Didn’t.
Orla licked my neck. “I should probably ask you how you know Nash has a big dick.”
“Areyou asking me?”
“Yes.”
It was an interesting way of cooling shit down. But the context kept me grounded. “I had it in my hand this morning before Rubi shouted for breakfast and I got in my head about something else. Hey, can I askyousomething?”
Orla rubbed her cheek on my chest. “Is it about Nash’s dick?”
“No. Yes. Kinda.”
“You want to know why he didn’t freak out over you touching it but kissing you scared the shit out of him?”
I hadn’t unpicked it, but yup. That was it. Naked in his bed, Nash had been chill as fuck. In my arms in the bunkhouse, my face in his hands as he’d kissed the shit out of me, something wicked had got the better of him. “I want to know what happened so I can stop it happening again.”
“He’s not used to that side of his sexuality being intimate.”
“Intimate?”
Orla hummed. “Yeah. It took me a while to figure it out, but aside from what happened with Rubi, he’s never been with a man in any meaningful way, you know? Getting his dick sucked at the strip bars or whatever, it was all stuff being doneto him,which made it too easy to detach himself from what it meant. To hide from all the horrible shit his parents had said to him, because he wasn’t actually doing anything... not really, anyway.”
I dissected her words. Put them together with what I already knew and what I’d seen with my own eyes.
It made a horrible kind of sense. The way he was fine with me touching him, but touchingmehad fucked him up. “It’s okay if he doesn’t want—”
Orla slapped a hand over my mouth. “Trust me, Locke. Hewants. And he never has until you.”
She let her hand drop.
I chased it down and laced her slender fingers with mine. “Never?”
“No. He’s been curious, but not about anyone in particular. That’s how I knew something had changed for him, when you came to live on the compound with Folk and Ranger. It took him a while to tell me, but in the end, he didn’t have to.”
I could believe that. I remembered the day Nash had come for us and led us home. How my gaze had zeroed in on him and he’d looked up at just the right moment.
He’dsmiled.
I hadn’t. I’d been too fucked up from every shitty thing that had brought my boots and hog to his club. Too deep in my grief for Rocco, even before we’d got solid word he was gone. But that clench in my heart, it had never gone away, and I hadn’t managed to hide it from anyone who knew me well.
Logan.
Folk.
Hell, even Willow had sniffed me out.“Dad, you’re so gay for him.”
Nice. And I fuckin’ meant that.
I wound a stray lock of Orla’s hair around my finger. “I need to be careful with him.”
She let me play with her hair for a protracted beat before she curved her neck and bit me. “You do. But not too careful, babe. Sometimes people just need a push.”
I moved fast, lifting her and depositing her on her back.
Orla laughed, the low, throaty sound going straight to my dick. “Nash told me you manhandled him. Wondered when it would be my turn.”
“Technically, I’mwomanhandling you.”
