“Sarcasm.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “The ladies love that.”
“What can I say?” I joked. “I’m perfect.” I leaned in and kissed her until she gave in, kissing me back until I was pretty sure she almost forgot what we were talking about. But then I felt her pulling away.
“And B,” she said, “Ash already gave me a list. He confessed to me about all his bullshit. Including his lack of commitment to recycling.”
I snickered. “Recycling? I thought you wanted gnarly shit.”
“Polluting the planet is plenty gnarly to me.”
“How about that carbon-coughing gas-guzzler of a Camaro of his? He tell you about that?”
“Didn’t have to,” she said. “I smelled it from the driveway.”
“He also throws out his clothes when he gets tired of them,” I said as I dropped back onto the window seat with a beer. “I’ve told him about a thousand times to donate them to charity.”
“How did this turn into a ‘shitty things about Ash’ conversation?” Ash asked.
“Come to think of it,” Amber teased, “most conversations we’ve had since I met you have been a ‘shitty things about Ash’ conversation.”
“Huh,” Ash said. Then he set down his spatula. He’d been making salsa in my food processor, but prowled over to where Amber was chopping at the island. She screamed when he grabbed her by the waist and spun her around so fast she almost dropped the knife.
Ash pressed her wrist gently to the countertop and she let the knife drop. Then he walked her over to the bench by the window, not two feet from me, laid her down, and crawled over her.
“I must’ve missed that conversation last night…” he said, snaking his hand up her bare thigh and under her shirt—my shirt. “And this morning. You know… while my tongue was up your sweet cunt and you were speaking in tongues.” He dragged her panties down her thighs and then peeled them right off.
“Did you just use the C-word on me…?”
“Yup. Spread your legs.”
She spread her legs as his hand slid up her thigh again, gasping when his fingers struck gold. “I… um… object to that word being used by you… to describe my… sex parts… .”
“Sure you do,” he said as he went down on her and her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Fuck… that feels good…” she gasped. “Your piercing… oh my God.”
“I know,” Ash mumbled. “Why do you think I have it?”
“Huh?”
“It’s for the ladies, Amber,” he informed her as he kissed her pussy. “Feels good on the clit.”
He’d shoved the sweatshirt up to expose her, and her tidy little landing strip of caramel-colored hair beckoned to me. I knew how soft it was, how she smelled. How she tasted.
I wanted to shove Ash aside and taste her, right now.
I didn’t.
“I… uh… noticed.” She fought her way up onto her elbows to watch as he shifted lower between her legs, tonging her, deep. “You, um, really got your tongue pierced for the ladies?”
“Uh-huh. Definitely not for my singing career…”
“What do you mean?”
“I have to remove it,” he said, coming up for air, “when we go into the studio. And when we’re playing shows a lot, I take it out. It fucks up my singing.”
“Ohh,” Amber sighed, kinda struggling for breath as he flickered his tongue over her clit again, teasing her. “So… it’s just for me?”
“Yeah, sweetheart,” he said. “For you and your pussy.”
“Oh…”
He paused, glancing up at her. “I mean, it feels good on a guy’s cock, too. When you rub it against the underside of his—”
“Uh, I don’t have one of those,” Amber said. “So let’s just go back to the pussy thing…”
“No problem,” he said, and went down on her again. And this time, he didn’t stop to make conversation. Amber mewled and whimpered and started falling apart right next to me, and I just sat here, frozen.
Fuck me.
This was all starting to get… complicated.
As I watched them, listened to them, I didn’t even know what the fuck to do. My dick knew what to do. I had a raging fucking hard-on, but my head was all over the fucking place.
The thing was, I didn’t do complicated. I didn’t know how to do complicated. It made me uncomfortable, and I didn’t like uncomfortable.
Last night in L.A., I’d had moments of such sheer fucking happiness… and such total discomfort, I didn’t know what to do with it all. Except fuck Amber. Repeatedly.
I knew this was all my fault, in a way. My doing.
I’d wanted Amber around, at first, to help Ash. To yank him out of his funk. To make him happy again.
Yes, I was curious about her from day one, and that curiosity quickly progressed to interest, then genuine affection, then a sense of attachment that I’d rarely felt toward a woman.
