Touching Paradise Read online

  “What about food? There’s not much here.”

  “I had a big lunch.”

  He still seemed hesitant. “I’ll be back soon. Stay out of the water.”

  “I doubt I’ll get much farther than the bed. If that’s ok.”

  This seemed to reassure him. “That’s quite fine.” He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips, then turned to go.

  He turned back, caught her around her waist. His eyes stared into hers, then he crushed his lips onto her mouth. It took her breath away, and she closed her eyes because the world was spinning. His tongue danced over her bottom lip. He nibbled her, then swept deeper into her mouth. She couldn’t keep up with him. She felt awkward, like it was her first kiss.

  When he let her go, she was still reeling. He smiled, and her entire body felt like it had been set afire. “Until later,” he said.

  Monroe stayed on the balcony for another five minutes, but she didn’t really see the ocean in front of her. She pressed her fingertips to her lips. They still tingled from his kiss.

  Finally she undressed and tried to nap in the bed, which was, incidentally, the most comfortable she’d ever been in. But she was too overstimulated to sleep. All of this… it was new and exciting, and whenever she was about to drift off, she’d come fully awake with a start.

  She swung her legs off the soft bed and slipped into a blue cotton dress that she knew would swirl around her calves when she walked.

  Might as well check out the house, and then, maybe, the beach.

  Chapter 14

  An hour later, his sleek yacht plowed determinedly through the waves, but Koenraad felt pulled in the opposite direction.

  He wanted nothing more than to blow everything off and spend the entire week with Monroe. He’d told her that they’d have plenty of space, but he didn’t want to be apart from her, and he knew the feeling was mutual. He wanted to do this right. Take her island hopping during the days. They could live on the yacht, making love while the ocean gently rocked them.

  He liked her. A lot. She was comfortable in her own skin, and she seemed to be handling the shapeshifting thing well, but she hadn’t seen him shift.

  Maybe it was better if she never did. If she was going home again in a week, what did it matter?

  He rubbed his chin and smiled. If things went the way he hoped they did, there wouldn’t be any permanent goodbyes for a long time. After all the misery in his life, Monroe was a breath of fresh air. He liked her little sarcastic remarks, and her open heart, and the way she melted when he touched her.

  She had an unselfconscious frankness that he liked. Her honesty about her ex, for example. She’d admitted what her ex had said, and she hadn’t tried to save face. She hadn’t let it diminish her, and most importantly, she wasn’t bitter. A little wounded, sure, but who wouldn’t be?

  Maybe some men didn’t like that kind of honesty, but Koenraad appreciated it. Human women couldn’t successfully lie to him. Not unless they were sociopaths, and if he wanted that, well, there was always Victoria.

  His afternoon and evening with Monroe had been the first time he’d truly relaxed since the day Brady went missing. He hadn’t even realized how tense he was until the stress left him.

  He liked Monroe’s body, too. No, he loved it. Curvy and soft and strong, and stunningly beautiful. She had healthy sexual appetites, too, and he loved how she clung to him like a drowning woman.

  Just thinking of her curves pressed against him made his cock stir, and he remembered how she’d felt, arching on his bed, her sexy body writhing as he devoured her. He couldn’t wait to get back and taste her again.

  He hoped she’d still be in bed when he got back.

  His cock was throbbing against the confines of his shorts, and he didn’t need to look down to know that there was one hell of a tent situation going on.

  Enough sexy thoughts. He needed to focus.

  Something was happening. It seemed his whole world had decided to go to pieces all at once. The dangerous sick… Wardell missing… Victoria back in the Caribbean.

  Plus he had his own reasons for worrying about the water. Well, one reason. Brady. Koenraad believed his son was safe, but only as long as the sick didn’t spread again.

  When Darius had called, Koenraad had wanted to throw the phone into the ocean. Funny how Darius could get other shifters to Tureygua and Curaçao when it was an emergency. Maybe, if Koenraad and Wardell hadn’t been shouldering so much work on their own, the situation never would have become urgent in the first place.

