The Devil Series Books 1-4 (Devil #1-4), page 51
She stands up and starts to cross the room and I ward her off. “Drew, you swore you’d remain in your chair.”
She kisses me once, closed mouth, and returns to her seat. “That’s all I wanted. I wasn’t planning to blow you.”
I groan. “I think you have no idea how little it takes to excite me.” I’m wearing scrubs, for God’s sake. This doctor is gonna walk in at any moment and see way more of my anatomy than I’m interested in sharing.
“I’ll talk about my feelings,” she says. “That kills any erection.”
I grin. “Don’t be so certain about that. I’ve been waiting a very long time to hear about your feelings.”
The doctor checks out my shoulder and prescribes some painkillers and a lot of rest, though he’s clearly aware, having seen Drew, that I have no intention of resting. “Do your best, anyway,” he concludes. I’m given scrubs and hospital slippers, and then Drew and I walk out hand-in-hand to find my parents waiting in the lobby. Joel is gone, and it worries me only because I’m sure it worries my mom. At the moment, however, she’s so delighted about Drew and me that nothing can touch her.
My dad suggests we all go to dinner, but my mom looks at our linked fingers and suggests we meet up tomorrow. My father is complaining about this as they walk away—We flew all night to see him—but she waves him off.
“I want grandchildren,” she replies. “Let’s not get in their way.”
Drew hears it and laughs. “I think your mom might be getting ahead of herself.”
I picture Drew pregnant, and I picture the child we might have. I smile and tug her closer. I’m not sure my mom is all that far ahead of herself, but I’ll take baby steps for now.
49
DREW
When we get to the hotel—Ben somehow arranged this too—I help him remove the shirt over his bandaged shoulder. Standing there shirtless, scrubs hanging low around his waist, he looks so good I can hardly bear not to touch him.
“I need a shower,” he says. He comes closer, his mouth at my ear. “I might need help. You know…bum shoulder and all.”
I let my palms rest against his chest. “Yeah?”
He nods. His eyes have gone all hazy, the way they do when he is not thinking about cleanliness, and there’s a bulge distorting the front of his scrubs. “The doctor said you should rest,” I remind him.
He leans down, finding my mouth. “Even he knew that wasn’t realistic. It would take a lot more bullets to make rest a priority right now.”
He strips me of my hoody and the t-shirt beneath. It’s not easy with only one good arm, but with my help he manages just fine. I push the jeans down myself. He tugs me against him then, like he can’t stand not to touch me. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” I sigh. More than I would ever have let myself admit. His nipple is level with my mouth. My lips close over it, taking it between my teeth.
“God,” he groans. His hips reflexively arch toward me, seeking friction. “Shower.” It comes out more as a plea than a demand. I let him lead me, shedding my bra and panties on the way, watching with breathless anticipation as he tugs the scrubs down over his narrow hips.
His cock is thick and long and shows no sign of needing any rest whatsoever. It needs the opposite of rest. I reach for it but he evades me, stepping into the spray with a laugh. I follow, taking the hotel soap and lathering it in my hand.
“Hmmm…where should I start?” I ask.
He laughs again. The last time I saw him this free, this unburdened, was the day we reached Kalalau Beach. It’s as if he’s suddenly got everything in the world he wants.
“You’d better start at the top,” he replies. “Otherwise this will be a very brief shower.”
I lather his neck first, letting my hands run over his chest and his back, avoiding his shoulder. I don’t miss his small intake of air every time his cock slides against my stomach, the way he tenses as if it’s so good it hurts. My core clenches in response. I go down to my knees to get his legs, slowly working my way up and over his skin.
“You’re torturing me right now,” he says.
Finally I rise, moving behind him, running my hands from his back down to his ass, reaching through his legs to cup his balls while my other hand roams over his hip to stroke his cock. Air hisses between his teeth at the contact. I move to face him and when I reach for him again, he stops me.
“Fuck,” he groans. “No condoms.”
“I’m…clean,” I whisper. “And I’m on birth control.”
This is something I never, not once, gave his brother.
His eyes slowly close. “Drew, I’m not gonna last two seconds without one.”
I smile. “If memory serves, you’ll be ready for round two fast enough. I can wait.”
He moves us so I’m completely out of the spray, my back against the wall. “You’re going to get your bandage wet,” I warn.
“That’s okay,” he says with a half grin. “I know a guy.”
His palm glides down my leg, hooking his fingers under my knee to pull one thigh around his hip. He bends his knees to get the right angle, rubbing his hardness over my core, hitting my clit with just the right amount of pressure and then he’s inside me, hissing at the feel of it. “Oh God, that’s so good,” he whispers. I arch to get closer to him as he tugs my hips toward him and begins sliding in and out, the tempo even and perfect.
I didn’t think it would be so different. After all, it’s the same amount of friction, the same amount of force. But it’s slicker, hotter, more real. When he thrusts inside me hard for the first time, my feet nearly leave the floor.
One of his hands is on my hip as the other trails over my neck to my breast, then my rib cage, then lower. His fingers slip between my legs.
I laugh. “This is going to end so fast if you do that.”
