Dark Around the Edges by Cari Z

Author:Cari Z [Z, Cari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-01T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Devon had always thought himself a pretty patient person. He’d learned patience first by force, following every command of his masters, and then by design, wanting to be good for Ren and Em, learning to focus and meditate. Yeah, sometimes he failed at taking things in stride, but overall he did a pretty good fucking job, he thought. Which was probably the only reason he wasn’t strangling Angelo right now. That and the fact that he couldn’t walk over to him unaided, but Devon was going to give his own exquisite personal restraint the lion’s share of the credit.

Angelo was flirting with Rio. Flirting with him. It was ridiculous, a thirteen year old boy, no matter how pretty he was, flirting with Rio Pagani. First off because Rio was Rio, he wasn’t the type to give in to flirting of any kind, secondly because he wasn’t a pedophile, and thirdly because Devon had clearly marked Rio as his personal territory, though Angelo was completely disregarding that in favor of being a snotty little bitch.

“If you keep making that expression, your face might freeze that way,” Ren remarked as he sat down next to Devon at the picnic table beside the dock. The rest of the group was a little ways off playing in the shallows, and Angelo was with them, cocking his head and making cow eyes at Rio and touching him—fucking touching him—on the arm and shoulder.

“Who does he think he is?” Devon muttered.

“Your talk didn’t go so well, then.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault Angelo won’t listen to reason,” Devon said. “I tried. I tried all day, remember? And Angelo just stayed sulky and now he’s trying to get back at me.” It wasn’t that Devon didn’t have compassion for his foster brother; he remembered being that age, and he remembered how incredibly frustrating it had been. But Angelo had no idea how lucky he was, and after a while Devon hadn’t been able to take the complaining anymore. He’d told Angelo to get over himself, and Angelo had responded like any wounded teen would and kicked him out of his room. Yesterday he’d given everyone the cold shoulder, and now, on the day Devon was supposed to be getting his sense of touch back, Angelo was putting all of his effort into keeping Rio preoccupied with him.

“Angelo’s just flexing his muscles,” Ren said calmly. “It won’t affect Rio, and it gives your brother an outlet for his energy. There’s no harm to it.”

“Whatever.”

Devon couldn’t feel Ren’s hand clasp his shoulder, but he could see him scoot closer along the bench, and the attempt at comforting made him feel a little better. “Why doesn’t our allure work on him?” he asked his dad quietly.

Ren shook his head. “It’s not my place to tell you. Suffice it to say, that man is well-protected against all sorts of things. He’s a good guy to have on your side.”

Devon huffed in exasperation. “I know he is, I just want to know why he is.

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