“Stunned” was the only word to describe his expression. His dark eyebrows shot for his hairline, his mouth pulled into a frown. He uttered a soft “Damn,” then clinked his glass against my bottle in macabre cheers. I drank several long swallows, wincing as the carbonation burned my throat. When I licked my lips and met his eyes, he gestured for me to continue.
I shook my head, not because it wasn’t something I didn’t want to tell him about, but because it was a clichéd story. “It’s a cautionary tale of underage drinking and distracted driving.” Then I added the part I never said aloud. I don’t know why I added it. Maybe because I wanted to tell Devlin the real truth. “The story of how the bad girl in the relationship became the good girl after her saintly boyfriend died.”
“You? A bad girl?” He raised an eyebrow.
“All things being relative.” I waited for him to pity me. To apologize. He didn’t.
“Was your boyfriend really a saint?”
I shrugged. “When you die at eighteen, no one seems to remember anything bad about you.”
Long, thick lashes swept over his blue unfocused gaze. “And they didn’t remember anything bad about you, either.”
“Nope.” He got it. Just like that. No pseudo-sympathizing. No judgment. Nothing but his spot-on assessment.
Dev scooted closer, hugging my knees and dropping his chin on his arms. “Did you want to keep being bad?”
I nodded.
“Instead you were forced to be good.” He gave me a half smile. “Be the mourning girlfriend. Go to a shrink. Talk through your problems.”
He was right on all counts.
“What did you do after that? Only date guys who were in seminary?”
I picked at the frayed ends of the blanket covering me. “I…didn’t date anyone.”
He let go of my legs and sagged against the back of the couch. “Don’t say until me.”
“Okay. I won’t say it.”
His bared chest expanded to take in a deep breath.
“It’s a burden, isn’t it? Knowing you’re the next guy after I dated the perfect guy? Why do you think I stayed single for four years?” I drank a few deep guzzles, feeling Devlin’s eyes on me. As I lowered the beer bottle, I couldn’t make myself return his gaze, so instead I picked at the label.
He stayed quiet. I looked up to find him staring at his glass. I poked his leg with my toe. “Your turn.”
As he angled his chin toward me, a shock of hair fell over his forehead. “Believe it or not, my worst thing can’t touch yours.”
I believed it. Death had the final say. “I don’t want to know your worst thing. I want to know the story behind your learning you had a brother.” I watched as he shook his head, sure he wasn’t going to tell me. Then he did.
“My dad’s best friend, Paul, who I’ve been trying to help out of a tight spot, apparently had an affair with my mom behind my dad’s back. Years ago. Mom split before Dad knew she was pregnant with Cade. Dad’s dead now, so…”
Sounded like he had me on the worst tale after all. I’d miss my parents if they weren’t around. I felt my brows pull in sympathy.
He didn’t see my expression because his head was down and he was talking to his bourbon. “Paul’s son, as it turns out, is my half brother.” He drank down the rest, put the glass aside. “My mom took off when I was, like, two. That left me with Dad, who’d managed to lose nearly everything—including his life—by the time I was eighteen.”
It was the first I’d ever heard of his family. Of anything personal, actually. I really didn’t know Devlin. Our bodies knew each other, and I’d believed that was enough. I didn’t know if I still believed it was enough, but the idea frightened me, so I decided not to think about it.
Knowing more of his past would only make it harder when he left. And he would leave me. Melinda was right about him. He would hurt me. Not physically. No, physically, he could only delight me. But there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he’d stomp my delicate heart into sawdust when he was through with me.
I shuddered at the thought and held myself tighter.
“Your dad…died when you were eighteen?” I asked.
“Jumped off a bridge.” A sharp, humorless laugh, then, “Paul took me in.” The irony showed on his face. “Out of the goodness of his heart.” His next pour landed half in his glass, half on the coffee table. “Or guilt.” He slammed the bottle onto the coffee table so hard, I half expected to see a hairline fracture in the glass.
“Did you learn to gamble from your dad?”
He nodded, drank, and poured some more.
The bottle had only a few inches of bourbon left. I reached for his arm. “Maybe you should stop.”
