Page 14 of Delivered to My Serpents

“No, but we picked up our habits of being extra careful in the military,” Naga said in a casual tone. “Ready for the tour, or would you rather rest after your long trip?”

“The tour,” she said decisively. “Train travel is pretty relaxing, as it goes.” She flushed, warm pink rising in her cheeks. “I napped for a lot of the trip.”

“That’s good.” Naga rolled her bag to the foot of the stairs. “Want to leave your backpack here with the suitcase and we’ll start downstairs?”

We showed her around the living room and pointed out the powder room under the stairs then the back patio where we demonstrated the code for disarming the French doors. “It’s not meant to keep you in, so go out anytime, but when you come in, please rearm it, okay? It puts our minds at ease.”

“You sure there aren’t a lot of criminals around?”

“Truly, no,” I reassured her. “So the kitchen is this way.” We were proud of that room with all its shiny stainless steel appliances, even if we didn’t cook as much as we should. Especially in the last few years, there were so many delivery services available even here, a bit out of town. Not as many as in the city of course, but enough. And convenience foods. But we did enjoy cooking, and the delivery that came last night was all about preparing fresh and healthy meals for our guest, our possible mate.

“Help yourself to anything you like. We want you to feel at home,” Naga said. “Let’s go into the family room area here. We mostly use it for media stuff, watching movies or listening to music. Relaxing.”

“It’s actually where we are nearly all the time when we aren’t working,” I put in. Big comfortable leather sofas and the biggest TV we could find made it a great place to screen the latest releases one of our clients hooked us up with. It wasn’t illegal since they were charged with handing out copies to selective people, and our job was making sure those movies didn’t go where they weren’t supposed to.

Much more cutthroat than we’d ever dreamed when we took on that contract.

“Upstairs next,” Naga suggested, and we left the kitchen, family room area, passing the basement door. It was the third time we’d passed it, but the first time, Jasmine came to a halt.

“What’s behind there? Is that a keypad?”

“Our office in the basement,” I told her. “Nothing interesting down there, but in our line of work, we are responsible to keep data private, so yes, it’s locked.”

“Uh, okay.”

“Upstairs!” I ushered her away from the door. “I hope you’ll like the room we have for you.”

She allowed us to take her up, along with her luggage, and show her around the room. We did not take her into the other bedrooms, nor had we shown her our bedrooms downstairs, something she noticed. After admiring the attached bath, she asked, “So the other bedrooms are yours?”

“We sleep downstairs,” Naga said. “But we’re not far away if you need us.”

We left her to take a shower and change after her travel, heading downstairs to prepare dinner. I got salad ingredients out while Naga heated the spaghetti sauce he made the day before. While chopping lettuce, I commented, “I think that went okay. My serpent is very excited.”

“Mine, too, but there’s something there.”

I piled the lettuce in the bowl and turned my attention to a tomato. “She’s hiding something, and we can’t let our guard down until we know what it is.”

We talked while we got everything ready and agreed that while we were both very attracted to her, and something about her presence calmed our serpents, we had to keep our heads about us and not reveal too much too soon.

Patience was a skill we had. We needed to use it.

Chapter Twelve

Jasmine

It took me all of three seconds to remember where I was. Smells were a shifter thing, but I knew their scents already. I drifted to sleep engulfed in them. Naga was a minty chocolate, while Drake was all brown sugar and cinnamon.

Everything in this house smelled like them. The sheets. The towels. It clung to the walls and was now inside my nose.

Not that I was complaining.

Gods. I hadn’t expected this kind of home. I thought their home would be contemporary with all metal furniture and nowhere comfy to sit or relax. I imagined lots of glass and stainless steel. All cold things. I might’ve judged them a bit harshly based on their serpents.

I was in their den now. Now to make sure I didn’t fall for either one of them, or both.

The million-thread-count sheets along with the plush comforter wasn’t helping my case. If I won this bet and my debts were paid off, these exact sheets and comforter would be first on my list to purchase.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I looked out, seeing the view of the land. There were mountains in the distance. They would probably cap with snow once the winter set in.

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