When Dylan walked in, hand-in-hand with Amber, carrying her backpack for her, and she was wearing those skin-tight jeans with the fuzzy little pink sweater that hugged her perky tits, and they walked right over to my table… I was as relieved to see her as I was to see Dylan.
I liked her.
I liked the way she and Dylan liked each other.
I wanted her to like me.
So it was official, then.
This girl was doing something to my head. Sparking ideas of the three of us, together.
Which, of course, was dangerous.
And yet I was drawn to it like a dumbass moth to a motherfucking flame. And yes, I knew there was a very real chance I’d get burned here.
As I got out of the shower, I knew what I had to do to handle this.
I just had to set some hard limits.
Beginning with reminding myself that I was not falling in love.
Regularly and repeatedly.
Second, we were gonna have to get Amber’s head around the fact that she was ours now, Dylan’s and mine, and she wasn’t fucking around with anyone else. Dylan had told me how she’d flipped out when he asked her to be exclusive with us. I might’ve had my own issues with monogamy, in the past, but that was definitely a hard limit—a woman fucking around on me. I was a greedy bastard and I didn’t share. Not with anyone, ever. Except Dylan.
Dylan was different.
Dylan was my exception for almost every-fucking-thing.
Every limit I’d ever had, I’d pushed for Dylan Cope. For him, I’d already bent, broken and abused my limits until they were so fucking muddled I’d almost forgotten what they were.
The thing was, when I walked back into the bedroom and saw Amber in my bed, kneeling over Dylan with her camera in her hands… I knew I’d press my limits for her, too. To see that look on her face, right now. And the look on Dylan’s as she took a photo of him, lying back on my bed.
I tossed my towel aside and joined them.
It was just sex, right?
Fucking great sex…
As Amber leaned down over Dylan to kiss him and I ran my hands over her tight curves, I told myself I could be careful with the rest of it. Mind the limits. Push aside any inconvenient stirrings of deeper feelings I might mistakenly develop for her, tuck them back out of the way where they wouldn’t fuck with things.
Same thing I did with my feelings for Dylan.
At least, I tried to.
Everyone was allowed to have secrets, right?
Secret thoughts. Secret desires. Secret feelings.
It didn’t actually change anything between us, because it didn’t fucking matter anyway. Out in the open or hidden away, my feelings for Dylan would never change a thing.
I’d told myself long ago that I’d take whatever I could get with him. That it would have to be enough.
But the fact was… as I watched him pull Amber onto his lap… as she straddled him and took his thick cock up her pussy and started to ride him, her waves of caramel hair dusting her shoulders as she tipped her head back… and she reached her hand out to me… The way I was already feeling about being with both of them… It was already starting to fuck with my head. It was already starting to feel too good.
So I couldn’t really fucking help it, could I?
Maybe this time, I’d just have to get burned.
Maybe for once, it would be worth it.
“You’re gonna fall for her,” I told him.
Of that, I was totally fucking sure.
Whether I was gonna fall for her or not, I really didn’t know. I didn’t want to fall for her.
But Dylan? He had no fucking choice.
I knew it.
I just wondered if he knew.
If he was afraid of getting burned, like I was.
Amber was standing in the back of the Dirty Deed and I was on the dock, finishing a smoke. Dylan was untying the boat. He looked up at me, his reddish hair blowing around, and squinted in the morning light.
“What?”
I flicked my chin at Amber in the boat. She wasn’t listening. I was pretty sure she couldn’t hear us. She was busy taking photos of the mountain view across the water.
“Her,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “You’re gonna fall for her.”
And what did Dylan say?
Nothing.
He just fucking laughed.
Chapter Nineteen
Amber
I stood in the middle of Katie’s art studio, holding my camera and turning in a slow circle, just taking it all in. Her art show was in full swing, and I was surrounded by people.
She’d let me in early so I could scope out the space and check out the studio’s lighting, with its partial loft and high ceiling and the skylight windows above. I’d taken some photos while the paintings for the show were hung. Then I’d left for a dinner break, and gotten changed at Ashley’s condo downtown—into the new cocktail dress that Dylan had bought for me yesterday.
It was A-line, turquoise, and came with turquoise stone earrings. It looked gorgeous on me and fit perfectly, because he’d taken me to get fitted the day before.
I wasn’t totally sure how I felt about accepting such a gift, but I accepted. Mainly because the fact was that I owned only one party dress, and his friends had already seen me in it. I kinda doubted they were all gonna show up to Katie’s big art show in the exact same outfit they wore to Zane’s housewarming/birthday party a week ago.
I was right.
I’d returned for the art show wearing my new dress, with Dylan and Ashley on my arms, like the world’s sexiest pair of accessories. Which raised more than a few eyebrows. I felt it when we walked in, when the guys greeted their friends and introduced me around, again. I’d met many of these people at Zane’s party, but there were a lot more people here tonight.
And this time, I was getting the feeling that we weren’t just getting looks because they’d both brought me.
It was because they’d both brought me again.
It definitely didn’t seem like anyone was shocked about Dylan and Ashley sharing a woman, per se. More like they didn’t usually keep the ones they shared around for this long. Or maybe they just didn’t bring them out in public this much?
