Oceans Untamed (11 page)

Koenraad turned and held his
hand out to her. “Be with me,” he said. “Please.”

She melted. She placed her hand in his, and she wasn’t the least bit afraid. There was nothing in the ocean that Koenraad couldn’t protect her from.
 

The heat from his body seemed to travel through hers as they walked into the water together. An incoming wave crashed against their knees. Farther out, she saw larger waves gathering, rolling toward
them.

“I think there’s a storm coming,” she said.

“Probably not until tomorrow sometime,” Koenraad said, turning to face her. The wind was whipping his hair against his sculpted cheekbones. If she had been him, she would have pushed the hair away.

A strange feeling came over her… and she had the oddest sensation of déjà vu. Except it wasn’t the wind whipping his hair… it was…

Water.

Water
splashing over him. He’d been kneeling… someone else had been there. Someone had splashed him, and he’d ignored it exactly the way he was ignoring the wind.

She concentrated hard, but she couldn’t bring the memory into focus.

“Are you alright?” he asked. The water was up to her elbows now. She hadn’t even realized she’d kept walking.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine.” Because even if she was feeling
a bit dream-like, nothing was going to stop her from finally seeing Koenraad as a shark.

She’d been up on her toes, and now it wasn’t enough; the sandy beach bottom was too far away. Her mouth opened and she gulped in air edged with salty spray.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said.

“What makes you think I need reassuring?” she asked. “You can hear my heart and smell my fear?”

He laughed. “It’s
written all over your gorgeous face.”

The unexpected compliment made her forget all about being freaked out by his super shark senses. It also warmed her, right to her fingertips and toes.

“We’ll go a little farther out. We’ll swim past a current, then there’s a calm patch.”

“Ok,” she said.
 

“Ok.” He pulled her to him, and she was helpless to resist even if she’d wanted to. She felt like a
little bathtub toy, a naked rubber ducky that would go anywhere the waves carried her.
 

But no, not anywhere. In the broad wall of his chest, pressed up to her back, was safety. She would go only where he allowed her to.
 

It turned her on, made parts of her even wetter.
 

She’d been in the water with Koenraad before, but not like this. Before, she’d been terrified. And ok, yeah, she was a little
scared now, but she was mostly excited.
 

The only thing between her and the ocean’s hungry maw was Koenraad. It was all she’d need.

A particularly large wave rolled up, and they rose. Her stomach lurched, and she laughed, throwing her head back. “This is amazing!” she screamed.

Koenraad’s voice was warm against her ear. “I’m so happy to hear you say that, Monroe. Most of the world is water.
I want to show you…”

He stopped talking as he wrapped her tighter, turned her around. She felt another wave rolling in, and she happily fell against his body.

His kiss wasn’t unexpected, but it still took her breath away. Her arms tightened around his neck, and she remembered what he’d said about gills… that he had them but she couldn’t see them. Well, she couldn’t feel them, either. She wasn’t
even part of his world yet, but there was so much that blew her mind.

The water was carrying them away; she could tell that, but she didn’t care. She was safe in Koenraad’s arms.
 

As his tongue thrust into her mouth in a promise of what was to come, she rocked her body against his, curious to know if he was hard, and to what extent, but he was holding himself apart at the hips, and there was
nothing she could do about that.

He’d told her that involving both his cocks was a conscious decision. She honestly couldn’t wait for him to claim her. It would be her first chance to know all of him.
 

The water was spinning them slowly, or maybe Koenraad was doing it. With her eyes closed against the spray of the ocean, and with Koenraad’s mouth devouring hers, she couldn’t even tell up from
down.

Then, suddenly, they stopped. Koenraad slowed his kiss, then swiped his tongue along the open gasp of her lips. The gesture had an air of finality to it, and she opened her eyes and shoved her sopping hair away from her face.

“It’s calm here,” he said, and she almost laughed because
calm
wasn’t the first word that came to mind with the waves rocking her.
 

“If I let you go, will you feel
safe?”

She nodded. He’d told her once that even if she’d turned on his yacht and tried to motor away, he could have caught her. Drowning wasn’t a concern.

