CHAPTER SEVEN
HAWK
I covered Sunny’s mouth with mine in a slow as fuck, drench-your-panties kiss that left her panting in the lunchroom. Heat and the scent of her coated my palm, and I hadn’t even gone skin deep yet. I released my grip on her pretty pussy to skim back over her stomach and grazed my thumb beneath the gentle swell of her breasts.
A soft breath escaped her lips at the touch that I ached to breathe in like it was my last whisper of air. With her head tilted back, she had that just-kissed glow that set everything off in me.
Blood rushed to my cock until I was painfully hard, straining for release against my jeans. Fuck , but I wanted this girl bad. Wanted her in my arms, in my bed. Hell, I wanted her curled on my chest when I woke up in the morning, all dozy eyed and sweet before I turned that pretty into something wild. Sinful.
Like the way she looked at me now.
I drew her back to me again, just to feel Sunny Cooper’s hand twist backward around my wrist and squeeze it tight.
“Hawk,” she murmured, my name tripping off her tongue in a single breath.
If she says my name like that again it’s game over.
“Shut up, Coops. I’m seducing you.”
“Okay.”
Okay?
Well if that’s what she wanted then I was more than happy to oblige.
That line came out of her mouth all sweet and dreamy, and fuck me if I didn’t have to haul myself back from the edge of ripping her clothes off right then and there in her borrowed office space where Benson had no idea she was working and wasn’t on holidays like he expected.
But I doubted she would appreciate that little reminder of reality. Maybe. Or maybe this girl would surprise me in other ways. Sunny Cooper had a way of doing that.
Her lips moved beneath mine when I devoured her again, all soft and sweet, sexy and wicked all at once. I groaned into her mouth and pulled her curved hips tight against me. A cute as hell sigh slipped from her lips as her tongue traced the shape of mine. I muttered promises of what I’d do to her soon into her mouth. The visual of her tongue doing the same to my bare cock when she knelt for me was too strong an image to ignore.
I swallowed the taste of her need and let it feed my own arousal into a frenzy that I leashed, teasing both of us with the potential to take the situation somewhere…different.
Sunny pulled her mouth from mine with a soft little gasp that I instantly wanted her to repeat in my bed. Or on the counter behind us. Or whatever surface was handy for screwing both of us into oblivion. I wasn’t picky.
“This is a public room, Hawk.” Her words were more a reminder than a reprimand.
I curved my hand around her cheek, buried my fingers in those luscious curls that begged to be pulled. “Not an exhibitionist, Coops?”
A pretty little flush graduated up her cheeks. I followed its progress with interest, stroking my thumb over her heated skin. “Do you do this all over?”
“Do I do what all over?”
“Blush like that. All over. Where else do you turn pink from a kiss, Sunny?”
“I—” She paused, swallowed as her body undulated against mine. Maybe involuntary, maybe not. I couldn’t tell if she was playing me, but I damn well wanted to find out.
I palmed her stomach, trying to keep track of her words. “Yes, Coops?”
“I think we need to find some other place to do this.” Her eyes flared wide, those thick lashes fluttering the tiniest amount before they shut fast, taking her mouth with them. “No. That’s not what I meant. I mean, you move too fast. Far too fast for me. You have to?—”
“Shh, Coops.” I pressed my fingers to those soft pink lips, puffy from our kisses, easing her head back to my shoulder so I could kiss her until she melted in my arms. “If I’m going too fast, then say so. Let me show you I can go slow.”
And I did.
Sunny arched into me the moment my lips met hers again, but despite her fingers curved tight into my shoulders, urging me on, I held to my promise and worked her to my tempo. I refused to let the spark that burned hot and deep for her take. If I gave into that, she’d be sated at the end of it, but she likely wouldn’t speak to me again for fucking her on the coffee room floor.
I wanted her to remember the feel of me inside her when she came, and every time after, even if she was alone.
So we went at my pace.
Every stroke of my tongue delved deep into the warmth of her, the slower kiss tainted with the dirty feel of licking her. She moaned into my mouth as I held her pinned against me, working the kiss slower, deeper, and refused to rise to her needs as she scrabbled at me, needing more.