I didn’t know whether to be flattered about that or horrified on behalf of those other women.
But I quickly distanced myself from both of them, using my camera as a convenient excuse. I was here to photograph the event for Katie, not to serve as the entertainment.
As it turned out, there was plenty going on here to upstage the spectacle of our little threesome. Like Katie’s giant, stunning portraits of gorgeous rock stars. Which was a relief, because I felt kind of self-conscious about the fact that I’d spent the last three days pretty much in bed with two of those rock stars.
Other than when Dylan had headed into the city today to work, rehearsing for Dirty’s new album, the three of us had been pretty much inseparable. Ashley, apparently, didn’t work all that much, because he spent whatever time he wasn’t in bed working on his Camaro in Dylan’s garage, working out in Dylan’s gym, riding his mountain bike around the trails on the island, or making food for us.
I hadn’t even met his band yet. They weren’t at the art show.
All of Dirty was, but despite all the famous people in attendance, it was still Dylan and Ashley who made me most nervous.
In bed together, it was strangely comfortable. Here, it was intimidating.
Maybe it was sharing them with all these other people—especially all the women fluttering around them. Unfortunately, it made me feel grossly insecure. Not that I saw either of them overtly flirting with any of those women, but what if they decided to take someone else home tonight?
I could be pissed about it, I could be jealous, I could be hurt, but I couldn’t exactly stop them.
I didn’t own Dylan or Ashley. Despite the proposal that Dylan had made to me that first night, at the restaurant, asking me to be e
xclusive with them until they went on tour, we hadn’t talked about it again. We’d never actually promised exclusivity to one another.
I hadn’t asked them if they were still sleeping with other women.
And they hadn’t yet asked me if I was with any other men.
Though maybe it was assumed.
When and how would I fit another man into my repertoire anyway? The idea was ridiculous, when I already had two such hot and willing men taking up all my free time. Between the two of them, I was getting laid on a stunningly frequent basis.
The way I saw it, it would be insulting to both of them, not to mention downright comical, if I actually tried to hook up with another man.
But as for the two of them… The more I thought about it, the more I had to wonder. They were more than satisfying me. But could one woman really satisfy two men like Dylan Cope and Ashley Player?
Could I?
And in the end, did it even matter? In the end, was I just going to take all I could get from this and run, before they took off on me?
I realized, as these questions ran through my mind, that I was still trying to treat whatever this was between Dylan and Ashley and I the way I would if I were traveling. As a stopover. A temporary diversion on my way to somewhere else.
The problem was, right now, I wasn’t going anywhere.
I still hadn’t booked my ticket to Thailand.
And I really didn’t know what to do with this sudden shift in my focus—it was so entirely new to me. This was the first time—since I’d briefly pushed the pause button on my travels for my incredibly-brief marriage—that I wasn’t planning for my next trip, looking forward toward my next destination. Years of being on the move hadn’t prepared me for this: staying still, just being where I was. And being so wrapped up in what I was doing and who I was doing it with, that I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow—about the pursuit of the next great photograph.
There was only this moment, here at Katie’s art show, right now.
With Dylan and Ashley.
I kept looking at them across the room. Checking them out. Taking photos of them. And getting tinglies every time one of them looked over at me and made eye contact. Feeling my entire body flush hot whenever I caught one of them checking me out.
And getting jealous as fuck when I couldn’t catch their attention because some other bitch was hogging it.
Like when Summer, the gorgeous DJ, put her hand on Ashley’s arm and left it there the entire time they were talking.
Like when some blonde I didn’t even know gave Dylan an overly-familiar hug and then kept hanging around, even when he was talking to other people, putting her hand on his back and laughing at his jokes.
I told myself it didn’t matter.
I told myself I was here to do a job, the one Katie had hired me to do, first and foremost. The fact that Dylan and Ashley had been already planning to attend the same event before I was hired was inconsequential. It was a mere convenience of transportation that I’d come with them. They had a boat. I needed a way here from the island.
End of story.
It mattered so little that the blonde was now following Dylan around, in fact, that I made a point of walking right over to them and taking a photo of them together. She was pretty, after all, and she’d worn a fantastic dress. She cuddled right up to Dylan with the world’s most massive smile on her face, thrilled to be photographed with him, while he just stood there, narrowing his eyes at me slightly. I shot him a dirty look after I took the photo, and he raised his eyebrows at me.
I turned away and got busy elsewhere.
Because fuck.
What the hell was I doing?
And who did I think I was kidding here, exactly? Myself?
I was coming down with a serious case of the feels for these guys—and the green-eyed crazies.
I did not want the feels. The feels were total bullshit.
Apparently, crazy-hot rock star sex made you weak.
Crazy-hot sex with two rock stars? It was dangerous to a girl’s sanity.
I already knew love made you weak, vulnerable, and in some cases just plain stupid. Like me with Johnny O. I did not want to go falling for Dylan or Ashley—or worse yet, both of them—just because they’d opened the door and I’d tripped, camera-first and unintentionally, into their world.
