Even if they weren’t mated yet, April was his now.

  And nothing would ever be the same.

  13

  Later that afternoon, April’s body was still humming from release as she sat in the front seat of Gunnar’s restored Chevy. It was like her body was still trying to process all the orgasms she’d had during her mind-blowing encounter with Gunnar.

  Her heart tightened whenever she looked over at him still, yearning for more of him, more connection, more of his kisses.

  After a much-needed nap, Gunnar had served her lunch in his room, then asked her where she wanted to go or what she wanted to do for the day.

  As much as her mind had yammered, “Seconds!” on the sexing, she figured a nice quiet place where she could be alone with him was the next best thing.

  So here they were, carving a path up a familiar dirt road on the outskirts of Clawson’s Creek, one she’d taken many times, toward one of the few places she had found where she could be alone over the years.

  Gunnar had changed into a navy-blue shirt that hugged his muscles tightly, and as he easily palmed the wheel of the car with one hand, she bit her lip from the recent memory of all the wicked things those hands had done to her.

  A few minutes later, they pulled up to a flat area at the edge of a ravine where a faded sign with holes and dents on it read, “Keep Out,” but nobody in town had ever minded.

  Gunnar helped her out of the car, and his gaze seemed much more comfortable just following her around wherever she went, making her blush with its intensity.

  “Is this the place?” he asked as she walked ahead through a row of pine trees, Gunnar close behind.

  “Yup, it is.” As she passed the trees, the ground fell off before her, opening up to a wide view of the abandoned granite quarry that had sat idly up in the hills for a long time now. Beneath them, a little lake that had formed from heavy rainfalls sparkled with blue and green as the early evening light glinted off the white and black-speckled stones.

  Her quiet place.

  “Wow,” Gunnar said, nodding as he came beside April and took her hand in his. “You have good taste.”

  She flushed and pulled him with her toward a little spot to the side where several stones sat beside the quarry’s edge.

  Every day she spent with Gunnar made her feel bolder than all of her years working to be an adult but only getting pushed around.

  When she sat on one of the smaller stones, pointing for Gunnar to take the larger one, he growled and, instead, pulled her into his lap to face her toward the direction of the silent, rocky abyss. Above them, robins and jays hustled about preparing for dusk as the brilliant Texas sky blazed in pink and orange and vibrant blue.

  She sighed as she let her thoughts drift and her body relax.

  She’d always loved stones. The texture, the feel of them. Cool to the touch and so solid.

  Kind of like Gunnar in many ways.

  “Tell me more about this place. Why you like it.” Gunnar held her in his lap as though she meant everything to him.

  Though she’d been told a million times by her aunt to “not run around with boys because they only want one thing,” April had the powerful sense in her heart that Gunnar wasn’t like any other man. Not in the way he made love, not in the way he watched out for her and protected her.

  She wanted to share everything with him.

  “Harlowe’s Quarry. It’s been abandoned for much longer than I’ve lived in town. The bears and wolves all ignore it because it isn’t useful to them. And most humans are too afraid of shifters out in the wild to come this far. So for a long time, I’d come up here to be by myself whenever I had free time.”

  “What about friends? Or your family here?” Gunnar asked, though if he was trying to hold back a sneer when he said the word family, he only half succeeded.

  “When I told them about it, they said it was gross and full of bugs and laughed. So I kept it to myself, which was all the better because I never got along well with my cousins anyways.” She kept out the part where she’d been bullied out of being able to use the family pool while her uncle and aunt had turned a blind eye and merely said, “You should just be grateful you’re not living with your parents.”

  “They’re stupid. This place is… peaceful,” he said, looking out as he let out a long breath.

  “You like it?” Secretly, she had hoped he would like it too.

  “Of course I do. Anything that’s special to you is special to me. But also, the ground here is still.” He closed his eyes as if sensing something she couldn’t possibly perceive. “Steady. Solid.”

  She cocked her head, so curious to know everything about him. “Can rocks talk? Can you hear them as a basilisk or something?”

  He looked confused. “Of course not. They’re rocks. But everywhere you go, there’s a certain feeling you get. I’ve been a lot of places, and this is a nice one.”

  “Tell me more about being a basilisk. What was it like before you woke up and became human?”

  He thought for a moment. “We’ve always had a human form, but I never needed it. As for what I was doing… the same thing I’d always done as a basilisk.”

  “Which is?”

  He looked amused by the eagerness of her question. “Protect the land, the earth, from destructive forces. Fight. Hibernate. Keep intruders off our territory.”

  “Fight what, earthquakes?”

  He grimaced. “No. Monsters. Great beasts that once terrorized the land and who only know chaos. But it’s been a long time since they’ve been around.”

  She was admittedly very curious to know what those things were, but she’d ask him another time.

  “So when did things change?”

  He paused. “We fought the dragons from Dragonclaw Ranch for a long time. I’m not sure who started it. Probably because we thought they were on our land, and they thought we were on their land. But recently, the dragons found mates, and that changed how they saw us. And seeing them settled, seeing them happy, made us want the same thing too.”