“Maybe you should go home.” His lethal glare nearly sliced me in two.
“You asked me here.”
“I got what I wanted. You can go now.”
He wouldn’t look at me even after I stared at him for five solid seconds. I put my feet on the floor, wrapping the blanket tighter, his words a cinder block in my stomach. He was doing this on purpose. He wanted me to leave and leave mad. When I stood, I snatched up the liquor bottle, unwilling to go quietly into that good night.
“Hey!” He stood, too.
“Does this usually work for you?” I walked backward toward the kitchen, blanket around me, bottle in hand.
He followed. “Rena…”
“This whole ‘no one loves me’ routine?”
“Thin ice.” His voice was thick with warning. I didn’t care.
“You want me to go?” I challenged. “You’ll have to throw me into the hallway wearing only this blanket.”
“You think I won’t?” He advanced, scarily serious.
Nothing on his face told me he was kidding. I spun the cap off the bourbon with one thumb. It bounced on the floor and rolled under a cabinet. Devlin’s face went red.
“You’re cut off.” I upended the liquor into the sink on the island between us. The remaining contents glugged down the drain. His hands were on my shoulders a second later and he spun me around to face him. The bottle clattered into the stainless steel sink and my blanket fell. His eyes didn’t move from my face.
Teeth pulled into a grimace, he growled, “Get out.”
It was unwise to keep pushing him. I had no idea if he was a mean drunk or not. His hold was tight, though he wasn’t hurting me. Maybe that’s why I felt my head move left then right, then left again. A slow motion No.
How far would he take this? I wondered. Would I wind up in the center of downtown Ridgeway dressed in a blanket? The flex of his fingers and flaring nostrils told me I might.
“Fine.” Shrugging off his hold, I dragged the blanket behind me to the living room, not bothering to cover up. “I’ll go.”
I was pissed. First off, I hated conceding. Second, Dev and I had been moments into the only real conversation we’d ever had, and he’d been as cowardly as if he’d taken the first available lifeboat off the Titanic.
What a wimp.
I snatched up my clothes and tugged them on, not caring that he watched. Halfway through buttoning my shirt, he stepped into the living room. The expression on his face was almost pained as he stilled my hand and put a palm on the back of my neck. His fingers tickled my nape before sifting through my hair.
I sought his face for remorse and found nothing but the grim set of his mouth.
He finished what I’d started, sliding button after button through the holes of my work shirt until he reached my neck. Extracting my hair from my collar, he dropped the length of it over my shoulders.
“I’ll give you money for a cab.”
His words hurt like he’d slapped me. He was actually sending me home? And here I stood, having already played my best card. The sex card. The reason he’d asked me here tonight. I felt a sad smile of acceptance cross my face. This is what being with Devlin was like. In all its agonizing glory.
“I can’t, Rena.” His voice was so soft I felt myself softening and
tried to guard against it. It was no use. One look into his warm eyes and I couldn’t keep from engaging him.
“What can’t you do?” I whispered, fearing if I spoke louder, I’d spook this new, gentle Devlin. I didn’t want to go back to the angry, emotionless man I’d stolen a bottle of liquor from moments ago. Not after the hint of vulnerability I’d heard in his voice. Because it was real. The realest thing he’d ever said to me…second only to him admitting he didn’t want to be alone.
Hands clutching my collar, he pulled me closer and spoke quieter than before. “I can’t make love to you, and hold you all night, and tell you how much I care about you.”
My heart pounded out barbed beats, deepening the ache in my chest. Why couldn’t he do all of that? I wanted that. So much. More than I’d wanted anything in a long, long time. The silence stretched. I refused to look away.
“I can’t.” On his final whisper, he lowered his lips to mine. Heavy lids closed over the honesty in his eyes.
Despite the bitter taste of resentment choking me, I kissed him back. His sweet kiss held everything I didn’t want, turned me inside out. Foolishly, I reached for him, linking my arms around his neck and hating myself for how relieved I was when he held me to him.
I clung, but he pulled away a second later and issued a warning. “Rena, don’t.”
