The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Grumpy Devils, #2)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

Warmth spreads through my chest. I didn’t need Six to be scolded, but I kind of love that for once in my life, someone took my side. Especially when I’m not sure I deserved it.

I can’t think of a time in my life where anyone has cared this much about my well-being, even when I was an age where they still should have. I have to swallow hard as I nod. “I promise.”

We order drinks and food and it’s easy and hard at the same time. Being near him is like seeing exactly how happy you could be if you’d been born into someone else’s life.

I want to reach up to feel my lips, to assure myself the kiss really happened. I want to run after him. Instead, I return to the lounge on unsteady legs, feeling like something inside me just died.

And then he kisses me. Not the way he kissed me in the airport. This time, he kisses me as if we’ve been kept apart by war and deserts and decades and he kept praying, the entire time, we’d somehow find each other.

He laughs, kneeling between my legs to remove my tank at last, his eyes traveling over the exposed skin. I’ve never seen someone observe me the way he is now, like I’m some lost artifact no one thought was real.