Locke 2 (Blackwater Boys #4)

Thirty-Three

Kali

T he night didn’t end after visiting Lenny’s bedroom. By the time we got back to the house, the discussion went on among the three men for hours. Luckily, the tension from the car had eased. Jem hadn’t said anything sour to me, and I hated that I had my back up, waiting for him to pick a fight with me.

He didn’t.

They sat in the large study room on the main floor, mapping out the town and the suspects they’d already begun to gather. It made my head spin how fast they could comb over details, log it and then move on.

Within minutes of entering the house, Hal had been crossed off the list. He really had been engaging in a fling, and he’d kept it quiet because the co-worker was married. That was a relief and also extremely impressive that they could find personal information like that out so quickly. It filled me with hope this was going to happen: we were going to find Lenny either with his mother, or…

“The townhouse complex had yard work done that week,” Jem explained as he munched on chocolate balls, pointing down at a printed-out map of Lenny’s street. “But we’ve been there, and these yard people didn’t really do much yard work, did they?”

“The grass was short,” Conor replied, shrugging.

“There were leaves everywhere, man.”

“It’s autumn,” Conor countered.

“I know it’s fucking autumn, but the leaves shed like two weeks ago, Conor.”

“You know they shed exactly two weeks ago?”

“That’s when the weather turned.”

“You were here two weeks ago?”

Jem’s vein throbbed in his neck. “Look, these yard guys didn’t clean up the leaves and the other houses had no leaves on their lawns.”

“Cheap labour.”

Jem itched at his chest. “Locke, tell Conor this is something to look into.”

Locke detached a long time ago. His dead eyes settled on Conor for a couple beats too long. Conor’s lips flinched, and I wondered perhaps if he was annoying Jem on purpose. “Jem’s not wrong. We’ll keep all avenues open. I’ll have the company who went around doing yard work looked into. Compare all the workers to that face on the wall.”

Jem smirked at Conor. “We can’t leave any leaves unturned.”

“Stones,” Conor whispered. “It’s stones, Jem.”

Ignoring him, Jem looked at me, sitting quietly on the armchair. “Was there anything out of the ordinary about the boy by the end?”

“Like what?”

Jem shrugged. “Did he act differently?”

“No, he was the same. Like I said, he was quiet and detached.”

Locke’s eyes caught mine. “Any absences?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but it was way earlier in the month.”

“Why was he absent?”

“There was a nasty flu going around. A bunch of kids didn’t show up that week. Other than that, he never missed a day.”

“We want someone to back that up,” Jem said. “Maybe contact the school.”

My words fell out of my mouth dry and accusatory. “Shouldn’t be an issue for you, since you and Kayla got so close.”

Jem’s face didn’t crack as he looked back at me. “We sure did.”

“Who’s Kayla?” Conor asked.

“The school secretary,” I answered.

“Sweet girl,” Jem added. “I can get her to talk.”

I swallowed back a snort. “Yeah, sure.”

Again, no humour or even a jab from Jem as he continued. I watched him intently, noticing how invested he appeared now in finding Lenny. A far cry from his earlier accusation that I’d used the boy as an excuse to lure Locke. Even his voice changed, turned deeper, more introspective. Something in him poked through. A surprising sort of desperation to learn everything about Lenny.

That was when I caught it.

The slight tremble in his fingers that he tried to hide by crossing his arms tightly across his wide chest. He avoided my eye like the plague, but not this time. He glanced at me quickly, and our eyes locked but didn’t hold. I looked away first because I saw something in his gaze that startled me.

Fear.

They resumed, and I stopped talking. At some point, Jem asked to see the picture of the face again. Locke handed him the phone, and I watched as it went from Jem to Conor. Even hard as nails, they appeared disturbed.

“You really think he’d have drawn the dude that took him?” Conor wondered quietly.

“He put a lot of work into it,” Jem replied, thinking. “You only do that when you’re thinking about that person a lot.”

“That’s exactly it,” Locke replied. “He may have trusted this man, which would be good, because that means we should be able to find him.”

