A loud laugh burst out of his chest, so strong it rocked my body alongside his. I friggin' loved this guy. Every single time he laughed, I swear it multiplied. At this rate, I loved him more than my own life cubed, and then cubed again.
"All right," he murmured between these low chuckles once he'd calmed down a bit. His fingers trailed over the skin of the back of my hand until he stopped at my ring finger and squeezed the slender bone. "I can be patient."
That earned him a laugh from me. Patience? Dex? Even after more than three years, that would still never be a term I'd use to describe him. And it probably never would. He'd started to lose his shit during our layover when Trip had called for instructions on how to set the alarm at the new bar.
"Dex, Ris, and Baby Locke, you done?" Sonny yelled, peeping out from over the top of the car door.
"Are you friggin' kidding me?" I yelled back. Did everyone know?
The bulging eyes my half-brother gave me weren't apologetic in the least. I wasn't even going to bother asking how he knew. These two jerks knew me better than anyone, including the flake I called my little brother. The same little brother I'd only seen twice. The wuss that had been too scared to come meet his little brother.
Not that it said much considering it'd taken me three years to finally get out to Colorado but Carson, my thirteen-year-old half brother, had been more than okay with our gradual progression into getting to know each other. We'd gone from me sending him a birthday present, to a single phone call as a thank you. Then monthly phone conversations for a year, to weekly emails, and finally, Skype video calls.
Even then, it had taken me a couple months to finally getting around to calling him once life had gotten back to normal after the crap with the man who shall never be named.
It had taken Dex and I another week and a half to get my father's motorcycle sold. That money had been enough to cover the remaining amount he owed the Croatians. Then, getting the money to them had been another tedious process to ensure that the matter was closed and we'd be safe afterward.
Just that easily, after those assholes got their money back, there was never another issue.
With the mafia, with the Reapers, or with my father.
The same father that had never made another appearance in my life, or any of my brothers'.
And I could easily say I hadn’t felt an ounce of guilt over what we’d done on that trip even years later. It also helped that we never did find out what the money had been for. By the end of it all, I didn’t care. At all.
"Ready?" Sonny called out again, tapping the roof of the car with his palm.
"Chill the fuck out," Dex yelled back. Well, their friendship had taken a few months to get back on track but they were fine now.
You know, after they got into a fist fight at Mayhem. And then got into a second fight in Luther’s backyard . Yeah. I missed witnessing both, but I didn’t miss the swollen noses, black eyes and busted lips afterward. Yet I couldn’t help but feel a sense of completion that these two caveman-esque idiots were mine. My proud, loyal morons.
I pulled away from him and slowly turned around, tipping my head back to look at his face. God, he was so good looking. So incredibly perfect. I could see the tip of Uriel's tentacle on one side of his neck, and the multicolored burst of a rainbow on the other side of his neck. The rainbow was my tattoo. The blue dragon Slim had been hounding me about getting for weeks.
Only Dex had beat me to it, weaving my name through the colors in violet, in a way that only Slim was capable of.
My own little blue dragon, a fraction of the size of his, had finally found a home on the inside of my wrist shortly afterward.
Going up to my tippy toes, I kissed the underside of the neatly trimmed beard he'd been growing in over the last few months. "Love you."
That slow, seductive smile crawled over his features. Brilliant and more affectionate than it was possible for me to handle, it sucked the breath out of me. When he palmed my cheeks and kissed each of my cheeks and nose and forehead, slowly like he was savoring the pecks and the contact, I ate it all up. Like always, and just like I always would.
"Fuckin' love you," he breathed against my ear, an arm slinking around my lower back to press us together. "More than anything."
The damn car horn honked, long and low. Friggin' Sonny.
I smiled up at Dex and threaded my fingers through his. "You ready?" I asked him. The question was broad and reached in a dozen different directions.
And he answered the way I knew he would every single time I asked him from them on, the way that told me he would never let me down. That he was an immovable object. That he'd always be there for me to battle the demons we could see and the invisible ones we couldn't. "Iris."
* ~ *
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About the author:
Mariana Zapata lives in Texas with her longtime boyfriend and two oversized children—her beloved Great Danes, Dorian and Kaiser. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, cursing the gym or pretending to write. Or burning experiments in the kitchen.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
About the author:
Under Locke Page 53