Locked (PresLocke Series Book 2) (22 page)

I reached up to touch Ace’s jaw line, and when my hand shook he took a hold of it and brought the pads to his lips to kiss them.

“Then what?” he asked.

“Then I moved in with the strangest, most unconventional family imaginable, and they turned out to be exactly what I needed.” I shut my eyes and tilted my face up to the sun, letting the warmth of it dry my tears as I remembered those first years living with Ziggy, Sunshine, and Lennon, and a smile split my lips. “Those first few months were…odd, to say the least. Not only was I adjusting to living with a new family, but this family was much different to any that I’d ever been a part of. My own had been a piss poor example and all the stops in between had been relatively normal. But then along comes Sunshine, a woman who could brighten up the darkest day, and they made me fall in love with them.”

I brought my attention back to Ace, and the acceptance and warmth in his eyes made me reach for him and loop my arms around his neck. His hands lay gently around my waist as I wriggled closer. “It wasn’t easy. Sunshine and Ziggy helped me through years of counseling, and always encouraged me to be open with how I was feeling. As you’ve seen firsthand, they’re sharers by nature, givers, and they helped me through the worst years of my life. They also taught me to take
control
of my life and the situations I put myself in. They’re the best people I’ve ever met,” I whispered, licking my lips and feeling more exposed than ever before. “Until you.”

Ace pressed a soft kiss to my lips, and then shut his eyes as he took in a deep breath. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he was thinking about everything I’d just told him. Hell, half the time I didn’t even know what to think, and I’d lived it. But when those blue eyes reopened, the expression there stunned me. It was fierce, possessive, and so full of love and pride that I didn’t dare speak for fear it would vanish.
 

“Dylan, I…” he started, and then brought both of his hands up to cradle my face. “I have never met anyone like you. You’re brave, and kind, and I’m not sure what I did to deserve getting to call you my own.”

I swallowed around the lump that had lodged in my throat, and tried to calm my thumping heart, but there was no way. Not with Ace looking at me with such devotion.
 

“And I want that. More than anything else. I want every part of you. All of the good, the bad, and, yes, even the ugly.
That’s
what makes you so unbelievably beautiful. The fight. That survival instinct that has driven you to be the best you can be despite the odds. You are so much more than a stunning face, Dylan. You’re the man I’ve fallen in love with.”

I brought my hands to the back of his head and crushed my lips to his with all of the passion and love that was dying to burst free. Ace kept his hands on either side of my face as his lips parted, and when I sank my tongue inside to taste him, I couldn’t remember ever feeling safer and more at home than I was there in this man’s arms.
 

“Ace,” I said, and when I raised my head I let my gaze rove over his familiar features. I brought my fingers around to trace the angles and planes of his cheekbone and jaw, until I reached his lips. Then I traced a line around them, enjoying the fullness of them, before taking his chin between my thumb and forefinger so I could lean forward and whisper against his mouth, “I love you too.”

19

MORE THAN A DAYDREAM

THOSE THREE LITTLE words from Dylan’s mouth sent a reviving jolt to my heart, bringing me to life in an explosion of color. I hadn’t even noticed I’d been living in a world of grey. In that moment, it wasn’t enough to have his mouth on mine, to have him straddling my lap. Never enough. My heart was so full I thought it would burst out of my chest, and the only way I knew to show him how much was to get as close to him as he would allow.
 

I lifted him off my lap and got to my feet, and then I took his hand in mine, leading him downstairs to the bedroom. Once we were inside, Dylan’s warm front pressed against my back, and as he planted kisses from my neck down my shoulder, his hands roamed possessively over my chest. I reached up to the back of his head and craned my neck to the side to give him better access. His lips traveled up the length of my neck, and when he got to my ear and whispered, “I want to be with you,” my knees came close to giving way.

Dylan gently trailed his fingertips across my shoulder blades as he walked around my side to stop in front of me, and when he reached for my hand and entwined our fingers, I felt the enormity of the touch, as if he’d just handed me his heart to hold—and essentially he had.

