15. Kara
15
KARA
T he hospital was fascinating. We were given scrubs to change into, then Grayson threw us into the deep end. I’d expected to be rolling bandages or maybe running mail from one department to another.
But Grayson explained that the volunteer program here was more about the emotional support of patients. Sometimes, that meant supervising someone who couldn’t be left alone, so they didn’t need to be restrained to the bed. Sometimes it meant comforting a child while a parent was seeking help for a sibling. We did some cleaning and other basic admin tasks when the nurses found out we were volunteers and pounced on us with glee.
I worried Hawk would find the whole thing irritating, but when I looked around for him about two hours into our first shift and found an old lady clutching his arm for support as he walked her to X-ray, I saw his expression.
It wasn’t boredom.
It was satisfaction. Something I hadn’t seen from him when he was at the club.
At two fifty, Grayson called us over. “Well? What do you think? This is generally about the time our volunteers quit. So I totally understand if that’s the case.”
I gaped at him. “They quit after their first shift?”
He nodded. “More than half. Probably closer to seventy-five percent. So trust me, I understand if it’s not for you. This place can be hard. Not just physically, though the vomit and shit isn’t my favorite. I don’t have to deal with that so much with my regular patients, but down here, there’s a lot of it. I think it’s the emotional side that gets to people more though. Being around people who are hurting isn’t always easy. You both were amazing today, but if you’re out, I get it.”
“I’m not out,” Hawk said quickly. “Not even a little bit.”
The determination in his voice was so strong, and pride swelled within me. “I’m not out either.”
Grayson’s expression switched to thrilled in an instant. He slung his arms around our shoulders. “Really? I knew I liked you two for a reason! Thank you!”
Then he realized he was touching us and jumped back. “Shit. Sorry. That was a bit much. How about a stoic handshake instead?” He cringed in Hawk’s direction. “Please still come back. I won’t always be this overexcited, I promise. This is just very unusual.”
“We’ll definitely come back.” I swallowed hard and said the words that had been playing over in the back of my mind for the entire shift, even though I’d given it my all. I’d seen Grayson’s work today. Saw the way he cared for his patients. It had reminded me there was one last thing on my list of things to do today. “I’d like to make an appointment with you. Two, actually. One for Hayley Jade. And one for me.”
If Grayson was surprised, he didn’t show it. “I don’t have my schedule with me, but your phone number is on the paperwork you filled out. Is it okay if I call you to make a time later?”
I nodded. “Please do.”
He glanced at Hawk. “If you ever want to talk…”
Hawk screwed up his face. “Me? It wasn’t me who was buried alive.” He glanced at me apologetically. “Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to just bring it up like that.”
I shook my head. “It’s okay. I think we need to talk about it. Or at least, I do.”
Grayson’s expression was gentle when he looked at Hawk. “She wasn’t the only one hurt by what happened. You love her and you thought you were going to lose her. That’s trauma.”
Hawk shoved to his feet. “I’m fine. I’ve been through worse.”
Grayson backed off pretty quickly. “I just want you to know I’m here. If you need me.”
“I don’t.”
Gray clapped his hands together. “Great. Then, Kara, I’ll call you later. Hawk, thanks for today. See you next shift. Anytime you want to come lend a hand, we’d appreciate it.”
Hawk was already walking away.
We both watched him go.
Grayson murmured to me, “Keep an eye on him, Kara. He’s not as strong as he tries to make people believe.”
I glanced at Grayson in surprise. It had taken me weeks to know the real Hawk, and Grayson had seen through his hard outer shell in the space of an afternoon. “You’re really good at your job, you know?” I said to him.
He grinned. “It’s the glove balloons, isn’t it?”
The next few days, we fell into a routine of sorts. Hayden stayed in his room most of the time when he was at the clubhouse, and the rest of the time he went to work at the restaurant. We all pretended he wasn’t working for Luca Guerra, and I fought the urge to go to his room every night.
I’d thought he would come to me, but whether he was respecting Hawk or the club boundaries, I didn’t know.
I focused on getting Hayley Jade settled at school and reveling in the happiness and color that had started coming back to her. She’d begun skipping in and out of the building each day when Hawk and I dropped her or picked her up at the gates.
Unhappy people did not skip.
I spent most days at the hospital. The clinic didn’t run on all of them, but that didn’t lessen the need for volunteers. I liked feeling needed and being helpful. I wished I could do more than hold hands, murmur soothing words, and file papers, but it was a start toward independence, and it was a step in the direction of a life I could see myself enjoying.
