She took a swig, and I honestly thought I could watch that smooth throat swallow all night long.
She handed it back, and then I took another swig, then pulled her into my arms and licked her up and down her neck, making her smell like me, like whiskey, like my tongue.
She stood still.
I set the whiskey down. Her blue eyes focused on me completely. She didn’t even look terrified that my dad, the scariest man alive, was talking about torturing his favorite son for letting a girl on his property.
“You ready?” I gripped her wrist as we faced the deep end of the pool.
“Uh, for what—”
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into the pool, taking her down with me, down into the deep, down into my darkness, I baptized her in it, and I wasn’t sorry when she came up for air and shrieked at me. If anything, that made me want to pull her deeper, beg her to drown with me. Maybe it wouldn’t be so lonely if I had someone dying with me.
“Come.” I gritted my teeth.
She shook her head and started to swim away, which was when I lost my fucking mind, swam after her, grabbed her by the arm, and with a giant splash, pushed her up against the tile wall, my hands bracing on either side of her head. “You don’t get to run when you volunteer.”
“You’re angry,” she whispered.
“I’m fucking furious!” I roared right in her face.
I hadn’t expected to yell.
And I didn’t expect her to slap me.
But she did.
Twice.
It stung like heaven.
So, I decided I needed more.
I shoved my body up against hers, and then I stole a kiss and another, and then I couldn’t tell who was pushing who, or who was moaning, or who was dying.
Both of us, maybe?
She captured my tongue with her lips.
And I gripped her thigh with one hand as I shoved my tongue farther into her mouth, needing more of her taste needing to feel anything but like myself.
She wrapped an arm around me, then her legs followed.
I groaned against her lips. “Told you, you would get wet.”
“This is cheating,” she panted back.
“And this is you.” I slid my hand up her shirt and cupped a heavy breast. “Not complaining.”
She rocked her hips against me.
What was happening?
In the back of my mind, I was screaming to let her go, but in the forefront, it translated wrong; it translated to a scream of desperation for the exact opposite, for her not to let me go.
“Come on.” I pulled her with me toward the shallow end, and when I could actually touch, I sat on one of the side steps and pulled her on top of me, her legs on either side as I basically dry—or wet—humped her where I’d first learned how to swim.
“You’re huge.” She squeezed her thighs around me. I winced from the pain of it, from knowing nothing would be the same, none of this, not even sex.
Not even meaningless sex with a person who I barely tolerated.
I captured her mouth again, biting down in a painful kiss that reminded both of us what this was.
What it would never be.
She rocked her hips even harder into me, pinning me against the side like she liked it like she wanted me to bleed.
I tugged her hair back, already addicted to the way her lips parted like she wanted more.
And then a throat cleared from overhead, and I got the distinct eerie feeling you get when you know multiple guns are trained on you.
I kissed down her neck, murmuring, “Kinda busy, Dad.”
He sighed. “I can see that. Hello, Annie. I take it he lied about you being one of Breaker—or sorry, Valerian’s old sluts.”
“Breaker?” She said in a confused voice.
“Dad…”
“Shit.” He looked away and then looked back at me, his expression unreadable, like he was doing really hard math and needed a little bit of extra help with the last equation. His smile wasn’t cruel; it was damn calculating as he nodded at me. “Annie’s been vetted a while, so you two… just clean up when you’re done…”
THE HELL?
I gaped at him in both frustration and terror. “Dad, aren’t you—”
“Oh, and make sure your mom doesn’t see, or you will really be dead.”
And then he fucking started whistling as he walked into the house, most likely right after Valerian had.
I peered over at the bushes.
My dad stopped whistling and caught my glance. “Looking for something?”
My sanity?
And maybe a condom?
Ha-ha.
Where the hell did that come from?
“Nope.” I quickly went back to kissing Annie, hoping he’d disappear, and when he did, I shoved her off me, got out of the pool, and started walking back toward the pool house with a hard-on from hell and soggy clothes.
I could hear her footsteps behind me as I jerked open the pool house door. I could somehow smell her lilac perfume too, which was disconcerting, to say the least.