I’m at his side in an instant, though. “Jesus Christ, Lock. What the hell?”
He slumps in the chair, head thunking against the chair back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.”
He moves to get to his feet, but I press him back down. “No, it’s fine. I’ve got it.”
I sweep up the glass, dump it, wipe up the whiskey and spray down the wall and floor, then wipe it again. And then I sit in the chair kitty-corner to his, and pull the bottle of whiskey closer to me. Away from him.
“Lock, are you…are you an alcoholic?”
“I don’t know.” He scoops up the cap, twists it onto the bottle, slides the bottle away. “I’m not supposed to drink.”
“Sounds like alcoholism to me.” I touch his hand, cover his hand with mine. “I’m not—it’s fine. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
He shakes his head, more in frustration than denial. “It’s…more complicated than that. I used to drink a lot, yeah. But it was social drinking. I told you I sailed the world, right? That included a lot of partying. But then there’d be days and weeks where I’d be actively traveling, trying to make time to another port, and I wouldn’t drink at all, or very little. I didn’t drink to pass out. It wasn’t a problem. It was part of my lifestyle, but if you talked to anyone who knew me, they wouldn’t say I was an alcoholic or a problem drinker.”
“Then I guess I’m lost.”
A deep, deep sigh. “Like I said, it’s complicated.” He stares at the table, spends a solid minute in silence, clearly working through what he’s going to say. I sense it’s important, and I give him the time to think.
Finally, he shifts his gaze to mine. His sea-blue, sea-green eyes are full of pain, hesitancy, and misery. “You ready for this?”
I wobble my head side to side. “The way you’re acting, I feel like maybe I’ll never be ready.”
“No, probably not.” He blows out another breath. “Okay, here it goes.”
But then he shakes his head, and doesn’t say a word.
“Shit, why is this so fucking hard?” He shoots to his feet, paces away.
Leans against the counter, both hands braced against the edge. Head hanging. Muscles flexing as if he’s literally, physically, fighting a war with himself.
I have to stand up, have to go to him. He’s in pain, and I hate seeing it. There’s something in that thought that scares me, but I ignore it. I move to stand behind him. Run my palm over his back in soothing circles.
Straightening and pivoting to face me, Lock latches onto my wrist, pulls me against him. My ear is against his chest, and once again I hear his heartbeat.
“Hear that?” he murmurs.
I nod against his skin. “Yeah. It’s your heartbeat.”
“That heartbeat you’re hearing…” A deep, shaky breath sucked in, even more shakily let out. “It’s Oliver’s.”
I am rocked to my core. “Wh—what? What do you mean?”
“The heart in my chest, the heartbeat you’re hearing right now, that’s Oliver’s heart.” His voice is low, deep, as if he’s pulling these words from the deepest chasm of his being. “His actual, physical heart, the organ, is in my chest.”
“Lock, why—why the fuck would you say that?” My eyes burn. My heart is rabbiting. My lungs can’t catch air. My knees shake. “What does that mean?”
His arm is around my waist, holding me against him. Too tight, almost. As if to keep me from escaping.
A prudent precaution, I think.
He’s silent. I feel him shaking, as if a man of his stature, his strength, could be terrified into trembling.
“Lock? Talk to me. You can’t say something like that and then clam up.”
“I was born with a congenital heart defect. My great-grandfather had the same defect and he died at sixty. My grandfather at forty-five. My dad at thirty-eight. The doctors told me I’d likely not live past thirty.”
“Oh my god, Lock.”
“I made it to thirty-one. My heart gave out on my thirty-first birthday. I actually died on the operating table, but they were able to bring me back. Kept me on all those machines and whatever the fuck. I’d told my mom I didn’t want to be kept alive, but she—you know what, that’s not important right now. Point is, I have the rarest blood type in the world, plus an unusually large heart. The chances of finding a heart that my body would accept were…essentially nil.”
I’m faint.
Shaking my head.
No. NO. NO.
It can’t be possible.