“Just fuck me.” I held on to him desperately, keeping my body pressed tightly against his. “Fuck me and leave me alone in bed and don’t say a goddamned thing.” I trailed my hands down his bare chest and to the snap on his jeans. “I don’t want to leave.” I unzipped his fly. “And you don’t want me to.”
Pressing my lips against his naked chest, I trailed down his torso, reminding him how much he wanted me. How much he liked me.
By the time my teeth raked along his rib cage, he caught my elbows to keep me from dropping to my knees. “I don’t want you…”
I broke his hold and used his lack of balance to push him to the couch.
“…to stay,” he finished as he sat with a whump.
“Yes, you do.” I stripped off my shirt, my bra, and my remaining clothes while he watched from beneath hooded lids. Devlin may not know what he wanted, but I did. And I knew what I wanted. Leaving him wasn’t what I wanted.
Before I could go down to my knees, he caught my waist and pulled me into his lap. He wrapped his arms around my back and squeezed, his hold tight, his breath warming my exposed skin.
We sat that way, my hands in his hair, his head resting against my breast, for I don’t know how long. Eventually, he retrieved the blanket and I scooted onto the couch and made room for both of us. We fell asleep snuggled together, his head on my stomach, my thoughts on him.
Chapter 14
Devlin
I couldn’t remember the last time I disentangled myself from a woman in the morning. Until this morning, when I woke up, my arms wrapped around Rena, and both of us sharing the afghan that usually laid on the back of my couch.
She didn’t wake when I went into the kitchen to take a few pain relievers and snag a Gatorade from the fridge, so I left her there and lurched for the bathroom, hands clamping my skull as if I could keep my brains from leaking out of my ears.
An entire bottle of bourbon. Was I an idiot?
Yes, you are.
Under the hottest water I could tolerate, I leaned my head back and let the spray wash over me. My stomach had settled some. I picked up the Gatorade I’d carried in with me and downed a few more greedy gulps.
I wasn’t a stranger to drinking, but I hadn’t dived into that much of the hard stuff for a while. I guess finding out I had a brother, and that my childhood had been peppered with lies, was the very thing that led me to hit the bottle.
I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair, my tight muscles just now starting to relax. When I opened my eyes, two wide brown eyes were peeking through the shower curtain. Rena’s gaze sifted down my chest, to my stomach, and lower. Then stopped. Her throat convulsed as she swallowed before she jerked her attention back to my face.
Memories of last night came back to me in disjointed pieces. I remembered I’d been pissed, that I asked her to leave, that she didn’t. I was glad she didn’t. Weird as it was to have her here, it was nice, too.
“Come to make fun of the hungover guy?” I asked, my voice low and groggy.
“I came to stare at him,” she said with a small smile. I noticed she wore a towel around her body and was likely waiting for an invitation.
She had it.
I shoved the shower curtain aside and held out a hand. Then my eyes bugged out when I watched her drop the towel and expose her body.
“I will never get tired of seeing you naked,” I said as I helped her into the tub, my eyes appreciating the subtle dip of her waist and skimming over the smooth curves of her hips.
Her smile was blindingly beautiful. My hands went into her hair and pushed it away from her face. I kissed her, tasting something I wasn’t as familiar with.
Hope.
“Don’t look at me like that.” I barely heard her above the spray.
“Like what?” I let my hands trail down to her breasts and she pushed against my chest like she couldn’t resist me. I understood. I couldn’t resist her, either.
“Like you’re afraid I’m getting too close to you.”
Her honesty made my smile falter. Melinda’s words from last night rang in my ears. She warned that once Rena fell in love with me, I’d freak out. Unfortunately, Melinda might be right. Everyone in my past who had “loved” me had bailed. Mom, Dad, and now Paul, and likely Sonny, once he found out what I did to help Paul. And what about Cade? Cade and I did not like each other. Adding an angry brother to my life wasn’t exactly an improvement.
