Page 9 of All My Hexes (Pine Gulch Ever After)

Shadow

Dain grabs his supplies in one hand and smiles at me. “You alright with being flown? Where I wanna take you is a little hard to get to in my truck.”

Nerves fill my belly at the idea of being up off the ground, especially with him carrying things in his hand.

“I’d never drop you,” he promises, a devious look on his face. One dark brow curls upward and his nostrils flare. “Trust me, little witch?”

Somehow, despite knowing this male for less than twenty-four hours, I do trust him. In the city I’d never meet a guy for a first date in a remote place like this. But here? With Dain? I don’t have any reservations.

“I trust you,” I say softly, stepping into his arms.

He reaches down and lifts me easily, tucking me against his chest. Dipping through the front door, he kicks it closed with one foot.

When he steps off his front porch and flares his wings wide, it’s everything I can do not to touch them.

He exudes power and strength and a quiet, effortless dominance.

“Hang on, little witch.” He waggles his brows at me, so I slip my arms up around his neck.

Still, when he presses off the ground and beats his wings, carrying us up into the air and through a cloud, I hold back a scream. Blinking open my eyes, I find the ground just far enough below us that falling would suck, but not far enough away that I can’t easily make out everything down there.

I hang onto him tighter, but he curls his big fingers around my right thigh, keeping me close to his chest. His tail sneaks around me, forming a cross over my breasts with the spade-shaped tip trailing into the neck of my tee.

We glide smoothly over downtown, the occasional monster glancing up and waving.

I don’t risk waving back. While I trust him, I’m still a little afraid of heights.

A few minutes later, we leave downtown behind and sail over the golden fields toward the setting sun.

Wind blows my hair back as I cling to Dain’s neck.

His hold never falters, and if I get heavy at any point, he doesn’t show it.

Ten minutes later, he descends and we sail through some sort of canyon with giant red sloping walls and a beautiful river running through it.

Rocky shorelines dot the canyon now and again, and the water runs slowly.

When we round a bend to find a herd of the local horses—mustangs—I gasp in surprise.

They’re so beautiful in every shade of white and cream and tan, black and brown.

Some are multicolored with patchwork patterns that look like knitted clothing.

They frolic in the shallow water, eating grass on the riverbank.

When we sail above them, a few look up and shake their heads at us, but we don’t descend.

It surprises me when we continue past them, swooping through the gulch as the sun moves lower in the sky.

“Almost there,” Dain says, squeezing my thigh a little tighter.

We round a bend and the gulch’s walls split into a Y, the river running on either side of a huge rock wall that soars up into the sky. It’s littered with tiny crevices and covered in sunflowers. They crowd around the base of the plateau and carve tiny paths up its sides.

It’s absolutely stunning.

I gasp as he continues flying. We head to a large outcropping that’s got a sizable crowding of sunflowers. When he drops out of the sky, flapping his big wings carefully, I take a moment to admire their obvious strength.

He grins at me as he sets down on the ground and notices the look on my face. “What’s goin’ on, Shadow?”

I shrug as I slip my hands into my back pockets. “I was just thinking how very predatory you look with those gorgeous huge wings and the horns and the claws. Like you could hunt me down and do whatever you wanted, and I’d be powerless against you.”

He laughs, the sound so deep it travels right between my thighs.

“That’s something we can do, if being chased is up your alley.

Just because I didn’t go into that career field doesn’t mean the instinct is buried.

” Stepping closer, he slings an arm around my waist and bends down enough to growl into my ear.

“But for tonight, what I had in mind is a little more focused on your power.”

I love that. I fucking love that. So many of the males I’ve dated in the city were focused on their careers and our mutual connections.

Very much a ‘what can we do for each other’ vibe that sometimes felt like a business transaction.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love Rainbow and I’m a city girl for sure.

But there’s something freeing about this beautiful haven and the male who so casually brought me right to a field of intensely stunning sunflowers just because I’m into plants.

Despite my short stay here and the fact that I’m staying another night…

I’m already a little sad about leaving. Is it possible to fall for someone almost at first sight?

Humans have that saying, of course, and many monster species have some version of that.

But as a pragmatist I never thought something like that could happen to me.

Could that be what this is so soon?

Could this be…the beginnings of a real love story?