“Take me home, Locke,” I say, and when I lick my lips, it’s with purpose. He breathes hard through his nose. “And do anything you want to me.”
Locke doesn’t speak. He acts. He throws me into his arms and sprints the last block to his apartment.
“Locke, your knee!” I say, for what I feel is the millionth time.
“Don’t care.” His words are short, along with his breath. “Do. Not. Fucking. Care.”
We reach the door where he sets me down, fumbling in his pants for his keys. On impulse, I get up on my toes and scrape my teeth across his neck. My lips must be cold against his skin because he shivers.
“You’re mine.” His gaze is dark with promise when I draw back. “I’m going to tear that dress off you right here and now.”
“Do it,” I dare.
I feel light, so high and free that I don’t care if he strips me naked at his front door and fucks me in public.
Locke gives a feral grin like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
I peel off his shirt, let it puddle to the ground. Then I unzip the lower back of my dress and smile.
Locke doesn’t bother with the time-wasting task of slipping my dress all the way off. Instead, he lifts one of my thighs, reaches down for my underwear and, realizing I have none—
“You’re home!”
I almost slip and fall flat on my ass. Locke drops my leg like deadweight.
Astor’s gaze ping-pongs between us as she props the door open with one hand. “I heard you guys talking outside. Wanted to make sure you two were okay. It’s already on the news.”
She doesn’t have to explain.
“We made it out just fine,” Locke grumbles, but his expression is patient. He knows his sister is worried.
“Where’s your umbrella? Actually, where’s your shirt?”
Locke reaches to the ground and grabs the soaking wet, dirtied shirt. “It was torn in the mob. As for the umbrella….we lost it. As you can see.”
“And—and Ben?” she asks while pushing the door farther to let us in. I’m so slick between my legs, and it’s not rain. I’m worried Astor can tell.
“He’s good.” Locke’s response is curt, but I’m too busy racing up the one flight of stairs and cooling my flushed face down to analyze why.
“Thank God,” Astor says, but doesn’t follow us up. “I brought my stuff with me. I’m ready to go.”
“Thank God,” Locke echoes, but not loud enough for Astor to catch. “Thanks a bunch, sis. I hope Lily wasn’t too much trouble.”
“Are you kidding? That kid’s an angel. She must get it from me.” Astor winks, props open her umbrella, then heads out. Before she disappears, she calls over her shoulder, “But you two kids have fun!”
My head whips to Locke, clumps of wet hair sticking to my mouth. “Do you think she knows?”
“Oh, she definitely knows.” He glances behind me. “Your dress was unzipped the whole time you went up these stairs.”
“Shit. Shit,” I squeak. “But I promised—”
“Forget promises. We’re making too many of those.” Locke’s hands come down on my shoulders, his thumbs slowly drawing the straps down my arms. “I want right now, instead.” He angles his head, and that somehow makes him sexier. “Don’t you?”
I can’t stop myself. “Yes.”
That’s all he needs. With an inhuman flick I didn’t think was possible for mere mortals, my dress is off, and I’m wet and naked in the hallway.
He lifts me against his chest, my legs wrap around his torso, and we topple into the apartment.
26
Locke
I leave the lights off in the bedroom.
When I lay Carter down on the bed, I do it slowly, carefully, so as not to scare her. Because if I spook Carter, I’m gonna have goddamned blue balls for life.
She’s so hot. So fucking sexy naked. She’s soft, so easy to nip at with my teeth, and before I can tell myself to cool it, I’m down there, grazing her torso with an incisor, and just like that, she’s writhing.
Fuck.
I glance up at her, make sure she’s still with me and not scrambling off the bed. I never question my prowess. My skills turn on more women than not, but Carter’s different. She’s special.
And her eyes are glittering like she wants more.
“Your wish is my command,” I say, words low and deep in my throat, and scrape my mouth and the stubble surrounding it across her sensitive naked curves before I reach what I’ve been dreaming of tasting again. And again. I want to taste her every night.
