“Grab your cock, babe.”
Emery reached down with one hand and fisted his shaft. He slowly slicked his own juices up and down it, eyes barely parted to meet Sean’s gaze.
“Don’t you dare come until I say so.”
Emery’s lower lip caught under his teeth, but he gave a tiny nod.
Sean started moving again, knowing this time he wouldn’t be able to just stop and hold back. This time he’d empty his balls into his lover’s ass.
Starting slow, Sean didn’t take his eyes off Emery as he thrust his cock into him, the head brushing against Emery’s gland with every stroke. Nothing mattered but this moment, the two of them, the love and passion flowing through them.
He turned his face to bite the inside of Emery’s thigh, enjoying the way his lover sucked in a sharp breath at the delicious pain.
“That’s it, babe, stroke that cock.” Sean repeated it with Emery’s other thigh, knowing it only served to drive his lover harder toward release.
He picked up the pace, until he was slamming into Emery deep and hard at the bottom of every stroke, his cock like hard steel in Emery’s ass.
“Getting close, babe,” Sean warned. “Get ready.”
Emery nodded but didn’t speak, his lip still clamped between his teeth.
Sean felt his own balls drawing up, tensing, ready to explode. “Closer.”
He unleashed, fucking Emery hard, slamming his thighs against his ass, watching the way Emery’s sac bounced with every impact.
“Now!” Sean finished with a flurry of hard thrusts, his climax made that much sweeter when Emery let out a cry, his eyes falling closed as his own cum exploded from his fist all over his abs, and his ass began milking more cum out of Sean.
He didn’t stop fucking his lover until he felt completely spent and started to soften. Then he buried himself inside Emery and leaned forward to kiss him.
“Better, babe?”
Emery’s eyes remained closed. He nodded.
Sean pulled him up to him, Emery’s legs wrapping around him as Sean embraced him. They kissed, lingering, relaxing into the water until only their heads remained above the surface.
“I love you, Sean,” Emery thought through their mate-bond. “I love you so damn much, it’d kill me if anything happened to you.”
Sean reached up and cupped Emery’s chin and made him look him in the eye. He spoke aloud, quietly. “Dude, nothing is going to happen to me. Okay? Stop thinking and worrying and focus on the here and now. The happy stuff. Got it?”
“I can’t help worrying. It’s who I am, part of my nature.”
“I know. That’s one of the many things I love about you.”
* * * *
Emery loved Sean for reading him so well. Letting go to him was no hardship. Sean was the only man he trusted enough and felt comfortable enough relinquishing control to, even though he knew it was his responsibility to protect Sean.
They eventually untangled themselves and leisurely floated on their backs in the pool, temporarily sated and relaxed, fingers entwined.
“It feels like you’ve always been in my life,” he quietly told Sean.
“Me, too.” He gently squeezed Emery’s hand.
“Promise me you’ll be careful at the superpod.”
“Only if you promise to try to enjoy it.”
He smirked. “I promise I’ll try to enjoy it.”
Sean stood up, feet touching the bottom. “I should have made you promise to enjoy it.”
Emery grinned. “Too late.”
“Ugh.” He climbed out of the pool and grabbed a towel. “You can’t spend our whole lives worrying about every detail.”
Emery followed him out of the pool, where Sean handed him a towel. “I’m not worrying about every detail. Just about sending Erik to the bottom of the ocean permanently. Better him dead than he hurts or kills anyone else.”
Chapter Three
The Moritas had decided to drive to Sarasota in their own car in case Sean and Emery wanted to stay behind at the Nadels’ house later to talk dolphin pod business.
Sean knew his dad had also suggested separate cars in deference to his mom’s difficulty embracing the whole dolphin shifters are real news. Helen Morita could only handle listening to so much of that reality before her nervous giggles started. Then Sean’s dad would have to either change the subject or take her home.
At least the shape-shifter stuff had made her completely forget any reservations she might have had about her son being gay.
Sean considered that a win and would take it as such.
