“Can I kiss you again?”
Locke blinked. “You don’t have to ask me that.”
I felt like I did. Because I’d fucked it up by freaking out. But as Locke leaned closer, the tightness in my chest eased.
Then his lips touched mine and obliterated me with a kiss that was slower this time. Lighter. I missed his tongue. His teeth. But I lost myself in that gentle press of his mouth. In his quiet inhale and the easy pressure of his hands on my flank, his roaming fingers finding my bare skin again, and by the time he pulled back with the crooked grin I saw in my dreams, I was whole.
Locke gave me a hug. A long one, caging me in his arms.
I squeezed him back. “We need to roll before Cam blows my phone up.”
On cue, it happened.
Locke sighed. Kissed my neck and let me go. “Where are you tonight?”
“On the road.”
“All night?”
My clueless shrug was an answer he expected.
“I’ll guard her.”
I knew he would. He always did, even when I was there, but for the first time ever, it wasn’t enough.
Locke was halfway to the door.
I called his name. “Can you do me a solid?”
He rotated to face me again. “Anything.”
“Wait inside with her, brother. I don’t want her to be alone.”
12
LOCKE
What a day.
I thought the night that had preceded it was unexpected enough, but this turn of the earth on its axis was the gift that kept on giving.
Church was a bust. Embry fell asleep to avoid divulging that we’d goaded the bikes on our tail into running us down and showing theirgun-filledhand, and after an hour on Cam’s comfortable couch, I did the same.
I woke up to a throaty, feminine chuckle and Saint’s cat digging holes in my belly.
The cat—Jonah—was black, with the same yellow-green eyes as Viktor, the missing Russian mobster, the subject of the conversation I’d fallen asleep to.
Definitely preferred the cat.
I sat up, tickling his chin.
The cat purred, and the sexy-as-fuck laugh came again, close enough that I turned my head, searching for the source.
Orla, naturally. As if it could ever be anyone else. She was curled in a big leather armchair, watching me, her phone in one hand, a glass of amber liquid in the other.
“Rum?”
She shook her head, dark waves falling over her shoulders. “Whiskey. I found Cam’s stash.”
