How could someone so sexy, so beautiful, want someone like me? I was just a plain Jane, a nobody. I didn’t have any particularly noteworthy attributes to speak of. I was chunky, and couldn’t pull off a two-piece bathing suit if my life depended on it. My hair was ugly—a frizzy mess— if I didn’t do anything to it. My eyes were green, so bland that they were unremarkable. Then there were my thighs—thighs that touched regardless of how much effort I put into working out. I wore holes in the thighs of my jeans because they rubbed together so religiously.
But this man? He had muscles for years. His tattoos were beautiful. He had skin that most women would die for, and most of all, he was way out of my league.
“It’s gotta be good, honey ” Tobias broke me out of my thoughts.
I stopped what I was doing, and realized I’d been rubbing the lotion into his back for much longer than the time that it would normally take to complete the task.
“Yeah, you’re good.” I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry. These tattoos are amazing; I forgot what I was doing.”
His quiet laugh had me blinking up at him.
“What?” I asked as he stared down at me with humor lighting his eyes.
“Nothing.”
Then he struck like a snake, lifting me into his arms and then bodily throwing us both into the pool at our backs.
I gasped a lung full of air before I went down into the water, sinking with the large man who was wrapped around me like a monkey.
The shock of the water hitting my skin from every single direction assaulted my senses, sending my heart rate skyrocketing.
I screamed under the water as the arms around me let me go, and instinctively kicked to the surface. The moment my head broke water, I started to look around for the man who was about to die, and found him all the way across the pool, staring at me with laughter lining his face.
“You’re going to die,” I informed him.
His grin was unrepentant. “Gotta catch me first, sweetheart.”
Now, here is where I tell you that I was an excellent swimmer.
In high school and college—before the incident that changed my life irrevocably—I’d been a competitive swimmer. I was on the swim team, competed in meets and was actually pretty good at it.
But my skills held nothing on those of the man in front of me.
He was like a freakin’ fish.
Every time I swam toward him, he dodged the opposite way. When I put on the speed, he put on the boosters.
By the time I broke the water a few minutes later, exhausted and thinking I might die, I was still no closer to catching him.
“You’re no fun,” I pouted.
He was across the width of the pool from me, staring at me.
Well, my chest.
I looked down to see my breasts acting like their own flotation devices at the water line, and realized rather quickly that the suit had slipped down in my exuberance to get to him.
It wasn’t flashing him my nipples…yet. But any more activity, and I would be.
I pulled it up, and his eyes finally came to mine.
“I swim a lot,” he declared. “Plus, I don’t want you to kill me. I like myself too much.”
I snorted and moved toward him.
“Come on,” I teased lightly, making my way to him. “Be a man.”
His brows rose in unison.
“A man would stay still and let the woman he lo—likes…” Had he meant to say something else? The man never stutters! “Do whatever she wants to him?” he finished.
I nodded firmly. “Yes.”
He laughed in my face and would have taken off again had the water not splashed at our backs, signaling the entrance of other people into our secret hideaway amongst the old folks.
I turned and found a couple of men—who had to be cops by the watchfulness of their eyes—in the pool up to their chests.
“Yo,” I heard Tobias say. “What took y’all so long?”
Each man had a beer in his hands, and they were palming them like they were their best friends.
“Apparently, you’re only allowed to bring one bottle of alcohol with you. Also, you’re not allowed to have your gun.” The first man holding the bottle of Heineken said. “The guys at the metal detector were all like ‘Mr. Asher Connely, you’re not allowed to have firearms on this vessel.’ So I had to call my sister back and have her come get my piece.”
The man, Asher, had a man bun and a beard, two things that I’d developed a fascination with when they’d first become popular a few months ago. Only, this man’s ‘man bun’ wasn’t much of a man bun but more of a convenient way to stow his hair out of his face while he did extra-curricular activities.
He was tall, built and tattooed. Though, he was white…very white. So white, in fact, that if he didn’t put on some suntan lotion very soon, he’d be burned to a crisp in a matter of minutes. He was literally the color of my sheets at home on my bed.
“It was embarrassing that this booze-a-holic even came with me,” the other man grumbled.
And dear, sweet baby Jesus, was he pretty.
He looked like Dr. McDreamy from Grey’s Anatomy…only more rugged.
A lot more rugged.
He had silver at his temples, beautiful ice blue eyes, and a salt and pepper close clipped beard that was so freakin’ sexy that if Tobias hadn’t been standing at my side, I would’ve said he was easily the hottest person I’d ever seen.
A large hand went around my waist, and I turned to the side to see Tobias treading water next to me.
“Come on,” he ordered.
I didn’t have much choice seeing as he’d pulled me with him to where the shallow end was.
Or where the shallow end was for him.
The entire pool was deep, and there wasn’t really a shallow end. At least not for me.
The starting point and the ‘shallow’ end was five and a half feet. The deep end was seven feet.
Both places I couldn’t touch.
But Tobias seemed to realize that rather quickly when he dragged me with him, and pulled me into his chest. He held me in place, my back to his front, with one strong forearm around my waist.
“Audrey, I’d like you to meet Asher, the really white man who’s about to burn his body to a crisp if he doesn’t put on sunscreen.”
Asher grinned. “I did, don’t get your titties in a twist.” He turned his eyes down to me, studying me. “Nice to meet you, Audrey.”
I nodded my head. “You, too.”
“And this man,” Tobias continued, “is Amos.”
Amos. Huh, not what I was expecting at all.
“Nice to meet you,” I greeted him, trying to make my words work right.
His grin was slow to come, but still beautiful. “You, too, honey.”
Tobias’ arm tightened around me. “Fuck off, pretty boy.”
Amos’ eyes were sparkling.
“Brought you a beer.” He gestured toward the side of the pool that was furthest away from us.
Tobias let go of me to go get it, but I pushed off of him and swam to the side, grabbing the bottle of beer that still had the cap secured tightly.
Thankful that there was no way so spill, I swam back just to hear ‘hot as fuck’ come out of Asher’s mouth.
My brows furrowed. It wasn’t that hot.
In fact, it was actually kind of chilly, but maybe this man came from somewhere up north where it was actually cold during the winter instead of hot like it was in Alabama.
Tobias grunted and reached for me, pulling me back into his chest as he also reached for the beer.
“I went to the police academy with both of these yahoos,” Tobias said. “What was it, eleven years ago now?”
“Almost twelve,” Amos agreed, his eyes turning to me. “We were the three amigos in the academy. Then this douchebag had to go and find a job in Ala-freakin’-bama instead of Texas, splitting us up.”