Kino suddenly jumped to his feet, smashed his arms against his sides so he was standing completely straight, and then did some ridiculous penguin-looking dance as he sang along to Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People.”
“What is that?” Hailey asked, throwing a handful of sand at him.
“That’s how white people dance,” he said.
Sylvia lost it. She laughed out loud. She’d always made fun of the way Penny danced, claiming she needed to find a little bit of soul.
“You’re fuckin’ white!” Jagger said.
“I’m tan!” Kino defended himself. “It’s different.”
“Anyway,” Kino continued, “I put a lei around her neck and she whispered into my ear that she was high as hell and thought I was cute and asked if I liked blowjobs.”
Everyone laughed and booed him.
“I call bullshit!” Rickshaw said. “No fuckin’ way!”
“Cross my heart,” Kino said. “So, we snuck off behind one of the huts, she sucked me off, and then she rode me right there in the dirt.”
“Huts?” Ruby asked. “You didn’t have houses?”
“I did,” Kino said. “But this was a touristy place, you know? We had huts so it would look all authentic and shit. Oliver. Your turn. Tell us about your first time.”
Everyone grew silent and Sylvia wasn’t sure why. It seemed everyone was more interested in his story than they had been about Kino’s. Sylvia guessed it was because he seemed more serious than the others and maybe kept to himself more.
“You have to go, dude!” Kino said. “I went. It’s your turn. That’s how it works. A question is asked and we all have to answer.”
“Fine!” Oliver said, as he set his attention on the sand in front of him.
He poked at the ground with a stick, drawing something and tracing it over and over again. From where Sylvia was seated, she was pretty sure it was the letter “A.”
“His name was Anthony,” Oliver said. “And he was my first, and maybe my only true love.”
Silence. Sylvia wasn’t expecting that, but she still didn’t see what the big deal was. She came from a world where being gay was almost as normal as being straight. Surely these people knew their friend was homosexual if they lived with him all this time, however long that was.
More silence.
“I fuckin’ knew it!” Kino suddenly yelled and ran to Oliver to lift him up and give him a big bear hug.
Everyone cheered. Oliver smiled, trying to hide his smile and act mad, but finally he opened up and began to laugh.
“Didn’t that feel good to get that off your chest?” Kino asked.
“It did,” Oliver agreed. “I guess I should say thank you, asshole.”
Everyone laughed again.
“We knew it anyway,” Ruby said. “We’ve just been waiting for you to finally admit it.”
“I have been anyway,” Faith said. “I’ve been wanting to hook you up with someone for so long, but I didn’t want you to get offended. Damn. No wonder you were never attracted to Kalina. Too bad she’s not here right now. She totally missed this. And, yes, I’m definitely going to hook you up now.”
“No,” Oliver said. “Please don’t hook me up. I’ll take care of that myself.”
“Because you’ve done such a good job of that so far!” Thane said. “Somebody please hook this boy up.”
“Yes, somebody please hook this boy up,” a female voice said from the shadow beach somewhere behind them.
The voice seemed to float on the air, echoing off invisible walls. It seemed hollow, loud, and powerful.
“No,” Thane said. “Not possible.”
“‘Fraid it is, Sweetie,” the voice said again.
“Is that who I think it is?” Penny asked.
A woman stepped out of the shadows and closer to them. She was completely naked and had a body that was out of this world. Her long, wet, dark hair hung down over her tits, and as she stepped closer, Sylvia could see that her face was badly scarred. So was her chest and arm, but that didn’t detract from her beauty. In fact, it seemed to intensify her sexiness, giving her a bad girl quality. Sylvia had no idea who this woman was, but the rest of the people around her looked as if they were staring at a ghost. Behind her, several male bodies walked forward and stood around her. Each was covered in tattoos. They looked like bikers, each with a different style. One had his head shaved and a wet mohawk dangling to one side. Another was bald. Another had long hair and an eye that looked pale and lifeless. All of the men were naked, cocks swinging everywhere in the moonlight. Some huge, some small and shriveled up, but all totally visible. It was surreal.
