Go Luck Yourself (Royals and Romance, #2)

by Sara Raasch

To you. Again. Because we could all use a bit of luck.

Because marrying her would’ve made you useful, and you have nothing else to offer.

And I didn’t realize until the very moment of telling Iris I love you that I only loved the idea of a happy ending, not her.

There’s a moment. Where I’m staring at the door. And I think to myself, This is my rock bottom. But I might as well find out what the full depth of my rock bottom looks like. Maybe there’s something interesting down here, like my dignity.

“You tinsel-bombed the St. Patrick’s Day Prince,” he says. “I have never been more proud of you in my life.”

“For fuck’s sake, Coal—” “You tinsel-bombed the St. Patrick’s Day Prince. This was almost an act of war.” “I know—god, get off me—hence my appropriate response of oh shit.”

“You’re lucky I do na make you get down on your knees and beg. Though you did call me hot, so would you enjoy that, hm?”

“Was that the apology you had in mind?” I whisper up at him. “Or should I go on about how all the rainbows in Ireland point to the pot of gold in your asshole?”

“Fuck me,” I groan to my plate.

Loch doesn’t hesitate. “Only if you say please.”

I hate that my stomach does feel a little better. “Have I earned my coffee?” Loch relinquishes it to me, and I’m so desperate for it that I almost miss the way his voice serrates over the words “Good boy.”

After about thirty minutes of riding while holding myself angled away from Loch, straining all the muscles I abused today so I don’t bump into him, I put my hand flat on the seat to prop against it and give my torso a break. But my eyes are shut. And I don’t see his hand already on the cushion. I feel it now, though. The edge of his wrist against mine. My body goes even tenser. Concrete solidified. Pull away. It was an innocent mistake. Pull back. But a second passes. Two. And it rapidly barrels past the time when I could yank away and claim it’s an accident and now, now, I’m actively touching him, barely touching him, and the beat of blood in my injuries channels to pound, pound, pound over my heart. It’s an accident. He touched my knees earlier, and that meant nothing, so this, this means— His finger moves. Hooks with mine. Holy shit. The icy wind thrashes against my face and chaos ratchets to boiling in my head, it’s haunting me, that juxtaposition, cold to hot to cold— I hear his voice, the memory of it. Echoing. Echoing. I’m Irish, boyo. Talking shite is how we flirt. Holy. Fuck. Has he been flirting with me this whole time? And. Oh my god. Have I been flirting back? No. No way. Flirting is telling someone they look nice, or smiling at each other across a room, or anything that leaves a fuzzy feeling in my chest, not— Not heat so intense I don’t think there’s a part of me that isn’t blistered anymore. Not tension so potent it creates its own gravitational pull. That’s...

Only I do. Bullets of that cold-hot-cold are firing down into the root of my stomach, and I chase them. I am stripped of all thought again, a being of appetite only, and that appetite wants more of this sensation, hot-cold-hot— I work my hand under his and twine our fingers together.

What am I doing. I’m suffocating is what I’m doing. I’ve passed out from my injuries and I’m unconscious right now. Loch’s fingers tighten on mine. His thumb strokes over the back of my hand and I launch stratospheric. There is nothing deniable about this. No rationalizing it off. It’s such a thing outside myself that I’m forced to sit here in excruciating mental silence and endure hi...

This is so childish, isn’t it? Holding hands. This is playground bullshit. It shouldn’t be—it shouldn’t be— But it’s everything. His touch is on my hand but it’s all over my body, and those bullets whizzing through me, the aching thuds of my pulse, all of it swells together in a detonation that is physically agonizing to not react to. My eyes split open. And I twist to him; increment by increment, I’ll find an excuse in his face. My m...