CHAPTER ELEVEN
HAWK
H AWK
Sunny made bilinis stuffed with smoked salmon for breakfast.
“I’m never leaving,” I promised her as she reloaded my plate with a small, sweet smile.
“I might take you up on that,” Sunny said under her breath so low I wasn’t sure she meant for me to hear it.
A massive smile spread over my face and I narrowly avoided an exuberant fist pump by stuffing my mouth. The plate emptied quickly, and I helped her wash up.
“Thank you.” I wound my arms around her waist, kissing along the back of her neck. “That was amazing. Like you.” She made little sighs when I reached the slope of her shoulder so I did it again, then bit down the tiniest bit.
The squeak I expected didn’t come out of her mouth, but a soft, low moan did.
My cock hardened against the curve of her ass and I pressed her forward against the bench. “Do that again and I’ll fuck you senseless right here.”
Sunny stilled in my arms, then let out a tiny sound I craved as I nipped along her neck. “The neighbors might complain.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the neighbors.”
“Good.”
I drew in a long breath, let my eyes fall shut to savor the moment and spun her around, kissing her soundly.
Sunny tugged up my shirt and slid her hands over my stomach.
Her very wet hands, full of soap and suds.
I yelped, pushing back from the counter but she came with me, a wicked gleam in her eye. “Minx,” I growled, catching the lobe of her ear between my teeth. She froze in place, her fingertips resting on my ribs. Very deliberately, she slid them lower.
I spun her back to face the counter, one hand on the back of her neck. She resisted for a moment, until I ran my fingers over her thighs and raised the hem of her short skirt.
Then she sank lower, her resistance fading as she rested her cheek to the cool countertop.
I grinned, painfully hard at the sight of her bent over for me, and ran my fingers under the tap. Then I traced my wet hand straight between her thighs, earning the same sort of yelp I had given her.
Except that my other hand still held her pinned to the counter.
She flailed, slapping back at me as she laughed, giggling when I tickled the backs of her knees with my damp fingers. “Stop! Damnit, Hawk,” she shrieked, waving that perfect, tempting rump at me.
I traced my fingers between her thighs, over her white lace panties. She moaned, pushing back against my touch and I withdrew my hand. “These are wet too, but it’s not from me.” I leaned down to bite the soft flesh exposed to me, tracing over her swollen little mound at the same time. “Still want me to stop?” I asked as I played with her.
“Yes—no,” she whimpered, pushing her toes into the floor to press back against my hand.
“You mean this?” I bit her again, rubbing her lace-covered pussy again as she cried out, then soothed the spot with my tongue as she pulled away from me.
I alternated nipping and touching her, sliding my fingers over the lace of her engorged flesh until my fingers were drenched and I hadn't even touched skin yet.
Her delightful little moans drew my own pleasure higher. I shoved my jeans down, fisting myself as I pulled the sopping material between her legs aside.
“Hawk,” she moaned, raised on her toes, her back arched, her thighs spread wide.
“You want me to stop?” I paused, my thumb rolling off the top of my cock. “Princess, I won’t take you if that’s not what you want.” But her body told me different lies.
“No, don’t stop ,” she rasped, her voice raw, her desire untamed.
“Good girl,” I murmured, yanking a condom out of my wallet and rolling it on in a one handed joint effort with my teeth.
I was careful not to touch her glistening pink pussy with my fingers, wanting the first contact she felt to be my cock.
Her low moan reverberated through me as I teased her entrance then slid into her slick depths in a long, slow thrust. My groan matched her cry. I swallowed hard, and gripped her hips with both hands as I willed myself to last for her.
“Tell me you’re okay,” I leaned over her, drawing my tongue along the back of her neck.
She shuddered in response, clenching around me. “Please, Hawk.”
Those two little words undid me. Though we had played around plenty, it was nothing like the intimate, skin-on-skin contact with the woman I loved.
“Slow, gentle? Tell me what you need, Coops.”
“Hard. Fast. Rough.” She whimpered at my first thrust, then all I had from her were tiny screams filled with need and satisfaction.
I took her at her word, letting my body’s wild need take over without conscious thought. Her pussy fluttered around me as she came, sweat-drenched, and my own roar followed her into oblivion soon after.
This is the girl I’ll never stop chasing.
Sunny stared at the remnants of her car in silence. I got the impression she was frozen in shock. I released her hand to wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her back into my chest. She didn’t move, but some of the tension melted from her stiff stance.
“I can search for all the pieces of your…puzzle, Miss Cooper, but some of them are going to take time to source. You might be relying on Hawk for a lift for a while longer.” Ryan grimaced at me as Sunny peered over his shoulder.
“Take your time. I’ll be fine,” Sunny said so softly I barely heard her.
I doubted Ryan did.
“Why don’t you sit with Benny and he’ll go through a list of what we’re looking for? You can tell him if you want any changes or tweaks to the original.”
I could have told him that wasn’t going to happen. Sunny was a purist, plain and simple. Even in its ruined state it was obvious that she had kept the car in its original condition.
