“You have a doggie biscuit with you?” I asked. “Cause if you don’t, that’s mean. You should never tease your pets.”
“I’ll buy you a bunch of Scooby treats once we get stateside.”
Then, I paused. She was taking this in stride.
“Aren’t you even a little bit shocked?”
She shrugged her shoulders and made a face. “I was for about two seconds. But then, after all I’ve been through and everything that I’ve seen, I’m not so sure that I could be surprised by much anymore. I’m beginning to understand that there is a lot in this world that I don’t know and don’t understand.”
“In that case, I may as well tell you about my friends.”
She raised her eyebrows in anticipation, although I’m pretty sure she already knew what I was about to say.
“My friends, who came here with me to rescue you, are also shifters.”
Elise nodded and asked, “Are they wolves, too?”
I shook my head. “No. Gage is a bear. Lucian is a dragon. Damian is a tiger.”
Once again, I was amazed that she didn’t seem shocked. She was just taking it all in stride.
Then, she cocked her head and said, “A dragon. I didn’t know that dragons existed in real life.”
I chuckled. “I promise you, they exist.”
“And unicorns?” she queried.
“They do as well. Only, they aren’t the sleek, beautiful horses with horns on their heads that you see in the fairy tale books. They have shaggy coats, and their horn is used for fighting. They are quite formidable. You really wouldn’t want to upset one.”
“It looks like I have quite a lot to digest today,” she said. Then, she hopped up and slid the straps of the backpack over her shoulders.
“We should get going. We have a long way to go, and a short time to get there,” she said, quoting a song.
Once again, the thought of how amazing she was crossed my mind. I couldn’t stop myself from leaning over and kissing her. I could have stayed in that cave and made love to her all day long. I was pretty sure that I was falling in love with her.
However, as she said, we had a long journey ahead of us.
12
Elise
His kiss was phenomenal. With a single look from those liquid silver eyes, he could make my insides melt. His kisses turned my bones to jelly. I was pretty sure that I was falling in love with him. Actually, falling is not the right word. I had already fallen in love with him.
I’m not sure that he felt the same way, although he certainly did like me a lot and cared for me. To that end, I would hang onto and celebrate every second I had to spend with Jared.
I would have liked nothing more than to stay in the cave all day long and make love. However, I had already cost us a day of travel. And, as Jared had said, every single second that we are in this country, we are in more and more danger, both from the terrorists or from the Iranian government.
While we walked, I digested the information he gave me. Animal shifters. Okay. They shifted into animals. Interesting. One of them shifted into a dragon, a creature that had always been a part of the fantasy or mythological world. Yet, not so much any more. And unicorns.
If we had the time, I would have gone down the list. Do people like aquaman exist, where they can shift into fish? If werewolves exist, then do mermaids, centaurs, minotaurs, and satyrs? What about other creatures such as fairies and leprechauns? Was there a million other species of people and animals that exist that I’ve been ignorant of my entire life?
Then, my thoughts turned toward Jared. He must really have trusted me if he was willing to tell me his secrets and the secrets of his friends. I realized that he only told me because he was afraid he might have to shift and didn’t want me to suddenly be terrified of him as well as anyone who would be attacking us.
I liked the idea that he trusted me. I knew that for men like him, trust didn’t come easy. Trust had to be earned in his world. If he was out in a foreign country where there were hostilities, he had to assume everyone was the enemy until proven otherwise.
Trust was a complicated concept. There were many levels of trust. Obviously, I trusted him with my life. He had saved it several times, starting with the first day we met. The question was whether I could trust him with my heart. He wouldn’t hurt me on purpose. I just wasn’t sure whether he was the kind of man who would be able to settle down.
I watched him as he moved. Jared was an incredibly sexy man. His body was as perfect as a statue that had been sculpted from the finest marble by a master artist. He was a big man. It wasn’t only that he was extremely tall. His arms and legs were huge with bulging muscles. His rock hard chest was wide and strained against his shirt. His belly was flat and tapered into his pants, leading to paradise.