Page 12 of Catch of a Lifetime
Doing my best not to move about too much and make things worse, I brought my hands up and cupped his cheeks. I attempted to ease him back and unhook his fangs but he resisted. He shook his head. He didn’t stop biting.
“It’s okay.” I stroked him. If it was what he wanted, he could fang me the whole time we were waiting for Jerry. “We’re cool. Keep doing that if you must.”
My scar heated and began to buzz. He sucked on it lightly.
I couldn’t move off him without hurting him. I lay there and continued to stroke his face and hair, every now and then drifting down to his wide shoulders and back up.
From the corner of my eye I watched the waves creep closer and closer. As soon as the water reached us, Dave let out a gusty sigh of relief. He retracted his fangs but left his lips on my neck. His tongue dabbed at my skin. Then he kissed the sore spot and let me go.
Carefully, I eased my upper body back and stared down into his face. “Better now?”
He kicked his chin up and gave me a haughty look. The water hissed over the sand and curled lovingly around us. His hair lifted on it and the receding wave dragged it out to lie in a dark and tangled halo.
I tried to get off him. He still wasn’t having any of it. He looped his arms around my lower back and locked them there, tight, as the tide continued to rise.
All right.
“So,” I said. “Let’s catch up. How’ve you been? What’s new?”
He grunted and shuffled his shoulders against the sand, wincing.
“Oh no,” I said. “Your back!” Busy being horrified by the front of him, I hadn’t even thought about his back, even when I’d been wrestling him out of the waves. Two of the larger slashing wounds wrapped around his waist. What if they were worse back there, where he was now being ground against the coarse sand? I tried to push up and off.
He growled, and I flinched with a startled gasp when a shower of cold seawater splashed me in the back of the head. We were completely surrounded by now. The water was only a couple of inches deep, but apparently it was enough for him to flick some at me with his fluke.
“Dave,” I complained.
He echoed my tone in a short whine of sound that I was fairly sure was supposed to be me.
I glared at him.
He smiled, eyes glinting.
“You’re an arsehole. I hope you know that.”
His short chuff was cut off when the next frisky wave rushed in and skimmed over his face, once again swirling his long hair about before receding.
The next wave was going to get me in the face as well.
Not that it mattered. I was already soaked to mid thigh.
My top half was lying on Dave, chest to chest. I’d parted my legs and was doing my best to straddle him, but he was huge and my flexibility wasn’t up to much even when I’d had the opportunity to warm up first. I must have looked like a jockey perched on top of a racehorse. My knees weren’t even close to reaching the ground.
My phone was in my back pocket. Normally when Dave was near, I wouldn’t have given the damn thing a second thought. Today, I was relying on Jerry to help us out of this mess, and I needed to be able to contact him if something else went wrong. He might need to contact me if he had trouble getting the quad bike, or was delayed for any reason.
Another wave came in and lapped over Dave’s big chest, curling up to flirt with the tops of my thighs. I quickly threw a hand behind me and grabbed my phone out of my back pocket, holding it up in the air.
Dave watched me from under the water.
I waited for the wave to recede again, leaving Dave’s hair trimmed with lacy foam, then I waggled the phone at him meaningfully.
His brows drew together.
Mine lifted.
Dave sighed and looked away.
I didn’t fool myself that Dave understood what a phone actually was. Like all other human things apart from me and nets—he had strong opinions on nets—he simply wasn’t interested.
