Master of the Deep (2 page)

She followed the faint sounds of what was either a television or a radio. The wafting, wholesome aroma of freshly brewed coffee grew stronger with every step. Such a typical morning routine, but Koenraad was anything but. It was the little things that tripped her up, leaving her confused. But then, she hadn’t seen the biggest things. Only the way he’d saved her life two days before was absolute proof.

She remembered his mouth over hers, how he’d sent breathable air into her lungs. He’d held her close while the weight of the water seemed to want to crush her, and she’d been shocked stiff, but deep down she’d also known she was safe.

That experience surely bound them together, too. But it didn’t mean she shouldn’t be running like hell while she still could.

She rounded the corner and stood at the entrance to the relatively small kitchen. There were so many bathrooms and bedrooms and other rooms that she knew there had to be a gigantic kitchen elsewhere, but she was glad Koenraad used this one. Its simplicity seemed studied, but she still found it soothing. The stocky table and chairs didn’t match exactly, but they fit. They complemented each other perfectly, which was better than an exact match in her opinion. Proof of a professional decorator with an excellent eye.

Looking at the sturdy wood furniture, she suddenly remembered Koenraad’s jaws clamping on the shelf in the hallway when he’d roughly taken her the evening before. The wood had been crushed during the height of his release.

What she hadn’t realized then was that he could have just as easily caught her neck between his teeth.
 

Her shivers turned into a shudder.
 

She wasn’t ready. She wanted to go back upstairs, crawl into bed. Or run out the front door… But her legs had locked up on her.

Koenraad was a shark. For all his wealth and natural elegance, he was dangerous. A mindless killing machine if the documentaries on sharks were to be believed.
 

He stood at the counter, his tall, musclebound frame facing away from her. The counter was a mess: scraps of pineapple skin and core, an open container of yogurt, a spoon covered in white that threatened to drip at any second, and a large plastic and rubber lid.

It was such a normal morning scene that a whisper of tension eased out of her. Not enough to make a difference, but it was a start.

She watched as he picked up the rubberized lid and slapped it atop something she couldn’t see. A blender whirred quietly to life.

“Good morning,” Koenraad said without turning around. His rumbling voice added goosebumps of a different sort to her trembling. He was large, closing in on six-and-a-half feet tall. Currently, he wore nothing but black boxers that clung to the thick muscles of his tanned legs. On the right side of his waist, she could see the tail end of the knotted, ropy scar that she knew started at the bottom of his neck.

The blender cut off.

“How’d you get the scar?” she asked.
 

He tilted his head back and shook his white-blond hair out of his eyes, but he still didn’t fully turn to face her. “Boat propeller.” His deep voice was starting to feel familiar, reminding her of how normal their date the night before had been, and she felt her muscles begin to relax. “I was getting into trouble with some friends, doing things we shouldn’t have been doing. In short, I shifted human before I could heal.”

“Heal?”

He glanced over his shoulder, startling her with those abnormally large irises that made his blue eyes seem black. “Sharks heal very quickly.”

“And humans don’t?” she asked when he didn’t volunteer more.

“Comparatively? No, you don’t.”

“Sharks don’t get cancer, right?”

“That’s a myth, unfortunately, but our cells are much less likely to mutate and we have stronger immune systems, so it’s rare.”

Monroe waited, but Koenraad had apparently said all he was going to. She watched him pour thick white smoothies into two tall glasses.
 

Four bagel halves popped up in the toaster, and Koenraad put them onto plates.

“Carbs?” she asked, surprised.
 

“You’d rather watch me jump in the ocean and rip apart a fish with my teeth?”

That made her shudder. In fact, she most certainly did not want to see anything of the sort.
 

His gaze swept over her. She blushed as his attention lingered on her full curves. “It happens that I have an insatiable sweet tooth. When I find something I enjoy, I have a hard time holding back.” The last line was delivered in a slightly deeper tone that made her tingle.
 