When I drew back her lips were swollen and red, pretty eyes unfocussed. Our bodies pressed together everywhere possible, not a gap between us.
That was fine by me. Her heart thundered against her chest and mine. I held her, stroked her cheeks and pressed featherlight kisses to her jaw until her heart slowed, and her gaze recognized me again.
“That was—” She blinked at me, resting her cheek against my open palm.
I speared my fingers through her hair and into her scalp, pressing the tips to the sensitive spots there as I massaged any remaining resistance away.
“That’s what you get with me, Coops.” I arched over her, brushed my lips against the shell of her ear. “Every. Single. Day.” I drew back. “I haven’t started yet.”
“Bragging much?” Sunny’s gaze sharped as she focused on me. “You think rather highly of yourself, Hawk.”
“True. But there’s a good reason for that.”
She huffed a laugh, her palms pressed to my chest, though she didn’t push me away. “You’re unbelievable.”
I smiled and lowered my mouth to catch hers again before I could say something I’d regret later.
“Sunny, I got some food for you and— oh.” A perky voice clashed with my serenity and backed away.
I held Sunny tight to my body, not lifting my head until I was sure we were alone again. Then I broke the kiss with care, still holding her close, though the jury was out on whether it was for my benefit or for hers.
“Timing,” Sunny murmured. She glanced up at me for a second. Her brow dipped, her gaze narrowing before she buried her head against my chest.
I held her to my pounding heart, molding her to my body. She fit tight against me, her sweet curves the perfect match for my own lean muscle. More than sexy and cute as sin, she gave me a sense of belonging, of home.
What started as a game of catch and kiss back at the track fast devolved into something with much higher stakes I wasn’t ready to admit to betting on. I could take this girl home, wake up with her and not be lonely in the morning. Though my house was only across the city, it hadn’t been home for a very long time.
I hadn’t known what home was for so long that I barely recognized it when she stood right in front of me.
“Come home with me.”
“Are you okay?”
Sunny pivoted to face me and frowned as our words clashed together, indistinguishable from each other and thankfully garbled. I sighed my relief as the offer that had slipped out without any forethought and certainly without my permission was swept away in a moment’s confusion.
“I’m fine.” I pried my fingers from her shoulders and speared my fingers through my hair. “Thank you. For—” My head tipped to one side as I considered her, letting a slow, sin-filled smile spread over my face. “For dealing with a horny man who didn’t get to have lunch with the girl he came to see.” Why was I speaking in third person like a fucking numpty? Why?
Sunny raised an eyebrow, the faintest hint of a smile curling those luscious, swollen lips. “You do think highly of yourself, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Part of the job, I guess.”
“You guess?” Sunny cleared her throat, tugged at the hem of her top. “Well, some of us don’t have that issue and I do have to go back to work.”
“Oh.” I blinked owlishly at her. The penny clunked into place. “Ah. Well. I’ll uh— I’ll leave you to it.”
Ten minutes in her presence and I was a blathering fool.
“Mmhm.”
Sunny watched as I backed my way out of the small kitchenette, banging my hip on the equally small table and my elbow on the door frame.
I managed to give her a rueful and somewhat crooked grin before I turned and fled, running straight through the same woman who had interrupted us a moment before. My apologies followed me down the short corridor that opened into the foyer area.
I sucked in icy air-conditioned and over filtered oxygen that had probably circulated the entire building a dozen times before it reached the ground floor but for me it was the breath of life.
Heat that flushed my face receded with each breath. I stood in the center of the blessedly vacant entrance foyer to the building. My car was visible outside the front doors where I had parked—illegally—and I headed for it with some measure of relief.
The same relief of a teen who had approached his first crush and not been told to fuck off.
That gave me pause. I sketched a glance over my shoulder, but the corridor behind me was empty. Either Sunny had retreated to her office or she and her co-worker were having the gossip fest of a lifetime.
