Chapter 13
Hawk
Now I know her past and why she was here in Cupid City.
Honestly, it was more high stakes than diamonds.
She shared an overview of her story and it might be painful to recall details.
It doesn’t diminish how I feel. I have a good idea what she’s been through, but I would never underestimate it.
Nor would I hold it against her. In fact, I respect that she’s held herself so well through it all.
Kat moves toward the bathroom without saying much — just a soft, “Give me a minute.” I nod and watch her disappear as the door clicks closed.
For a few seconds, I just stand there letting my pulse come down from everything that’s happened — the suite upstairs, the smoke, the trolley, the way she looked at me when she said she chose something else.
Chose me.
Water pipes groan softly behind the walls. I hear the steady rush of bathwater filling porcelain. I lean back against the dresser, arms crossing loosely over my chest. My mind keeps replaying her voice.
For you.
The sound of water continues. Then, I hear her call … “Hawk.”
My name carries through the door. I stop just outside the frame.
“Do you need something, Kat?” I ask, keeping my voice even.
“Yes … you.”
Everything inside me tightens. I reach for the handle. A cloud of steam hangs in the air, thickening until the room feels like a spa on another planet. The lights are dimmed, enough to blur the boundaries between tile and mist.
Kat is already in the tub, knees drawn up, arms resting loose over the edge. Her hair is pinned haphazardly on top of her head, stray dark strands curling at her nape and temples.
The tub is freestanding, claw-foot, big enough for two.
There’s a marble shelf beside it with a line of travel-sized products and her glass of champagne perched precariously on its edge.
She’s half-submerged, shoulders gleaming above the foam.
A single line of droplets traces the side of her neck.
She tips her head back and looks at me, eyes dark and calm.
“Close the door,” she says. I do. My hand lingers against the cool metal for half a second before I turn to face her, taking in every detail.
Her attention is fixed on me now. I feel it like a current over my skin.
The air is heavy, humid, charged in a way I haven’t felt since the first time I ever flew.
I’m holding my breath, nerves alive and stretched thin. My palms are warm and tingling. I realize I’m not masking any of this from her. Maybe I should, but I don’t want to.
I step to the tub, lean down to her eye-level. The water makes her skin glow in a way that’s almost unreal. If she’s nervous, she doesn’t show it. Kat never looks nervous. But for once, she’s not hiding from me.
I see the faint flush on her cheekbones, the slow spread of heat down her throat to the tops of her breasts, the way the foam clings to her collarbones. Her nipples peek through the water, rose dark and ready to be touched. Damn, I want her … all of her. But I’ll let her lead on this mission.
Kat leans forward, almost imperceptibly, and the water shifts. Her knees part, not totally as an invitation, just unapologetic openness. I kneel beside the tub, feeling the cold tile bite through my pant leg. The heat radiating off the water is intoxicating. Kat’s eyes never leave mine.
“I’m not used to this,” she says, voice low and close.
“What, exactly?”
She tilts her head, considering.
“Being wanted. Not as a tool or a commodity.”
She lifts her hand out of the water, trailing drops. Her fingers rest on my hand, the one braced on the porcelain edge.
“But as myself.”
Kat draws me closer with barely any pressure. My face is inches from hers, the humidity clinging to my jaw, making my shirt collar stick to my throat. Her breath is warm, tinged with champagne. I lean in the rest of the way and kiss her.
Her mouth is wet and hot, tongue brushing against mine, almost aggressive.
She tastes like sugar and champagne. I want to taste it again.
Deepening the kiss, my hand slides up her arm, water-slicked, then cups her jaw.
Her lips part and I don’t hesitate. I taste the inside of her mouth, the faint tang of alcohol.
Kat’s hand comes up and hooks the collar of my shirt, pulling me toward her. The edge of the tub presses into my ribs.
“You can get in,” she says, voice raw, “or you can just keep kneeling there and watching me.”
I stand and strip my shirt, then the rest. I kick out of my pants and leave them in a heap on the tile.