“Dylan, we don’t have to do this. Not right now. We can just be here, together.”

“I know,” Dylan said, and then looked down at our joined hands before raising them up to his lips, where he pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “But that’s not what I need right now. I want to feel
you
all around me.” He drew my arm around his waist and planted a feather-soft kiss over my jaw. “That’s where I feel safe. In your arms. And today, I want to be as close to you as another person can be.”

My breath got stuck somewhere in my throat at his words, and when his eyes found and held mine, the love and trust shining in them swept away any lingering doubt that this was the right thing to do.
 

No longer able to deny myself the pleasure of touching him, I brought my hand up to cradle his face, and when he leaned into my palm and let his eyes flutter shut, I marveled at the long lashes sweeping against his gorgeous skin.

His full lips had fallen open on a sigh, and before I could stop myself, I took them with mine. Slowly, mindful not to jolt him out of the languid headspace I could see him slipping into, I brought our joined hands up between us to lay his palm over my heart and then lowered my head to touch my lips to his.

My eyes fell shut with that first contact; I wanted to experience the taste and texture of him without being distracted by anything other than the whimper that escaped him as I slipped my tongue between his lips. Dylan’s fingers dug into my chest as he swayed closer to me, and I slid mine up through his hair. As I cradled the back of his head and deepened the kiss, I felt Dylan’s other hand come down to rest on my waist just above the band of my shorts.
And God,
this is sublime,
I thought, as Dylan continued to tease the naked flesh at my hip.
 

As we were caught up in the taste of one another, I couldn’t have said how long we stood there sampling each other’s mouths, and swallowing the sounds of pleasure escaping us. But when he pulled away and nipped at my lower lip, I had trouble focusing on him. My head was spinning, my blood was racing, and I’d never wanted to be with anyone more than I wanted to be with Dylan right then.
 

“I want you inside me,” he whispered, and I didn’t hesitate. Walking him backward, I took his lips with mine again, moving forward until his legs hit the edge of the bed. Before I could lower us, Dylan’s hands were on my wrists. When I stilled, waiting to see what he was going to do, his fingers went to the button of his shorts, flicked it open, and pulled down the zipper. Then he looked me in the eye and did the same to my shorts.
 

“Every time we’re together like this, I swear I have to pinch myself that you’re really standing here in front of me. But you are, aren’t you?” he said.

“Yes, I really am. And Dylan?”

“Mhmm?”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
 

Dylan tugged his shorts and briefs down his thighs and stepped out of them before sitting on the bed and angling his head up at me. With unhurried hands, he lowered my clothes down my legs, his fingers skimming along the sides of my thighs as he pulled them off. Then, as he came back up, his lips brushed the tip of my cock in the softest of kisses, and my hips jerked forward.
 

“God.” I sighed and traced the rough stubble of his cheek. “I don’t know how I got so damn lucky to have you in my life. But I’m so thankful to whatever brought you to me.”

Dylan scooted back on the bed, and I crawled my way over his body, straddling his hips and leaning down over him so that my mouth was only inches from his.
 

“All that time I spent wanting you,” I said, and grazed a kiss along his temple. “And now you’re mine.”

“All fucking yours.” His voice was a low rumble in my ear, and as I brought my gaze back to him, I could see the love swirling with the lust in those sea-green eyes of his. I recognized that look now. It was one that had been there for weeks, but I was only just learning what it meant. I wondered if he could see the same in mine.
 

“Ace?”

My chest was rising and falling against his, and as he widened his legs and I settled between his thighs, I ran my fingers through his hair. “Yeah?”

“Help me forget.”

I lowered my head to nuzzle into the crook of his neck, and listened to the soft sound of him breathing—in and out. In and out.

“Help me shut my mind off,” he whispered.

“I can do that.”

“I know. Because guess what I just found out?”

“What’s that?”

He craned up and placed his lips by my ear and said, “Ace Locke loves me.”

When he laid his head back on the pillow and a shy, impish grin curved his lips, it made one appear on my own. “Does he, now?”

