Oh, Bite Me: Paranormal Dating Agency

by Chris Genovese

  “Are you serious?” Penny asked. “I was kidding. I really don’t need—”

  “That’s enough,” Gerri said. “You’re not fooling anyone. Write your room number down and give the card back to me.”

  Penny didn’t argue. She wrote down her room number and handed the card to Gerri. With that, the older woman stood and walked away, calling out over her shoulder, “It was nice to meet you, Penelope.”

  One of the young studs in the pool climbed out of the water and walked away in the same direction. Penny would never know the truth, but she liked to believe he was headed off to rock Gerri’s world. She seemed like the kind of woman who could handle that and so much more. Penny laughed at the thought of it and turned off her computer, no longer feeling like working. She would rather think up fantasies of some of these hot men sneaking into her room at night. Ordering another drink, Penny relaxed into her imagination. If nothing else, the older woman she’d met at the pool had given her a sense of hope that her love life might not truly be at its end.

  ***

  The phone rang later that afternoon as Penny was stepping out of the shower with plans to curl up in bed with a good book. Sylvia was out somewhere, probably on a date, maybe even a picnic where she’d come home telling tales of getting fucked on a blanket beneath a palm tree.

  “Hello,” she said as she picked up the phone.

  She felt like she should announce herself as Sylvia’s secretary since any call they’d received so far had been for her best friend.

  “Penelope?” the voice asked, and right away Penny knew it was Geraldine Wilder.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “It’s Gerri,” the voice on the other end said. “We met earlier at the pool.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I believe I’ve found you the perfect date, and the guy lives right here in Queensland.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I am not.”

  “So…umm…”

  A million little ants raced through Penny’s limbs as the nerves took over and she got the urge to pee. This wasn’t normal. She’d been expecting to hide away, get some work done, maybe watch a live band or two, but she’d never expected to be set up on a blind date.

  “Pick up a ticket for the Salvation’s Sister party ship down by the resort docks,” Gerri informed her. “It’s casual since it’s a daytime cruise, but no jeans. You know, maybe wear something light…fresh…sexy?”

  Penny remained silent as she took in everything Gerri said.

  “He’ll approach you,” she continued. “His name is Thane.”

  “Dane?” she asked.

  “Thane,” Gerri replied.

  “Stain?” Penny asked, and she really wasn’t trying to be funny, but she couldn’t quite grasp the name.

  Gerri laughed on the other end.

  “Yes, dear. I’m setting you up with a man named Stain.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No, not seriously. His name is T…H…A…N…E…Thane. The ship leaves at noon. Don’t miss it unless you want to stand him up.”

  “Wait, what does he look like…”

  Gerri had already hung up. They hadn’t even discussed payment. Was she supposed to pay the woman for setting her up on the date? The other dating agency had charged her a fortune even though it had ended so badly. They’d refused to refund her money even after she’d explained how she’d been threatened by a feral ferret. As Penny set the phone down in the receiver, it sunk in that tomorrow at midday, she was expected to get dressed, put on some makeup, and be on a cruise where she’d meet a mystery man.

  She walked to the closet and spied the wrinkled clothes she had hanging up. Only one outfit could possibly work in this situation. It was a breezy white pants and top set that Sylvia told her looked lovely.

  Penny hated the word lovely. Lovely could mean anything from the way a cadaver looked at a funeral to the way someone’s old grandmother looked the day they went to meet her at her nursing home.

  Didn’t Nana look lovely? She sure does like her afternoon bowl of Jell-O!

  It wasn’t the best way to describe a thirty-something on her way to a daylight cocktail party on a boat. But lovely was all she had, so she pulled out her clothes and decided to whore the hell out of that lovely piece of fabric. Besides, she knew the pants hugged her ass snugly and the top showed off her belly a little. She didn’t give a shit what Sylvia thought. Lovely would have to be the new sexy tomorrow.

  Oh, who am I kidding?

