Page 12 of Leaping Into Love

“No, none of the above and no other scenario you could possibly imagine.”

“I’m not sure if I should be relieved, or offended that you think my imagination is subpar,” I tease. “Remember, I thought I saw a wolfman downtown? That’s a vivid imagination.”

Again, the raven passes above us, cawing. Lower this time, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear its vocalizations were directed at us, and more insistent. Maybe if I told Henry that, or about my nightly rendezvous with an anonymous frog, he’d appreciate the extent of my imagination. Or maybe he’d send me packing and tell me to head straight to a psychiatrist.

“I feel like he’s trying to tell us something,” I say when the raven swoops by a third time. “How’s that for imagination?”

“It’s not your imagination.”

My gaze snaps from the raven to Henry’s calm face. “What?”

“He’s impatient with me.”

“The raven? A bird is impatient with you?” Even as the question leaves my mouth, I don’t have the urge to move away. To run away. Or to laugh in his face. It should be ridiculous, but…it’s not? “Tell me what I need to know. Whatever it is, I can handle it.”

“I can’t tell you.” He looks into my eyes as if he’s trying to see straight to my soul. As if he wants me to see his. “Close your eyes.”

I do. Without hesitation. The constant tingle I feel around him becomes a buzzy hum when he cups my waist and slides his hands over my skin. The water and maybe the slight numbness from its cool temperature distorts the sensation, making his hands feel larger, and my mind immediately goes to what it would feel like to have his long fingers inside me, filling me and finding that spot I’ve never been able to reach.

Then it breaks into my thoughts. Frog song. The male mating call so intimately familiar, I would recognize it anywhere. The sound I orgasm to every night, only now, it’s not from a distance, it’s right in front of me. The beautiful, erotic song wraps around me, fills my ears, weaves through me like a lover’s touch. His touch.

“It’s you?” I whisper, fighting the urge to open my eyes. The memory of his throat bulging rushes to my mind. I didn’t imagine it. My eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. “At night, it was you?”

“It was,” he says with a croak.

Eyes closed and heart pounding, I slide my hands to the back of his head, gasping when my fingers sweep over a wide expanse of pebbled skin instead of tidily cut hair. My eyes pop open, my bottom lip falling. “You’re a…frog.”

“Of a sort. My kind evolved millennia ago, just as humans evolved from primate species.”

I must be dreaming. This can’t be real. And yet, every second that I look at him, taking in the details—his face with large reddish eyes and wide, distinctly froglike mouth, his mottled green skin—I know this is really happening.

I fell for a frog. A man who’s a frog. A frog man?

“Are you frightened?” he asks after several beats of my stunned silence and staring. “Angry?” His throat bulges with a croak. “Repulsed?”

“No, to all.” Trailing my fingers over his face and down his thick neck elicits another croak.

He doesn’t apologize like he used to, and this croak sounds different, almost contented.

“I have so many questions.”

“And now that the glamour has lifted, I can answer them all.”

“The glamour?”

Before he can answer, the raven flies above us again, cawing before taking off toward town.

Gasping, I clap one hand over my mouth. “Is that…Munin?”

“Yes.”

“How do I know that all of a sudden? And how is he a bird?”

“He’s a raven shifter, so he’s not always a bird. Sometimes he’s a man. Unlike the facade you previously saw when you looked at me, Munin’s human form is exactly as the day you met him. You’re able to recognize his raven form now because the old magic that wrapped the townsfolk in protective glamour is gone.”

“The townsfolk?” Thank goodness Henry is still holding me because my head is spinning, and I’m sure he’d have to save me again if I didn’t have him for support. “Are you telling me all those people I met are…not human?”

“Some, like Munin, have human forms. Most are what you would call humanoid, as I am.” His wide mouth turns down when my knees buckle and I wobble in his arms. “You’re in shock. May I assist you to your cottage where you can be more comfortable while deciding what you want to do?”