Unshackle (Deliver #7) - Pam Godwin Page 0,91

open.” She shifted on the lounger, adjusting her injured leg before meeting Amber’s eyes. “Your husband terrifies me.”

“Me, too.” Amber moved the coasters around on the small table beside her, arranging them in neat groups of four. “He’s meaner than piss.”

“With you?”

“Hmm. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“No, that’s—”

“Van!” Amber leaned to the side, shouting toward the open door of the veranda. “Come here!”

“Oh, now you’ve done it.” Tula groaned. “You call one of them out here, and they’ll all show up.”

Sure enough, as Van ambled into the pool area, Joshua and Ricky trailed behind. They wore swim trunks and carried beers. Sunglasses and sexy hair. Shirtless and shredded with stacks of muscle. Where was a camera when she needed one? They belonged on a vigilante calendar. She would call it Freedom Fighters, the Weapons of War edition.

Van paused beside Amber, gazing down at her, and his smile stretched the scar that curved from his mouth to somewhere beneath his shades. As he leaned down to kiss her fully on the mouth, his hand swiped over the coasters she’d arranged on the table.

When he straightened, her eyes zoomed in on the mess he’d made.

Apparently, Amber’s OCD was a work-in-progress.

“Vera wanted to know,” Amber said, without looking away from the scattered coasters, “if you’re mean to me.”

“Nah.” He removed a toothpick from his pocket and set it between his teeth. “I’m a big sappy baby.”

Joshua laughed as he stepped into the pool. “He’s an asshole. With everyone.”

With an unapologetic shrug, Van rolled the toothpick to the corner of his smirk. “Anything else you want to know? Like if I’m mean when I suspend my wife from the trees out there?” He nodded at the rainforest. “When I whip her and welt her pretty skin? Or when I bring her to orgasm, and she screams so beautifully everyone in the estate can hear her?”

“No, I…really didn’t want to know that.” Vera squeezed thighs against the warmth that rushed between them.

During that brief and disturbingly hot exchange, Amber had discreetly started moving the coasters back into symmetrical groups.

Van tossed his toothpick next to her busy hand. Then he kicked the table, just enough to jostle her attempt at order.

“Excuse us.” He grabbed her, tossed her over his shoulder, and walked straight into the pool, submerging them both as she screamed.

Vera shook her head. “Well, that was…”

“Typical Van.” Ricky took Amber’s chair, stretching out his legs and closing a hand around Tula’s knee. “You’ll get used to him.”

Not likely.

For the next few hours, she hung out with Tula, Ricky, and Joshua. Van and Amber stayed in the pool until Van started removing her bikini. Then they disappeared, taking their foreplay elsewhere.

Beer flowed. Platters of food arrived, and the air buzzed with laughter and conversation.

Until Tula started harping on Vera for hiding the magnitude of their mother’s medical bills. They both had regrets and hashed it all out over multiple beers. Then Tula revisited the topic of Luke.

“He hasn’t fucked her in a week,” she said to Ricky.

Vera gave her the stink eye.

“She has a gunshot wound.” Ricky scraped a tortilla chip along the bottom of a salsa bowl and crammed it into his mouth. “I’d be the same way. A wound like that needs time to heal.”

“That’s what I told her. You’re all so overprotective.”

“Okay, first of all…” Vera picked at the gauze on her thigh. “I’m not a sex addict. There’s more to Luke than his body.”

Tula snorted. “You’re in the honeymoon phase of your relationship. It’s all about the fucking. I mean, the guys and I still go at it like rabbits.”

“You’re wet just thinking about it.” Ricky winked.

“You know I am.”

“Not helping,” Vera muttered.

“Go to bed naked.” Joshua arched a brow and reclined back in the chair. “Trust me. All chivalry will fall by the wayside the moment he reaches over and finds his woman laid out and bare. It’ll trip the wires in his stubborn head.”

That night, she took Joshua’s advice. No t-shirt. No panties. No bandage on her leg. She slipped beneath the covers, wearing only her skin, and shut off the light.

Luke hadn’t come in yet. He’d been tied up with Cole and Tate all day.

As she started to drift off, the door opened. He crept in quietly and removed his clothes in the dark. Then the mattress dipped.

Lying on her side with her back to him, she held her breath, her blood heating in anticipation.

His hands went directly to her ass, as they always did. Only this