Damn.
Every clanging bell rang an alarm in my head. A “time’s up” panic button telling me I needed to leave. Now. That bell had been my only ally for years. I left the haven of Rena’s incredible body with a grunt.
Her damp hair stuck to her temple, she smiled… a fucking smile. And that’s when I knew.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
Chapter Nine
Rena
Devlin was in the bathroom on the other side of the narrow hallway, leaving me to survey the damage. His jeans, my pants, his sweater, my shirt were strewn across the carpet, his boots several feet apart, one standing up, one on its side.
I’d had unplanned, amazing, teeth-rattling sex. Against a wall. My smile might live on my face for years to come. I untangled my panties from my yoga pants and slipped into both. Then I pulled my shirt over my head. My socks were still in place. If Devlin thought I’d looked silly wearing only black anklets, he hadn’t complained.
In fact, I’d heard a few compliments. Phrases like “beautiful nipples” and “you’ve been making me crazy for a week” bounced around my brain. I took them as compliments, anyway. I doubted a guy like him bared his soul during hallway sex. If ever.
Muscles sore and legs spent, I sank down the wall and sat on the floor. I heard water running from behind the door at the same time I noticed Devlin’s wallet lying open on his jeans. Before I thought about it too hard, I picked it up and peeked inside.
His hair was much shorter in his driver’s license photo than it was now. The formidable scowl lining his forehead was one I was familiar with, though. The edge of a business card peeked out from under a flap. Pulling it out seemed an even bigger invasion of privacy, so I didn’t. After a quick glance at the bathroom door, I opened the money compartment.
Holy shit.
Hundreds. A lot of them. Twenty? Thirty, maybe. And a few folded and tucked to the side. I fanned through them at the same time I heard the bathroom doorknob turn. I slapped the wallet shut and tossed it next to his jeans.
Devlin stood, hand on the doorknob, his gaze pinning me where I sat.
I forced a smile and folded my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. I hoped I didn’t look as guilty as I felt. I shouldn’t have spied, but… What was he doing with all that cash? I had thirteen dollars in my purse. Maybe.
He was still naked, and I couldn’t help taking in every inch of his beautiful form. Thick, muscular thighs, flat, flexing abdomen, wide chest, broad shoulders. A face handsome enough to stop my breath. I just had sex with the most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on. I felt damn pleased with myself.
He bent to retrieve his jeans and a small complaint sounded in my throat when he covered himself. Shirtless, he sat next to me, his bare upper arm resting against my clothed shoulder.
“Aren’t you cold?” I asked. But he wasn’t. Heat rolled off his body.
“Nah. You?”
I shook my head.
He mimicked my position, back to the wall, arms locked around his knees, and then turned his head. Under his sky-blue scrutiny, I couldn’t think of a thing to say at first.
Finally, the words came. “What’s next?”
“Next?” His eyebrows were set at a regal slant, his lips quirked.
“Yeah.” My cheeks warmed with embarrassment as I admitted, “I’ve never had a… hookup.”
Was I supposed to show him the door, invite him to my bedroom, or make us a snack?
He shrugged with his mouth. “You need to decide if you’re going to kick me out or go another round.”
I faced him, eyes wide, breasts growing heavy at the idea of “another round.” Another round sounded amazing.
I trailed my eyes down his bare chest and back up to his face. I was greeted with the unforgiving set of his lips as they formed the words, “Did you find another condom when you were digging around in there?” He jerked his chin to his wallet.
“Um—”
“I told you if we were going to be friends, we couldn’t lie to each other.”
That’s true. He said that. Did that mean he’d tell me why he had that much money if I asked? Only one way to find out. “What are all the hundreds for?”
Are you a drug dealer?
He didn’t hesitate. “They’re not mine. It’s bet money.”
Bet. That word again. I thought of his “friend” Travis who delivered cash to Oak & Sage. “Do you bet often?”