  Darius wanted samples of the water, and he’d tasked Koenraad with gathering some from near where he lived, or, rather, where he used to live. Darius didn’t know that Koenraad had relocated, and Koenraad planned to keep it that way.

  The process of collecting samples was being repeated on all the islands in the area, with special attention being paid to Curaçao and Tureygua, of course.

  Koenraad had decided that testing the water was a good idea, and he’d made backup samples for himself. Darius could conduct the official investigation, but Koenraad was damned sure going to run his own analysis.

  Getting help from a top-notch lab that didn’t answer to other shifters wouldn’t be easy. Especially on short notice. And Koenraad’s lab was still getting up to speed. Hell, his lab was focused on genetic diseases in shifters. The scientists he’d hired were biologists. He needed chemists.

  His parents knew chemists, so Koenraad had phoned his father after leaving Monroe. He’d gone right to voicemail. His parents spent most of their time in shark form. They loved to migrate, loved to hunt in the deep oceans. It could be weeks before they even learned he’d been looking for them.

  Reaching out to his parents hadn’t been easy. If they started making phone calls on his behalf, it wouldn’t be long before they learned what he’d been up to the last six months. And when they found out, they’d connect the dots quickly.

  They were unlikely to be supportive of his decisions, and things could go downhill quickly. His wealth was his own, had been since his eighteenth birthday, but if motivated, his parents could make the research difficult.

  He docked his boat and grabbed the large cardboard box containing a dozen quart jars. It had been over an hour since he’d left Monroe standing barefoot and lovely on his balcony. The thought of her in his bed was the only reason he didn’t scowl when he caught Victoria’s scent.

  The office that Darius used to oversee his various businesses as well as island matters was a five-minute walk from the ocean. Koenraad covered the distance quickly.

  The door to the square white building was ajar, and Koenraad pushed in. Nine shifters, all sharks, were crowded into the waiting area, deep in conversations on the same topics: Wardell and the sick. They were calling it “the contaminant.” Like it was sludge from one of Curaçao’s oil refineries. Like it hadn’t put shifters into comas.

  Some of the sharks Koenraad hadn’t seen in months, but he didn’t have time to catch up. Darius sat atop his secretary’s desk. There was a large map spread next to him, and he was taking careful notes with a pencil.

  “Drop them in the back,” Darius said, jerking his head. “I assume they’re labeled?”

  Koenraad nodded and crossed the room. A few shifters acknowledged him. He grunted in response.

  Just as Koenraad reached the entrance to the hallway, Darius frowned and stabbed at the box with his pencil. “Those samples are bigger than I need. If it’s no trouble, could you pour them into the plastic bottles?”

  “I’m in a hurry,” Koenraad said, irked. “Dump what you don’t need.”

  He went through the building until he reached the back room. To his relief, it was empty except for a shark who was finishing pouring off his samples. He nodded a greeting at Koenraad and left.

  Koenraad didn’t know the shark’s name, but he’d encountered him a few years earlier in the ocean. He lived in the states, off of the Florida coast, and had come down ahead of a tropical storm along with several dozen
other sharks who weren’t willing to move inland.

  Victoria’s odor was faint. She’d probably been one of the first to drop off her samples. If he moved fast, he might be able to get out before she returned from wherever she was.

  The small room was filled with boxes, most of them labeled Falcon Tubes, 50ml. Some were sealed and stacked neatly, but many more had been opened. He glanced inside one and saw the tubes were filled with water.

  He used the side of his foot to do some gentle but fast rearranging until he had an empty bit of floor space large enough for his box. He carefully set it down and was about to leave when his gaze caught the samples marked Zone 1-12, Curaçao. Zone 3 included the beach where they’d found Wardell’s cowboy boot.

  Curious, he opened the box. The samples were in larger containers, the exact locations marked, and not in Victoria’s messy scrawl. Darius must have sent her a new partner.