  When he gazed into her eyes, both his irises were that cool sapphire blue, the color of the sky at dusk, and it sent a shiver down her at the sight of him like that.

  It was like her life was on a collision course with this man. Like he’d come at just the right time to be in her life when she needed him most.

  Hopefully, he felt the same way about her.

  She got up out of Gunnar’s lap, thoughts already wandering to what they’d done that morning, and she strode over to the edge of the cliff near them. She looked down the thirty-foot drop she’d leapt off hundreds of times when here by herself and suddenly felt like swimming.

  “Want to hop in with me?”

  April pulled off her shirt, and Gunnar’s one eye went red again as he stood up and moved toward her, gaze roving over her.

  He peered over the edge and frowned. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “I’m positive.” She sent him a sultry glance as she pulled off her jeans too and set them aside, loving the visible effect she had on Gunnar. “What, do basilisks hate water?”

  “Basilisks don’t like swimming. But no, I don’t hate water.” He looked down again, distracted.

  Emboldened by his nearness and feeling more than a little mischievous in the moment, April came up behind Gunnar and pushed him forward into the water so she could join him.

  He didn’t make a sound, just looked up at her as his huge figure fell downward and plummeted into the deep water beneath her, making an impressive splash.

  She waited for him to surface, practically giggling to see how he’d respond.

  But he didn’t come up.

  “Gunnar?”

  She waited a few more seconds. Bubbles rose to the surface but no Gunnar.

  Oh crap…

  Maybe basilisks really couldn’t swim and he’d just been hiding it from her because he was trying to be nice about not joining her in the water…

  “Gunnar!” she yelled, but nothing moved in the inky green darkness.

  She covered her nose and jumped in immediately. Oh no, oh no, oh no, her brain kept thinking on repeat as the air sailed past her before she felt icy coolness surround her and the rush of water in her ears as she swam for the surface.

  A second later, she broke the surface and spun around in a circle, already trying to determine where he’d fallen so she could start swimming down. She’d never forgive herself if anything ever happened to—

  She’d just taken a huge intake of breath, ready to dive deep, when a familiar face rose from the water in front of her, almost eerily silent. The top half of Gunnar’s face appeared, his expression unamused, water covering him from the bottom of his nose down.

  “Gunnar, you’re alive. I’m so, so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to.” She swam toward him and wrapped her hands around his shoulders. “I didn’t know you couldn’t swim.”

  He chuckled at that. And when his hands came around her, pulling her into him, the warmth of his body a stark contrast to the nearly freezing water of the quarry, her worry immediately began to melt.

  “I said basilisks don’t like water. That doesn’t mean we can’t swim.”

  “But… you were down there for so long.” She had to tell her brain that he was okay, or else she wouldn’t stop worrying.

  No more practical jokes, that was for certain.

  “I’m a heavy guy. It took me a second to swim up from the bottom. Also, basilisks hibernate underground, so we don’t need air the way humans or other shifters normally do.” He nuzzled her into his shoulder, treading water for the both of them.

  “You really scared me there,” she said.

  “Call it even, then, for pushing me in in the first place.”

  She nodded emphatically at that.

  If nothing else, her immediate reaction to the utter horror at the idea of something happening to him was enough to give her heart pause.

  Even after only so little time, she’d never be able to be without him.

  “Tell me everything. About basilisks.” She just relaxed in his arms, enjoying the sun beating down on them as his powerful legs moved them in lazy circles, moving toward the middle of the small lake.

  “Well, you know how I feel about water, though with you here, it’s a lot more fun than I thought it would be.”

  She smiled at that.

  “Basilisks are also nearly immune to fire. It’s one of the reasons dragons hate us so much. They can’t use their fire on us.”

  “So the coffeemaker… or the fire at the bar, that’s why you weren’t harmed.”

  He nodded. “Basilisks are also very poisonous, at least in our beast form.”

  She gaped at him. Apparently, being huge and monstrous wasn’t enough for these guys. They were poisonous as well?

  Her curiosity had never been greater.

  “Can I… can I see it?” she asked tentatively, body tensing with fear and excitement.

  “You sure?” He seemed oddly reserved about the idea. “It’s not pretty. Or majestic. It’s a killing machine. A remnant of the old world, something that’s been around a lot longer than cities or civilization.”

  “Of course I do. One, it’s a part of you, and I want to see everything that makes Gunnar, Gunnar. Two, I’ve only seen blurry videos on the internet that don’t do it justice. Three…” She trailed off, distracted by his hard body pressed against hers in the water.

  “Was there a third thing?” His low laugh, relaxed and provocative, made her hot inside.

  “Because I asked nicely. Pretty, pretty pleeease.”

  He snorted in response to that. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” And to her chagrin, he let go of April to swim away toward the other end of the quarry, covering the distance with surprisingly fast strokes. When he was a hundred or more feet away, he looked back at her like this was her last chance.

