34. Hawk
34
HAWK
K ara’s hair smelled of fresh apples and honey. Which I could only recognize because I’d read it on the shampoo bottle in her shower when I’d been looking for a washcloth. It was girly, but I liked it a whole lot more than the cheap-ass soap I normally used. I sucked in deep breaths, vaguely pleased that if I moved my head lower, to her skin, the scent of me still clung to her.
Or maybe that was the scent of the sex we’d spent half the night having. We’d cleaned each other up, but neither of us had showered, falling asleep with her in my arms more important than washing off.
She breathed softly now, her robe falling open in her sleep to display her tits. The hem had crept up around her ass, and if I hadn’t been worried about her being sore from the night before, I would have cupped her breast and exposed that sweet pussy, waking her up in the best way I knew how .
Instead I just lay there, feeling her warmth, oddly comforted by the feel of her there in my arms.
The panicked feeling from last night when I thought I’d lost her had been replaced by a weird calmness.
I didn’t want to run. I didn’t even want to leave the bed. The thought of getting up for a shower or food seemed like a poor choice when the other option was to stay here and hold her.
“Hayden,” Kara mumbled in her sleep, rolling over. “Hayden…”
I froze.
All the good things disappeared.
I pulled my arm out from beneath her so abruptly her eyes flew open.
But I was already out of the bed, searching the floor for my jeans and T-shirt.
“Hawk?” she asked sleepily. “You’re leaving?”
I glared at her, so damn angry at myself for staying. I should have left, like I always did. I should have fucked her, then picked up my shit and gone back to my own bedroom like I always did. If I had, I wouldn’t have had to hear her mumbling fucking Chaos’s damn name, after I’d spent the night in her bed. “Yeah. I’m leaving.”
She pushed herself up to a seated position, and I wanted to groan at the sight of those full tits spilling out of her robe. I wanted to crawl across the bed and take them in my mouth. Or lube them up, straddle her chest, and slide my dick in between them until I came all over her neck.
But not if she’d been thinking about another man all night, pretending I was him.
I was nobody’s sloppy seconds. Nobody’s runner-up prize. That was for saps like War and Fang, who didn’t mind sharing their women.
She frowned. “Are you upset? Did I do something wrong?”
I glared at her. “Why? Are you going to ask me to punish you again? To make you come so many times you can barely walk straight?” I shook my head bitterly. “Go ask…”
I swallowed hard, not wanting to say his name. She didn’t even know he was still alive and yet she’d spent all this time pining for him anyway?
I should have just told her so she could go running into his arms.
But I was too fucking selfish. The thought made me want to hunt him down and put a bullet through his head.
Or to wind back the clock five years and leave him on the side of the road to die instead of nursing him back to health.
Chaos wasn’t a good guy. He was the sort of man who would chew Kara up and spit her out.
But then so was I.
I yanked on my shirt, pulling it down to cover the skin that still smelled like her.
Now I needed a shower. Right. Fucking. Now.
She reached out and caught my hand.
I wanted to jerk my fingers away.
But I couldn’t.
She stared up at me with those big brown eyes. “I don’t know what I did. Please. Last night you were sweet and kind. And now you’re…”
I leaned down so my face was barely an inch from hers and shook my head bitterly. “No, Little Mouse. This time it’s not me who’s the asshole. You were the one who let me fuck you all night and then slept with your head full of another man.”
She blinked, confusion creasing her brow. “What other man? I didn’t…I don’t remember…” She squinted her eyes. “What did I say?”
“You said his fucking name!” I roared.
“Josiah?”
“Chaos!”
She drew back, shaking her head. “No, I… Chaos is dead. I don’t…”
We both knew she was lying.
She looked up at me sadly, face full of resignation. “I can’t help who I dream about. It doesn’t mean anything.”
I picked up my jacket from the floor. “Just like I don’t.” I scrubbed my hands over my face, hating every word falling from my mouth, and the ridiculous hurt tone that accompanied them. “I’m not your boyfriend. You can dream about whoever you want. I’m out.”
I strode out of the bedroom, picking up my boots from the other side of the bed and continuing without putting them on. I didn’t know where the van keys were, but I wasn’t stopping to find them either. I’d walk back up to the clubhouse barefoot. And then I’d get on my bike and drive as far away as I could, so I didn’t have to think about the jackass I was making of myself right now.
Kara caught me at the door, grabbing my arm, pulling me back with a strength I’d never associated with her. “Wait!”
Her entire robe had come undone. It hung from her shoulders, completely wide open, showing me everything she had beneath, and hardening my dick in an instant because it was a sucker for her body.
She breathed heavily, tits rising and falling, her eyes dark with a mixture of anger and hurt.
Good. ’Cause that’s how I fucking felt too.
At least her anger was distracting her from covering herself up. She hadn’t been self-conscious at all since we’d started arguing.