“I don’t bet ever. People lose bets and bring the money to me to give to Sonny. Sometimes they win and I deliver the payout from him to them.” His gaze was steady on mine, his expression unapologetic.
“Sonny?”
“Sonny,” he confirmed, as if that cleared everything up.
I thought for a moment. And then guessed. “Is Sonny… like a bookie?”
“Exactly like a bookie.”
“Oh.” I digested this fact. “Isn’t being a bookie… illegal?”
“Completely.”
Completely. I tried to decide if I cared that my new boyfriend—er, hookup—was involved in “completely” illegal betting. I didn’t think I cared at all. What did that say about me?
“So?” he asked after a few seconds had passed.
“So, what?”
A delicious grin split spread his talented mouth. “Guessing you’ve had enough for one night, huh?”
Without waiting for me to answer, he stood and offered his palm. Then he pulled me to his chest in a hug. My arms rose to loop around his neck. That tender move was totally unexpected, as was how wonderful it felt to be held. I gazed into his blue eyes, not wanting him to let me go.
“We’ll save the other condom for next time, sweetheart.” He released me and tugged the hem of my shirt before retrieving the rest of his clothes from the floor. I watched with a heavy heart as he pulled on his sweater, coat, and scarf, and walked to the door.
I wanted a next time right now. I suspected if I latched onto his arm and begged him to stay, I’d meet with resistance. I might not know much about hookups, but I knew that.
Just as he was shutting the door, I spotted his wallet on the floor. “Devlin, wait!”
He appeared through the open doorway again and my entire being levitated. Which was bad. So, so bad.
I offered the wallet, and the thousands of untaxed hundred dollar bills in it. He opened his palm and waited, forcing me to walk the rest of the way to deliver it without taking a single step to meet me. It said so much about this entire situation. How invested he was. How invested I was.
Laying the wallet in his hand, I asked, “Was that a test?”
He smiled. A small one with a secret meaning. Then he tucked his wallet into his pocket and walked out into the snow.
Just a wave. No kiss goodbye.
I wondered if this entire night had been a test.
Devlin
“Hot damn!” The final score for the rivalry college football game flashed on the screen of my sixty-inch television: a cool 47 to 46. Paul had won by a point. One fucking point. In overtime. It’d been almost too close for comfort, and I didn’t technically have anything on the line. Still, I’d been sweating it.
That bastard is lucky to know me.
I drained my beer and stood from the couch. Before I made it to the kitchen for another, my cell phone rang. Watching on TV as the stadium’s fans pour onto the field, I shook my head with pride. Somewhere deep inside, I knew they’d win this one.
Paul’s name flashed across my phone’s screen. I pressed Accept.
“What’d I tell you?” I said.
A loud whoop pierced my eardrums. “You did it, Dev! You fucking did it!”
“Yeah, we won this one.” Barely. But a win was a win.
The take wasn’t much. I’d managed to double Paul’s money, but he wasn’t out of debt with Tex yet. It would make a good head start on a payment plan, though, and that meant Paul was no longer my problem.
“It’s a great start, Dev. A great start. Once I
reinvest—”
Reinvest? Oh, hell no.
“One and done.” I reminded him, my scalp prickling. “Five hundred goes straight to Sonny for your payment and the rest you use to buy an arrangement with Tex.”
I heard an audible gulp and my hand curled around my phone tight enough to crack the plastic cover. Another warning bell rang in my head, different from the one I’d heard at Rena’s, but in the same foreboding tone.
“Paul,” I started, really not wanting him to confirm what I already knew. “Did you bet again?”
“Not… exactly.”
“Paul.”
“Double or nothing,” he muttered.
I pinched the bridge of my nose as I paced my living-room floor.
“Still need your help, Dev.”
I opened my mouth to say, Fuck no, but I couldn’t leave the man on his own to make a double-or-nothing bet his pathetic ass was sure to lose. Didn’t he know that’s what Tex wanted? For Paul to be so in debt that he was bound to Tex permanently? The pair of giants that had worked me over would murder Paul if he couldn’t pay.