  Good. Darius was finally catching on.

  Frowning, Koenraad did some quick calculations. He planned to investigate this on his own, right? So why not save himself a long boat trip? With Victoria working that area, he wasn’t going to take Monroe anyway, so going to Curaçao would just be a waste of time.

  Working quickly, he helped himself to parts of those samples and quickly labeled them. He put them into the box he’d brought, then made the smaller samples as Darius had requested. He moved fast but his hands were steady. If someone asked what he was doing, he could always tell the truth, that he wanted to check his own samples, but he preferred to keep this to himself.

  When he was finished, he flipped the box’s flaps over the top to shield the contents from casual observation, then picked up the package and headed back the way he had come.

  “Leaving already?” Darius asked.

  “I’ve got company waiting,” Koenraad said. “You need me, you have my number.”

  He smelled Victoria as he approached his boat. While objectively her scent was pleasant, Koenraad’s lip curled in disgust. If she had boarded The Good Life, he was going to throw her into the water.

  “Nearly missed you.” Her voice, falsely warm, made him grit his teeth. She had come up behind him, and he turned; Victoria wasn’t the kind of woman he felt comfortable leaving his back to.

  “I don’t have time for this, Victoria.”

  She inhaled, her delicate nostrils expanding slightly. Her large pupils went wider. Koenraad expected her to make a comment about Monroe, but instead she lowered her head with a little smile. “You can spare five minutes for the mother of your son.”

  Her words knifed through him. She stepped closer. “That’s what I want to talk to you about,” she said. “Brady.”

  “Nothing to discuss.”

  “I think I know where he is.”

  “What?” he asked hoarsely. A hot surge of adrenaline shot through his veins, and he struggled to control his physical reaction. He needed to be careful. “No,” he said. “You don’t get to come out here and use Brady against me.”

  “You’re so vain. Not everything is about you.” Her cool eyes roamed over his face. “I think he’s still alive, and I think he might even be in the area.”

  “Did you catch his scent?”

  “No,” she admitted. “What I’m saying is that so long as I’m here, I might as well help in your search.”

  “It’s been two years. What makes you think I’m still looking?”

  “You were a few months ago.”

  “Well, I’ve stopped.” He stared into her eyes. “I’ve gotten on with my life, and so should you.” He was referring to the impossibility of a future for the two of them, but she clearly took his words to mean something else.

  “I’m his mother,” she said. “And I know he’s alive.”

  Koenraad clenched the box tighter. “Based on what?”

  It seemed like an eternity before she answered, and that pause played with his peace of mind. “Female intuition,” she said finally. “A mother can feel these things.”

  “Three weeks after you lost him, your mother’s intuition told you he was dead.”

  Irritation flashed in her eyes. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “Stay away from me.”

  It wasn’t until he was well out of sight and scent of the dock that his shoulders finally relaxed. Victoria was playing games. She’d finally learned that she couldn’t lead him around by his cock, so now she was sinking her claws into his emotions. She didn’t know a damned thing, but she’d managed to rattle him nonetheless. The last thing he needed was her shadowing him under the pretense of looking for Brady.

  With the sick in the water, it would take her more than a few days to track him down, but if she was determined enough, she’d be able to do it.

  All the more reason to get this mystery solved so that she could be on her way.

  Chapter 15

  Monroe walked around the six-foot-long model ship in the middle of Koenraad’s library. She wondered if he’d made it, and if so, how long it had taken. She stretched out a hand and touched one of the white sails with her fingertip, then drew her hand lightly over the delicate rigging.

  The detail was staggering. The ship’s decks gleamed. In fact, she almost expected tiny, sunburned sailors to come above deck and start lowering the sails.

  She straightened and looked around the library again. There had to be several hundred books on the built-in shelves, and in one corner was a wooden ladder that was connected to the second level. The theme was clearly nautical, and this was the most fully furnished room that she had discovered in the mansion, though there were several sections she hadn’t explored at all.