“Evelyn,” Thane said.
“In the flesh, baby,” she replied. “What? You thought I was dead?”
Sylvia’s blood froze in her veins and her limbs suddenly felt cold. If she’d been standing, she may have stumbled and fell. Penny had told her all about the evil bitch standing on the beach in front of her and hadn’t left out the part that she and her gang of sharks were the ones responsible for the massacre on the barge. She was responsible for all those deaths. She was the reason none of those kids would go home.
“Penny,” Sylvia said.
Her chest hurt. She couldn’t breathe and felt faint. She reached for something, anything to hold onto. Penny moved to her side and helped her.
“It’s her,” Sylvia whispered. “Penny, it’s her. I have to go. I have to get off this island.”
In the past, if she’d ever had a problem with a woman, or anyone for that matter, she wouldn’t have hesitated to face them and call them out on their bullshit. She’d once grabbed a woman by her hair and almost punched her in the face when a girl grinded up against her man in a nightclub. But this was different. This was the leader of a rogue group of savage sharks, monsters she’d seen slaughter people. Sylvia couldn’t keep her composure. She thought she was going to pass out. She fell back onto her ass and watched Thane and the others stand up and walk toward the woman. Sylvia was afraid to be left behind them.
Her eyes darted left and right as she imagined a sneak attack. She thought of the possibility of a shark jumping out of the ocean and grabbing her. She was far enough from the water, but she imagined they’d be fast even in human form.
The water was a stone’s throw away and suddenly the gentle lapping of the waves sounded thunderous.
The wind tormented her.
The darkness suffocated her.
She was alone, behind them all.
Behind her, the cabins sat quietly in the distance. Somewhere inside, the children slept. Behind the cabins, the trees swayed. Birds cooed. The ocean crashed, and she jumped. Paranoia pulled at her nerves, strumming them like guitar strings, and she wanted so badly to be back in her hotel room where it was safe.
“You don’t need to be here,” Thane said. “Things are going good. Take these assholes and go find a life someplace else. You’ve caused enough chaos.”
“I can’t do that, lover,” Evelyn said. “You’d miss me too much.”
“You heard him,” Penny said. “Get the fuck off our beach.”
“Oh, look who has a bun in the oven,” Evelyn said, pointing at Penny’s stomach. “So, the king will finally have a prince or a princess. Now, what if I were to grab you by your pretty little hair and drag your ass out there into the water. I wonder how that might change things.”
“How did that work for you the last time?” Penny said. “I seem to remember kicking your ass underwater.”
“Did you?” Evelyn asked. “Or was it that great white friend of yours, Poet? That was his name, right? Pity what happened to him. He was kind of cute. Too bad he had to die so your sorry ass could be spared.”
Sylvia couldn’t believe it. Penny lifted her foot up with lightning fast speed and kicked Evelyn square in the chest. The woman stumbled backward, set her feet, and hissed. Not like a snake, but like a pissed off bull, fuming and ready to attack. Then it was a full-on brawl. Like watching a high schoo
l scrimmage, the shirts versus the skins, the clothed good guys took on the naked villains.
All Sylvia could do was watch. Thane punched the guy with the lifeless eye and Evelyn ran at Penny but was tackled by Faith. The names of Sylvia’s new friends eluded her as the action moved in every direction. A punch, a kick, a body slam. Jagger picked one guy up and slammed him down on top of his knee, a blow that probably would have broken the back of a normal human, but the bald gangster rolled off his knee and moaned before climbing back to his feet and coming at Jagger again.
One of the guys grabbed Ruby by the neck and looked down at her pregnant stomach.
“Looks like we’ve got another one waiting to hatch!” the mohawked asshole yelled.
Kino roared like a bear and grabbed the guy in a chokehold from behind, screaming out his rage as he did his best to squeeze the life out of the man who’d threatened his woman.
“Look what we have here,” came a raspy voice that sounded almost as if it were gargling liquid with each syllable.