He sucks in another of those shuddery breaths. “There was no hope. I was going to be kept alive on the fucking machines until my mom finally told them to pull the plug. And she should have. I’d signed a DNR saying I didn’t want to be forced to exist that way. I should be dead right now. But then a miracle happened. That’s what the goddamn doctors called it—a fucking miracle. A donor, against all odds. A heart big enough, and the same blood type. They put that heart in my chest, put me through all the rehab, the monitoring, and the months of tests. And then…sent me away. Told me I had ‘a new lease on life’. Go, live, be free!” The bitterness, the sarcasm is venomous. “What the fuck was I supposed to do? I’d gone my whole life knowing I was going to die. Being told I was an extremely poor transplant candidate. Prepare for the worst, I heard them tell my parents more than once. Lived my whole life with a fucking deadline. That’s what I called it. A deadline—some kind of terminally ill humor. Not really funny unless you’re the terminally ill. And then, just like that, boom. Someone died, and I got to live.” He wipes his face with both hands. “Fuck, listen to me, making this about me. It’s not about me. Forget all that bullshit I just said.”
“Lock—I don’t—I don’t understand.” I’m still leaning against his chest.
Listening to his heartbeat.
Oliver’s heartbeat?
Could it be? That’s what it sounds like he’s saying.
“Oliver died in that car crash on the PCH. His organs were harvested and donated, and his heart…it was transplanted into my chest.” He takes my hand, guides my fingers to those scars.
I shake my head. “You’re lying.”
“I wish I was.”
I back away. Stare at him. Blinking hard against the flood of tears. “That’s Oliver’s heart? In your chest?”
He nods. “Yes.”
“It was your heartbeat I fell asleep listening to last night?”
“Yes.”
“After the most—the most earth-shaking sex I’ve ever had in my life?”
“It was for me, too.” He says this quietly, as if the admission takes a lot of effort to get out.
I back up again, but then my legs give out and I collapse ungracefully to my butt, sitting on the kitchen floor. “And you knew? You’ve—you’ve known, this whole time?”
“It’s why I’m in Oklahoma, Niall. I came looking for you.”
“Then my truck dying, the way you rescued me—” Everything spins, a million thoughts and conjectures coruscate through me, take up my headspace, make me dizzy. “Everything, it was all—”
He kneels on the floor in front of me. “No, Niall, no. That was pure accident. Or fate, or…coincidence. I saw you trying to push that truck and I had to help. I didn’t know it was…you…as in the woman I was looking for, until I went to have them fix it. I found your registration in the glove box, and that’s when I realized it was you. I’d been looking, because I knew you were down here somewhere. But I had no idea how I’d actually find you. And then…” He shrugs. “You were there. And everything since was real. I haven’t lied about anything.”
I scoot backwards on my butt across the floor away from him, because I don’t know what to think. I just don’t. It’s all too much and I’m sobbing, because I heard Oliver’s heartbeat. I heard his actual heart beating. Just thinking about it slices me to pieces, and I collapse further, prone on the floor, roll to my side and curl up in the fetal position.
“Ollie—my Oll
ie…he died, and you lived.”
“Yes.”
I swallow hard against the knot. Breathe past the sobs, summon words past the hurt. “You knew. You kissed me, you…we made love…we fucked, or whatever you want to call it—and you knew the whole time?”
“Yes.”
I can’t fathom it. And looking at Lock right now, clearly neither can he.
“I’m sorry, Niall. I—” He shakes his head, as if he can’t finish the rest, or as if there’s nothing to finish. “If I could give it back—if I could give my heart so Oliver could live? I would. By all accounts, he was a better man than me in every way. I didn’t…I never asked for this.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I tried. I wanted to. But I just…couldn’t. I mean, how do you come out with something like that? ‘Oh, by the way, I know this might sound weird or whatever, but your dead husband’s heart was transplanted into my chest.’” He barks a humorless laugh. “How do you think that would have gone down?”
“Better than this.” I curl into an even tighter ball. “You need to leave. I need some time.”
“I—yeah. Okay.”
