I felt the bed shift as he crawled closer.
“You deserve a medal for that,” I said, exhausted in the best way possible.
“Oh yeah?” I heard the happiness in his voice. It matched the happiness in mine. “Well, I’ll take the silver because you, sweetheart, take the gold.” He kissed the side of my mouth as I hummed, satisfied beyond belief. “You can let go now.”
I hadn’t realized…My hands still clung to the iron posts over my head. When I let go, I had to flex my fingers to return the feeling to them.
“I take that back. Maybe I get the gold.” He leaned past me to rummage in the nightstand drawer.
My laugh, so easy, so light, was almost startling to my ears. It’s like we were in a secret pocket of time in an alternate universe. The alarm clock on the nightstand read 3:33. I heard when the numbers on the clock were the same, you were supposed to make a wish. I couldn’t wish for myself since I was already exactly where I wanted to be. So I closed my eyes and made a wish for Cade that sounded more like a silent prayer.
Devlin rolled on a condom and lowered his body over mine. I started to reach for his neck and hesitated. “Can I touch you now?”
His chest and belly brushed against mine, followed by the press of his erection at my entrance. “You’d better,” he said with a low growl.
I locked my arms around his neck and he pushed forward, entering me, filling me. A pleased gasp exited my throat, followed by a cry that started out as his name but faded into an inarticulate moan. I was overcome.
And so in love with him it hurt.
I hadn’t meant to fall for him. But my heart could not be separated from my body.
He pushed in to the hilt as his hair brushed against my forehead. “Say it, Rena.”
There was a slight panic in the center of my rib cage, like I was half afraid he’d read my mind and was challenging me to tell him the very thing I knew he couldn’t hear. Then he clarified.
“Say my name.” He thrust in then out oh-so slowly.
I let out a deep breath of relief, my body tingling and tightening around him.
“Say it,” came the repeated demand as his fingers wound in my hair.
I held him closer, clenched my innermost muscles, and put my mouth against his ear. “Devlin.”
A tremor climbed his spine and branched across his back. I felt him shudder against me. “Rena.”
He thrust again, and again I breathed into his ear. “Devlin.” The words “I love you” were implied. I felt them. It was as real as the part of his body gliding into mine now.
Our tongues mated as he drove me higher and higher with each pivot of his hips. I focused on his face in the dim room when he broke the kiss to take a breath. His eyebrows were pulled together, eyes shut, lips parted over clenched teeth. He said something that may have been “God,” but it sounded reverent rather than blasphemous. I put my hands on his face and his eyes popped open, his chin dropping, his focus unwaveringly on me.
What I saw in his eyes floored me. Naked vulnerability. I didn’t want to lose him. Not for a second. “Look at me when you come,” I instructed, holding his jaw.
He wet his lips. “You first.”
He pushed into me harder. Deeper. I cried out.
“Eyes on me, Rena,” came his calm command. My name rolling off his lips was as good as any three-word pronouncement.
I focused on his dark blues and held on to him as fireworks exploded between us. His lips on mine, he continued pumping into me. I wrapped my ankles around his back and held tight while his orgasm climbed his body. When he came, he was shuddering, tense. And looking right at me.
His breath expelled, eyes clenched, and my name rang out like morning church bells. Then I knew.
He belonged to me.
Chapter 17
Devlin
The moment Rena and I had maneuvered beneath my comforter, we’d fallen asleep. The kind of dead sleep that seismic earthquakes didn’t interrupt. Though the earth had shaken. At least for me it had.
Her hair was in a tangle around her head, her mouth open as she pulled in a sound that was almost a snore. An open-mouthed snore. Suppressing laughter, I elbowed her arm.
She stirred, emitting an incoherent little mmph.
“Hey.” It’s like the damn smile was glued to my face. How had she come to mean so much to me so quickly? She mumbled something, and then curled into a ball, snuggling into her pillow. I enjoyed the novelty of having her here. Of sharing my bed with someone. Of not being alone.
