Chapter 17 #3
I moved closer to him and pulled him into my arms again, trying to ignore the wet layers of T-shirt between us. “Don’t fuck with Hawk Sunday,” I said softly.
“No kidding!” Gracie stood up and did a little dance. “He was sooo hard-core, Jack. Like, literal, actual heroism. I can’t wait to post about… Oh, no! I can’t post this at all, can I?”
“Not this,” Hawk agreed. “But what if I made you an official collaborator on the Save Fogg Peak Instagram account? That way, you could post all the other pictures you take on your hikes or of our protests. You’d be doing me a favor.”
“Seriously?” Gracie’s big eyes went wide. She sniffed a little and pulled the emergency blanket around her. “This is the best day.”
I met Hawk’s eyes. “You think he’s going to follow through on his promises?”
He nodded. “Honestly, it’s the only way Evola stands a chance at developing here. If we showed these videos to Little Pippin Hollow, they’d vote straight no on everything.”
I leaned in and kissed him again. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”
“Guys?” Gracie said, nudging Hawk with her elbow. “The rain has stopped. Should we make a break for it?”
Hawk let go of me and turned on his phone flashlight. “Absolutely. Lead the way.”
Gracie and I did the same. Then I sent a second text to Webb, this one telling him all was well and promising to explain more later, and we set off down the Red Trail toward the main parking area, where Gracie had left her car.
It took us three times longer to get down the mountain than it normally would, and by the time we got to Gracie’s beaten-up sedan, she was clearly exhausted.
“Why don’t you let me drive? I can drop you off now and bring you your car tomorrow,” Hawk suggested.
Gracie stood straight, her battered emergency blanket hanging off her shoulders like a queen’s robe, and fixed him with a steely-eyed glare I hadn’t known her capable of.
“I’m not a kid, Hawk,” she insisted. “I just helped you foil Simon’s shitty plan to push this resort through. I’m capable of driving myself.”
I coughed to cover my laugh, and Hawk pressed his lips together to hide his smile. “Understood,” he said solemnly. “In that case, will you drop us at Rock Cut pullout before you go home?”
She grinned. “That I can do.”
Once we were on the road, my phone pinged with several messages, all from Webb. The final one agreed to take my truck as long as I called him when I was safely home to tell him the story.
When Gracie dropped us off, she got out of the car to give Hawk a big hug. “Thank you for coming to help. I knew you would.”
Hawk shifted awkwardly. “Of course. Peaky for life, right?” He reached out a hand to fist-bump.
“Always,” she said, bumping it and jumping in for another quick hug.
As soon as she’d hopped back in her car and drove off, Hawk turned to me.
The air was heavy with the leftover humidity from the rain, and the moon had risen fully, bathing the world in milky light.
The scent of rain and fresh pine needles filled the air and the hush of latent drips falling from nearby trees formed a soft patter in the distance.
We stared at each other, and I’d just opened my mouth to ask if he was okay when Hawk suddenly shoved me against the hood of his car. I barely gasped in a breath before he attacked my mouth with his.
I grabbed him to keep from falling backward. He was all hands and tongue and hard dick lurching up into my inner thigh.
My hands roamed everywhere on his body without thought, shoving up his shirt and mapping the contours of his back and shoulders.
“Want you,” he panted against my mouth. “So fucking much.”
He yanked my rain jacket from around my waist and dropped it on the dirty ground before kneeling on it and fumbling at the waistband of my shorts.
All I could do was stare down at him in the moonlight.
Rock Cut was nearly impassible after the rain, and the chances of anyone driving to this out-of-the-way pullout at this time of night were infinitesimally small…
but they weren’t zero, which made it even more electrifying.
“Oh, fuck,” I moaned as he palmed my dick. “Hurry.”
I yanked off my shirt and leaned over to pull his off, too. I wanted his skin. I wanted to feel him against me as much as possible.
