9. Hawk
9
HAWK
TEN MINUTES EARLIER
I ’d been sitting outside Chaos’s shitty apartment building for hours, watching him and Kara through the cracked blinds of his ground-floor apartment. I was fully aware I was a loser. As pathetic as a stupid high school kid with a crush, who followed girls around when they didn’t even know he was alive.
I’d turned full-blown stalker because sitting at the clubhouse, knowing she was out in the world unprotected, was more than I could handle.
So I’d sat on my damn bike, getting a numb ass, and turning Peeping Tom like the perverted creep I was.
They were just fucking sitting there. Watching a movie or something.
But he had his arm around her, and every part of me wanted to storm in there and rip it off her. Shove him across the room, up against a wall.
I closed my eyes for a second, the idea of being chest to chest with Chaos, our faces too close, coming into view.
Kara watching from the other side of the room as he undressed me. Stripped his clothes. Forced me down on my knees and demanded I take his cock.
My dick twitched behind my jeans.
I groaned, squeezing my eyes tight and pushing out the idea.
It didn’t help when I opened my eyes and he and Kara had changed positions, him lying over the top of her, her skirt around her waist and her panties on display for the entire fucking street to see.
Who was I kidding? There was nobody out here but me. I was the only asshole watching the woman he loved get railed by the guy he… Fuck. I didn’t know what Hayden was. Or what I wanted from him.
Only that I couldn’t stop thinking about the things he’d said at the hospital. About the idea of me fucking him.
I watched him grind over Kara, and the jealousy was there, hot and fast, the desire to storm in there and rip his hands off my woman.
Only when I waited a minute, watched the way he kissed her, the way her body responded to his touch so sweetly I could practically hear the way I knew she would be moaning, the jealousy disappeared.
Leaving desire in its place.
My dick got hard, and this time, I knew it wasn’t just for Kara.
“Great,” I muttered. “Just fucking great.”
I was the biggest fucking hypocrite. I’d given War such a hard time when he’d fallen for a guy.
I’d known all along that part of it was me projecting my own unresolved feelings about the idea of men fucking men.
It wasn’t done in the club. We’d grown up with fathers and their friends who used words like faggot and fairy. I’d had my first woman shoved at my dick when I was barely old enough to get it up.
Nobody had ever asked me if a guy might have gotten me harder.
I hadn’t questioned it either. Just shoved down the occasional realization that when I was watching porn, sometimes I watched the guy just as much as the woman.
It wasn’t that I liked the thought of them more. But that I knew what having a woman on my cock felt like. I knew what her touch did to me, and sure, I liked it. I’d fucking loved Kara’s body wrapped around mine and the feel of her curves against my skin.
I fucking loved her .
But I’d watched men fuck on TV screens. I’d watched men dance at strip clubs.
I’d thought about letting Hayden fuck me.
It had turned me on.
As did the thought of having Kara watch. Or of having her in between us, both of us impaling her, feeling Hayden’s cock nudged up against mine, both of us inside her pussy.
My balls ached with the desire building inside me.
I needed to go home.
I couldn’t sit out here watching them anymore. This was fucking torture.
I started the bike, not caring the damn engine was loud, and steered it down the shitty Saint View street Chaos called home.
I paused at the end for a sleek gray Porsche, the driver’s profile visible through the windshield as he took the corner. He lifted a hand in greeting, and I did the same back because it was instinct, and something about the guy was familiar.
I rode along the backstreets of Saint View, puzzling over how I knew the guy until my thick-as-rocks brain finally puzzled it out.
I spun the bike around so fucking fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. Within a minute, I was back on Chaos’s street and dropping my bike on the road outside his apartment, not giving a fuck if I ruined the paint.
Luca Guerra would be buried six feet under before he got anywhere near my woman.
I ran across the sparse lawn, sending my boot against a security door that didn’t live up to its name because it crumpled beneath the force of a single kick. Seriously? This was where Hayden wanted Kara to live? He had to be fucking joking.