Rena, though. She’d seen me at my lowest. I’d been mean, unforgivably mean, last night. She stayed. I didn’t think it was because she was desperate, or because she’d felt bullied. I remembered I told her to get out, lied and said sleeping with her was my sole goal. She hadn’t believed me. I stood now, looking down at the woman in my arms and wondering why I pushed so hard. Habit, I imagined.
Getting her to leave would guarantee she was safe. Keeping her here with me was the height of selfishness on my part. But I still couldn’t seem to let her go.
She took the washcloth hanging from a small bar in the shower and rubbed soap on it. “I take it by your silence, I’m right.” Stroking the lathered cloth over one arm, then the other, she cleaned herself leisurely, unknowingly bending her body into a seductive dance.
Suds trailed over her nipples, down to her belly button, and to the V of her thighs.
“I am.”
“You are what?” I rasped. Her voice startled me. I’d gotten lost watching her.
She soaped my chest and leaned into me. “I’m getting too close to you.”
My hands wrapped around her back on their own. I liked having her close to me. But I couldn’t say that, could I? I didn’t know how I felt about what we had. Probably because I didn’t know what we had. Having someone close—anyone—who didn’t bail on me wasn’t something I’d had the opportunity to grow accustomed to.
“It’s nice to feel alive instead of nothing.” She drew circles in the soapsuds on my chest. “You…are the first person who made me feel alive in a long, long time.” I saw her forehead frown, but she kept her eyes on my chest instead of looking up at me. “I don’t want you to be my power source.” Her voice was a soft murmur. “Because when you unplug, I’m afraid I’ll…fade out.”
Her eyes finally met mine, worry in their depths. Water from the showerhead bounced off my shoulders, causing her to blink. I shielded her face with my palms and waited for the panic to set in. Or the anger. Arguing had long been my coping mechanism for girls who stayed around too long. I knew I should level with her. Shrug and offer a casual Come on, Rena, you know we’d never work in real life. Play it off, get out of the shower, and take her home. Then she’d be safe. Safe away from me. Funny how the i
dea had taken root.
There was only one problem with that plan.
She was the first person to make me feel alive in a long time, too. Alive. Before now, I hadn’t known the word for it. Since the first time I kissed her, I’d been telling myself I was using her to get what I needed. After that, I convinced myself I was indulging curiosity. And then indulging insatiable curiosity.
Last night, something shifted. Rena was still here. She didn’t appear to be interested in going anywhere. For the first time in forever, I felt afraid. What did it mean if I let myself depend on someone? If I let someone depend on me? Relying on her to stick around was dangerous territory. One day, I’d piss her off, and she’d leave. And that would leave me…just me.
I repressed a shudder. I didn’t want to think about it.
I’d pushed her pretty hard last night, a small voice in the back of my head whispered, and she hadn’t gone anywhere. I couldn’t trust that voice yet. Hope may be prevalent in Rena’s life, but it had long been a stranger to me.
I didn’t know what the hell she was doing with a guy like me, nor did I understand why I insisted on letting her mire herself in my life, but I knew I wanted her. I didn’t think I deserved to have her. But I wanted her beauty and attention, her softness, her willingness to push back when I push first, more than I wanted my next breath. For now, that was enough. For now, it was all I could handle.
Her fingers gripped my sides. “I almost left this morning without saying goodbye. I heard you get in the shower and thought of getting dressed and leaving.”
She’d kicked the door open for me to ask her why she hadn’t. Or suggest she leave now. To defend myself or argue. I couldn’t. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Just say it. Tell her you are glad she’s here. Tell her she’s beautiful. Say something.
My jaw clenched tighter, refusing to allow my mouth to form the words living in a deep, dark part of me. A terrifying part of me.
I kept silent, continued to stroke her lower back, but she didn’t wait for me to speak before she lifted to her tiptoes and kissed me. Soap slid between our bodies as I licked the seam of her lips. She opened to me, darting the tip of her tongue out to meet mine. Her lips moved slowly, lazily as she took my tongue in her mouth and slowly, lazily moved with it, too. I mused this might be the most erotic kiss I’d experienced with her. With anyone.
Fighting for Devlin (Lost Boys #1) Page 14
