Page 16 of Magnum, Volume 1

“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.

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Storm