Oh, Bite Me (Guardians of the Deep 1)

Penny saw something pass between the two men. Thane’s eyes squinted ever so slightly, and it looked as if he might be glaring at the nosy blond. She wondered if the two already knew each other.

“A new friend I suppose,” the officer said.

“Do you two know each other?” Sylvia asked, talking to the men.

She must have sensed the awkwardness too.

“I’m not sure we do,” the officer said.

“We’ve met…once,” Thane said, “but I’ve heard about the brave Boating and Fisheries Patrol officer Keelan Kane. His shark hunting skills are…legendary.”

“Well,” Keelan said. “Sometimes it takes a beast to know how to hunt one.”

Am I missing something here? What is this show of testosterone I’m seeing in front of me?

“Be careful out there,” Thane said. “Sometimes beasts bite back.”

An odd silence followed as the two men sized each other up. Finally, it was Thane who broke the silence with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Just saying,” he added. “I’ve heard sharks are great hunters too.”

Keelan shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and said, “I’ve yet to find one worthy of the fear they incite. They’re nothing but big fish really. Big dumb fish.”

“Isn’t that how you got the scar on your face?” Thane asked. “The big dumb fish scar?”

Penny noticed the flexing in Thane’s jaws and wondered if the officer had seen it too. Why was Thane so aggravated by the man? Penny didn’t know him well, but she still felt that instant connection with him. Now that he’d shown up to the hospital, she knew it wasn’t a temporary thing. He wanted to make sure she was okay. He cared about her.

“Ask where that shark is now,” Keelan said.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said as she popped her head in the door. “Visiting hours are over. We need to run a few more tests in the morning and she needs to get her rest.”

“Of course,” Thane said.

“I can come back some other time,” the officer said.

“Are you sure I can’t stay with her?” Sylvia asked.

“It’s not a good idea,” the nurse said.

“I’ll be okay,” Penny told her. “Go back to the hotel and have a few drinks for me.”

Sylvia leaned over her friend and gave her a hug.

***

Make a fucking move. Do it. Go for that sidearm at your hip.

Keelan Kane had a pistol under his jacket. Thane could smell the dried gunpowder. He wished the man would try something stupid. Did he know that Thane was a shifter? Humans were aware of their existence. Stories of wolves and bears and even lions and tigers shifting into humans had reached every continent. Shifters were everywhere. Not in great numbers, but they were on every continent. Yet, Thane hadn’t heard a single story about an underwater shifter. At least nothing substantial. Nothing beyond the regular ol’ stories like the Loch Ness monster or tales of mermaids and mermen. But this guy wasn’t normal. The way he looked at Thane suggested he knew more than he was letting on. Had he known Bobber was a shifter?

Come on. Make a fucking move.

The desire to bash his fucking skull against the hard tile floor was almost too much to contain. Thane wanted to kill him for what he’d done to Bobber. He wanted to rip him apart to show his people that he was capable of it, but he needed the officer to make a move first.

When the nurse came in and interrupted, Thane realized he’d wasted the time he could have spent talking to Penny on this son of a bitch. This gave him a second reason to hate the officer. The laundry list of reasons to hate Keelan was growing longer by the day.

Outside the hospital, Thane watched from the shadows as Keelan offered Sylvia a ride back to the hotel. She accepted, and they rode off together.

Now was his chance to speak to Penny with nobody else around. He walked back into the hospital and made his way to her floor. The nurses weren’t around and the light to her room was off when he slipped inside. Penny was in bed, staring at the light seeping in through the window. He knew there was no way he could approach her without scaring the shit out of her.