13. Lynx
LYNX
Dear Diary,
I had priorities. Oxygen wasn’t one of them.
Nyah sat on the couch with Amber, the two of them huddled over a phone.
I had a pretty good idea what they were watching.
I ground my teeth, but I already knew Amber well enough to know she wasn’t going to knock it off with that fucking video, but I didn’t need to stick around to see it.
Embarrassment heated my neck to the point my skin felt too hot. It had been like that all day, only getting worse when I’d had to sit in the damn locker room and listen to Luca tell Nyah all about how I was such a pathetic fool, stupidly in love with a woman who had no interest in me.
I didn’t want to see the look on her face when Amber showed her the video and Nyah got all awkward because she’d just heard what her “brother” must be like in bed.
I wanted the earth to swallow me up and never spit me back out. Which was not the best feeling when I was already triggered, my control barely hanging on by a thread.
The common room was too loud. Too hot. There were too many people. I left them all to it, slipping away silently, unnoticed, and letting myself into my bedroom. I flopped down onto my bed and stared at the ceiling.
The door opened no less than a minute later, and Luca walked in, like my room was his.
“I’ve been on the phone all day, working on poaching us some new players. There’s these two guys, twins. They’re fucking amazing. One plays for Providence, the other—”
I rolled to my side and glared at him. “Don’t you think you should have run that by me before you started making calls? You literally know nothing about hockey. How the hell would you know if a player is amazing?”
Luca blinked at the sharp tone. “I thought that’s exactly what I was doing now?”
I shifted back to stare at the ceiling again. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever, Luca. Do your thing.”
The room was small enough I was overly aware of his presence. I knew exactly what he was doing even without glancing in his direction.
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned his ass against the chest of drawers beneath the window. “So…you’re mad at me. What did I do now?”
“Nothing, Luca. You’re perfect. You could do no wrong. Everyone loves you.”
He snorted at that idea. “Yeah, I’m Mister Popular. All that drug running and human trafficking my father had me doing has made me everyone’s favorite. They absolutely adore me around here. So much so that I’m pretty sure War is erecting a statue in the parking lot in my honor.”
His sarcasm was thick, and he had a point.
I didn’t know the full extent of Luca’s history with the club, only what I’d heard in murmured conversations, and while him getting his sister away from her abusive, too-old-for-her husband, had gone a long way to gain him some favor with the Slayers, it was clear the men here didn’t all trust him.
They weren’t openly hostile, but there was a clear level of wariness, evident in the way conversations dried up when Luca walked in the room.
And yet I knew he was so fucking charming he would have the entire club eating out of his hand within the week.
Luca Guerra had something about him that made him impossible to ignore. Impossible not to see.
It was no fucking wonder he had Nyah wet and trembling, hanging on his every word.
While I was relegated to the role of bodyguard, the man who stood in the corner and was so unseen she could fuck other men right in front of me and nobody batted a damn eyelid.
When my emotions hadn’t been this raw, it had been fine. But ever since the night in Scotland, my entire nervous system had been firing on high and everything felt bigger and worse than it had a few days earlier.
I was being an asshole. “Sorry.”
But Luca wasn’t having my apology. “No, you aren’t. Say what you really wanted to say.”
I shook my head, fighting off the red rising feeling that would inevitably lead to me blacking out and waking up in a pool of someone else’s blood. “I said I was sorry.”
“Then look me in the eye and say it like you mean it.”
Oh, fuck him. He was such an arrogant prick.
I sat up, then stood because I hated that on the bed, I felt smaller than him.
He needed to be reminded who I was. That I wasn’t just the nice guy bodyguard who stood patiently to one side while he fucked the woman I wanted.
I wasn’t just the man he fumbled around with in the dark when he thought no one was watching.
I was the cold-blooded killer who couldn’t get his emotions under control and was going to lose his shit if Luca didn’t stop pushing his fucking luck.
I went nose to nose with him, my grip on my patience snapping. “Why the fuck did you tell Nyah I was in love with her?”
Luca blinked. It clearly wasn’t what he’d expected me to say.
I probably had an identical expression because it wasn’t what I’d expected to say either.
But I’d been holding it in ever since the hockey rink, and obviously it was pissing me off.
