Chapter 7
Magnum
Fuck me. She’d just outlined the perfect submissive for me. Someone truly afraid of pain who enjoys schedules and lives for the challenge of keeping to high protocol inside of scenes.
And I actually appreciated the crop top over her bathing suit, but I didn’t think it helped very much. The lines of the bathing suit underneath still showed when she moved her arms around, and fuck, it was hard to look at her face instead of her rack.
“We’re going to have to shelve the kink talk for the time being,” I told her, regretting every word. “I’m not trained as a bodyguard, but I was raised to be one, and I know I can’t be distracted too much by the person I’m protecting.”
“We aren’t expecting them to show up,” she noted, “and honestly, if they do, we’re fucked whether you see them coming or don’t notice them until they’re on us.”
“I have some skills I’m not ready to talk about, and a few ways we might not be completely fucked if I have a heads-up.
Point is, we might have a little fun with schedules, but no protocol stuff yet.
I’ll show you my calendar when we get back to the house, and we can talk about how to split the chores, since you offered to help clean. ”
She nodded. “Yes, I want to pull my own weight, and I can adapt to your schedule.” She sighed. “Not a fan of waking up early, but I have a feeling you’re a morning person, so I’ll have to deal with mornings while I’m here.”
“I wake without an alarm about an hour to an hour and a half before the sun rises,” I told her. “I’m most active around the crepuscular hours.”
She didn’t ask what crepuscular meant, so I kept going.
“Spring and fall, I just don’t sleep a lot, but during the heat of the summer and the worst of the winter, I often take naps during the day.
I wrote my calendar program, so it alters the times and maps my schedule to sunrise and sunset, which annoys most women. ”
She stared at me a good fifteen seconds.
“I’m a little miffed at you for playing the part of the redneck biker without a brain at the start.
I knew it was kabuki theater, and it seems now I get to see your full vocabulary, which is refreshing.
” She blew out a breath. “Yeah, the changing times will be annoying, but if it’s written down so I know what’s coming, know what and when to expect things, I can make it work.
When I’m on a case, I often nap, so that actually works for me.
I’m up at all hours following people and taking pictures, and then have to make phone calls at eight the next morning, which often means I only get a few hours of sleep.
So… three or four hours at night, then a two to four-hour nap, and I manage. ”
I gave her a deliberately obnoxious, arrogant smile. “And now you’re testing to see if I know what kabuki theater means?” Interrogation one-oh-one, throw unexpected questions in. “How do you feel about anal?”
She lifted a brow. “I’m not a switch, but if you insist, I can probably figure out a strap-on.”
I couldn’t help my grin. Storm was going to prove to be fun if it worked out for us to play together. No one was ever going in my ass, and she knew that, so there was no need to protest. I decided on another question out of left field. “Anyone ever managed to get a fist into either of your holes?”
Her arousal levels went off the charts, and I breathed in her spicy scent, which made my dick go hard, but she shouldn’t be able to see it.
Probably a good time to get her used to the idea I’d be safe without a condom, assuming she’s on the pill, anyway.
No way could I explain how difficult it is for a turtle to impregnate a human.
When it was clear she didn’t intend to answer my question, I told her “I’m allergic to latex. Makes condoms a problem. Don’t suppose you’re on the pill?”
“I am, but condoms are about more than contraception, and bikers have a reputation for sleeping around.”
“Our sweetbutts get tested before they get their initiation weekend,” I told her, and it was mostly the truth, since the bear shifters can scent for all the STDs.
“There’s a testing schedule once they’re in, and I’m not sure what it is, but we have a retired doctor on staff to handle it.
” I shrugged and told my first true relationship lie, but it couldn’t be helped.
“He tests all of us every-other-month. Club rules, after a chapter in California had to close when well over half ended up with HIV a few decades ago. We’re careful about who we bring in to fuck and pass around. I’m clean.”
She stared at me. “Initiation weekend.”
Her voice was flat and cold. It was a judgment, not a question.
But not necessarily a bad judgment, because her arousal levels went from simmering to boiling.
I grinned. “You ever had a Dom give you an initiation into his rules? A boot camp of sorts?”