Joseph and Louise Nadel lived in eastern Sarasota County, outside the city limits. A retired commercial real estate broker, Joseph had made his fortune and retired before the real estate bubble burst a couple of years earlier. They’d raised all five of their children in that house, which Sean believed should be called a mansion no matter what Emery said. At thirty-four, Emery was the eldest.
Sean had finally gotten over his unease and had learned to relax when at the Nadels’ home now that Emery’s father had personally welcomed him to the pod as Emery’s mate.
When Emery pulled his Mustang into his parents’ driveway, several other cars already sat parked there. Sean only recognized one other, besides the Nadels’ vehicles.
“Is that Wyatt’s car?” Sean asked.
Emery nodded. “Yep.” He got out.
Sean scrambled to join him. “He won’t try the same trick twice, will he?” Wyatt, an incorrigible practical joker, had scared the crap out of Sean by showing up, shifted, in their swimming pool.
Nothing like a seven-foot alligator to make a guy learn to walk on water.
Emery finally smiled. “Probably not.” His smile faded. “Not tonight, at least. Tonight’s about business.”
Sean followed him to the front door where Emery opened it without knocking. “Mom? Dad?” They walked in and closed it behind them.
“In here, Em,” his mom called back.
Louise, Wyatt, and Emery’s brother, Christopher, were all gathered in front of the stove, the two Nadels flanking Wyatt. Wyatt held a wooden spoon in one hand and the lid to a large pot in the other. The well-muscled man with the ebony skin and amber eyes stirred whatever was in the pot.
“I think dat’s about right,” he drawled in his Cajun accent.
“What are you cooking up now, besides trouble?” Emery asked as he hugged his mom and shook hands with his brother. He clapped Wyatt on the shoulder.
Wyatt grinned, exposing white teeth that, in his shifted mode, had scared Sean into wetting himself in his own pool. “Now why you assume I’m causin’ trouble, Em?”
“Because you’re always causing trouble,” he joked with his friend.
“Your momma can attest to the fact I been a perfect gentleman so far.”
Louise smiled. “That’s only because I threatened to turn you into a deep fryer full of gator nuggets if you scared me like that again.”
Christopher laughed. “I’ve never heard Mom scream so loud or long in my life.” He turned to Sean. “We all came running in here and found her curled up on the counter and Wyatt, naked, rolling around on the floor and laughing his ass off.”
Wyatt tipped his head over onto Louise’s shoulder. “Aw, you forgive me, right, Momma Flipper?”
She gently smacked his shoulder. “Yes, I did. You’re too damn cute to stay mad at.”
“In two-footed mode,” Sean added.
Wyatt took a careful taste of whatever it was he had bubbling in the pot. “Yeah, I do believe dat’s about right.” He offered a spoonful to Emery. “What you think?”
Emery carefully tasted, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “Damn, that’s good jambalaya. No wonder Mom forgives you.”
Wyatt offered Sean a taste. Not so spicy he couldn’t make out anything beyond the heat, Sean had to agree it was the best he’d ever sampled.
“Where’s Dad and everyone else?” Emery asked.
“Out back manning the gr
ill,” Louise said. “You might want to go check on them. Sean can help me get the hush puppies ready.”
Sean wasn’t an idiot, and neither was Emery. Em brushed a kiss across Sean’s lips before heading out back, Christopher on his heels.
Sean took Christopher’s place in front of the stove, on Wyatt’s other side. “So what did you want to talk about, Mom?”
She smiled. “You are a very smart man.”
“You think your momma gonna be all right, us talkin’ in front of her tonight?” Wyatt asked, now all business.
Sean shrugged. “That’s Dad’s department. My dad,” he clarified. “She’s got her own version of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ going on with the whole shape-shifter issue.”
Wyatt nodded and replaced the lid on the pot. Then he reached over and turned down the heat on the burner. When he looked at Sean, the gator shifter’s amber eyes seemed to burn with an intensity he hadn’t remembered seeing before.
