Oh, Bite Me (Guardians of the Deep 1)

Sylvia moved closer to her and wrapped her arms around her friend’s neck.

“I love you,” she told her. “I know these kinds of creatures…people…exist and I know it’s possible this is going to work out for you, but to be honest, I haven’t seen you this pain-free or happy in a long time, so whatever this Thane guy is doing, he must be doing something right. Go be with him. I’ll be okay.”

This was why Penny considered Sylvia more like family than a friend. She was her sister. She might have been the one to get all the guys, but she’d always been one with a gigantic heart too.

Things should have gone smoothly the rest of the day. Penny wanted to get back to the Thane, wrap her arms and legs around her man, and maybe even fuck him on the way back to the island. She had almost made her way to Juan Diego’s boat when she noticed that parked only a few spots away was a familiar vessel with the official seal of the Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol.

Officer Keelan Kane’s boat was parked so close to where Thane was resting, and she had to wonder if either of the men was aware of it. The thought faded from her mind when she saw the gorgeous tramp, Evelyn, climb up the ladder from the lower deck of the boat. She wore a skintight dress and had to pull it down over her thighs. She wore the messy-haired, smeared makeup look of only a woman who has been royally fucked.

No fucking way.

Was it possible that the sly vixen who hated humans was fucking the shark terminator? They were like polar opposites. She was the Magneto to Thane’s X-Men. She had something sinister up her sleeve, or up her dress rather, and Penny needed to get the message to Thane quickly. From her hiding spot between two boats, Penny saw Evelyn crouch down at the edge of the dock, and slide into the water, instantly shifting into shark form and taking off like a bullet.

She stood and was about to hurry back to J.D.’s boat when she heard Keelan’s voice call out to her from behind.

“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing out here?”

She spun on her heels and faced the man. He had on an unbuttoned pair of jeans and was in the process of pulling a t-shirt down over his muscular chest. Evelyn sure knew how to pick them. First Thane, then Axel, and now Keelan? They were all very good looking.

“Just came to pick up my things,” she said, lifting her suitcase up to show him. “I’m going to stay on the island for a little while with Thane.”

“I bet you are,” he said, in his usual tone, the one that made her question what he was really saying with his statement.

After a moment of awkward silence, Penny was about to turn toward J.D.’s boat when Keelan said, “Well, I thought I should let you know that I got a lead on the group of sharks terrorizing the beach. Probably the one who bit you too.”

Who? The one WHO bit me? Who is usually reserved for humans. If he’d said the one THAT bit me, he might have meant an actual regular shark. But he’d said WHO. How much does he know? What the fuck did Evelyn tell him?

“I bet you do,” she said, returning his sarcastic sounding response. “How did you come to that conclusion?”

She’d put emphasis on the word “come” but he didn’t seem to notice.

“A friend of a friend kind of thing,” Keelan said. “He said, she said, shit.”

“She said,” Penny replied. “I bet she did.”

“What does that mean?” Keelan asked.

“What’s going on out here?” Thane asked as he stepped down off J.D.’s boat.

“We should go,” Penny told him.

“Is there a problem out here?” Thane asked.

Thane’s tight black t-shirt hugged his muscular chest and arms tightly. He wasn’t the kind of guy many other men would fuck with, but Keelan Kane wasn’t any other man. This guy had bravado that most lacked. It was like he wanted to pick a fight with the world, and until he could do that, he would pick one with whoever was around him.

“Do you have a problem?” Keelan shot back.

Penny grabbed Thane’s hand and pulled him back to the boat.

“We should go,” she said.

Keelan smiled back at them both.

“I’m curious,” Keelan said. “how you and your people survive out there on that tiny island. Where do you get your food? How do you carry on in your day to day? You don’t strike me as the roughing it, survival expert it would take to live a nice life out there. But…I could be wrong. Maybe I’m just a small fish in this big ol’ pond and maybe you’re like a…uh…

He held out a finger and turned it around as if trying to come up with the right word to finish his sentence. Like the finger was helping him rifle through his mental thesaurus to find the right synonym, a stronger word than what he was thinking of using.

“…you’re more like a shark in this pond,” he finished.