Grayson had a new bad joke ready for me every time I passed him in a hallway, and he promised he was working on a new glove balloon camel. I couldn’t even imagine how that would work.
On Saturday, I woke up early, just as the sun was rising. I tossed and turned for thirty minutes but couldn’t get back to sleep. Next to my room, Hayden’s door opened and closed softly.
Nothing had happened between us since we’d come here, and I was beginning to think I’d imagined the make-out session we’d had on the couch in his apartment. As well as the chemistry we’d had when he’d pulled me into that movie theater bathroom. I didn’t know where I stood with him after Hawk had blabbed about filling me with his cum so Hayden would know who I belonged to.
Maybe that had been enough to scare him off.
The thought left me breathless. I wanted Hawk.
But I wanted Hayden too.
So I got up, shrugged on a robe, and belted it around my waist. I slipped from my room quietly, finding Hayden alone in the common area behind the bar where there was now a brand-new coffee machine that everyone was loving.
“Could I have one of those?”
He jerked around, hissing when hot milk sloshed over his hand.
I winced. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
He mopped at the mess on the countertop. “No, it’s okay. I didn’t realize anyone was awake. I’m overly jumpy around here.” He smiled ruefully. “Still kind of half expecting someone to put a gun to the back of my head at any minute.”
I sighed, hating he was so on edge. It wasn’t fair for him to live like that. He was a fish out of water here, nobody talking to him, and making it worse by isolating himself, even from me. “You don’t have to stay here, you know,” I assured him, even though I hated the idea of him going back to his awful little apartment. A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Oh my God. Where are your kittens?”
He bit his lip and then motioned for me to follow him. He went to his bedroom door and opened it a crack.
Three sleeping kittens, who seemed to have doubled their size in the last week or so, were curled up on the end of his bed.
He closed the door again and gave a small laugh. “I snuck them in early one morning when everyone was asleep. You haven’t heard them?”
I shook my head. “No, not at all. Hawk said the walls are actually pretty thick.”
“Not thick enough to avoid hearing you shouting Hawk’s name when you come though.” He chuckled, throwing the dishcloth in the sink.
Heat flushed through me, burning my cheeks. “You heard that.”
“Everybody heard that.”
I buried my face in my hands. “I’m so embarrassed.”
He wrapped his fingers around mine and tugged them away. “Why? You were enjoying yourself. Nobody begrudges you that.”
“We could have been more discreet.” Except I still remember how strong that orgasm had been. How I’d been so mindless to the pleasure that there really hadn’t been any stopping the way my body reacted. My breath stuttered at the very thought.
“You’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you?” Hayden asked softly.
I really needed to get better control of my expressions. “No,” I lied, though all I could think about was Hawk filling my pussy, his fingers in my ass, increasing the pleasure and preparing me for the possibility of having two men at once.
I was suddenly boiling hot, my skin an inferno. I tugged at the collar of my pajamas, trying to force the cool morning air down my top before I suffocated. “How’s the restaurant going?”
Hayden’s heated gaze lingered on me for another long moment. “I want you to come.”
I jerked. “Excuse me?” But it was too late. My core was already tingling from thinking about what I’d done with Hawk. It could barely handle the idea of Hayden making requests of it too. Arousal pooled, and I squeezed my thighs together, trying to relieve the building pressure.
Slowly, his gaze locked on mine, he put down his coffee. Closed the gap between us and ghosted his fingers over my hip.
On instinct, I raised my hands to his chest, feeling the hard muscle beneath his shirt and fighting the urge to undo his buttons so I could touch his skin.
I trembled when his fingers found the mid-thigh length hem of my nightshirt and brushed my skin, slowly inching higher toward my panties.
His warm breath coasted over my cheek and neck. If it were even possible, Hayden’s voice seemed to get an octave lower. “I meant I wanted you to come to the restaurant, but now I’m a whole lot more interested in what you thought I meant.”
Embarrassment rocketed through me again, and I tried to pull away.
He wouldn’t let me. He grabbed my thigh and my arm, refusing to let me go. That hand on my leg slipped beneath the line of my panties, still way too far away from my center, just resting on my hip, but the knowledge he only had to move a few inches to be where I really wanted him was maddening.
My breaths got too fast, my pussy throbbing with desire.
His lips ran over my neck and ear. “I can’t stop thinking about him fucking you. And how I wish I’d come to his room and joined in.”
The sound that escaped my mouth was probably something Hawk would have made fun of me about, claiming I actually did squeak like a mouse.
