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“Hey.” I close the distance between us, his chest still bare given the fact that he’d just have to undress in a matter of minutes anyway. I press my hand there, looking up at him. “It’s not going to scare me away, okay? It just feels…wrong. Not seeing everything. If we break—” I stop myself, shaking my head. “Whenwe break this curse, I want to be able to say I saw it all. All of you.”

“Technically you already did,” he reminds me.

I shake my head. “I didn’t see you change.”

He gives me a long look as if he’s considering, and then he nodsstiffly, eyes wary. “All right. But…if it’s too much, just forget you saw anything, aye?”

“I can handle it,” I say, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Don’t worry.”

“You’d better stand back, then.”

I do as he says, taking several steps back as he glances once more at the sinking sun before grabbing for his pants to undo them. He grins when I waggle my eyebrows, giving a small shake of his head.

“Maybe you just wanted to watch me strip, aye?” he jokes, his voice just barely giving away his nerves.

“It’s a bonus,” I tell him.

And it is, honestly. As he shucks his pants down his massive thighs, revealing what seems like miles of bronzed skin and an impressive cock even when soft—I mean. It doesn’t hurt.

“If you keep looking at me like that,” he says, “I’ll likely be too hard to get this done.”

I laugh. “I don’t think it works that way.”

“Aye, but I’ve never been hard as a monster. It’s not something I want to learn how to navigate today.”

“Now I’m a little curious,” I say with another laugh.

“Devil woman,” he mutters, pulling his feet free of his pant legs and dropping them to the side.

He casts one more look toward the sun, then starts backing up until he’s standing in the shallows of the water. He shivers a little with the cold of it, closing his eyes as the sun creeps lower and lower, until it’s only a sliver of light on the horizon.

“Just remember what I said,” he reminds me. “And remember…I won’t hurt you.”

I shake my head. “I know you wouldn’t. I think it’s safe to say, after what we just did, that I trust you.”

His mouth breaks out into a smile, but it’s short-lived, quickly morphing into a grimace. He all but doubles over, clenching his stomach as his skin starts to ripple with movement and color. It’s like moments ago when we had sex, but more violent—a faster change that seems to tear through him all at once. My mouth falls open as his neck elongates, as his features shift into something more monstrous before my very eyes—all the while his skin darkening and forming scales that start to cover all of his rapidly changing body.

He grows and grows, the man standing before me moments ago lost to the quickly forming beast—and after a matter of seconds of watching what looks to me like a very painful shift—the beast I remember saving me floats in the shallows, twisting his neck this way and that as if it’s stiff from the change. His gaze settles on me, and I have to remind myself that this is Lachlan, that he would never hurt me. He’s just sobignow.

But then he lowers his head in a submissive gesture, inviting me in, and my feet stumble forward as if they have a mind of their own, bringing me closer to him until they’re submerged in the water. I press my hands on either side of his wide face, peering into his plate-size eyes, which are the same piercing blue I often get lost in.

“There you are,” I say softly, stroking my hand up one side of his face. “You’re still pretty beautiful, you know?”

Lachlan makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a snort, and I pat his cheek playfully. “You are, you stubborn ass. Different but…beautiful.”

He shivers in my hold, his eyes going half-mast as he nudges his massive nose against my cheek. I let him nuzzle me there, and there’s something so strangely intimate about it all, seeing him in this way no one else can,knowingthat it’s him inside the beast. I turn my face to press a kiss to his snout—closing my eyes.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “For showing me.”

He makes another noise, a guttural thing that I can only assume is his version ofyou’re welcome—and I pat his cheek once more before stepping back just a little. I take in his long neck and his giant body, finding a gracefulness in this form that I doubt he’s ever taken the time to appreciate. I doubt anyone has, for that matter.

I give one more kiss to his snout, rubbing my nose back and forth there before telling him, “You’d better go. It’s too dangerous for you to be on the shore for too long.”

Another rumbling sound, one that must be his agreement, because he starts to swim backward, going deeper into the loch. I watch him go until I can’t see him anymore, feeling overwhelmingly grateful that he trusts me like this, especially knowing there are so few in his life he’s deemed worthy of that trust.

I vow to myself right there, standing in the shallows of the loch, that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that trust is earned.

A noise behind me makes me jolt, a shaking of the bushes farther up the shore making me spin around as what sounds like the thumping of footsteps makes my heart begin to race.