Nash pushed himself up, one hand pressed tight to his chest. “I can’t fucking breathe.”
Laughter tempered his words, but the pulse that raced beneath the fingers I pressed into his wrist was a long way from funny.
“Lean forward. Breathe slow.”
“Locke, I’m fine.”
“Do it anyway.”
Nash obeyed, still holding his chest, his eyes heavy with blistering sex and amusement. “You kill me, man. That’s all it is.”
“Death by orgasm?”
Nash laughed again, already moving more air through his lungs. “Maybe I really do need to give up smoking.”
My fingers were still plugged into his pulse. It had slowed as he started to come down. Mine too, though I reckoned the thunder of my anxious fuckin’ heart had left cracks in my ribcage.
The couch was a wreck too. I tugged Nash to his feet. “Meet me in bed.”
He dragged his lips along my jaw and complied.
I took a bathroom break to clean up, put the couch back together, and changed the record for some gentle soul.
Found him in Orla’s bed, already half asleep.
I crawled in beside him, loving the sensation of him pressed against me, his head on my chest. Nash was so strong. So resilient. But moments like these reminded me that he was human. He was fragile, and he was so fuckin’ precious to me I wouldn’t survive it if anything happened to him. “I love you.”
Nash kissed the bird etched into my skin. “I love you.”
We lay in the quiet for a while. Nash’s breathing was slow and rhythmic. I wondered if he was asleep. Then his hand meandered to my persistently optimistic cock and I figured him awake. “Ignore it. It’ll go away eventually.”
Nash laughed. “Maybe I don’t want it to go away.”
“At least make him wait.”
“Him?”
I hummed, wrapping my arm around him a little tighter. “You need to be anywhere today?”
The barest ripple of tension travelled through Nash’s shoulders. “Later. Cam needs me for something.”
I didn’t ask him what. Wasn’t my business unless he wanted to share, and I was done punishing him cos he didn’t.
Cos hecouldn’t.
“What are you doing with Willow on her birthday?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you.” Nash grazed my belly with his blunt nails. “We can drive her if she wants to come and have a legal drink at the club.”
“She’s with Kara tomorrow. Some stuffy family party. Then out with her mates after.”
“You’re not going to the party?”
“No. I mean, I could, but it’s not for me. I don’t want to stand around Kara’s house while her parents look down their noses at me. I was done with that shit years ago.”
Nash said nothing for a while, accepting, processing, whatever. Beneath the sheets, his light touch gave me goosebumps.