Wait.MyCourteney?
Where the fuck did that come from?
She glanced at my abandoned drink, blinked at me and said, “Maybe you’d prefer avirgin?” She licked salt from the rim of her glass, slowly… and my dick twitched. “You wouldn’t want that nasty,clingyhangover.” There was acid in her voice, but she smiled again and walked away.
Or tried to.
I grabbed her arm, gently, stopping her.
“Can I talk to you?”
“About what?” She blinked at me innocently. “There’s nothing to talk about, right? Excuse me, I think I’m burning. I need someone to rub lotion on my back.”
For a split second the smile crumbled, and she gave me the nastiest, filthiest look I’d ever seen on her face. And not sexy-filthy. It was more of aWhy-don’t-you-eat-shit-and-die-choking-on-it?filthy.
Then she yanked her arm away, snatched a bottle of sunscreen off a chair as she went, and sauntered right over to that rich brat from next door.
Stephan. The trust-fund-kid-turned-pool-boy.
The guy I’d overheard her and her girlfriends talking about that first day by the pool.
Yeah, I heard that.
The same guy who’d come by a few times now and fucking stared at Courteney in her bikini.
Yeah, I saw that too.
Saw her lounging by the pool, working on her book or something on her laptop, with her cute little glasses on… and the kid about to break his neck trying to keep one eye on her as he cleaned the pool.
And now he was taking the bottle of lotion she held out to him and nodding like a puppy. She turned and stretched out on a lounge chair, just like she did for me, and the little dickwad started rubbing the lotion on her back.
I took a deep breath and blew it out through my gritted teeth.
I made the decision not to snap Stephan’s neck and toss him in the pool to drown, and instead sat down on the lounge chair right next to them. I kicked my feet up, stretching out. On second thought, I peeled off my shirt. Then I relaxed back, making sure my muscles flexed a little and all her little brat friends—the male ones—noticed I was twice their size.
They noticed.
Stephan looked right at me, and when I met his gaze, I smiled—the way a jaguar might smile at a small, juicy deer who’d been separated from the herd. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Kid had to be fresh out of high school. Courteney’s age. Kind of athletic, but no match for me.
He knew it.
He made quick work of getting that sunscreen on her back, then beat a path to the other end of the patio.
Larissa was in the chair on my other side, her mouth hanging open a bit as she watched him go. When she realized I was looking at her, she snapped it shut.
“What’s new, Larissa?” I asked her.
And there I stayed, for the next five hours, while Courteney and her friends had their little party.
* * *
Courteney was drunk.
She was leaning on Stephan for support, laughing at his jokes, while his arm was wrapped around her waist.
At least she had clothes on now. She’d pulled on a little skirt and a T-shirt over her bikini.
Unfortunately, Larissa and her boyfriend hadn’t been drinking all day—I’d kept track—and they were all packing up to head out for dinner.
