Recording contracts, Brenna learned, contained a lot of details and required a lot of explanation, at least with girls as smart as the members of Blush, who asked Damon probably a hundred questions before the deal was reached and the meeting ended just before noon.

When the band left, Brenna admitted that she could use some additional explanations on certain clauses herself, so Damon suggested they talk about it poolside as there was no more pressing work until this evening, when they would hit a few more clubs. As luck had it, Kelly had insisted Brenna add a sexy bikini to her new wardrobe, which Brenna had thought silly and frivolous—but she’d relented and now possessed a hot-pink two-piece with a short matching sarong.

Returning to her room to change, she felt thankful, too, that she went to the expense of hitting the tanning bed a couple of times a week. She wasn’t much of a sun-worshipper, but a little color made her look and feel healthier—especially when she slipped into her new suit.

Taking a glimpse back into the bathroom mirror, she couldn’t deny that she looked sexy. Like the new bras she’d bought, the pink underwire triangles lifted her breasts to make them look pretty and plump, and the scant bottoms showed off her slender tummy. Peering at her reflection, she made a mental note to fall to her knees thanking Kelly the next time she saw her. Apparently, she did need a man, she did need a penis, and she did need a fuchsia bikini—and from now on, she planned to follow any and every piece of advice Kelly doled out.

Slipping on the wedged, glittery flip-flops Kelly had insisted completed the look, she left her room to find Damon approaching her door. He wore stylish trunks of black with red slashes up the sides, along with his usual earrings and that silver cross she’d first noticed last night.

“Damn, babe,” he said appreciatively, letting his gaze rake over her from head to toe. The warmth of a blush climbed her cheeks, but only because she wasn’t used to such open praise of her body, let alone liking it.

When they walked onto the rooftop pool and out into the desert heat, Brenna felt overwhelmed by luxury. While the pool itself was large but simple, the surroundings were grand. Hundreds of elegant lounge chairs set amid huge stone pots cradling well-manicured trees and immense stone columns upholding wrought-iron arches strung with vines. Beyond the pool area, the Venetian’s clock tower spired skyward between the Mirage and Caesars Palace in the distance.

As they settled in two chairs rimming the pool’s edge, Brenna began to notice all the “beautiful people” lounging about. Oh, certainly there were people of all types—older folks on vacation, a few young families—but she immediately felt outnumbered and intimidated by all the glamour girls in barely-there bikinis and the hip, cool guys hiding their eyes behind sunglasses by Versace and Prada. One would think that after living in Los Angeles and working in the music business for three years she’d have grown used to such people, but this was different—because suddenly she was among them, with a guy who was one of them, and she supposed, in order to keep his affections, she wanted to be one of them today, too.

Not far from where they’d stretched out over towels spread across their chairs, a brunette wearing a narrow black cowboy hat and a black thong bikini lay on her stomach atop a large concrete pillar in the pool that rose just above the water’s surface. She sported a sun tattoo at the small of her back and she rested propped on her elbows, showing so much cleavage that Brenna was surprised her nipples weren’t exposed. Another scantily clad girl, this one a blonde in a gold-lamé bikini, her firm breasts bulging from too-small triangles, stood in the water next to her, smoothing sunscreen over her back.

The girl in black sipped a fruity-looking concoction from a plastic cup, and expensive sunglasses shaded her eyes as she looked up—toward them. “Why, if it isn’t Damon Andros. Aren’t you even going to say hello, baby?”

Oh hell. No wonder she’d been intimidated. Since Damon was one of the beautiful people, that meant he also knew beautiful people, and apparently he knew this one in particular, whose perfectly tan, round ass Brenna couldn’t help but envy.

Damon turned toward the voice. “Tawny. What are you doing here?”

The brunette grinned. “Just catchin’ some rays, baby. And you?”

