Page 134 of Dirty Like Dylan

“I wanna know… your gnarly shit…” she said, her voice growing raspier as Ash drove her closer to ecstasy.

I’m falling in love with you, I wanted to say. Is that gnarly enough for you?

But I had no idea if she wanted me to say that or not.

So I didn’t say a thing.

* * *

Sometime later, the three of us were in my bed. I was on my back and Amber was riding me, facing away from me. I was running my hands all over her round little ass, squeezing her, enjoying the fuck out of the view, and Ashley was on his knees in front of her, making out with her. Kissing her, his hands in her hair.

At one point, she looked at me over her shoulder and said, “Come, baby,” as her hips bobbed up and down.

When I came, I heard her gasp my name.

But she never stopped making out with Ash.

Then Ash turned her around, pushing her over me on her hands and knees. She kissed me, and I closed my eyes. I knew when Ash started fucking her from behind. And I kept kissing her, wouldn’t let her go. Even when Ash came and fell limp against her, panting, I was kissing her.

“Shit,” he said suddenly, startling us both. “Did I leave the nachos in the oven?” His eyes met mine, wide and still sex-dazed. “Shit.”

Then he ran out of the room, naked, to deal with what I hoped was not a fire in my kitchen. There was definitely a faint burning smell drifting up the stairs…

Amber lay down on top of me with a sigh. “Should we be helping him…?”

“Nah. He’ll yell if the house is on fire.”

She giggled. Then she kissed my throat.

Her hand was on my chest and I picked it up, turning her wrist out to see the scripted lettering of her tattoo, as she lay her head on my shoulder. I kissed her tattooed wrist, then asked her, “What does MCOA mean?”

Amber’s smile faded a bit. “It means Michael, Cathy, Olivia, Amber. My parents, my sister and me.” She stared at the initials a moment, as I drifted my thumb over them. “We used to be together, the four of us, always. Now… we’re so distant most of the time. But I got the tattoo to remind myself that we started out so close.” Her voice got pretty sad at the end of that statement, and I wondered if I should’ve asked.

But I wanted to know. And I was glad she’d told me.

She’d never really said anything to me about her family before. Even when I took her to my family dinner and my mom asked, Amber had very little to say about her parents. She had little to say about anything personal. She was still guarded around me at the best of times.

“It’s funny,” she mused. “Liv never let us call her Olivia. I never understood, because I always thought Olivia was such a pretty name.”

“You love her.” I didn’t have to ask if that was true. It was obvious by the tone of her voice when she talked about Liv. It was like the way I talked about my sister Julie; like someone who’d always just felt like a part of me.

It was the same way I probably talked about Ash.

“Of course I do. She’s my sister.” She smirked and added, “If I ever have a daughter, though, I’ll probably name her Olivia, just to piss her off.” Her green eyes met mine and I couldn’t help smiling.

The girl was melting me like a hunk of chocolate left out in the sun.

I could understand why she’d want to name her daughter after her sister, and pissing her off probably had little to actually do with it. Amber just liked to act a lot tougher than she really was.

Kind of like Ash.

She gazed at me and said, “You still never told me your gnarly shit.”

Right. That.

“I sucker-punched your ex-husband last night,” I offered.

“Yeah. But that’s just a point in your favor.”

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