“I’d planned to serve you breakfast in bed,” he said, moving closer to her.

Serve.
Like anyone with Koenraad’s bearing could ever do something so diminishing as serving. His scorching masculine scent enveloped her, and just like that, the last of her fear melted away, leaving a desire for his touch that shook her to her core. She couldn’t think straight around this guy.
 

“If you hurry back up now…” He trailed off as something caught his attention. He was listening to the radio, Monroe realized.

She furrowed her brow. She couldn’t understand a word being said, but it sounded serious. Like a news announcement. Sirens wailed in the background. They were different from the sirens in New York, the sound more plaintive and a little breathless.

“Is there a massive car pileup or something?” she asked.

Koenraad shook his head. “No.” He seemed distracted as he handed her a plate and a cold smoothie, then pressed a kiss to the top of her head. His soft lips lingered there.

She’d never known this kind of kiss could feel so intimate. Possibly his large hand curving possessively around the back of her neck had something to do with that.

He released her and turned back to the counter. She took a moment to appreciate the stretching of his muscles as he swept the pineapple scraps into the trash.
 

Not a bad view, though breakfast in bed would have been nicer. If she’d been allowed to choose one or the other, she’d have opted for the bed part. Definitely.

Oh well.
 

She took a sip of the smoothie and found it a perfect balance of tart and sweet.

Koenraad switched off the radio. “That was an update of an earlier news story. Three tourists drowned this morning.”
 

Her throat tightened as she remembered struggling for air, the burning in her lungs… She’d almost drowned. If not for Koenraad—
 

“Monroe?” He was watching her, concerned.
 

She tried to school her face into a neutral expression, but she felt a frown pulling at her lips. “That’s awful. Did their boat capsize?”

“No. I thought the same thing when I first turned on the radio because I’d caught it mid-story. But they weren’t on a boat. They weren’t together at all.”

Her frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

“Three separate drowning incidents.”
 

The hammering of her heartbeat thundered in her ears. “That’s not normal. Is it? I mean, accidents happen, but…”

“It’s highly unusual when the weather is calm, but it sounds like a coincidence.” He spoke slowly, giving her the impression that he didn’t quite believe it himself.

“I… want to thank you again for saving my life, for taking the risk. And for trusting me.”

A dark look fell across his face. “There was no risk. A panicking swimmer can’t accidentally drown me. So stop thanking me. I brought you out there and promised to keep you safe. I’ll protect you every time. Without hesitation.” Despite the certainty of his words and his tone, she sensed he was upset about something.

Perhaps he was angry with her. All he’d asked her to do was hold her breath for thirty seconds. Surely he realized that it wasn’t like she’d
wanted
to freak out when the fish scraped against her calf, feeling like it planned to take off her leg at the knee. She’d been startled.

“There was nothing to think about, Monroe. I will never let anything happen to you.”

She felt her face coloring. “What I mean is—”
 

“You think it’s your fault.” An anguished look transformed his refined features. Without the mask of confidence he wore, he looked lost and far younger than his thirty years.

“It’s hardly
your
fault,” she pointed out.

He grabbed his smoothie and tapped the glass against hers. “Don’t you like it?” he asked, then drank deeply.

It’d be easier to drink if I didn’t have whiplash from the sudden change of conversation.
But she took a long, hearty draught, all the while watching him over the top of the glass. Koenraad was unfairly good-looking. She’d been struck by how handsome he was the first time she set eyes on him, when he’d been her prince on a shining white yacht. The other thing she’d noticed was how confident he was, how in control, and she was learning that he kept a tight grip on himself at all times.
 

She wished she knew him well enough to guess what he was thinking now. Or, better yet, for him to trust her enough to share whatever weight seemed to burden him when she least expected it.
 

He seemed on the verge of adding something, but then he stopped. It was a habit of his, she was starting to realize. He was a great conversationalist, but he didn’t reveal much. At dinner, he’d effortlessly steered the discussion so that by the end of the night, it seemed he knew everything about her.