She groans and her hips twist, taking my mouth with them. Carter grinds into my tongue, small circles, then faster, faster, before she’s spearing and bucking and grabbing my head to pull me deeper.
I crave all of her. I want to ride her so hard the insides of her thighs are red with friction.
She’s not bare. She shaves, but I find I love it. Too many chicks are fucking hairless, and I want that sign of a woman—that racing stripe leading me right to the finish line.
Carter’s lost all decency. She’s not shy, not anymore, as she begs, “Yes, Locke. Yes, right there. Do it. Harder. Oh—my—harder!”
She’s gasping, rocking under me, and I curve my arms under her thighs over her stomach, and squeeze her breasts, tweaking her nipples.
Carter can barely contain herself. Her hands land on mine and she presses them against those delicious, hot tits, and like a true gentleman, I do as she bids.
“Come for me, baby,” I say into her heat.
“Don’t stop,” she gasps but has enough energy to look down and glare at me. “Don’t you fucking stop.”
I hope she can feel the curve of my mouth against her clit. “Yes, ma’am.”
When she orgasms, I nearly shoot my load right there. I keep dancing with her, keep twirling, helping her cross that brink, but I use a hand to unbuckle and unzip my jeans before my cock spears right through the denim.
“Oh,” she gasps, her ribs flying up and sinking down. “Oh.”
“Don’t rest easy yet, sweetheart,” I say, and lift off to step out of my pants and boxers.
“I-I can’t.” She’s glazed over, staring at the ceiling, but then her eyes land on me standing at the edge of the bed. “Oh.”
I like that sound she makes, the way her lips round on the syllable, the same way I want them around my cock. She can repeat that word all she fucking wants.
Don’t scare her, you fucking idiot.
I take the instinctual warning to heart. I want to fuck her until she can’t scream my name anymore, but I have to go by her initiative—her pace. I’m not about to screw this up now.
To my surprise, she pushes up to her knees. And in a move that has my dick begging to blow over, she tucks her hair behind her ears while looking right at it.
“I want to…” she says tentatively. “Can I…can I touch it?”
“Honey, you can do whatever you damn well please.”
She scoots forward on her knees, and I tip my chin up and bare my teeth, at an angle she can’t see, because all I’m desperate to do is grab her by the back of her head and get those juicy lips on me. I can still taste her, though, and that has to be enough. I scrape my tongue across my lower lip, savoring the sweetness.
Carter raises her right hand and encloses it over my shaft. I groan—can’t help it—and close my eyes, bending into her grip.
She starts moving it, up and down, and I’m following the pace, hips bowing, but the dry friction is making it uncomfortable.
Carter bends her head and spits, offering a natural lubricant that has me doing everything in my power not to ram down her throat.
I look down and blink. She must see the confusion on my face, because she asks, “What? Does that gross you out?”
“The exact opposite, actually,” I grind out. “But…”
She tilts her head, the picture of innocence that I just want to fuck out of her, over and over. “But what?”
“I thought, uh…” I’m deeply aware of her hand, still tight on my cock. “I thought you might be a virgin.”
Carter peals out a guffaw. “You…huh? You did?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Am I that prudish to you?” She asks it in a way that’s more amused than mad.
“No, not at all.” Fuck. I’m backpedaling. I’m scrambling for words, and this gorgeous girl is ready to jerk me off, and I’ve initiated awkward conversation. “It’s—well, you’ve been kind of skittish…”
And now I’ve referred to her as a horse.
She laughs again, but it’s a light sound, not a humiliating one. “It’s been a while, is all. A long one. And I’m not…as talented…as you.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I say, with full knowledge that my dick has been made into a slip-and-slide, by her, and she knows what to do with that fucking hand. “I’ve been dreaming about that mouth of yours around my dick. How you’d leave your lipstick marks on it.”
