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“You taste–fuck. I’m going to need you to sit on my face before we even make it to the shower,” he muttered to me as we headed toward the house.
“Any objections?” he teased, enjoying that fact that he hadn’t allowed me to speak yet.Stupid dare.
I pulled us to a stop beside the pool. What a difference six months had made. Standing there, in the warm Maine evening, in the heart of summer, I felt overwhelmed with happiness.
Cayden brushed my hair out of my face, and I grabbed his arm. It was the one that his former foster father had made him cut. The long slash he’d cut that night was still there when I ran my fingers over it, but it wasn’t really visible. The ink that surrounded it had covered it too well. That long straight cut Cayden had dug into his arm to stop Uncle Jack from hurting me was now the first letter of a word.
Lily.
He’d told me, while the tattoo gun had buzzed, that it was exactly what he’d intended to write. My name sat right there, on the Hellions’ star player’s forearm, for the world to see. The tattoo had been the impetus for Cayden moving out. My parents might have been okay with the idea of us dating, but a tattoo of my name at the grand old age of eighteen had freaked them out. They were slowly recovering. There weren’t going to be any teen pregnancies or shotgun weddings anytime soon for us. Cayden was on track to get drafted by the NHL, and I was on course to study the subject of my dreams and later, kick ass in the science field. We didn’t have to give up our dreams to be together. We were going to achieve every single one together.
“Have something to say, Freckles?” Cayden goaded me. His wicked smirk made my heart flutter in my chest.
I nodded, and he leaned in immediately, his hands coming to brush my hips.
“You can break the dare, if you need to…I’ll think up a good forfeit for you,” he murmured, anticipation already curling in his satisfied tone. “Maybe that matching tattoo…my name stamped on your ass so no one can ever get any ideas about who it belongs to.”
I glared at him, and he laughed, and tapped the skin just over my heart. “How about here? Would that be better? This is mine too, isn’t it?”
My breath caught. His eyes stared unflinchingly into mine. My heart felt like it swelled three sizes in my chest, so I did the only thing I could to get my balance back.
I nodded slowly and leaned up on my toes to brush a kiss against his lips, my hands falling to his chest.
Then I pushed as hard as I could.
His face morphed into shock for a second as he fell toward the clear, glassy surface of the water, just before his hand snaked out and grabbed my wrist.
“No!” I cried, as he yanked me into the pool with him.
The cool water rushed over us both, shocking me and making me feel alive at the same time.
“You-,” I pushed at his broad chest as soon as I surfaced, and he only laughed and pulled me toward him.
“Me what?” He teased me.
“Hey! We’re in the pool already?” It was Marcus’s voice, and it was the only warning we had before he cannonballed into the water beside us.
“Lil!” Eve’s voice was next. She was standing on the edge of the pool, her hand clamped over her mouth, eyes wide with surprise. Beckett wandered out of the pool house beside her and approached the pool. When he got closer to her, he suddenly lunged out and grabbed her around the waist, before walking them both over the edge and into the water beside us.
Eve surfaced after a moment, spluttering, and I swam toward her.
“What are you crazy people doing?!” She demanded, smoothing her dark hair out of her face. She cast an unreadable look at Beckett as he swam past us. “I hope HHU is ready for all of us.”
I laughed, my eyes catching Cayden’s. That same sentiment might have bothered me not too long ago. A new place, new classes, new rules—it would all have been a source of anxiety. Not anymore, though.
“Don’t worry, we’ll work it out. We’ll be together,” I reminded Eve, pulling her into a hug. “There’s nothing we can’t work out.”
Marcus appeared to chase Eve, and she shrieked and dove under the water to escape him. Cayden popped up beside me, his hands gripping my waist, and turned us into the wall. “Hilarious, Freckles, but you do know that technically, you failed the dare. I have to think of what to do with you.”
I shrugged, biting my lip in anticipation of what Cayden’s filthy imagination would come up with.
He grinned. “Hey Beck, you mind if we use your shower to freshen up?” he called over his shoulder.
“Knock yourself out,” Beckett called back.
Cayden’s grin only became more wicked as he leaned in. “You hear that? Now, you’re mine. And there’s nothing you can do about it, just the way you like it. Now, and forever.”
* * *
