Chapter 45 Hawk
HAWK
I watched Cassie through the windshield of my Hellcat, trying to reconcile the woman chatting with customers and pouring coffee with the one I’d come to know in the three weeks she’d been living with us.
Coffee Shop Cassie was always cheerful, always friendly, always pleasing.
She smiled at the right times and nodded amenably and rushed to fill the napkin holders or creamer pitchers when someone brought it to her attention.
Coffee Shop Cassie was playing her part and playing it well.
But there was another side to her: our scrappy little mouse, the woman who was just beginning to learn all the ways her body — and ours — could give her pleasure.
That was the Cassie who wasn’t playing a role, who cried out when she came, who folded her arms over her chest when she was mad, who smacked things out of Vigo’s hands when he touched stuff that was supposed to be off limits.
That Cassie — our Cassie — was sharp as a blade, persistent as a mule, angry when she had a right to be, sad when she thought no one was looking.
I recognized the deception because I’d lived it. I’d pretended to be someone else too, before I got tired of acting out the play for everyone else’s enjoyment.
“I see you,” I murmured, watching Cassie smile up at a middle-aged guy who came a little too close to leering for my liking.
I tightened my hands around the steering wheel, reminding myself of why I was there (not to beat the shit out of some rando undressing Cassie with his eyes) and took another minute to drink her in before grabbing my laptop and getting out of the car.
I skipped the coffee shop door and went to the door leading to her apartment instead, then punched in the key code.
1228. Bram’s birthday.
I cursed when the door opened even though it was what I wanted. She should have changed the fucking code after Vigo spotted it over her shoulder.
I stepped into the vestibule and started up the stairs.
I hadn’t been here since the morning after the Hunt when we’d brought Cassie to get her shit, but I wasn’t worried about anyone finding me inside the vestibule. There were no other apartments here and Cassie was working.
I got to her apartment on the second floor and punched in the same code.
The door opened.
“Fucking unbelievable,” I muttered, stepping into the living room.
I closed the door behind me and looked around, getting my bearings all over again: small but cozy living room open to an equally small, equally cozy dining area and kitchen, hallway leading to two bedrooms and a bathroom.
I scanned the living room, found what I was looking for in the router near the TV, and set up shop with my laptop at her dining room table.
I wasn’t even close to a tech expert, but Marcus, my buddy from the Bureau, had given me clear instructions, and while I didn’t love following someone else’s instructions, I wasn’t so far down the rabbit hole of my own recklessness that I couldn’t do it when necessary.
I opened up my phone for the instructions from Marcus and worked my way through the steps, starting with checking Cassie’s network permissions and settings to see if they’d been changed recently and moving on to any new devices (besides my laptop) that had recently connected to her network.
I made notes as I went, information I could feed back to Marcus who would hopefully be able to tell me more.
I was so deep in it that I didn’t even hear the door open behind me.
“What the…?”
I looked over my shoulder to find Cassie standing in the doorway, her mouth open in surprise, then returned my focus to my laptop. “Hey.”
“Hey?” She closed the door behind her and walked toward me. “Hey?”
“That’s what I said.”
"What are you doing here?”
“You’ve had a visitor,” I said.
“I see that.”
“Not me,” I said. “Did you change your network settings last week?”
“No, why?”
“Someone’s been in your network,” I said.
She came closer and looked over my shoulder at my laptop. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, someone changed the access settings in your network and connected to it. They logged out, but I don’t know enough to be able to tell if they set themselves up to be able to access it at will.”
She dropped into the other chair at the dining room table. “Who would do that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m guessing it has something to do with Kensington, or maybe the Russian.”
“But… how would they know anything about me? The Kings— ”
“The Kings wouldn’t have put anyone onto you. It’s not their style. If they hadn’t wanted to dig into the financial transaction they just would have said no.”
“Then who?”
I sat back in the chair and ran my fingers through my hair. “Travis?”
“I wasn’t with you when you beat up Travis,” she said.
“We were asking about your parents,” I reminded her. “About their accident.”
“You don’t think…”
“What?” I looked at her, trying to stay focused on the conversation when all I wanted to do was stare at her beautiful fucking face.
Her heartbreakingly beautiful fucking face.
“Could the Russian or… whoever is behind all this be worried that I still have some of my parents’ records?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
This espionage shit was not my specialty. Not now and not when I’d been a Fed. Shit, I couldn’t even follow the rules for SWAT or the high-risk arrest team I’d been assigned to for exactly three weeks before I’d fucked it.
I was a wrecking ball not a surgeon.
She frowned. “You should have told me you needed access to my apartment.”
“I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“You didn’t think finding you sitting in my apartment would freak me out?”
“You weren’t supposed to be home,” I said.
“I wanted to get some things to bring to the house.”
We stared at each other and it occurred to me that for the first time since Cassie had come to live with us, we were alone.
Completely and totally alone.
She surprised me when she spoke first.
“Why don’t you like me?”
She sounded so sad I wanted to pull her into my lap, stroke her hair, tell her only someone as crazy as I was could not like her.
“I never said I don’t like you.”
“You never want to be around me,” she said.
“I'm around you now.”
“Because I caught you snooping in my apartment.” I wanted to kiss the adorable pout off her lips.
“It’s not snooping if you don’t mind being caught,” I said.
“You’re avoiding the questions, but fine, whatever.” She got up and started for the door. “Have fun snooping in my apartment.”
I willed myself to stay put, but the truth was, I never had a chance.
I reached her just as she opened the door, and I slammed it shut, her luscious ass nestled against my dick as I braced my hands on either side of her head.
“I don’t hate you.” My nose was in her hair, that sweet, creamy scent of hers occupying my body like deadly vapor. “I hate that I want you.”
She didn’t turn around, but I could feel her shallow breathing through the rise and fall of her back against my chest. “Why?”
I lowered my head to her neck, exposed by her ponytail, and murmured against her skin. “Because I’m not good at this.”
I closed my eyes as I pressed a kiss to her throat, and she sighed as my tongue darted against her neck.
“Because I don’t want to hurt you.” I pressed another kiss under her ear, then caught the whisper of her breath, minty and warm, on my face when she turned her head in my direction.
I kissed her cheek, closing my eyes at the sheer pleasure of her velvety skin against my lips. “Because I got used to feeling nothing.”
She turned in my arms and met my mouth with her own, sliding her hands around my neck and molding her body against mine when our tongues met in a storm of heat, tangling as she grabbed onto the hair at the back of my head.
I grabbed her hips and pulled her even more tightly against my hard dick, and she moaned into my mouth, a primal, needy sound that only made me harder.
I held her face in my hands as I took the kiss deeper, wanting to own very piece of real estate in her mouth, wanting to find all the unexplored corners and crevices and make them mine.
I could have stood there kissing her forever — a danger sign if there ever was one — but she pulled away, her lips pink and swollen as she looked up at me.
“Take me to bed, Hawk.” She pressed her hips into mine and the friction of her curves against my dick was almost enough to send me over the edge. “Please.”
I was never one for reason. For caution.
But if I’d had any left it would have evaporated under the soft weight of her pleading eyes, the promise of her sweet flesh.
I scooped her into my arms with a groan and headed for the bedroom.