Devlin doesn’t answer.
“Are you sure this passes your inspection?” I ask when we get to the car. I hold out my arms and gesture to my outfit.
His eyes rake down my body and back up with blank indifference. “Yes.”
“Wow,” I say, sliding into the front seat of his car. “You didn’t make a single disparaging comment. Why do I get the feeling we’re going to get to school only to have you change your mind and drag me back here yet again?”
I halfway expect Devlin to tell me to get in the back, but he climbs in the driver’s seat without a word. Then, he turns and smirks at me with real humor in his eyes this time. “Are you fishing for compliments?”
“No,” I say, sitting back and crossing my arms. “Okay, maybe. My ego can only take being told I’m trash so many times in one day.”
“I would have thought that asshole just about coming in his pants when you kissed him would have done the trick,” Devlin says. He twists around to reverse the car, laying his hand on the back of my seat. And my stupid body reacts to his nearness, electricity crackling up my spine even though his hand is inches from touching me.
But he must not feel it, because once the car’s straightened out, he takes his hand away without touching me. I remember this morning again, when he had me up against my dresser and ready to do anything for him. He can turn it off like a switch, walk away from me without a backwards glance.
Why can’t I do the same?
“I don’t care what some random guy thinks of me,” I admit, turning my face away and staring out the window. Suddenly, I don’t feel like toying with him, trying to get what I want out of him. If he liked me, he’d give it without me having to beg.
Don’t be a dumb bitch,I scold myself.
Devlin Darling does not like me. I’m nothing but a toy to him, something to treat as roughly as he can to see how much it can take before it breaks. I went to all that trouble to make a scene at school, to prove that I could make him jealous. But what did it prove? That I was no better than any other desperate girl trying to hold the Darlings’ attention, trying to make them see what they’d be losing. Just because it worked doesn’t prove anything. He’s possessive because I’m his fucking dog. Not because he feels anything. His heart is too hard to feel anything, too cold, just as his icy blue eyes told me the very first time I met him.
“Chase London isn’t some random guy,” Devlin says. “He’s the most quality dude in this town outside our family. You could do worse.”
I could do better, I think.
“Maybe I’m not willing to settle for second best,” I mutter.
Devlin doesn’t answer. Shit. I can’t believe I just said that. As if his ego isn’t big enough. I’m sure girls are throwing themselves at his feet and telling him what a god he is night and day. But it’s not just that. I basically just told him I liked him. That I want him.
But as we pull up to the school, a crazy idea starts to form. What if Icoulddo better? What if I could get a Darling? What if I could get him to trust me enough to tell me the truth about Royal, what happened to him? Maybe he’s still alive. Maybe they know where he is.
I know I’ve fucked things up with Devlin already. I gave in too soon, let him fuck me for his game.He probably thinks I’m easy. And for him, I am. I would never win that battle. He makes me weak, strips back my defenses with one touch and leaves me bare and aching for him.I want Devlin too much, need him in a way that’s too raw and real, too powerful.
But he has two cousins. I know Colt a bit. He’s burned me a few times, well enough for me to know not to trust him. Preston, on the other hand, is still a mystery to me.
fifteen
Devlin
I tell her to go in, and she obeys. I watch her walk away, her slender figure clad in something a lawyer would wear to work, her curves only hinted at. She doesn’t scurry or hurry even though she’s late. She doesn’t sway her hips to make sure I’m checking out her ass. And even though I know she’s carrying a lot with her brother being gone and her world upside down, you’d never know it. Her spine is straight and tall, her gait measured and confident. She walks inside without looking back.
I sit in the car trying to get my shit together. What the fuck is happening? I squeeze my hands around the steering wheel until it creaks in protest.
I did what I was supposed to do. I had to get her out of my head, so I fucked her. It always works for my cousins. Fuck a girl, she’s as good as invisible afterwards—she’s used up and done. But I don’t go around fucking random girls, so I didn’t know. I sure as fuck didn’t know when this poised and polished, straight-laced virgin cried my name over and over like a chant when she came, that it wasn’t just the hottest thing I’d ever heard. My name rolling off her tongue… It’s enough to make me hard just thinking about it. I didn’t know she’d laid a fucking curse on me with that chant.
A curse so I can never get it out of my head—the sound of her voice softly panting my name, the sight of her lying helpless under me, her pillowy lips parting in ecstasy, my name tearing from them as if it’s the only word she can remember, the only thing that matters in her world, the only person who exists to her. This calm and collected girl, who refuses to obey, to fall in line or follow the status quo even after what I did to her, who is so fucking unbreakable it’s driving me out of my head… This girl goes to pieces, completely loses control, when I so much as touch her. It’s addictive as hell.
I press my forehead to the steering wheel and try to come to terms with this. Is this what addiction feels like? Like a craving for more, for the softness of her body under mine, so vulnerable, completely powerless and yet somehow trusting me enough to open herself completely, to give herself fully to me, to let me make her cum. The feeling of her cunt squeezing around my cock, needingmeto get her there, to make her cum, to fill her with my cum as if it’s the only thing that can quench her thirst.
And now I’m fucking hard as a rock.
I sigh and lean back against the seat, trying to stop thinking about fucking her and think about my job—breaking her. I’m not supposed to want more than that.
I’m used to girls falling all over themselves when we walk in a room. My cousins love it, and our fathers before us, and the truth is, I did, too. Before her. Now… The fawning annoys me. It’s starting to bore me. What good is it to have everyone kneel if she’s shown the whole thing to be a charade? I don’t care about being everyone’s king. I want to beherking.
And yet, she’s the one girl who won’t kneel for me. She’ll obey outwardly, when we force her to, when she has no choice. But she’s just biding her time, waiting to be out from under my thumb, before she goes on being just who she is. Because that’s the thing about her, the same thing Dolly has, but in a different way. Crystal is just going to be who she is, and she won’t change or apologize for anyone. She doesn’t care that her best friend is a fat freshman who wore dog ears to school. She doesn’t care that everyone in the entire school calls her a dog.