“There gonna be some people here tonight,” he quietly said. “Shifters.”
“Shark shifters,” Sean said.
Wyatt hesitated, but finally nodded. “Em tell you?”
“He started to, but we got…distracted.” If you can call boinking our brains out a distraction.
“Not just shark shifters,” Wyatt quietly said. “Great whites. And lemme tell you somethin’, they every bit as scary on two legs as they are in the water.”
Sean felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Wyatt looked genuinely anxious, something he didn’t think the alligator was capable of feeling. “What are you saying? That they’re dangerous?”
“They can be. I’m not sayin’ your momma’s in any danger. But I’m sayin’ they can smell blood in the water or the air. They think someone might not be full-on into keepin’ secrets…”
Wyatt shrugged. “I’m sayin’ might not be a bad idea to get her outta here as soon as dinner’s over. Before we start talkin’ business, as it were.”
“I’ll take her home. Em can catch a ride with my dad.”
Louise shook her head. “You need to be here and be a part of the talks,” she said. “You’re Em’s mate. And your dad’s going to need to be part of the talks, too, because of logistics.”
Wyatt laid a hand on Sean’s shoulder. “An’ you need to show not a hint of fear, you hear me? They respect strength and they respect courage. Only way they gonna help us is if they think everyone’s on board and worthy of their help. Catch my drift?”
“Then who’s going to take her home?” Sean asked.
“Laura’s here,” Louise said. “I already talked to her. She’ll drive your mom home.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You might need to help your dad get her out of here,” Louise said. “Laura’s going to say she’s got a friend in Englewood she wants to visit. As soon as dinner’s over, and with as little fuss as possible, we need Helen scooted out the door. You know how your mom is. She won’t want anyone to think she’s being rude by leaving early, and she likely won’t want to go without your dad.”
Wyatt soberly nodded and squeezed Sean’s shoulder before releasing him.
“Why do I have a feeling we’re about to make a deal with the devil?” Sean asked them.
Wyatt grinned, flashing teeth. “Because we are, man. We are.” His smile faded. “The devil you know, and all that jazz.”
* * * *
Helen and Sam Morita arrived a few minutes later, bearing a delicious-smelling pot of chicken and dumplings as their contribution to the dinner.
Sean did his best to swallow back his nerves and to try to act normal.
For his mom’s part, to Sean’s familiar ear, her voice sounded a little too tightly wound, too high-pitched, her laughter coming too often and bearing a trilling titter that Sean suspected meant she was already on edge.
Too bad she’s not a drinker. In this case, he suspected a shot of something would help her relax.
The other people already there were Reese and Laura, two of the Nadels’ three daughters, Bob and Mary Wellsley, the Alpha of a pod near the Florida panhandle and his wife, and Michael and Kathy Haddox, the Jacksonville pod Alpha and his wife.
The sharks had yet to arrive, but were expected shortly.
With a brief moment alone in the kitchen, Emery pulled Sean in close and gave him a scorching, melting kiss that made Sean want to drag him upstairs and fuck his brains out again.
Emery smiled, his grey eyes filled with concern. “You all right?”
“You’d think I’d have learned by now to expect anything, but no. Not so much.”
“Shark shifters?”
Sean nodded. “Why are we talking to them if they’re so bad?”
“It’s not that they’re bad, but they operate under their own rules. They really don’t need our help in normal circumstances. We need their help right now. I’m sure that they’ll look at the situation and figure out what’s in it for them before making up their minds.”
“So it’s not a done deal?”
“Not by a long shot.” He kissed Sean again, for a moment driving all other thoughts out of his brain. “But in our favor is the fact my dad helped Floyd Edick out of a really serious jam several years ago. One thing the sharks believe in is paying back their debts. Dad called in the marker for this. Whether it stands up to their standard of being worthy of going through with remains to be seen.”
“What’d your dad do?”
