4
Damien
Laurence Gwynn's son was hot. Unreasonably hot. The kind of hot that made lead melt and turned perverted dicks to steel.
And yet he was so,sounattainable.
Damien sauntered down the dock toward the beach regardless, moving in the proud, purposeful way he did when he wanted to impress the fuck out of prospective clients. Matthew was watching. The intensity of his gaze skewered Damien from behind, boosting his confidence and feeding his ego.
Yeah, Matthew was off limits. So what? If he was allowed to be hot as fuck fumbling on the dock, the perfect vision of a boy who needed a capable man in his life, then Damien was allowed to look hot as fuck, too.
It was revenge.
Or something.
Damien made it to the beach, leaving behind the dock's solid wooden planks for stunning white sand that shifted beneath his feet. It was harder to get his swagger on when every step was on unsteady ground, but goddammit, he tried. His efforts led him across the beach to the walkway that spanned the length of the island. There, safe from losing his balance, he channeled all the sultry dominance of his inner investment banker and made the walkway his bitch.
Matthew might not have been watching him anymore, but if he was, Damien intended to give him a show.
What was Gwynn thinking, bringing his barely legal progeny with him on vacation? It was tactical warfare at its dirtiest. If Gwynn thought Damien would be too distracted by his fine-ass son to throw down, he was only partially right.
Unfortunately for Gwynn, Damien could ogle and obliterate the forces of evil with glitter at the same time.
Which led Damien to an uncomfortable realization: ogling was okay; bringing Matthew’s fine ass to bed was not.
“Goddammit, Gwynn.” Damien shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked a tiny spiral shell out of his way. It skipped across the walkway and landed in the sand, then sprouted a mass of nightmarish gray legs and scurried toward the water. Disturbed, Damien came to a stop and watched it go. Paradise, he noted, wasn’t all beach towels and sunsets—it was also horrifying crab creatures emerging when you least expected.
Stupid Gwynn.
Stupid Gwynn’s hot son.
Stupid crab monsters.
When the crab was swallowed by the surf, Damien continued down the walkway. At the far end of the island was the island’s only wharf. The small ferry that ran to and from Viti Levu moored there, allowing those who’d rented the over-water bures to come and go at scheduled times each day. If all had gone according to plan, TD, Glit, and their small army of lovers would arrive on the ferry’s next crossing. Eager to see if either of his friends had messaged the Single Dad chat with an update, Damien dug into his pocket for his phone only to remember that he didn’t have it anymore—when Matthew had bumped into him on the dock, it had slipped from his hand and skidded straight into the lagoon.
David Geller, who’d been vying for the top spot on Damien’s shit list since yesterday, could consider himself a lucky man—Damien had been three-fourths of the way through a scathing but professional email addressed to him when his phone had decided to pursue its lifelong dream of becoming a fish. While Damien was almost relieved to have a reason to take a goddamn minute to himself, being disconnected came with a hidden cost: he couldn’t reach out to the Single Dads.
“Fuck me with a cactus,” Damien said aloud as he continued toward the dock.
“That sounds unpleasant, but if you insist…”
Damien whipped around, grinning so wide, his cheeks ached. xVerity, the man the Single Dads had all flown to Fiji to see married, had come up behind him.
The first and only time Damien had met xV, they’d been at Gwynn’s wedding. Since then, not much about xV had changed. Damien remembered the intelligent glint in his eyes and the scruffy but well-trimmed facial hair that spanned the length of his jaw and stretched across his upper lip. Compared to the rest of the alphas in the Single Dad chat, xV had a willowy build, but today with his shirt hanging open, he put any myths about his body to rest. Damien wasn’t into alphas, but fuck, was xV packing some hot abs.
“xV!” Damien pulled him in for a hug. “It’s been way too long. You look great.”
“It’s all that true love,” xV said with a laugh as their embrace ended. He took a polite step back. “Tell me you’ve been working on your bibbidi-bobbidi-boos.”
Damien smirked. “Salagadoola mechicka boola, bitch.”
“Good, good.” xV nodded thoughtfully. “To be honest, I’m not sure ‘bitch’ is part of the incantation, but the magical world has got to allow for a little individual interpretation.”
“It’d fucking better.”
It was xV’s turn to grin. The expression washed across him like the surf breaking on the sand—gentle and playful while still hinting at a hidden, torrential depth. Of all the Single Dads, xV was the most guarded, more private than even Harley, who, for years, had neglected to tell the rest of the group that he was the father of a Hollywood starlet. Because he was so often withdrawn, a smile from xV was precious.
“Have you heard from Gwynn?” xV asked. “My cell reception’s been spotty since we got here. I’m pretty sure that he arrived earlier this morning, but Mal and I were—” xV’s expression shuttered like a house bracing for a storm, “—too occupied to greet him.”
