Page 3 of Shark Bait

We stare at each other for a few moments while she contemplates her answer. Telepathically, I’m begging her not to say she witnessed anything, even if she did see me wipe out everyone. If she says she saw me, she becomes a loose end I’ll need to tie up.

Only minutes ago, I made an instinctual decision and spared her life; I’m sticking with it. That will create a problem Alessio might want to fix, and I can’t let him, because I don’t know what he’d do about her.

“Deny it,” I tell her when I get the feeling she knows her death wish will come true if she admits to witnessing my mission.

She shakes her head. “I ain’t seen nothing.”

That a girl. She’s a survivor.

TWO

HE LETS ME TEASE HIM

WITNESS

Shark Daddy’s lollipop tastes like sour apple. I wonder if it matches his personality. Is he sour like the candy, which can taste perfectly sweet too, or is he just sour and nasty, like Fis and his crew, who the Shark offed, then dumped into the sea.

During the time I spent on the yacht, I’ve learned I can be a siren if I want to. I also learned to use my feminine wiles to see if a man could be manipulated. I open my mouth and use my tongue to slide the lollipop to the edge of my lips. He follows the movement of my tongue, but not in a way that tells me he’s attracted to me. I get the feeling he’s studying me as if I’m a frog he’s dissecting in science class.

“Good riddance,” I say, testing his resolve to spare my life, since he ordered me to lie about seeing what he did.

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” he says, confirming that neither of us said or heard anything. We’re like the three monkeys that see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.Okay, I can play that game.

I take the lollipop out of my mouth and smile while tapping his plush bottom lip with the candy. “You want it back?”

He shakes his head and reaches into his pocket for another one, this one with a pink wrapper.

“Oooo, what’s that one taste like?”

The man shrugs. “Maybe bubble gum.”

“Can I have it?”

He unwraps the lollipop and offers it to me. I don’t take it with my hand, but lean in and wrap my lips around the candy while batting my eyelashes, teasing him again.

He watches my mouth, but his eyes aren’t hooded, and he’s not giving off any creeper vibes. I’m an expert in creeper men. I seem to attract those by the dozens.

“I like this one better,” I slur around the lollipop.

He closes his fingers over the one I took first. “Then I’ll have the sour apple back.”

I try to push it past his lips, but he takes the candy from me and then puts it into his mouth, only to crush it with his teeth.

This man can’t be teased. He’s totally uninterested in me, probably because I’m almost seven months pregnant. His lack of interest makes me feel more at ease around him.

Hands on his hips, he steps back and casts a faraway gaze over the open sea.

“You thinking about what you’ll do with me?” I cross my arms over my chest. “Don’t think too hard now, lest your brain starts reasoning out all the ways you could push me off the boat and make it look like I slipped and fell. Now that you spared my life and told me I haven’t seen nothing of what you did, you can’t take it back, ’cause now I got all this hope blossoming, and it’ll just be sad as fuck if you shit all over my very hopeful party. You hungry?”

Shark (that’s what I’ll call him) regards me with a head tilt. “Are you mental?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a therapist. All I know is it’s June, and I’ve been stuck on this boat sailing with Fis and them for months now. You know a therapist? You think I’m mental? Want to cure me?” I chuckle. “Good luck.”

“It’s not a boat.”

“Huh?”

“You called the vessel a boat. It’s a yacht.”

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