The picture made my skin crawl. Why had Lenny drawn that? I tried to imagine the boy picking up the crayon and drawing a circle for a face—

I paused, staring hard at the floor while my mind wandered. Something niggled at me. That same feeling I had before when I’d seen the picture for the first time.

“It wasn’t the first time he had drawn a face.”

Despite talking, they’d been paying close attention to me, too. They went completely quiet. All eyes settled on me.

I looked up, meeting their gazes, nodding because I remembered now. “In his planner…he drew a door, and there was something on it.”

“What was on it?” Jem asked.

But I didn’t need to answer. Locke’s voice cut in. “A lock.”

I nodded, my heart picking up. “And he drew something else, too. A face.”

“The same face that was on the wall?” Conor questioned.

I shrugged. “It could have been, but it was a face, and it…” I paused, my face paling as I recalled the face and what was around it. “The window. There was a window around it, and at the time, I thought it was supposed to show someone looking out the window, but—”

“It was someone looking in,” Jem cut in, his face paler than a sheet of paper.

I nodded, wordlessly.

Jem and Conor exchanged looks, but Locke was solely watching me, his eyes carrying that fear I’d seen just outside Lenny’s bedroom.

“What’s outside the window?” Jem asked.

“A patio,” I answered, looking away from Locke to stare at him.

“And beyond that?”

“Well, a street, and then a new housing development.”

“So, it’s in construction.”

“Yeah.”

“Deserted at nights.”

Conor’s voice piped up. “If someone wanted to pay Lenny a visit by jumping the fence, would there have been any witnesses?”

“We’ll find out when you both pay those neighbours a visit tomorrow,” Locke returned.

This time, Jem didn’t look as itchy when he looked at Conor. “I need the old Conor for that.”

Conor’s lips flinched into a smirk. “A little bit of the old me.”

“More than a little.”

“I’m not going back to prison.”

Jem smiled dangerously. “For this, I’d be happy to.”

That seemed to break the ice between them. When they strategized, there was no bickering or jabs. They began to develop a plan, and Locke was already sending out orders to his men that were discreetly stationed all over Georgewel.

By this point, my eyelids were growing heavy, and I was having a hard time focusing. I fought so hard to stop it, but I began to drift off.

When I opened my eyes again, it was because I was floating. Arms wrapped around me, cradling me, my face pressed into a hard chest. Locke’s scent made my blood roar.

I let out a soft groan. “Locke…”

“Sleep, Kali,” Locke murmured gently as he carried me up the steps. I felt his heart beating against my ear, lulling me back to sleep, but I fought this time to hang on. Within moments, he brought me down to a familiar large bed. Slowly, he began to detach from me, pulling away—

I gripped his shirt. He’d removed the suit jacket earlier in the night and rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt. I felt the buttons as I clenched his shirt, pulling him to me. I kept my eyes shut, still in that floating space between sleep and wakefulness.

“Don’t leave,” I whispered, needily.

“I never left,” he replied solemnly, his words layered with deeper meanings. I felt his hand in my hair, his fingers twirling a strand.

I slowly opened my eyes to look at him. The hallway was lit, but the door was nearly closed. Enough light filtered through to chase away the shadows from his face. His expression was warm as he gazed at me. My heart quickened when our eyes locked, and a heavy feeling settled between us. I couldn’t resist running my fingers along his plump red lips, hoping to smooth away the lines and brush away the folds between his brows. His muscles relaxed beneath my touch as his eyes drank me in, the warmth growing into palpable longing as he closed his eyes for a long moment.

“Good night kiss?” I whispered.

He opened his eyes and the pure desire in them floored me. I gripped his shoulders tightly, anticipating buzzing beneath my skin.

“I’ll kiss you if you say my name,” he whispered.

I obliged. “Locke.”

“No, little lion.”

I swallowed, catching the meaning in his fierce gaze, and uttered softly, “Max.”

That soft smile returned. “Kali.”

