She only slept twenty minutes before she lifted her head from his chest, pretty eyes blinking as she looked around the room.
“Ice cream?” she asked.
“Freezer. I’ll get it.”
“No. I’ll get it.” Placing her palms flat on his chest, she levered herself up and scratched her head. Then she stretched, arms above her head, chest pushed out. Lock grew hard again and reached for her.
“Ice cream,” she insisted, pushing his grasping hands away. “And don’t pout,” she ordered before she got up and walked to his freezer.
Gwen stared into Lock’s freezer. How much ice cream did the man eat on a daily basis? The top three shelves were filled with pints of ice cream, from the expensive brand names to the cheap store-brand versions. He had every flavor possible.
While holding the door open, Gwen turned to ask Lock what kind he wanted, but he had his legs up in the air, his hands gripping his toes.
“Enjoying yourself?”
He grinned, nodded.
Did he really have to be so cute? Was that really fair to her at all?
“Which ice cream do you want?”
“Rum raisin.”
She glanced in the freezer. “Any particular brand? You’ve got like ten rum raisins in here.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She grabbed the rum raisin at the front and dug around until she found butter pecan for herself.
“Where are the spoons again?”
“Second drawer to the…” he pointed with one leg “…left.”
“That is not an attractive position for any man to put himself in.”
He laughed and went back to playing grabby toes or whatever he called it.
Ice cream, spoons, and paper towels in hand, Gwen walked back over to Lock and sat down on the floor.
“We can go into the living room if you want.”
“Nah.” She took off the top to the rum raisin and stuck the spoon in it. “I’m getting a perverse enjoyment out of sitting naked in your kitchen, something my aunts would never allow because ‘That’s just nasty.’ So, I want to savor that.” Lock sat up, his back against the thick wood breakfast-table leg. But instead of taking the ice cream from her, he first pulled her over until she sat between his legs.
“Comfortable?”
Surprisingly, she was. Who knew she’d like having his thick cock pressing into her back like a lead pipe? “Yep.”
Long arms reaching around her, he took hold of his ice cream and scooped spoonfuls out of the carton without Gwen worrying about him touching her with the cold container. His legs were so long, his toes kept pushing the swinging door open that led to the dining room. She felt completely dwarfed by him.
After a few spoonfuls of her ice cream, she finally had to ask, “Are you uncomfortable with your size?”
“No. I’m uncomfortable with how uncomfortable everyone else is about my size.” He dipped his spoon into her butter pecan, which annoyingly left rum raisin residue behind. “There’s only so many times you can hear, ‘Holy shit, look at the size of that guy’ before it gets old.”
After scraping any rum raisin out and dumping it into a paper towel, Gwen said, “So Blayne and I were invited to this party on Saturday.”
“It’s Halloween.”
She was waiting for more to that statement but it didn’t seem like more would be coming. “Yeah. It’s Halloween.”
His spoon came in for another pass at her ice cream and she moved the container. “At least clean your spoon off better.” She scrunched up her face. “I hate rum raisin.”
“Blasphemer.”
“Like I’ve never been called that before.” And by actual men of God, too.
She took another scoop of her ice cream and offered it to Lock. Smiling, he cleaned off the spoon, and Gwen took a spoonful for herself. “Anyway, the party.” She cleared her throat. “Blayne and I can bring someone with us, if we want, and I thought I’d see if you wanted to come with me. Although I should warn you that my mother’s coming and I’ll most likely spend a good portion of the evening stopping her from getting others drunk so she can make them do things they’ll regret in the morning.”
“I’ll be working in my workshop on Saturday.”
“Oh. Right. No problem. I mean, it was just a—”
“So I’ll meet you there, if that’s okay. Ric’s gonna pick me up in his limo.” He gulped down another mouthful of ice cream. “Afterward we can come home together like we did tonight.”
“Okay. Sounds good.” She scooped up another spoonful of ice cream but didn’t eat it, instead placing the spoon back in the container. “You were already going?”
“Yeah.”
“You hate parties.”
“I know. But Jess threatened me with tears. It was either go or endure the crying. I hate when she cries.”
“Right.” Gwen picked up the spoon but ended up shoving it back into the ice cream. “So what is your attachment to her?”
“Jess is my friend,” he explained while he continued eating.
“And?”
“And what?”
“Did you date her or something?”
“Jess?”
“Yeah. Jess. She of the weepy eyes and the excessively clingy hold on you. That Jess.”
“She doesn’t have a clingy hold on me.”
“So if she told you to jump off a bridge…?”
“It would depend on what she wanted me to jump off the bridge for.”
Glaring at the bear over her shoulder, “What kind of answer is that?”
“Look, if she asked me to jump off the bridge because she was bored and wanted to see if I would die a painful death in the Atlantic, then no, I wouldn’t. If one of her pups had fallen in or it was Jess or one of her Pack, then of course I would go in and try to get them. Because it’s Jess.”
“Oh, my God,” Gwen blurted, feeling incredibly stupid for not seeing it before. “You’re in love with her.”
Lock’s head snapped up, the spoon hanging out of his mouth like a lollipop. “What?”
“You heard me!” She tried to pull away from him, but he gripped her around the waist, holding her against his chest. “Why don’t you just admit you’re in love with her?” she demanded when he wouldn’t let her go.
“Because I’m not in love with her.”
“Bullshit.”
“Gwen…” He took the spoon out of his mouth and stuck it in what was left of his ice cream, took hold of her container, and placed them both aside. He then turned her around and lifted her into his lap so they could look directly at each other.
“I love Jess,” he said. “But I’m not in love with her.”
“Then—”
“Let me finish, because this is not an easy story to tell.” He took a breath and went on. “Jess talked to me when no one else would. She gave me a job when no one else would. She has my loyalty.”
“Fresh out of the Marines, advanced college education, and you were having trouble getting work?” She did try to keep the disbelief out of her voice but she failed.
“I wasn’t simply fresh out of the Marines, Gwen. I was fresh out of the Unit.”
In anger she’d forgotten, but she did know there was a difference. A large one. “Right.”
“I was specifically recruited to be in the Unit. All my training, every year I was in…always with the Unit. After eight years I was honorably discharged with a substantial bonus and a year of mandatory, five-times-a-week therapy.”
Five times a week?
“I met Jess in a coffee shop near her office. I was using my mother’s laptop to try and hack into my service records to see if I could find out why they cut me loose. At the time I wasn’t ready to face why they sent me home two years before I should have been, but I knew why. Everyone knew why. Anyway, I hadn’t shaved in about ten weeks. Hadn’t had a haircut since I’d been discharged. Was still wearing my uniform…I definitely looked like the guy who was about to go up to the roof of some building and start picking people off with a bolt-action rifle. So I’m sitting there, doing something I know I shouldn’t be doing, and when I looked up—” he shrugged “—she was standing there. Holding two big cups of coffee. Staring at me. I expected her to run. If not from a general fear of the grizzly, then at least from my stench—since it had been a few days since I’d showered. But she didn’t run.”