Luca didn’t hesitate. “I told her, because you are. Her making out with Dax in the back of the van was making you uncomfortable—”
“Was it making me uncomfortable? Or you? Pretty sure it was your knuckles turning white while you gripped the door handle like you were hanging off a cliff. You looked so desperate to get out of that van you were probably contemplating throwing yourself out the window.”
He stared at me. “That’s fair. I didn’t like it either.”
I breathed out a long, slow breath. “You’re such an asshole. You treat her like shit.”
“And she trembles with need every time we’re alone. You treat her like she’s precious, and she treats you like a brother.”
“Fuck you,” I spat back at him. Except nothing he said was a lie.
And I realized I was no better than Nyah.
Every time Luca was a prick to me, it just turned me on more.
Like right now. The tension crackled in the air between us, the need to grab him and shove him into the wall and press my weight against him all-consuming.
I forced myself to sit back down so I didn’t actually do it.
I took multiple deep breaths, trying not to suck in the scent of him, trying not to notice how nice his dark hair was when it wasn’t brushed and gelled neatly in place.
How good his jaw looked when it was coated in stubble rather than shaved clean like he’d kept it when we’d been beneath his father’s roof.
I stared at him, my chest too tight with how bad I wanted him, and hating myself for it all the more because I was also so pissed with him that I wanted to punch him in his arrogant face.
My bedroom door opened, and Nyah walked in, closing the three of us inside.
I threw my hands up in the air. “You’re both unbelievable, you know that? Were neither of you taught basic manners? Like knocking and waiting to be given permission to enter? God, fucking rich people and their arrogance.”
Nyah ignored my complaints. “Go away, Luca. I need to talk to Lynx.”
Luca raised an eyebrow at her. “Hey, princess? I don’t know if you noticed, but Lynx and I were kind of in the middle of something—”
“Stay then. I don’t care.”
She looked at me. Really looked. Her eyes blazed with an intensity I’d only seen when she was with other people.
Dax.
Luca.
“I just need to see something,” she whispered.
But I couldn’t fucking talk.
Because she had never stared at me the way she was right now.
She leaned in, gently pressing her lips to mine.
And like a nervous chump who’d never been kissed in his life. I did absolutely fucking nothing. Didn’t kiss her back. Didn’t make a sound. Didn’t even breathe.
She pulled away, confusion and maybe disappointment on her face. She shook her head. “Shit. Sorry. I just wanted to see…I didn’t mean…”
She went to walk away.
Something inside me woke the fuck up and screamed.
I grabbed her arm. Pulled her back to me in the same motion I pushed to my feet.
I gripped her face with both hands and then slammed my mouth down on hers.
She gasped and tried to step back so she could look at me, or maybe so she could tell me to go to hell and that she didn’t feel anything.
But I didn’t fucking care.
I kissed her harder, wrapping my arms around her small frame and holding her to me. I supported her back with one hand, diving the other into the back of her hair and twisting there, keeping her in place while I slicked my tongue across her lips, hot and demanding access.
She opened with a moan, and I tasted her, drove my tongue inside her mouth, taking what I’d been dreaming about for weeks.
Her body melted against mine, and suddenly it didn’t matter she’d been kissing Dax that morning. Or that I’d watched her ride Luca’s cock.
Nothing mattered except how she felt in my arms and the violence inside me that settled when she touched me.
Her fingers roamed my back, lifting the back of my T-shirt so she could trace a fiery path across my muscles.
When she’d explored every inch, she slid them to my front, stroking up my abs and chest, flattened palms over my nipples in a way that had me clutching her tighter and sinking down onto the mattress so I could draw her onto my lap.
She straddled my legs, the kiss never stopping, both of us hungry and desperate for more.
Luca cleared his throat. “I’m gonna leave you to it then…”
“Stay,” I ground out, voice deep and demanding.
In exactly the same way he’d said it to me when we’d been on the plane and it had been Nyah in his arms.
I was still fucking annoyed with him for what he’d blabbed to Nyah.
And yet it was hard to maintain a grudge when she was rocking over my lap, her hands cupping my face, her mouth warm and so damn sweet against mine.
I had no idea what I was doing. Only that the out-of-control feeling inside me disappeared when I had her to hold on to. Her to kiss. Her to touch.