Ladra.
My hand lays flat against the rough texture of the great white beneath me. She glides through the water smoothly, her body wiggling back and forth as she swims.
She’s a serene one. Hasn’t minded me one bit hanging onto her fin.
There’s a plastic six-pack ring caught on one of her teeth, but I’ve been letting her get used to my presence first before I extract it. Something that should never be in any fucking animal’s mouth.
I wouldn’t mind if it were wrapped around the neck of someone else, though.
Fucking. Thief.
It’s all I can think—a constant loop in my head, reminding me how easily I got played. And the only one stupid enough to let her in was me.
Doubt I’m the only one to fall victim to those big, sad eyes, though.
When I awoke the morning after I fucked her, my heart was already pumping adrenaline into my system. I just knew she did something to fuck me over. And when I found her gone, my fear was cemented.
It took me the rest of the day to figure out what she did. Nothing was missing from my wallet, and my safe went untouched. It wasn’t until I went into my office and found the bottom desk drawer unlocked that I knew she had pulled something.
Nothing was missing, and I couldn’t figure out what she was up to for several days. That is, until I looked at my credit report and discovered I had a new credit card on it. One that I didn’t fucking open.
The bitch stole my goddamn identity.
It’s been a few weeks since that happened, and since then, I’ve been calling to see the charges on my account. She hasn’t blown through the money as I expected, but there’s still time. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what her angle is.
Can’t figure out my own either, considering I haven’t brought myself to freeze the account and call the authorities.
Yet.
The anger coursing through my system is fucking astounding. If I didn’t possess control over my emotions, it would’ve been dangerous for me to get in the water today.
Sharks can feel when we’re anything but relaxed. An elevated heart rate would be the equivalent to strapping seal guts to my body and going for a swim.
I’m furious enough to take on a two-ton animal, and though I can’t promise myself I’d win, I’d put up a really good fucking fight. Problem is, I don’t want to fight a shark.
What I want to do is throttle the little siren that tricked me.
Christ, and to think for one fucking second, I thought I might actually want to see her again.
I force her from my mind, for now, focusing on the beauty before me. She darts to the left, thrashing her tail a little and throwing me a tad off-balance.
Down here, it’s where I feel most calm—swimming alongside Mother Nature’s fiercest creation.
I run my hand alongside her fin, coaxing her back into a relaxed state.
Slowly, I slide up the side of her body and toward her mouth, continuing to pet her as I do. She’s a fourteen-footer and bulky, too. Covered in mating scars, which gives me hope for research. It’s not very often we find females mature enough to give birth.
Keeping a close eye on her body language, I snag the plastic and slowly slide it off her tooth. Then I release her fin, letting her swim out of my hold while I aim for the ladder to the enclosure ten feet away. The second my head pops out of the water, I find my research partner, Troy, crouching down at the ladder, waiting for me.
“You good, Zo?”
I hate when he calls me that.
His red, curly hair is piled into a bun today, the freckles smattered across every inch of his face, prominent beneath the blue light.
“Stop calling me that, asshole,” is my response.
“Well, you’ve been stomping around the place all day. Surprised she didn’t take a bite out of you. I was expecting to have to get the net and fish out your limbs today.”
“Watch me throw you in so I can fish out yours instead,” I retort, pulling myself out of the water while ensuring to splatter Troy as I do. He only chuckles, used to my attitude by now.
“She good to go yet?” Troy asks, referring to the shark circling in the massive enclosure.
A few years ago, I built this research center from the ground up—Vitale Oceanic Research for Selachians. It’s my life’s work and something I’ve been privileged to do since I got the funding for it from the government.
It’s a massive lab built a few hundred miles off the shoreline. The only way to get here is by boat or helicopter—one of my favorite things about being out here. It’s an oasis.
The surface is made up of mostly all boardwalks surrounding the four enclosures where we bring the sharks into. There’s a platform for helicopters to land—sometimes other scientists travel here to learn about what we’ve gathered—and a dock for the boats. Below the surface is where the research is conducted.
Not much is known about mating rituals for great whites, and I’ve spent my entire career trying to learn as much as possible about it. We bring them in every so often to conduct our research and then immediately release them with tags attached to their fins so we can hopefully gain insight into something humans know very little about.
“Yup,” I say.
“You’re a sourpuss today—more than usual. What stingray barb got lodged up your ass?”
My eye twitches with irritation at his shitty joke. Then again, his jokes are always shitty.
Troy has been with me since the beginning. We went to college together, and despite how much of a pain in the ass he is, he’s a damn good marine biologist and just as passionate about what we do as I am.
“Got my identity stolen,” I answer shortly, not really wanting to get into it but too furious to contain it.
Troy’s eyes widen, making him look like a cartoon character. He follows me as I make my way down the metal walkway. The sun is beaming down on my skin, and more than anything, I wish I was back down in the water. Where it’s cool and fucking silent.
“No shit? You fall for one of those phishing emails, you old fart?”
I sigh. I’m only a year older than him, but he loves to treat me like I’m ancient.
“No,” I bark, leaving it at that. I’m having trouble forcing myself to admit aloud that a girl swindled me. Troy would never let me live it down, and then I’d have to attach cinderblocks to his ankles and throw him in the ocean to find peace again.
