Daring Devlin (Lost Boys #1) - Jessica Lemmon Page 0,5

far to fall.

I glanced around at the jaunty Christmas lights dangling from some of the homes in the neighborhood, already hung despite Thanksgiving being a week away. Luxury cars were parked in every other driveway, and giant blow-up cartoony Grinches, Rudolphs, and Santas decorated the yards.

The rain shifted to sleet. I changed my knock to a bang, slamming my fist into the door and shouting Paul’s name with more urgency. He opened the door.

Fucking finally.

“I’m freezing out here, man,” I let him know.

Paul was my dad’s age, or the age my dad would have been if he was still alive. He was a few inches shorter than my dad and had a potbelly from too much Heineken. Tonight, his belly was prominent beneath a hideous patterned sweater. His normally round cheeks were sunken, his eyes dark underneath.

Heroin? Cocaine? Meth? My stomach flipped. Sonny dealt with bettors who used. If a bettor came to him strung out, Sonny turned him away. Sonny and I ran a respectable illegal gambling ring. Everyone knew we didn’t mess with guys who couldn’t handle themselves. Especially guys who knew better—like Paul.

“Hey, Dev.” He fidgeted, rubbing his fingers together as he continued looking around nervously.

“Five hundred,” I stated. Lost causes weren’t my specialty. Whatever problems he had were his own.

His Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed. I stuck my hands in my pockets and watched as his eyes followed the movement, probably wondering if I had a gun or not. I let him wonder.

His nostrils flared. “Go away, Dev.”

What the hell? We were friends… or used to be, anyway. Even if we weren’t, he knew better than to challenge me. Saying no to me was saying no to Sonny. But it was hard to intimidate the guy who’d seen me as a scrawny teen.

Simple solution: I’d remind him who sent me. “If you don’t have it, I’ll have to call Sonny. I don’t want him to take you down, man, but…”

Voices rose in the house, then two goon-sized men were towering in the doorway behind him. I widened my stance in preparation for trouble, giving the pair of bozos a meaningful glance as I lifted my phone to dial.

Showing weakness would only get my ass kicked. Thanks, but no thanks.

One of the guys was bald, the other had a mop of messy brown hair and a cleft upper lip. They outweighed me. Hell, both of them together could probably lift my SUV. The back of my neck prickled with premonition, or good old-fashioned instinct.

Paul was in trouble.

If I didn’t stand a chance in a fight against Dumb and Dumber, he was screwed. He had pudding where there should have been muscle.

I lowered my voice and leaned in so only Paul could hear me. My thumb was still on the phone, ready to dial Sonny if it came to that. “Look, man, if you need help, just—”

A blinding light resembling a nuclear blast bloomed behind my eyelids as my head snapped back on my neck. I staggered backward from the punch, hearing a splash as my phone dropped into a puddle on the pockmarked driveway.

Hand on my throbbing jaw, I glared at Paul. He’d sucker punched me. My swelling lip curled as I stumbled to my feet. I surged toward him, latching onto his sweater with two fists. He was about to find out what that chicken-shit sucker punch cost him. Then I’d let the goons do whatever they damn well pleased to him.

I drew back a fist, and heard Paul wail, “Take him out!”

And then my world went black.

Rena

My best friend, Tasha, handed me a vodka cranberry and shouted so I could hear her over the music. “Then what happened?”

Then nothing happened, that’s what. I’d just shared the walk-in-refrigerator tale, leaving out the part where I turned into a tongue-tied twit. A college party wasn’t exactly the place for an intimate discussion, but I had to talk to someone.

I briefly debated how to answer her question. Devlin hadn’t spoken another word to me since the walk-in incident two nights ago. He’d done a pretty decent job of ignoring me altogether.

“Then I jumped him,” I shouted back to Tash. “Wrapped my legs around his waist and stuck my tongue down his throat.”

She threw back her head full of honey-blond curls and laughed. My brain knew I was joking, but my body didn’t differentiate real from imagined. At the thought of Devlin’s tongue on mine, my nipples tightened, my thighs clenched. The idea of kissing him, of feeling