I did not want to get hurt.
Doing what I was doing, right now, was just plain dangerous. When I took a step back and looked at it, why I would even want to take the risk of falling in love with either of these men made no sense to me at all.
I could not understand why I’d want to risk my heart like this.
So I tried to just forget about both of them and their adoring fans, and absorb myself in what I was here to do. Photography. The art show. These I could handle, even with all the famous people, the wealthy people, the beautiful people drifting through the room with champagne in hand, buying up Katie’s twenty-thousand-dollar paintings like they were picking out a new shade of lipstick.
And Katie herself, with her sweet, unassuming smile, her little champagne-colored dress, and no airs about herself whatsoever? Katie, I could totally handle. I could probably even stumble through a conversation with her husband. If he was married to her, he had to be cool, right? Despite his million-megawatt smile and perfect hair, his chiseled-handsome face and leather pants, there had to be a regular dude in there somewhere.
But the rest of it?
I should probably run screaming from the rest of it. If I had any sense at all.
“So what’s your big dream?” Katie asked me. “Like, if there were no limits and no fears involved, what would you do with your photography?”
It was late, maybe two a.m., and there were maybe a dozen people left in her studio. She and I had been sitting by the little kitchen area drinking wine for the last half hour, talking about everything under the sun.
Everything except my weird-ass three-way… whatever-it-was.
“Honestly,” I told her, “I’d do shows like this. Put together exhibits of my work and do gallery tours and see if I could get a book published.”
“That sounds amazing.”
“That would be a start. I actually think I want to teach, in the future. I had this amazing lecturer in university. She taught the history of photography and it was all kinds of interesting. I think it’s an important subject for young artists, especially in the age of iPhone cameras. To look back and see where photography came from and why. It’s such a new art form in the scope of art history. And I think with all my experiences traveling, I’d make a kickass professor. I’d have to go back for another degree and work my way up there, but I wouldn’t mind. I actually love education. Next to traveling, academics is my happy place.”
“Then you should do it.”
“Yeah. I probably should. It’s expensive though, and right now I’m too restless to settle into that routine. I needed a break from it for a while, you know? See the world. Photograph the people of the world. Find myself and all that crap.”
She grinned. “Any luck finding yourself yet?”
“Nope. Pretty sure Amber Paige Malone is still drifting around out there somewhere, lost as fuck.”
Katie eyed me knowingly, which was impressive since she was kinda drunk. “She’s probably a lot closer than you think.”
I sipped my wine and rolled my eyes. “Please. Don’t get all wise on me now. I saw you doing all those shots with your husband after the place cleared out, and I’ve got the photos to prove it. You may look like you have it all together, Katie Mayes, but I know you were nervous tonight, and I’m really trying to hold onto this opinion I have of you that you’re just a normal girl underneath it all, like me.”
“Oh, I’m normal as shit,” she said ultra-seriously.
That made me giggle. I liked Katie. I wanted us to be friends. And I realized: maybe this was what had me so torn in two tonight. So nervous and so compelled. I was drawn to this world—Katie’s world
. It had little to do with Dylan and Ashley. I just wanted a taste of what Katie had—such success with her art, on her own terms. Her own studio. Her work selling.
And I was uncomfortably aware that to have these things, she had to stay still, at least some of the time.
“It’s amazing, what you’re doing here, you know,” I told her. “You’re so young, and you’re selling your work for so much money.”
“Oh, I don’t kid myself that it’s about my talent,” she said easily. “It’s got at least as much to do with the famous people in the paintings as it does my ability to paint them. I don’t even try to ask for as much money for the ones of the non-famous people.”
“Okay. But trust me. Just because someone scribbles out a painting of your husband doesn’t mean it’s worth anything, Katie. Your work is breathtaking-gorgeous. More than that, it evokes emotion. That painting of Seth’s face almost made me cry. There’s just something in his eyes that you rendered with paint, that had me… I don’t know, heartbroken. The one of Dylan is just… damn, I don’t even have words. Like, I know he’s beautiful and an underwear god and all, but you made him otherworldly and somehow intensely real, flesh and blood, all at once. And all the ones of Jesse… anyone could tell you’re head-over-heels in love with the man, the way you paint him.”
“Thank you.” I watched the blush on her already rosy cheeks deepen.
“You two make a great team,” I mused.
“Yeah. He provides the beautiful face, I provide the paint.” She grinned like a fool in love. “Seriously, I couldn’t do this without him.”
“I bet he’d say the same about you. You know, he looks at you so much, it’s pretty nauseating.” I wondered if she actually knew how much he looked at her.
She laughed. “Trust me, he’s not always this attentive. He gets pretty sucked up into his music sometimes. But I don’t mind. I get pretty obsessive about my work too. It balances out.”
“You understand each other. That’s good.”
“How about you?” She raised an eyebrow at me, studying me, and I squirmed a bit. I couldn’t imagine being cross-examined by this girl; she’d probably just throw kittens at you until you surrendered to the sweetness. “You still sticking to that story that there’s nothing going on between you and Dylan… and Ashley?”
Dirty Like Dylan: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 4) Page 22