All she’d learned in return was that they shared the only child thing but that he, unlike her, had always wanted a younger sibling.
 

“I don’t keep the refrigerators stocked,” he was saying now, “but we can drive into town—”

A ringing phone cut him off. “Sorry,” he said. “I have to get that.” And he was gone.

She’d been downgraded from breakfast in bed, to eating in the kitchen, to eating alone. It’d have been funny if it weren’t so sad.
 

She turned the radio back on and sat at the table with her breakfast. The radio was now playing what she assumed were ads. She smiled. Apparently, commercials the world over were delivered in mile-a-minute speech with manic music that made her want to cover her ears. Advertising, it seemed, was universal.
 

Koenraad’s smoothie was more satisfying with every swallow. The bagel, on the other hand… yech. Freezer burned and stale.
 

Monroe went to the refrigerator, swung open the massive stainless steel door. The inside was desolate. Some ketchup, a few beers, a block of cheese. She expected tumbleweeds to blow across the shelves.

The cheese passed inspection, so she sliced off a few pieces to add to her bagel, then poured herself a cup of steaming coffee. Koenraad was gone long enough that she was finishing the last of her dry sandwich when he returned.

His face had settled back into that unreadable mask. She swallowed. When he got all focused like this, it reminded her of the predator inside.
 

“Good news,” he said, but his lack of expression said the opposite.

“Sure about that?” She ran her finger around the inside of the glass, trying to scoop up every last drop of the smoothie.
 

Koenraad looked at her, really
looked
, and a brief smile flashed across his face. Someone needed to convince him to smile more often.

“Let me frame this better,” he said. “Good news and less good news. Things at work are a bit busy right now, but I don’t have to work until tomorrow. In short, we’ve got the day together.” He poured himself coffee and downed half of it as he leaned up against the refrigerator. Even relaxed, his body looked carved of stone.

“And what’s the bad news?”

“Who said anything about bad news? Less good.” He grinned, his sculpted, male-model face turning from gorgeously sterile to radiant. Either way, he had a commanding presence. Merely being in the same room with him could, and did, make her shiver.
 

“You ok?” he asked. His expression had turned wary, and she wondered if he was able to somehow sense her moods. She sincerely hoped not, because if he could, he would know exactly how attracted to him she was and how often she thought about sex—which was pretty much all the time when he was around. It was either sex or that panic-tinged curiosity.
 

“I’m all ears,” she said, forcing herself to stay calm. “What’s the
less good
news?”

He came and caught her around the waist, his palms practically burning through the silk robe. Lifting her easily, he set her on a clean stretch of counter that was cool under her thighs.

Monroe stopped breathing, and it wasn’t because she was afraid of the suddenly hungry look in his eyes.

“Let me start over.” He parted her knees and stood between her legs. His fingers digging into the robe’s silky fabric, into her hips, he pulled her close until her body was pressing steadily against his. “I’ve got great news.” His voice was low and breathy.
 

She stared up into his eyes. The irises were an unnaturally dark blue with a ring of lighter blue around them. Objectively, they were gorgeous. Subjectively, the dilation of his pupils was the stuff of nightmares. They were a predator’s eyes, large, able to catch the smallest glimpse of movement.

“Whatever you’re worrying about, stop,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “You’ve been making me jumpy all morning.”

Before she could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, he caught her bottom lip between his teeth and bit hard enough to make her nipples tighten, to bring her attention to the large, virile body pressed up against hers.
 

One of his hands slid up her back, his splayed fingers pushing on her shoulder blade, urging her closer. Her breasts jutted forward, the movement opening the silky robe.

She brought her legs up, wrapped them around his waist.
 

He growled, and when she giggled, he silenced her with a deep kiss that had her rocking her hips into him.

“You taste like coffee,” he said as he ended his kiss. He wrapped his arms around her and easily carried her out the kitchen, down the long hallway, and back up the stairs.