Wyvern Protection Unit - Chapter 15: Chapter 15

She just did not want to be alone. Thirty-three at the time of her wedding, and she’d wanted a family. Joffrey had not been enthusiastic on that front, and for the first time, she was glad.
All she could say now was thank heavens it was over, and they hadn’t had children. She had barely survived marriage and divorce with her own sanity intact and would have hated putting any child through that.
Children should be born from love, not to keep a grown up company. She exhaled slowly, coming to terms with the mistakes she made, and letting them roll off her back like water from a duck.
Carolina was not perfect. The mistakes in her marriage had been just as much her fault as Joffrey’s. Looking back she saw the biggest mistake she made was marrying without love. Joffrey was not a bad man, he just never loved her.
If she was being honest, she did not love him either. Not really. She knew that now. Could finally admit the terrible truth, and for the first time in a long while, she felt good and at peace somehow.
It was like her very own Christmas Eve gift from the universe. Caro smiled as Jasper continued to tug his clothing off, and her eyes might have bugged out of her head when she realized he wasn’t stopping at just his shirt.
His long fingers unzipped his fly, and modesty made her cover her eyes even though she really wanted to look. She swallowed air, heart racing at the thought of all that muscle bare and nude for her hungry gaze.
“Um, what are you doing?”
“You wanted me to shift, right?”
“Yes, but⁠—”
“If I shift with my clothes on, they’ll tear,” he explained, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
“Do Shifters always strip first? In front of each other?” she asked out of curiosity, nothing more.
Yeah. Right. Liar liar.
“Yes. Sometimes. Well, unless it’s urgent, and we are forced to shift fast and rip our clothing. But it is bad etiquette to look unless the person is someone you are involved with. Like a lover,” he replied. Jasper’s voice had gotten deeper as he stared, and she gasped as his eyes focused on her, glowing gold as he added, “A mate.”
Unsure what to make out of all that, she was about to ask when he stepped out of his jeans. All coherent thought left her brain because—holy jingle balls—the guy went commando.
“Eeek!” she squeaked and slammed her hand back over her face.
“I don’t mind if you look at me, Carolina. In fact, I like it when you do,” he confessed.
Carolina was speechless. Her mouth was so damn dry, she could not utter a word. She must not have heard him correctly. Avoiding his body, she looked up and met that crazy, sexy, golden stare. Heat pooled in the pit of her stomach, her nipples tightened, and her panties grew wet from the sheer intensity of the lust she saw written all over his chiseled features.
“I, uh, I mean,” she stuttered, and cleared her throat. “So, does it hurt when you shift?” she asked, changing the subject.
“No. It’s very fluid. Just watch⁠—”
“Wait!”
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No, it’s just I don’t know what to expect. What exactly are you, Jasper?”
“I’m a Wyvern, baby.”
Jasper’s grin was contagious. He was so sexy and cocky, like he knew he was about to blow her mind. She couldn’t help but smile back at him, even though she wasn’t exactly sure what a Wyvern was.
The air around Jasper seemed to glitter and hum with magical energy, snowflakes swirled around him in tiny little zephyrs.
Caro sucked in a sharp breath. Holy fucking shit. What was happening? Sure, she’d seen Jennifer shift a few times, but it was nothing like this.
Jasper’s muscled body seemed to stretch and grow a hundred times over, maybe more, right before her very eyes. His skin changed from that smooth, lovely tan to a beautiful buttery yellow color, then darker on his back and legs.
Diamond-shaped scales grew along his limbs as they elongated to impossible sizes, adding black and gray to his golden yellow coloring. His legs grew thick and long, ending in sharp, deadly claws. A huge, spiked tail whipped to and fro behind him.
Carolina could not believe her eyes. Jasper the man was no longer there. In his place was something else. Something fantastic.
She covered her mouth as his arms elongated, each unfolding to reveal huge, leathery membranes that ended in savage looking claws.
Wings! He has wings!
Carolina’s eyes ate up every single inch of him. She noticed he was staring at her with those same golden eyes of his, although his face was different.
“You’re a Dragon!” she said, and he snorted a dark cloud of smoke at her, obviously offended. “I meant a Wyvern, of course. A far more superior creature than any stinky old Dragon,” she added and giggled when the enormous creature preened.
That made him happy, she realized, as another lighter puff of smoke escaped his nostrils. Her heart was pounding, and she clapped her hands in front of her like almost every child in the world would do the very next morning after Santa delivered his gifts.
