Page 42

We’re Good

Abi

“Are we good here, Mariano?”

I looked up at Dex, his face a tight mask that I would’ve described as a glower if he hadn’t just chanted cursing praises of me the entire time he’d worshipped every inch of my body.

No, he didn’t look mad, he looked intentional.

Intense.

I watched his strong neck as he swallowed and I could feel the tremble in his arms as he held himself above me. He was poised and ready, a hunter about to go in for the kill, and I’d never wanted anything more than I wanted him at that moment.

His green eyes looked dark as he waited for me to say yes, and nothing could’ve stopped me from trailing my nails down his long, muscular back and saying, “So good, Powell.”

Then he was there, we were there, and everything else in the world—the room, the lights, the air—disappeared from our universe.

It was only Dex and me as he held my hips and went deep, only us as he licked my skin and made me whisper his name on repeat, only Powell and Mariano as he flipped me around on the huge mattress, biting down on the back of my neck while I screamed into the pillow and he groaned my name on a string of profanities.

But everything returned, soft and muted and lovely, as our fuzzy surroundings came into focus again. He pulled me into his body, turning me to face him, and dropped a kiss on the tip of my nose.

My eyes were burning alarmingly as he gave me the sweetest smile, pushed my damp hair back, and said, “Is it weird to say the scorpion was worth it? That I’m sort of glad that little fucker cornered you in the shower?”

I coughed out a laugh and raised a hand to touch his cheek, reveling in the feel of such soft skin on an unyieldingly chiseled face.

A beautiful face.

“Well, I mean, it seems kind of wrong when they’re apparently poisonous,” I said, tracing his dark eyebrow with my index finger. “But I feel the same way.”

He swallowed, and I wasn’t sure why I was always so obsessed with that.

With the movement of his Adam’s apple.

Probably because I liked to think it was some sort of emotional tell, a sign that he was feeling things that his mouth wasn’t saying.

“So you’re saying you feel the same way,” he said, his voice low and rumbly, where I could feel it in my chest. His eyes moved all over my face, like he was searching for something, and then he kissed my forehead. “Good to know.”