Warmth unfurled in my chest despite the fact my arm was freezing in the cool air of the bedroom.
Eyes still shut, Rena asked, “Why are you awake?”
Her grouchy-slash-sleepy voice was cuter than her waking one. I shook my head at my thoughts. I had morphed into some sort of romantic sap overnight, apparently.
“Because the entire bedroom is filled with sunshine,” I answered.
Her lashes lifted and fluttered until she pinned me with bourbon-colored eyes. My heart lurched like a drunken hobo. She might be more beautiful this morning than I’d ever seen her. Her petal-soft lips parted, and then I knew. There was no “might” about it. Rena, in this moment, was more beautiful than ever. It didn’t take much to realize what had changed.
Me.
This morning when I woke and found her sleeping next to me, my entire future stretched out in my mind. For once I couldn’t see the end, didn’t want to, and had no idea where the path might lead. But I knew where it didn’t lead.
I wouldn’t end up like Sonny—washed up with no one to keep me company. “Helping” people while breaking the law. I couldn’t go back to that kind of life. Not when I knew what waited for me.
I palmed Rena’s arm, stroked up to her shoulder, and smoothed her hair back. “We did my second favorite activity in this bed last night.”
“Hmm.” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling in thought. “Did it involve me holding on to the headboard?”
Keeping my expression deadpan, I said, “We did my third favorite activity in this bed last night.”
“What’s that?” Her light laughter made me feel ten feet tall.
“Sleep,” I answered.
There was a moment where we just smiled and looked into each other’s eyes. Until her smile faded. “Sonny said you walked away.”
My turn to frown. I didn’t want to talk about Sonny. About any of it. Not while I was still trying to figure out how I felt about everything.
“I’m worried about you,” she said. “Are you in danger?”
“Don’t worry about me.” I started to get up, feeling pressed by the weight of a conversation that hadn’t started yet. It’s the whole “feelings” thing. I didn’t share what I was thinking or feeling. And I didn’t want her to spend a second worrying about me. This was what I’d gotten her into, though, wasn’t it? I’d inserted her into this mess. Without it, she’d be—
“Try.” She stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Just try not to run away when emotions get deep.”
Was she not paying attention last night? I’d been drowning in emotion. Drowning in her. And I’d stayed curled around her in this bed all night. And all morning.
I studied her glittering brown eyes.
“It’s cold out there. Stay under here with me.” She wiggled closer and I gave in, crawling beneath the blankets and facing her from my pillow. I was as ready as I’d ever be for this discussion. “You left Sonny,” she tried again.
I swallowed and forced my answer through numb lips. “Yeah.”
She ran her fingers along my chest, and I pulled in a deep breath, covering her hand with mine.
“For me?” She’d whispered the words as if she wasn’t able to say them any louder.
I wanted to tell her the truth. Yes, for her. For us. For a future involving the two of us working side by side, building the life my parents never got to live. The life I never imagined I would be able to live. I wanted to tell her. I just…couldn’t.
“What now?” she whispered again. “Now that you don’t work with Sonny.”
“I work at Oak & Sage. I move out. I live my life.”
“Move out?”
“This is his place.” I would miss the high ceilings.
Her fingers continued stroking my chest. She was turning something over in her head. “Where will you live?”
I faced her. Begged her with my eyes not to make the suggestion I thought I saw there. I decided not to answer.
“I’m going back to the hospital,” I said. “I’ll drop you at home.”
“I’ll go with you.”
I pushed her dark brown hair from her face, cupped her jaw. “No, baby.”
“Yes, baby,” she argued, and hearing her call me “baby” made me smile. She was so damn cute. “I’m going with you and you can’t stop me.”
I could have, but the determination in her eyes—and the shake of her ass as she made her way across my bedroom—made it impossible for me to say no.
So I didn’t.