“I want to know if that makes you wet,” he whispered in my ear. “I want to put my fingers to your pussy and know if the idea of having both of us turns you on as much as it does for me. You wet for us, Kara?”
His hand slid between us so agonizingly slowly I wanted to scream. He was giving me every opportunity to stop him, but I just wanted him to get there faster.
“Yes,” I murmured.
Hayden groaned into my shoulder, biting the flesh there as he cupped my mound, putting pressure to my clit. It wasn’t enough. I ached for more, and I clutched his arms, desperate for something to hold on to because my legs wobbled at the sensation he created inside me.
“Tell me I can make you come.” His lips trailed up my neck. “Tell me I can touch you like that, right here, right now, even though I don’t deserve to.”
I didn’t want to think about that. About why he didn’t think himself worthy of being with me. I just wanted to feel. Anybody could walk out of their rooms at any minute. Not Hayley Jade, who would be asleep for another hour at least, but there was a club full of other men and women who could see us like this.
But in the moment, I didn’t care.
I’d waited so long for Hayden to touch me.
The memory of him and whatever this was between us was all that had kept me going for years, even when I’d thought him dead. It was him I’d see in the darkness. Him I’d thought of when everything around me felt lost. His touch I’d craved when Josiah’s cruel fingers had hurt me.
I covered his hand with mine, pressing it deep between my legs, giving him all the permission he sought, even if I was too much of a little mouse to voice how badly I wanted him.
His fingers sank between my folds.
We both groaned.
“So fucking wet. Damn it, Kara.” He twisted us, pressing my back into the bar and crowding me in. He drew his free hand down the back of my leg, lifting it up off the floor and wrapping it around his waist.
My eyes closed at the gentle rhythm he worked my core with. In and out, alternating between strokes of my clit.
I let go of him and leaned my elbows back on the countertop. My head fell back, breasts pointed toward the ceiling while he drove my body closer and closer to the orgasm I so desperately wanted from him.
“You’re so beautiful.” He leaned over me. “Fuck, I wish you were naked right now. I want to do this slow and sweet, drive you mad until you beg me to let you come.”
“I can’t wait,” I moaned softly, hips rolling to meet each thrust of his fingers. I wanted more too. The idea of him having me naked on the bar was intoxicating. A thrill of forbidden lust shot through me at the very thought.
“I know, sweetheart. I got you. You’re nearly there.” He pressed against my clit, fingering me until every slide of his fingers produced a moan.
The budding swirl of an orgasm twisted through my lower belly, spiraling down to the place his fingers filled me.
Behind Hayden’s back, a door opened.
I jerked my head up, eyes flying open, gaze colliding into Hawk’s.
I froze.
Hayden glanced over his shoulder, saw who it was, and turned back to me without hesitation. “Come for me, Kara. You’re drowning my hand. I’m not stopping until you’re done.”
I shook my head desperately, trying to fight the delicious grips of the orgasm digging in tight when Hayden refused to stop. The base of his hand hit my clit every time his fingers filled me, but I couldn’t stop staring at Hawk, frozen to the spot, watching me let another man touch me.
Apologies sat hot on my tongue, begging for me to let them loose. My upbringing screamed obscenities in my head about what a slut and whore I was, and that only men could have multiple partners.
That the pleasure inside me was sinful.
Not mine to receive.
And yet Hayden was so hell-bent on giving it to me, I couldn’t stand it.
“Hawk.” I needed something from him. Anything.
His permission to feel the way I did.
His hand went to the bulge in his sweatpants. He swore beneath his breath, eyes burning as he watched Hayden push me closer and closer to the edge. Hawk’s fingers strangled his erection.
“You heard what he said, Little Mouse,” he bit out through clenched teeth. “Come for him.”
Hayden pushed a third finger up inside me, and I splintered apart, throwing an arm over my mouth so my cries of pleasure wouldn’t wake the rest of the clubhouse. I panted through the shock waves of ecstasy that rippled from the place he’d touched me, the orgasm wiping out any doubt or confusion and leaving only pleasure and desire in its wake.
Hayden slowed his movements, letting me coast down the other side of the orgasm and bask in the afterglow.
He kissed me softly, his lips finding mine until the kisses turned hungrier, deeper, that connection between us so magnetic it was impossible to ignore.
I didn’t feel complete when he wasn’t here. When I wasn’t touching him.
My heart swelled with a desire to never let him go.
And yet I had to.
He pulled away all too soon, well before I was ready.
But when he did, Hawk was gone.