And the fact that Dante had threatened his job made me want to teach him a lesson.
Troy hopped in the car with us and Leonardo shook his head the whole way to the hotel. We rounded it to go straight for the resort’s lit up pools.
I was getting over Dante tonight. I shucked off my skirt and smiled at Troy as I pulled him into the pool half naked with me. He’d make me feel good. How could he not with the ocean breeze and the glowing pool in the middle of a beautiful island? I was drunk on mojitos and trying to find paradise without the man I thought was paradise.
Troy was supposed to be making me feel something in this pool. The water lapped around us, and the night air was damp and warm. I should have been loving his lips on mine, his hands roving over my body.
Instead, I wanted to cringe away.
Dinner had been nice, dessert had been nice, dancing had been nice, and his hard dick against my stomach felt nice too.
Except my mind drifted to Dante’s hands on my back, how he worked all the right spots, how he knew just which part of me needed attention.
I moaned at the thought, and Troy took it as encouragement. “God, I want to fuck you in this pool,” he groaned and pushed his dick harder into my stomach. It wasn’t even that big.
I shouldn’t have been comparing, but as it turned out, I wouldn’t be checking much more than getting drunk off my Eat Pray Love list tonight.
I let our kiss linger and tried a last-ditch effort to hold on to his hair as I deepened it.
The sound of the waves just feet away from the infinity pool were relaxing, and the smell of sea salt and tobacco loosened me up, but—
I froze at the smell.
Tobacco. Not just the type from cigarettes either. I’d know that cigar smell anywhere.
He’d only smoked it one time around me, but I’d fallen asleep to that smell, I’d reveled in it and cataloged it as a comfort.
I jerked away from Troy and sobered up fast, not even sure what I was thinking in the first place with the lesson I’d wanted to teach Dante. He wouldn’t be okay with this.
Not even if I were only his friend. Or simply his best friend’s little sister.
I was breaking hotel rules, I was sure. I was making out with a stranger in the middle of the night. I was being reckless. Stupid. And drunk.
The alcohol tasted sour in my mouth as I searched for him. My eyes flew everywhere, only to find his dark silhouette lounging comfortably on a small white hotel chair near some shrubbery. He seemed to take up the whole area, to swallow the chair, and his legs in just swim trunks spread out to own the space around him. When he lifted the cigar’s glowing cherry, it illuminated his tattooed chest and how his lips sucked on the other end, his cheeks hollowed, and his brows lowered.
Our gazes caught in the darkness, and he took a long drag as he stared like he was trying to curb the emotion he felt. Like the cigar might soothe him a little.
His green eyes burned bright, though, and the emotion didn’t dim at all.
I bit my lip and murmured to my date, my eyes still on Dante. “So, I don’t think this is going any further tonight.”
“What?” Disbelief sounded from Troy’s mouth, like I was being a cock-tease. A Tinder hookup gone wrong wasn’t that hard to understand, though. Things like this happened all the time. He glanced behind him to see the dark figure and scoffed. “Is it because of that creep watching us? So what? Let’s give him a show.”
Troy grabbed my waist, a little rougher than I anticipated. I tried my best not to make a scene as I shoved his arm. If I did, I had a feeling Dante would break it.
“Look, I know I probably led you on—” I gripped Troy’s arm and glared at him to get my point across.
“Led me on?” His eyes widened and then narrowed in malice. His hand on my waist tightened.
I glanced at the chair where Dante had been, but the glowing red cherry was gone. No sign of him anywhere.
“Led me on, Delilah?” he sneered this time. “You practically spread your legs—”
“Careful.” Low and vicious in warning, Dante’s voice was right beside us. “You’re talking to the one person in the world I refuse to have hurt.”
“Dante, it’s fine.” I turned to see him close to us in the water. His muscles glowed against the light, his abs rippled, his neck flexed. I gulped as I saw how the veins wormed over his forearm like they were struggling to contain the strength that lay beneath them.
His green eyes didn’t even flick my way. They were on the guy’s arm where he still held me.
Troy didn’t take the hint. “Look, asshole, you’ve been watching us like a creep for the past five minutes. You want a show and I’ll give you one. I just need a minute with her to get her on the same page as—”