  She passed through the kitchen, got a glass of cool water, then wandered out the back.

  An ocean breeze played with the ends of her hair as she stepped from the stone onto the warm, shifting sand. The architect had designed the building around the beach, she realized, because there was a sharp turn to her left that mirrored the shape of the mansion’s hallways.

  She wandered over that way, passing an enormous and immaculate pool. The point of maintaining a pool when the ocean was a stone’s throw away eluded her. Status symbol, probably. Good for parties. She wondered if chlorine irritated shark skin, then laughed aloud when she realized how crazy it was to even think about that.

  Continuing on, she saw that the ocean here actually formed an inlet the size of a city block. A frown settled on her face as she stared at the rocks heaped on both sides of the inlet’s entrance, and she discerned the outline of an open gate. It was so well disguised that if she hadn’t been staring directly at it, she never would have seen it.

  So the architect had caught and tamed a part of the ocean. Impressive. She made her way down the beach for a closer look.

  The calm water was so clear and blue that it nearly broke her heart. The Hudson wasn’t going to be a good substitute, that was for sure.

  She took another sip from her glass as she waded out, ankle-deep, then deeper, up to her knees, the bottom of her dress clutched in the same hand that held the glass.

  The water didn’t seem deep, and it was so beautiful. Small fish darted just a few feet beyond where she stood.

  She considered going inside, changing and coming out for a swim. Salt water was a lot more buoyant than the pools she was used to lounging beside. And there weren’t really any waves in this corralled bit of ocean.

  She felt safe here.

  Because of Koenraad.

  Hell. She was going in. This was a private beach, and she hadn’t heard a single boat or seen any signs of other people since she’d arrived. She didn’t need to bother with a swimsuit. She emptied the glass into the blue water and watched as the wind carried the last few drops so that they fell in an arc.

  A flash of movement caught her attention.

  For a moment she couldn’t make sense of the dark shape in the water. A mass of seaweed? No, a fish. Maybe a Nassau grouper. But too large even for that.

  Coming toward her no
w.

  Her body froze, and she stared wide-eyed at the dark shape. The triangular dorsal fin and tail emerged from the water, the animal’s silhouette now unmistakable.

  It was a shark, no doubt about it. Not a gigantic one, but four feet long was big enough that she shouldn’t be in its domain.

  Large enough to kill a woman.

  Her feet came unglued from the sand, and she backed up until only her ankles were in the water. The beach here sloped so gently that she knew she was safe, out of reach.

  She shaded her eyes with her hand and furrowed her brow, trying to see clearly. Now that she knew shark shifters existed, she had to wonder if this was a shark or a shifter.

  The shark was now clearly visible, and while it was hard to tell what its dark eyes were tracking, she felt it was watching her.

  Of course it was. There wasn’t any other reason for it to be in this exact location.

  She walked a few feet to the right, and the shark followed. It never stopped swimming, she noticed, and she remembered hearing something about certain shark species being unable to breathe if they stopped moving. That they needed to force water over their gills.

  She went back to the left, and the shark mirrored her movement in the water. The creature was graceful, beautiful.

  There wasn’t anything predatory in its actions. It seemed… curious, like it wanted to come closer. If it had been a dolphin, that would have been her conclusion.

  Maybe it was a young shifter? But if so, why not change shape?

  “Hi,” she said. She waved at it, then dropped her hand because she felt incredibly stupid.

  The animal rolled a bit, its huge, dark eye studying her. Its tail thrashed and it swam out, circled back. Every time it turned its head, the skin over its gills rippled. It seemed… delicate. Monroe had the unsettling impression that for all those razor-sharp teeth, the animal was fragile.

  It abruptly swam away, quickly disappearing into the clear water. Either it had gone out toward the sea, or it was so well camouflaged as to be invisible. A shiver ran down her spine.