I can't imagine you give apologies, Ten had said before, and she'd been right, but Liraz thought that she would now, She would apologize for Savvath. If her voice was her own. If it wasn't reeling out of her, rising and falling in a sound that might have been laughter and might-if she weren't Liraz and it weren't unthinkable-have been sobbing.In truth, it was both. She was going to lose her arms, the clean way or the less clean, and here's where the laughter came in: It was horrific, and it was sadistic, and it was also, literally, a dream come true.

The survivor spoke to us though, or tried to. Mumbling through that matted brown beard of his, pale as death itself. I can__ say now if it was weakness from his wounds or what it was _ but we struggled to understand him. In fact we got nothing intelligible from him at all then. He seemed afraid, like any dying man probably would be, but he did seem more terrified than any dying man I__e seen before _ and I__e seen a few in my time. Let me tell you, Corsair or not, he grabbed whatever hand would hold his, and clenched it so tight his knuckles turned white! He kept fading out as we carried him on the stretcher board the medics brought with them. Looking back, I think he tried to warn us, poor bastard. He tried to tell us to leave him behind and go, but we wouldn__ listen. We thought we were better than the Corsairs, remember? We thought we would be all moral and upright and try to help him. __on__ say I didn__ warn you._ were the last words he said before losing consciousness. At least, those that we could make out. At the end of it all, he was right _ as it turned out, we couldn__ even help ourselves.

Why was life so unfair that the one guy she felt uncontrollable chemistry with ---even when they weren't even touching ---was the only guy she had to keep her hands off?

One of the most elusive things about the white shark is their, uh..." His eyes moved to hers and he held them there."Their what?" she asked when he didn't finish, a bit rapt by his expression.He kept his eyes locked on her. "Their mating.""Mating," she repeated, feeling a flutter in her stomach at the way he was looking at her...then suddenly not looking at her."We don't know if individual animals spawn in a certain spot every time --- kind of like a human might go to a particular pub if she wants some action. Juan an example, mind you?She folded her arm, feeling her cheeks heat up. "Pub Uh-huh."Jeff leaned against the railing, his expression looking smug at her embarrassment. "For all we know, sharks are just, ya know, doing it everywhere.""Like the Kardasians?" ...."But who know. Maybe, if we play just the right mood music, you and I will get lucky, Sharona Blaire."Was he talking about shark reproduction... or human?And... was he flirting? Earlier, he'd gone cold and hostile when she'd tried to apologize. The man was a ball of contradiction. A very sexy, very nice-smelling contradiction."Well." She swallowed, staring in his eyes. "I'm all for getting lucky.

His lips crashed against hers. If there had been air in her lungs, she wouldn't have known what to do with it. He kissed her fiercely, making her head spin wilder than a whirlpool, knocking every last puff of breath from her body.

Think of it this way," he rubbed a fist under his square jaw, "If we hadn't been on the same flight or at the same hotel, you would've had no one to spill your drinks on.