I watch through the bars of my fingers as he buttons his jeans. Zips. Trudges slowly into my room, finds his shoes, sits on the edge of the bed and tugs on his socks, stuffs his feet into the boots. Stuffs his underwear into his hip pocket. Moves, still shirtless—because I’m wearing his shirt—to the front door. Opens it. Stands in the opening.
Turns to look back at me. “I didn’t mean for it to go this far. I never meant to cause you any more pain. I—” He closes his eyes slowly, as if summoning something from deep inside. “You took me by surprise.”
“I took you by surprise?” My turn to laugh bitterly. “Got that backwards, pal.” I force myself to my feet; force myself to move to him.
“I spent my whole life doing nothing, Niall. Avoiding anything and everything, because I felt like nothing mattered. Nothing I did mattered, because I was going to die soon.” He looks at me intently, emotion boiling in his features—too much, too many, too intense to name. “You took me by surprise. I never expected to—to feel…” He trails off.
“Feel what?” I ask, my voice faint.
He waves a hand vaguely. “So…much. For one person. For the wrong person. It wouldn’t have meant anything had I stopped to help anyone else in the entire fucking world. But it was…you.” He lets out a sigh. I swear he’s close to a breakdown himself. “It was you.”
I shake my head. “Jesus, Lock. You can’t do this. You can’t do this to me.” I could cry again. But I don’t.
I move close enough to touch him. Put my hand on his chest. Feel his heart beat. Ollie’s heartbeat. And now I do cry.
“You can’t fucking do this to me, Lock. I can’t take it.”
“I know. And that’s yet another reason why I hate myself. Not that I have any shortage of other reasons.” He backs up, out of my touch, away from my reach. “Bye, Niall.”
He turns and trots down the steps. Out to the dirt road, still shirtless.
I run out after him. I don’t know why. I don’t want him to go, but I need him gone so I can think. I stumble to a stop in front of him, pushing him to a halt. I stand in front of him. Stare into his eyes. I peel his shirt off myself, slowly. I reach up and gently tug it up over my head. I’m standing utterly naked in front of him, tears on my face, a turmoil of emotions raging inside me.
Even now I want him.
And, even now, his gaze rakes over me as if he can’t get enough of looking at me. “Jesus fucking Christ, Niall. You should have just kept the goddamn shirt.”
“Why?”
“Because you look the way you…you look at me the way you’re looking at me and—” His hands are on me, he’s yanking me against him, wrapping his fists in my curls and kissing the hell out of me. “Because I have to do this, when you look the way you do.”
“It’s just me. How I always look.”
“Exactly.”
I want so much. But inside, I’m a mess.
And he, clearly, is even worse off. I back away. “Where are you staying?”
“La Quinta.” He digs a little envelope out of his back pocket, in which are two key cards. He hands me one. “Two-nineteen.”
“Don’t leave town, Lock. Please?”
He sighs. “If that’s what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want. I just know I need time to figure it out. And I don’t want you to leave until I do.”
“Okay,” he says, as if the word, the agreement, is a heavy burden. “I won’t leave until you tell me to.”
He grabs his shirt back and tugs it over my head. “That’s my favorite shirt, so it’s a kind of insurance.”
He backs away from me—as if it physically hurts to do so—out of my reach. Backs away another few steps and then, with a heavy sigh, turns and jogs down the road. With an easy gait, he quickly approaches the main road.
I watch him until he’s out of sight.
* * *
He wasn’t lying, was he? When he told me he had something to share, and that it would change everything. I should have let him tell me first.
But I’m also glad I didn’t because, ho-ly shit, that was intense.
Best sex of my life.
And, god, that’s hard to think about all by itself. There’s so much all tangled up in this, so much to think about, so much to feel, so much to try to come to grips with.
I loved Ollie. I loved the shit out of that man. I adored him. I respected him. I fairly worshipped him. I needed him. And he loved me. Wanted me. Took care of me. Adored me. Sex with Ollie had been…well, it had always been about love. Sweet, sensual, enveloping, comforting, familiar, beautiful. I loved having sex with Ollie every bit as much as I loved being in love with him.