Oh God, her name was Tawny. And now she was introducing her friend, whose name was Honey, and when Damon asked Tawny how things were at the club and she told him he should stop by, she got the distinct impression both girls were strippers. And that Damon knew Tawny via her work. Which meant, of course, that he’d seen her naked. And she’d probably given him a lap dance. Or twenty. And had quite possibly had sex with him, since any sane woman would if she could.

Swell.

But you can’t let this get you down. After all, you know he has a lot of casual sex. Everyone knew that about Damon—and even if you didn’t know it for sure, one look at him told you. And this wasn’t going to matter at the end of the week anyway, because what happened here was going to stay here.

Although if what happened in Vegas had to stay in Vegas…well, Brenna was going to squeeze in as much pleasure as she possibly could before she left.

That’s when she heard Damon introduce her and made sure to smile just as smugly as Tawny was smiling at her. Tawny offered a thin-lipped “Hi,” which Brenna smoothly returned.

It wasn’t that she wanted to lower herself to acting like a bitch just because Tawny and Honey were, but she also wasn’t going to be Little Mary Sunshine and let them think they could steal her man. In fact, she was going to go one step further.

Rising from her chaise, she moved over to Damon’s, parking her rear next to him, effectively blocking the view of the two bikini-wearing vultures, and handing him the bottle of sunscreen she’d packed with her bathing suit.

“Will you do my back, Damon?” she asked, giving him her best come-hither look. Although, realistically, she wasn’t sure she even had a come-hither look, but she was trying, and Damon got her so hot with a mere glance that it inspired her.

“Of course,” he said, taking the bottle and making her feel supremely victorious.

As the afternoon progressed, they ordered lunch from the grill—washing it down with a couple of fruity concoctions of their own—and went over the contract Blush had just signed, talking more about the particulars.

From time to time, other women who knew Damon approached—and Brenna struggled to keep her blood from boiling, instead just sticking out her chest, bending one knee, and trying to look as sexy and sophisticated as her competition. Still, with every sexy girl who talked to Damon, Brenna couldn’t deny growing more jealous, feeling unduly possessive of her new man.

Which was bad, she knew. This could go nowhere, and even if it could, she had a feeling that no one possessed Damon Andros. The fact was—she was lucky just to be with him for this short time. It was like a gift, she thought. A karmic gift. The universe’s hot little way of making up for her cheating husband.

But the more prickly pear mojitos she drank, the less she was able to reason and the more rank jealousy filled her veins. Until finally, just after a blonde bombshell in a slinky one-piece cut all the way to her navel departed, Brenna did what she was getting pretty good at doing the last day or so: following her urges.

Aware that Tawny and Honey were still observing from lounge chairs not far away, Brenna set her mojito cup on the ground and stood up, moving to Damon’s chair. He was still talking sales and distribution when she stretched out alongside him.

He offered a soft but steamy grin, their faces close now. “What’s this?”

“This is me thinking that all work and no play makes Damon a dull boy.”

He arched a skeptical brow. “Dull? Me? Come on, babe.”

He had a point. So she let her expression form into a sexy pout. “Okay, maybe not. But all work and no play definitely makes Brenna want to play.” And with that, she slid one arm around his shoulders and eased the other onto that broad chest dusted with dark hair, then leaned in for a kiss.

Was it bad that knowing Tawny and Honey and probably half the women at the pool were watching made her feel even sexier? At the moment, she didn’t care. And Damon didn’t seem to mind her affections, since he kissed her back, his lush mouth moving on hers, making her cream her bikini bottoms.

“Let’s get in the water,” he said low, near her ear.

She would have preferred to make out some more, but so long as he was with her, paying attention to her and only her, she wouldn’t argue.

Descending the nearby stairs into the pool, step by slow step, Brenna hissed in her breath upon meeting the cold water.

“Come on in, babe,” he said, his gaze turning downright wicked. “Don’t you want to get wet with me?”

The enticing words drew her straight down into the pool with only one gasp in response to the cold, after which her body quickly adjusted, heating up from mere anticipation.

