“She is.”
We don’t say more. How can I say what I want to my boys, who might be walking into a death trap? Grampa Darling has lots of guns, and I’m not stupid enough to think they’re all in the safe. The guy has a lot of enemies. He probably sleeps with two under his pillow. Hell, my cousins might not make it there at all. The Dolces have a bigger vehicle, and they’re not above using it as a weapon. They almost killed Colt with it already. We should have been harder, meaner, from the start. We should have seen how serious they were.
But it’s too late to go back now. Now, I have one chance to get Crystal to safety.
The only question is, what’s safe now? The Dolces bombed all our houses. They live right next door to me. They could storm our house and drag her back. When my cousins walk away, I turn back to Crystal. Her eyes are glassy and faraway as she stares at the ceiling. Her lips are colorless.
“What do you need?” I ask, sinking onto the edge of the seat beside her. She doesn’t answer.
I think of the flash of life that came into her eyes when I kissed her. She needs to get warm, that’s what she needs. Dry clothes. Heat.
Maybe I should take her home, turn her over to her dad. Maybe I should leave her alone, never speak to her again, and hope that would be enough to keep her safe.
But I’m not going to. I know that’s not what she needs. She needs me.
And I need her.
“I’m going to move the car,” I tell her. “It’ll just take a minute.”
I get in the driver’s seat, and I turn on the Ferrari. After powering the heat to high, I turn down the opposite side of the road, down a steep embankment toward the river. The trees grow up this side all the way to the road, but they were cleared to make way for the bridge, and I aim the car down the narrow strip of cleared red dirt and gravel. I know I may never get my car out, but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is getting her away from the road, where her brothers might see her.
Taking her home won’t keep her safe. Delivering her to her brothers won’t keep her safe. That’s not where she belongs anymore. She’s not a Dolce. She’s mine. Her family doesn’t deserve her. I’m done playing their game. I’m done sharing her. If I brought her home, I wouldn’t just lose her. She’d lose herself again. Tonight, she broke free, and I won’t be the one who delivers her back to her cage.
twenty-eight
Crystal
“What do you need, baby?” Devlin asks, sliding into the back seat and covering me with a fleece blanket he got from the trunk. He kneels on the floor, wedging himself into the tiny space while I lie on the seat.
I can’t answer. I can’t begin to explain to him how it feels to lose a twin, like half of me died on that bank out there. Royal isn’t just my brother. He’s half of me—the good half. He’s the boy who kept me upright when I wanted to collapse, the boy who picked me up no matter how many times I fell until I learned to stand again. He’s the one person in all the world who understands me to my very soul without me having to say a word. The boy who offered help and strength and silent companionship in moments when I didn’t even know I needed them.
He said I wasn’t his family anymore.
That I wasn’t his sister.
That I was dead to him.
Fresh tears spring to my eyes, and Devlin leans down and kisses them away from my cheeks. The gash across his cheekbone is still bleeding, and a deep bruise is swelling on his jaw, but pain only enters his gaze when he sees mine. He kisses down my cheeks, then my lips. I don’t respond. My lips are cold, frozen, as immobile as the heart that has died inside my chest.
Devlin kisses me harder, his mouth warm and commanding. I submit, opening my lips when he pushes his tongue against the seam between them. His tongue is hot and forceful, and he arches up, angling himself over me. A minute later, I feel his hand on my body, pulling at my clothes. I don’t know how he can want sex now. I’m dirty and wet and bedraggled, my eyes swollen, my makeup long gone, and my skin cold as the dead when he peels away my clothes, stripping me bare.
But he kisses me hungrily, roughly even, his teeth clashing with mine and his tongue pumping against mine. He pulls back only to pull off his wet shirt. His nipples pebble in the cold, water clinging to his skin. I swallow hard, watching the muscles in his chest and his arms while he unbuttons his wet jeans and shoves them down.
“I’m gonna fuck you now, Sugar,” he says, his fingers wrapping around his thick shaft, which is hard and ready to destroy me. I swallow hard, raising my eyes to his. The burning hunger in them makes me shiver and cower from him, not sure I can take his roughness tonight. I open my mouth, and his lips crash down onto mine, devouring, demanding, dominant. He lifts the blanket and slides on top of me on the seat without breaking the kiss. His chest and arms are cold, but when his pelvis meets mine, the heat of his skin makes me gasp into his mouth. He growls in response, grinding his stiff cock against my cold, bare skin.
It’s so hot I can’t breathe for a second. I feel like I’m being burned, branded. I don’t want to think about that much life being inside me again. I don’t want to feel alive again, but he makes me. His tongue sweeps over mine in an irresistible rhythm, his body moving against mine until I can feel myself blooming under him, wetness springing to life for him. Shame burns through me. I shouldn’t want this so soon, shouldn’t be able to feel so alive after what Royal said to me.
But I am still alive. Devlin’s bringing me to life, warming me with his heat, waking parts of me that I didn’t know could be woken at a time like this. “What do you want, Sugar?” he whispers, his breath hot against my neck. “Tell me you want it.”
“I want you,” I say, my voice hotter than I expected, breathless with desire. “Fuck me back to life.”
He does. He draws back, reaching down to position himself at my entrance before pushing into me hard and deep, filling me with one thrust. I cry out, tensing at the suddenness, the painful fullness of him inside me. He doesn’t slow. He pounds into me hard and fast, until I can’t help but respond or be crushed to dust under him. I dig my heels into the seat, lifting for him to go deeper, to hurt me more. I move with him until we’re both panting for breath as our bodies crash into each other, until I can’t hold back. I crest hard and fast, the orgasm like a shock of heat blooming inside me.
I cry out, gasping and clawing at Devlin, but he’s not done. He grabs my hands, pinning them and pushing himself up on the seat to watch me as he hammers into me, his breath coming as fast as mine, his eyes glinting with fiery intensity. He moves even faster, until I have to beg him to stop, that it’s too much.
“Can you come again?” he asks, grinding his bare, raw cock into me until his pelvic bone crushes my sensitive bud.
My body answers for me. I can’t hold back my cries at the intensity of this one. I buck under him, trying to wrench my hands free as my toes curl and climax grips me, squeezing his length as it pulses thicker inside me. He gives one more quick thrust, and then his heat spurts into me, warming me from the inside, filling me with life—his life. My whole body jerks under him, and helpless cries escape my lips again and again. Devlin holds himself up on his hands, grinding into me until I’m whimpering for it to be over. When it finally ebbs, and I begin to come down, Devlin lowers himself onto me.