His cold hands fished out my hot dick, causing me to hiss at the sensation. Before I could finish making the sound, it turned into a groan of pleasure at the feel of his hot, slick tongue wrapping around my cock.
His eyes were locked on mine, liquid and hungry, and that sexy fucking hoop in his nose winked up at me from the shadows. Hawk Sunday was a fucking wet dream… and he was on his knees for me.
My fingers tangled in his hair as I begged myself to take it easy, to keep from shoving myself as deep into his throat as possible and taking everything from him.
Neither of us said a word. The only sounds were the faint slurps from his lips and tongue and my heavy, broken breathing. The raindrops in the trees continued their irregular patter, and the cool, damp air of the summer night curled around us.
I couldn’t stand not kissing him. Even though his mouth felt amazing on me, I yanked him up and crushed his mouth to mine, kissing him again and again, tasting myself on his tongue, and wanting to imprint those mingled tastes in my brain forever.
My hands shoved down the back of his shorts and squeezed his ass cheeks. All I could think about was burying myself deep inside him and joining us together as closely as we could get.
I scrambled to think of what I could use as lube until I remembered that Hawk had started carrying it in his first aid kit several weeks ago after I’d provoked him at the town meeting. The knowledge that had once made me wild with jealousy was now driving me wild in a whole other way.
After gently pushing him away, I leaned over and grabbed the pack, rifling through it until I found what I was looking for.
“I’m negative, Hawk,” I said quickly, knowing his status was most likely the same. “Was tested last month. Can I take you bare?”
His pupils were dark in the moonlight, and his hair was a tangled mess. He’d never been more beautiful to me. “Of course,” he breathed. “Yes. God, yes. How can you even—mmpfh.”
I kissed him hard again, trying to keep our mouths connected while stripping us both out of our shorts until they lay around our booted ankles. I pulled away and turned Hawk until he faced the hood of his car.
“Bend over, sweetheart. Just like that.” The pale globes of his ass were easy to see in the dark. I squeezed some lube onto my fingers and reached between his cheeks. “Okay?”
His long, drawn-out groan was answer enough. I leaned forward and pressed a warm kiss between his shoulder blades. “I love you,” I said into the now-familiar scent of his skin. “So much.”
Hawk brought a hand back to grab me, squeezing my arm as he choked out the same words.
After stretching him as much as I had patience for, I slicked myself up and began to enter him slowly. “More, Jack, fuck. More.”
Within moments, I was slamming into him, shaking the car and pushing grunts out of him as he begged me to fuck him harder. The freedom of connecting with him wildly like this, outside under the stormy night sky, was unlike anything I’d ever even fantasized about.
“You feel so good, baby. So good. I’ll never get enough.”
“Show me,” he begged.
I clasped his hip with one hand and the top of his shoulder with the other while I fucked him until my brain was about to explode along with my balls.
Hawk reached down and gave himself a few firm strokes, crying out as he came with my name on his lips just seconds before I lost the rhythm to my own release.
I shouted into the night and stayed pressed close behind him for several breaths.
I murmured words into the back of his ear, words about how much I loved him… how impressed I was by his loyalty and dedication… how beautiful he was, inside and out… and how I wanted to share moments like this with him for the rest of our lives.
I told him that I wanted the fairy tale.
When I finally pulled out of him, he turned around and held me, burying his face in my neck and pressing small kisses to the sensitive skin there.
“I want to go to your house and open all the windows to the breeze,” he whispered. “I want to sleep in your arms and make love to you before breakfast. That’s what happily ever after looks like today.”
I ran my nose along his jaw. “Today?” I repeated, amused and utterly besotted.
“Mmhmm. You know, in books they make it seem like happily ever after is a single moment frozen in time. They never tell you what happens after the story ends. In real life, people grow. Dreams change. So maybe every day you get to write a new happily ever after. I just know I want all of them to be with you.” He pulled back to look in my eyes. “Take me home, Jack.”
So I did.