I paused at a T intersection in the corridor, turned about and not sure which direction Chaos’s apartment was.
“Chaos!” Luca shouted. “I’m done with you not answering my calls. You owe me ten women. So unless you want me to start with the sweet little thing you picked up from the hospital this afternoon, I suggest you don’t leave me standing out here waiting.”
The red haze that dropped down over my eyes was instant.
So was the way I pulled my gun.
On silent feet, I moved along the corridor, finger over the trigger, rounding a final corner and taking aim at the back of Luca’s head, right as Chaos opened the door.
I paused. I was a decent shot but not perfect, especially not at this distance.
He might have shot me once upon a time, and maybe I owed him a bullet, but the fact I might miss Luca and hit Chaos instead had me freezing, finger shaking.
Chaos’s gaze slid to me.
Held.
When I didn’t move, he turned back to Luca.
Chaos’s eyes darkened. “You so much as come near her and you’re a dead man.”
Luca laughed, the sound uncharacteristically bitter.
I didn’t know the guy well, but from what I’d heard, he wasn’t fazed by much. His control over his emotions was exactly what made him deadly. He was sharp as a tack. Slick. He never missed.
But today that had slipped because either the guy wasn’t as good as his reputation had led me to believe. Or he was downright distracted.
He leaned in, so he was all up in Chaos’s business. “That’s a lot of talk for a man who claims to be out of the game. You gonna throw yourself back in by killing me? Wouldn’t that cause a scandal?”
“I’m not killing anyone,” Chaos said, his voice full of steely determination.
“No?” Luca sniggered. “So you’re planning to give me ten new women to replace the ones you let go?”
Chaos practically closed the gap between the two of them, so they were eye to eye.
Luca’s sharp intake of breath was audible, even from where I was standing. His breathing quickened, shoulders rising up and down with the force of nervous intakes of air.
It would be nothing for Chaos to lean in and kiss him. For him to lay his mouth across Luca’s and plunge his tongue inside, kissing him the way he…
The way he should have fucking kissed me.
Something inside me screamed in irrational jealousy. Which was all I seemed to feel these days. But unlike when I’d seen Chaos with Kara, this time it didn’t give way to wanting Luca to join us. It only fed the rage I was trying to keep a hold on.
“No,” Chaos murmured. “I’m not killing anyone. But I’m not going to stop him either.”
His gaze flickered in my direction.
Luca spun around.
My finger pressed down on the trigger.
The shot exploded from the gun, damn near deafening in the hallway. The doorframe exploded into shards of wood and plaster dust.
Chaos yelped like an injured puppy. “Jesus fuck, Hawk!” He clutched at his arm, inspecting his torn sleeve, the thin trail of blood trickling down from his bicep, and then turning around to inspect the bullet lodged into the wall. “You fucking shot me! It went right through my damn arm!”
The bullet had barely nicked him. But my fingers shook, adrenaline pumping through my blood.
Luca glanced between the two of us, suddenly more unflappable now than he’d been a second ago when it had seemed like Chaos had been going to make out with him.
I trained my gun on him again, fighting the wobble in my arms, and he just raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t the best shot, Hawk. Do you really want to try that again? He’s got a woman inside, you know?” He clapped his hands together gleefully. “Oh, of course you know! It’s the one he stole from you, right?” He leaned on the wall, completely ignoring Chaos and the blood seeping through his fingers where he clutched the graze the bullet had given him.
Kara peeped around from behind Chaos, who tried to hold her back, but she shoved him out of the way to get a better look at his arm.
She gasped at the hole in his shirt and then at me, still holding the stupid weapon I was clearly out of practice with. “Hawk!”
I didn’t say anything. I was too fucking mortified.
Not a feeling I was very experienced with, and it had me reeling. As did the sight of Chaos bleeding and the realization I’d been inches from putting that bullet into his chest.
Accidentally.