He groans. “This is going to end so fast in either case. That’s why I’m doing it.”
He is stiff with the effort to restrain himself, to not push faster and harder and take what he needs.
“Faster,” I demand.
“Drew,” he says with a warning in his voice but I arch toward him and he complies, his hips bucking hard and fast, almost involuntarily. My blood heats and leaves my brain entirely. That thing in my stomach starts to wind tight and tighter. “I’m close,” I warn him.
“Thank God,” he grunts, and his next thrust is pitiless and entirely selfish and it sends me right over the edge. I cry out and then he pushes once more, hard, and I hear his own muffled cry as he buries his face against my neck.
Eventually, we dry off and find our way to the bed where we repeat everything at a more leisurely pace, sleep like the dead for a few hours, and then wake and do it again.
It’s dark when he rolls toward me and says, “Tell me about the numbers.”
I frown. We’re happy now and it’s not a happy story. “Was I talking in my sleep again?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “No. Not here. But in Dooha, you were. All night long.”
I try to think of a way I can distract him, a way I can turn it into a joke, but I guess the time for that has passed. At this point, failing to answer would feel like a lie.
“They’re bus lines,” I tell him, staring at his chest. “From the last time I went to see my dad.”
He stiffens. “I thought he died when you were young.”
“He did,” I reply, and then I close my eyes and let the story spill free, each piece of it a little uglier than the one before it.
My father was distraught after that bottle hit me in the face. I told my mom the truth because a stupid part of me thought she’d understand how lost my dad was, how much he needed us.
“She said she was taking away his visitation rights, instead,” I tell Josh. His hand slides over my arm, encouraging me to continue. “And he said he was going to do his best to fight it.”
I believed him, little idiot that I was. I believed him and I packed a bag and memorized the bus schedules and left New York, alone. And I was so scared the whole way. I’d never taken a city bus in my life and I was sure someone was going to ask why I wasn’t in school, or that I would get off on the wrong stop, or forget which bus came next. M7 to the 199 to the 88. And I dream about it again and again, those moments before I knew how it would all turn out, when I still was full of blind, stupid hope.
“Did you make it?” I hear concern in his voice, as if this is a story that’s still evolving, that can still change.
“I did,” I reply. I take a single deep breath. “He’d shot himself in the head.”
He stiffens. Maybe he isn’t sure if I’m making another wildly inappropriate joke. Lord knows I’ve made enough of them. I hear the air leave his chest in an audible rush. “Jesus, Drew.”
I shake my head. “I don’t really remember it,” I tell him. “A neighbor came in behind and got me out of there.” What’s left, mostly, is the feeling of being blindsided, of being stunned that he didn’t try like he said he would. He was never going to try, and I truly believed every word out of his mouth until that moment.
Josh holds me for a long time after I conclude. I’m not sure if it’s for me or for him or for us both. “I think it’s why I reacted so badly when I came to see you in Dooha,” I admit. “It just felt like it had all been a lie.” I cut him out of my life because it felt like the least painful option. Until I realized how much more painful things could be.
“I wish I could go back and fix it all for you,” he says. “What happened then. And how I acted when you came to visit.”
“I’m not sure we’d be where we are if it all hadn’t happened just the way it did,” I tell him. I close my eyes. “It’s all gonna come out now, though. Davis knows. Once he discovers I wasn’t bluffing when I fired him, he’s going to tell the whole world, and he’ll find a way to make me look bad. I think I probably need to get it out there first.”
It still terrifies me, but not the way it did before. Those hours I spent thinking Josh might be dead make any other outcome pale by contrast.
“I’ll be there with you, at the interviews, if you want me there,” he says, pressing his lips to the top of my head. “I’ve got two weeks off now, but I’m going to find a way to get out of Somalia permanently. I already put in the request but now I’m going to demand it.”
I blink up at him, my throat swelling a little. “Really? But…I thought it was impossible? What changed?”
“What changed is that I fell in love,” he says. “And I don’t ever want to spend a single night away from you again. It might take a while, but Drew, even if we’re apart, you’re not alone anymore.”
I press my face to his chest and cry. Not about my father, really, or the scare we’ve just had. But about all the lonely years that existed between those two events.
And how relieved I am to discover it’s coming to an end.
50
DREW
Nine Months Later
Our new terrace looks spectacular.
Fairy lights are strung haphazardly overhead. The long plank table is laid out with ten place settings punctuated with wine bottles and vases full of hydrangeas. And Josh stands on the other side of it, which might be the thing I like most.
He grins at me now while helping Audrey, Tali’s daughter, take uncertain, lumbering steps across the grass. Gemma, Jonathan’s oldest child, is trying to teach her somersaults, which might be a little advanced given that Audrey just started walking a month ago.
Tonight we are celebrating several things at once—our new home, the release of Tali’s book, Jonathan and his partner’s newest child.
And perhaps most of all, Ben’s first but significant victory over Davis—and therefore mine as well. It took many months to sort out all of Davis’s mismanagement. This week, he finally freed up the eleven million they owed me, and now we go after him and my former accountant for the ten million they embezzled. I don’t need the money, but I’m looking forward to ruining them both—or ruining them more, anyway.