She laughed happily and realized she hadn’t felt this giddy since, well, ever. He was beautiful and magical. And totally fucking enormous. Bigger than three elephants standing side by side.
His powerful legs were the size of her car, and before she knew it, he was crouching down before shoving off, unfurling his wings, and taking to the skies like a rocket.
Carolina pulled on the hunk of the clay from the package he’d brought, and immediately her hands worked it between her fingers while Jasper soared overhead and did loop-de-loops for her amusement.
Show off, she snorted and grinned so wide she thought her head would split in half.
Carolina hardly took her eyes off of him. A Wyvern! She thought, brain working overtime and heart soaring with joy. A creature of fantasy and magic, and her brain was teeming with questions.
By the time he landed, she had a rough, but perfectly scaled model of him.
“Hold that pose,” she instructed, and he did, amazingly enough.
She needed to get the proportions of his wing to hind legs correct. Her brain was moving faster than her hands could, but Caroline knew she was going to make another grander sculpture of her Wyvern protector.
The idea was there now, firmly imbedded in her skull, and she couldn’t stop it even if she wanted to. And she didn’t want to.
“Okay,” Caro told him, and within the time it took to blink, he was a man again.
“What are you doing?” Jasper asked, cocking his head to the side.
She loved his golden eyes, the way they seemed to follow her hands with curiosity. But he was not demanding, and he was not rude or condescending. He seemed to be truly interested and didn’t that beat all!
“I am making a small-scaled sculpture of you, and with your permission, of course, I’d like to do another, larger one.”
Carolina narrowed her eyes as she used her fingernail to scrape away some of the clay to indicate the claw atop his wing as opposed to the talons on the bottom.
“That is awesome,” he said, and moved closer to her.
Only then she realized he was still naked. Heat rushed to her face and moisture pooled between her thighs. Her physical reaction to him shocked her. In all of her life, she’d never been so ready and willing to bed a complete stranger.
They’d only spent a day together and yet, she felt as if it were so much more. If only she were younger and a little less gun shy. But she’d already been burned once, and Caro learned from her mistakes.
Trusting a man like Jasper, someone so obviously vivacious and virile, was dangerous for someone like her. After all the glitz and glamour of being a somewhat famous artist wore off, she was still herself.
Just a chubby woman quickly nearing middle-age.
Ugh. How unflattering.
But honest. And Caro was nothing if not that. The totally truth was that she could all too easily lose her heart to the man.
Her protector, she thought. If she was a very good girl, and asked Santa Claus, would the jolly old elf gift wrap a Wyvern for her?
No, probably not.
It was hopeless. Besides, what would a man like him want with her? Unlike with her failed marriage, Carolina wasn’t sure her heart would recover if she gave it to Jasper.
Her body might thank her for falling into bed with him, but the rest of her? she would never survive. The only question now was, could she have an affair with the sexy as sin Shifter?
“There,” she said, avoiding his stare. “I wish I had an oven, though.”
“An oven?”
“A kiln really. I make several smaller pieces to study, and to experiment on, before I begin work on the final, often larger, sculpture. This one is pretty good to start, but it will break before I get it to my studio. Hey, what are you doing?”
Jasper took the sculpture carefully from her hand and turned away from her, granting her a generous view of his spectacular ass. He smirked, as if reading her mind, before focusing on the tiny delicate Wyvern in his hands.
While she watched, Jasper opened his mouth and exhaled. What started out as breath quickly escalated into something she’d never seen in her life.
Flames. White hot and precise, he breathed fire onto the little Wyvern she’d made, hardening the clay into something durable that she could carry home with her. Tears pricked her eyes as he held the little beastie in his gentle grasp until it was cool enough for her to handle. She licked her lips, biting the lower one, and smiled her thanks as he presented it to her.
“Will that do?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
Decision made, Carolina took the little figure from him, tucking it safely into the bag she’d already packed back up for their trip back to the cabin. Then she leapt into his arms and crashed her mouth to his.
“Jasper,” she moaned his name, and her body hummed with satisfaction as he caught her easily, grabbing her ass with both hands and proceeded to kiss the hell out of her right there on a snow-topped mountain on Christmas Eve.
If Caro did this right, they’d both have a holly jolly Christmas Eve. The trick was going to be whether she could walk away when the time came. It was a risk she was willing to take.