But we’d surpassed that place long ago.
Now, I was feeling twinges of possessiveness that I’d honestly never felt toward a woman in my life. There was a part of me that wanted Amber to myself. In a big way.
Which meant that watching what was happening right now was hitting me in a really weird way.
It wasn’t as if I’d never seen Ash eat a chick out before.
But I’d definitely never felt like this about it before. All twisted up.
It was fucking with my head.
I almost got up to leave, wanted to, but I was somehow rooted to the spot, transfixed, even as my heart sledgehammered in my chest. Then Amber’s head fell back as she moaned, and when her eyes drifted open, they looked into mine, upside-down.
“You never told me your gnarly shit,” she said, gazing up, dreamily, into my face.
No. I didn’t.
“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 wonde
red 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.”
“You looked scared,” I told her, in all seriousness.
She blinked at me. “I guess I was, a little. But, hey, I’ve seen worse.” She rested her chin on my chest as she gazed at me. “You know my old jeans with the Venezuelan flag patch on them? I saw a guy get stabbed in the street, like two feet in front of me.”
“Shit. Someone you knew?”
“No. Just wrong place, wrong time. I held his hand and I got his blood on my jeans. He didn’t die or anything, but it was plenty scary.”
“Shit,” I said again.
She shrugged. “What can I say. I’m a woman of the world, Dylan Cope. I’ve seen much worse than a bunch of drunk rock stars getting into a jealous brawl.”
I knew she was making jokes to deflect from the point. Fact was, she was scared when the shit hit the fan and the fists started flying. She was right in the middle of it, and she could’ve gotten hurt. But I was pretty sure she was more scared about one of us, Con or Ash or me, or maybe even Johnny, getting hurt.
“Seriously,” I told her, “I don’t want you to think I’m that guy. Other than some random drunken bar fights where I jumped in to pull guys apart, I’ve actually never been in a fight. I’ve never hit someone in the face like that.”
“So why did you do it this time?”
“Because I was pissed.” I laid my hand on her cheek. “I saw Johnny grab at you and you pulled away from him, and I just saw red. I swear to you, though, I don’t usually lose my temper like that. I mean, look, Amber… I—”
“True story,” Ash said, walking back in. “You’ve got his Underlayers all tied up in knots, Amber Paige.”
Amber had turned to look at him, and slid off of me a bit. Now, she just stared at me.
And damn, I wanted her alone.
I wasn’t even sure where that conversation was going, but I really wanted to have it.
I glanced at him. “Nachos?”
“Burnt to a crisp.”
He flopped onto the bed next to Amber, and for whatever reason, I wanted out. So I got up and started pulling on my jeans.
“I put them in to crisp up a bit before putting the toppings on,” Ash was saying, “then forgot when Amber got all sexy.” He smacked her bare ass and she grinned. “But we’ve got more.”
I pulled on my shirt, and when I looked at them again, he’d started kissing her. “You get to come, baby?” he asked her.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “You made me come.”
“I meant after that. Dylan take care of you?”
“Um…” She glanced at me. I didn’t make her come, but fuck, when he left, I just wanted to talk to her.
Now I felt like an asshole.
Ash pushed her over onto her back. “Can I get a little help here?” he asked me, his eyes on Amber as he shifted over her and started kissing his way down her body.
And yeah, normally I’d be all over that. I’d already lost track of the times we’d made Amber come together, one of us between her legs, one of us sucking on her tits… My dick throbbed at the thought, but I still didn’t make a move toward the bed.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“I’ll take care of the nachos,” I said. “You guys just…”
I didn’t even bother finishing that sentence. Amber looked at me, but then her eyes rolled closed as Ash went down on her. “Stay…” she breathed, reaching out a limp hand for me.
“I’ll be back,” I said.
I took a lingering look at her lying there, getting off on Ash’s face between her legs.
Then I went to the kitchen to make dinner, for the first time in pretty much as long as I could remember.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ash
The next night, we hit up a party at Summer’s place. It was the Sunday before Halloween, which meant it was a Halloween party, and she’d gone all out. Decorations, dry-ice fog rolling through the house, the works.