Sylvia looked up to see a man with a deformed face walking her way. One of his eyes was closed and looked as if it had been pulled halfway down his cheek. His other eye was normal, but his head seemed misshapen, as if he’d gotten hit by a car, face first, and had never healed properly.
“Please,” Sylvia said as she scooted on her ass, trying to get away from the man.
“I ain’t never dipped my dick in anything as sweet as you,” the guy said.
“Leave me alone,” Sylvia said. “I mean it.”
“You mean what, princess?” he taunted her. “You gonna turn into a polar bear or somethin’? ‘Cause that’s about the only thing that’d scare the likes of me. I done seen it all, baby.”
The man walked forward slowly, talking with his approach. He seemed to want her to beg. He looked down at Sylvia, at the bathing suit top she wore, and he grinned. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that his cock was stiffening. He was getting a full-fledged hard-on. He lowered a hand and gripped himself, stroking it once, twice.
Sylvia closed her eyes and prayed. She saw flashes of the barge party. The blood. A severed foot. A screaming woman. Splintered wooden planks. The beady eye of the shark.
“Penny,” she tried to call out, but her voice was stuck in her throat. “Thane.”
She could have been calling out to them from under water because her voice failed to go anywhere.
“You’re human, aren’t you?” the man asked.
His eyes lit up and he seemed to get more excited at the realization that she was. Sylvia looked right and saw that everyone else was still fighting. No one was even looking her way. It was over. The guy leaned forward and reached for her hair.
“You want some of this, don’t you?” the man asked.
“No, but I do,” a second voice said.
A flash of pale light and Sylvia saw a new guy, white in the darkness of night. He grabbed the man by his hair and rained a closed hammer fist down against the guy’s face, shattering his nose in a spray of blood. Her attacker fell to the ground and she finally got a good look at her savior. He was huge, massive, and completely naked. He ran at the man who’d attacked her and kicked him hard in the chest. The guy curled up on the ground and whined, begging him to stop. The power of her white knight was astonishing. He seemed to have ten times the strength of the guy now in the fetal position in front of her.
The pale man held out a hand to her, and as she took it, she couldn’t help looking past his hand and seeing the huge cock between his legs. She wasn’t in a sexual mood, she wasn’t even in a flirtatious one. She’d been seconds away from being raped, but the sheer magnitude of this thing was ridiculous. Finally, she tore her eyes away from it and looked at his face as he pulled her to her feet.
“You’re okay now,” he promised. “Stay with me.”
“I’ll never leave you,” she said in a trance like state, only realizing after she said it how dumb she sounded.
“Thane!” he yelled.
His voice thundered so loud it stopped the fight altogether. People on both sides of the fray looked at him, and Sylvia slunk back in his shadow, still terrified of Evelyn and the control she had over her sharks.
“Cobalt,” Thane said as he took Penny’s hand and led her away from the others, pushing her toward Sylvia. “Penny, stay with Sylvia.”
“Coby,” Evelyn said, stepping up next to Thane and leaning her head against his arm as if they were young lovers caught fucking in the middle of a date.
Thane pulled away from her and pointed a finger in her direction.
“This isn’t finished,” he said.
“Oh, I hope not,” Evelyn said, reaching a hand down to touch her own clit. “I know how long you can last.”
“Where’s Poet?” Cobalt asked.
Silence.
“Uh oh,” Evelyn said. “Big brother’s not gonna like this.”
“Thane,” Cobalt said. “Where is my brother. I know something’s not right. I can sense it. I lost my connection to him.”
Thane bowed his head.
“No,” Cobalt said.
Sylvia stood behind him, and she didn’t know all the history, but Penny had told her enough that she knew about Poet’s death, and how he’d saved her only to be attacked by another great white. It hadn’t been Evelyn herself who’d done the killing, but she’d been ultimately responsible.
“I’m sorry, man,” Thane said.
“He trusted you,” Cobalt said, looking down at his feet, and turning his head to the right and left as if trying to shake off something, or trying to understand something unfathomable.