Damon took her hands to pull her deeper, until the water came to chest level. Then he leaned in to press his mouth back to hers, his slow, lingering kisses reverberating all the way to her toes, his palms molding warmly to her hips beneath the water. As her breasts brushed his chest, sending a fresh spark of arousal all through her, he glanced down, so she did, too, to see her nipples erect and jutting at the hot-pink Lycra.

His voice came low and smoky. “Do you know what I want to do to you right now?”

She struggled not to let herself tremble with lust. “Tell me.” She’d never gotten into dirty talk before. Well, before last night. And now she wanted more of it. “Tell me,” she said again, throatier this time.

“I want to peel this sexy top off your pretty tits and lick those hard, pink nipples.”

She swallowed, feeling the words in her cunt, and when he let his hand rise from the water just long enough to stroke the tip of his thumb across the peak of her breast, her pussy surged so hard she thought she would come.

Oh God, had he just done that—here? He had—and she loved it.

“What else?” she asked, eager for more.

His low rasp was downright intoxicating. “I want to take your skimpy little bottoms off, too, spread your legs wide, and taste your sweet pussy.”

Instinctually, her arms looped loosely around his neck and she shimmied her breasts against his chest again, hungry for more sensation there. Despite all the people at the pool, no one was near them in the wide expanse of water, and she looked around, feeling at once alone yet crowded.

“I wish you could do it right here, right now,” she told him softly. Her eyes stuck on another lavish spot at the pool—one of several beds situated along the water’s perimeter, flanked by columns, covered by a vine-strung canopy of wrought iron. Though all were vacant, since they had to be rented, the beds struck her as a downright hedonistic and rather erotic decoration. “I wish you could lay me across that bed and lick me until I come.”

The shudder that passed through him was more satisfying than any reaction she could have imagined. “Do you have any idea how hard you’re making me?”

Her gaze stayed glued to his. “Let me feel it.”

He didn’t hesitate, gripping her ass and pulling her to him until his cock stretched long and hard up the front of her bikini bottoms. Even after the lust of last night, after the release of reaching that closet and being taken by him, hard, she didn’t think she’d ever felt anything more deeply arousing.

“Your girlfriends would all be jealous,” she told him in a saucy tone, “if they could see what’s happening underwater right now.”

He didn’t balk at her calling them his girlfriends. “I think they’re already jealous,” he said instead, his voice teasing even as he began to grind gently against her, creating just a bit of blessed friction.

“You’re right,” she practically purred, still rubbing her breasts against him. “They want what I’m getting right now, but they can’t have it.”

He gave his head a sexy, playful tilt. “You don’t like to share?”

She offered a smirking grin. “No way.”

“Ah, I forgot.” He tipped his head back. “You like it in private, too. Prim and proper little Brenna.”

She let out a laugh, then a soft moan as his hardness rubbed against her in just the right way. “You still think I’m prim and proper?” Was he serious?

“Just around the edges,” he conceded. Then he scanned the pool area. “But for your information, this isn’t very private.”

She swallowed, a little nervous—because he was right. It might feel like they were alone in a way, but in reality they were surrounded by lots of people, some of whom surely watched their little water ballet, especially the women who wanted Damon so bad. Even if they couldn’t see them moving together under the water, surely they knew what was happening.

“Then maybe I’m becoming less prim and proper every time I’m with you,” she boasted.

Pressing harder against her pussy beneath the pool’s surface, the rigid column of his cock pushed perfectly at her clit—and at the same moment, one masculine hand snaked down behind her, quickly, gently, stroking between her legs. “Unh…” she heard herself moan.

“If it were up to me,” he said, low, “and if I wouldn’t get arrested…I would carry you over to that bed right now and fuck you ’til you screamed, private or not.”

Her breath came shallow, her whole body going weak. “Believe it or not,” she uttered, voice ragged, “if it were up to me and I wouldn’t get arrested…I might just let you.”

A lecherous smile unfurled on Damon’s face. “Who knows?” he whispered near her ear. “Maybe before this trip is over you’ll convince me you’re not prim and proper at all.”