Aurelia’s breath caught as she awoke with a twinge between her thighs. She had dreamt of a snake for the umpteenth time this month. She wasn’t sure what it was about them that turned her on. Maybe it was the way the world viewed them. Humans saw them as gross and dangerous when they were just beautiful beings merely existing the only way they knew how.
The thought of the snakes left her with a sudden realization of the basilisks she had been researching at work the past week. It didn’t explain the whole months’ worth of dreams, but it could explain the sudden heightening in her sexual views of them the past few nights.
She took a shower before work. That was the last thing she wanted on her mind while she was there, and a shower may shake ift from her thoughts and remove the lingering feelings within her body.
Today, she was meeting with the new coworker that the fae had set the company up with. She knew it was a creature but did not know any of the details. With the events that unfolded a week ago with the pooka, she found herself more worried than she was when they had first broken the news of it in the restaurant.
Picking out her clothes, she decided she didn’t want to try to come off too strong to the new coworker who would share her office. She dressed in a black knee-length fitted skirt and a loose white button-up top. She did a touch of makeup before placing her hair into a high ponytail rather than the high bun she usually did. To finish the look off, she put on a pair of black high heels that made her feel powerful. She wanted to tower over the puny men who had treated her as lesser.
Before she walked to work, she did a double take in the mirror and felt okay with her appearance.
As she sat in her office, which now had an extra chair and desk in it, parallel to hers, she felt her stomach knot in anticipation of meeting her new work partner. Her breath hitched as she heard Jerry’s voice from directly outside of her office.
She stood waiting. Jerry walked in, followed by a familiar man.
The man, the same one from the bus stop, gave her the same up-and-down look. He took in every part of her body before meeting her eyes and giving her a devilish smile.
“Aurelia, this is Noxus. You’re new partner,” Henry said as he showcased the man to her. “Noxus, this is Aurelia. We look forward to having you here at the company.”
Jerry continued talking as Noxus stared down Aurelia. She stood frozen in place, as she had when she first met the man at the bus stop. She hadn’t perceived the man as tall until this moment. Standing next to Jerry, he was a good five inches taller. She was the same height as Jerry and imagined seeing herself standing next to Noxus, him peering down at her.
Neither of them noticed when Jerry walked out of the room. Their gazes stayed plastered to each other.
They stood staring for several minutes before Noxus started walking towards her. Her breath hitched in her lungs. She should have been scared, potentially terrified. All she felt was longing.
“Had I known it was you, I wouldn’t have signed up for this job,” he said, followed by a tisk of his tongue.
His eyes changed color from black with big flecks of gold to a dark brown with smaller flecks, and Aurelia felt the ability to move and speak and come back to her.
“I am sorry that you feel that way; I assure you, you were not the one I wanted to see come through that door,” she said as she sat down in her chair and started typing her newest fact check into the search engine.
She could feel him move behind her to his chair. The movements smooth and graceful.
A question burned at her tongue. She knew it was rude, but she couldn’t help herself.
“What sort of creature are you?”
He raised an eyebrow at her and then looked at the computer screen filled with pictures and information on the lore of basilisks.
“Seems you already know,” he said with a smirk as he placed his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
His arm and chest muscles bulged as if they were trying to make their way out of the shirt. Aurelia swallowed the saliva that was flooding into her mouth.
“You’re a basilisk?”
His eyes lit up as he said, “I didn’t want to come out and say it after seeing what you did to that salamander.”
Her cheeks flushed. “I told you it was a pooka. I would never willingly hurt any sort of amphibian. They’re beautiful.”
She realized what she just said and hoped that he hadn’t caught onto what she must think of his alternate form. She realized that he had as his mouth formed a smile.
“You think I’m beautiful?” he asked as he leaned forward in his seat.
“I think your alternate form is beautiful,” she said, trying to avoid the question as she went back to looking at her screen.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Several minutes passed by as she felt more questions come to the tip of her tongue. She wasn’t sure how far she wanted to push him. She felt nervous and safe all at once, and she disliked it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be scary? Turn me to stone? Kill me with one look?” she asked.
He leaned back in his chair again and inspected his nails. “That’s actually why I came here. Yet, you show no fear. You see, the faes believed you were enchanted in some way. They did not understand how such a beautiful woman could work at a job like this or how she could turn them down.”
Aurelia almost laughed until her face met his. He was being serious.
He continued, “They want you for themselves, and if they can’t have you, they want you dead. Yet, here I am, unable to harm a hair on your body.”
She believed it, felt it, and wasn’t sure what it was, but it was starting to consume her.
Noxus wanted to tell her the truth; he wanted to explain to her that she was his mate, and if that hadn’t been the case, he probably would have gone through with sending her to the faes or killing her. His mind had been confused since meeting her at the bus stop, and his body seemed to pull towards her. He knew she probably couldn’t feel the ethereal mate bond between them. She wouldn’t understand it.
"We need to leave soon,” he said.
His words shook her from her frozen stare.
