He smelled of smoke, clean cotton, and the lemon Fanta he drank when he was tired, three things I’d deduced so fast that Orla reckoned it was a primalmanthing, biological proof of my attraction to him, and with him this close, the theory had legs.
I literally ached to lay hands on him. To press my face into his neck and breathe him in.
Did I want him to fuck me?
Want. What a strange fucking word. Sometimes I knew what it meant. Others, I just heard my dad’s voice in my head, telling me that liking dick was asin, and I was still learning to let my sexuality be whatever God had meant it to be. That I lovedOrla, and she set me on fire in every fucking way.
But this dude, man.
Fucking hell.
He wasn’t even touching me and I was shook, and in the three seconds it took for my brain to short-circuit, Locke leaned closer and braced a brawny fist on the door behind me, his rugged face inches from mine. “You need to rest too,” he murmured, reminding me that we’d been having an actual conversation. “I can’t remember the last time you got your head down for more than a cat nap in the fuckin’ bar.”
“I was here this morning.”
“For an hour.”
An hour of fucking my girl as the sun rose. I had no regrets.
But... “To know my every move, you must be awake too.”
“Or Orla tells me. Cos she’s worried about you.”
Plausible. Orla and Locke were together most days, and he was easy to talk to. Unless it was to tell him you couldn’t close your eyes without picturing his mouth on your woman.
Fuck my life.
And fuck Locke too. He was making this way harder than I had time for it to be. “I won’t be long. Couple of hours. Then I’ll be back for some shut-eye before church in the morning.”
“Couple of hours?”
I nodded, fighting to keep my hands at my sides and my teeth from digging into my bottom lip. “Go home, brother. Please? It fucks me up to know you’re out here all night when you don’t have to be.”
Locke’s gaze darkened. “You’re wrong about that.”
“In what way?”
Locke took a breath, then something seemed to sweep through him and he blinked too hard for it to be anything other than a reset.
He straightened as if he hadn’t spoken. “What’s Mateo’s ETA?”
“Soon.”
“All right.” He backed up, leaving me mourning his domineering presence. “We’ll figure it out when he gets here.”
I didn’t want to figure anything out withMateo. I wanted to drag Locke inside with me and pull Orla into his strong arms so they could keep each other safe and whole until I came home. But I didn’t know how to articulate that, and Locke was done with the conversation.
He lit another smoke and turned his back on me.
I opened Orla’s door and slipped inside, shutting him out, and it felt so fucking wrong, it was a physical pain in my chest. A hurt only one person could shift.
Rubbing the open wound, I moved through Orla’s flat, following the sound of the shower running. Following my goddamnheart, even though it felt like I’d left a piece of myself in the hallway.
The water shut off as I neared the bathroom. Orla emerged in a cloud of steam, one crimson towel hiding her tattooed curves from me, another twisted around her long, dark hair. Water still glistened on her body, swathes of milky skin that after years and years of yearning was mine to touch whenever I wanted.
And fuck me I wanted her.
All the goddamn time.