Even in the shadows, I see her expression darken with desire. “You have?”
“Hell, yes,” I say. “So why don’t you show me.”
She smiles, and it’s with confidence. Hoo-ya.
And when Carter bends down, she leaves her eyes on mine.
Fuck. Yes.
Each movement forward, each movement back, she doesn’t tear her gaze away.
Not as talented, my ass.
I grin, meeting her with thrusts, watching her take all of me. And when she purrs, lets loose a little, delighted sound at how I fill her mouth—that’s it.
I bury my hand in her hair and pull out, but not because I want to stop. Oh, hell no. Because I need to bury myself in her, right fucking now.
Carter squeals when I toss her onto her back, her body so light, firm, and toned in my hands. I cover her with mine, my face up against hers, and I kiss her, long and deep. Her lips are swollen, from both my kisses and my dick, and I groan.
She spreads her legs underneath me, tightens them around my hips.
“Right now, Locke,” she says against my mouth. “Right now, before I lose it.”
I don’t need to be asked twice. In one maneuver, both of us so slick, wet and hot, I go deep. Carter cries out, her nails carving crescents onto my shoulder blades. I lift onto my hands so I can see her better, so I can spot each and every firelight in her gaze as I pound, circle and urge her into another orgasm.
I look down, where we’re connected, a few times. I want to see all of her, imprint every single movement and sound into my memory.
She’s the one for me.
I pause, frozen mid-thrust, at the errant, unwanted thought.
“What?” she says, her voice more breath than sound. “What is it?”
I shake myself out of it. “Nothing. I’m good.”
“Okay,” Carter says, but she’s still unsure. I have to hammer any uncertainty out of her. Out of me.
So, I do.
We work together, she and I, both of us finding the perfect pace, the smacks of our bodies turning us on, and when I come, I see her face. I watch her go half-lidded when she orgasms, and I curl my lips before taking hers and pouring the sounds of this new intoxication into her mouth.
27
Carter
Reddish gold sunlight hits the side of Locke’s body, sending the hairs on his arms sparkling. I want to run my hand down, collect some of that golden dust, but I’m enjoying the quiet, watching his chest rise and fall. The black crescents of his lashes are still—he’s having a peaceful sleep.
I’m used to waking up early, and I mean super early, because of Lily. Yet, I’ve even beat her this morning, and while I have one ear directed to hear her cries, I’m tangled in Locke’s sheets, his warmth mixing with mine, and I couldn’t be happier.
Oh, I’m going to be so sorry for this.
But not yet. Not now. I burrow deeper into the pillow as I lay on my side, enjoying the view.
Locke grunts and flops onto his back. After a startled snore, his eyes blink open.
Nerves tighten my belly. We haven’t spoken since, well, since. I don’t know how he’s going to react, but memories of the woman I first met him with, Tara, and how she was so seamlessly booted from his bedroom without so much as a see ya later…Locke may not want me here. He’s famous for one-night stands. When it comes to more than that, two-night stands even, nobody knows. It’s a rarity for him—if it exists at all.
Yet here I am, waiting for him to turn, notice me, and see the oh, shit in his expression.
His head tilts, and I brace.
“Hey,” Locke says, throaty with morning dew. He smiles.
I mirror a tentative one back. “Hey.”
On a grunt, he turns to face me, swinging an arm around and hooking me closer. Locke kisses my forehead before I nestle into the curve of his neck and chin.
This isn’t what I expected, but it’s everything my heart wants.
“You okay?” he asks above me.
“Yeah, why do you ask?”
“Because I can feel you blinking nonstop down there. Your eyelashes are tickling the shit out of me.”
I laugh, push away slightly. Guilty. “I was just thinking.”
“You think too much. Get back here.” Locke scoots me against him. “Jeez, you’re stiff.”
“I—crap. I do think too much, I’m so aware of it, and I’m trying—”
“Lily’s middle name. Is it James because of you?”
