Once she’s gone and I can draw a breath again, I smack him in the stomach. “What the hell was that?”
He shrugs. “She’s fun to fuck with.” He looks down at me, his dark eyes sparkling with mischief. “So are you.”
“You weren’t serious, right?”
“Of course not,” he says, encircling my waist and pulling me tightly against him. “You know I don’t share.”
I don’t know if I’m relieved or… something else, but I shake my head, still feeling a little breathless. “That was so mean. Why are you so mean?”
“You like it,” he rumbles, kissing my jaw.
“No, I don’t.”
“Mm-hmm. At least a little bit.”
I sigh with pleasure, my eyes drifting closed as he starts to kiss my neck. “You’re a menace.”
“I know.”
“You’re the one who belongs locked up in a tower where you can’t torture any more innocents.”
He grins against my neck. “Maybe you and Hannah can team up and take me on.”
I can’t resist. “Sounds like you wanted us to.”
“Hey.” He squeezes my side and I laugh. He turns me around and pulls me back against him, squeezing me around the waist and kissing the side of my head. “Let’s get out of here.”
Prom was hosted in the ballroom of a hotel by the beach, and Dare booked us a suite upstairs, so we don’t have to go far. I take my heels off the moment we’re in the door, and Dare picks me up like a caveman and hauls me laughing to the bed.
When we’re both naked and sated and lying relaxed in each other’s arms, I trace the lines of black ink covering his shoulder and bicep. When I met him, he only had the crow, but he’s added to it this year.
When I asked why he got a big black crow inked into his skin, he said when he was growing up, his mother always told him the crow was a symbol of wisdom. When he started at Baymont High and they put him into onyx—Slytherin, if you ask Hannah, but actually the house that’s supposed to stand for wisdom and loyalty—he thought the crow would be a nice representation of this period of his life.
Now, there’s a mermaid wrapped around his bicep and a crown on the crow’s head. His wings are open looking down at the havoc he seems to have wrought, but at the start of the year, he was looking at nothing. Now, he looks down at a busted clock, the glass splintered and bursting up toward him, the hands set to midnight.
I never asked him what that one meant.
It’s cool, though. I like it.
I lean in and give it a little kiss.
I hear the pillow rustle as he turns his head to glance at the ink I just kissed. His gaze drifts to me, a relaxed smile on his face. The contented kind I don’t see very often, but they’re my favorite ones.
I reach up and caress his handsome face. “Did you have a nice prom night?”
He nods. “Did you?”
“I did. Thank you for taking me.” Sighing, I tease, “I hope now that I’m your queen, I don’t turn into a lunatic.”
Dare grins, catching my hand and bringing it to his lips for a kiss. “You won’t. You’re not cut from that cloth.”
I smile, resting my head on his chest and looking up at him, but my smile fades. “Are you glad about that?”
His brow furrows briefly like he didn’t like that question, or maybe that it passed through my head. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m a lot different from what you had before. I know you played a lot of different games with her. I guess sometimes I wonder if you ever get bored with me.”
“No,” he says, reaching down and stroking my cheek.
“Okay. Good.”
“I would ask if you ever get bored with me, but I don’t ask stupid questions.”
I laugh, and he smiles. “Yeah, no. I don’t know how anyone could ever get bored with you.”
He smirks, grabbing me and rolling over so I’m underneath him. I spread my legs to make room for him—not to go another round, just so he can get comfortable on top of me.
Inevitably, once he is, though, he starts kissing and touching me. My body gets warm and he pushes a finger into me.
There’s a knock at the door.
I gasp, and he pulls out of me.
A frown flickers across my face.
“Must be the room service I ordered,” he says, sitting up on the edge of the bed and grabbing his underwear off the floor so he can pull them back on.
Oh, right.
I thought…
I shake my head of silly thoughts and smile up at my beautiful boyfriend, pulling the blankets up to cover my chest. “Room service. You spoil me.”
He smirks as he looks back at me, then walks to the door in just his underwear because he’s absolutely shameless.