I hadn’t been to one of Summer’s parties in a few weeks, and if I didn’t show my face at one of them soon, she was probably gonna start worrying about me. She’d already been blowing up my phone, wondering where the fuck I’d been. It wasn’t exactly like me to ditch on her parties when I was home from tour.
And Summer’s parties were always epic. Great music ’til all hours of the night. Beautiful people. Easy sex.
Both Dylan and Amber came with me, and while Amber seemed to be having a good time, something was going on with Dylan. He’d been acting weird since last night, when he’d walked out on us to make nachos. Like dinner had ever been more important than eating Amber’s pussy?
He’d been distant and kinda distracted all day, which was not normal for him. Seemed like something was bothering him, but he didn’t want to talk about it.
I’d tried, a few times, to ask, but he just shut it down. Said he was just preoccupied, thinking about Dirty going into the studio.
Which was bullshit.
Dylan never got stressed about making an album. But he was stressed right now.
I watched him most of the night, making the rounds, talking with people, laughing. His arm was slung around Amber pretty much the whole time. Him in his zombie Khal Drogo costume with the black wig and beard braid and war paint, her as zombie Daenerys, with the blonde wig and the toy baby dragons clipped to her shoulders—both of them with their melting, rotten, zombified skin.
I was zombie Jon Snow, no wig needed, but I kinda dug the big faux fur cloak and badass sword. (Amber had insisted on the fur being fake.) I’d suggested the Game of Thrones theme, since we were now in the middle of making Amber (who’d never seen it—WTF?) binge watch the entire series with us. Dylan was the wiseass who’d suggested the Khal Drogo/Daenerys Targaryen/Jon Snow threesome costume. And Amber was the one who’d insisted it had to be creepy, since it was Halloween, which meant we’d spent hours layering on latex and painting each other, then glopping on the fake blood and puss. Really, we’d done a commendable job. If the rock star thing really didn’t work out for me, maybe I could get a gig as an FX makeup artist in Hollywood? Because from where I was standing, watching them and smoking my joint, Dylan and Amber were the best dressed at the party.
Summer had even awarded us a prize for “best threesome costume”—three bottles of booze.
But since then, it was like Dylan had forgotten that we’d all come together.
He didn’t seem to give one fuck about sharing Amber with me tonight. But I just let
him have her. It wasn’t like him to hog a girl we were both involved with, especially at a party, but I let it slide.
Whatever was bothering him was maybe just making him forget his fucking manners.
I considered—very, very briefly—forgetting mine too, when Summer came by to check on me, wearing sinfully low-slung white leather pants and a wisp of an excuse for a white shirt, with a red cross on it. And a little nurse’s cap. Summer had amazing tits, and a beautiful body that I knew all too well. Never mind that I used to be in love with her.
I wasn’t now.
But yes, I was fucking jealous about Dylan and Amber cozying up without me. And when Summer hugged me in her skimpy costume, and I touched the small of her bare back… I almost let my hand slide down over her tight ass.
Almost.
Luckily, I didn’t. Because as much as I might’ve been tempted to get petty on account of the jealousy, groping Summer was not gonna go over well with Amber or Dylan. We’d made a promise to one another. A commitment.
It probably wouldn’t go over well with Summer, either. Because she and I had agreed, years ago, that “we” were done. I knew neither of us wanted to blur the line by screwing around.
Usually, that wasn’t a problem. My bed was rarely empty; I had plenty of lovers to keep me from groping my ex in a moment of weakness.
So did Summer.
So I kissed her on the cheek and released her, and when she asked me why I was smoking alone in the corner, I told her, “Just admiring you from afar.”
She was accustomed to me flirting with her, so she just smiled and rolled her hips a little as she walked away, winking at me over her shoulder.
Then I gathered up Dylan and Amber and got us the fuck out of that party before I did something stupid. Like get drunk and stick my tongue down my ex-girlfriend’s leather pants.
Because when I thought about it… I wasn’t actually one-hundred-percent sure that Summer would turn me down if I tried, which would’ve made a move like that extra stupid, and extra risky.
With Dylan and Amber… I just wasn’t willing to take those kinds of risks.
By the time we got home, Dylan was all over Amber. Barely even got her to his bedroom by the time he had her naked.
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