The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(10)
“Smile,” I instruct, holding up my phone to take a picture of him for Beth. He folds his arms across his chest, his mouth flat, and the only part of his face that moves is a single eyebrow saying Why are you taking my picture? I only stand for photos when required to do so by the US Passport Office.
I take the photo anyway, just to spite him. He looks like a brooding, virile Viking on the cusp of pillaging a village or declaring prima nocta.
“Though you’re hideous,” I tell him, “you could potentially take a decent photo if you were capable of smiling.”
He raises that brow once more. “You think I’m not capable of smiling?”
“You’re not even capable of smiling right now when I’m accusing you of being unable to do it. Your face only has two expressions—mildly disgusted and really disgusted.”
There’s a low, warm noise from his throat. One I might almost confuse with a quiet laugh. I want to not be pleased by that. “I wouldn’t confuse the way I look at you with the way I look at everyone,” he says, turning up the hill and heading toward the second bunker.
Asshole.
For ten more minutes, we climb, and when we finally reach our destination, I’m absolutely spent and ready to throw myself from the peak and hope for the best. Instead, I turn and grab the first foothold to scale its side.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he demands.
I continue to climb, though the footholds are far apart and I’m not especially gifted with upper body strength.
“I want a selfie from the top,” I reply, “so I can prove how healthy I am and show up all those dickheads saying I need rehab.”
“That definitely sounds healthy,” he mutters, following me up with no sign of effort.
When I reach the top, I take in the view. The ocean is the deepest blue imaginable, a royal blue crayon plucked straight from a new box and brought to life. In the distance, a kayak moves over the water toward the Mokulua Islands, small as a grain of rice from here. I close my eyes for a moment and picture it—the only sound the roar of the wind, no one gawking at me. There are times when I think I could live like that, on some barren island alone. At least then I could fall down without half the world saying I need rehab, or have some premenstrual bloating without TMZ suggesting I’m pregnant.
My eyes open and I discover him standing way too close. “What are you doing?”
“Just making sure you don’t fall off,” he replies dryly. “I understand you do that sometimes.”
I lower my phone and stare at him balefully. I thought he might be the one person alive who hadn’t heard about Amsterdam. “You’ve been saving that up all morning, haven’t you?”
He gives a small laugh. “Since the start of the trip, actually.”
My mouth moves and I struggle to hold it still. “Well, I’m glad we’ve gotten it out of the way.”
And then I laugh. Joshua is still a fucking asshole. If he hadn’t made the comment about the silver, I’d probably want to be his friend anyway.
7
JOSH
Man is not as evolved as he’d like to think—when it comes to sex, we are essentially puppets, wired by our primitive brains to seek reproduction of the species at the expense of all else. Infants will stare at a photo of a symmetrical face longer than they’ll stare at a photo of their own mother. Show men around the world a variety of female bodies, and no matter what they claim to like, they physically respond to the exact same proportions.
So, yes, I did a double take the first time I saw Drew Wilson on the cover of Maxim. I imagine the number of straight men who did a double take at that cover was—well, all of them. It’s meaningless that the mere sight of her was enough to take me directly from thinking about the surgery I’d be performing that evening to thoughts of bare skin and soft lips and breasts barely contained by a little pink dress.
But that doesn’t mean I have to do a double take every time she comes into view.
I’m poolside—forced into a chair next to my father, who’s droning on about the evils of managed care—when Drew appears. She’s in a t-shirt and shorts instead of some skimpy bikini, thank God, long blonde hair piled beneath a hat.
My mother pats the chair beside her. “You look like you need a nap, young lady,” she says affectionately. Drew seems to make her motherly side go into hyperdrive, for reasons I can’t understand.
Drew smiles but there’s something uncertain in it, something fragile. It’s almost as if she doesn’t know how to react when someone is kind.
“I was up before five today to run,” she says. “Between that and the hike, I’m pretty beat.”
Sloane, reading beside me, stiffens. I didn’t mention to her that I ran with Drew, since she’s already weirdly jealous. She seems to be putting it together now.
“Well, you sit down here and take a little rest then, hon,” says my mom.
Drew nods and then her hands go to her waistband and I stiffen in sudden panic. Drew is removing her clothes and my God that’s nothing I need to see. I know I should stop looking, for my own sanity, but I just don’t.
The shorts slide off. My gaze travels involuntarily along the smooth bronzed skin of her toned thighs, and up, up up to the curve of the perkiest ass I’ve ever laid eyes on. White bikini bottoms tied with string. A single tug and she could be freed from them.