“Thank you.” Sunny disengaged from my hold with a gentle squeeze to my wrists.
I let her go, missing her warmth already.
“You two look cozy,” Ryan commented. He stood beside me, his bulky arms folded over his chest. “Bit of a change from the usual, eh? Not that we don’t love Sunny,” he added after a spare glance at my face.
“You’re not the only one.” I pushed my hair off my face and gave him a rueful smile. “Sorry I wasn’t here yesterday.”
“Could have used you. We had a small issue with theft.”
“Again?” Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I remembered the last batch of sabotage. “We have to find out who’s doing this.”
“We did.”
That got my attention.
“Yeah?” I pretended disinterest, flicked at a speck of dust that floated in front of me. “Who?”
Ryan snorted. “Kid from Jannie’s crew. Said he was borrowing a few tools and he’d bring them right back. Like Team Germany don’t have enough of their own shit.”
“Hey,” I said in warning. “Don’t let your prejudice flow onto the rest of the team, old man.” But he was right; the German racer had an exceptional team and better financial backing. His workshop had a full complement of Snap On tools that could have paid the annual wages for half my team.
“I’m not fucking old,” Ryan grumbled. “But yeah, you’re right. Sorry. It shits me that no matter what I do something else is getting wrecked, other things are going missing. It’s fucked with our focus.” His lips pursed. “Yours, too.”
“Yeah, well. Shit happens.” I watched Sunny engage my youngest mechanic. A grin creased my lips.
Ryan’s gaze flicked between Sunny and me at speed, his mouth hanging open. “Hell, Hawk. There’s gonna be a shitfight over this when Benson finds out.”
I inclined my head. “I know.”
“That’s her career, boy.”
“Don’t you boy me. And she’s got a job here if hers fails.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
I said nothing and slid my hands into my pockets. Sunny read over a folder Benny had produced and flicked through it, nodding at intervals. Someone else might have been brain dead by now, their eyes glazed, but Sunny listened attentively to every word and engaged the younger man with respect.
My heart swelled in my chest. I did love this girl, so damn bad it ached.
“You’re fucked.” Ryan shook his head and sent me a sidelong glance.
I rubbed the back of my head with the heel of my hand.
“I know.”
Ryan was right, though I’d never admit to it. The team had lost its focus, and by team , I meant me. I dropped Sunny off around the block from Benson’s garage and watched her walk away. My chest tightened with every step she took.
Leaving her near him riled me in a way I hadn't experienced before. He was a mean-as-fuck asshole and I hated that she worked for him, that she had to be anywhere near him, but Ryan’s warning rolled around my head.
In the end I sat in the driver’s seat and fumed, watching her walk away, and counted the seconds until I could feel her against me again. Throwing myself into my work and daily regimen—which had been utterly ignored in the last few days—felt better than good. Every spare inch of energy I could muster was thrown into tweaking that car—and its driver—to perfection.
I distanced myself from the activity, working through as though the driver were simply another well oiled machine who needed touching up and retraining and refused to feel the burn until the end of each workday when the exhaustion set in and I collapsed back into my own car and headed home.
Until the moment I saw Sunny again.
She kissed me every time, no matter how filthy I was, winding her arms around my neck as though I were the lifeline she needed. And for a few hours, between my house and hers, we lost ourselves to the pleasure of exploring each other, finding our geek together and forgetting about Benson.
It was a state I knew couldn’t last. Something pushed her away from me as much as I tried to draw her in—two similar ends of magnets repelling each other. I fought it, even if it seemed to be our nature.
I was fighting a battle I was scared I couldn’t win, that no degree of determination could force the result I wanted to achieve.
“Where’d you go?” Sunny rapped the back of my knuckles with the stumpy end of a butter knife. That was one thing we’d discovered we both loved—cooking. Or food, to be more precise. We even followed some of the same social accounts. It was good to know we had something in common, apart from the track—and that was something I never thought I would say.
That, and cheesy as hell B-grade sci fi movies.
The regular argument was whether we watched Kurt Russell or Richard Dean Anderson. If fights were on important stuff like that, they were the sort I could live with, rather than the sort currently brewing in my head.
“I want you to come and work for me.” And fuck Benson right off. Any way I phrased it the words came out wrong. I winced. “Damn. I meant, what do you want to watch tonight, sweetheart?”
Sunny shot me an exasperated look tinged with amusement. “Something old. And you know my answer to the first one.”
“The don’t talk about it and it’ll go away rule?” I groused, unable to hold my silence. “It’s bullshit, Sunny. He treats you—and the rest of the world—like his personal sandbox, and sprays everything he owns.”
“Stop, Hawk.” Sunny sighed. She placed the butter knife on the chopping board in front of her, lined up exactly to the edge of the bench.
“I’m sorry.” I dropped the rolls I’d cut open onto the breadboard and wrapped my arms around her, kissing the top of her head and squeezed my eyes shut. “I, hell— I’ll stop. I’m sorry.”
“Mmhmm.” She nestled against my chest. “Why do you hate each other so much?”
