For the tenth time since I’d fallen into a seat at the table, I sought her out, checking in with her from head to toe, reassuring myself that she was safe.
That she waswhole.
She caught me, of course. She always did. But as much as I lived for her smile, tonight, her plump red lips and teasing gaze weren’t enough.
Someone came at her. It had taken me a while to accept it, to digest the reality of what had gone down tonight, but once church had broken up and we’d flowed into some semblance of a normal evening, it had kicked me in the gut, and it had been kicking me ever since.
I shoved my plate away.
Beside me, Rubi pulled it back. “Nopety nope. You’re a terror when you’re undernourished.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue with him. I ate the potatoes left on my plate. Imagined them rotting in my anxious gut, and searched out another face in the room that always made me feel better.
As it happened, I found two. Locke had finished eating and stolen a moment with his tiny BFF, and man alive, if watching him handle that kid with his big deft hands didn’t do something to me.
Couldn’t say what because, despite Rubi’s daddy-kink jokes, it wasn’t sexual. But it hit a raw part of me, a sweetly painful nerve, and whenever I saw him with Hope, I couldn’t look away.
I ditched my plate all over again.
This time, Rubi let me and pushed water on me instead. No booze. We both knew what would happen if I drank on a body this tired, and I needed some decent shut-eye.
Somerestfulshut-eye.
Civilised, if God allowed it.
I drank the water. Tipped Locke a nod when he signalled that he needed to duck out, and beckoned Orla over.
She didn’t come on the first try, but I was knackered enough that she only made me ask twice.
Her heavenly body slid into my lap, those red lips coming to mine, sliding against my mouth in a sensuous kiss, bringing my fatigued body back to life, albeit temporarily.
Dizzying exhaustion returned as soon as she drew back and assaulted me with her dark gaze.
Hiding from it, I buried my face in her sweet neck, letting my hands roam to convince myselfagainthat she was okay.
It was less than a minute. Saint protected her.Lockeprotected her. He did his job. But at what cost? That cunt on the bike could’ve had a weapon. Agun. Locke and Saint could take anyone with their fists, but a speeding bullet—
“Shh.” Orla tangled her fingers in my messy hair. “You keep thinking like that and your heart is going to gallop out of your body.”
“How do you know how I’m thinking?”
My voice was muffled by her throat. By her chest as I moved lower to the warmer skin between her lush breasts, tuning out her answer.
I loved her tits. I wanted to see them. To close my mouth around a dark nipple and suck on it until it pebbled and her pussy got wet. I wanted to fuck her until the sun rose and my brain was empty of everything but her sweat-slicked body in my arms.
But despite the optimism tightening my jeans, we both knew I didn’t have it in me right now. “I need a shower.”
Orla hummed and slid off me, giving me a better view of the room. While I’d sought sanctuary in her body, Folk and Decoy had left for the night, Mats and Em with their brood too. Everyone else was staying put, guarding Orla while we kept her off the roads, when all I wanted was to hustle her back to her flat and be alone with her.
Well, nearly alone.
Locke slipped back into the chapel, phone in one hand, a cigarette in the other, the stressed look on his face he got when his kids gave him the runaround.
I shoved my chair back and went to him. “You lighting that thing?”
Locke frowned at the unlit smoke. “I forgot I fuckin’ had it.”
“Come on.” I pointed at the door. “Let’s puff outside.”