“I’m not afraid of water if you’re near,” she said as she fussed at a lock of hair that clung stubbornly to her cheek.

Koenraad tucked it behind her ear. “Then you’ll never have to be afraid again,” he whispered.
 

He let her go gently, reluctantly,
and she knew it wasn’t because he was worried but because he hated letting her go. He’d been like that since the beginning, her big, strong, apex-predator boyfriend who liked to keep her close, to hold her hand, to drape an arm along her shoulders.

He smiled. She’d told him before he was gorgeous, and she wasn’t going to say it again. Her heart was beating faster, and not just because the sexiest
man she’d ever met was looking at her like he couldn’t get enough.

She wanted to remember this moment forever.

“How does it work?” she asked.
 

“I’m going to dive. I’ll shift underwater and come up as a shark.”

A shudder ripped through her unexpectedly. “How will I know it’s you?” It was a stupid question, and she winced.

“You’ll know,” he said, showing he understood she needed a few more
moments to brace herself. “There aren’t any other sharks around right now. It’s peaceful here. Actually, a lot of marine life has left the area because of the contaminant. You see a shark, it’s me.”

She licked her lips and tasted ocean salt. “And you won’t… You said that when you’re a shark, you have shark instincts.”

“I will never hurt you, Monroe. If I were starving and there was nothing to
eat, I would die before I’d hurt you. Are you ready?”

She nodded, but she could feel her muscles wanting to tense. It didn’t matter; she was buoyant in the ocean water. It was easy to float here.

He moved away several feet. “Shark skin is rough. It can cut you,” he said. “Not fun for petting.”

A little smile tugged at her mouth. “This is like last night’s conversation,” she said, referring
to when he’d finally allowed the spurs on his shaft to emerge. She’d stroked him the wrong direction and had ended up with a bloody palm, but it hadn’t hurt.

“You can do what you want,” he said easily. “Just remember that sharks can smell blood from quite some distance away, and we swim very quickly—”

“Got it,” she said. A lump had formed in her throat. “But if a shark comes…”

“There is nothing
in the water that can hurt you. I wouldn’t allow it.” He moved back another foot. “I can hear and understand you, so you can talk to me. Obviously I won’t be able to talk back.”

Before she could tell him that it wasn’t so obvious given his ability to breathe underwater in human form, he was gone.

She’d known he would disappear, but anxiety twisted her insides all the same as she stared hard
at the dark bit of ocean where, moments before, an extremely tall and muscular man had been gently teasing her.

Should have asked how long it takes him to shift
, she thought. For all she knew, he’d be gone for several minutes.
 

The thought that a shark would be coming up toward her made her want to pull in her arms and legs and curl herself into a little ball.
 

If she’d said that to Koenraad,
he’d probably have pointed out that it would have made her an easier morsel, snack-sized.
 

Something was underneath her, though. She could
sense
it. She craned her neck and stared into the darkness but saw nothing.

And then it was there, circling. A dark-bodied shark. Enormous. Longer than a New York taxicab for sure; she could tell that even though it was still submerged.

Her blood hammered
in her ears, the sound louder than the ocean. Her mouth had gone parched, and she felt like she might faint.

As the tip of his dorsal fin breached the water, her heart stopped completely, then took off at breakneck speed. She cried out as she felt something ripping through her side, and her hands flew to her stomach.

Her skin was intact, but she felt it, that she was being bitten, and she believed
she smelled blood in the water. Her blood.

“Brady,” she gasped, not knowing where the name had come from. She kicked away, trying to put as much distance between herself and the shark as possible. “No!”
 

Her voice rang out, loud and clear, and then the shark’s enormous head was shoving through the water. His mouth opened, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.

“No!”

Now she was sure she felt
the blood. Koenraad had bitten her. But not Koenraad… he was too large. But Koenraad had…

Pain racked through her, making her nerve endings sizzle. Her eyes rolled back into her head and everything went dark.

Chapter 13

Monroe blinked up at a cloudy, nighttime sky. Her vision was hazy, and she couldn’t hear, but slowly everything came into focus.

