Page 28 of Kings & Chaos

Except when I picked up my phone, it wasn’t a text from Mara.

It was from Rock.

I unlocked my phone and a pic of bubbles and lights appeared my screen.

Come down here and get wet.

I laughed, then shot a quick text to Mara.

I love you. I just feel sick when I think about something happening to you… Idk. This place is weird. Talk again later in the week?

I surveyed my bathing suit options — extensive, thanks to my time in Bali — and chose a hot-pink bikini with a G-string bottom and a barely there top. I was stepping into the hall when Mara texted me back.

Love you too. Everything is weird right now.

Agreed. We good?I texted as I started down the stairs.

Always.

My shoulders relaxed as some of the tension left my body. Mara was the one constant in my life. She always had been. We hardly ever fought, but when we did, nothing seemed right. I’d call her later in the week and make sure she was okay.

I hit the vestibule at the back of the kitchen and headed for the glass doors leading to the luxe patio and outdoor kitchen behind the house.

The pool was closed, but the hot tub was nestled just off the covered patio and had been left open for winter. The closer I got to the rising steam and smell of chlorine, the more excited I got. I hadn’t spent any time in the hot tub yet, and after my altercation with Neo in the kitchen, the essay from hell, and the unnerving convo with Mara, nothing sounded better than a long soak with the two most gorgeous guys at Aventine.

It wasn’t until I reached the edge of the hot tub that I realized there weren’t actually two guys in the hot tub.

Just one. Rock.

He grinned at me through the steam. eyeing my body appreciatively. “What’s with the suit, kitten? I’m naked as a jaybird under here.”

The engine on my never-ending lust for one of the men I swore I’d never fuck accelerated from zero to sixty in under three seconds.

A naked and slippery Rock Barone looking me over like I was the appetizer, main course, and dessert all in one?

Count me the fuck in.

Chapter10

Willa

Istepped down into the hot tub and sat across from Rock with a sigh, positioning one of the jets on my lower back. “Where’s Oscar?”

“Otherwise engaged,” Rock said.

Fuck me. The only thing sexier than every-day-jeans-and-T-shirts Rock was slippery-when-wet Rock eye-fucking me through the steam.

“You told him to fuck off, didn’t you?” I asked.

“I told him to fuck off,” he confirmed, obviously pleased with himself.

“Rude.” I said it with a smile, because while I loved fucking Oscar, I was more than eager to take Rock for a spin, especially now that we’d cleared up the whole Emma-on-the-security-cam thing.

“Think so?” he said, rising to make his way toward me.

He looked like a fucking Renaissance sculpture, his broad shoulders and muscled pecs sculpted like the masterpieces I’d seen in Italy. His blond hair looked darker wet and slicked back from his face, and I had the urge to touch my tongue to the droplets of water that clung to his cheeks and chiseled jaw.

The water barely covered his dick, and my gaze strayed to the line of light hair that disappeared beneath the water.

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