His beautiful face.
The fucker was chewing his bottom lip. Nervous or uncertain. Whichever it was, it could get in the sea.
I grabbed his hand and yanked him down on top of me. “What are you fretting about?”
Nash let himself fall. “I’m not fretting.”
I waited, keeping myself busy slotting us together. Neither of us were small, but his legs seemed to fit around me as well as Orla’s did, his chest to mine, his earnest gaze searing a fresh mark on my heart. “You’re going to make me guess?”
“There’s nothing to guess.” Nash skimmed my torso with a light touch, checking my healing injuries more than anything overtly sexual, but the stone column in his sweats told a different story.
I kissed his bare shoulder. “You fucked me a week ago. Why are you scared of touching me now?”
“I need a reason to be scared?”
“Course not. I’m searching for the logic.”
“There isn’t any.” Nash’s lips turned up in a rueful grin. “I don’t understand it either.”
Definitely notnothingthen, but I kept that brilliant observation to myself. Fear didn’t always make sense, I knew that. And trauma rarely played fair. There didn’t have to be a reason why Nash didn’t know what to do with how he felt right now. Just a safe place for him to show it.
The ad break on the telly ended. My dad’s favourite programme came on, and I patted the couch cushion. “Wanna watchColumbowith me?”
Nash snorted. “No. I want to play the Terry Reid album I stole from Rubi and fuck around on this couch.”
These cats and their music. “Anything you can’t fix with crackly old vinyl?”
“Yeah.” Nash cupped my face with his rough hands, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones. “But we survived it.”
A beat passed between us. Then I shifted him off me and rose, stepping to the turntable in the corner of the room.
The stolen record was on top of the ever-changing stack. It wasn’t one I recognised, but then I wasn’t an encyclopaedia of fuckin’ music.
I crouched to put the album on, noting the pull in my back was less shitastic than it had been in weeks. Came upright feeling strong, energy buzzing in my veins that I knew came from the prospect of losing myself in Nash for a few hours. It wasn’t about the fucking—if we even got that far. It was all abouthim. Loving this dude was better than therapy.
Nash was exactly where I’d left him on the couch. I went to him and pulled him up to kiss me. Our lips met as seventies cult-rock filtered out of the wall-mounted speakers, and once again, I found myself struck by how well we fit together. How perfect he felt in my arms.
I wanted him so much.
On the inside, I vibrated with need. But I went easy on him, for a little while, at least, kissing him for fuckin’ ages before I finally tipped him onto the couch.
“What do you want?” I peeled those evil sweats down his muscular legs. “What do you need?”
Breathing hard, Nash pulled at my shirt.
I reached behind my head and yanked it off, skin on skin, while I waited for him to get it together enough to answer me.
He was naked.
I took advantage of it and wrapped my hand around his cock, teasing a hoarse groan from his throat.
“Don’t—” He shook his head, eyes screwed shut. “Don’t make me fucking talk.”
Don’t make himchoose, maybe. And I was okay with that. The mess in his head was years old and I didn’t hold the cure for it in my dick.
I went back to kissing him and letting my hands roam his body, chasing every shiver and moan that wracked him. The simmering heat beneath his skin.
“Locke?”