Daring Devlin (Lost Boys #1) - Jessica Lemmon Page 0,29
it as an insult. I knew better. I hadn’t been looking for different, but Rena found me. And now I owed her an explanation for my behavior.
Four hours later I was, once again, banging on her front door.
Chapter Eight
Rena
Snow started to fall a little after midnight. The television was tuned in to a random sitcom, the canned laughter keeping me company while I sketched. I didn’t sketch Devlin. I hated him too much.
Not for yelling at me, which I knew was for the sake of the servers loitering outside the door, but because he’d had my pants halfway off inside of a minute and I didn’t feel the least bit ashamed. Maybe I was mad at myself.
With my ring finger, I shaded the edge of the beer bottle I’d drawn, considering. Would I have had sex with him in that office?
Yes. I’d have let him feed my clothes into a shredder if there’d been one large enough to do the job. That was scary. I was supposed to be angry with him, and loyal to Joshua.
I know how stupid that sounds. How can you be loyal to someone who’s not living? But that had been my coping mechanism—my psychologist’s words—since Joshua passed away. If I belonged to him, I was more incentivized to stay out of harm’s way.
But after four and a half years of staying out of harm’s way, I’d apparently developed a fondness for harm. Nothing about Devlin was safe.
I wanted to prove, if only to myself, that I was the same girl who’d talked Joshua into his first alcoholic drink. I’d been the one who’d pushed him into having sex. It was me who’d coerced him into skipping church to go down on me in the county fair parking lot.
I liked that girl. Once upon a time, I’d embraced her.
But when he’d died a saint—struck down by a drunk driver—I’d become a saint by proxy. I’d been in that car and I watched the accident happen. Lightning fast, and yes, I was tipsy, but I knew Joshua wasn’t looking at the road. Had he been looking, he might have seen the car run the stop sign. He hadn’t been looking because he’d been arguing with me. My last words to him—the last words he heard on this planet—were heated from the argument we’d been having. They echoed in my mind now. Look at me, Joshua.
Then he had.
Pounding on the door startled me. My arm jerked and the pencil in my hand made a harsh line over my careful shading.
“Shit.” I set aside the sketchpad and muted the TV. Who the hell…?
Tash, I assumed. By the sound of the knock she wasn’t happy. She and Tony probably had a fight and she had come over here to vent. I’d have to remember not to say I’d told her s—
I pulled the door open, frozen in shock when I found Devlin instead of my crying best friend. Snow dotted his hair, and a thick gray-blue knit scarf was wrapped around his neck and tucked into a leather jacket zipped halfway up. The faint bruises on his face, the broad set of his shoulders, his torn jeans… every inch of him looked amazing.
He watched me and I watched him as the seconds ticked by.
“Hi,” he said, the word visible on the breath that left his lips.
I cocked an eyebrow, refusing to respond.
Before I could slam the door in his face, one palm hooked the side of my neck, the other locked on my waist. He smelled like the cold and some sort of liquor. Whiskey, maybe. I only ever drank light beer, so I wasn’t sure.
His lips closed over mine and his tongue darted into my mouth. He tasted sweet and warm, and I melted into him. I wrenched the scarf from his neck and worked the coat from his shoulders as I dragged him into the house. He’d come to me. I couldn’t believe it.
He kicked the door shut with one booted foot and pulled the band holding my ponytail free. A few hairs came with it, but the biting pain in my scalp felt almost good.
Because he had caused it.
His mouth left mine and his teeth raked against my lips and jaw. He bit the side of my neck gently before suckling my skin to soothe the pain. We kissed our way into the dark hallway, my back once again on the wall, the length of his hard body against my front.