His strokes haven’t differed, his light grip on my body indicating no pressure in every sense of the words. I know what he’s doing, but I respond. “Yeah. Part of my last name.”
“You must’ve meant a lot to Paige for her to give Lily your name.”
“We were all each other had,” I say honestly, and I’m content to be speaking to his chest instead of his eyes. I don’t feel as much guilt down here, on how much he missed out on. “We bonded over green Skittles.”
Locke lifts his head from the pillows. “Say again?”
“We stress-organize. I thought I was the only one. But in freshman year, while studying in the library for finals, we were at the same table. Someone brought a family pack of Skittles. I kept my attention on my textbook, but out of habit, I started separating the candy into color-coded piles. Then eating the green ones because that’s the only flavor I like.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been on a strict athletic diet most of my life, but don’t they all taste the same?”
I gasp like he’d just flung a dead rat at me. “No, Locke. They do not taste the same.”
Locke darts his chin back. “I stand corrected.”
“And I look up from my book,” I continue, “and Paige is doing the exact darned thing. And…” I laugh at the memory of us, mirroring shock. “That’s how we first bonded.”
“That’s sweet, you know.” Locke strokes my shoulder. “A nice memory to have.”
“It is. And when she got pregnant, and we found out it was a girl, we were over the moon. Scared as hell, but excited.”
“That…I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like.”
I don’t mean to, but I stiffen, and he starts tracing calming circles on my back. “I’m not asking you this stuff to get mad. I really want to know. Talk to me. When you guys found out she was pregnant when Lily was born…I want to know all of it. If you’ll tell me.”
A few seconds of silence pass as I figure out what to say and how to condense everything Paige and I went through to pillow talk. But if Locke has proven anything these past weeks, it’s that he deserves a part in the beginning of his daughter’s life.
“When Paige took the pregnancy test, she cried,” I say at last. Locke continues his gentle circles. “We’d just graduated, got our internships, found an apartment near the beach. I came home with groceries and found her crying in the kitchen, on the floor, with an open jug of milk beside her. She’d gone to make tea while she waited for the results, and found out before she could pour the milk in�
�and she just collapsed. Right where she stood.”
“That’s awful.”
I nod. “I went down on the floor with her, and she told me. I’ll always remember how cold the tiles were, compared to her hot skin. She was red, blotchy from crying for who knows how long. And we talked. After she told me…God, my stomach dropped to my toes. And when we discussed what she wanted to do, I was willing to support whatever she decided. And she didn’t figure it out right there, by our kitchen sink. She took a few days…I never asked who.”
Locke pauses at my sudden change in topic.
“I never asked her who the father was. Not then, not after. She and I…we coped with our loneliness in different ways. I’m estranged from my family because they can’t accept my art, my creativity—but that’s a topic for another time. Paige lost her parents in a car accident when she was young. Not having a mom or dad or both, it can really screw with a kid’s mind, and it did with ours. I coped by doing what I was supposed to—graduating with a business degree and getting into data science. Maybe my dad would notice me then. Paige…Paige coped by throwing herself at men. She didn’t care who it was, wasn’t looking for relationships, and spent most of her college weekends doing just that. I don’t judge her for it. She liked sex, liked the lack of commitment. So, I assumed it was another one of those college boys she never seemed to have a problem going after.”
Locke’s tracing of patterns has all but stopped. “She didn’t seem like that kind of girl…”
I rise on my forearms. “She’s not. She’s loving and kind and smart and sacrificed everything for her child. Just because she enjoyed screwing around—”
“Not what I was getting at, Carter. I only remember how she was with me.”
I bring my shoulders down from my ears. “Oh.”
“Go on. Tell me about how Lily went from a literal peanut size to what she is today.”
“Lily made her so, so sick,” I say, my lips growing wide with a smile. “But all Paige could eat was burgers. That’s all she wanted. Lily’s DNA is half Big Mac, I gotta tell you.”
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