Every Glance (Every Life #3) (23 page)

I tilt my head to the side and
try
to contain the grin.
Try.
“Maybe I’m happy to see you.”

“Maybe, but…” She leans in and takes my mouth in a surprise kiss, her tongue sweeping carefully between my parted lips before stepping back with a grin. “Unless you’ve started using whiskey-flavored toothpaste, I’m willing to bet you’re not completely sober. This could be fun.”

I hold out my hand to her. “Highly doubtful. I’m a boring drunk. I usually just want to sleep. Ready for bed?”

She swallows hard, finally taking my hand, and I lead her inside, trying to be as quiet as humanly possible on those creaky wood floors. Before going into my bedroom, I make a circle through the kitchen and living room, stopping off at the glass doors leading to the deck. From here, we can see the moonlight glittering the ocean waves as they reach for the sandy shore.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispers.

I jerk my head toward my bedroom door, and she follows me inside. I walk across the room and flick on a lamp beside the bed before going back to shut the door. Devyn is just standing there, staring at my bed with a completely blank expression on her face.

“What’s wrong? You kinda look like you’re freaking out.”

Her eyes dart to me as she smirks. “Is it that obvious? This is…a first for me.”

“What part?” I ask. After kicking my shoes off, I cross the room to stand in front of her, grasping her shoulders and pulling her into a hug. “Your son is a friend of mine, so you can’t play the virgin card, not that you need it.”

She rests her head at the hollow of my neck. “This isn’t a great time to bring this up, but I’ve only ever been with Carter. No male friends, no other boyfriends. I only know how Carter was…or wasn’t. I have no idea what to expect. It’s like starting all over, back at the beginning. Is it weird for me to be nervous about everything?”

“Devyn.” My voice is barely more than a whisper. “What is it that you’re afraid of? Me? Being with someone else?”

“More than anything, I’m afraid of being myself. Of going for what I want. For so many years, I did everything he told me. I acted how he wanted me to act. I wore what he wanted me to wear. My every day was spent trying to live up to the wife and mother he wanted me to be, and I failed. If I can’t keep a man happy by doing every damn thing he asks of me, how would I keep one by just being myself?”

“You mean, you’re worried about making
me
happy? I’m not Carter, Devyn. As a matter of fact,
most
men aren’t like Carter. He’s just a controlling asshole who let the most perfect woman in the world go and uses his son as a weapon. I want you to do and say and feel whatever the hell you want. If you’re going to be in a relationship with me, you have a voice, and I expect you to use it. I’ll be honest with you, and I want you to do the same. Nothing happens unless we both agree to it.”

She leans back and looks up at me. “I know you’re not like Carter. Not at all. He never worried about Simon making friends or tried to make him feel special. And he sure as hell wouldn’t have ever watched a cartoon with him, just to make him happy. He never would’ve cuddled with me in front of a fire or kissed me at the top of a Ferris wheel. And he never would’ve told me that who I am is who he wanted me to be. Thank you for all of those things.”

I’m not surprised to suddenly find my lips on hers. It’s all I’ve wanted to do since I kissed her the first time. I crave the sweet taste of cherry Lifesavers on her tongue and the way her cool fingers feel in my hair. The gentle nips of her teeth on my lips and her soft breath on my skin. Everything about her intoxicates me.

“Let’s get some sleep,” I whisper. I know that, if I don’t stop, I might take this too far. And she’s been so brainwashed that she might let me.

She nods and allows me to lead her to the side of the bed. While I take her jacket and toss it over the chair in the corner, she kicks off her flip-flops. I turn the lamp off, which only leaves us with a little haze of moonlight. I climb in first and scoot all the way over, lying on my side and holding the blankets up until she gets in with me. I almost laugh when she curls up on her side and faces away from me, an entire foot away. I tuck the blankets around her and lean over to kiss her cheek.

“Goodnight, Dalton,” she sighs. “Don’t let me sleep too late.”

“I won’t. I have an alarm set already.”

Already irritated at my t-shirt because I never sleep in them, I sit up and slip it off before falling back into my pillow and staring at the ceiling. Devyn Rion is actually in my bed, and I don’t know if I’ll ever believe it. I better not wake up in the morning to find out it is all an insanely vivid whiskey dream.