The air is shockingly cold against my skin, but the heat from the bath hits me as I lower myself into the water across from her.
There’s just enough room for two, as Kat slides her legs along mine, stretching her calves flat against my thighs. She’s not shy about it.
The water laps up my chest, hotter than I expect, and the sensation forces a sharp inhale. She leans back, arms folded behind her on the rim, watching me. She fixes me with that impossible gaze — unwavering, but not cold. If she wanted distance, she could freeze a room with one look.
But what I see in her now is hunger. Not for food, not for comfort, but for a kind of contact neither of us is permitted to want.
She reaches for my hand beneath the water and brings it to her ankle.
I run my thumb along the bones there, up the muscular line of her calf, and she shudders — not from temperature, but because of my touch.
I move my hand higher, skimming her shin, then the inside of her knee. Her thighs open for me, not in a practiced way, but deliberately. She watches my face the whole time, reading me, learning the rhythm of my need.
I slide my hands up her thighs, thumbs slipping over her skin.
She is so hot under the water, so impossibly alive.
I pause with my palms braced on her inner thighs, waiting for her to blink, to call me off, and recede into the mask she wore that first night.
She doesn’t. Kat tips her chin up and meets my eyes, confident.
I move my hand higher, and she exhales, a sound that starts as a laugh and ends as a moan.
I raise my body up into a position of hovering over her, water splashing over the rim.
When I kiss her again, it’s different — deeper, slower, tasting more than just her mouth.
I slide my hands up her sides, over the wet silk of her skin, and catch her just beneath the ribs.
I pull her toward me, and she slips in the water, knees bracketing my hips.
Lying back in the water again, I feel her breasts pressed against my chest, bare and slick.
We lock around each other, wet skin colliding.
Kat’s hands are on my shoulders, then in my hair, holding me at the base of my skull as she kisses me.
She tastes every part of me, her tongue pushing and seeking.
The water sloshes, tidal, steamy, and the bubbles are gone by now, replaced by the heat of our bodies and the feel of marble under my back as she clambers over me, straddling me in the deep oval basin. She’s so wet, and not just from the water.
Kat sinks her hips down, slides her velvety core along my cock. Her head drops back, exposing her throat and the fine edge of her collarbone. I want to bite it, mark her, but I don’t rush.
I grip her hips, guide her, allow her to set the pace. She grinds against me with a slow, desperate friction, and her hands clutch at my shoulders like she’s not sure if she wants to hold me down or pull me closer.
Kat’s mouth finds mine again, but this time she’s smiling.
“Thank you, Hawk. This moment we’re having together would never be possible if you had not made the choice of yes.”
Her words are true, but I feel no bravery. If anything, I feel weak because I cannot yet tell her something she needs to know … that I admire, respect and … love her. So I stay silent and allow my wanton feelings of lust, my need to have all of her take control.
My cock is so hard it aches, standing out of the water and leaking against her lower belly as she slides up and down, slow at first, teasing me with her velvety softness. She watches me watch her, her face open in a way I haven’t seen, like she’s letting herself be seen for the first time.
"Kat, you feel so fucking good,” I tell her as she shifts her body. Finding my cock with her hand, she lines herself up, teasing the tip against her entrance. The movement is soft and deliberate. She’s so wet she doesn’t need to guide it.
Kat lets out a tiny, involuntary gasp as she pushes down, taking just the head at first, then a little more …
more … then all of me. Her eyes flutter closed, then snap open, pinning me in place.
She wants to see what it does to me, how I react to the impossibility of being inside her.
Maybe she wants to see if I’ll come apart, or if I’ll hold the line.
I don’t. Not yet. But I won’t last long if she keeps this up.
It doesn’t matter. I want to give her everything right now.
Her body is a miracle, tight and hot and clenching around me.
She rides me slow, then hard, then slow again, like she’s calibrating the speed to the beat of my heart.
Every time she sinks down, I feel her shiver, her muscles rippling around my cock.