Sylvia wanted to go to him, to comfort him. She could feel his pain. She didn’t even know the man, but she felt like she could understand the sorrow he was feeling. It seeped through his pores and floated on the breeze, wrapping around her like a blanket of suffering.
“He trusted you,” Cobalt repeated. “You said he could stay with you. He wouldn’t leave you. He said you were the real deal.”
His pain transferred to Thane who opened his mouth to speak and nothing came out. Behind him, Evelyn made a gesture with an open palm and her men started backing into the shadows once more, slowly and quietly departing. It was the smart thing to do. She was removing herself from the situation while Cobalt and Thane were both distracted. Sylvia could see her retreating, but she couldn’t say a word to stop her. In her heart, she was glad the woman was going. If she was gone, Sylvia would feel safe again.
“I loved your brother,” Thane said. “He was like my brother.”
“But he wasn’t your brother!” Cobalt yelled.
He lifted his head and glared at Thane. Sylvia couldn’t see his face, but she was sure he would have fire in his eyes. His voice cracked with agony. He was on the verge of crying, but his hardened mentality wouldn’t allow a single tear to flow. She’d known men like him. They couldn’t be broken, and if there was ever a moment to test them, this was it. Even with all the misery, he wouldn’t let himself fall apart. Not in the company of others, nor in private. He transformed sadness into rage. Cobalt was redirecting all that negative energy at Thane.
“He wasn’t your fucking brother!” Cobalt roared as he charged at Thane and with his fists clasped together, swung his hands up like a rock-solid club, and bashed it against Thane’s jaw.
“Unf!” Thane muttered as the hit surprised him and rang his bell.
“Hey!” Kino ran at the man, but Cobalt was a pissed off pitbull and swung his arm out, slamming his knuckles into the bridge of Kino’s nose.
The hit was so hard Kino did a complete backflip.
“Grab him!” Jagger yelled.
Rickshaw and Jagger both rushed at Cobalt as he leaned over Thane and swung his heavy fist down, nailing the fallen leader’s cheek and sending his head back down into the sand. Thane couldn’t move.
“No!” Penny yelled as she tried to run to his aid.
Sylvia grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“He’ll kill you and the baby!” Sylvia told her.
“Thane!” Penny yelled as she slapped at Sylvia, trying to force her friend to let her go.
Sylvia wasn’t strong enough to hold Penny back. If Penny hadn’t wanted to hurt her, Sylvia would have gotten her ass kicked.
Jagger and Rickshaw each grabbed one of Cobalt’s arms and pulled him away from Thane.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Cobalt yelled.
Sylvia had never seen such raw, furious, animalistic behavior. As much as she felt for Thane and hoped he was okay, she was turned on by the look of rage on Cobalt’s face. Her chest pounded. Her fear had been replaced by an intense desire. She wanted him, wanted to have him between her legs, to make him direct some of that manliness at her.
What the fuck am I thinking? He’s terrifying. Oh, but he’s not. He’s hot. He’s so fucking hot. So brutal. So fucking sexy.
“I loved your brother,” Thane said as he spit a wad of blood into the sand. “Poet was a good man. I didn’t kill him.”
“Poet died saving me!” Penny yelled. “He saved me.”
Tears ran down Penny’s face and Sylvia hurt for her friend. Penny would have given her own life gladly to let Poet live. Sylvia had heard the story. She’d seen the pain on her friend’s face when she talked about how she’d called for help and how Poet had dove into the water to save her life. And how she’d circled the water, waiting for Poet to move, to show any form of life, but he’d been gone, and there had been nothing Penny could do.
Cobalt stopped struggling and looked at Penny. His ferocity dissipated and all that was left was a speechless, distraught man, confused and in pain. Sylvia wanted to go to him, to comfort him, to tell him everything would be okay, but she didn’t know him. She had no right to say a single word to the man. She hadn’t known Poet. Nothing she could say would mean anything.
But she didn’t care.
Bite Me Harder (a paranormal shifter novel) (Guardians of the Deep Book 2) Page 10