My chest tightened, and the breath in my lungs seized when I thought of Paul being harmed. Or worse. Harming himself because he didn’t think there was any other way out. Like my dad. A deep, dark part of me knew that saving Paul wouldn’t balance out losing my dad. But fuck if I wasn’t drawn to help Paul anyway.
Rena’s sweet face popped into my head next. Unless I was trying to be worthy of the good girl. My stomach rolled. No. No fucking way was I trying to be “good enough” for the good girl. She was a preoccupation, a means to an end. That was it. That was all. I sure as shit couldn’t afford to go there.
Yeah? Then why did you tell her there’d be a next time?
Because I wanted her again.
On the drive home from her apartment, I’d tried to push the desire away. Tried to convince myself my need for her was only physical. Didn’t work. Desire was complicated. I needed to keep things simple. I could have her again as long as Rena understood the deal. If she accepted that she was a friend who would come and go. That’s all she was to me.
I ignored the voice in my head suggesting I was full of shit.
“I didn’t give him my bet for the games yet,” Paul interrupted, his voice small.
“Games,” I repeated grimly. “Plural?”
He was a junkie after all. He might not be addicted to cocaine or heroin, but he was an addict all the same.
“I have to, Dev. It’s the only way.”
“It’s not the only way. Pick up some overtime.” Did accountants have overtime? No idea. “Get a second job. Something.”
“The only money I have left is Caden’s college money. I won’t ask him to leave Ridgeway U because I owe some lowlife bookie money! No offense.”
I was too pissed to be offended. Silver-spoon-fed Cade could use a hard knock or two if you asked me. “Going to an overpriced university isn’t at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid.”
“The what?”
“He’ll survive,” I said flatly.
“And the car.” Now Paul was muttering to himself. “I can’t take away his Chrysler. I’m already behind on the payments. What if he finds out I gambled, that I lost my job, that—”
“What?” This was the first I’d heard about job loss. “When?”
A pause, then, “Eight months ago.”
I tipped my head and studied the high ceiling of my apartment. Everything in this place, from the sleek TV to the living room furniture, to the rarely used dining room table and chairs, had been purchased with Sonny’s money. Money I earned at Oak & Sage, sure, but it was tangled up with an agreement—a promise—I’d made to him long ago. And tied with the bow of illegal gambling—the very vice that killed my father.
Money I’d earned from encouraging guys like Paul to go “double or nothing.”
Paul being saved had nothing to do with “saving” my father. Helping him was about evening the score for him doing me a solid when I was eighteen and had nowhere to live. He wasn’t my father. Saving him wouldn’t bring my dad back. Nothing would.
“What do you need me to do?” No tone. My voice had no tone.
Paul’s, on the other hand, sounded like he’d won the purse for betting on the underdog. “Advice. That’s it. The next game is—”
“Stop. I’ll come over.” Doing this over the phone was making me twitchy. I wasn’t sure if I trusted him. But I owed him. If not for the time he’d allowed me to live in his house—with his wife and Cade—then because I was partially responsible for leading him astray.
He was thanking me when I cut him off. I hated the desperation in his voice. “Don’t do anything until I get there.”
I hung up on him and palmed my keys.
Chapter Ten
Rena
Melinda sidled up next to me, her eyebrows pinched. “Most frustrating shift ever. Did you see that old guy at table nineteen? He refused to order. Refused. He literally said, ‘Pick a meal for me.’ So, I did, and then he complained about his surf and turf dinner! He didn’t like lobster. I felt like saying…”
I tuned her out, sorting my own cash and receipts while the other servers bustled around the kitchen behind us. It was around nine, early by restaurant standards. Melinda and I had been first in, which meant we were relieved of our dining room duties first, too.
Devlin hadn’t worked tonight or the night before. I didn’t have his phone number or any other way to reach him. But then, I’d kind of gathered we weren’t really “seeing” each other, so I shouldn’t be thinking of texting him anyway.
