“Doesn’t mean I won’t kill you.” She tossed her underwear at me—somehow I’d missed her leaving them off.
Then she left.
Wrung out, I flopped back on the bed.
Changed my mind and rolled to my feet, moving to the window to track Orla’s progress as she stormed across the yard. I knew where she was going—to the banker’s meeting with the clever people, a weekly event I avoided like the plague.
“You should come. It’s your money too.”
Like I cared. As long as I had enough cash to keep her safe, I didn’t give a monkey’s fuck.
Folk crossed paths with Orla and escorted her to the chapel. Didn’t stay. Like me, Folk had little interest in money. Or in the sight of me naked in the window if the bemused frown he sent my way was anything to go by.
Dammit.
I retreated and sat on the edge of my bed, battered, but resistant to the idea of more sleep before I’d laid eyes on Locke.
My gaze searched him out, sharper than it had any right to be considering the sex haze in my brain.
I found him by the garage doors, frowning at a stack of boxes. Picking them up all in one lift, biceps popping in the morning sun, those muscular thighs taking the weight.
He set them down out of the way and rubbed his back, that unconscious gesture I hadn’t seen from him in a while.
His injuries, and what had caused them, had been on my mind every moment I hadn’t been lost in Orla. Were they hurting him now?
I stood and grabbed some clothes from my bedroom floor, tugging them on.
My boots were nowhere in sight.
I tripped over them on the landing.
Left them there and jogged downstairs and outside in my socks, doing my best impression of Embry, whoof coursesaw me do it andjudgedme in the kindest possible way. Man, there were too many brothers around here who saweverything. Why couldn’t more of them be a blithering idiot like me?
I crossed the yard to where Locke still stood.
He sensed me coming, his frown deepening as he glanced between my feet and my face. “What’s up?”
Nothing that I could verbalise.
I stepped closer. He ditched his notepad on the boxes and reached for me.
That he didn’t question it should’ve given me some clue as to how frayed I was looking. It was hardly a secret that we had something going on, and we were both tactile men. But the way he caged me in his arms was a long way from fraternal. It was protective. It wasloving. And fucking hell, I needed it. His solid warmth and strength, if only to remind me that he was alive.
A shudder passed through me. Locke tightened the arm he had around my waist, the other sliding up my spine to tangle his fingers in my hair. He said nothing, just breathed slow and deep, the steady thump of his heart the same quiet song that had lulled me to sleep.
The noise of the yard faded away. I let my palms skate over his hips and under the Kings crewneck hugging his torso, grazing my fingers over the first wave of ropey scars marring his back.
A month ago, he’d have stiffened.
Now, he let it happen, sitting with it a moment before he drew back to look at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Nash, are you lying to me?”
“Yeah.”
Locke hummed a faint laugh and pressed a soft kiss to my temple. “If you were a woman, I’d sweep you off your feet and fuck you senseless until you told me the truth.”
