“Yes.” I had one foot off the floor.How? When?No clue, but my leg was half wrapped around the muscular tree trunks that belonged to Locke, and I couldn’t find the will to take it back as I wondered if I should tell him that when the time came for Nash to kiss him back, he’d become a paid member of a club that contained onlyme.
I stuck my tongue out and licked the scar splitting his bottom lip. “Is that how you kissed him?”
Locke’s hands migrated to my backside, big hands squeezing the ample flesh he found there. “Pretty much. Is that how you pictured it?”
When it came to Nash and Locke, I’d pictured way too many things for a snatched conversation in a hidden corner of the yard. Too many things toremember.
Had I pictured them kissing?
Maybe. It was part of every love story, right?
“Orla.”
Locke said my name like a gravelled prayer.
I took a breath.
So did he.
Then we collided, and the force of it rocked me backward, my balance wavering until my feet left the floor completely.
Locke reversed our positions. My back hit the wall. He bore down on me, and I sank into his rough kiss like softened clay. Drowning in it for the hazy, rushed beats, I let him control the moment.
Then I kissed him back, sliding my tongue into his mouth, digging my nails into his flank, his low groan igniting the smouldering arousal in my blood.
And hey, listen. I wasn’t a nun. And Nash was my everything. But I knew the thunder in my pulse as Locke ground against my core was rare. That until he’d come along, only Nash had ever brought the storm.
Not here.
We had to stop.
For many reasons, but mainly that anyone could walk up on us, and I didn’t want Nash discovering from someone else that I’d punched a new level in our complex love story.
Like he’d read my mind, Locke slowed our kiss. Then he broke it, pressing his forehead to mine instead, his sea-green eyes eating me alive. “You’re a dangerous woman.”
“So they say.”
“You two drive me fuckin’ crazy.”
“Not on purpose.”
“I know.” Locke tucked my hair behind my ears. “That’s why I let it happen.”
Let it. As if he had any more control over this beautiful chaos than I did. But whatever. If he believed that, I wasn’t going to use my words to dissuade him.
I kissed him again. Once. On his scarred lip.
Then I ducked under his big arms and pointed at the clubhouse. “I need a drink. Next time you kiss Nash, do it like that.”
I walked away knowing he’d follow, and not just because my brother paid him to keep me alive.
5
NASH
I’m so fucking tired. I pushed food around my plate, eyes full of grit, my face throbbing like I’d taken a beating in the ring, my brain so wired I couldn’t shut it down.
Orla.
