So when it fell, I didn’t pick it up again.”

Butters crowed in triumph, happiness permeating the room as he found his phone inside a crevice in the couch. He held it out to me, waggling his eyebrows as he tapped a few buttons and the screen turned white as what looked like a…map? showed up.

“Hey Siri. Find. Me. The. Nearest. Grocery. Store,” Butters enunciated nice and slow.

“Finding the nearest grocery store.” The phone chirped back in what was supposed to be a woman’s voice but sounded all sorts of wrong. I stared at the device in horror, terrified to know the damn thing could not only hear me—apparently—but talk to me too.

“If you’re making a sex basket, you should put snacks in it.” Butters hummed helpfully as the screen changed, and I processed this new information. “Oh. And lube.”

“Lube?”

“You know, the slippery shit that comes in a tube.” Oh yes. That stuff Jeffrey had made me put on my fingers in the shower. “Don’t tell me you’ve been jerkin’ it dry this whole time?” Butters looked horrified.

My cheeks flushed.

“Oh man,” he sighed, like finding out I hadn’t known what lube was, was the worst thing ever. “Your poor dick. RIP.”

Butters tapped a few things into his phone and then headed for the front door. Halfway through it, he seemed to remember he needed to put a shirt on. Annoyed, he huffed and turned back around. I frowned, commiserating—because I too hated clothing.

It was the stupidest invention humans had come up with.

I followed him into his bedroom, grimacing as the stench of virile-brother-sweat filled my nose. I hated going in there. It was way less palatable than the mixed scent of pack-pack-pack. This was a lot more…concentrated.

“Ha!” Butters found what he was looking for, yanking a t-shirt over his head with a happy hum, before he turned back to face me.

I hated to be a jerk, but…I just…

I did have a few worries.

My scent was worry-concern-anxiety as I spoke. “Will you be able to keep this secret?” I asked, grateful the rest of my brothers were elsewhere. Butters perked up immediately. Then he wilted.

“Well…I dunno.” He bit his lip. “I’m not the best with secrets.” He frowned. “Remember last year?”

“That was different.”

“I told Mama what we got her for her birthday.”

“That wasn’t an important secret.” I wasn’t sure why I was being so stubborn about this, but I was. I needed an ally. Needed someone who understood humans better than I did. Who could help me.

I hated asking for help, but I’d do anything to make Jeffrey smile.

“And this one is.” Butters cocked his head to the side, his ears flattening. They flickered as he thought, chewing on his lip. “Then yeah. I got you.”

I perked up, my own tail wagging happily as I nodded. “Good.”

I knew he’d pull through.

“So tell me about your human,” Butters said as we headed out of his room, through the house, past the door that led to the basement cell, and out the front door. The woods greeted us, pine cones snapping beneath our feet as we followed the directions on his phone.