  Chapter 4

  “Do I really need to show you how it’s done?”

  Thane looked at Kino with a sidelong glance. If it were anyone else, he might have backhanded him. Nothing sucks the manliness out of a guy like a slap to the face. Of course, Kino didn’t need to show him how it was fucking done. He’d been having sex with local women for years, and he was damn good at “driving the spear” as Kino liked to call it.

  “You see?” Kino started. “The key is, you have to play with her first. She needs to be nice and wet. I use my tongue. Then the spear drives in like it’s stabbing through grain.”

  The fact that he’d compared pussy to grain wasn’t lost on Thane. It seemed Kino couldn’t distinguish one edible food from another.

  “Shut up,” Thane said.

  “I’m just saying,” he continued. “Finding a mate is easy. Pick the hottest girl around. Pick Kalina. You two were good together and she doesn’t yet bear the mark. She’s a great match for you.”

  “Shut up,” Thane repeated.

  Kalina was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever laid eyes on, and yes, things may have been good between them once, but she wasn’t the one. He knew that. Thane couldn’t do things like the others. He should have been able to. Finding a mate wasn’t impossible. It wasn’t even difficult. As Kino had stated, beautiful women were everywhere in Australia, in all major cities, and in the smaller towns. Even on Shamrock Island, which had gotten its name from its shape, all the women were beautiful. Kalina was beautiful. Yet, he knew deep down that she wasn’t the answer. She wasn’t the one.

  Shamrock was a hidden place, usually only stumbled upon by lost fishermen. With over 8,000 islands surrounding the continent, Thane and his people were safe here. They could live their half-dressed, completely chill beach town lifestyle without any worries. The island was little more than a small mountain peeking out of the water. His great-great-grandfather had been the first to settle here. With Queensland so close by, it was easy to speed over to the mainland to pick up any necessities, yet it kept his people safe and secluded.

  This was the problem with finding his perfect mate. Kino and his small school of friends had migrated from the Hawaiian Islands many years before, and aside from having an insatiable sexual appetite, the guy didn’t seem to care much about anything. He’d found his mate too quickly and the constant bickering between him and his wife, Ruby, was as hilarious as it was annoying. Ruby was a spitfire, and Kino’d had a hell of a time keeping up with her, especially now that she was pregnant. She didn’t let him get away with anything.

  Sometimes Thane wondered what life would be like if Kino had never come this way. As much as he appreciated everyone else in his pack, it was his Polynesian buddy who reminded him there was more to life than ruling unruly people. His pack was a tough bunch, but they were loyal. He hated calling them a school and rarely did. The word made him feel like he was dragging around a class of high schoolers.

  “So, you trust this woman?” Kino asked, breaking the silence that was only interrupted by the three young kids playing in the shallows.

  Thane envied their ability to splash in the foam of the wave breaks. Children were so free to play and be silly, without any of the drama of the adult world. Tiko, Kino and Ruby’s first child, was only ten years old, and Malena, their daughter was five. Little Ricky was four and was the son of Rickshaw and Paisley. With Kino and Ruby expecting another so soon, Thane often joked about how they might have to create an a
ctual school in their school. Usually around the age of fifteen, those children would begin their transformations, and they’d no longer find the water so blissful. Sure, the freedom of soaring through the ocean with your fins cutting through the water was one of the best feelings in the world but being one of nature’s strongest predators came with a price. Thane had spent so many years trying to teach his people to live peacefully among the pure humans. If they didn’t attack the surfers, fishermen, divers, or the other tourists, they’d be safer. The humans would feel less need to hunt them.

  The only thing more vicious than a vengeful human is a greedy one. He and his people could at least eliminate that need for vengeance. The desire for shark meat, oil, and medical research was a whole different story. The fear of losing any of his family, his people, always loomed at the back of his mind. He looked back at the half-circle of ten cabins set back near the tree line and focused on the one to the far right, the one that had once belonged to Bobber. He was the biggest joker of the group. He rarely took anything seriously, even when Thane had warned him to stay out of the water for a few weeks until the humans’ desire for shark blood subsided.

