16. Treasure
TREASURE
Iroll over the next morning and reach for the claw I fell asleep holding. My hand closes on empty sheets, and I sit straight up. Sunlight pours through my curtains, and the spot where I left a kneeling gargoyle is nothing but carpet.
I poke my lip out at it. He’s gone, and he didn’t even say goodbye.
I climb out of bed, stretch, and rub the sleep off my face. My bonnet slipped off somewhere in the covers, and my braids are all over my head. I wanted one more hour with my gargoyle before sunrise, and the sun beat me to him.
I head down the hall into the living room, and the chest has moved. It was by the balcony door when I dozed off. Now it sits against the far wall, tucked away from the glass, and I’d bet money my gargoyle had his reasons.
I crouch down and open it, and all that gold before breakfast makes me sit back on my heels. I pick up a ruby the size of a plum and turn it over in my hand. The only place I’ve ever seen stones like this is at the movies.
“Okay, Soren,” I tell the ruby. “When I see you tonight, we are going to talk about where you go when you turn to stone.” I set it back in the chest and close the lid.
The Singer is still sitting on my kitchen table with his pants under the needle, and I don’t have work today. Matter of fact, with what’s in that chest, I don’t have to work at all unless I want to. I’m going to need a quiet afternoon to let that one sink in.
I eat breakfast, then park myself at the Singer for the morning, finishing Soren’s pants and building Sable’s from the numbers in my notepad.
Around midday I go digging in my closet for tonight and come out with one dress. It’s the nicest thing I’ve got, and my gargoyle kneels for me in a loincloth. We’ll manage.
So I do it right. I shower, then sit on my bathroom floor and unbraid my hair, working the crown loose row by row. I put in the time.
By the end of it my hair is silk-pressed and swinging past my shoulders. Soren has never seen me like this. Tonight he will.
I slip into my flats, because I learned my lesson about my feet this week. I tidy the apartment and fold both pairs of pants into a neat stack. Then I drag that heavy chest into my bedroom, away from any glass door, and grab the pants and my purse on my way out.
The shopping center is Friday-quiet when I park, and I go hunting for my gargoyle first. There he is, posted outside Stanley’s in a new spot, closer to the corner of the building. It’s my day off, and he’s still out here standing guard over a parking lot.
I walk up and lay my palm against his stone cheek, already warm from the sun. “Hey there.” I lean in and kiss the side of his face. A couple of shoppers cut their eyes at me on the way past, and I keep right on kissing my statue.
“There’s nothing wrong with resting in my apartment, you know,” I tell him. “I left your pants in my car. I’m gonna hang around town till you wake up, and then we’re having our date.”
The bell jingles when I push into Stanley’s, and my good mood makes it two steps inside. Andy’s set up in a booth with some woman, a resume on the table between them, going on about needing someone for the evening shift. He means my shift.
Andy glances over, gives me a shrug, and goes right back to his interview. I roll my eyes and let him have it. I’m not quitting. Unless I’m about to be fired, in which case that man and I are going to have words.
I claim a stool at the counter, and Shelly comes over, dish towel on her shoulder. “Hey.” Then she leans in close. “The gargoyle moved again. And word is, he’s yours. Andy says he is.”
“Yeah,” I say with a casual little shrug. My chest goes warm anyway.
“Damn.” Shelly slumps onto the stool beside me. “I took this job hoping mine would walk in and swoop me up. You’ve heard about this place, right? Every woman who works this diner ends up carried off by some shifter. I’ve been here months and haven’t gotten so much as a sniff.”
I put my hand over hers on the counter. “I’m sure he’s coming.”
“He better hurry up,” she says, reaching down to press her thumb into her own ankle. “My feet are killing me.”
I nod along, all sympathy. Shelly does not need to know my gargoyle spent last night on one knee rubbing my feet.
There’s a stranger working the grill, an older man with a mustache, and he moves through Lamar’s station without one wasted step. I frown at the pass-through. “Where’s Lamar?”
“Didn’t come in today.” Shelly shrugs. “That’s John, one of Andy’s old friends, filling in.”
Something about that sits funny in my stomach. “Huh. Well, maybe a shifter lady came in and swooped him up.”
“It sure happened to Marcus,” Shelly says, smiling. “Our old dishwasher. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”
I laugh it off and treat myself. “Let me get the tomato soup, a grilled cheese, and an iced tea.”