I was sitting at the steering wheel, and she was in front of the windscreen, looking at the island through the camera’s screen, zoomed in, her hands steady despite what her scent told me about her state of mind.
“I thought we were shelving the kinky talk for now,” she said.
She was right, but I had so many questions. Not the time, though, so I changed gears. “I can take you to see the osprey’s nest when you’re done with the herons. Not much to see of the eagle’s nest up close, since it’s so high.”
Skippy radioed us while we were near the osprey’s nest, which meant it was time to head back in.
I’d worried about her burning in the sun, with her blonde hair and fair skin, but she seemed fine after nearly an hour.
I come from strong Italian genes on my human side, though my ancestors had mated with snapping turtle shifters once here, so we could go into the wild without attracting too much attention.
In Italy, my many-times-great-grandfather Leonardo da Vinci had been a particularly aggressive turtle species, commonly known as the European pond turtle, which sounds boring, but isn’t.
So I don’t often use sunscreen, but I keep it handy for my guests, and that brought back the conversation about chemicals.
I was going to have to be careful, with an investigative journalist living in the house.
Most people don’t see all the tiny differences in shifters versus humans, but I had a feeling she’d note way too many.
I decided to head a little of it off at the pass.
“You should know that I don’t hear high-pitched noises.
For some reason, my ears are more tuned to the lower end of the hearing range, so I’ll hear deep, bass sounds you probably won’t, but if you hear something in the distance at a higher range, you’ll need to tell me. ”
“When I was a teen, I used a high-frequency ringtone on my phone. My parents were in their thirties when they had me, which meant they were in their forties when I was a teen. I tested the frequencies around them to figure out which I could use, so they wouldn’t know when my phone went off.
I haven’t checked myself lately to see if I can still hear those high-pitched sounds, but I’m twenty-eight, so it’s likely I can’t. Speaking of which, how old are you?”
“Thirty-four. Or I will be in a few weeks. What were you doing that you needed to hide from your parents?”
“Nothing terrible, just… they didn’t want me on my phone after ten on school nights, and my friends texted me at all hours.”
I edged the boat up to the dock, and Storm surprised me by grabbing a rope, jumping onto the dock, and tying us off.
“You’ve done that before,” I noted.
“Dated a guy who sailed. It was quieter than your boat, but a much bigger pain in the ass.”
Skippy called Storm’s dad when we came back to the office, and I had so many questions about her parents, but I didn’t ask them. The man was cool as a cucumber though. “Not interested in a warranty. You’re the second person who’s called today.”
He quietly disconnected, and once I was sure Skippy had cut the connection on our end, I asked Storm, “That another keyword?”
She shrugged. “Means either someone’s come to the house or called him, asking for me.” She paused. “Or just snooped around without asking. He’s observant.”
They’d broken into her house, so it wasn’t surprising they checked at her parents’ house, looking for her. It was yet another reason for me to do as much as possible to keep her hidden from every direction, though.
We spent the next couple of hours working our way through land deeds and tax records, and I considered what to feed all of us.
Ravens mostly eat meat, eggs, and seeds.
Turtles eat mostly meat but at least a quarter to a third vegetation, and I prefer to have greens with my steaks in human form, too.
I wasn’t sure how everyone else would feel about it, but I sautéed some spinach in bacon grease while the steaks were on the grill, and used it as a bed for the steaks when we plated them.
I also made a huge salad with bitters, greens, onions, cabbage, walnuts, and cut-up pieces of apple.
I wished I had some cherry tomatoes, but sliced two tomatoes into bite-sized squares.
Storm surprised me by asking for the ingredients to make her own salad dressing — balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I stared at her a few seconds and pulled my mason jar of salad dressing out. “I add a little rosemary and garlic to mine, but I have some already made up.”
She lifted a brow and nodded, and I smiled internally. She’d seen the redneck biker right off the bat, and now I had her constantly recalibrating that.
- - - ? - - -
Storm
Magnum shooed Skippy away as soon as we finished eating.
The three of us had a brief conversation about when Skippy would return the next day, and then I followed Magnum back into the kitchen, still full from the steak — and a little unsteady from the way Magnum had watched me eat like he was cataloging every bite.