Master of the Deep (6 page)

With Koenraad, though, she was so far out of her element that it unnerved her. He treated her well, but what he was made her feel powerless. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.
 

“Monroe.”

She looked up into his handsome face and saw concern written there.
 

“Am I freaking you out? Is this too fast?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s not too fast, but it feels almost too easy. It’s just… I’ve never had a… well, a relationship… that didn’t feel like…” She frowned. “Like work.”

“Even at the beginning?”

She nodded and shrugged at the same time, and Koenraad squeezed her hand again.
 

“You’re only here a week, and I want to take advantage of this time. That’s why I’m telling you these things. Everything is tied up together. I’m rich because I’m a shifter. So long as humans prize gold, any shifter who can dive will be rich. There’s plenty of gold in the oceans if you know where to look, and that’s not including sunken ships, though most of those have been looted by now. Money breeds money. Most marine shifters are quite wealthy. It also breeds power.”

“So a lot of you are politicians?”
 

“No.” He released her hand and slid his arm over her shoulders and pulled her to him. Heaven help her, he smelled so good. Each breath brought the scent of him deeper into her lungs.

“We’re born this way.” He paused again, but only for a moment. “Many shifters have a preferred form. Some prefer to stay human, others prefer animals. My parents, for example, love to migrate the world as sharks.” He glanced at her. “If you need me to stop, if this gets overwhelming, just say the word.”

Overwhelming? If that was the criteria, she should have stopped him two days ago. She licked her lips. “Please continue.”

“My parents. You might assume, based on what I just said, that they’re uncultured, but nothing could be further from the truth. If you met them, you’d probably find them charming. Educated and intelligent. Sophisticated.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” she said.

The compliment had been intended to make him smile, and it did.
 

“And I’m guessing your mother is beautiful and always says the right thing.” He leaned forward and turned a knob. “My parents have the shark side, and they love to hunt together, to prowl the oceans. It makes them happy.”

She was afraid to ask the next question, but she had to know. “Which do you prefer?”

“I’m somewhere in the middle. I love the water in any form. I can enjoy it more deeply as a shark. But I also love civilization. It’s mostly a personal preference, not genetic predisposition.”

Mostly.
She wondered what that meant.

“There are five kinds of marine shifters. Dolphins, porpoises, orcas, manatees, and, of course, sharks. Those groups are further subdivided. For sharks, there are bull sharks, tiger sharks, et cetera.”

“What kind are you?”

“White.”

“As in great white? As in
Jaws
?”

He nodded.
 

“There aren’t any whales?”

“Only orcas. But nothing larger. There used to be, apparently, but shifting isn’t magic. It’s a restructuring of the body. The size of a whale, you wouldn’t shift often if you could help it.”

She wondered if it hurt, and if pain was a reason that some shifters chose one form and stayed there. After a moment’s reflection, she decided to add the hypothesis to her growing list of questions rather than keep interrupting Koenraad.

“When I’m in shark form, I have the cognitive abilities of a human as well as the physical abilities of a shark. When I’m in human form, I’m… let’s say sturdier and more perceptive than a true human.”

“True human?”

“I’m a shifter. You’re a true human.”

She pondered that. “Neither a shark nor a human.”

“Exactly. You with me?”

“I guess. It’s getting freaky.”

“Getting freaky. Good segue,” he said lightly. But when he pulled her closer, she noticed he was tense. He was worried about whatever he was about to say. “Do you know anything about shark mating habits?”

She shook her head. “Can we stop there just for a moment? I need to…” She needed to process this, to brace and prepare herself. What form shifters preferred and their finances didn’t have anything to do with her, but she was sleeping with this man. With this
shifter
. Sex stuff? Everything to do with her. “I need to use the bathroom.”

“Follow the hallway to the end.” Koenraad smiled. “Take as much time as you need.”

“I’m not hiding from you. I had a lot of coffee this morning.”

“Of course,” he said formally, but she could tell he was teasing her.

“I’m serious!”

