Chapter Twenty-One
Harold took Jack back to the pool a week after he'd killed Rashe in the same waters.
The dolphin facility had been cleaned, the water drained and refilled, the blood scrubbed from the concrete.
Harold had checked with the manager, a tired-looking dolphin who'd been more annoyed about the damage to his tile grout than about the dead shark.
Pool B was open. The waiting list for Jack's time block was empty because word had gotten around about what had happened and nobody wanted to swim where a shark had killed another shark, which meant Jack had the pool to himself for as long as he wanted.
"I don't know if I can go back in there," Jack said.
He was standing in the parking lot beside Harold's truck, looking at the painted warehouse wall.
His arms were out of the gauze. The cuts healed to thin pink lines.
The stitches in his side were out. He moved carefully but he was moving better at least.
"You don't have to," Harold said. "We can turn around. I know you like being here, and I want you to do what you enjoy. If you want to come back another time, that's fine."
Jack stood there for another minute. Then he walked toward the door.
The lobby was bright and smelled like the slightly fishy undertone of a building full of aquatic shifters. The manager was behind the counter. He looked at Jack, looked at Harold, looked at the security badge on Harold's belt, and pointed them toward Pool B without comment.
They walked down the hallway together. Past the other pools where dolphins and seals glided through their laps, past the crocodile in Pool D who was floating on his stomach with his eyes closed. Jack stopped in the doorway of Pool B.
The water was clear. Blue-green, still, the lights above making the surface glow. The concrete around the edge was clean, new grout in the seams where the old grout had been stained. No blood. No evidence. Just a pool, ten feet deep and thirty feet long, the way it had been before.
Jack stripped at the edge and dove in and shifted. Harold watched the human body dissolve into the shark, the gray muscles stretching, the dorsal fin breaking the surface, and then Jack was gone, sunk to the bottom, a dark shape against the concrete floor.
Harold waited. He sat on the edge of the pool with his feet in the water, jeans rolled to his knees, and watched the shark settle on the bottom.
Jack stayed there for a long time. Five minutes.
Ten. Not moving, just lying on the bottom, letting the water hold him.
Harold watched the dorsal fin and the slow sweep of the tail and thought about what it must be like to return to the place where you'd killed someone and find it clean and quiet and waiting for you.
When Jack surfaced, he was in human form. He treaded water in the center of the pool, naked, wet, looking up at Harold with those gray eyes.
"Get in," Jack said.
Harold looked at the water. "I'm not a water shifter."
"I know. Get in anyway."
Harold pulled off his shirt. Kicked off his shoes, stripped out of his jeans. He stood at the edge of the pool in his boxers and looked at the shark in the water who was watching him with an expression that was part challenge and part invitation.
"You know bloodhounds can't swim like you," Harold said.
Jack smirked up at him. "You can swim. You just look stupid doing it."
Harold jumped in. The water was cold and the shock of it made him gasp and Jack actually laughed. A real laugh, short and rough, startled out of him by the sight of Harold flailing in the deep end with his arms windmilling and his legs kicking too hard.
"You look like a washing machine," Jack said.
"I'm a land animal. We're not built for this."
"Clearly."
Harold found his rhythm. Not graceful, nothing like Jack's effortless presence in the water, but functional.
He treaded water across from Jack and the two of them floated in Pool B at eleven in the morning, naked except for Harold's boxers, and it was the most absurd and tender thing Harold had experienced in his life.
"Shift," Jack said.
"What?"
"Shift. I want to see the hound in the water."
Harold shifted. The bloodhound replaced him in the water with a splash and a scramble, long ears floating on the surface like kelp, legs paddling in a frantic circle that covered no distance whatsoever.
The hound's nose lifted above the waterline and Harold could smell everything, the water and Jack's ocean scent was so pure and strong in this environment that it was overwhelming.
Jack shifted too. The shark appeared where the man had been, six feet of gray muscle, and for the first time in his life Harold was in the water with a shark.
The hound's brain registered predator and his hackles would have risen if they weren't underwater.
Every land-animal instinct told him to get out of the pool.
Harold's human brain, riding underneath the hound, told his instincts to shut up.
Jack swam a slow circle around him. The shark was enormous up close, bigger than Harold had imagined, the gray skin smooth and the black eye tracking the ridiculous paddling hound with an intelligence that was entirely Jack.
Harold paddled in his circle and the shark circled him and the absurdity of it, the vulnerability of it, a bloodhound in a swimming pool trusting a shark not to eat him, was the most ridiculous thing Harold had ever done.
Jack came alongside him. The dorsal fin cut the water inches from Harold's nose. Harold reached out a paw and batted it. The shark turned. Harold did it again, clumsier, and his paw landed on the fin and stayed there.
He was holding Jack's dorsal fin.
The shark went still. Not the shiver stillness, not the blank shutdown.
A different kind of still. Attentive. Waiting.
Harold gripped the fin with his paw and Jack began to move, slow at first, pulling Harold through the water.
The hound's legs stopped paddling. He let the shark carry him, his body dragging through the pool behind the fin, and the trust of it, the surrender of it, a land animal gripping a predator's fin and letting himself be towed, cracked something open in Harold's chest that he hadn't known was sealed.
