The Pool Boy - Nikki Sloane Page 0,77

She was giving me so much of what I wanted. The chance at a career with a top-tier manager. The rights to her song. The acknowledgement that what we had wasn’t just casual sex, but more.

But her statement pissed me off.

I hauled her up to her feet, tightening my grasp on her arms. “I’m not some kid you can boss around.”

It was the wrong thing to say because . . . wasn’t that exactly who I’d asked to be to her?

Her eyes thickened with irritation, but lust was buried beneath. “You’re not?”

I liked when she told me what to do, but I wasn’t a pushover, and I had no problem being the one in charge. Half the time, I let Erika think she was the one taking the lead when it was really me.

Who was actually in control anyway when one person ordered the other to take the reins?

“Is that what I am to you?” I gripped her hair at the base of her scalp and tugged hard enough to get her attention. “Just some kid? Because you let me do some very adult things to you.”

It excited me when she went weak at my words, her lips parting to drag in a shallow breath.

“You want that, don’t you?” I demanded. “For me to fuck you all the ways your husband wouldn’t?” I dropped the volume of my voice until it was a growl. “In all the places he wouldn’t?”

“Oh, Christ,” she gasped.

She’d confessed to me she’d never had anal sex. I hadn’t either, really. The one girl from my past who’d been open to the idea changed her mind five seconds in.

I was excited to try it with Erika at some point, and she’d dropped plenty of hints she was eager too. But right now, I was more talk than promise. She’d gone over my head to make this decision about my career, and I needed to remind her I was capable of making decisions too.

I slammed my mouth over hers, silencing her moan of approval. I wasn’t going to ask how she wanted it this time, and I didn’t need to either. We’d been together long enough I could tell. Plus, we were both angry at the situation and looking for a way to blow off steam.

When I stroked a hand between her legs, right over the fabric of her bikini bottom, she jolted and broke the kiss. Her gaze flew down the slope of her lawn toward the party still going on around Preston’s pool. The sound was quieter up here, but we could still hear the music and the people laughing over it. We were partially obscured in the shade, but not exactly hidden from their view.

I’d expected her to drag me into the air conditioning of her house, but instead she clamped a hand on my wrist and tugged me toward the pool house. Not to the workshop door, but to the side of it.

There was a slatted partition wrapping around the outside of the brick building and covered by the overhang of the roof. I’d never had a reason to go into her outdoor shower before. If I’d needed to rinse off my hands, I’d used the garden hose or the sink inside the pool house.

The open-air shower was spacious and bare, other than a hanging wire rack full of shampoo and lotions. I stood on the textured concrete floor as Erika cranked the handle attached to the chrome pipe that climbed up the brick wall and ended in a large rainfall showerhead. Right before the water began to pour and drip from it, she stepped back, shed her cover-up, and hung it on one of the hooks at the doorway.

Fucking her in the shower had been on my to-do list, but this? It was so much hotter. We were secluded back here, but it felt like we were out in the open. There was a party going on just across her lawn.

“If you get too loud,” I set a hand on her hip and eased us both under the falling water, “someone might hear us.”

The shower was barely warm, but that was good. It was hot enough outside and between us. In seconds, we were drenched, and her nipples poking through her bikini top begged for attention.

She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth as I pinched one of them, surprise making her blink her pretty blue eyes rapidly.

That’s right, Erika. I’m in charge.

As soon as my message had been received, I put