Prologue Quinn #2
As I walked around the pool in the dark, I could see the darker shadow as he lay out on the lounge chair. Gray ignored me as I approached and remained silent as I lay down on the lounge chair beside his.
“Thought you were on a date?” he asked me softly.
“I was.” I stared up at the star-filled sky. “He asked her to marry him.”
Gray grunted but said nothing.
“It’s only been three years since Mom died.”
“You think it’s too soon?” he asked.
“Don’t you?”
“Dunno.” I heard him move slightly, and then he was on his side, facing me. “It will always be too soon for you; she was your mom.”
Shifting, I faced him. “He said he loved my mom more than life itself.”
“Why do you think that’s changed?”
“Because he’s marrying someone else.”
“So? You think he should be alone? And unhappy?”
“I’m not saying that!” I argued back.
“What are you saying?”
I turned so I was on my back again. “You turn everything into an argument.”
“You just don’t like hearing the truth.” I said nothing. We lay in silence for a while longer until Gray spoke again. “So . . . the date?”
“He kissed me.” My heart was racing as I waited for his reaction.
“Where?”
Despite myself, I laughed. “On the lips.”
“Which ones?”
“Gray!”
I heard him snigger as he turned to lie on his back again.
“He wants to go out again.”
“Tell him you’re busy.”
“Why?” The silence stretched, and I was sure he wouldn’t answer before I heard him move as he was sitting up.
“Because I told you to.” Gray stood and walked away from me. At the edge of the pool, I saw him looking back at me. “Just do it.” He couldn’t see me clearly in the shadows, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t waiting.
“Okay.” My voice floated across the decking, no more than a whisper, but he heard it.
I saw his head jerk in a nod once before he disappeared into his house.
Staring up at the night sky, I wondered why I agreed before I closed my eyes, too afraid to question myself further, knowing that, unlike the stars, the answer wasn’t that far out of reach.
* * *
Quinn, age sixteen
“Jett, I need to talk to you.” I watched him finish his push-ups, his toned golden skin on display — he never cared that he walked around shirtless in front of me. To Jett, I was no more than another member of his family. I liked that about him. Actually, I loved that about him.
“So, talk.” He grunted as he started doing sit-ups.
“Didn’t you do all of this already?” I demanded as I watched him effortlessly go through his exercises.
“Yeah, but I need to be fitter.”
“You’re going to burn out,” I chided as I slipped down onto the floor and held his feet. “What?” I asked when I saw his raised eyebrows. “I always help.”
“You do always help, Queeny.” He grinned as he resumed his workout. “What’s going on under that mass of black hair?” he teased me.
My hair had always been wild and untamed, but when we hit high school, I knew I had to put more effort into my appearance. The boys were easy — they grew into their looks — but I needed to exfoliate, buff, wax, and straighten my hair to look as effortless as they did. “Ash kissed me.”
Jett stopped his sit-ups and leaned back on his hands as he considered my words. “You kiss him back?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I stared at him. I didn’t have an answer. Ash kissed me, and I kissed him back. “I dunno. ’Cause I thought he wanted me to?”
“Don’t be stupid, Quinn. A guy kisses you, does anything with you that you don’t want, you knee his balls, kick his face in and then tell us, and we’ll beat the fuck out of him.”
“You going to beat Ash up?” I asked him mockingly.
“Do I need to?” Jett stood and wiped his neck with a towel and waited until I shook my head. “So, you wanted him to kiss you?”
I bit my lip. Ash had started paying more and more attention to me.
I couldn’t say that I didn’t like it. I saw the way they were with girls, and I had been envious.
They weren’t like that with me, of course — I was their friend — but it stung when I heard them say pretty things to girls who didn’t deserve it.
I deserved it. Jett had already had sex with two different girls, and Ash almost had sex with Carlie at a party the other week, but she chickened out and only gave him a hand job.
Is that why he kissed me? He thought I was more of a sure thing than Carlie?
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Jett stared at me and then rolled his eyes. “Queeny, I can’t tell you who to suck face with — just make sure whoever it is, you want to be doing it.”
“What about us?” I asked him in a whisper. “The Devils?”
“The group?” Jett shrugged. “We’re friends, it’ll be weird, but it won’t change anything between me and you, at least.”
“You’ll still be my bestie?” I asked playfully, hoping he didn’t see the need I had to make sure he would never leave me.
“Always. There isn’t anything you could do to change it. C’mon, I’m starving.” Jett punched my shoulder as he passed me, and I grinned as I followed him to the kitchen.