“Where are we going?” she asked as she watched the smile form on his lips and cursed herself for speaking too eagerly.
“We need to leave here. Return to the Otherworld. I won’t be taking you to the fae, and when they find out I’m not returning or following through with the plan, they will seek you out themselves,” he said, looking deep into her eyes as if he were searching her soul.
She pulled his eyes away from him and looked at the screen before she felt trapped in his gaze again. Tears started to well, but she refused to let them fall. This man, this creature, would not see her cry. She would not give him that satisfaction.
“And what if I say no?” she asked with little confidence.
“You don’t have a choice, Aurelia. You can’t stay here. If you do they will send others for you or they will come looking for you themselves. We must leave,” he said, desperate, pleading with his eyes.
“You expect me to just believe all of this? Give up my life here and move to the Otherworld with you?” The questions ran out of her like lava, burning with anger as she felt them.
Noxus chuckled. He enjoyed the woman’s spirit, the hate that was deep-rooted in her chest. He wasn’t sure what had caused that, but he wanted to try to unlock it and get to know her. He could basically see the wall that she had put up to guard herself.
Aurelia didn’t have the strength for this today, or any day really. She was used to her uneventful life of going to work and coming home. Deep in her mind was a formed hate of men. No matter how much her body and mind wanted to believe the words coming from this man’s mouth, she couldn’t.
The day seemed to drag on. She felt unable to work with the eyes of this creature constantly on her. The burn that his gaze left upon her body made her tense and confused. Every time she caught him staring, he didn’t falter, just stared into her face, into her eyes.
When the clock on her wall hit five o’clock, she bound out of the room to go home. As she walked out of the building, she could feel his presence behind her. She could hear the faint sound of his shoes walking a few paces back from her own.
“Are you going to follow me?” she asked without turning around.
Yes, because you are in danger, whether you want to believe me or not.”
She huffed out a curse word and continued to her apartment. A block away, she felt a cold sweep through her body before she heard the sound of men chuckling.
“Well, hello pretty, we came to talk to you about our friend. The friend that you stepped on, that you killed,” one of the men said in a roar before all of them shifted into lions before her.
The shift had happened so quickly that she couldn’t believe her eyes. Four giant lions, with the feature of a main on each one, stood before her. Their eyes were narrowed into her, they bore their teeth, and their claws were the size of her fingers.
Aurelia didn’t have time to fight or flee before a black and gold serpent, much larger than any creature she had seen in person, came between her and the lions.
With a dart from one of the lions, the serpent made a hissing sound and locked eyes with it. The lion stood staring at the snakelike creature before it as he burst into a cloud of flames that evaporated into dust within seconds.
The other lions took off running as they shifted back into their human forms to not draw attention from anyone else nearby and allow their bodies to be smaller targets.
The serpent whipped its head to look at her, and in its eyes, she saw familiarity. Walking towards the basilisk, she reached to meet his bowed head. She placed a hand on the scales between his eyes. Each scale was more significantly sized than her hand, proving to her that his size was not only in her imagination.
His black scales had random gold scattered throughout and swirling. The muscles beneath them seemed to glide with every movement he made, causing a shimmer effect. The head was the most alluring part of the figure. Narrowed at the snout, she could see his teeth behind his lips. The nostrils above were small oval shapes that changed size with each breath he took. Above his snout, his eyes pierced her soul. They matched his scales, black with shimmering gold. His pupils were completely dilated to a thin line.
The touch of her hand had relaxed Noxus. He shifted back into his human form. In the moment, it hadn’t dawned on her that he was naked, only that he was beautiful, both as a serpent and human.
“Are you afraid of me?” Noxus’s voice pulled her out of her mind, and she realized he was completely exposed.
Seeing her blush made Noxus cover his manhood, though it wasn’t much help. Aurelia turned away and saw his clothes in a neat pile on the ground. She grabbed them and presented them to him, not allowing her eyes to wander on his body.
“Thank you,” Aurelia said sincerely. Then she walked the rest of the block to her apartment, scanned her hand on the screen, and entered without looking back.
She was sincerely thankful for what he had done. Without him, she hadn’t stood a chance. She was just unable to look him in the eyes or speak to him more after seeing him in all of his glory. It had been years since she had seen a man naked, and at the time, she was a young girl, unable to understand the significance.
She walked into her house and immediately called Bryn to tell her about her new partner, leaving out the part about him wanting her to leave with him. Knowing Bryn, she would probably tell her to go.
Laying in bed, she thought of everything that had transpired over the day. She thought of everything her life offered her here and pondered over the idea of going to the Otherworld with Noxus. She wanted more out of her life, and maybe this was a bigger world calling to her. She couldn’t walk herself into a death trap, though. This brought her back to the death trap of the faes, and she considered that it would be worse. The thoughts swirled through her mind as her body sank into the bed, and her mind finally wandered into sleep.
The dreams of a snake came again, this time they were of a basilisk, Noxus. In his serpent form, he was even more beautiful than his hybrid form.