Coby took one look at her, grinned, and then stood and walked into the pond. For the first time, she watched the transformation take place. His body did it so quickly, exploding into a form that was no longer the man she’d just fucked. She couldn’t scoot back on her ass quickly enough and she nearly fell over as she tried to find her feet. Then, standing on the path that led away from the pond, she looked back once more at the fin circling the pond’s surface. Flashbacks hit her: Kids’ faces screaming in horror, bloody limbs, and then amazing sex. Coby wasn’t the bad guy. Her body knew that, but her mind struggled with it until she collapsed back into the seated position on the sand and watched him move around the pool with an awe that was one-part amazement and the other part absolute terror. A giant, beautiful, but horrific great white shark swam only feet away. Sylvia fought to control her rapid breathing. She closed her eyes until she was able to force a smile onto her lips. The man was hers…if she could only learn to accept the shark.
Chapter 14 - Rafe
Their first date was amazing. After hooting and hollering from fifty stories up, his buddies had hoisted Kalina and him back up to the top. Rafe and Kalina had ended the night with a sweet kiss on the beach before she’d made him turn away from her as she slipped off her clothes, tucked them into her baggie, and dove into the water. She’d simply disappeared from sight. She had, however, agreed to go out with him again the following night.
This time, he did it more gentlemanly, arriving at the island on one of the fishery boats. If she wouldn’t go out into the water with him, he’d take her out the good ol’ fashioned human way. He was surprised when she made her way out to his boat on a small dinghy with an older Hispanic man driving. Then he remembered what she’d told him the night before about not getting wet. It made sense.
Yes, a tiger shark might have a hard time climbing onto the boat, minus feet and hands and all.
“Is my pirate captain up there?” she called out with her hands cupped in front of her mouth to resemble a megaphone.
She wore a skirt this time, black with white flowers, and a tight top that looked unbelievably hot on her. In his jeans and T-shirt, he felt slightly underdressed even though her outfit would have worked fine in both a formal scene and a laid-back casual one.
“Have you met Juan Diego?” she asked as the older man on the dinghy took her hand and helped her reach for the ladder on the side of Rafe’s boat.
Rafe took her free hand and pulled her up and into his arms. He held her tight and kissed her forehead. Then he threw a wave in Juan Diego’s direction.
“Missed you,” Rafe said, wishing he could explain to her exactly how much.
He’d slept alone last night, imagining what it would be like to have her in his bed. The tactful tumble of two young lovers ferociously fucking, but also the sweet aftermath of spooning and whispering pillow talk into each other’s ears. He wondered if she felt the same way. Had she thought about him at all since their plummet toward the earth? Or had she hopped into the ocean and swam away freely, off to search for her next meal with Rafe only a distant memory?
“How much?” Kalina asked, standing up on her tippy toes and planting a soft kiss on his lips.
Since their first kiss at the end of the bungee cord, they’d had many more, and each one felt more comfortable than the last, but also carried with it a nervous sting. He recognized it as a slight fear that this wouldn’t work out. Either she’d grow tired of his carefree ways or he’d grow tired of her endless bickering, not that he’d had any issue with her so far. Nagging didn’t seem her style. But he knew those two scenarios always worked their way into a relationship, running nonchalantly through the cracks in a couple’s foundation and then freezing when things got cold, until the stones at the relationship’s core fissured, cracked, and crumbled.
“This much,” he said as he spread his arms out as far as he could.
“You two have a good time,” Juan Diego called out as he restarted the dinghy’s engine and turned back for the shore. “Be careful with her.”
“I need to stay away for longer,” she joked as Juan Diego sped back to the beach, “until you miss me much more than that.”
“I can’t stretch my arms any farther,” he said, “without ripping ‘em out of the sockets and throwing ‘em toward the shore.”
“Beautiful visual,” she said.
“For you, baby, anything,” he replied.
She smiled, and he was glad she did. He’d learned in the past that using the word “baby” could instantly go bad with some women. Like the dreaded word moist or the detested “C U next Tuesday,” calling a woman baby who doesn’t appreciate the sentiment could spark a heated discussion. Kalina was too chill for such trivial things. If anything, she seemed to like it. He’d already begun thinking about her as his girl, and “baby” wasn’t a term he’d throw around freely. Kalina was his baby.
The sun was starting to set on the horizon and Rafe felt like the champion of his world as he grabbed hold of the steering wheel and set off, his woman’s head resting on his arm.
“Busy day?” he asked, not sure where to take the conversation.
“Long night,” she said. “Thank God you had me out for most of it. A lot of stuff went down when I wasn’t there.”
“Like what?”
“Oh boy,” she said. “Where to begin? Evelyn’s back. Guess that’s a good place to start.”
“Evelyn?” he asked.
“Surely Kane has mentioned her. The anti-human shark. The evil bitch of the sea.”
“Ah, her,” Rafe said. “Yep, I’ve heard of her. But I thought she was dead. Or at least Kane seemed to believe so.”
Rafe had never met Evelyn, but he’d heard about her legendary beauty and equally renowned seduction skills, but even knowing this, he couldn’t help imagining her looking a lot like Ursula, the sea witch in The Little Mermaid. He wondered if she sprouted sexy legs and a banging body through magic but then retreated to some underwater lair where she grew tentacles and plotted out her next sinister plan.
“We all thought so because she’d stayed gone so long and had been badly hurt in the last fight. But she’s back and she has a whole new gang behind her. Faith said it was those guys we had a run in with at the bonfire.”