Page 42 of Loki
“Once again, it wasn’t private when it’s on speaker phone and the door is wide the fuck open.”
“You know what? Fuck you, Joshua!”
“Fuck me?” He reached me in two strides. “No fuck you, Nikki. You think I don’t care about you! You think that I’ve distanced myself from you because I don’t give a fuck about you! That’s the reason I have! Because I do and I fucking shouldn’t!”
The air rushed out of my lungs. “Wait. Wh…what?” I furrowed my brows in confusion, trying to make sense of what he was trying to say.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, his frustration evident in the way he sighed and looked at me. “After coming home from overseas, I had my own shit to deal with and everyone suffered because of it, including you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, curious as to what happened to him when we lost touch.
“We’ll talk about that some other time,” he muttered. “Of course I cared about you back then, but I also loved your brother like he was my own, and I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever disrespect him like that no matter how much I wanted you.”
Is he saying what I think he’s saying?
“You wanted me?”
“When I saw that photo of you being taken, all those feelings came rushing back to me and I needed to protect you,” he said, ignoring my question. “Those feelings became stronger once we got you out and I couldn’t be selfish, Nikki. You’d been through some terrible shit, and I wanted to be there for you.”
“If you wanted to be there for me, why did you leave me when I needed you!” I yelled, interrupting his thought.
“Because I wanted to do more than hold your fucking hand! And it was selfish of me to want you, when you had just been through a bunch of bullshit. So, I left to give you space to heal before I fucked it up.”
“So, wait…you wanted me?” I muttered again.
“Not wanted, Nikki. I fucking want you with everything in my being. I want you so bad my fucking chest hurts,” he said, rubbing his hand across his heart. “I want you so much I can’t breathe when you’re not around. But I also don’t want to be the asshole who rushes you into shit you’re not ready for. You need time to heal from what you’ve been through. So, I’m so fuckingsorry I left, but I did what I needed to do to protect you from me.”
I reached up and cradled his face with one of my hands, my eyes filled with tears. “Joshua, you don’t need to protect me from you because I want you too. I always have. Nothing will ever change that.”
Chapter Fifteen
Joshua “Loki” Ledet
Fuck, she wasn’t makingthis easy for me. I was shocked to hear the conversation she was having with her friend. Was it wrong for me to listen? Yeah, it was. Did I give a fuck? No. It told me a lot about Nikki, things I most likely would have never found out.
It surprised me she would think any sane man would not want her. What the hell was there not to want? Despite how beautiful Nikki was, the woman was fucking intelligent, no non-sense, and strong as hell. Who wouldn’t want a woman like that?
I’d heard the brothers talking about her a few days after she arrived, and I shut all that shit down just like I did when we were younger. She wasn’t that type of girl, and if they wanted just a piece of ass, they weren’t getting it from her, that was why we had club whores. They were easy and available.
While I understood the attraction to her, I’d fucking beat the shit out of them before they got anywhere near her. So that was why I made sure to put out the word to all brothers, she wasn’t to be touched because she was mine.
The sensation of her hand against my skin sent a wave of desire through me that almost knocked me on my ass. I wanted so bad to bend her over this desk and fuck the hell out of her. However, she’d been through some traumatic shit, and I didn’t want to trigger her in any way. That was the reason I took off. I didn’t want to let my desires hinder her healing process.
“You’re really making this hard for me, sweetheart.”
I kissed the scar on the palm of her hand that was a stark reminder of the shit she had been through only a few weeks ago. She took a life with these hands and even though that motherfucker deserved it, I knew the costs of taking lives. Unless you were just a heartless bastard, it affected you.
“I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
She took a step closer to me, her palms landing against my chest sent a jolt of electricity through me. “And what’s the right thing?” she asked.
“Giving you time to heal. Not to take advantage of you.”
There were so many emotions dancing across her face, it was hard to determine whether this conversation was a good thing or a bad thing.
When I returned from the road, I only had one thing on my mind and that was her. Of course, the brothers had been giving me updates on her while I was away, but I needed to see it for myself. However, imagine my surprise when I heard the conversation between her and Cadence. It pissed me off she thought I could never want her when all I could do since she had been back in my life was think about her.
She was absolutely right about me distancing myself, but it had nothing to do with not wanting her. It was the complete opposite. She was all I wanted. It was the same when we were younger, but now Reggie wasn’t here to stop me from doing what I’d wanted to do since we were in high school.
