“Oh, my God,” I said through my laughter. “Baby, it’s just a stingray.”
“A fucking death ray!” she screeched from atop my shoulders. I wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten there, but I was pretty sure it would end in a black eye. My face already throbbed. “You don’t use your money for much, but that’s because you saved it all up for an untraceable way to kill me, didn’t you?”
“Ben—”
“Oh, my God! Help us! Call the fucking Coast Guard!”
We were in the middle of nowhere, but not that in the middle of nowhere. Fuck. Officials and hotel staff would be descending on us in no time.
“Georgie—”
“Shit! Oh, shit, Kline! He’s circling. This is what they do before they strike!” she screamed, and I was reasonably certain my eardrums were bleeding.
“Baby,” I said through a grimace. “It’s a stingray, not a shark.”
Sure, stingrays weren’t completely benign, but I’d read all about their frequent tendency to swim among tourists without incident before I’d booked our honeymoon. As long as we were watchful, I didn’t see the harm.
“THERE. ARE. SHARKS?!”
So much for calming her down…
“Your plan is fucked! He’s going to kill us both!” Her hands were in my hair by that point, yanking the strands with a strength I had no idea she possessed. “Get me the fuck out of here before I end you!”
Unwilling to torture her until both of my eyes were bloodied, I laughed and waded my way to the ladder. I’d thought being close to safety would bring her some comfort, that the idea of an escape route would be enough, but she jumped from my shoulders to the deck without even touching a rung before I could stop her.
“That’s it!” she said, pointing at me. “That’s the last time I go in the water.”
“We’re in an overwater bungalow for another week and a half! What do you mean that’s the last time?”
“Nope. Nuh-uh. Not gonna happen. If you want me dead, you’re just going to have to figure out another way.”
I pressed my hand against my chest, and my heart pounded against my fingertips, wild and erratic, all thanks to my husband who was still in the water, watching me have a minor—okay, huge—freak-out on the deck above him. His eyes were amused, mouth set in a tickled grin.
His crystal-blue gaze turned heated in a flash as it made a circuit of my dripping wet, bikini-clad body.
If I hadn’t almost died, I might’ve been turned on.
But I had been mere moments from sleeping with the fishes rather than swimming with them, and my otherwise sweet husband found it nothing but comical.
No matter how brutally I stared at him, his smirk never diminished, playful eyes branding me as his and threatening to hump me in broad daylight.
“Don’t smolder at me!” I shouted down to him, my feet still firmly planted on our deck.
No way in hell would I ever let him coax me into the sea of death again.
I enjoyed the view of the ocean, but savoring it from the sand or the pool was as far as I preferred to go. Sea creatures of all kinds creeped me the fuck out. Small ones flitted and flaunted, nibbling at your legs when you least expected it, and anything bigger could swallow you whole. No fucking thanks. No man, orgasm expert or not, was going to talk me into seeing it a different way.
“I’m not smoldering, baby.” He held up both hands, an irritating display of the exact opposite of innocent. “I’m just enjoying the view that is my beautiful, riled up wife.”
How could he smile when I had just been three seconds away from seeing the light?
With annoyance, I watched Kline run a hand through his hair. Droplets of water slipped from those wet locks down his chest, until they disappeared south of his belly and back into the ocean.
Okay, so I wasn’t that annoyed. But I was doing my best to keep up appearances.
“I’m going inside to make some lunch.” I grabbed a towel off one of the lounge chairs on the deck. “You can stay out here and risk your life, but I’m not going to be a part of it,” I huffed over my shoulder as I strode toward the interior of our bungalow. Well, I should say, sashayed, because yeah, my ass was a superpower when it came to my husband.
“Bring that sexy ass back here.”
“Not a chance!”
“But I love you, Benny! You and your ass. I really love your ass.”
“Trying to off me is an odd way of showing it!”
“Baby, don’t be mad,” he called from behind me in that tone he knew usually worked like a charm. It was annoyingly sweet yet husky in a way that only Kline could pull off.
Not gonna work this time, buddy.
I flipped him off over my shoulder, and his chuckles followed me inside.
“Save me some food!”