I run my fingers down my bare stomach, spreading myself for him. “Here.”
Devlin’s breath hitches, and he holds the knife for a second, staring at my cunt with a reverence most would reserve for the second coming. I don’t even tremble as he brings the blade to my skin. I know Devlin wants only my pleasure, and he’ll give me only the pain I need to increase it. A pinch darts through me when the pinprick of the knife’s point breaks my sensitive skin. Devlin groans, dropping the knife and sinking down as if in prayer to capture the drop of blood he drew. He sucks hard, and I writhe and buck against his mouth as he licks and thrusts and sucks, stroking and biting and pushing me to the edge until I can’t breathe, and I have to grab a pillow and hold it over my face to stifle my cries of pleasure as I go over.
For seconds, minutes, I can’t breathe or think or even see. There’s no thought, no mind, only my body that is so wonderfully, powerfully alive and overflowing with pleasure. And Devlin, who is giving it. At last, I begin to come back to myself, to reality, little quivers still racing through me every few seconds.
“Damn, Sugar,” Devlin whispers, his voice rough and hoarse, as if he’s the one who’s been crying out. He pulls the pillow away from my face before I’ve caught my breath, resting his elbows on either side of my head as he sinks into me slowly. “We’re part of each other now,” he murmurs, his lips hovering above mine, his heated gaze holding mine. “You can’t undo what we just did. We’ll be part of each other forever. From the moment we met, you were mine.”
“I was yours,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around his neck, my legs around his hips. “Iamyours. I never stood a chance. Never had a choice.”
“Neither did I. Every inch of me is yours.” Devlin skims his lips over mine as he moves slow and deep inside me, to the place where pleasure and pain mix until I can’t tell them apart. Then he stills, kissing me gently, letting me feel the perfect, painful way he fills me until I can’t take another fraction of an inch without screaming.
“Give me every inch,” I pant, rocking against him. “Give me everything.” I want it all, from the unbearable bliss to the deep, bruised ache he leaves in my lower belly. I want to wrap myself around him and never let him go, no matter who tries to tear us apart. I want to weather every storm with him, even the storm that is Devlin himself. I want him to break down my walls, to pound into me with the brutal force of a hurricane until he’s spent, and he’s placid as a calm, blue sea. Until there’s nothing left in me to break, no fight left; until my walls are nothing but sand next to his sea.
“We’re meant for each other,” he whispers, beginning to move inside me. “Nobody else. Just us.”
“Just us,” I agree, holding his face between my hands. “Always.”
Our love is different, deep and intense tonight. Devlin fucks me slow and hard, and our eyes never leave each other’s. When we come together, the connection between us pulls so tight it’s almost unbearable, infinite and painful in its rawness, as if our souls have woven together and can never be separated from each other, and every ugly, shameful, and hidden part of ourselves has been bared to the other. Even my orgasm is different, echoing in some deep, hidden part of me.
I know then that no matter what our families say, we can’t stay apart. We can’t even when we try. We’re each other’s, and there’s no way to change that. It was set in motion the first time we met, and it will never stop. I may have joked about Romeo and Juliet with Colt, but now I understand it. I understand love that can’t be stopped. I understand two people can’t be separated even by death. I understand because we just became those two people. Nothing will ever come between us again. No matter what it takes, we will be together, even if we have to die to make it happen.
twenty-two
Devlin
“Are we really going through with this charade again this year?” Dolly asks, slipping her hand into my elbow and joining me under my umbrella. I’m annoyed by how familiar it feels—how comfortable. But that’s all it is. She doesn’t make my head all dizzy and turned around when she’s in there, doesn’t get my heart all fucked up or send my blood rushing to my cock when she touches me. No, she’s just Dolly, the girl I’ve known since we were young enough to take off our clothes without shame.
An incident that was quickly corrected by a few whacks of Grampa’s belt.
“What charade, my darling fiancé?” I ask, squeezing her hand to my side. “Don’t tell me marrying a Darling won’t make your every dream come true.”
She gives that ladylike scoff of hers. “Hardly.”
“I don’t know how you could want for anything more than our coveted name,” I say as we fall into the parade of matched couples under large umbrellas entering Grampa Darling’s house for the annual Christmas Eve dinner.
“I don’t know, either,” Dolly says. “But somehow I manage.”
“What else is there?” I ask, smiling for the event photographer. Yes, my family’s Christmas Eve dinner counts as an event in this town. No doubt it’ll be in the papers tomorrow. Rain or shine, the show must go on.
“Travel,” Dolly says. “Fame, fortune, the whole world.”
“Don’t tell our families that.”
“Don’t I know,” she says. “Is your grampa going to make us give the dreaded have-you-set-a-date talk again this year? I don’t know if I can fake my way through another one of those, Devlin.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly as we ascend the wide steps to the front door. We both know I’m apologizing for more than my insufferable grandfather. I’m apologizing for not being able to love her the way she loved me, the way she wanted. The way she deserves. She had to sit through those questions, and as uncomfortable as it was to have to lie my way through, I know it was that much worse for her when she wanted to believe the lies, that we’d get married and have it all.
“Grampa knows you,” I say, leaning down to speak to her as we enter into the foyer. “Just be yourself.”
“I’m always myself,” she says. “That’s the problem.”
“It’s not a problem,” I tell her. “It’s spectacular.”
She smiles, but I catch the shade of sadness there. I feel it, too. This is the end, the last one of these we’ll ever go to. I lead her into the next room, where people are dancing and chatting quietly, clinking their glasses together.
“Dance?” I ask, holding out a hand to Dolly.
“We got dressed up, we might as well play pretend,” she says with a sigh, sliding her arms around my neck. She feels so different, so much bigger and more solid, her waist thicker than Crystal’s in my hands. I wonder what she’s doing at home, if she has any ridiculous obligatory traditions in her family.