I only hoped the encounter—and my subsequent retreat—didn’t make it to the press.
Mind, those were the articles readers seemed to devour, when a celeb put their embarrassment on a plate and served it up to the world stage.
Apparently, it made us more human.
Those moments only made me feel small, and for a driver who needed to focus and believe in himself and his ability, that was never a good thing.
My breath evened out as I strode to the double glazed doors with my usual confident gait, even if I didn’t feel it. It was a trick I had learned early on.
Never let them see you sweat.
Never let them see the fear.
Never feel the fear.
It might sound like a whole lot of motivational happy-snappy bullshit, but that same line had gotten me to right here. I’d cling to that fake it ‘til you make it screen and no one on earth was going to take that away from me.
Except maybe Sunny.
What the hell are you doing to me, Coops?
I shook my head, the energy that had been my constant companion since I’d started racing liquified in my veins. Sunny did that to me, put my body back into high adrenaline mode, striving forward to a finish line I couldn't see.
The last of my awkwardness dropped away as I stepped outside and reached for the door of my car. Some faint movement in my peripherals caught my attention, or maybe it was just how wrong the situation was, and my brain processed the image before my gaze had registered the damage.
The car parked beside the doors, the blue Cobra Sunny drove glinted weirdly. Sunlight bounced off glass at odd angles.
Driver’s intuition kicked in, registering that same reflected light that told me the car beside me in a race wasn’t reacting the way it should.
A chill crept up my spine as I turned fully to stare at the mangled vehicle.
The side had been bashed in by what could have been a battering ram, or a herd of rampaging wildebeest. Glass shards littered the cement parking lot outside the office building in a haphazard mosaic. Her tires were a wreck.
Hell, the whole thing was a wreck, and whatever calamity occurred had happened when her car was stationary.
I stared at the deflated rubber that sagged beneath the weight of the ruined vehicle and took a step away from my own car. Another. And another. Until I stood next to Sunny’s car, my keys gripped tight in whitened knuckles, starting at the malicious damage.
There was no chance this happened by accident. The targeting was too tight, too perfect to be unintentional. Hell, a drunk on a Friday night could ram a tank into a car on the side of the road and do less damage than this.
Someone had been intent on ruining a special aspect of Sunny’s life.
A very personal part of her life, from the story she told me.
Anger brewed low in my chest, but I pushed it down. That could come later. Right now, action had to come first. My mind fell into the same quiet zone I was intimate with on the track, silence amidst chaos.
When I could actually think.
My thumb slid over the screen of my phone, tapping out words and sending the message before conscious thought caught up with me. My mind was already churning as I turned away to wait at the door.
Sunny’s curvy frame came into view, a slightly bemused expression lighting her gorgeous face. Curls bounced around her shoulders as she closed the space between us in tall boots that lengthened the curve of her calf, and drew my eye along the line of her thighs.
Thighs that had been pressed against mine minutes ago. Time that seemed like nothing and a lifetime all at once. I stared as she opened the door. What the hell? Was I falling for Sunny Cooper?
“Back for more already, Hawk?” Her lips curved up and my heart took a swan dive.
Too late.
I wasn’t falling for Sunny. I was already there.
I sent her an answering smile, my arrogance on speed dial while I gaped at her from behind the mask I threw up on automatic. “I’ll stare at you all day if you let me, Coops. Those heels should be illegal.”
“So you’re a leg man?” She raised an eyebrow, considering. “Or you have a foot fetish. Not that I’m shaming your kink.” She took a half-step back, her open palms raised to shoulder height.
“Come back here. And for you, I’m an everything man.” The line was cringeworthy at best but I had bigger issues. “Coops. You have someone stalking you? Someone who wants to hurt you?”
Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits as she glared at me through thick lashes.
Well hot damn if that’s not the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
Time and a place, Hawk.
I slid my hand around the curve of her hip and hung on for dear life. “You got appointments for the rest of the day?”
“Well, yes. Of course.”
“Cancel them.”
Her eyes flared, alongside her temper. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, H?—”
“There’s something you need to see.”