“Monroe?” Koenraad leaned over her, his face creased with worry. “What happened to you?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Guess I freaked out when I saw you as a shark.” She grimaced. “I’m such a wimp.”

“You’re not,” he said, his mouth turning
down.
 

“This is crazy.”

“Having second thoughts?” Koenraad asked. He pulled at something in her hair, and she saw him toss away a small bit of seaweed. The gesture didn’t at all obscure the stiffening of his shoulders.

“No,” she said truthfully. “I knew you’re a shark. I’m a wimp, that’s all.”

His smile was noticeably forced. “So seeing it wasn’t worse? You can change your mind, you know.”
 

“How could something I’ve known about all along be a deal breaker? We’re both crazy, that’s all.” She grinned, but to her surprise, his smile was fading. “What?” she asked. Had she offended him? “I didn’t mean crazy like it’s a bad thing—”

“Last night I wanted to tell you something,” he said. He spoke slowly, like he was thinking deeply about each word before allowing it to cross his lips. “Something
that might be a deal breaker. I have a son.”

“You…” She felt her eyebrows climbing, and she forced her expression into something more neutral.
A son?
She couldn’t even imagine it, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Kids hadn’t really been part of her plan, at least not for several more years. “Well, we’ve only known each other a couple of days,” she said finally.
 

“That’s not the problem.
One, I have a son,” he said. “Two, that’s who attacked you.” He touched his hand to her side, where the skin was new and pink, and she flinched as she finally remembered what had gone through her mind right before she passed out.

“Brady,” she whispered. “He… builds model ships.” Then she didn’t move, and worse still, neither did he.

“Yes,” he said. His head dropped, but then he pulled up again,
seemingly forcing himself to meet her eyes. “Third, the scars on my back aren’t from him. What he did is wrong, but I could never hurt my son. The scars are self-inflicted. I needed a large quantity of my blood, and shark’s teeth are better than human teeth.”

“Your son attacked me?”

“Yes. Please don’t cross your arms.”

She looked down and saw that she had crossed her arms. She uncrossed them
but then felt even more vulnerable and alone, even when Koenraad laced his fingers through hers, their palms pressed together.

Then she felt it again, the teeth biting into her. And when she looked up at Koenraad, she remembered him throwing her into a vast abyss of nothingness, his body outlined against the sky.

She remembered the look on his face. Pissed. At her.

The sob welled up from deep
inside. No wonder he’d been so guilt-ridden after she’d woken up. And she’d kept thanking him for saving her.

He was moving away now, and a moment later he handed her clothes to her.

She took them without meeting his eyes.

Chapter 14

“This is so fucked up,” Monroe said as she brushed sand out of her clothes with a brusque snapping of her wrists.

Koenraad didn’t agree aloud. He couldn’t bring himself to. When she’d passed out in the water, he’d known something was wrong, and in the sixty seconds she’d been out of it, he’d had plenty of time to berate himself.

It had never occurred to him that she might
have a flashback of the attack, but as far as he could tell, that was exactly what had happened.

Why hadn’t it occurred to him? She’d repressed the memory, but it wouldn’t have been wiped out of her mind.

Or had he known, deep down? Was this his subconscious at work again, forcing out the truth?

Either way, it was out in the open now. Not everything… She didn’t know the punishment for Brady’s
attack was death.

He thought maybe if he talked to her, he could convince her that everything was ok. He could tell her all about Brady, explain the stakes and why he hadn’t wanted to tell another living soul. She might not forgive him, but he was sure she’d understand on some level.

But what seemed best, for her at least, was if he turned his back and walked away.

It was the humane choice.
It was what she deserved. For the first time since he’d revealed himself in the crater lake, he had an opportunity to give Monroe her life back. Once she was back in New York, she wouldn’t have to worry about navigating the dangerous life as the human mate of a shark shifter. He could hire someone to erase all traces of her visit to Tureygua. Unless she hemorrhaged blood everywhere she went, not
even a wolf shifter would be able to track her in New York. She’d be safe from kidnapping and from the Council.