Chapter 12
DISCOVERING THE MINOTAUR
PARKER
One minute I was staring into Levi’s eyes, convinced this was finally the moment we’d kiss for the first time. And the next, his face had turned murderous.
“Huh?”
Levi let out an angry bellow as he pushed me behind his body, shielding me from whatever was going on.
Was that the sound of glass breaking? Wood splintering?
A door slamming into the wall? I blinked, still dazed from standing so close to Levi, taut with the anticipation of finally having his mouth on mine.
The air around Levi shimmered, and everything about him transformed. His white dress shirt somehow disappeared beneath my fingers, and I was touching warm, bare skin. And his whole body had grown into a more muscular, beefier version.
Beefier. Ha! What a word. Because Levi was definitely beefier in more than one sense of the word .
His head had transformed into something resembling a black bull, including two deadly looking horns that were so massive they gouged holes into the ceiling.
Little bits of plaster rained down on us.
I glanced down to shield my eyes, only to find his pants were gone now too.
They’d been replaced with a little leather loin cloth.
And his feet were hooves. Honest to God. Hooves.
“You’re amazing,” I whispered.
But back to that loin cloth… Because fuck. It was so skimpy. It barely covered his shapely ass. My fingers twitched. Was it wrong to want to touch?
“Levi? Parker?” Van sounded cautious. Hearing his voice reminded me we weren’t alone. Damn it. Touching Levi’s butt would have to wait. “Is everything okay in here?”
Levi grunted. “Van? What are you doing here? Are the hunters attacking? We need to get Parker to safety.”
I peeked around Levi’s shoulder to look at Van, our chief of police. Huh. Nana was right, sort of. Our top cop was hiding something, but I didn’t think even Nana could have guessed it was something supernatural.
Van shook his head and held up his hands in a placating manner. “No hunters. Just me.”
“You… You broke my door and my window. Why?” Levi accused. I was more than a little confused by Van’s actions myself.
Van glanced at the damage and rubbed the back of his neck. “Clive and Warren called in. Something about Parker seeing under the glamour and there being a problem. I didn’t mean to break the window, but when I rammed the door, the wall shook and…” He shrugged .
“Clive and Warren.” Levi huffed and shook his head. “I’m surprised they said anything.”
Van winced. “Yeah, well, I think Daphne might have had something to do with that.”
Daphne was their mother, and although most of her kids were a little wild, she was the ruler of the family, and everyone listened to her. A bit like my grandmother.
“They’re the ones who let the cat out of the bag, so to speak,” Levi grumbled.
Cat out of the bag! I snorted. Levi glanced over his shoulder at me. His big, beautiful, bovine-like eyes held my gaze for a moment. Fuck. He really was a minotaur.
He’d changed right in front of me. And those cats from earlier? They’d talked.
God only knew what was going to happen next.
Would a troop of fairies blast through the cat flap and perform aerial maneuvers as they dumped pixie dust on me? Would my mother’s garden gnomes do a jig in her garden patch the next time I saw them? I didn’t know anymore. Apparently, anything was possible.
“Parker?” Levi sounded worried. His lips, which I still hadn’t kissed, damn it, wiggled and stretched toward me, like he was trying to taste me, as if they could help him figure out what I was thinking. He still sounded like Levi. He didn’t moo or anything. “You okay?”
“Yep…” I squeaked, even though I was barely hanging on.
Then I snickered again. I tried to hold it back. I swear I did. But when Levi spun around on his… his… hooves, they clomped with his steps. I snorted, but that wasn’t enough. Laughter burst out of me. I was well past snickering now; I was at guffawing-level hysteria. Tears ran down my face.
Oh my fucking God. I couldn’t stop.
Levi recoiled. That sobered me up quickly.
“No.” I shook my head and grabbed for his arm so he couldn’t leave. “Not laughing at you. Fuck… But… Just fuck. You really are a minotaur. Clive and Warren are really cats. Jesus. I don’t…” I wiped my eyes. “It’s just… fuck. It’s a lot. Okay?”
Levi eyed me warily.
“Seriously. I wasn’t laughing at you. My brain broke for a minute there, but it’s better now.” I squeezed his arm, hoping he’d understand.
Van nodded, like my reaction didn’t surprise him. “Hey, Parker.”
“Hi, Van.” I waved at him.
Jasmine poked her head through the opening where the one-way mirror had once been. Jagged bits of glass littered the floor.
“I’m not cleaning this up,” she said.
“That’s fine.” Levi turned away from me, and I wanted to yank him back and talk to him until I was sure he believed me.
“And you might want to drop the horns before someone comes in the door,” Jasmine said.
Levi pulled out of my grasp as he glanced over his shoulder at me. He had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen framing his dark brown irises. Was that part of the eye still called an iris on a bull? Or was that something only used to describe human eyes? I’d never thought about it before .
“You promised we’d talk later, right? I’m holding you to that.”
Levi averted his eyes.
“Go on.” I patted him on the back. “You don’t want to let any more cats or minotaurs out of the bag today.”
He grunted. His body shimmered again, and suddenly the human Levi was standing in front of me.
“That’s pretty surreal,” I whispered as I touched his back again, marveling at how his clothes appeared out of nowhere to cover him. He turned to face me. His forehead was furrowed.
“Did I scare you?”
“Nope. Not scared.”
Van cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt, but you know the SC will want an update.”
“The SC?”
“Supernatural Council. We advised them of the hunters, so they knew about the possible threat.”
I still didn’t think my family would be involved in something as sinister as hunting down other people, magical or not. But I understood the precautions.
“He said he wouldn’t hurt us,” Levi said. “I believe him, but I said he’d need to talk to you.”
Van nodded. “Yeah. We should get that out of the way.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed.
“Do you need something to eat after shifting?” Van waved to Levi’s head.
“I’ve got some instant oatmeal in the kitchen,” Levi muttered. “I’ll make some when I get a broom to clean up the mess. You can use my office. ”
Levi shuffled around Van and left the room. I had a strange compulsion to follow him, but I didn’t. I got the sense he needed a moment to himself.
“Levi?” I called after him. “It’s going to be okay. We got this.”
My words probably sounded ridiculous to everyone. Because what did I know? But I’d finally figured out what was holding Levi back from pursuing a relationship with me and I wasn’t about to give it all up now.
And Levi might be a minotaur, but I came from a long line of humans who were as stubborn as an ox. I was ready to take the bull by the horns. I was… running out of bull sayings.
And, as much as I was now even more concerned about Nana and Finley being in Willow Lake, their arrival had some unexpectedly good outcomes. I now knew the secret of Willow Lake, and that, I decided, finally made me an official insider.
And, more importantly, Levi had revealed he cared about me. He’d tried to protect me. I just prayed he cared enough to slam his mouth against mine in the near future. And maybe he could rip my clothes off then, too. My body vibrated with anticipation.
Nothing bad could happen now. I wouldn’t let it.