“Apart from the asshole factor?” I grinned as she rolled her eyes. “Nah, it goes a bit deeper than that.” I tilted her head back to stare into her eyes. “Are you sure you want to hear the dirty deeds your boss has done, Coops?”
“Are they dirtier than yours?” She held my gaze, arching up to press her lips to mine.
I gave into the kiss, let her play her game for a long minute, sinking into the feel of her before I ruined her outlook on her career.
“Yes, Coops. He’s dirty, and not in the good way.”
She huffed at me, turning in my arms. “Tell me.”
It was a terrible idea, sharing her driver’s history, but on the other hand…
“We used to share a mentor. Before I met York.” I swallowed. “Benson—we competed. Daily. In everything. There were six of us in a small program to fast track skills and career options, to get us onto the professional circuit faster. Two drivers stood out.” I gave her a lopsided grin. “It was like having a best friend or a brother—though maybe because I have neither of those, I had a somewhat skewed expectation. Like those based around trust.”
“Oh.” Sunny stilled, then twisted around in my arms, staring up at me with a breath of innocence in her eyes that I was about to screw right to hell. “What happened?”
“The usual. We competed to be the best. And there can only be one of those. Benson put everything into one race. Well, we both did but…he put in a little more than the rest of us.”
“He cheated, didn’t he?” Sunny said in a flat voice.
“Nailed it. You know him so well.” I dipped my head to capture her mouth in a quick kiss. “He had worked the track out in his head, found the perfect place for an ‘accident’.” I let out a hollow laugh. “An accident that wasn’t visible to anyone else except the drivers on that corner. An accident he initiated. He clipped the side of my car, pushing us both into a controlled spin. I was supposed to go into the barrier, and because of the angle he came in at it would look like I’d pushed past him and shoved him off the track, but… See, the thing is that on a track, you think you have it all worked out, where everyone is, what everyone is doing. Benson got so focused on his own plan that he forgot to cover his ass.”
“Ow?” Sunny held my gaze, not shying away and I admired her for it.
So much so that I didn’t soften my words, though maybe I should have.
“We had a young kid racing with us. Not young in age, just…you know how Benny appeared young when you were talking to him about your repairs?”
Sunny smiled. “He’s such a sweetie.”
“Yes, he is. And so was this kid.”
“Was.”
The warning signs were there but I either didn’t see them, or I ignored them.
Lying to myself had never been my strength.
“He hit the wall head on. Crumple zones worked for the car and against him. The whole vehicle folded in on itself. He came out of it in one piece but nothing worked right. Not his brain, not his body…he’s damaged, Coops. He can’t, he doesn’t function like he should.”
Silence reigned in the kitchen.
I pressed my lips to the top of her head. “They cleared the incident on the track as a freak accident, but I knew what had happened, what he had set up. Benson walked away with corporate funding. I…am where I am. Three people know what happened that day, though only two of us remember it.” I sucked in a shuddering breath and raked my hand through my hair. Energy of the sort I hated rioted through me in a chaotic mass I couldn’t shake. “I’m sorry. I shouldn't have told you that.”
“You told me one side.” Sunny lifted her head, her face clear of tears, though I had expected something more—distress, anguish…but it was anger that blazed in her face. Anger directed at me.
I took a slow step back. “Sunny, we…”
“You were both assholes, fighting for something that didn’t matter. Something that ruined a life.” She shook her head and pushed at me, pushed past me.
I let her go, pressed my lips together. “Sunny, stop?—”
“No! No more stop , no more come work for me . No more .”
The words were shouted in my face and for the first time I saw Sunny truly angry. It was so different from the spats we’d had in the past. Emotion roiled to the surface, flushing her face. Wide eyes surveyed me in a new light.
A pang struck me as I recognized the same way she looked at Benson.
“Sunny.” I swallowed my pride, my tearing heart, and tried again. “Coops. Please. That’s not why I told you.”
“Isn’t it?” she sneered at me. “Haven’t you said since the first day that you wanted me on your team? That you’d do anything to get me away from Benson? Yes, I hear all the rumors, Hawk. Maybe this is that last step in your plan to get me away from Benson, but you know what?” She shoved my chest with both hands, letting out a growl that the me of ten minutes ago would have found cute as hell. Now I didn’t have the bandwidth to register anything but the distress that finally showed up, but not in the way I ever wanted to see on her. “All it’s done is to get me away from you .”
She shoved past me while my brain was still playing catch up with my mouth and stormed out of my apartment. I shot for the door but she was faster than I gave her credit for—though lacking shoes, as she had left her favorite red Blahniks in my kitchen.
“Sunny!” I yelled down the corridor, not caring who I woke or who heard me. “Stop!”
She reached the elevator before me and darted inside.
I slapped the button but the doors were already closing. The last frame I caught was Sunny staring at me from the absolute back of the elevator, the anger drained from her face, replaced with abject fear.
That stopped me. Though I could have made it through the closing gap I stepped back, swallowing the curse that rose to my lips, and let her go.