“Yep, he does,” he said as he slowly wound his legs over the backs of my thighs, and then wrapped his arms around my neck.

I rocked my hips over the top of his and allowed myself to sink into the sensation of having his erect cock aligned with my own. Pushing aside the seriousness of our earlier conversation and losing myself in the glorious moment of lying down with him this way, the soul-searing connection I now felt as I stared into his eyes was not lost on me. With nothing more than our bare skin touching, I felt closer to him than I had to anyone else in my entire life, and I wanted to savor that for as long as I could.

* * *

MY HEART THUNDERED at the expression in Ace’s eyes as they roamed over every one of my features, and when he braced his forearms on either side of my head and said, “Kiss me,” nothing could’ve stopped me.
 

I crossed my ankles against his lower back and bowed up off the mattress, making sure to connect every part of my body to his that I could, and the low growl that emerged from his throat had me crushing my lips to his. Ace’s mouth parted beneath mine and I bit and sucked at his lush lower lip as he used the arms he had anchored by my head to shift his entire body over the top of mine in a delicious body rub.

Jesus, that feels
— “Again,” I said, and Ace smiled against my mouth.
 

“What…this?” he asked, and again rolled all of his hard, warm muscles over the top of mine, including his thick cock, which was leaving a sticky trail all over me.

“Yes, exactly that,” I said. “It feels—
Ahhh
.”

The groan that left Ace summed up pretty damn well how good it felt, and when he brought a hand down to trail the backs of his fingers along my ribs to between our bodies, I gasped. Ace had shifted his body slightly to the side and wrapped his strong hand around our engorged shafts.

“Oh God. Please,” I said as his hand flexed and my hips punched up, gliding my erection through the fist he’d made around us and against the tender underside of his.

“Dylan,” Ace said as he began to move in perfect synchronicity with me. We continued to rock against each other as we watched every thought and feeling cross the other’s face, and when I knew I was perilously close to exploding all over him, I braced my hands on his chest and halted him.

“Inside me,” I said, panting. “I need you inside me.”

Ace nodded and pressed a bruising kiss to my lips before he released the hold he had on us. I groaned at the loss, and the hungry light in his eyes made me clench my teeth and tell him, “Hurry.”
 

Ace got off the bed, picked up his shorts, and grabbed what he needed from the pocket. With his focus locked on me like a tractor beam, he brought the square packet to his teeth and tore it open. I splayed my legs apart for him, and took a moment to check him out as he rolled the condom down his veiny cock. Then he tore open a packet of lube and slicked it all over himself, and picked up a second before climbing back on the bed, and I licked my lips in anticipation.
 

Resuming the exact same position, Ace hovered over me with an arm by my head and my legs spread wide to accommodate him.
 

“Wrap your leg around my waist,” he ordered, his voice raspy and deep.

I not only wrapped my right leg over his hip, I once again twined my arms around his neck, and Ace shut his eyes as his nostrils flared. I knew he was trying his best to take this slow and steady but was having as much difficulty as I was. Because right then all I wanted was him inside me, filling me until I didn’t know where he ended and I began.

When he seemed to have himself under some modicum of control, he brought the second packet of lube to his lips and tore it open, and before I knew it the packet was tossed aside and his slippery fingers were sliding their way along my perineum to my hole.

“Ace—”

He pressed his mouth to mine, cutting off my groan, and as his tongue speared between my lips, his finger pushed inside me. My hips jacked up off the bed, and I tore my mouth from him. My body was so ready for this; it felt overly sensitized, as if I would shoot all over him with nothing more than a finger in the right spot and a smile from the sinfully handsome man working me over.
 

“I can’t wait,” I told him, and clutched at his shoulders. “Don’t make me wait any more.”

Ace removed his finger, and when his hand smoothed over my hip and around to the cheek of my ass, I tightened my leg on his waist. I could feel him line the head of his cock up with my firm entrance, and as he began to slowly push forward, I gnashed my teeth together.