Page 81 of Sweet Chaos
I kissed his jaw and his black eye and his bloody lip and razor-sharp, bruised cheekbone and when I came, I screamed his name.
“We’re a beautiful mess,” I said.
And I didn’t want to give him up for anything or anyone.
29
Dylan
Starlet was wearing a tiny white bikini and a sheen of sweat.
I reached for a cold beer from the ice bucket on the pool’s edge, my reward for swimming fifty laps, or a hundred, I’d lost count, and took a long pull as I watched her working. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, her plump bottom lip caught between her teeth as the paint marker in her hand moved across the rail of my new surfboard. She was painting a giant wave, undeterred by the blazing sun beating down on her sun-kissed skin.
For the past two months, we’d been spending most of our free time and most of our nights together. Fucking, talking, laughing, falling in love. I had no idea how the hell the love part had happened, but it had.
Scarlett was good at love. She was good at loving my fucked-up self.
She called me out on my shit and did it in a way that forced me to own up rather than retreat.
Meanwhile, I was still at war with her father. The whole fiasco with The Surf Lodge was still being dragged out. Except now he was attacking my business. We’d lost two of our biggest clients. He was forcing my hand, and it was time to shut him down. I would take the war to him, the war he had started that I’d never wanted, and I would fucking end it.
But today was a Saturday and it was Memorial Day weekend so the war could wait.
“You look hot,” I told Scarlett.
“Thank you,” she sassed.
“Hot and soon to be wet.”
I levered myself out of the pool and stalked toward her. Her eyes widened. “No! You wouldn’t dare.”
Didn’t she know me yet? Marker still in hand, she scooted back and stood up, making a dash for the house.
“I need to finish—”
I caught her around the waist, spun her around and tossed her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Her small fists pounded my back and she tried to struggle out of my hold. It was laughable.
“Let me down, you Neanderthal,” she shrieked, laughing.
“You need a spanking?” I smacked her ass and she squirmed in my arms, gasping for air between her laughter.
Unceremoniously, I tossed her into the deep end and dove in after her. She came up spluttering and pushed the hair off her face, lunging for me, her hands grabbing my shoulders, nails digging in. “You—”
I dunked her before she got another word out. When her head emerged, she narrowed her eyes on me. “You’re an ass.”
I laughed. “Like a donkey?”
“Like a jackass.”
“You love it.”
“I do not love being manhandled,” she said primly. Little liar.
“You love it when this man handles you.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. “Only when you handle me with care.”
“Have you seen my back lately?” I asked, lifting my brows.