The familiar worship in his tone as he spoke my name like a prayer. If he felt what I felt every time he spoke my name, I’d say his anytime he wanted.

Then he dropped his head, and he kissed me. Soft lips brushed over mine. It was tender and slow. A kiss that didn’t promise a brutal fuck I’d need to recover from physically. This was the kind of kiss I’d have to recover from emotionally.

I felt it everywhere.

The happy parts and the sad. The patched holes and neglected corners. The sad alleyways I never ventured down. The centre of me—my very essence—poked deliciously in response. It called for me. It asked me to accept his touch and embrace who I was. That girl I was running away from wrapped herself around this man, wanting him to revive her. To never let go.

Being touched by Locke was like riding a roller coaster. It was an out of body experience. A rush that made me weak in body and spirit. I parted my lips, and he greedily searched my mouth, his tongue sensually moving along mine. He sucked it and bit it, and then he pulled away before dropping back down to kiss me all over again.

I felt his hard length press against my centre. I moaned, bucking my hips. We rocked against each other, like gentle waves against the rocks. In that very moment, he was all I tasted, all I touched, all I scented and all I felt.

Max was in all my senses.

Then he pulled away, and just when I began to protest him moving away, I felt him move down my body. My heart spiked with anticipation. He slid my pants off slowly, savouring every inch of my being to him.

“I have more lips to kiss,” he growled.

I barely smiled when he kissed my pussy, sucking at it with feverish need. I bucked my hips, the pleasure exploding out of me. He sucked and tasted, nipping at my folds, eating me out like it was the only thing he ever wanted to taste.

“I love this pussy,” he groaned. “I love eating it, Kali. You ever going to stop me?”

I shook my head. “No.”

He gripped my hips hard, ordering me roughly, “Come against my mouth. I want to taste you, drink your sweet release, every fucking thing about you, I want it. I fucking want it, little prey.”

I dug my fingers into his hair and practically rode his face, using him to come. The pleasure washed over me, leaving me trembling. My teeth were chattering as I came down from my high. Locke moved back up my body, kissing me suddenly, forcing his tongue against mine so that I could taste my pleasure. I moaned into his mouth.

“I want you to come on my dick next time,” he said. “Then I want to come deep inside you. Would you like that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You think your pussy would milk me dry?”

Another throb tore through me. “It would.”

“I want it spilling out of you. I want to mark you.” He bit my bottom lip, his desire pressed against my legs. “Fuck, I have this fantasy of breeding the fuck out of you, Kali. Just tying you up and coming inside you over and over again. You’d keep it inside you, though. You wouldn’t push it out. I would fill you up.”

Holy fuck, his words incinerated me. I felt a little dazed. “I think we should put a day aside for this fantasy.”

He licked my lips, drunk off our kiss. “I agree. I have to date you first.”

I paused, grinning. “You want to date me?”

“Take you out somewhere nice. Isn’t that what women like?”

I nodded. “Yes. Is that what you want?”

“Only if it makes you happy.”

I expected him to keep kissing me, but then he stopped. He was holding back. Maybe to drive me crazy, I didn’t know. I wrapped my arms around him, enjoying the warm feeling of his body. His heart rattled against mine. Just as affected, his breaths were hard and uneven.

He looked down at me, and I stared up at him. He brushed away the strands of my hair, and I smiled sheepishly. “That was good. Thank you, Max.”

His breath tumbled out of him, shaky. “For you, anything.”

“Anything?” I repeated dazedly. “Are you sure of that?”

His words were resolute. “Whatever you ask of me, I’ll do it.”

“You’re already doing it.”

He shook his head. “This is easy for me, Kali. It’s sport.”

“Finding Lenny is sport?”

“Finding the monster responsible for Lenny is sport,” he corrected me.“I will find him. I will kill him.”

I searched his eyes. Dangerous and bottomless. Eyes I could easily fall into, and I wanted to. Right now, I wanted to fall into Locke and never get up. “So, I’m right. You’re a wolf that hunts.”

That boyish look returned. “That’s correct.”

“How good of a hunter do you think you are?”