Shelly jots it down and heads behind the counter.
Andy wraps up his interview in the booth, telling the new girl she can start Monday, that weekends are dead in this town and he closes early anyway.
She thanks him and leaves, and Andy comes strutting behind the counter with his chest all puffed out.
I glare at him over the sugar caddy. “So, what, I’m fired?”
“I haven’t fired an employee in a very long time.” He picks up a rag and wipes a counter that doesn’t need it. “But I know when one’s about to quit.”
My face goes hot. “I am not about to quit.”
Andy walks off to his office without another word, which is somehow worse than arguing.
I turn to Shelly. “What is his problem?”
She sets my iced tea in front of me and pats the counter. “Honey. You’ve got a big-ass gargoyle sitting outside this diner for you. You’re about to quit.”
I stab my straw into my tea and take a long sip. Neither one of them is gonna hear me say they’re right.
The afternoon is all mine, and I spend it all over town.
I stop in on Lena and catch up over the fabric shelves, and she makes me promise our bar night is still on.
Then I wander Cozy Corner, testing cushions and flipping price tags that can’t scare me anymore.
There’s a chest of treasure sitting in my bedroom.
I’ve got decorating opinions I’ve been saving up my whole life, and now I can afford every one of them.
By the time the sun sits low on the mountains, I’m back on the sidewalk in front of my statue.
“You know it’s agonizing, waiting for you to wake up,” I tell him, and today the word fits. “Oh, and Andy hired someone to replace me. The nerve of that man. He could’ve at least waited for me to put in my two weeks.”
A woman passing with her shopping bags gives me a long sideways stare.
“I’m not crazy,” I tell her. “He’s just my fated mate.”
She keeps on walking.
Then the sun slips off the ridge, and I get to see it for the first time.
The gray fades off him in one long slide, stone giving way to skin from his claws on up, and my mate wakes up in front of me. He blinks, straightens to his full height, and stretches, wings sweeping wide and then tucking back down.
“Hi,” I say, grinning up at him with my whole face.
He sees me, and his gold eyes flare bright. His claw stops in the air over my hair, and then it follows one silk-pressed piece from my temple all the way down to where it swings loose past my shoulder. Anyone else put a hand in this fresh press, I’d slap it down. I stand still and let him.
“You changed your hair,” he says.
“For our date.” I do a little turn on my flats. “You like it?”
He scoops me clean off the sidewalk into his arms, and I decide that answer is acceptable.
“Excuse me. I said something to you before.” A woman marches up to us, pointing at Soren, already digging in her purse. She pulls out a measuring tape. “If your mate won’t get you some pants, I will. Put her down so I can get your measurements.”
I laugh so hard I grab his arm. Soren turns from her to me and back, and that makes it funnier.
“I took care of it, ma’am,” I manage. “Pants are made. I was just waiting for him to wake up.”
The woman huffs, drops the tape back in her purse, and marches off down the sidewalk.
Soren presses his forehead to mine and closes his eyes. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too.” I rest my hand along his jaw. “Why’d you come back to the diner? It was okay to stay in my apartment, you know.”
He steps off the sidewalk into the empty street instead of answering, and his wings spread out wide behind him.
Then he pulls me up against his chest, and I grab onto his arm with both hands. “Umm. What are we doing?”
“Your date.” The rumble in his chest travels into me everywhere we touch. “I would like to show you the land of your future home.”
“Ohhh?—”
His wings drive down, and we leave the ground.
I bury my face in his neck and hold on tight. The wind rushes cold past my ears, and his skin burns warm against my cheek. “Wait,” I holler, “the pants??—”
“We don’t need them now,” he says.
Well, alright then.
When I can breathe again, I peel my face out of his neck, and the town is laid out under me.
Shadow Wolf Creek glows in the valley, the shopping center, the Shadow Bar’s neon, little strings of porch lights running out to the dark edges.
The mountains stand black against the last orange of sunset, and the wind is doing whatever it wants to my fresh press.
It’s so damn beautiful I forget to be scared.
He carries me up the mountain in long easy sweeps, over pine tops and a thin bend of creek, until the trees open below us. He drops through the gap, touches down so soft I barely feel the stop, and sets me down easy.
Cabins sit tucked against the mountainside among the pines, dark-timbered, gone quiet with the years. A fire pit waits cold in the middle of the clearing, and the valley spreads out past the tree line.
