Page 44 of Shifters in the Night

He nodded. “Let’s just make the after-sex awkward family conversation complete. Your turn to share.”

“Pretty normal except for all the deer issues,” she said, making him laugh. “Not to rub salt in your childhood wounds, but my parents were happy, deliriously so, in the way that people can only be happy when they get absolutely everything they want or hope for. They were set up by my grandparents. There aren’t a lot of us left and the hind parents keep up with each other in a sort of network. When they were thirty or so and Dad had finished his MBA and my mom was ready to settle down, their parents got them together to see if they sparked. There wasn’t any pressure on them. If they didn’t get along, their parents would have just moved along to find new candidates who might better suit. But Mom and Dad hit it off right away. They had a careful, thoughtful courtship that lasted about two years and then they got married in a very tasteful ceremony outside, in a park. And then immediately moved to Dallas for my dad’s job.”

“So you grew up in Dallas?” he asked.

“I grew up in a lot of places,” Lia said.

“But a little house on the edge of the swamp makes you happy?”

She kissed him. “A lot of things in Mystic Bayou make me happy.”

12

LIA

Her sheets smelled different.

Lia woke up in a strange bed, and for a moment, she panicked, unsure of where she was – but just a few moments later, she inhaled that familiar sea wind and spice smell and realized she was at Jon’s. She sighed into the pillow, burrowing into the blankets. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so hard. She’d never tried energetic sex to replace her usual sleep aid, but it seemed pretty effective.

She stretched, touching her toes to the footboard, wincing at the soreness – well, pretty much everywhere. She was going to have to start taking yoga or something if she wanted to keep up with the man. Speaking of whom … where was Jon?

She reached across the bed, patting the other side of the mattress to make sure she hadn’t just ignored him for the last few minutes. His side of the bed was empty and she rose up on her elbows, looking around the tidy bedroom.

Sniffing lightly, she recognized the scent of onions and peppers sautéing somewhere nearby. She rose, shrugging into a discarded Carmody & Sons t-shirt and following her sensitive nose into the kitchen where she found Jon standing at the stove. Bare-assed.

Jon’s ass was literally bare as he carefully ran a spatula around the rim of a pan, flipping a golden sweep of egg over vegetables and cheese. Another omelet waited on a plate on the counter, steam curling over it. Bread was browning in the toaster and the coffee pot was warming a deep, rich looking brew. Jon wasn’t even wearing an apron to protect his … delicate bits. There was something weirdly sexy about that level of confidence … or maybe it was recklessness, she wasn’t sure. Either way, it was attractive.

Also, the man had made her breakfast. And coffee. It smelled like the good coffee that one had to grind at home. She might just marry the man if he hadn’t overcooked the eggs. Her brows rose as he lifted the pan from the stove and flipped the omelet with ease, like he was demonstrating on some sort of explicit cooking channel.

Well, that was it, she was going to marry him.

She took a minute to get a better look at the house. She’d been too distracted the night before to appreciate the touch of the ocean in every corner, from the sun-bleached corals arranged on the table like a floral centerpiece to the polished sea glass on the windowsill reflecting patches of blue and green light on the wall. The kitchen was painted in shades of blue and green, with ruthlessly clean white appliances that had probably been installed sometime in the 1970s.

“I’m not sure what’s more impressive – that you made me an omelet or that you’re naked while using a kitchen appliance,” she said.

Jon jumped and for a second, she was seriously concerned for him and those bits of him she preferred most. But his instinct was to move away from the stove, which was another point in his favor, in terms of sexy competence-slash-self-preservation.

“Shit!” he yelped, nearly bobbling the pan.

“Sorry, I figured you heard me!”

“No, I was focused on flipping the eggs!” he laughed, putting the pan down. “I sort of get in the zone when I cook. I’m afraid of screwing up.”

He cast a dismayed look at the plated eggs. “I was going to bring them to you in bed.”

“I’ve found that breakfast in bed is a nice idea, but ultimately, you just get crumbs all in your sheets. This is impressive,” she told him, hopping up on the counter.

“Yeah, Will’s been on me to eat more vegetables,” he muttered, handing her a plate. “I draw the line at those kale smoothies Sonja keeps talking about.”

“I eat enough greens in my other form,” she told him, poking her eggs with a fork. He hadn’t overcooked them. She would definitely marry this man.

“Do you always make breakfast naked?”

“Only on weekends,” he said. “Benefit of living alone.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, pressing her hands against his chest so she could scoot back on the counter. Now that she was seeing Jon naked in the light, she saw that his chest and stomach were a network of pale lines. The scars on his chest ran deeper, as if something had dragged hooked claws over his pectoral muscles and wrapped around his upper bicep. She saw his aura flush violet with shame and instantly felt sorry.

“It was a kraken,” he sighed, handing her the plate. “I was thirty or so, just throwing myself all over the ocean to see what I could find. Seaborne creatures are sort of funny in that we’re drawn to each other, out on the water. I found what I thought was a cool rock formation off the coast of Sweden. It turned out to be a kraken’s nest. She did not appreciate me getting that close when she was about to lay eggs. I didn’t realize she was nesting and I thought, well, who was this big ol’ squid to tell me I can’t swim somewhere I want to go? If I’d known she was about to have babies – well, no, I was young and dumb, I probably would have done the same damn thing. I thought I was fast enough and strong enough to put up a fight. When I finally decided to run like hell, but she got a tentacle around me. My chest was the worst of it. My face was all torn up too. Damn near lost my eye.”

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