Right alongside Jamie—or whoever she is. I’d bet my last dollar that’s not even her real name. Was the real Jamie another unsuspecting victim?
Jesus.
I rub my hand roughly over my hair, the short spikes soothing my frayed nerves. Hatred is churning deep in my stomach and polluting anything good I had thought about her previously.
I want to fucking hurt her. Even worse, I want to fuck her again while I do it. Her body was addicting that night—so addicting that I couldn’t leave her alone until the early hours of the morning. And it makes me sick that the craving hasn’t dissipated in the slightest.
“You’ll get it back, man,” Troy assures quietly, sensing my turmoil. He knows better than to push me. I’m already on the verge of snapping, and the last thing I want to do is take it out on the wrong people.
Nodding my head, I head into the small cement cabin, V.O.R.S. painted across it in bold black letters. There’s only an elevator within, and it’ll take me down a couple of hundred feet below sea level to my lab. Then, I will spend the rest of the day watching a camera feed of the female shark gliding throughout the vast blue ocean.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll get it back. Go tag her and then release her from the enclosure,” I order, pointing toward the female shark I was swimming with. “We got a lot of screen time ahead of us.”
Troy offers me a smart-ass salute, then turns to do as I say while I smash my finger in the button to open the elevator doors.
I will absolutely get my identity back. However, I’m not waiting on the legal process to accomplish that for me.
I’m going to fucking find her first.
The sand compresses beneath my feet as I walk the beach for the fifth fucking time today. If I ever get my hands around her throat, there will be no disputing that it was premeditated.
It’s been a little over three weeks since I fucked her, but I’ve been looking for her for only two days. There’s a sinking feeling that she could be out of town already, but I refuse to give up just yet.
Port Valen is a small beach town, and Jamie had mentioned in a passing comment that she’s still getting used to the ocean, so it’s the only place I can think to look, aside from the bar I had met her in.
A woman in a royal blue string bikini starts heading my way, a bright white smile on display beneath her obnoxious sunhat.
“No,” I clip. She stops in her tracks, the smile melting off her face as if it were a scoop of ice cream. In a matter of seconds, her lips twist into a scowl.
Except my attention is already drawn away from her, now locked on the source of all my anger.
Ecco la mia piccola ladra.
She’s walking the beach now, wearing a neon green bathing suit bikini, and tiny denim shorts, the matching bottoms to her top peeking through the unfastened jeans. Her lithe, tanned body is on full display, which only serves to brighten the hair curling down past her shoulders. The blonde is radiant beneath the sunlight, a soft breeze blowing the tendrils around her face.
She looks tired—sad—but I’m not falling for that bullshit again.
It was one of the reasons I had bothered with her in the first place. She had a sense of humor and a perpetual grin, but nothing about her seemed happy or carefree. Which is exactly why I liked her. My darkness was attracted to hers, and it seems I learned the hard way just how dangerous it is.
The second I spot her, I gun it straight for her. Instead of storming up to her and grabbing her by the throat like I’d prefer, I keep my pace casual and relaxed.
Moments later, our eyes clash, and hers round at the corners. She bristles, and I can see that alarm system blaring in her head, banging the gong like a madman, and screaming at her to turn around and run away. If she does, I’ll fucking tackle her ass, uncaring of who sees.
She forces herself to keep walking, probably hoping I hadn’t noticed her little crime. Which is precisely what I plan to make her think.
“Thought you didn’t want to see me again,” I say casually when she’s close enough.
She forces a grin, light-years away from reaching her eyes. Her nervousness is palpable; just like the sharks lurking in the ocean, I can smell her fear.
“Just couldn’t stay away, I guess,” she says, ending it with an awkward laugh. “This doesn’t have to be weird. We saw each other naked. It wasn’t anything special for either of us. I’m okay with us keepin’ it moving.”
Now that’s a fucking lie.
I raise a brow. Normally, I’d enjoy the way it makes her swallow nervously, but that comment is enough to infuriate me. I don’t need her to stroke my ego, but the fact that even now, she still fucking lies.
I don’t get the fucking point of it.
That was the best fuck of her life, and she doesn’t even need to open her mouth and tell me so to know that. My soaked bed sheets and her red, shell-shocked face were a clear indication.
“Wasn’t anything special?” I reiterate.
Another awkward laugh. “Don’t make this weird, Enzo.”
“Okay,” I tell her. “I won’t remind you of the best night of your life. But I am curious if you want to experience the best day of your life now.”
Her brows pinch, and she stares at me like she’s waiting for the punchline. She even glances around as if a film crew is going to pop out and tell her she’s being punked.
Patiently, I wait for her to make up her mind.
“I don’t think that’s a good—”
“It’s not sex, Jamie. I won’t even ask you about yourself.”
It’d all be a lie anyway.
She blinks. “What exactly is going to give me the best day of my life then?”
“A shark.”
“Oh, you’re fucking cracked,” she tells me with an incredulous laugh, and for a second, it almost seems genuine. It makes her look… innocent.
Yet another lie.
“Scared?”
“Uhm, who wouldn’t be?”
“Me.”
She frowns. “Okay, well you got me there.”
“I’ll keep you safe,” I assure her. And it’s the truth. I will keep her safe from the sharks. Just not from me.