She’s so close, I can see it in the way her pupils dilate and her hands tremble.
I brace Kat’s hips in my hands, not to control but to memorize this moment.
She is so fucking beautiful—hair wild and cheeks flushed, eyes locked on mine.
I haven’t felt this alive in years. Every movement she makes, every shift of muscle and breath, feeds something inside me that’s been starving.
Kat rides me with relentless determination.
I push up to meet her each time she drops her hips, the water’s thrust amplifying every sensation, every ripple of pleasure between us.
Kat’s hands are everywhere—on my shoulders, in my hair, clawing at my back.
She leans forward and bites my lower lip, then gasps as I thrust up harder, rocking her whole body.
The bath is turning to a tempest, water sloshing over the sides, foam dying away to reveal her skin and her need. She puts her hands on either side of my face, kisses me hard, then pulls away just far enough to look me in the eye.
“Don’t let go yet,” she whispers. “Not until I do.”
There’s a pleading urgency in her tone, and it undoes me in a way nothing else has. I clamp down on my own release and just hold her, feeling the way her body flutters with every motion, every breath.
I slow the rhythm, letting her hover on the edge.
I want to draw this out until we both break.
Kat’s hands are shaking now, nails digging into my skin.
With one hand, I reach between us and find her clit, swollen and ready for more stimulation.
I circle it slowly, then fast and keep that pattern repeating as I watch her begin to unravel.
She’s whispering something in Russian, rapid and desperate, the meaning lost but the intent universal.
I meet her eyes and see the wildness there, the loss of control.
That’s when I know she’s never had this before, not on her terms what that feels like, not really.
Not with someone who sees her, who wants her, who chose her when he didn’t have an ulterior motive.
Her breath stutters, lips parted, eyes squeezed shut, then opened wide again.
I want to tell her how good she feels, how goddamn perfect she is, but I’m not sure words would make sense to her now.
She seems like she’s barely holding onto this moment, like it’s burning through every layer of armor she spent years welding shut.
She whispers my name, a thread of sound almost lost in the steam.
“Hawk…” she says, the word not even a sound at first but something like a confession.
Her nails rake down my arms and I feel her convulse around my cock, her body arching, locking, and then shattering apart.
She doesn't scream, but she moans deep and guttural, like she’s fighting an enemy inside her own skin and finally winning.
Her eyes squeeze shut, and she buries her face against my neck.
The heat of her breath and the tremor in her thighs is almost more than I can survive.
I hold her as she comes, every pulse a tremor through her body into mine, her hips don’t slow, don’t stop.
I pump into her, pulse matched to the frantic throb of her wet muscles around me. I don’t want to come yet, but she’s got me so deep, so tight, I’m losing the fight.
Kat’s arms lock around my neck. She pulls me down to her, her lips finding mine in a messy, desperate kiss, tongues hungry.
Her hips buck, frantic, and I feel myself losing it as I come inside her.
She breaks the kiss, gasping with her forehead pressed to mine.
Her whole body is shaking now, and I want to laugh with relief, with disbelief, with something like awe that I get to see her like this.
I grip her ass and squeeze. She’s muttering in Russian again and I wish I knew what she was saying.
I hold her like something that isn’t temporary. She chose me … and I’m not walking away. I just consummated protecting her out of duty to wanting to guard her for her love … always.
Kat settles against me like she’s found something she didn’t know she was allowed to keep.
The words rise in my throat — too soon, too exposed, too real — and I almost let them slip out.
But, I don’t want anything to ruin this moment.
Kat may not feel the way I do. She may only see this as release after a high octane situation.
But, I love her and I’ll protect her as long as she’ll let me.
She’s had others own her. I must be careful to not make her feel that way.
Instead, Katerina needs to know that I’m here for her through anything.
I press my mouth to her damp hair and hold her closer, letting the truth live in the space between us. For me, this wasn’t adrenaline. It wasn’t relief. It was a choice I’ve made.