Free Blood in the Water by Cleo Peitsche

somehow she doubted that.

Chapter 11

    Koenraad could barely control himself.  
    Monroe wasn’t ready for penetration—he would need some time to prepare her, to loosen her muscles—but his spurs wanted out, and his cocks demanded to be inside her.
    They were so swollen they throbbed painfully.  
    Being near Monroe, making love to her… It didn’t compare with the animal mating that he needed. Sex in a bed was a tease, a stopgap.  
    And he’d been teased many times a day for the last week.
    During the drive over from the aquarium, all he’d wanted was to lose himself in deep water. To be fully immersed in something that felt unequivocally right. Or as right as was possible with the sick in the ocean.
    And when Monroe had snapped at him, he’d thought for a moment that she somehow knew that he’d put Brady into a tank. That she blamed him for having trapped her on The Good Life for the last week.  
    He’d looked in her eyes and thought he saw scorn and disgust.
    But she’d been frustrated, that was all.
    Still, for a brief moment he’d had a glimpse of what it would feel like if she ever got tired of life with him, of the limited existence that he could offer.
    All he seemed to do was bring misery to the ones he cared about. If taking her into the ocean, which he craved anyway, would make her happy, he’d do it.
    He’d do anything to make her smile.
    Her soft curves were pressed tight against him. As wild as the ocean was, he could smell her intoxicating arousal.  
    His cocks throbbed. His balls were full and heavy.  
    Monroe felt surprisingly relaxed in his arms. It made him wonder if she’d been practicing breath control and meditation while he was off searching for Brady. She wasn’t using much oxygen at all. In fact, she seemed as efficient as she’d been a week earlier, when her veins had been full of his blood.
    He needed to go deeper underwater, until the storm above was forgotten, and so he did.
    Down here, it was calm. He wished he could take her deeper still, but she would need protection from the cold and the crushing water pressure.
    Too bad. He would have wrapped his body around her and taken her to the deepest parts of the ocean if he could. He would have shown her things humans knew nothing about. He wanted that, to expand her world. Pretty much the opposite of keeping her on a boat or in a secluded house.
    The scent of her arousal was stronger than ever, and it was wreaking havoc on his control. As if she knew what he was thinking, she reached a hand between their bodies.
    For a moment, her soft hips pulled away from his. His natural instinct was to press forward, but then Monroe squeezed her fingers around his shaft.
    Gritting his teeth, he stubbornly clung to the thought of how much it would hurt him to hurt her.
    She squeezed his shaft, jerked him, strangled him.
    She was trying to make him lose control. She wanted both his cocks, and she wanted his spurs anchored inside her while he emptied into her silken heat.
    And she knew that violent foreplay was his weakness.
    If he let her keep doing what she was doing, she was going to get her way.
    He was a shifter. He wasn’t supposed to be fighting this, not when his mate wanted him. It was against his nature. The urge was supposed to overwhelm him. It was meant to be violent.
    And then Monroe’s feet slid around the backs of his knees as she wrapped her legs around his. She unhooked her other arm from around his neck, and she plunged her other hand down, to grab his second shaft.
    He threw his head back and groaned. The spikes were pressing just under the skin, now, and—
    He ripped her wrists away from him moments before the spurs burst free. Monroe’s smile was triumphant.
    His mate was utterly insane. Tempting a shark like this…  
    She needed air. His mouth crashed over hers, and he kissed her like he couldn’t get enough. Because he couldn’t.  
    He would have preferred to prepare her, fore and aft, for his cocks. But now the