They circled the pool twice. Then Jack stopped and Harold let go and they both shifted at the same time, human forms surfacing together, treading water face to face.
Jack's eyes were bright. Not the flat gray of the club or the exhausted dullness of the steps. Bright, alive, and looking at Harold with an openness that made Harold's throat tight.
"Nobody's ever swum with me before," Jack said. "In the pool I was always alone. Every time. Nobody wanted to be in the water with a shark."
"I wanted to be in the water with you." Harold reached through the water and put his hand on Jack's jaw. Wet skin, cool, the pulse underneath fast and steady. "I looked ridiculous."
"You looked like a hound in a bathtub."
"I'll take it." Harold pulled him closer. Their bodies met under the water, skin to skin, and the contact sent heat through Harold's limbs despite the cold. "I need to tell you something."
Jack cocked his head, listening. "So tell me."
"I'm not going to push you. I'm not going to rush this.
I'm not going to put anything on you that you don't want.
" Harold's thumb moved on Jack's jaw, the same gesture he'd used on the couch, in the truck, every time he touched Jack's face.
"I'm just going to take care of you until you are mine.
That's it. That's the whole plan. No pain, no rope, no tools you're not ready for.
Just me, showing up, until you believe it. "
Jack stared at him. The water moved between their bodies, warm where they pressed together, cool where they didn't. "Is that a Dom thing?"
"That's a me thing."
Jack pressed his lips together. "What if I don't know how to be yours?"
"Then we figure it out. At whatever speed you need.
" Harold kissed him. Soft, the water lapping at their chins, their legs tangling underwater as they treaded to stay afloat.
Jack's mouth was cool and tasted like salt, always salt.
His hands came up to Harold's shoulders and this time the grip was real.
Not service. Not debt. Jack holding on because he wanted to touch him.
Harold deepened the kiss. Jack's mouth opened and his moan echoed off the pool walls, low and rough, and Harold's cock stirred in his wet boxers and the water moved around them as they pulled each other closer.
Jack's hands slid down Harold's chest, fingers trailing through the water, and found his waist. His touch was tentative.
Exploring. Learning what it felt like to reach for someone because you wanted them and not because the rules said you had to.
"Tell me if you want to stop," Harold said against his mouth.
"I don't want to stop." Jack's voice was raw. "I don't know what I'm doing but I don't want to stop."
Harold guided them to the shallow end where he could stand.
His feet found the bottom and he pulled Jack against him and the full contact of their bodies, chest to chest, hips to hips, the hard length of Jack's cock against his own through the soaked fabric of his boxers, made Harold groan.
Jack was hard. Fully, unambiguously hard, and his hips were moving, pressing forward into the contact with a rhythm that was instinctive and uncoordinated and real.
Harold got his hand between them. He pushed the boxers down, kicked them off, and wrapped his hand around both of them. Jack's cock alongside his own, hot in the cool water, the friction of skin on skin making Jack's breath stutter and his fingers dig into Harold's shoulders.
"Oh," Jack said. Just that. Just oh, like he'd discovered something he hadn't known existed.
Harold stroked them together, slowly, his hand tight enough that they could both feel it.
Jack's forehead dropped against his shoulder and his body pressed into Harold's hand.
His moans and groans were unguarded and messy, breath and noise and half-formed words that Harold caught against his neck.
Harold's own pleasure was building fast, the heat of Jack's cock against his own, the water around them, the sounds Jack was making, muffled against his skin but still loud enough he was sure others in the pools around them could hear.
Jack's hand found Harold's. Not to stop him.
To join him. His fingers wrapped around Harold's fingers and they stroked together, Jack's grip clumsy, uncertain, and the most arousing thing Harold had ever felt because Jack was choosing it.
Choosing to touch, choosing to participate, choosing to be with him.
"Harold." Jack said his name against his shoulder and the word was thick and shaking. "I'm close."
Harold kissed the side of his neck, needing to taste him however he could. "Yeah. Me too."
They came within seconds of each other. Jack first, his body locking, his hand clamping on Harold's, a noise against Harold's neck that was half gasp and half sob.
Harold followed, the orgasm rolling through him hard enough that his knees buckled and he grabbed the pool edge to keep them both above water.
Jack kept his face against Harold's shoulder for a long time. When he pulled back, his eyes were wet. Harold opened his mouth and Jack shook his head.
"It's the pool water," Jack said.
Harold chuckled, letting him have that. "Sure it is."
Jack almost smiled. Not quite. But close. The closest Harold had seen. He leaned forward and kissed Harold again, brief and firm, and then he pushed off and floated on his back in the center of the pool, arms spread, staring at the ceiling. Naked and seeming not to care.
Harold watched him float. The cuts on his arms were healing. The stitches scar on his side. The lean body stretched out in the water, relaxed, present, no blankness in his face and no fear in the room with them.
"The pool works again," Jack said to the ceiling. "I feel calm here."
Harold leaned against the edge and breathed and let the water hold them both and said nothing, because Jack was floating in the place where he'd killed a man, and the silence was back, and it was real.