But what I just experienced with Lock…felt very different. It was out of this world. Shattering. Mind-erasing. And, really, it wasn’t even as all-in as it could have been. He didn’t finish inside me—he finished on me. And fuck, was that hot. I liked that. God, I feel like a slut for it, but I liked it. Gripping him in my fist and feeling our essences sticky and slick on his hard flesh, pumping him and feeling him lose it, feeling him grunt and groan and shove against my hand as he came, shooting his hot seed all over my belly.
Fuck, I’m all in a tizzy again just thinking about it.
Several thoughts hit me at once.
He had the presence of mind to pull out, because he wasn’t wearing a condom.
He seriously knew what he was doing, knew how to make me come hard and fast.
And he had impressive stamina.
I want him again. I want to roll a condom onto him and feel him inside me, feel him lose control again, only next time I want him inside me.
And, deep down, way deep down where you keep those thoughts that you shy away from admitting even to yourself, I want him bare. Like last night, but I want to take him all the way. Feel him release inside me with nothing between us. I want to feel that heat, that warm wetness inside me…god, I want that.
Sex with Lock wasn’t necessarily better than sex with Ollie. It was just…different. Not as sweet, not as familiar, not flushed with that sense of soul-deep, hearts-entwined love. It was lust, between Lock and me. Primal, sensual, animal. So, so intense.
I can’t stop thinking about sex with Lock, though. I want it too much. My libido had been woken up, after being dormant for so long. I have a more-than-healthy libido, a sex drive that drove Ollie to exhaustion trying to satiate. If I keep thinking about Lock, I’ll do one or both of two things: I’ll finger myself again, thinking about him, or I’ll get in my truck and go find him at his hotel.
I fantasize about what would happen if I did go find him.
I’d knock on his door and he’d open it, maybe freshly showered, wearing a towel, knotted loose around his waist. Hair wet and slicked back, beard damp, beads of water trickling down those broad, hard, round shoulders, down between h
is thick pecs, down, down, down. Maybe I’d untie his robe and follow that little bead of water down to his erection, where I’d lick it away. Lick him all over; lick him until he lost it, maybe down my throat.
I don’t have a lot of experience going down on a guy. When I first started being active sexually, there was a lot of experimentation, the way you do when you’re seventeen or eighteen. You’re not really sure what you’re doing. Trying things, clumsy but eager. Giving or receiving oral sex wasn’t really on my radar: I wanted the real thing, so that’s what I went after, all through high school and college. And then I met Ollie, and we were often too busy and too tired for more than slow lovemaking in the darkness, clutching each other close and kissing—making love, as husband and wife. There wasn’t a lot of time or energy for much foreplay…for either of us. I never missed it, and I’m pretty sure Ollie didn’t either.
But with Lock things are different. He went down on me like a pro. Made me come so hard I saw stars. Fucked me like I was all that existed in the whole world, as if my pleasure was his singular goal. Each thrust was for me, and me alone.
And…he’s just gorgeous. Head to toe, he’s a beautiful man, in a wild and rugged sense.
And I want things. I want to do things to him.
Naughty things.
Things I’ve never done, or haven’t done in a long, long time. Since before Ollie, if ever. I was a little wild, before Ollie. A college girl, single and not prone to second-guessing myself, or being unsure about what I wanted. I drank a lot, and hooked up with hot college boys. And that’s something you’ll never hear me regret. It was a good time in my life. I had friends, I was good looking, I enjoyed my classes—as hard as they were—and I never had any trouble snagging a cutie after a party for some decent, if sloppy, sex. I don’t regret it, and I will not apologize for it. Then there was Ollie, and that was a slightly different kind of sex. Similar to what I’d known, but better in every way, because it meant so much to us.
And now there’s Lock, and it’s something totally new, something I’ve never experienced.
Experienced. Uninhibited. Wild. Fierce. Pure unslakable lust.
Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance Page 16
