The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(56)

Josh groans quietly, running a hand over his face. “Mom, you’ve got to stop telling people to watch C-SPAN. Especially people who are appearing on primetime the same day.”

He knows my schedule. I want it to mean something. God, I want it to mean something, but he’s barely even looking at me.

“I’m just proud of you, honey,” Beth says to him, leaning back so the waitress can clear her plate. “Besides, Drew’s practically family.” She squeezes my hand. “Thank you so much for the scarf and the sweet note. I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Joel, but you’re both young still. Anything can happen.”

Josh’s gaze jerks to mine. That wariness in his eyes is now shock and—something else.

He didn’t know. I have no idea if that changes anything, but based on the way he’s looking at me now, it might.

Jim pays the bill while Beth asks about my plans and then suddenly we are all standing and my chance to change something between us is pretty much gone.

“Josh, honey, I want to go to the gift shop,” she says. “Can you get the car? We’ll meet you in front.”

He nods, never taking his eyes off me.

I hug his parents goodbye and then it’s just the two of us.

"So," I say nervously. The moment is too much. I stare at his shirt, focus on the texture of it. It would feel like fine grit sandpaper under my fingers, his chest hard beneath it.

"Let's walk," he says with the sort of decisiveness that makes my knees weak. I let myself be led from the restaurant. "Where's your room?"

I point toward the cottages weakly and we move, his hand on the small of my back as if we are a couple. I fumble with the key. The cottages at the Chateau are weirdly old-fashioned and still look like the sort of place where some 1950s starlet might drink herself to death in a satin robe. I wish now I’d stayed someplace modern, someplace for the well-adjusted.

When the door opens, he follows me inside and doesn’t look at the room at all. He’s only looking at me. I want to memorize his skin, his lovely mouth, his deep-set eyes. I search his face, wondering why he’s here, looking for an answer so I won’t have to ask.

He takes a step forward. I take one too. It feels as if we are magnetized, as if I can’t stop moving his way until we are pressed together, skin to skin.

“Why didn’t you tell me you broke up with Joel?” he asks.

“Would it have mattered?”

He pushes his hands into my hair, gripping my face in a way that shocks me, leaves me breathless. “That cannot be a serious question.”

And then he kisses me. Not the way he kissed me in the airport. This time, he kisses me as if we’ve been kept apart by war and deserts and decades and he kept praying, the entire time, we’d somehow find each other.

He lifts me onto the small table behind me. His hands are on my bare thighs and our mouths are frantic. I groan and he pulls back.

“Drew,” he whispers, his eyes closed. He’s about to say goodbye and I won’t allow it.

“Stay,” I command.

His mouth lingers over mine, his palms stretch over my skin—my thighs, my ass, and higher—as if he’s trying to touch as much of me as he can. “I have to take my parents home. My dad doesn’t drive in the city.”

And, of course, he can’t tell them why he’d like to remain.

My hands slide up his shirt, clinging.

“Can you come back?” I ask.

There’s a hint of a smile in the curve of his lips. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m definitely coming back.”





Two hours later, I hear his knock on the door.

In the time since he left, I’ve picked up the room and made the bed, all evidence of my depressive state hidden. I have showered again, shaved every inch of skin, moisturized, chosen better lingerie, and then put the same outfit on so he won’t know I did it.

I am unreasonably nervous and far too sober. I wish I’d had a drink. I wish I’d had ten drinks.

He’s in shorts and a t-shirt. It’s my new favorite outfit. He bites down on his smile, his eyes curving into quarter moons, a flash of the dimple in his cheek. I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anyone and it feels like I’ll never be brave enough for it at the same time.

“Do you want a drink?” I ask him. “I need a drink.”

I reach for the champagne bottle on ice, provided by God knows who and God knows why. He takes it from my hand.

“I don’t need a drink.” He pops the cork with practiced ease, which surprises me. I didn’t picture him having a lot of experience with champagne. “Should it bother me that you need one the second I walk in the room?”

I hop on the counter and hold out a champagne flute as if I’m still the casual girl who doesn’t care about anything all that much. And then his gaze levels me, forces honest words from my mouth. “I’m nervous. You make me nervous.”

His upper lip quirks up for half a second as he pours, quietly pleased. “You just spent several days risking life and limb trudging through mud with me. You’ve shared a tent with me. How could I be making you nervous now?”

“I wasn’t about to sleep with you any of those times.”

His eyes darken in a way that makes me shiver. Feral, dangerous, certain eyes. “And you’re about to now?”