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She swung downward, hammering a punch at its snout, but unlike the tales you hear on the internet, her fist did nothing. Under the water, her downward swing had no steam behind it and it fell flat against the shark’s face. Then she remembered something else she’d heard. Poke it in the eye. She had nails. She had fingernails and she wouldn’t need a lot of strength.
As the shark continued to pull at her, she put her fingers together as if about to pick something up and slammed it downward into the big black circle of the shark’s eye. Her fingernails pushed against the glossy eyeball until they broke through its surface with a snap. Then it was jelly-like. She opened and closed her hand, fighting with all her might to destroy the creature’s eye. Finally, it let go, and she kicked as hard as she could for the surface.
She looked down only once, and saw a different shark coming at her from the side. Another shark had smelled the blood and was coming for her. Then something amazing happened. As she prepared to finally meet death, the new shark came into view, and it slammed into the one that had attacked her. The two giant beasts thrashed around wildly, and Penny turned her attention to the surface.
Her hand broke through first, and then her face, and as the warm air hit her lungs, she nearly passed out. She was still alive.
***
Thane sped around Penny in a circle, warding off any oncoming attack. He couldn’t possibly fight them all. Evelyn had brought six sharks with her. She and Axel might have been part of that group. He couldn’t tell. He was too worried and too angry to try to communicate. He needed to focus all his strength on making sure his mate made it safely to the surface where her own kind could drag her back onto the yacht and get her to the hospital.
She would live. Evelyn hadn’t meant to kill her, but she’d definitely hurt her. Thane doubted if the woman would ever go near the water again. That might make it hard to bring her to Shamrock Island, but he wasn’t giving up yet.
As Thane continued to circle around Penny, keeping her in a protective circle, he said a silent prayer that God would get her out of this in one piece. Blood was in the water, and even though Evelyn hadn’t wanted to kill her, controlling rabid sharks is no easy task. All it would take was one wrong move and one of them could tear into her guts or rip her head off. Even now, if she lost that leg completely, she’d never make it back to the mainland.
“See you later, lover,” Evelyn’s voice pinged off each shark until it reached Thane. “Tell your new main squeeze we’ll see her later too.”
The sharks backed off, and Thane could do nothing but watch from below as a lifesaver was thrown into the water and Penny was pulled back onto the yacht. She would wonder where Thane had gone. She would think he’d abandoned her. And as she left the ocean surface, he could only think of how he’d let her down. He’d fallen for Evelyn’s insidious plan, and Penny had almost lost her life.
Chapter 6
“You gonna eat that soup?” Sylvia asked as she slid the small plastic dish her way.
Penny had eaten enough liquid food to last a lifetime. It seemed to be the hospital’s answer to everything.
“You can have it,” she answered her friend. “Any more and my insides will turn into that shit.”
She’d been in the hospital for two days. Between the constant tests and badgering by her bestie, Penny thought she might go insane. Turns out a shark bite, especially in her condition, was riskier than she thought. The teeth had only broken the skin, gnawed on the meat a little bit, but other than that she should be okay. It was the leukemia that was kicking her ass.
“Sylvia,” Penny said when they were finally alone in the hospital room. “I’m not so sure it’s going to be okay this time.”
“You got a fucking bite on your leg,” Sylvia said, throwing her hand out as if swatting away an invisible fly.
“It wasn’t a mosquito bite,” Penny reminded her. “And the doctors are acting funny.”
“That’s what doctors do,” Sylvia replied.
“Sylvia…”
Sylvia looked at her and Penny knew that she was taking it much more seriously this time. Her friend’s eyes welled up with tears and she used her jacket sleeve to quickly wipe them away.
“You’re gonna be okay,” she said. “This is nothing. We still have two days left. They’ll let you out and you’ll sit on the side of the pool all bandaged up and shit, drawing all the attention of the guys, and then I’ll swoop in and take them up to my room and fuck ‘em while you get some work done on your laptop.”
Her friend’s simple explanation kind of summed up the two of them perfectly.
“Maybe not this time,” Penny said. “I don’t feel so great. I’m tired. And I have bruises in places I’ve never had bruises before. Maybe we should go home.”
“You don’t mean that, babe,” Sylvia said. “You’d regret it if we got on that plane.”
Penny’s head fell back on her pillow. She hurt in so many places. She’d dealt with the aching of her bones and the soreness of her body for so long. She’d suffered the chronic fatigue, the feeling that she might pass out at any given moment, and the results of what happened when she actually did. It came, and it went. All of it. Some days she felt fine. Like that day on the yacht. She had forced herself to stay positive and go on a date. She’d tried.
I tried so hard. But I don’t know how much I want to try anymore. I only want to sleep.
A knock on the door pulled her from her self-pity. She pulled her blanket up higher to make sure it covered the horribly thin robe they’d given her. She had no chance to invite the visitor in. He did so himself. He was incredibly tall and had dirty blond hair. He looked like he hadn’t shaven in days and his hair stood out in all directions. His messy appearance seemed accidental, but it was the look models strove for. He had rolled out of bed looking like a badass, and the long scar that ran across the left side of his face, starting at the spot above his eye socket and ending at his jawline, only intensified his natural meanness.
“Penelope Cross?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
