Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JACK
“He is so excessively handsome!”
~ Mrs. Bennet
Hawk had been to my house many times before. Hell, he’d helped me renovate almost every room in the place. But bringing him home tonight felt different.
For one, he hadn’t been here in a couple of weeks, which meant there were plenty of little changes he noticed.
“I like the trim you picked,” he said, pointing to the crown molding above the cabinets in the mud room.
“You picked it,” I said with a soft laugh while we kicked off our shoes on the tile floor. “Remember you shared that folder of inspo pics? This was from one of those. Or… as close as I could figure, anyway.”
Hawk’s cheeks turned a little pink. “Really? No wonder I like it. What else have you done since I was here last? Did you decide what to do with the addition yet?”
I thought about the project I’d spent most of my nights working on.
“I, uh… I have some plans.” And when I thought about what those were, it seemed impossible that I’d hidden the truth of my feelings for Hawk from myself for as long as I had.
“But since you suggested turning it into a dedicated ravishing room, I may have to rethink. How does one decorate a ravishing room?” I wondered.
“I have ideas.” His eyes heated. “I may have to start a new inspiration folder.”
“Can’t wait. In the meantime, I did finish tiling and grouting the upstairs shower,” I offered with a salacious eyebrow wiggle designed to make him laugh. “I got that rain showerhead if you wanted to take a look.”
“I think I read about this in one of my books.” Hawk’s gaze followed his fingertips as they trailed lightly up the center of my sternum, fire-hot even through my shirt. “You plan to lure innocent little me upstairs to see your etchings and then have your wicked way with me, is that it?”
My heart rate sped up so fast I was nearly light-headed with it. My hands shook with the need to touch him. Seeing him here brought home just how much I wanted him in my life as more than my friend, more than my employee, more than my renovation partner.
“You caught me,” I said roughly. “There’ll be no going back after that. You’ll be ruined.”
He lifted his face to mine and studied me for a moment. “Promise?” he whispered.
Without another word, I grabbed his hand and led him upstairs, directly into my bedroom. Hawk let out a surprised bark of laughter as I tugged him across the threshold… and then his laughter dissolved into a moan when I pulled him against me and covered his lips with mine.
He tasted like the cool water of Glassy Creek after a long hike. Like fresh air after spending too long in a crowd. Like freedom. Like home.
I couldn’t believe it was possible to crave someone so much when I’d spent so long denying to myself that I wanted him at all.
I was still half-convinced—maybe more than half—that it might go bad somehow in a way I didn’t know how to fix, but I could no more push him away in that moment than I could stop myself from breathing.
And when Hawk’s hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer so that I had to wrap my arms around him to keep us both from tumbling to the ground, there was no choice to be made at all anymore. Hawk was every bit as hungry and demanding as I was.
Our mouths explored each other while the sounds we made were almost embarrassingly desperate—or maybe that was just me.
It was hard to tell, and it didn’t matter.
All I knew was a gut-deep need for him, to hold and touch and devour him without ever letting go.
Now that the lid was unlocked and flung open on this opportunity to be with him this way, I was all in.
“Hands are shaking.” His words were muffled against my mouth.
“Sorry.”
“No,” he said, moving his mouth away from mine so he could let out a nervous laugh. Our cheeks pressed together, his stubble rubbing against mine. “Me. My hands are shaking. It’s… I feel out of control.”
It’s his first time, for fuck’s sake, I admonished myself. First time being with someone this way. First time with you. Stop attacking his face.
“Shit.” I pulled back and cupped his face, rubbing my thumb over the tiny faded scar below his eye. “I’m sorry. I’m going too fast.”
“Not too fast,” he said gently, leaning forward to kiss me again. “Just… overwhelming. I want you so much, Jack. I’ve dreamed of this—you—for…” He let out a breath and dropped his eyes. “A long time.”
“Is that right?” I tilted his chin back up until he met my eyes again. Anticipation filled the air between us like a living thing, throbbing and swirling and sucking up the oxygen in the room. “Then I’m really, really glad you’re here with me now.”
Hawk’s mouth opened in surprise, and I couldn’t help but lean forward to taste it again.
We kissed for a long time, standing just inside the door to my room still fully clothed, our mouths becoming frantic once again.
