“The first time they came for me, I was in bed at the house me and Kara rented from the firefighter’s trust, sleeping off a double shift on green watch. Drummer and his boys dragged me out and I never really got over it.”
“You don’t like sleeping in beds?”
He shrugged. “It’s not as literal as that. More that I sleep better when I’m around people I trust, and like a scared cat when I’m alone.”
I thought of how often Locke had dozed off around me. In the bar, in the wagons. Outside in a damn deck chair.
I’d always found it funny.
I never would again.
“I’m sor—”
Locke gripped my jaw, his big hand cupping the whole damn thing. “Stop. I didn’t tell you so you’d feel bad for me.”
I know. But his hold on me was so absolute I couldn’t say it.
I stared at his mouth instead. There was a scar there too, but no worse than anything on my face.
Kiss me.
I blinked away the thought for no reason other than habit. Dragged it back again because it eased the ache in my heart.
His neck was as beautiful as Orla’s. I traced the Gemini tat with my fingertip.
Locke shivered. “Don’t push me, brother.”
“Or what?”
Still clutching my chin, Locke pressed me against the sink. “Or I’ll have to push you back.”
“What does that mean?”
His free hand found its way under my clothes, to my belly and my chest, rough fingers grazing every sensitive spot in his path. “What do you want it to mean?”
“I—”
Locke silenced me with a swipe of his thumb over my lips.
Then he kissed me.
Like,reallykissed me, as if devouring me whole was as important as shutting me up. As if his mouth on mine held the answers to every question I’d ever had.
And maybe it did, but I’d never fucking know it, because his kiss wiped my brain clean of every naïve dream I’d had of this moment.
I thought I knew what it would be like to kiss Locke—to kiss any dude, anyperson—who wasn’t Orla. But I’d had no fucking idea. No clue that the moment his lips consumed me I’d be a different person.
He kissed mehard, his hands rough and his tongue demanding, and I let it happen, barely kissing him back, barelybreathing, until he slowed it to this chill ache of a thing that left me giddy all over again.
Gripping him for balance, I found my feet, relaxing into him, letting the rush of the unknown become familiar. His harsher touch and tougher exterior. The musky scent that was nothing like Orla, and yet still made me think of her as my tongue danced with Locke’s and my heart rate hit warp speed.
In the mess of flesh and bone I’d become, I took his hand and gripped the back of his head. Breakneck desire swept over me and I sank into his embrace, finally catching up and matching the dizzying pace that he’d set from the start.
We collided. Locke held me up, still clutching the hard edge of my jaw, his body arching to meet mine, his low growl swallowing the desperate sound of my hitched breath, his hand at my waist roaming higher, sliding under my tee.
His palm hit my hot skin, fingers dancing over the ladder of my ribs, thumb grazing my chest. The light touch set something off in me and I pulled him tighter against me. Then changed my mind as panic I didn’t quite understand reared its ugly head.
Locke wasn’t a mind reader like some of my other brothers seemed to be, but he was older than me. Wiser. Whatever effect my bizarre state of mind had on my body, he felt it and backed off.