The interviews I gave about my father’s death, with Josh by my side, highlighted Davis’s role in hiding it all, and the way it kept me silent and compliant as well. His company’s other clients fled once the stories came out, but the best part for me was simply getting out from under it. That story held a lot of power over me for a very long time, and letting it out broke the spell. If I had to continue rehashing it in interviews, I’d probably be okay, but my new publicist terrifies everyone into good behavior so it doesn’t come up.
“You did an amazing job,” says Tali, coming up beside me.
I shrug. “Thanks, but Beth did most of the planning.” She wanted me to cook for this—she keeps trying to teach me how to make Josh’s favorite foods—but my domesticity has its limits. “Have you met Ben’s date, by the way? I couldn’t get a straight answer about what she does for a living.”
Tali rolls her eyes. “I think she just goes around being hot for a living, and taking pictures of herself. Who can we set him up with? He needs to settle down.”
Ben shows no signs of wanting to settle down, but now that Tali’s happily married she’s hell-bent on marrying everyone else off too. Between her and Beth the number of daily hints I get about weddings is staggering.
“You have two sisters, right?” I ask.
“One of them is married and one of them is barely twenty,” she replies. “What about that friend who’s been helping you with the album…Juliet?”
Juliet has been a godsend now that I’m finally free of my obligation to the record label. It’s her label and producer I’m working with, and she even came in and sang backing vocals on two tracks. But I can’t see her with Ben.
“She’s hung up on someone else. And she’s more of a Six sort of gal, anyway.”
Tali’s nose wrinkles. “Ugh. Six.”
I laugh. Six has been trying to clean up his act a little these past few months, ever since he learned about Beth’s cancer. And he’s going to need people in his corner when his mom is gone. I plan to be one of them.
“He’s not so bad,” I reply. “He even played on one of my new songs since I am, and I quote, ‘about to be a member of the family’.”
Her eyes light up. “Member of the family, huh? Does he know something I don’t?”
“No,” I say firmly. “He’s just been listening to Beth, who—like you—keeps putting the cart before the horse.”
“Says the woman who claimed she and her boyfriend were going to take things slowly when he got back from Somalia then moved in with him a week later.”
I smile without a hint of shame. We did plan to go slowly, but after waiting three more months for the refugee camp to replace Josh, I was done with being away from him. Even living together, I still feel like I don’t see him enough—only Josh would move from one wildly understaffed medical facility to another. On the bright side, the fact that he is “wasting his talents” at a free clinic aggravates his father to no end, which we both enjoy.
“Oh God,” Tali says, her attention focused across the yard. “Hayes just took the baby from Jonathan. We’ve got to get over there.”
I laugh. “He’s the most overprotective father I’ve ever seen. The baby is fine.”
“Sure, the baby is fine. I’m worried about myself. If Hayes holds that kid for more than thirty seconds, he’s going to want another one.”
We cross the yard. Tali deftly “borrows” the baby from Hayes, Josh returns Audrey to her father and wraps an arm around my waist. He’s currently telling the guys about my latest foray onto Twitter, which I’ve discovered is the perfect place to mess with people who irk me. After Richard, my stepbrother, sent a text saying he wasn’t surprised I’d been “dropped” by my label, I put out a one-line tweet about the white-collar criminal he was in the process of defending, a guy he was trying to get a plea deal for.
Suddenly the case was in the news, and not in a good way. It was something along the lines of another rich guy is escaping justice. As it turns out, having your client’s wrongdoing become the focus of national attention does not help grease the wheels of justice. Who knew?
Ben covers his face with a hand. “Please don’t start encouraging people to do that, Drew,” he says. “Not everyone I represent is, uh, as deserving as you.”
“It gets worse,” Josh says, pressing his lips to the top of my head. He has enjoyed the hell out of my Twitter revenge. “Her stepfather sent a text scolding her for it and Drew tweeted about one of his clients too.”
Ben groans aloud while everyone else laughs. Weirdly, my mother didn’t seem to mind all that much. She told me the firm was in an uproar, and when I told her I wasn’t sorry, she said I didn’t figure you would be. Let’s get lunch the next time you’re here. It can even be burgers.
Dinner is served, toasts are made. It’s a lovely evening but it ends pretty early given that there’s an infant, a ten-month old, and a toddler all falling apart by nine PM.
When everyone’s gone, I climb into bed and wait for Josh.
“I think it went well,” he calls from the bathroom.
“It did but Ben seemed kind of…wistful when he left. Do you know anyone we could—”
Josh wanders out with only a towel wrapped around his waist, skin still damp. My thoughts turn carnal in a second flat. “Well, hello there, nearly naked stranger.”
He grins. “I’ve got something for you.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” I reply, throwing off the covers. “Remove the towel.”
“It wasn’t that. I mean, it will be obviously, in about thirty seconds,” he says with a chuckle, “but not just yet.”
He goes to the dresser and pulls out a sheet of paper. “Remember that reporter who came to the studio when you were recording? She just published a story about it.”
I stare at him for a moment, and then I start to laugh. “An online blogger wrote an article…and you printed it? You are so old.”