“If it bleeds, I can track it.” So much conviction was delivered in that simple line. I could imagine it. A moving reel inside my mind, of this man wading through the endless dark, searching for his prey.

I tensed, reminded of earlier words. Locke noticed. “What is it?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“Don’t retreat from me, Kali.” For once, it came out as a plea instead of a demand.

“Did you know where I was?”

The muscle in his jaw ticked. He didn’t speak, and the seconds stretched. Then he finally ran his tongue along his bottom lip and said, “I knew, and I didn’t know.”

He saw my confusion and didn’t expand. I felt him brace himself as he waited for me to prod. It was easier if I asked a specific question than for him to just say it. Like me, Locke had difficulty opening up. I didn’t want to press him. We had pushed each other to the limit lately. The protective shells we had snugly fit into were beginning to crack.

What would we become once our shells were shattered and gone for good?What vibrant colours would paint our new lives? What new emotions would arise in us, filling the voids we never knew existed? The possibilities felt endless as I lay beneath him, searching his eyes for answers. No, no, I would not prod him about this.

But I didn’t have to.

He said, “I found you a year ago. You were in another town, but you were passing through.”

I didn’t even know what town I was in a year ago. I moved so frequently; it was all a blur.

“Why didn’t you come for me?” I asked, and I hated that it sounded like an accusation. I felt hurt.

“Because Charlotte found me before I came for you, and she said you didn’t want me yet. She told me you were very…specific about not wanting me, in fact…” His words trailed off, and I saw that same rejection flash in his eyes.

I couldn’t look him in the eye. I looked away, admitting, “I said that at the start. When they found me and took me away. They gave me a new identity, but I was told only to use it if I was certain I didn’t want to be found.”

Locke simply nodded. He didn’t look angry though. He was just hurt. “She said you were going to hide, and then she warned me that if I found you before you were ready, you’d leave and she’d help you hide from me again.” His voice was thick. He cleared it. “I didn’t think I was ruining your life. I thought I was saving you, and I guess my desire to take you for myself outweighed everything else. I wasn’t rational. I held back because…I hoped you might reach out to me. That you might want me. Charlotte made me promise to wait for a sign. She gets through to me, and Conor…he said he’d stop me from ruining us. Because if I stole you again, I might drive you away for good, and I didn’t want that possibility. I would rather suffer and wait than to do something that could make you hate me forever.”

I let out a shaky breath, but as he began to pull away, I gripped him and kept him close. “I was scared, Locke. I’m still scared. I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want to trust and then…find out that you don’t want me later—”

“Do you believe me now that I do?” he cut in, and it wasn’t like him to interrupt. “If I didn’t want you, I wouldn’t have dropped everything to be here.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m not like other men,” he said, stiffly, his face twisting to embarrassment. “If I’m going to be honest, Kali, you’re the only woman I’ve ever fucked like this…I’ve never…wanted the things most want in a relationship…until you came into my world, with your angry eyes, damning me in that bathroom.”

My lips flinched. “You weren’t very likeable.”

“People are scared when they see me,” he explained. “And you were scared, but you were brave. I wasn’t used to that. You breathed fire, and I thought I wanted to extinguish it, but when you kept breathing fire, Kali, you started to breathe life into me, too. I wanted you the second you were tied to my bed, and I’ve never stopped wanting you since.”

His words sat heavy in the air.

He opened himself up to me.

This serial killer, crazy man.

But he didn’t seem those things to me in that moment.

He didn’t wait for me to talk. He let those words hang in the air. He bent down and kissed me again.

“Get some sleep, Kali.”

Dazed, I nodded, and he tucked me in.

The day felt endless, and I should have been fretting about Lenny’s room and the drawing of the man and the heavy admission this beautiful man made, but I thought of another little boy. One that sat in a hole and waited for help that didn’t come.

My heart clenched painfully.

“If monsters are made in the darkness, do you think they can be unmade in the light?” Aurora’s whispered question raised the hairs on my skin.

I closed my eyes and fell into sweet nothingness.