Page 35 of Dirty Like Dylan

When Amber’s eyes met mine, I smiled and tried not to stare at her legs. She was wearing short cut-offs, and her thighs were toned and tanned. Her recent months of backpacking through Brazil were showing. Not that she’d told me about Brazil; Liv had.

“He’s not a morning person,” I informed her.

She just smiled a little. Her thick hair was pulled back in a messy little pony tail again. She looked like the kind of girl you could make out with and she wouldn’t give a fuck if you messed up her hair or smeared her makeup. Again, she wasn’t wearing any makeup, as far as I could tell. She looked like the kind of girl who wouldn’t taste like makeup either, but like sweet, clean skin.

She was wearing a flowing blouse with big, pink flowers and leaves on it that were the exact same color as her pale, minty-green eyes. It was the kind of shirt that gave up zero information about her tits, yet it looked sexy as fuck on her, kinda drifting off her right shoulder, showing the little freckles sprinkled there like pink-gold dust.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she ate a strawberry off her plate, her lips sliding in a plump, round, very blowjob-like O around the berry for a moment before she bit down.

Jesus.

I shook my head, searching for something else to fixate on. Like anything. I offered her a coffee, but she declined. Apparently, she preferred tea. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any. I made a mental note to tell Ash to get her some from that hippie tea place near Summer’s house when he went into the city today. He wouldn’t love it, but too bad.

“How’s the picture-taking going?” I asked her.

I listened as she filled me in, all the while wondering where the fuck Ash was. And if he was coming back. It fucking irritated me that he’d taken off.

And why the fuck did he kiss me like that, when she was in the house? Kinda felt weirdly like he was marking his territory or something.

Very fucking weirdly.

Amber showed me a couple of images on the screen on the back of her camera, gorgeous shots of my drum kit all aglow in the sunrise. Girl had a serious eye. I noticed, too, that the only time she didn’t seem unsure of herself or self-conscious or borderline prickly was when she was talking about her photography.

She didn’t say a word about taking a photo of me and Ash. A photo of Ash kissing me, while he was wearing that frilly apron and I was in my underwear. I also didn’t ask. I didn’t particularly want a photo like that splashed all over the internet, mainly because everyone on Earth would then ask me about it, and I’d have to come up with some kind of response that didn’t piss off Ash. Wasn’t sure I was that clever.

But maybe she didn’t even take a photo of us anyway.

If she did, I actually wasn’t worried that she’d sell it to some online rag or whatever. I already knew that wasn’t her style. She had too much integrity for that shit.

And besides that, she wanted me to like her.

That was made pretty clear to me last night.

If she took a photo of me and Ash this morning, she probably just did it because she was a photographer and that’s what photographers do. I wasn’t gonna make her squirm about it.

I really didn’t mind if she took photos of me, half-naked or not.

And I did like her.

Any girl who could handle Ash’s bullshit had my respect. The fact that she seemed so unsure of herself in my house, yet she wasn’t letting Ash scare her off, was a major turn on. The fact that she wasn’t impressed with the things that usually impressed the women I met—women like Susanna—was also a turn on. The fact that whenever she picked up her camera, she lost all that uncertainty and her green eyes blazed with passion, was also a turn on.

The fact that she’d spoken her mind at the Underlayer shoot, even though it had gotten her fired? Biggest turn on of all.

That, and the girl was the kind of ridiculously, naturally pretty that only got prettier the more you looked at her.

I hadn’t found a thing about Amber Paige Malone, yet, that didn’t turn me on.

And that was beyond interesting.

Plus, it was pretty fucking adorable that the entire time we spoke and looked at photos on the back of her camera, she very purposefully kept herself on the other side of the island, as far away as possible from me and my tighty-whities.

* * *

Mid-afternoon I hit the shower, briefly, to rinse off the sweat; I’d spent several hours playing drums and probably smelled like it. Then I threw on some sweats and headed downstairs, towel in hand, heading for the pool.

Amber was on her knees at the front entrance, photographing the staircase that swept up to the second floor and the sunroom off to the side of it.

And shit, the girl was sexy. I could really get used to finding her hanging out in my house like this. The fact that she was down on her knees didn’t hurt. I really wasn’t trying to get any dirty ideas about her kneeling there, but come the fuck on.