  They’d been angry about one of Evelyn’s attacks on some scuba divers. If the tourist couple had simply gone missing, maybe Bobber would still be alive, but she and her gang had made it a point to kill them while other people on their boat were watching. Evelyn believed in setting an example, one that warned, “Stay the fuck out of the water. It doesn’t belong to you.” Unfortunately, one man from the Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol, the QBFP, seemed to like using the “imminent threat” policy put in place along Australian shores as justification for his love of shark hunting. In Officer Keelan Kane’s eyes, every shark was an imminent threat.

  Thane should have killed the man for what he’d done to Bobber. A shotgun blast to the head, especially to the head of a shark who’d only surfaced to feed on the chum dumped by a coward, was no way to go. Not for any shark. After it happened, Thane made it a point to bump into the man in human form, disguised as a weary surfer. Yet, as badly as he’d wanted to rip the officer’s throat out, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Somehow, in human form, it seemed wrong. To put it simply, it would have been murder. He was strong enough to snap the man’s neck with his bare hands, but his conscious kept him from completing the task.

  His inability to act was the reason some of the members of his group had switched sides and followed Evelyn. Bobber had been a brother to them, and Thane, the one who was like their father, had allowed a human to end his life without any retaliation. His morality was a weakness. Evelyn lacked morals and ethics. She was as cold as they came, and it was only a matter of time before Officer Keelan Kane would meet his end.

  Now, Bobber’s cabin sat empty. Without a mate, nobody was left behind to carry on his name. He had simply vanished from the world with only his memory lingering to taunt Thane and remind him of his faults. His major one was his unwillingness to risk it all to seek vengeance.

  “Thane,” Kino said, cutting through his thoughts.

  He welcomed it. Falling too deeply into his memories would only bring back the depression he’d battled for so long, and that was a place he did not need to go. Not right now. Not ever.

  “I asked if you trust her,” Kino repeated.

  “I trust her,” Thane said. “Gerri is an old friend.”

  “How did you meet this matchmaking wolf woman?” Kino asked.

  “Through an old acquaintance I met in America. A wolf named Theron.”

  “Theron and Thane,” Kino said followed by a chuckle. “You two should get together and start one of those umm…one of those boy bands. Oh, you guys could be like that old duo…umm…Milli Vanilli.”

  With that, Kino broke out into song, singing the 90s hit song Blame it on the Rain.

  “It worries me that you know the lyrics to that song,” Thane said.

  “You know them too, don’t you?” Kino said, slapping an open palm against Thane’s bare chest. “Don’t pretend you don’t, my friend.”

  Thane laughed and sang along with him.

  The singing and laughing helped shake off some of the nerves. Something about dating a pure human worried Thane. He’d slept with plenty of them in the past, but he’d never had a full-blown relationship with one. He didn’t need to. He wasn’t even sure what he would do with a mate once he found her. Would he bring her back to his island and turn her into one of his kind or would he keep her as a pure human? Being a human was much safer. Sure, they were fragile beings, but remaining on dry land meant there would be nobody hunting her.

  Nobody except Evelyn.

  God, why doesn’t Evelyn do the opposite of Kino and take her ass over to Hawaii with her minions?

  “Well, let’s hope this Gerri lady can find you a good woman,” Kino said. “Better yet, let’s hope she finds you one who can be a good friend to my Ruby, so they can have ladies’ nights and stuff. I’m in desperate need of a guy’s night out.”

  “You’re quite the apex predator,” Thane said. “When your wife gives you permission to be.”

  This time Thane slapped Kino’s chest.

  “What time are you supposed to be meeting this girl again?” Kino asked.

  Thane pulled his cell phone out of his shorts pocket and checked it once more as if he hadn’t already memorized the entire message.

