Talk to me. But I knew he wouldn’t. Not tonight. If there was one thing unshakeable about Locke, it was how much he cared, and I knew he cared about me. Like Orla, I was getting nothing out of him until I’d had some kip.
I finished the cigarette.
Locke pulled his gaze from the sky. “You should get your head down. If she wants to stay up, I’ll bring her to you when she’s done.”
He meant when she was done bullying Cam and River into washing up and cleaning the kitchen. Terrorising Rubi in return for his bad jokes. But my mind went somewhere else, and I knew he saw it.
“Stop it.”
I dropped my phone in my pocket. “I’m not doing anything.”
Locke rumbled a low growl that did absolutely nothing to drag my mind from the gutter. “Don’t be a dick.”
I grinned. “I’m not. But can I say something?”
“You’re the boss.”
“That all I am to you?” I was ribbing him, but Locke’s gaze flickered, and I dialled it back. “I’m your boss at the table,sometimes, when Cam’s not around. That doesn’t mean you have no choices. Look at Rubi. You think he gives a shit that I technically outrank him?”
“You’re comparing me to Rubi?”
“If you’re gonna judge our friendship on technicalities, yeah. I don’t have or want control over you. Even thinking about it makes me wanna puke.”
Because I knew the last men to have power over Locke had abused it and what it had cost him. Some of it, anyway, and in moments like these, I saw it more than ever. Locke was a grown man. Astrongman. But his own voice fucking scared him—Iscared him, and I hated that as much as the bastards who’d hurt him so much.
“Hey, I’m sorry.” I held up my hands. “You asked me to stop, and I hear you.”
Locke had already put some distance between us, backing into the closed chapel door. Confusion creased his face for a fleeting moment. Then it cleared, only to be replaced by a rueful expression that made zero fucking sense to me.
He opened his mouth, but the door moved behind him, forcing him forward, and Saint slipped out of the chapel, weaving between us with a stare that made me feel like we’d been caught naked.
And then I pictured Locke naked, his brawny tattooed limbs tangled with Orla’s pale Irish skin. His big hands on her body, and onmine.I had this fantasy about watching them together, but more and more, I’d begun to wonder how it would feel to be caught between them. Images bombarded my brain. I tried to take them all in, but I was too tired to keep up with my wild imagination. “I need a shower,” I repeated to no one in particular.
“You need to sleep.” Locke dropped a hand on my shoulder.
A warm hand. Forgetting about Saint, I leaned into the touch, my back colliding with Locke’s chest.
His arm circled my waist and he dropped another big hand on top of my head. It felt ridiculous, but so fucking good. Like he was taking a shift in my thick skull, giving me a break.
Saint disappeared. I heard his footsteps fade, but the rest of my senses were cut off by Locke’s fingers in my hair, massaging my scalp, his touch firm and blunt, the perfect contrast to the shivery perfection of Orla’s long nails. “Trying to hypnotise me, brother?”
“Is it working?”
“Depends what you want me to do.”
Locke chuckled, his mouth somewhere near my ear, the vibrations humming through his bones and into mine. “I want you to go to bed.”
Cometo bed would’ve sounded better, but as he rubbed his scruffy cheek against my temple, the quip was swallowed up by a rush of sensation I’d never felt when Rubi touched me, not even when he’dfuckedme all those years ago.
Locke’s arm was still around my waist. I covered his hand with mine, wrapping my fingers around his wrist. “I’m going.”
“Yeah?”
I leaned harder against him. “For a shower,” I clarified. “I’ll be back.”
He made a sound of discontent, but it was distant enough to my hazy mind that I ignored it and focused on dragging myself from his embrace, one atom at a time. And even then, it still happened too fast.
Locke let me go. In my head, I turned to face him and said some words that made sense.