It didn’t stop me from scouring the Internet for a social media account under his name. No luck. He wasn’t cataloging his life online like the rest of us. Part of me wished he did. I… well, I missed him.
I turned in my cash and receipts to Chet, who was managing the floor tonight. He swept into the office ahead of me.
“Have your tables checked for cleanliness,” he said in his ever-present lisp, “and then you can go.” He settled into a chair in the small office. The last time I was in here with Devlin he’d had my pants halfway down my legs in a matter of seconds.
I tried not to think of him, but everything made me think of him. Being here, or being at home. I thought of him whenever I walked through my hallway. Or glanced into the hallway. Or thought the word “hallway.”
The door leading to the back parking lot swung open, letting in bitter, icy air. Miguel, one of the prep guys, lumbered in, the handle of a giant empty trashcan in one hand. I stepped out of his way en route to the stockroom. I heard the back door open behind me again a moment before strong fingers wrapped around my upper arm.
Devlin. My breath whooshed from my lips as he tugged me to him. Oh, he looked good. Cheeks red from the cold, jaw lined with a shadow of stubble. His black leather jacket and scarf were the same as the last time I’d seen him, but his jeans were black instead of faded blue.
“You off?” he asked.
Completely off, now that he’d shown up.
“Yeah. Yes. I mean, I am.” Wow. How did he do this to me? Every time. English was my native language, and I spoke clearly and concisely most of the time. Then he shows up and nothing but single-syllable words come out of my mouth.
“Rena, you’re all set,” Chet called, evidently finding my paperwork acceptable. “Dev, what’s up?”
“I have to talk to Rena about the schedule next week. You done in the office? We need a few.” His tone was casual, but my heart dropped into my stomach. Then between my thighs. At least that’s what I told myself was pounding down there.
“I’m not making another cut for an hour.” Chet flipped his keys against his palm and flicked a glance from Devlin to me. He left the door open. “Have at it.”
“Oh, we will,” Devlin said under his breath as Chet walked off.
Devlin gestured for me to go ahead of him and I did, feeling his eyes on my body the entire way. I couldn’t wait to be a
lone with him again. It’d been two very long days. He shut the door and plopped into the swivel chair, wasting no time clutching my thighs with his palms and pulling me close. So close that my breasts practically lined up with his mouth.
I tried to calm my thundering heart. And failed.
He grinned up at me, delicious and dangerous. Under the bright office lights, his bruises were barely visible. More yellow and green than black and blue. I tenderly touched his cheek.
“Lose the apron, sweetheart,” he said.
I untied my apron with shaking fingers, wondering what came next. Me, I hoped.
He undid my belt and then the button on my pants and I sent a nervous gaze over my shoulder.
“Lock the door,” he instructed.
I clicked the button on the knob. The sound seemed twice as loud as the hum of the ancient computer on the desk, and the pulse pounding in my eardrums.
Devlin unzipped my pants and one eyebrow arched in approval. I’d worn red silk panties. I didn’t know what possessed me. But in case I saw him tonight, I’d wanted to be prepared. Since I owned only the most utilitarian of undergarments, I bought these, and a few other pairs like them. I’d never bought sexy underwear before, but seeing his approval I knew I’d do it again.
“Is this why you came in tonight?” I sucked in a breath as he lifted my shirt and kissed my belly.
“No.” He licked a slow, wet circle around my belly button and then dipped his tongue into the waistband of my panties. Meanwhile, I clutched his hair for dear life.
God, I loved his hair.
I’d grabbed a handful of it from behind the other night, but this was so much better. I could see it—dark, wavy, and disheveled. Still cold from him being outside.
He slid off the chair and knelt in front of me. He slithered those silky panties down my legs, having a nice, long look at what he’d revealed.
“When I saw you tonight”—his warm breath fanned over me before slicked his tongue along my folds—“I decided I could eat.”
Daring Devlin Page 9
