“Like those loafer-wearing dudes without tattoos and stab wounds.”
“I’ve never heard of this phenomenon.”
“Me neither until I found myself stuck in a room full of the twats. And don’t get me started on the fuckin’ corduroy jeans.”
Genuine grump leeched from Locke’s tone. I tipped my head back and laughed, something wicked releasing from my pent-up heart. “That’s what you get for producing such a talented little beast. I can’twaitfor this shit to start happening to Mateo.”
Locke chuckled too, but the humour in his gaze was overcome by the heat that he levelled at my exposed throat. By the invisible magnet that drew him close enough to kiss me there, his tongue grazing the sensitive skin.
Holy... yeah. Just holy. There wasn’t another word for the tidal wave of havoc that light-as-hell swipe wrought on me.
My breath staggered, and I bit my lip. “Fuck.”
“Yeah?” Locke pulled back with an expanding,cautious, provocative grin. “I was worried I’d forgotten how to do that.”
“How to sear me alive?”
Locke shrugged, casual, as if he hadn’t just roasted my nerves. “I’ve been feeling like my dick has shrivelled up and died, so...”
My gaze dropped to his crotch, to the package bulging behind the confines of denim, and more tingling heat prickled my skin. It wasn’t about size; I knew that. How many times had Locke and Nash turned me inside out with nothing more than their skilled fingers? But as I stared at Locke, I couldn’t escape the memory of how it had felt to have him inside me, moving slowly as he filled me with an intense rhythm, his hands a rough burn on my bare skin.
I took a breath, lips parting on a heady inhale, stretching up in the same moment that Locke leaned down again. “I?—”
We collided.
Hard.
A kiss that sent us staggering into the clothes display before Locke caught me, clutching my face with one strong hand, the other sliding down my ribs and over my hip to grab my backside.
He spun me away from it, like we were dancing, still kissing me as if he’d spent his whole life yearning for it.
I felt like I had, and I clutched at him, nails digging in until his sharp inhale reminded me that despite him manoeuvring me as though I weighed nothing, he was still hurt.
My fingers found their way to his hair instead, tangling in the soft waves, scratching the nape of his neck as desire brewed between us. Another hot second passed, another kiss, and I forgot that we were in the sales reception, mauling each other in the window. Lost to a hazy swell of sweet endorphins, I forgot everything except his fiery mouth on mine and the throb and burn pooling between my legs.
Fuck me, Locke.
Not here.
Lit up from the inside out, I forced myself to pull away, a dizzy rush swaying me on my feet as he stared at me as if I had the same intoxicating power over him.
I couldn’t fathom how such a thing was possible. Then I thought of him and Nash together, of the consuming attraction that made me want to devour them both, and everything made the filthiest kind of sense. “I need you to do something for me.”
Later, I’d laugh at the breathy mess my voice had become. When my head wasn’t so crowded with want and need and there was room for the wider world that stretched beyond the crazy-hot kisses singeing my lips.
Locke didn’t laugh. He cut the short distance that had opened up between us and sank me with another glittering stare. “What do you need, queenie?”
Another shaky breath rattled my lungs. “I need you to take me home.”
17
LOCKE
“I need you to take me home.”
After so many days and nights of battered distance, I tasted sugar on her lips, desire swirling around us in thick, bracing waves, and my skewed view of the world came a little more right.
Nash. He wasn’t here, and I felt his absence in the raw scrape of my pulse. In the abrasive anxiety I knew wouldn’t settle until I sank into his baby blues and saw for myself that what we had was still there. That I hadn’t fuckin’ broken it. But Orla, man. This woman. My woman.Ours. I found strength in just touching her. Feeling her silky warmth against my sore body, and despite what I’d told her, I felt better than human as I took her hand and led her from the sales desk. For the first time in a while, I feltalive.