Lead Me Home (Fight for Me #3)(16)

No matter how much shit was piled on top of why I couldn’t have her, there was no way I could ever forget her touch. Her smile and her laugh and the way she made me feel like I was a damn king.

Her guardian and shield.

I doubted there’d ever be a time when I looked at her and didn’t think she was the best damned thing I’d ever seen.

“Not sure what you expect when you’re sneaking around my place in the middle of the night,” I finally managed to say, breaking from the spell the girl had me under.

Magic in her fingertips.

And there I was, imagining sucking every single one of them into my mouth.

One by one.

Wondering if she’d groan and go wild or if she’d melt. Didn’t know which way I wanted her most.

Sucking in a deep breath, she seemed to gather herself. Her brow lifted in speculation as she set the carton of milk on the island like she’d rummaged through my kitchen a million times before.

Guess there was no need to invite her to make herself at home.

“Middle of night?”

She spun away and hiked up onto her toes to grab a bowl from the cabinet, giving me another flash of that sweet ass.

Little tease.

She spun back around, and there were those tits.

Didn’t know which view I liked better.

She really was trying to kill me.

“I have to be to work in thirty minutes.”

My attention immediately shot to the huge, curved bay of windows that overlooked the city. Darkness still hugged the buildings, but the promise of something to come was baited in the sky.

“Just because you sleep half the day away, it doesn’t mean I get to,” she started to ramble, moving to dig through my pantry and my selection of cereals. “Early bird gets the worm—or rather, the breakfast pastry pie. Whatever you want to call it. And I have to be the one to make sure those pies are ready.”

Right.

Work.

At an ungodly hour.

“And do you have to do it half naked?”

Couldn’t help but bring attention to her state.

It was like only then the girl noticed what she was wearing.

Or lack thereof.

Her full, pink lips stretched into a lust-inducing O, and the shock was punctuated by a tiny sound.

A rash of fantasies rapid-fired through my brain.

Closing the distance.

Taking that mouth.

Devouring that body.

Olive skin and slender curves and cupid mouth.

Fuck.

I wanted her.

Wanted her propped on my counter and spread out on my bed.

She made an offended sound and angled to the side like that might cover her up. She pointed my direction with one hand while she wrapped her other arm over her tits. “Oh, you think this is funny, do you? Sneaking up on me this way?”

I was about to respond, but she didn’t let me. That gaze narrowed. “Maybe you really were trying to take advantage of me while I’m here. How the hell a mountain of a man like you sneaks up like some kind of ninja is beyond me.”

A chuckle rumbled free, half-pained, half-amused. “This from the girl who decided to parade around my kitchen half naked. Just who is the one who isn’t playing fair?”

“You were just asleep. I heard you.”

Affection and regret pulsed through her expression the second she realized what she said. With what she’d let on.

She’d heard me.

Fuck. She’d heard me calling out for Sydney.

Shame rumbled through my spirit. It was a feeling she only managed to intensify.

The girl’s magic at work again.

Thought she might be the only one who could really understand. Brutal, considering she was the one I couldn’t let see.

My life was devoted to finding my sister. Whatever it took. Whatever the cost.

What made it worse was I couldn’t look at Nikki without seeing Sydney at her side. Without my mind going to what Nikki and I had done.

I couldn’t let her light be dimmed—tainted by that vacant, ugly space that roiled inside of me.

In a moment of weakness, she’d gotten in there once, and look how that’d turned out.

I roughed a palm over my face and down my beard. “You didn’t hear anything,” I told her. Any amusement in my voice had been extinguished.

That face transformed, and the easy playfulness she normally exuded shifted into some sort of a plea. Because when it was just the two of us together?

The space between us rippled and danced.

Begged to be erased.

That awareness between us became its own, thriving entity.

Rising from the depths.

The girl a crashing wave that was going to take me under.

“Ollie.” Her voice was a petition.

Pure understanding.

Come to me.

Too soft and too kind and too full of all the things she couldn’t make me feel.

Dropping my head, I lifted a hand. “Don’t. Just . . . get dressed. I’ll drop you at work. We’ll pick up your car after you get off so you have it over here. God knows, I don’t need to be getting up before the ass crack of dawn to drive you every day.”

She blinked back at me. “You’re crazy if you think I’m coming back over here.”

“I think we already established that.”

Crazy was my goddamned middle name.