“Great whites don’t have pods or social structures like the ocean mammal shifters do. They’re pretty solitary, for the most part. They have what they call spawnings every so often, sort of like our superpods. They absolutely don’t mate with humans, either. During one of their spawnings off California about twenty or so years ago, one of Edick’s brothers got caught by a research vessel. Dad was out there on business and rallied dolphin, porpoise, orca pods, and some land-based shifters to help out. They managed to rescue him from the research aquarium he was taken to. Made it look like ecoterrorists had freed him.”
“I’d say that’s a pretty big marker.”
“It is. But they’re still sharks.”
“Are there other kinds of shark shifters?”
“There used to be lots of different shark shifters. Unfortunately, many of them were in other parts of the world and got caught up in fishing nets, or they ended up mating with humans, or not mating at all, and dying out. The different shark breeds don’t usually closely associate with each other like other shifters do.”
“I’m guessing I shouldn’t quote Jaws lines at dinner?” Sean teased.
Emery’s expression darkened. “I know you’re just kidding, but don’t even think it.” He hesitated for a moment. “You ever watch The Sopranos?”
“Fuck, yeah. Loved that show.”
Emery slowly nodded. “They’re not mobsters, but pretend we’re about to sit down with Tony Soprano, and he thinks you might be a government snitch. That’s the level of serious that you need to take this whole situation.”
Sean blinked. “Fuck.”
* * * *
If Sean didn’t already know Floyd and Grace Edick were great white shark shifters, he wouldn’t have had a hard time believing it. Floyd, at around six five, stood solid and broad-shouldered, had neatly styled black hair, and brown eyes so dark they looked black. Forty-two years old, it turned out he was the senior partner of one of the largest law firms in Miami.
“Don’t bother with the jokes,” he dryly said, a smirk on his face. “I’ve heard them all.”
His wife, Grace, coolly appraised everyone after her introduction. A willowy six one, she had a lithe swimmer’s body, long black hair pulled into a braid down her back, and dark blue eyes the shade of midnight. She turned out to be brain surgeon at Jackson Memorial Hospital, and at thirty-eight apparently had a world-renowned reputation in the field of neurosurgery.
Helen Morita chatted the two newcomers up as if they were anyone else. Sean suspected no one had told her
they were shark shifters. From the way she appeared to focus on them, she likely thought they were humans. And she focused on Wyatt, too, which Sean attributed to the fact that he’d forgotten to tell her Wyatt was an alligator shifter.
He didn’t have the heart to break it to her, especially when she seemed hell-bent on getting Wyatt’s jambalaya recipe before the end of dinner.
Surprisingly, as soon as dinner was over, Sean’s father followed Helen into the kitchen when she went to help Louise with the dishes. Moments later, Helen Morita was happily leaving with Laura.
As Sean and Sam stood in the driveway and waved good-bye, Sean leaned close. “How’d you get rid of her, Dad?”
He shrugged. “I told her the truth. That we were going to be discussing pod business, and I thought she needed to go home.”
“Wow. We all thought it’d be a fight to get her out of here.”
Sam nodded. “I gave her two options. To sit in the kitchen all night, or go home.” He grinned. “She told me sitting in the kitchen would be rude.”
He turned to his father. At work, Sam Morita had been a slavedriver. At home, however, Helen ruled the roost with an albeit less-than-kosher fist. “I’m impressed, Dad.”
“I think Joseph’s wearing off on me.”
“This is straying dangerously close into TMI territory.” The last thing he wanted to do was discuss whatever relationship dynamics his parents had.
“Understood.” He rubbed his hands together. “Now then. Let’s go talk to the sharks about that fucking rat, Erik.”
Chapter Four
Emery wasn’t happy about bringing the sharks into the superpod discussions, but he couldn’t argue with his father’s logic.
And he’d certainly tried to do just that, without success.
Sharks, especially the great whites, were ruthless and focused, and if they agreed to do something, they’d follow through with it.
Grace spoke very little throughout dinner, enough to be polite, but seemingly content to let her husband bear the weight of the conversation. After dinner ended and Helen was safely bundled out the door, Emery felt himself marginally relax.