Chapter 7
It was past midnight and I couldn’t sleep.
Again.
It was finally the weekend and I’d survived a crazy first week at Triple C, thanks mostly to Arena. The workload was intense and I was already weighed down by reading and assignments. Not to mention the endless politics of their insane community.
I should be sleeping like a damn rock, but instead I was staring up at the ceiling like an insomniac.
The letter from my father was weighing on me more than I was willing to admit. I’d tried to push it aside every time that undercurrent of anxiety twisted in my stomach at the idea that he could turn up here any day and drag me back with him.
Would my mother put up a fight? She’d always been useless at standing up to him. Besides, did she really need me now? She was so wrapped up in Byron and her new life as Mrs. Aston that she’d probably let him have me. I was little more than a prop that she could parade at parties to prove what a loving mother she was. Her husband was all she truly cared about. Another few weeks and she and Byron would jet off via his private plane for the most elaborate European honeymoon known to man, and there’d be nobody standing between me and my father.
A swirling ball of stress formed in my gut at the thought. Which was how I found myself at the outdoor pool in the dark. It was still warm outside, the sounds of the ocean in the far distance filling the silence. Like the rest of the Aston estate, the pool was enormous, with several interconnected sections, a large grotto and waterfall at one end, and three different water slides over near the outdoor kitchen and cabana that had a swim-up bar attached. Every day that I lived here I was blown away by just how cashed up the Astons truly were. Not that I’d ever seen anyone use this pool, let alone appreciate its grandeur.
Tossing my towel on a lounge chair, I slipped into the pool, dropping under the water and letting the silence consume me. The stress rolled off my back instantly.
No one and nothing can touch me here.
I’d loved swimming since I was a kid, according to my mother. She claimed she’d struggled to keep me out of the pool. Neither of my parents were surprised when I made the swim team in high school. I planned on joining the team at Triple C eventually, if they’d have me.
I waded to the edge of the pool and pushed off, completing lap after lap of freestyle strokes, working my muscles until they ached.
Forty laps in, my lungs were on fire and my body lagged with fatigue. When my fingers scraped the wall, I pulled up, gripping the edge and dropping my forehead against it to catch my breath.
“Impressive.”
My head snapped up at the voice, all the tension I’d just worked out of me filling my body again, putting me on edge.
Presley sat at the side of the pool, his legs dangling in the water. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of sleep shorts, his athletic body a mouth-watering sight.
Get a fucking grip, Dempsey. He’s not yours to look at.
“I knew your body was too toned for you to be a couch potato, but I’d pegged you as a cheerleader.”
I sniffed a laugh, turning towards him and pressing my back to the wall.
“Funny, from the look of you, I pictured you as a boring vanilla sex type of guy, not a raging exhibitionist.”
My gaze purposefully ran over him, as though I were picturing him partaking in the mundane sexual position I’d just named.
He smirked back at me. “First of all, you know firsthand that there’s nothing vanilla about the way I fuck. And I like an audience—so what? Plenty of people like to watch.”
I rolled my eyes. “And second?”
“Second…” he said, eyes trained on me as he slid into the pool.
He made his way through the water like a shark tracking a seal. Only I was the seal, helpless against the strength and raw, dominating power of the shark.
Stopping in front of me, my back pressed to the side of the pool, he leaned in close, our slick bodies meeting in the water.
“… I’m obsessed with that smart mouth on you.”
He tilted his head so his lip brushed my ear when he spoke, sending a shiver over my skin.
“We expected you to be meek. To fall in line, or at our feet, whichever you preferred. But so far, you haven’t done either.”
I swallowed, trying to hide the way my body was reacting to him. “And I won’t.”
The words fell from my lips with more confidence than I felt. My body was betraying me. I was enjoying being this close to him and wanted more.
Stop it, Dempsey. You can’t have this and you know it.
He smirked at my words. “You know, I’d almost believe you. But the way your chest is rising and falling fast right now, I know you’re a fucking liar, Sass.”
Sass.
The way he said the word was filled with heat.
His hand pressed against my stomach, his finger tantalizingly close to the top of my swim shorts. “You’ll be moaning my name eventually, we both know it.” I bit the inside of my cheek, forcing down the need unfurling inside me. “And what would our daddy say about that?”
Not only Byron. But my mom and this whole damn community.
There was no way any of my stepbrothers would risk ruining the Aston name, one that would open door after door for them the second they graduated from Triple C. Sinclair had already established himself in the tech world, and no doubt his name had helped him get there in some way. Presley wasn’t about to risk his future for the chance to fuck me.
He pulled back, his lips no longer lingering and sending my head spinning, but he still towered over me.
“You’re right. It would be a fucking scandal.” He lowered himself so we were eye to eye. “But you just might be worth it.”
His blue eyes sparked with trouble as he pulled back, dipping under the water and resurfacing near the edge he’d been seated on. His back muscles rippled as he hauled himself out of the water.
Fuck. He was even hotter wet.
“Sweet dreams, Sass.”
He strolled back towards the house like a soaking sex god.