Page 76 of Shark’s Pride

“Talk about what happened last night. It’ll help clarify…why that was necessary.”

Though he tried to be casual about motioning toward the pool, my nerves skittered worse than the pair of lizards that popped over the crater’s edge. “Necessary,” I repeated in a four-part stammer. The expression on his face concerned me more than his words. It was nervousness for sure, but there was something else I couldn’t quite identify. Fear? Worry? Dread?

“Come here.” He moved to one of the padded seats next to the fire pit and then patted the cushion at his side. “Come sit with me.” He looked up, confronting my cautious gaze with the dark entreaty of his own. “Please.”

Well, damn it. He’d said please. That one was going to get me every time with this guy.

I snatched my drink off the bar. I had a sinking feeling I was going to need the fortification. “Do you want yours too?”

“Yes, please.”

There it was again.

“You want me to bring plates out, as well?” I asked. “Will we be eating outside?”

“No,” he answered, “I had Craig set the table inside. You likely won’t want to sit and look at the empty pool. Especially after I explain.”

He was even quieter during the last few words, and my apprehension grew into emotional lizards again.

“All right,” I finally snapped. “I can’t take it, Bas. Just get into it. Please. No sugarcoating.” And now I was the one adding more “pleases” than necessary. I plunked down next to him. “Obviously it’s bad. I see it; I feel it. So just say it, and we can go from there.”

As I ranted on, Bas simply watched me. At least until amusement—or what I guessed to be an emotion close to it—pulled at the corners of his lips.

“Am I amusing you?” At once, my nervousness morphed into annoyance.

Sebastian wrapped a firm arm around my waist. He tucked me close. Then closer. “Easy, Little Red,” he said against my lips before settling deeper into the soft cushion with me right beside him.

I swung a look around the backyard as the lighting system kicked in, back on its regular timing. That included the pool lights, which made the dry hole look like an alien moonscape. “Still no Tawny in sight?”

Sebastian discernibly stiffened. “I have an update about that,” he explained. “But the information is not good.”

I forced down a full breath. “How ‘not good’?”

“It’s likely going to ruin the night.” There was an unspoken apology in his voice. “I just wasn’t overly anxious for the day to end this way. Can’t blame me for that, right?”

“Of course not.” I pivoted to face him better and gently twined a hand with one of his. “But let me be the judge. How does that sound?”

“Fair enough.”

I waited as he took a long second after that, draining the second half of his sangria in one gulp. He extended the pause by keeping his eyes closed, and I let him do that too. Even gripped by obvious tension, the man was captivating. His eyelashes were ink-dark crescents against the sharp blades of his cheeks. Some of the wine lingered on his full lips, tingeing them with lush color.

At last, he grated two words into the still air.

“Tawny’s dead.”

My exhalation was rough. “I wish I could say that was unexpected.”

“Her body, or what was left of it, was the flotsam we saw in the pool water.”

“Yeah,” I rasped. “Also not unexpected. Wait.” I pinned him with a double take. “Th-That was a lot of debris.”

“It was.” Bas scrubbed a hand down his face. “Apparently, the noise we heard when we first came into the backyard last night? As we suspected—was from the water.”

“Because of…what?” They were the most tenuous words I’d ever uttered—a caution confirmed by the full shudder that overtook Sebastian.

A shudder.

Up and down this man’s form.