“Dalton?”

“Yeah?”

“Would it be okay if I turn over and snuggle up to you?”

I chuckle, trying not to be too loud. “Yeah, it’ll be more than okay.”

She reaches up to pull the band out of her hair and shakes the knot loose, wafting the floral scent all around me. Turning over on her side, she scoots closer. I raise my arm so she can rest her head on my shoulder, and she hooks an arm around my waist.

“You took your shirt off.”

“Want me to put it back on?”

“Hell, no,” she snickers. “I’d be okay if you want to go shirtless from now on, but only in my presence, of course.”

I drag my fingers from her bare shoulder to her wrist before taking her hand. “The same goes for you.”

“Oh, please. You’d probably gag. Have you ever seen the body of a woman who’s had a child? Even after all these years, I still have saggy skin and stretch marks. It’s not attractive.”

“When it’s time, I’ll be the judge of that. But don’t forget that I’m a doctor. I don’t think there’s much of anything I haven’t seen. In my experience, sometimes it’s the imperfections that make you more perfect.”

I can feel her shaking her head. “I think that’s the whiskey talking. You look like you just fell out of a fitness magazine.”

“I have plenty of flaws. Trust me.”

She’s silent for a beat. “Sometimes it’s the imperfections that make you more perfect.”

“Touché,” I say, smiling at the fact that she threw my own words back at me.

Devyn is quiet now. I listen to each soft breath grow deeper as she finally drifts off to sleep. Every exhale caresses my chest, which constantly reminds me how close her mouth is to my skin. I should be sleeping, but my hormones have other ideas. My imagination runs rampant, flashing images of her naked form tangled in my sheets, her warm breasts pressed against my chest, her legs wrapped around my hips.

I’m dying here. Absolutely dying. I feel like there’s a twenty-pound sledgehammer resting between my legs.

Anatomically possible? No. But I like the analogy.

And this is how the next few hours pass. Devyn sleeping and occasionally snuggling into me more or stretching and pressing her chest against me. And me…with a racing mind, overactive imagination, and a raging hard-on. I don’t think I’ve had a night like this since I hit puberty. Well…minus the girl next to me. But that didn’t stop me from imagining it.

This funny thing is that it was usually Devyn that I imagined. Talk about everything coming full circle.

She moves again, this time throwing her knee over my legs and moving it up my body, coming to a stop right over my groin—as if it wasn’t painful enough already. I’m too busy praying she doesn’t move again to notice right away that she’s not breathing as deeply. I peek down at her to make sure she’s still asleep, and my eyes meet hers.

“Good morning,” she whispers lazily. She even looks good first thing in the morning. Her drowsy smile, her wild hair scattered all around her, her skin picking up the glow of the emerging sunrise. I could get used to seeing this every morning.

“Good morning. Sleep well?”

“I did, actually.” She sighs. “Uh, please tell me that my leg isn’t on what I think it is.”

I turn my head to face her. “Okay, fine. It’s not on what you think it is. It’s on what you
know
it is.”

“Oh, God. So sorry.” Color floods her already-glowing cheeks. She carefully picks her leg up and rests it lower on my thigh. “I forget about guys and their, uh, morning affliction,” she giggles.

“Morning? Well, I guess it was morning when we got into bed, so that’s right.”

Her eyes widen. “You mean…because I…”

“Yep.”

I half expect her to begin another round of apologies, but instead, she smiles. “That’s reassuring,” she admits.

“Reassuring how exactly?”

Devyn raises up to rest her head on her elbow. “I mean that it’s reassuring that I…you know…turn you on as much as you do me.”

Well, if my hormones were starting to calm down a little, they sure as hell have sprung back to life now. I’m going to have to spend half my morning in a cold shower to tame this beast.

“You have no idea how much,” I croak, trying not to sound too fazed by her admission.

“Good.”

Good? That’s all she has to say right now is “good?” She’s way better at this than she gives herself credit for because right now I’d like to show her just how good it is.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, rolling out of bed. If I don’t get away for a couple of minutes, I just might pounce her, and I don’t want our first time to be a quiet quickie before I shove her out the door. I go to the bathroom and splash some water on my face, brush my teeth, and do everything else I can think of before I return.