Rena
After Devlin washed me from head to toe in the shower, and brought me to orgasm no fewer than two times, we drove to the hospital to see Cade. I texted Tasha, who surprised me by admitting she was already there. When he and I stepped off the elevator, Tash met us and we followed her to the waiting room.
“Coffee?” Devlin asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Tasha?”
She hesitated, as if deciding whether or not she trusted him to get her coffee, then said, “Uh, sure.”
With a nod, he left us and walked to the coffee cart at the back of the room.
Other than an elderly couple sitting on the opposite row of chairs flipping through magazines, and the low volume of the television airing The Price Is Right, the waiting room was quiet. Tasha and I sat.
The second my butt hit the chair, my best friend said, “Devlin is hot.”
It was the wrong place and time to smile, but I did.
“Seems like he’s a bit more than your boy toy, though.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “It seems so.”
He returned with two coffees, creamed and sugared by the looks of them, a moment later. Tasha accepted hers with a soft Thanks and I accepted mine, and his hand on my neck. I’d pulled my hair up and it was still wet. Devlin’s scarf was looped around my neck and keeping me quite warm. So was the hand.
“Any news?” he asked Tasha.
She shook her head. “Same as last night. You guys weren’t here when I came out.” She looked at me. “Do you know?”
“If you didn’t tell me, I don’t know,” I said. We hadn’t heard from Paul or Sonny, or Nat for that matter. Remembering the sheer size and girth of Nat made it almost comical that I’d once accused him of being Dev’s “girlfriend.”
“Cade’s got a broken foot, a few broken ribs, and a sprained wrist,” Tasha explained. “He’ll need physical therapy for his injuries, but nothing too extensive. They’re suggesting round-the-clock care at first. Help with showers and walking and maybe even eating.”
“Eating?” Devlin spoke the word in my head. We exchanged worried glances, then turned back to Tasha.
“The collision with the fire hydrant wasn’t head-on, but to the side. The brain injury he suffered was different from a head-on collision.” She shook her head. “Sorry, I sound like a textbook. Bottom line is, the doctors are concerned about his brain. He had a nonrupturing aneurysm, which is good, but it may affect his speech.”
I gasped. Devlin cursed under his breath.
“The aneurism may have caused him to slow down in certain areas. We don’t know yet, since he’s not awake enough to really test it, but communication might be more difficult for him than it used to be.” She gave us a wan smile. “And he had quite a mouth on him.”
“Yeah,” Dev chuffed next to me. His hand slipped from my neck, and I moved the hand that wasn’t holding my coffee to his knee and squeezed.
“Cade might not be able to talk?” I didn’t want to believe it. He was our age. I couldn’t imagine what he must be going through.
“The doctors think he’ll be able to talk, but it may be more difficult than before; his mind might be slower. He may process words in his brain at the same pace, but they’ll be more difficult to move to his mouth, and he may not say what he means to. He’ll have to think extra hard about his responses…for a while.” She looked sad when she added, “Or for good.”
Devlin’s hand returned to my neck and I kept my palm on his leg. We sat, quiet, for a long, long time, until the elevator doors opened and Baron, of all people, came striding into the waiting room.
Devlin
Rena went from comforting me to sitting ramrod straight in her seat. I followed her eye line to the cop ambling across the room. I was reeling from the news about Cade. Yeah, we hadn’t always gotten along, but I had thought until just now his injuries were limited to the physical. A physical injury, even one resulting in a permanent limp, seemed more palatable than a brain injury…than his not being able to speak.
I thought of him being in college, majoring in law. He’d been on his way to becoming someone. Meanwhile, I was no one, contributing to the advancement of the underbelly of society, and I was fine. Seemed unfair.
“Devlin,” Rena whispered.
Her eyes were still on the cop.
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Rena. He’s probably here to see one of his buddies.” I gave her neck a gentle squeeze. “Relax.”
“No, you don’t unders—”
“Rena?”
