The Devil You Know (The Devils #3)(40)

“If you think I’d drop Hot Tamales and not eat them straight off the ground, you don’t know me very well,” she says. “Anyway. The sex?”

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

She laughs. “Shut up.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Fine. I don’t believe you but I’ll play your game. So what happens now?”

“Nothing, obviously. It’s not like I’d date him.”

“I’m no one to throw stones, but it seems to me your bar for who you sleep with should be set higher than your bar for who you’d date.”

As loathe as I am to accept advice on this matter from a woman who once seduced a monk during a silent meditation retreat, she has a point. “It’s not that he isn’t good enough,” I admit aloud for the first time ever. “It’s that he’s not what I want.”

“Ah, yes,” she says, with a quiet laugh. “You still want flannel boy—the wise, widowed but strangely youthful farmer. I mean, what would you even wear on a farm? Do you own a pair of boots?”

“Yes,” I begin. “I have the Burberry—”

“Boots that aren’t designer, or suede or high-heeled.”

“Oh,” I say with a sigh. “Shut up.”

She laughs. “Just think about it, honey. Because repeatedly hooking up with a man you’ve talked about obsessively for two years straight…doesn’t sound like hate to me.”

I guess it doesn’t sound like hate to me either.





On Tuesday, Ben’s case concludes. No one in the office can shut up about it, because it’s the highest award FMG has ever won. Even I’m impressed, though I will never, ever, admit it.

I wake the next morning and put on a red dress before I take it off again. Red is the color of sex and I don’t need him thinking I want a repeat of Saturday night when I don’t.

He might not even be in today, I tell myself, watching the elevator as if it’s my job. There will be loose ends to tie up, a hotel room he’s reserved for a few more days. We probably won’t see him until next week.

And just because he made me come in about ten seconds flat doesn’t make him a keeper. But I think of him looking at my face as he went down on me. Saying, “I’m doing exactly what I’ve wanted for two fucking years”, and my thighs clench in both memory and anticipation.

It’s late that afternoon when I hear a tiny smattering of applause, signaling his arrival, because he’s the only person in this office anyone would clap for. He must have rushed back. I refuse to believe that means something.

I return to reviewing a promissory note, then I call my mother and convince her that the adorable pajamas I’m sending her are from a “cute little shop in Ojai” as opposed to Nordstrom. I clean out my inbox and cut and paste boilerplate to craft a threatening email to the school board on Victoria’s behalf.

But every five minutes I’m thinking of Ben’s weight above me and the sounds he made, and by the time evening falls my productivity has decreased to almost nothing. I want a repeat of Saturday like I want my next breath, even if it means going against every warning voice in my head.

I rise and walk to the break room, my heels clip-clip-clipping against the hardwood floor, a modern-day mating call, my way of luring Ben from his lair.

I slide open a drawer in the kitchen, surveying its contents blindly, willing him to come to me.

A door hinge creaks, followed by male steps, and I can’t seem to regulate my breathing.

I’d know that footfall anywhere, the sounds he makes as he approaches, surprisingly quiet for his size.

I turn, expecting him to say something, to make a joke or address the way I ran out of his room like a coward last weekend. But he says nothing. He doesn’t even smile. He simply moves forward, and he doesn’t stop until our bodies are flush. I gasp—some combination of surprise and pleasure—while his hands grip my hips, pulling me closer.

“The outfits you wear fucking destroy me,” he says. There is something so certain in his voice, so determined… Maybe he—like me—has been pushed too far to wait any longer.

Only the faintest shred of common sense has me yanking him into the closet. He pulls the door shut. “Someone could walk in,” I warn. “This needs to be fast.”

He spins me toward the closed door and places my palms against it. “Fast is my middle name.”

“That’s a terrible middle name,” I reply, but then his palm is on my inner thigh, moving upward, and his fingers slide beneath the elastic of my thong, and I can’t even remember what we were discussing.

“Jesus,” he says quietly, against my ear. “You’re so fucking wet.”

I want to tell him it’s not for him. I want to tell him almost anything that won’t give him the credit, but then two fingers push inside me and my head falls to the door. “Condom,” I demand. I hear the tearing of foil almost instantly. “Naturally you have one.”

“I’m happy to skip it,” he suggests, rolling it on. “Since you’re complaining.”

I laugh. “Yeah, you wi—” The words are cut off as he pushes inside me. I brace against the door, unprepared for the fullness of it, for how complete it makes me feel when we are like this. He does it again, harder, his hands sliding up beneath my shirt, palming my breasts.