I think I’m finally calmed down enough to get back into bed with her, but the sight of her sprawled across my mattress totally negates it all. But she jumps up and grabs her purse before I can get back to the bed.

“Leaving already?”

“Nope. It’s my turn.”

She slips behind me to go into the bathroom, and I hear the water turn on. I listen to her brush her teeth and rummage through her purse, doing who knows what. After a couple of minutes, she emerges with brushed hair and smelling like lavender. She drops her purse back on the chair and crawls back into bed with me.

“Why didn’t you tell me how scary I looked?”

I roll over to face her and run my fingers through her silky hair. “I think you look gorgeous in the morning.” Leaning in to kiss her, I smell the hint of mint before I taste it. “You taste good, too.”

Devyn smiles and grabs the back of my head, pulling me back to her until our mouths collide. When she throws her leg up over my hip, I can’t help but grabbing it and dragging her closer to me, causing her to moan into my mouth.

That has
got
to be the sexiest thing in the world.

For a while, we’re nothing but a tangle of tongues and limbs. Our legs are twisted together, and her arms are around my neck and back, while my one of my hands is in her hair and the other caresses a sliver of skin on her back, just below her shirt’s hem. Her body is soft and curvy in all the right places, making me want to explore a lot further than I need to right now.

I don’t know how many times I’ve slept with a girl on our first date, but that was because I knew there wouldn’t be another one. I’ll admit that I’ve used women, just for that purpose. But that’s not what I want with Devyn. I want to take things slower than I have in the past because I want more than sex. It’d be one hell of a bonus, and once we get there, I’ll take all I can get. But right now, I want her to know that it’s not all I want—even though I’m having a damn hard time telling that to my body right now. I
need
more than that. And I think she does, too.

I never would’ve imagined it, but she’s just as vulnerable as I am.

Devyn groans and pulls away unexpectedly. “I really need to go if I’m going to get out of her undetected, don’t I?”

I peek over her at the alarm clock. It’s going to go off in five minutes, so I reach over to turn it off. “As much as I hate to say it, yeah. You probably do. You going home this morning?”

“Nuh-uh. Later. I want to read on the beach for a while and get some sun, so I’m planning on heading home around four. Carter should be dropping Simon off at six.”

I nod. “We’ll be leaving around then, too, I think. I’m taking vacation all week, but Sawyer and Wes both have to work tomorrow.”

“You’re off work
all
week?”

“Yeah, I haven’t ever taken a day off. Stan kinda forced me to take the week. Too bad you have to work. Maybe the three of us can do something one day this week after Simon gets out of school. Maybe the park and dinner. If you want to.”

“Dalton Hoover,” she giggles. “Did you just ask me out on an actual date?
And
include my son?”

“Pretty sure I did. Unless you’d rather do the grocery date next.”

She shakes her head. “No. I think I’ll save that one until I’m desperate to get out of the house.”

“I’ll be busy with the wedding stuff later in the week, so how about tomorrow or Tuesday?”

“Tomorrow,” she blurts out without any hesitation.

I’m glad to know she’s as eager to see me as I am to see her. “It’s a date then.”

“I can’t wait.” She plants a swift kiss on my lips and rolls out of the bed, immediately slipping her feet into her shoes and throwing her purse and jacket over her shoulder.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” I say, sitting up.

“No, no, no. I know you didn’t get much sleep, so I’ll see myself out. You stay right there and try to get a little rest before the guys wake up. I’ll text you later to let you know when I’m headed home.”

I get up anyway, walk around the bed, and pull her into a hug. “I’ll see you and Simon tomorrow.”

“Sweet dreams, handsome,” she says and kisses me one last time.

I open the bedroom door for her and watch her walk down the hallway until she’s out the front door. I’m just about to shut the door and get back in bed when I hear Sawyer’s voice.

From the porch.

“Good morning, Devyn.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

I sneak down the hall to listen at the door, hoping and praying that nothing more will be said, and he’ll let her leave peacefully.

But I know there’s no chance in hell of that happening.

“Hi, Sawyer. I didn’t know you were awake.”

Okay, so
of
course
she knows his name. He went to school with us, too, and everyone knew him. But that’s not the part that disturbs me. The fact that she doesn’t seem surprised to see him is what throws me off.