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“No, not seriously. His name is T…H…A…N…E…Thane. The ship leaves at noon. Don’t miss it unless you want to stand him up.”
“Wait, what does he look like…”
Gerri had already hung up. They hadn’t even discussed payment. Was she supposed to pay the woman for setting her up on the date? The other dating agency had charged her a fortune even though it had ended so badly. They’d refused to refund her money even after she’d explained how she’d been threatened by a feral ferret. As Penny set the phone down in the receiver, it sunk in that tomorrow at midday, she was expected to get dressed, put on some makeup, and be on a cruise where she’d meet a mystery man.
She walked to the closet and spied the wrinkled clothes she had hanging up. Only one outfit could possibly work in this situation. It was a breezy white pants and top set that Sylvia told her looked lovely.
Penny hated the word lovely. Lovely could mean anything from the way a cadaver looked at a funeral to the way someone’s old grandmother looked the day they went to meet her at her nursing home.
Didn’t Nana look lovely? She sure does like her afternoon bowl of Jell-O!
It wasn’t the best way to describe a thirty-something on her way to a daylight cocktail party on a boat. But lovely was all she had, so she pulled out her clothes and decided to whore the hell out of that lovely piece of fabric. Besides, she knew the pants hugged her ass snugly and the top showed off her belly a little. She didn’t give a shit what Sylvia thought. Lovely would have to be the new sexy tomorrow.
Oh, who am I kidding?
Chapter 4
“Do I really need to show you how it’s done?”
Thane looked at Kino with a sidelong glance. If it were anyone else, he might have backhanded him. Nothing sucks the manliness out of a guy like a slap to the face. Of course, Kino didn’t need to show him how it was fucking done. He’d been having sex with local women for years, and he was damn good at “driving the spear” as Kino liked to call it.
“You see?” Kino started. “The key is, you have to play with her first. She needs to be nice and wet. I use my tongue. Then the spear drives in like it’s stabbing through grain.”
The fact that he’d compared pussy to grain wasn’t lost on Thane. It seemed Kino couldn’t distinguish one edible food from another.
“Shut up,” Thane said.
“I’m just saying,” he continued. “Finding a mate is easy. Pick the hottest girl around. Pick Kalina. You two were good together and she doesn’t yet bear the mark. She’s a great match for you.”
“Shut up,” Thane repeated.
Kalina was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever laid eyes on, and yes, things may have been good between them once, but she wasn’t the one. He knew that. Thane couldn’t do things like the others. He should have been able to. Finding a mate wasn’t impossible. It wasn’t even difficult. As Kino had stated, beautiful women were everywhere in Australia, in all major cities, and in the smaller towns. Even on Shamrock Island, which had gotten its name from its shape, all the women were beautiful. Kalina was beautiful. Yet, he knew deep down that she wasn’t the answer. She wasn’t the one.
Shamrock was a hidden place, usually only stumbled upon by lost fishermen. With over 8,000 islands surrounding the continent, Thane and his people were safe here. They could live their half-dressed, completely chill beach town lifestyle without any worries. The island was little more than a small mountain peeking out of the water. His great-great-grandfather had been the first to settle here. With Queensland so close by, it was easy to speed over to the mainland to pick up any necessities, yet it kept his people safe and secluded.
This was the problem with finding his perfect mate. Kino and his small school of friends had migrated from the Hawaiian Islands many years before, and aside from having an insatiable sexual appetite, the guy didn’t seem to care much about anything. He’d found his mate too quickly and the constant bickering between him and his wife, Ruby, was as hilarious as it was annoying. Ruby was a spitfire, and Kino’d had a hell of a time keeping up with her, especially now that she was pregnant. She didn’t let him get away with anything.
Sometimes Thane wondered what life would be like if Kino had never come this way. As much as he appreciated everyone else in his pack, it was his Polynesian buddy who reminded him there was more to life than ruling unruly people. His pack was a tough bunch, but they were loyal. He hated calling them a school and rarely did. The word made him feel like he was dragging around a class of high schoolers.
“So, you trust this woman?” Kino asked, breaking the silence that was only interrupted by the three young kids playing in the shallows.
Thane envied their ability to splash in the foam of the wave breaks. Children were so free to play and be silly, without any of the drama of the adult world. Tiko, Kino and Ruby’s first child, was only ten years old, and Malena, their daughter was five. Little Ricky was four and was the son of Rickshaw and Paisley. With Kino and Ruby expecting another so soon, Thane often joked about how they might have to create an a
ctual school in their school. Usually around the age of fifteen, those children would begin their transformations, and they’d no longer find the water so blissful. Sure, the freedom of soaring through the ocean with your fins cutting through the water was one of the best feelings in the world but being one of nature’s strongest predators came with a price. Thane had spent so many years trying to teach his people to live peacefully among the pure humans. If they didn’t attack the surfers, fishermen, divers, or the other tourists, they’d be safer. The humans would feel less need to hunt them.
The only thing more vicious than a vengeful human is a greedy one. He and his people could at least eliminate that need for vengeance. The desire for shark meat, oil, and medical research was a whole different story. The fear of losing any of his family, his people, always loomed at the back of his mind. He looked back at the half-circle of ten cabins set back near the tree line and focused on the one to the far right, the one that had once belonged to Bobber. He was the biggest joker of the group. He rarely took anything seriously, even when Thane had warned him to stay out of the water for a few weeks until the humans’ desire for shark blood subsided.
They’d been angry about one of Evelyn’s attacks on some scuba divers. If the tourist couple had simply gone missing, maybe Bobber would still be alive, but she and her gang had made it a point to kill them while other people on their boat were watching. Evelyn believed in setting an example, one that warned, “Stay the fuck out of the water. It doesn’t belong to you.” Unfortunately, one man from the Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol, the QBFP, seemed to like using the “imminent threat” policy put in place along Australian shores as justification for his love of shark hunting. In Officer Keelan Kane’s eyes, every shark was an imminent threat.
Thane should have killed the man for what he’d done to Bobber. A shotgun blast to the head, especially to the head of a shark who’d only surfaced to feed on the chum dumped by a coward, was no way to go. Not for any shark. After it happened, Thane made it a point to bump into the man in human form, disguised as a weary surfer. Yet, as badly as he’d wanted to rip the officer’s throat out, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Somehow, in human form, it seemed wrong. To put it simply, it would have been murder. He was strong enough to snap the man’s neck with his bare hands, but his conscious kept him from completing the task.
His inability to act was the reason some of the members of his group had switched sides and followed Evelyn. Bobber had been a brother to them, and Thane, the one who was like their father, had allowed a human to end his life without any retaliation. His morality was a weakness. Evelyn lacked morals and ethics. She was as cold as they came, and it was only a matter of time before Officer Keelan Kane would meet his end.
Now, Bobber’s cabin sat empty. Without a mate, nobody was left behind to carry on his name. He had simply vanished from the world with only his memory lingering to taunt Thane and remind him of his faults. His major one was his unwillingness to risk it all to seek vengeance.
“Thane,” Kino said, cutting through his thoughts.
He welcomed it. Falling too deeply into his memories would only bring back the depression he’d battled for so long, and that was a place he did not need to go. Not right now. Not ever.
