I wanted hernow.
Sweeping her off her feet, I pressed her against the wall while I worked the knot out of the towel wrapped around her body.
Orla laughed, that husky, feminine chuckle going straight to my dick. “Is this your idea of date night?”
In a second, I’d have to come clean and tell her date night was off. That if I got my way with Locke, she’d be spending her evening with a grumpy Mateo who’d rather be at home. But as the towel fell to the floor and her full breasts sucked me in, I had no fucking words. Just pure, unadulterated desire for the woman I’d adored since I was a teenager.
I buried my face in her sweet-scented flesh, breathing her in, saturating myself in all that was her with the same burn I’d felt for Locke out in the hallway. The same heat pumping my blood.
O’Brian to the bone, she had ink on her tits. Vintage roses and skulls. Daggers on her collarbones. I traced it all with my tongue until I found her mouth and claimed her there too.
Her kiss was the only one I’d known my whole damn life. Sure, I’d fucked other people. She had too. But she was the only soul on earth I’d ever given myself to like this. These filthy-sweet moments where her breath became mine, the velvet sweep of her tongue enough to sway me on my fucking feet.
Dizzy, I pulled back enough to meet her dark gaze.
Herknowinggaze. “What’s the matter, Nash?”
“Hmm?”
Orla flicked my ear, shifting out of my possessive hold. “You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one you get when you’re about to tell me the world is on fire.”
Damn. I attempted to school my features, but all it earned me was the sardonic arch of her brows. “I have to go out again.”
“Business?”
“You wanna know?”
“Do I need to?”
“Nah. It’s boring shit. But it has to be me or I’d have delegated it, I swear.”
Orla sighed and ducked under my arm, leaving her towel where it lay as she walked to her bedroom door. “You don’t have to swear, I believe you.”
Engrossed by the retreating view of her thick thighs and narrow waist, it took me a second to follow her. I breached the doorway to the sight of her damp hair cascading down her back and my faded jeans grew tight. “It shouldn’t take long.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll come home... if you’re not too lairy to want me here.”
Orla spun around, irritation flashing in her sharp gaze. “When has that ever happened? I don’t care how ragey I am, Ialwayswant you here, for as long as it’s where you want to be.”
I knew that. But I was cursed with the ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and fuck everything up. Or not say anything at all, and the result was the goddamn same. It was a slow lesson to just spit the fucking truth and let shit happen. “I do want to be here. More than anything. I love you, woman.”
“Woman?” Orla snorted. “If you’re gonna go caveman on me, I’m gonna need more than words from you.”
“More than words, eh?” I braved a step into the room and once again found my faculties scrambled by her bare skin. Only this time, there were no towels in my way. I could see everything, and I drank her in like a starving man. “You want me to make you come, Orls?”
Orla rolled her eyes. “It’d be a start.”
“What’s the end?”
“The end?” Orla reeled me in, matching every step I took towards her with one to her bed. “I guess you’ll find out when you roll home after thisthingthat shouldn’t take too long.”
It was a fair answer. I’d run out on her so many times it was almost funny. But the truth was, it bordered on tragic, and sometimes the thought of dying before I got to finish what we’d started was the only thing that kept me going.