“I’m agreeing with everything you say, Monroe.”

“That’s hot, you know.” They grinned at each other.
 

She made her way below deck. The cushions and lamps she’d been able to see when she first boarded only scratched the surface of the boat’s tackiness. Everything was boobs or vaginas or penises. Several small multicolor disco balls hung overhead, light glinting manically off them.

Looking down introduced her to purple shag carpet. And now she noticed a slightly musty odor. The parts of the floor that weren’t purple had tasteless decals in the form of nude female silhouettes, their jaunty breasts so large that Monroe felt a bit offended.
 

Everywhere she looked was a fresh assault on her eyes.

What she couldn’t understand was
why
someone would spend so much money on… this. It looked like someone had given a frat house a credit card with no limit and told them not to purchase anything that a respectable person would own.

At the end of the hallway was a closed wooden door. The handle was—oh, god, it was a long, flaccid cock. In case she hadn’t recognized the shape, two wrinkly balls were painted just below the handle.
 

“Gross,” she muttered, and tried to twist the cool metal.

It didn’t turn in her hand. To open the door, she had to pull up, effectively giving the door a hand job.

She wiped and then settled her weight on the clear seat (which was covered in bright red lipstick marks) and closed her eyes to block out the anatomically correct figures embroidered on the black hand towels. A spicy waft of overbearing cologne came out of nowhere, and she wrinkled her nose.

She wondered what Koenraad was going to tell her next.
 

The brief article she’d read in the tourist guide in her hotel room popped into her head…
Shark Warriors of Tureygua.
She scrunched her brow, trying to remember the details. Unfortunately, all she could dredge up was the bit about “two male members.” It was so absurd that it had made an impression.

Sharks didn’t have two penises. Did they?
 

It seemed unlikely. What advantage could come from something like that?
 

But… even if sharks didn’t have two, shark
shifters
might.
 

She finished in the bathroom and, taking care to touch the bare minimum possible, she rejoined Koenraad.

“How’d you like the bathroom?” he asked.

“It matches the theme,” she said diplomatically. The remark earned her one of Koenraad’s gorgeous smiles. That gave her the confidence to ask, “Do shark shifters have two dicks?”

Koenraad choked, and Monroe took his response to mean she was way off base.
 

“Never mind.” Itching spots burned her cheeks; either she was blushing furiously or she’d just broken out into embarrassment-induced hives.

“Yes,” Koenraad said.

“Y-yes?”

He nodded, and her gaze swept down, involuntarily. She’d seen him naked. “How? Where are they?”

His response was silence. He wasn’t shutting her out, she didn’t think, just taking a moment to collect himself, to phrase his response in the most neutral terms possible.

He was wasting his time because there wasn’t a way to gloss over having two dicks. By definition, it was outrageous.

“An anatomical difference,” he said clinically. “There are aspects of my human form that I can modify to better fit in.”

Monroe raked her eyes slowly over his perfect face. “Like what?”

“This… isn’t my natural form,” he said.
 

A thick lump formed in Monroe’s throat, and she had to swallow hard to get it to go down.
 

And then she remembered something else she’d seen in that guide book. That the shark warriors had shark heads on human bodies.
 

She began to tremble.

“Monroe?” Koenraad turned to face her, and while he moved as if he wanted to reach out, to touch her, he didn’t. “What’s wrong?”

“I… read about you in a book,” she said.
 

“A book?”

“In my hotel room.”

A dark look crossed Koenraad’s face. “Oh, that,” he said. “I’m not going to downplay how… unusual a shifter must seem to a human, but I’m talking about subtle adjustments. I have gills even in human form, but you can’t see them unless I want you to.”

She stared at his neck; she couldn’t help it.

“You can’t see them.”

“Show me.”

He shook his head.

“Show me the…” Her eyes darted down.

He took her hands. “When I’m human, I’m only aware of one unless I make a decision to involve the second one. That’s the easy part. Shark reproduction is brutal. Violent. Like shark lives, to be honest. And everything else. Biting plays an important role.”

