I don’t know what kinds of football contraptions they have for lonely boys. My brothers don’t need a tire swing or even a fancy setup. When they want to throw a ball around or practice plays, they have enough players to run them, practically a whole team. Devlin’s out here all alone, every night.
When he turns, he spots me and pauses. I step out from the shade of the lilacs and hold out my hands.
“What?” he asks, sounding wary. We’re at least fifty feet apart, but his voice is quiet. The neighborhood is silent around us, even the insect noises having quit for the season.
“Throw it,” I say.
Devlin works his jaw back and forth once, and then then he draws back and throws. It’s a soft pass, like he’s afraid he’ll hurt me with a real pass, but it’s perfect, landing right in my hands.
“Nice catch,” he says, not moving.
“The only way I could have missed that is if I threw my hands up over my head and hid when I saw a ball coming toward me.”
He shrugs. “What do you want?”
“To get some sleep without having to hear you out here throwing a football by yourself all night.” I draw back and throw the ball to him. It spirals high and long, and he has to backtrack a bit to catch it.
“Damn,” he says, jogging toward me. “You got an arm on you.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I say. “I have four brothers.”
Three.
The thought tears at my heart, and it’s all I can do not to sob out loud. I’m relieved that Devlin tosses the ball back, and I have something to distract me from the staggering pain. At night, when there’s nothing to distract me from it, I can barely keep breathing.
I pick the ball out of the air and toss it toward where Devlin is heading, making him run for it. “Yeah,” he says, glancing behind me at the house before returning the pass. “Is one of them out here with you?”
I scowl at him. “No. Just me.”
“You know that was a really fucking stupid thing to do?”
“What?” I ask, a taunt in my voice. “Coming out here alone? What are you going to do to me now, Devlin?”
“Whatever I feel like,” he says with a smirk.
I throw the ball without warning, but he picks it out of the air like it’s nothing. Then he grins at me like he knows exactly how much that pisses me off.
“Are you threatening me?” I ask. “Because I have a house full of guys you really don’t want to fuck with right now.”
“Yeah, well, you really don’t want to fuck with us,” Devlin says, tucking the football under his arm and approaching me. “See, that’s the thing you don’t understand about the Darlings. You can’t win against my family, Sugar. No matter what you do, we’ll come back twice as hard.”
His words send a shiver of desire straight to my core, and it’s all I can do not to press my knees together right in front of him. Because if I’m honest, didn’t I come out here for that? I want him to want me. To be as unable to resist me as I am him. I walked out here to make him stop making noise, but also so he’d show me more of what he did yesterday, when he called me his girl. I want him to consume me, to take away the thoughts, the pain, if only for a few minutes.
“But you like it hard, don’t you, Sugar?” he purrs, lifting my chin with gentle fingers. “You like to be pounded nice and deep.”
“So deep,” I whisper. I swallow, unable to catch my breath. Damn. He does this to me every fucking time, but I can’t stop myself from wanting more. I’m just about begging for it.
His lids drop halfway, and his hooded gaze dips to my lips. His hand moves lower, from my chin to my throat, his long fingers wrapping around my neck gently, like a caress.
“You’re a sick little girl, you know that, Dolce?”
We stare at each other a long moment, and then Devlin drops his hand. And my stupid heart aches for it to be back around my throat. I can’t quite quell the disappointment that he didn’t squeeze this time. He’s right. I am sick.
“Who’s at your house?” he asks, turning away.
He lifts his arm and throws the football, a casual pass, not one he’d throw in the game. I watch the muscles in his shoulder slide under his golden skin wrapped in tattoos, and my fingers twitch to touch them, to grip his hipbones, to feel the flex of those muscles as he drives into me. I am so fucked up.
“Family,” I say with a shrug.