Until Fools Find Gold (Providence Gold 1)

I would make sure that she rested it and that it healed properly though. I’d also cut her broken toenails that had turned into deadly weapons from where they’d broken off when she kicked the table. Those things had been dangerous as hell!

Giving her one last look, I walked out and went into my own room.

Turns out I hadn’t checked the weather forecast for the area, which was unfortunate given how bad the storm that hit an hour later was.

I did my best to leave her alone and just lay there listening carefully for any noises or movement in her room. It was torture, but I didn’t want to scare her even more by going in and her potentially waking up to me standing over her.

But then the power went out…

LunaThere was something different about my room, I just couldn’t figure it out when I opened my eyes. Then everything hit me at once.

There was no light, and now something warm was moving against my leg.

A rational brain would tell you that you should reach out and turn on the light. It would also tell you that there was someone that you trusted in the next room so go to them.

It might also tell you that the mental image of a snake slithering up your leg was wrong because whatever it was that was on my leg was so warm.

My brain didn’t. My brain told me we were under attack and that the heavy pounding of rain on the window was part of it. It also decided that the thing against my leg was one of the snakes that you see in the photos with a human or crocodile in its belly.

My reaction to all of this was to scream my ass off, then pause in case the snake took it as a welcome to eat me, then scream again hoping that it would decide to eat whoever was attacking us outside.

I hope it spared Noah!

“Baby,” it murmured in my ear, which was kind of nice of it to do. I wouldn’t have expected a snake to use endearments or sound so much like…

“Noah,” I gasped. “You have to run. I’m gonna try to get the snake to go after the baddies!”

The snake stopped moving against my thigh, but then for some reason started bouncing slightly on my back and laughing. I knew it was the snake because I could feel the vibrations of its laughter every time it tapped my ribcage and I sure as hell wasn’t laughing at that moment. I was the closest that I’d ever been to making a mess in my drawers, is what I was!

“What the fuck?” he rasped, sounding like he was laughing too.

What if that was a red rag to a snake? Him laughing while it was laughing?

“If we both jump out at the same time and lock it in here, it might work!” I tried to explain as quickly as possible.

At that moment, the vibrations and sounds of laughter still very obvious, the snake curled around my waist and started to squeeze.

That was it for me, I screamed as loud as I could hoping that someone would hear it and come and save us before it swallowed us whole as I then tried to kick back with my non-painful foot and hit it somewhere that would hurt.

I wasn’t sure what a snake’s anatomy looked like, but it had to have a vagina or a set of balls. I’d been hit in the vagina with a baseball when I was a kid, that shit hurt. In retaliation, I’d thrown the ball back at my brother and hit him in the nuts. His reaction was my introduction to the fact that men were pussies and that a hit to the nuts hurt them.

Unfortunately, my foot hit something that didn’t feel squishy like reproductive organs should feel like. It was warm and I could feel bone.

What if it’s the body of the last person it ate?

Just then, a huge crash sounded outside making me jump and scream.

“Calm, baby,” Noah soothed, still chuckling slightly at whatever the hell he found so hilarious about our life or death situation. “It’s just the storm.”

“Where’s the snake?”

If he could get that close to my ear, then where the hell was it?

“There isn’t a snake, Luna,” he assured me. “And there aren’t any bad guys in the house either. The lights went off with the storm, so I came through to sleep here in case you woke up,” he explained.

Damnit, that made more sense than a python or anaconda. And the full weight of the situation was crashing down on me now too.

Desperate not to make myself look a total dork, I made myself sound as sleepy as I could as if I’d just woken up, and said, “Oh, hey, Noah! I was having a bad dream. I think I must have watched Anaconda recently because I was having a dream about it.” I cleared my throat and tried to laugh, but all that came out was a high-pitched squeak.