“He won,” I said.
Devin didn’t ask who, because of course he already knew. He waited.
“He—the one who took me the other time, at first he was really, like, I’d completely broken him. He stopped going out because I’d go to parties where I thought I might see him, and he’d be too scared of me calling him out on violating the restraining order.” I looked away for a second so as not to take in a slight change in Devin’s expression. “I was a kid then, don’t judge me.”
“Oh Julia.” Devin put his hand on my cheek and turned me back around to face him. “I wouldn’t judge you, it’s not like I have a leg to stand on when it comes to judging someone else’s character flaws, is it?”
“Neither did the guy whose kneecaps you funded getting smashed,” I observed.
“Sassy even when I’m taking a weight off you, I like that.” He still had his hand on my back, stroking me a little… no, I was moving against him a little. “Julia, it’s not for me to tell you whether you’re wrong or right for what you were doing back then. In my business, the goal is to deal in as few questions of wrong and right as possible. Have your lines, and don’t cross them, but everything else has to be just business. Would it make a difference to you if I told you that guy who needed the kneecap reconstruction, our friend Rocky, was a well-documented piece of shit? That he was very much a part of this world and not some bystander?”
“It would,” I said. “Not that I’ve really had time to question that sort of thing yet.”
Devin nodded. “We all have our strategies. And I know you weren’t really looking for my validation, but an unburdening. What happened to him after at first?”
It still burned me. “He fell in love. Properly—at least, when he looked at her, I could see it was nothing like how he’d ever looked at me. And it wasn’t just the look, it gave him power somehow. He… she came with him, to those parties, and if I was there she’d find me and warn me he was around and I’d better go home. I’d better go home. For my own protection!”
If anyone else had given me that little smirk he responded with, I would have been inclined to claw their eyes out. With him… it was beautifully real after the aggravation of getting absolutely nothing during our dinner, and I wished I had more humiliating stories to tell him so he’d give it to me more. “Little brat doesn’t like to be put in her place by another woman, does she?”
One further, pitiful detail occurred to me. “She didn’t even like those parties! It was so obvious she was hating every second of being there… but she was there, for him.”
“It’s rare to have anyone so willing to fight for you,” said Devin. “Of course he loved her.”
I tried to fix him with the shrewdness of my look but I wasn’t sure I could have managed that even when not tipsy. “Are you trying to sell me the line that I’ll love you, once you show me you can protect me in the same way?”
That question made him serious again… in that distant way that was everything I hadn’t wanted. “There are complications as far as that’s concerned. I’m not some straightforward little schoolboy, actually seeking to love and be loved. My requirements are profoundly different.”
“You make it sound like you’re some kind of serious sexual deviant, buttering me up for your dungeon.”
“If I had a dungeon I wouldn’t have needed to call in a favour to house you somewhere that would prove difficult to escape from,” said Devin. “I’m not deviant in some way we haven’t discussed before.”
“So…” I couldn’t believe where I was going with this. It was definitely the alcohol. “You’d say you engage in relatively standard sex.”
It was impossible to tell if he was offering me a smile or a grimace. “When I choose to engage, yes, I would consider it to be nothing out of the ordinary for the average person…” It had definitely evolved into a smile. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve had anyone go away dissatisfied.”
That little hint of self-promotion, the tease, was somehow all I had been waiting for. “Let’s do it,” I said.
I could tell I’d taken him down a wrong path in his thinking… but now I was thinking, well, why not?
“I mean getting married,” I clarified. “Or playing at it, at least for now. Let’s see where that leads, you know? If you give me the space I need and I can give you the space you need, maybe it’ll work out for both of us in the short-term. If I find out you’ve misled me, that you’re not all you seem, I can just walk away.”
“You have that option,” Devin agreed.
I was really caught up on that other idea. “We need to make sure we’re compatible.”
“Excuse me?” said Devin, and I stood up, slung both my arms around his neck, and kissed him. I knew it was partially the wine tipping me over the edge, and I didn’t care. He’d gathered most of my secrets from me before even twenty-four hours had passed of us knowing one another, and I wanted to give him one more.
His mouth seemed rigid against me at first. I thought he was going to push me away… but then he put a hand on the base of my spine, drawing me in, and as smoothly as he turned every situation into a plan revolving around what favoured him, he turned my advance into his advance. His other arm wrapped higher around my back to pin me completely against him, and I felt his tongue tickling mine, though he wasn’t forcing his way in. Yet.
I tried to work out if there was… well, anything else he might like to get in, but my ankles were starting to vibrate because of those stupid shoes I still hadn’t removed. I couldn’t make sense of anything except that he was very warm and I was scared at having brought him so close to me when I tried to wrap my head around everything he was, but I wanted to keep going anyway. I wanted to see if he was as good as his promises, if I would feel anything—if I could do anything that would make him feel something.
I steeled myself for what would come next—and Devin set me back. I nearly tripped over my stupid heels.
“W—what?” He didn’t look like he was angry or turned off, he’d just retreated out of range. I took a step to close the gap. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Nothing wrong.” Devin smoothly restored the distance. “But it is not a good move for me to allow you to offer this tonight.”
“What? Why not?” I had to sit back down because the rage was making whatever was left in my stomach boil. I thought I was going to be sick. My big beautiful kitchen in my big beautiful house was starting to spin around me, speeding up and flying apart. He was supposed to be making me feel safer, not like my entire world was shattering.