  “Show me what you’re made of, you big, silly basilisk,” she said, her voice echoing between the granite walls surrounding her.

  He nodded.

  Then he changed.

  In moments, his shape grew upward and outward in every direction, changing from the burly man she loved into something so huge, so gigantic it almost filled the quarry from one end to the other.

  Instinctively, she swam backward to get a better look, until she was hugging a rocky wall as she stared up in awe, terror, and amazement.

  A basilisk. Gunnar’s basilisk.

  The videos really hadn’t done it justice.

  He was humongous, more than the length of a football field from end to end. He had a huge head with a craggy face that resembled a dragon mixed with a dinosaur, with a big mouth lined with rows of jagged, razor-sharp teeth that protruded at every angle and horns that curled outward and forward, so long they were like school buses.

  His eyes looked more reptilian with slitted irises that glowed, one blue, one red.

  He had a large domed back that resembled a tortoise shell on steroids, though it was covered in huge patches of dirt and loose rock, so much she wasn’t sure where the rocks ended and the basilisk began. But all along the top, gigantic, long blue spikes colored like obsidian and sapphire protruded upward, bunching together as they formed a deadly-looking row down a long tail that ended in a bundle of spikes that made her cower in terror at what it would be like to be on the receiving end of those spikes.

  His underbelly was scaled, though still covered in soil and rocks that gave an even more earthy feel to him.

  If dragons ruled the skies in the world of shifters, these guys certainly ruled the earth.

  It was like Godzilla had a baby with the scariest-looking dragon imaginable, but was also related to a dinosaur. The big, four-legged kind with spikes.

  His front paws were buried in the water before her, but at the back, where the lake got shallow, she could see thick legs that came down to huge talons like the ones he’d had in the cafe but a million times bigger, so big they would shred a skyscraper in half with ease.

  She finally let out a breath and reminded her legs to keep swimming or else she’d drown.

  Good heavens, he was scary.

  And amazing.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about because I think this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” she shouted upward, shaking her hands up at him. The huge creature’s eyes glanced away as if slightly embarrassed.

  Even five stories high and interminably scary, Gunnar could be cute at the most unexpected times.

  Then he reared back and bellowed, his roar low and ominous, shaking the trees and the very canyon around her and causing wildlife to flee in every direction. Even the ground seemed to quake from the sound he made.

  She wished she could always be with him

  And in that moment, April knew she wanted to be with Gunnar for the rest of her life.

  Forever even, if it were possible.

  He was amazing in every way. And she’d spend every day making sure he knew exactly how amazing he was.

  14

  After spending the rest of the evening in the quarry, swimming together while Gunnar heard more about April’s history, they took the drive back down the canyon in relative silence, listening to April’s favorite tunes.

  As quiet creatures, basilisks didn’t listen to a lot of music. But his mate had good taste; that was for certain.

  Ever since she’d looked up at his basilisk form and not screamed in terror (which he’d half expected her to do), he’d felt even more connected to her. More protective, if that were even possible.

  And the more he knew about her, the more he learned of the hardships she’d endured living here, the more he wanted to take April away from it all. Take her all the places she’d never seen. Visit the mountains in the West. Show her things she’d never have a chance to witness if she stayed here in Clawson’s Creek.

  They pulled up to her house in town, as April had said she needed a few things, including a few more changes of clothes (in case there were “repeats of this morning,” she’d said with a beet-red face).

  “I’ll just be right back,” she said, hopping out.

  But he was already out of the car, joining her up the steps. “Not without me.” He scented the air, and though it seemed like bear and wolf shifters had come by the place today, he only smelled human right now.

  But something told him to keep his guard up.

  They came through the front door, April moving in front of him to turn toward her room, and his suspicions were confirmed immediately.

  “There you are!” A short, half-bald man appeared from the kitchen instantly, reaching forward to try and grab April by the wrist. “You ungrateful little—”

  In an instant, Gunnar’s hand yanked him off the ground by the front of his dark suit jacket, and he screeched and kicked his legs around.

  “Unhand me! I’ll sue you! I’ll sue!” he yelled, florid face spitting obscenities as he flailed.

  “Uncle Marvin? What are you doing here?” April, who’d only barely seen what had happened, looked up at her relative being held a foot off the ground.

  From the kitchen, a woman of similar age that Gunnar assumed was April’s aunt appeared, and when she saw her husband, she ran forward and started screeching as well. “Let my husband go, you barbarian!”

  Gunnar rolled his eyes. So these were the people April had had to make do with for family all these years?

  Based on the stories he’d heard, he wasn’t surprised, just disappointed.

  “You can let him down now,” April said, moving to Gunnar’s side, and Gunnar had the inclination to not let go of her uncle. Make him squirm a little longer.

  Squash him like a bug… His basilisk growled. There was no kindness in these people’s hearts. He could tell just from the smell on them.

  But that wouldn’t likely go over well with April, so he gingerly set down the short, stocky man, who immediately straightened his clothes and composed himself as if he hadn’t just been squealing like a pig a moment earlier.