My head shot up and I met the eyes of the officer now standing at the side of the waiting room. He was around my age, with reddish hair, and I knew in an instant why Rena had said my name and why this guy had said hers. Her words from not long ago echoed in my skull.
He’s the nephew I told you about. He’s twenty-six, a police officer.
He’s responsible. And nice. He ate my mom’s terrible pie and she loved him.
I bet he pays his taxes. All of his taxes. And probably rarely, if ever, does anything illegal.
“Baron,” she breathed.
Yep. I was right. I didn’t like it. Not a bit.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“Investigation took a turn. I’m meeting someone.”
So this was the guy that was trying to be Rena’s Mr. Perfect. I slid my arm around her back, my hold becoming more proprietary. Baron watched this, his eye ticking as if he didn’t like it.
I liked that he didn’t like it.
“Um, this is, uh…Roy’s nephew,” she said to me.
He gave me a perfunctory glance, not bothering with a further introduction. Then his eyes went to her. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting a friend. This is Tasha, my best friend. Tasha, this is Baron.”
I watched Tasha turn her eyes up at Baron and waited for further proof that she was what Cade had accused her of being. But she didn’t bat her eyelashes or swoon or look the least bit interested in Baron—though I spotted his male appreciation of her long, long legs in her short skirt.
“Pleasure,” Tasha said, her gaze a polite two-second glance.
Baron didn’t look happy about this.
“Is Roy working the investigation with you?” Rena asked.
“Yeah, he’s at the station….” His eyes flitted to the side and he said, “Excuse me.” I looked over to see Sonny leaving Cade’s room, strolling to the nurse’s desk, and Baron making a beeline as if Sonny had a target painted on his chest.
“Shit,” I muttered, standing up.
“Laurence,” Baron said, addressing Sonny. The nurse looked up. Sonny turned, eyebrows raised.
Rena stood beside me, her hands wrapping around my wrist.
“Sonny.” I moved toward him, towing Rena with me.
His eyes went from Baron to me, and then to Rena. “Hey, Devlin. It’s okay, the officer and I are…friends.”
“Devlin,�
� Baron repeated and I tried to decide if he said this with familiarity or recognition.
I glared at Sonny. “What the hell’s going on?”
“We can’t discuss an ongoing invest—”
“Ah, buh, buh,” Sonny tsked, waving Baron off and putting him in his place. Sonny turned to me. “We’re taking down Tex.”
“Tex?” Rena asked.
“Tex is a big bad bookie, sweetheart.” Sonny spared her a smile.
The puzzle linked together in an instant. “You’re ratting.”
“I’m buying insurance,” Sonny corrected.
“I need you not to discuss anything further with Devlin,” Baron said, and it sounded like he was glad to get to say it. “Rena, darlin’, this isn’t the place for you.” He gestured to me with the tilt of his head. “I recommend you stay away from this guy if he’s involved with any of this.”
“He’s not.” Her tone was sharp, her body rigid. Her hand slid down my arm and clasped my hand. The part wanting to kiss her for her loyalty to me warred with the part of me wanting her safe above all else. Unfortunately, Baron was right. I’d been “involved” with Sonny and his business for years. I didn’t know what that meant now that the cops were involved. It could mean I was in physical danger from Tex’s guys. If so, Rena in my bed wouldn’t do.
Damn. I knew what I had to do.
I dropped Rena’s hand. “He’s right. You need to keep your distance.”
“No, he’s not,” she argued, clasping my hand again. “You’re out.”
God. It hurt to have to do this. I loosened my grip.
“Yeah.” I looked down at Rena. “But he’s still right.”
All the crap I’d tried to avoid was surfacing, right here in the middle of the hospital. Cade couldn’t talk. Sonny was a rat. The cops—including Rena’s mom’s boyfriend—might know who I am, and what I’d done. I could go to jail. My dream of a future with Rena, working at Oak & Sage, building a life together began to fragment.
Fighting for Devlin (Lost Boys #1) Page 18