Fuck, my aim needed some serious work.
I lowered the gun. We all fucking knew I wasn’t shooting anyone with Kara standing right there.
“The neighbors have probably called the police,” Kara murmured.
Chaos and I both knew, in neighborhoods like this, the residents were used to all sorts of disturbances outside their doors, and it was a hell of a lot safer to mind your own business.
Luca chuckled. “Shall we try again? I admit some fault. Perhaps my greeting wasn’t as polite as it could have been.”
“You don’t fucking say,” Hayden growled. “I owe you nothing, Guerra.”
Luca tutted beneath his breath. “Now see, that’s where I disagree. You cost me a lot of money the other night. But I can let that go. The real problem is that you haven’t shown up for work since, and we’re opening in a few days.”
Hayden stared at him. “You don’t seriously think I’m coming back to your restaurant?”
“ Our restaurant,” Luca corrected. “You have a partial ownership, don’t forget, and your name is on the window. Have you paid any attention to your Instagram account lately? It’s not so little anymore. People are getting excited for your food…and for…uh…dessert.” His gaze slid to me. “Do tell War and fam that I’m sorry for the sex club competition, but I’m sure he’ll take it as a compliment. Maybe we can cross promote sometime?”
“Maybe you could walk barefoot across hot coals all the way to Hell?” I suggested instead.
Luca laughed like we were old friends reconnecting, which couldn’t be further from the truth. “You’re a funny man, Hawk. Is that what Chaos likes about you? Or do you have…other assets he likes more?”
Heat rose up the back of my neck again. Fucking Guerra. He knew everything, though the showdown that Chaos and I’d had on his restaurant security cameras had probably clued him in on where to poke.
He pushed off the wall, his gaze on Hayden. “I’m going to let this all slide, as long as you show up and do the job you’re contracted to do. You don’t have to like me. Nobody does, but I’m a good business partner. You live in a shithole. We both know this isn’t where you want your woman and that girl of hers growing up. We all know your dream is Sinners and what we’re doing there.”
“Dreams can change,” Hayden said bitterly.
Luca patted his cheek condescendingly. “Fine. Come to work and hate every minute if you prefer. I really don’t fucking care.” His voice lowered an octave. “But you’re in this, Hayden. There’s no backing out now. You think it would matter if Hawk had put a bullet in my back just now like the cowardly bastard he is?”
“I could try again if you like?” I growled.
Luca ignored me, his stare solely for Chaos. “If I go down, there’s a second in line. And a third. And a fourth. Nothing changes.” His gaze switched to Kara before coming back to his chef. “You’re in and you know it. Especially since you’ve got something to lose now, don’t you?”
Rage ripped through me. I raised the gun again, everything inside me desperate to pull the trigger, even though I knew I couldn’t.
Luca put his hand up, palm facing me without even looking in my direction. “Hold your fire, Quick Draw McGraw. I’m going.” He strolled down the hallway toward my gun like he didn’t have a care in the world. He dropped his voice to a whisper as he strolled past. “Keep your boy in my good books, Hawk. Neither of you will like what happens if he doesn’t show up for work this week. I want him. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I generally get what I want. One way or another.”
A possessive surge of jealousy coursed through me, hot and hard. In an instant, I grabbed Luca’s arm, hauling him in close, talking in his ear while staring straight at Hayden, even though my voice was low enough he couldn’t hear me from the other end of the corridor. “I’ll be sure to remember that the next time he asks me if I want him on his knees or on his back.”
Luca stiffened beneath my touch.
A sly smile spread across my face because he’d just confirmed his weak spot.
He liked Hayden.
Too fucking bad. This guy was a woman-trafficking piece of shit, who Chaos might have been dumb enough to get into bed with in a business sense, but fucked if I was letting someone close to Kara do anything more than that.
“See,” I whispered to Luca while staring down at Kara and Hayden watching us silently. “I get what I want, too.”
And apparently what I wanted was them.
Both of them.