“All this?” I turn a circle.
“I will make sure you are happy with me,” he says, watching my face.
I walk up to the nearest porch and run my hand along the rail. It doesn’t even wobble. The overgrowth is nothing a weekend of work can’t tame, and here I am getting teary over some cabins in the woods. I press my hand over my mouth. “I can make this work.”
“It belonged to a wolf shifter pack,” Soren says, “so it’s built well enough to handle my size.”
“This is better than any date I had imagined.” I shake my head at him. “I was expecting to watch you hunt or something, not be handed land. You’re really knocking it out the park, Soren.”
His head tilts. “You were hoping to watch me hunt?”
“Yeah, I guess. There isn’t much else to do in town.” I fold my arms and let the other grievance out, since we’re here. “Besides watch you walk around with your whole ass out where everyone can see it. And that grinds my gears, if I’m being honest.” I know how I sound. I don’t care.
His claws close around my waist, and my feet lose the mountain. “Hey!”
“You really can love a monster,” he says, and his gold eyes have gone bright enough to read by.
“You’re my monster.” I flick the tip of his pointed ear. “Now show me our house.”
He leads me to the largest cabin, works the door open, and ducks in behind me. The wolves left it furnished, sofas, a long table, a wide fireplace, all of it under years of dust.
“I went looking around the furniture shop in town today,” I tell him, trailing my fingers along the back of a dusty sofa. “I have so many ideas.”
I wander the front rooms while he watches me from the door, and when I head down the hall, his footsteps follow me. I push open the bedroom door at the end.
The bed is huge, and it’s the one thing in this cabin without a speck of dust on it. The sheets are crisp and new, the corners tucked tight, and the pillows sit up fat and proud in a room that’s been shut up for years.
I step out of my flats at the door and set my purse on the dresser. I catch myself doing it and can’t even be embarrassed.
I cross to the bed and smooth my hand over the mattress. “This is a new bed.”
“The wolf pack has been friendly,” Soren says from the doorway, filling it. “They want to be sure you’re comfortable.”
“Huh?” I turn around to face him.
His wings give a little shrug behind him. “After you fell asleep, I flew to the Shadow Wolf Pack and asked their help.”
I walk over and lay my hand flat on his chest, and his heat comes up through it. I slide my hand down all that carved muscle and catch my bottom lip between my teeth. I’m in over my head. I need to know anyway.
This time, he doesn’t pull my hand away.
I drag my fingers down his stomach one ridge at a time, and the rumble in his chest drops lower with me.
His eyes burn gold in the dark of the cabin, and his wings shiver at their edges.
All that power, and he stands statue-still and lets me play.
The gold light follows my hand and gives away everywhere he wants me to touch him.
I find the edge of the loincloth and grip it, and it turns out I don’t even need to pull. He’s already swelling behind the cloth, lifting it, and then he’s out from under it, heavy and standing free, and I forget to blink.
Let me be honest about what I’m working with here. It’s thick, it’s long, it’s hanging out of him like a second leg, and there is no way in hell all of that is going inside me without putting me in a coma. A nervous laugh comes flying out of me, and his head tilts, and that makes it worse.
I take a step back. His claw catches my hand, gentle, and he leans down and presses his forehead to mine. “You will fit, Treasure.”
“What?” I pull back enough to see his whole face. Surely I heard that wrong.
His tongue comes out, long, and swipes warm up my cheek. “I just need to prep you.”
And Lord help me, I’m not even worried about the tongue. The tongue, I can work with. It’s the rest of the situation I’m negotiating.
“I never thought I’d die from sex,” I whisper. “Soren, I don’t think I can handle all of that.”
“Don’t worry, my love.” Every part of me pays attention to that. “I’ll prep you.”
I open my mouth to ask how, exactly, and he rises up over me. My feet leave the floor, and then my back meets that brand-new mattress with the sheets cool under my shoulders. His claws settle at my knees and spread me open with a gentleness that does not match the size of anything about him.
“Ahh?—” It comes out of me with no time to dress it up.
He eases my dress up my thighs, in no hurry at all, and I drop my head back on the pillows and brace myself.
His wings spread wide over the bed, curtaining out the last of the light. “Let me worship you, Treasure.”
My legs are trembling and he’s barely touched me. So I’m really about to get fucked by a monster.
The only question is whether I’m going to survive it. A dick that big…
I hope I do.