Pretty Little Savage (Sick Boys #1) - Lucy Smoke Page 0,131

… she's a pretty shit person."

"No need to justify it to me," he says.

A soft breeze that smells like salt hits my face as a wave washes in against the shore several feet away. Turning, I stare at his profile. He sits on his ass with both feet on the ground, legs bent, and his shoulders rolled forward. My eyes are immediately drawn to lines of black peeking out from beneath his shirt and I'm transported back to a moment when he was driving into me that his tattoos were all I could see. That and a white light as my orgasm crashed over me.

I want to ask what the meaning of his tattoos are, if they have a meaning anyway—for all I know, they could be pure decoration—but something tells me they're not. Dean Carter does not strike me as the type of man who does anything for the fun of it.

"It's your turn again," I point out, tipping my beer in his direction. His drink remains dangling from his fingers, the bottom resting against the sand.

After a moment of silence, his head tilts and he turns to look at me. "I went first," he says. "I think that earns me a second round where you take a leap of faith and just tell me something about you that no one else knows."

My lips part. "No one knows that I hate my mom."

"Maybe not," he says. "But anyone can guess. Give me something else. Something more meaningful."

"Why?" I ask.

"What?" he replies. "I've been inside your pussy, but you can't tell me a secret?"

I groan and bare my teeth in irritation. "I hate that you're such a fucking control freak," I snap.

Finally, there's a crack in his mask. His lips twitch and the corner of his mouth lifts until he's smiling—actually smiling, teeth and everything—at me. "No, you don't," he challenges.

"Excuse me?"

He shakes his head and chuckles. "I think that's the furthest thing from the truth and that's not how this exchange works. No lies in this game."

One arm hangs over his knee and I have the urge to knock it off and then knock his ass to the ground. "What do you know about me?" I say, but my words don't carry their usual acerbic-ness.

"A lot," is his immediate response. He sets his beer down in the sand and lifts his hand up until his fingers graze my cheek. I freeze at the feel of skin on skin contact. Which is fucking ridiculous. I've felt his skin on mine before. Hell, I just got done having a day and night long fuck fest with the dude, but this time is different. This feels like something more. And I don't know how to react to it.

"I know the reason that you're so fucking hostile and stubborn is because you've had to be. Let me guess … you grew up in a house with a revolving door? Did your mom date a lot of guys? Did they ever look at you the way adults shouldn't look at children?"

With every word he speaks, the colder I become. A prickle of something sinister slithers up my spine. I grab his wrist and hold it away from my face. "Did you learn that from your fucking research?" I spit. "How nice for you to think you can figure out everything about someone just by paying people off. Well, do you want to know what I know about you, D-man?"

He looks at me and I hate how I can't fucking tell what he's thinking right now. "Yes." I might have missed the word if I hadn't been listening for it. As it is, the whisper is so quiet, so quickly swallowed by the wind and the sound of crashing waves that I almost think I imagined it. But in his eyes, I see the truth. I know I haven't.

"You're such a control freak because you feel out of control most of the time," I accuse. He doesn't blink or react, and I think back to all the times before. The gas station. The Frazier House party. The warehouse fight. The lake. He hates his dad...

"What else?" he asks when I don't keep going.

"You're an asshole," I state.

The corner of his mouth twitches. "That's not a secret." No, it's not, but the reason for it is. I just haven't figured that reason out yet. He moves closer until I can smell more than just the beach breeze and saltwater. My lips part. He's so close and