“Is that why you ruined the wooden shelf yesterday?”

He flinched. “I wasn’t trying to ruin it. When a male takes a female—and it’s taking, no romance involved—several things happen. He bites her to anchor himself to her. When he penetrates her…” He dragged a slow hand through his light blond hair. “When a
shark
engages in coitus, there are spines involved. Barbs.”

“Barbs? Where?”
 

Koenraad didn’t answer, and Monroe’s mind filled in the blank. “That’s… barbaric!” The joke was unintentional, and so was her short, slightly hysterical laugh.

“It’s actually very common in the animal kingdom. Felines have them, some apes have them, and most sharks do, too. Which means I have them. When I’m very excited, I need to concentrate to control mine,” he said, “but I manage.”

Oh, she knew about his self-control. She’d felt it more than once, and she was happy to know she hadn’t imagined that he was holding back… though the explanation was making her feel dizzy.

“After an intense orgasm, I’m hyper-sensitive. It lessens my control. That’s why I sometimes need to take a few minutes after.”

“What would happen if you lost control? I guess it would tear up your partner.” She was starting to feel bad for him. What a curse.

“First, I never lose control. But to answer your question, it depends who she is. Another shifter would find it enjoyable. Like I told you, everything about a shark’s life is violent.”

The lump in Monroe’s throat had started growing again. “So it’s only when you’re with a human that you have to hold back.” Her eyes bored into his, and she prayed he would shake his head or tell her she was wrong.

But he didn’t. What she saw was compassion and regret, and it knifed through her.

She turned to sit straight on the seat and stared out at the ocean. Koenraad had been right; there wasn’t much to look at… no distractions from the bomb he’d just dropped on her. Bombs, plural. Because between two penises and barbs and the fact that he had to stay in control during sex, she was feeling pretty overwhelmed. And inadequate.
 

“Why would you ever have sex with a human? Sounds to me like it’s unnatural.” There was a bitter edge to her voice, but under the circumstances, she didn’t think she was being overly defensive.

“It’s not unnatural. If it were, humans and shifters wouldn’t be able to procreate. And to answer your question, I do it because it’s enjoyable,” he said. “Especially with a woman like you. Two nights ago, I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think about anything except the way you’d felt in my arms, in my bed, underneath me.” His voice was a low rumble, and despite all the things going through her mind, she couldn’t ignore the tightening low in her stomach and the way her heart sped up.

She wondered if he was trying to distract her. But she wasn’t ready for this conversation to be over yet.

“Do barbs come out of them both? Can you use them at the same time?”

An amused smile twisted his mouth, and her cheeks turned blistering hot. “I wasn’t thinking what you’re imagining,” she said, remembering how he’d pressed his thumb into her rear the day before.

Koenraad’s hand landed on her knee, and she jumped, startled. He feathered his fingers up the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. “What do you think I was imagining?”

She wasn’t going to answer that. “I think you should show me.”

“Show you what?” His fingers danced higher, distracting her. She wanted to slide her hips down the seat, to hurry his touch to her quivering core. He repeated his question.

“Um…” On second thought, no way was she going to ask him to pull down his pants. He might interpret it as her being interested in wanting to enjoy both his cocks at once. Oh, god, there was something she’d never thought she’d have to worry about.
 

Koenraad’s finger brushed over the bikini-covered mound of her sex, and she gasped.
 

“I have ways of making you talk,” he rumbled.

“I want to see you turn into a shark.”

Koenraad sighed and removed his hand from between her legs. “While I understand why you’re curious, I don’t think it’s a good idea right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re upset.”

“I’m not,” she said, puzzled.

That made him smile. “Not the ‘angry’ definition of upset. Unsettled is perhaps the better word.”

If she had been, it was because of what he’d been doing with his hand. But now that he wasn’t distracting her, yeah, there was a twist of unease deep in her gut. Fuck. He noticed everything. And that was
definitely
unsettling.