  “Noon-ish,” he said. “On one of those drunken lunch boat parties.”

  “The one where the girls always show their tits?” Kino asked, a big goofy grin growing on his face.

  “I don’t think that really happens,” Thane argued.

  “Sure it does,” Kino insisted. “I saw it on TV.”

  “You don’t even own a TV.”

  “But I’ve fucking watched one, my friend. I have.”

  “Well, not one of those kinds of boats.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Not like Ruby would let you come with me anyway,” Thane teased.

  Kino looked down into his lap and chuckled.

  “I should probably go see what she’s up to,” he said.

  “If you know what’s best for you,” Thane replied.

  Kino stood and jogged toward his cabin, calling after the kids to join him. Thane looked once more at Bobber’s and thought of Evelyn’s last attack. She wouldn’t stop. She would never quit.

  As he lay back on the beach and stared up at the sky, Thane wondered what his father and his grandfather and all his other ancestors would think about his newfound need to live peacefully with the humans. One of his ancestors, Malik, was known for eating everyone and everything. One story passed down through the generations told that he once ate a chest full of gold, and every pirate along the Canadian shores was out searching for him.

  His people had been migrating for centuries, always searching for the next best place. Thane believed he’d found it on Shamrock Island, off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Yet, he had to wonder what his father, Liam, would think of the man he’d become. And what would Malik the Great think? They’d each passed on the family name, and the family curse, on and on down the line until it had reached Thane. Now, he needed to find a mate, so he could do the same. He needed to secure the future of his name.

  He hoped Geraldine Wilder was as good as she claimed to be.

  “I never make a mistake,” she’d told him. “When I set someone up, it’s for life.”

  He hoped she was serious because he had a boat to catch tomorrow and from what she’d told him, his lifelong mate would be somewhere on it.

  Chapter 5

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Sylvia asked as she eyed the price list at the ticket counter.

  “No kidding,” the squirrely guy behind the counter said. “That’s the price.”

  His eyes remained on Sylvia’s tits, only leaving them long enough to check out Penny’s. He was a creep and Penny couldn’t help wondering what kind of animal he might shift into if he had the ability. Lizar
d she decided. He was definitely a lizard.

  “You owe me big time for this one,” Sylvia said. “I passed up a date with that guy Mick too. Did you see the size of his muscles? He could have lifted me up and sat me down on his pole so hard…”

  The ticket salesman’s eyes shot open wide like a horny teenager overhearing a conversation going on in the girls’ locker room.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Penny said. “She’s always like this.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” he said.

  “All I’m saying is for the price of this damn thing, you and I both better get laid tonight,” Sylvia continued to complain.

  “Don’t worry,” Penny said. “I’ll buy your ticket.”

  That calmed her friend down.

  “Okay then,” Sylvia said. “I’ll get the next one. And by next one I mean I’ll buy you a drink at a bar because I damn sure ain’t paying for anything this pricey.”

  With their tickets in hand, the two sassy and single women made their way toward the yacht, their high heels clip clopping against the wooden deck beneath their feet, as if they were two horses prancing into the party. Most of the men walking ahead of them wore dress shorts and loafers without socks. The women all seemed to wear dresses with slits up one side. Penny wondered if they were all tourists or if this was how the Australian locals got down on the weekends.

  Once aboard the ship, Sylvia snatched two champagne flutes off a waiter’s tray and handed one to her bestie.

  “So, what’s the plan?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Penny admitted. “I guess I’m supposed to wait and the guy will find me.”

  “How does he even know what you look like?”

  “Good question,” Penny said. “Maybe Gerri snapped a picture of me when I wasn’t looking? I don’t know.”

  Slinking into Sylvia’s shadow as she did most of the time when they went out together, Penny surveyed the ship and tried to pick up on anyone who might possibly be watching her. It seemed nobody was paying her any attention. Most of the guys seemed to already be involved with someone and that didn’t seem to sit well with Sylvia.