Page 36 of Free for Adventure

“It isn’t done yet. I don’t know what you were planning for the evening, but you are done for the night.” Skaay held her arm carefully.

“I am just going to crawl into bed and upload the footage.”

“You need to eat dinner.”

She smirked. “You would be wrong. I have snack bars.”

Kayak murmured, “Please let me buy you dinner?”

“No more launching me off your upper lip?”

His mouth quirked. “Not unless you have a nice time.”

She blinked and then laughed. “Ah. Right. Forgot about that man versus whale.”

“We would win.” He smiled. “Can I help you get the lower part of your suit off?”

“How careful can you be, and you had better leave my suit on.” She was struggling to focus on him.

“I will take that as a yes.” He eased toward her and slipped his fingers between suit and skin, prying her suit off.

When he got to her feet, he had to remove her fins, and then, he tugged her suit off her legs carefully.

She felt air rush around her and was suddenly getting itchy. “Is there a hose to rinse off?”

Skaay murmured, “You have to remain still for ten more minutes.”

She sighed.

Kayak returned and sponged her off with warm water and a wide sponge.

She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Do you always grovel this much?”

He shrugged. “I have rarely fucked up this badly. He wanted to watch you fly.”

“I did. Thirty feet straight up. Like I said, I was usually snorkelling or freediving when my dad did it. The more normal thing is just to let me balance on the lip and lift me out of the water.”

Skaay moved her away from him, and Kayak took care of her back. He huffed softly. “We are really all on here.”

“Yup. When they showed up, I tried to ignore them, but I recognized the shoreline and the cliff face.”

Kayak continued to stroke idly. “You recognized us?”

“Well, I remembered the apprentices that Dad had and that you guys didn’t want me on the boat when you four went out for your guy trips.” She sighed. “Dad said that you all didn’t want to scare me, and he didn’t tell you that I had been swimming with him since I was four. After that first time, it was just how things were when we were here. I would go out on the research boat with him, but you guys would have private time out in the deep ocean. Hell, your species is rarely seen out in the islands.”

Skaay chuckled. “It was a surprise to us, too.”

“A shark incident triggered each of you?”

“How did you know?”

“I know my dad told you, but it is what normally triggers this kind of transformation. Something bigger than a human tries to eat you. Or a whale shark shows up and scares the crap out of you while you were primed to shift.”

“Well, it was something of that nature.”

Orc said over his shoulder, “We got a distress call. We are the harbour patrol. Tourists from Emerald had a rented boat that was foundering, and they had been shark diving, so they had chummed the waters. There was a set of children stranded on a sand bar, so we hit the water and boom. Two of us stayed as whales after we drove off the sharks, and Skaay got the zodiac and got the kids to their parents. We towed them back to the harbour. Kekoa got in touch with your father right after that.”

“And then we started having vacations out here to help you get your shit together. I got some nice souvenirs every time we came out.”