* * *
Quinn, age sixteen
“How much longer you going to string him along?” Gray asked me, his hard stare boring into mine.
“I’m not stringing him along,” I snapped back at him. Why did he have to be so close to me? All I could smell was him.
“Yes, you are. You’re being a prick tease. He wants to fuck you; do you want him to fuck you?”
“I’m not being a prick tease!” I shoved at his chest to get him to stand back. “Fuck you, Gray. What happens between me and Ash is between me and Ash.”
“What happens between you and my cousin happens to all of us. Why the fuck are you playing with him?” Gray moved back into my space, and I stared up at him. I was almost five eight now, but Gray was still taller.
“I’m not playing, I like him,” I told him defensively, even as my heart raced as he stepped closer to me.
“Yeah, you like him?” Gray’s eyes narrowed as he smirked at me. “That why you let him stick his fingers in your cunt last week?”
Gasping at his vulgarity, I stepped back and hit the wall behind me. “Don’t be such a dick,” I hissed at him as my eyes filled with tears.
“Gonna spread your legs for Ash, Queeny?” Gray pushed his chest into mine as he glared down at me. “That what you want, so desperate to be a Devil you’ll let him fuck you?”
My hand stung, and I realized it was because I slapped him. Slowly, his head turned back to face me, revealing my handprint on his face, and I chewed my inner cheek as my body stilled, waiting for the eruption.
Jett was fiery but fair. Ash was lighthearted and laid-back with a temper that rarely let loose. Gray . . . Gray was fury. He always seemed to be moving, as if he could barely contain the wild energy inside him. The smallest thing would set him off, and usually Jett or Ash needed to haul him back.
“That was stupid,” Gray murmured as he dipped his head. “Always knew you were stupid.”
“I’m not stupid, you fucking dick, I just don’t fucking like you when you’re being a prick.”
“Liar.”
My retort was swallowed when he kissed me.
Not soft and gentle like Ash had kissed me.
Gray was unrestrained, his mouth dominated mine, his kiss was savage like him, and his tongue tasted every inch inside my mouth.
Hazily, I realized I was kissing him back just as eagerly.
His hand was tight in my hair, his other hand already cupping my sex as he ground his palm against the small bundle of nerves that throbbed for him.
As quickly as it began, it was over. Gray pushed me away from him as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Fucking make up your mind, but stop being a fucking liar,” he snarled at me before he turned and walked away from me.
I was still crying when Jett found me, and then he got pissed off when I refused to tell him why I was crying, which only made me cry more.
* * *
Quinn, age seventeen
“I don’t want to go to the movie,” I snapped angrily as I looked at Ash.
He’d had another growth spurt over the summer and now was standing proud at six-four.
My own height had stopped at five-ten, much to my disgust. I’d been hoping to be closer to six feet so I didn’t have to always look up to the Devils, but my DNA had other ideas, and instead of filling me upward, I had filled outward.
Last summer, my boobs became more generous than they had been before, a fact my boyfriend, Ash, was very grateful for.
My once stick-thin legs now had shape to them, and my hips were intent on keeping any morsel of food that I put in my mouth straight on them.
I watched the guys devour any food in front of them like a swarm of locusts and still look like needles.
I looked at the amount of carbs they ate, and I could feel my stomach bloating.
But I ran with them in the morning, I worked out with them in the evening, and I kept myself fit and healthy, at first so I could keep up with them and then because I genuinely enjoyed it.
“I don’t mind staying in, if you want,” Ash said with a grin as he lay back on my bed, his hands tucked beneath his head as he watched me with expectation.
“I’m not in the mood,” I told him as I pulled on a long sweater over my T-shirt, covering me completely and sitting mid-thigh over my leggings.
“Ugh, you’re never in the fucking mood,” he grumbled as he got off the bed and headed to my bedroom door. “I don’t know what’s wrong, and you won’t talk to me, so tell Jett, he’ll tell me, and we can move on. Okay?”
He was an idiot. Jett would never tell him, and that’s why Jett was my best friend. I heard the front door bang and knew he was gone. I counted in my head, and then my stepmom poked her head around the door.
“Trouble in paradise?”
“No, Anne, all good here,” I lied as I forced a smile. She was a nice enough lady. She just wasn’t my mom, and although our relationship was a good one, I knew she wanted it to be more.
“We can talk about it if you want?” she said as she took a step further into the room.
“No, honestly, it’s just Ash. He gets riled up during the season.”