My hands mapped the angular contours of his body through his clothes—his pebbled nipples, his firm stomach, the curve of his ass.
His cock was already hard, straining against his zipper as he rubbed himself against my thigh, and his fingers were threaded into my hair like he was afraid if he let go, I might disappear altogether.
His words from the cave this morning came back to me…
And then I wake up, and poof.
As much as I wanted Hawk—and fuck did I want him in every possible way—I also knew him.
I knew what he wanted and needed from me tonight, and it was more than just kisses and unbridled passion.
He deserved a slow, deliberate, no-holds-barred seduction.
He deserved to know that while he might have dreamed of this for a long time, I wanted him just as badly.
I gentled the kiss and pulled back slightly. Hawk made a whimpering noise and clung tighter.
“Baby,” I whispered against his lips. “Shhh. Let go for a second.”
He made a frantic, negative sound and pushed himself harder against me.
“Bird.” I grasped his jaw in both hands and held him in place. I kissed him softly, on his full lower lip and his cupid’s bow, on either side of his mouth, on his stubbled chin. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”
“There’s no need to wait!” he said breathlessly. “Please—”
“Hawk,” I insisted, “do you know the first time I noticed how gorgeous you are?”
Distracted, he pulled back slightly and blinked like the question confused him. His big, brown eyes were dilated with lust and confusion. “Uh. Yeah. Last night… or this morning, I guess. I was there, remember?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Last night was when my blinders fell away, and I realized all that I might lose if I kept trying to keep you in this tidy little friendship box in my mind. It was not the first time I wanted you.”
He frowned, and his nose wrinkled. “So, then… two weeks ago. When I, um… when I propositioned you.” He bit his lip. “When I changed things.”
I shook my head, fighting a smile. “Wrong again,” I said softly.
“That was when I realized you might want me, which, yes, forced me to think about some things I’d been too afraid to let myself think about.
But your cherry-popping proposition didn’t change my feelings for you.
They were there all along, just waiting for me to stop pushing them away. ”
“But then…”
I huffed out a laugh and pressed a kiss to the tiny dent between his eyebrows. “Four years ago, Hawkins. Four.”
“No,” he said flatly. “Impossible.”
“So. Very. Possible,” I informed him, punctuating each word with a tiny kiss to his lips.
I nudged him to the overstuffed chair in the corner and pushed him down gently before kneeling in front of him.
I had to find a way to distract myself, or this whole thing would be over in a minute.
“You know, Webb and I bonded really quickly after I came to the Hollow because he knew what it felt like to have a business and family depend on him, right? He understood where I was in my life, my circumstances, because he was in a similar place. But you…” I shook my head and began stripping off his socks.
“You understood me. I knew you were special from that first day. That I wanted to protect you at all costs. But you were a kid then, so I figured, ‘Well, Jack, you’ve never had a brother. Maybe this is what it feels like.’”
“But it wasn’t?” he whispered.
I shook my head. “That was only when I first knew you,” I said in my best Colin Firth impression. “It has been many years since I have thought you one of the most handsome men of my acquaintance—and by that, I mean utterly gorgeous, down to your soul, Hawk Sunday.”
“Oh my god.” Hawk’s eyes widened, and he leaned forward in the chair with a gasp. “Oh. My. God. Is this actually happening? Did you just… did you just quote Darcy at me?”
“Maybe.” I was pretty sure I’d butchered Darcy at him, but with Hawk, it was generally the thought that counted. I pecked him on the lips and pushed him back in his seat to resume my story. “Remember that time we went swimming at Lake Nitka a few years ago?”
“Yeah. We… um…” Hawk licked his lips, his gaze focused on my hands, which had begun massaging his feet and then the thick muscles of his calves. “We did the, ah… the zip-lining thing. Just us. It was one of the first times it was just you and me on one of our adventures.”
“That’s right. And you decided to take your shirt off before we climbed up the tower…” I massaged higher on his leg, my fingers delving under the hem of his shorts and sifting through the coarse hair there.
“Yeah.” Hawk’s voice was strangely gravelly, his neck flushed red. If I worried for a second that too much talking and confession might ruin the mood, one glance at the bulge in his shorts proved me wrong.
Hawk had always been a lover of words.