“I don’t want you to go,” she said eventually, ending the staring contest between us.
“Yeah, well, go tell that to Chaos.”
Her bottom lip quivered. “That’s cruel,” she accused. “He’s dead. He only lives in my memories. I didn’t mean to dream about him. And I didn’t mean to say his name.”
Except he wasn’t dead.
He was alive and living just to ruin my life every chance the asshole got.
“Are you in love with him?” I demanded, hating myself for even saying it. I wasn’t her boyfriend and I sounded like a whiny, pathetic loser.
Except some part of me really needed to know.
Kara paused. She opened her mouth, then closed it.
I knew the answer even if she didn’t.
But she was a fool. I twisted our positions so her back was to the wall, my body pressed against hers. “Just fucking say it, Kara. Say you’re in love with a ghost.”
Because that’s what he was to her. And that’s what he needed to stay. Over my dead body was she going to go to him. If she didn’t want me, fine. What-the-fuck-ever. She would eventually find some nice accountant or something. Get married. Have a couple more babies and make Hayley Jade a big sister .
I could live with that.
Even though the thought made me want to punch something.
But the Sinners were scum, and Chaos had been their leader. He’d been the one mixed up with Caleb. Didn’t she remember what they’d done to her? Didn’t she remember how he’d held her hostage? How Caleb had taken Hayley Jade from her arms, the exact same way her cunt of a husband had. Didn’t she see Chaos was cut from the same goddamn cloth?
She had some savior complex because he’d shown her a scrap of human decency when she’d had nothing else. That asshole shrink at the hospital probably would have diagnosed her with Stockholm Syndrome if he hadn’t been so busy chatting her up.
I’d never done jealousy. Never had anyone I cared enough about to get jealous over. Amber and Kiki had fucked all the guys at the club, and I didn’t feel a thing, watching them go off with them instead of me.
They could have gone off with Chaos and I wouldn’t have given a damn.
But Kara wasn’t them.
“I barely even knew him,” she said softly.
“And yet you love him anyway.”
“Hawk…”
I shook my head. “Don’t. Don’t fucking look at me with those big eyes and say my name.”
“Hawk,” she whispered, doing the one thing I’d asked her not to.
She touched the side of my face, and it felt like death and ecstasy all mixed into one. I hated it and wanted it. Her other hand joined, cupping my face, hands sliding to the back of my neck.
When she pulled me down, I was helpless to resist.
I slammed my mouth down on hers, stealing her gasp as I picked her up, using the wall and my body as leverage.
My tongue battled a war with her lips until she opened for me and I dove inside, tasting her mouth.
She kissed me back, legs locked around my waist, mouths hard and fast, one hand fumbling between us for my only half-done-up fly and the erection straining between us.
I groaned when my jeans fell around my ankles and my dick made contact with her pussy.
I shifted, getting a better position, lining up my tip with her pussy and driving it up inside her.
She cried out, the sound so full of pleasure I wanted it engraved in my brain forever. I fucked her fast and hard, pistoning my hips, slamming my body into hers, greedy and selfish like the asshole I was.
I couldn’t let her go to play with her clit, didn’t want to put her down when she felt so damn good in my arms and wrapped around my cock.
But I needed her to come. Come with me. “Touch your clit, Little Mouse. Play with it like I would.”
She went to shake her head, but I claimed her mouth again, kissing any disagreements right off her lips. “Make yourself come. Rub your clit while you take my cock. I want to feel you come on me.”
She moaned, hot for the words I growled in her ear, just like she’d been the night before. Her fingers came between us, grazing the topside of my cock as she found her clit.
“Faster,” I whispered in her ear. “Need to feel you clench around me.”
Her head tilted back, exposing her throat. I licked a path up it, biting at her jaw, so she’d lower her head and kiss me.
Our mouths connected.
Her pussy pulsed.
I came inside her so deep and hard and fast, no care given to how irresponsible it was to screw her without a condom, not once but multiple times.
I didn’t care. Just needed to be in her.
She shouted my name, squeezed her arms around my neck, clamped down on my cock, and milked it until I was dry.
Fucked me until I couldn’t breathe for how good it felt.
Fucked me until I remembered she would never be mine.
I carried her from the wall to the couch. Laid her down gently. Covered her body with the robe still clinging to her shoulders.
This time when I went for the door, she didn’t stop me.
It was what I should have done last night.
Fucked her.
Then left.
I staggered back to the clubhouse, hating every step that took me away from her.
Hating myself even more for caring.
Amber sat on a chair outside the clubhouse, an oversized shirt that probably belonged to one of the guys swamping her petite frame. Her nipples showed through the sheer fabric but did absolutely nothing for me. Not compared to the way Kara’s soft tits had fallen from the confines of her robe just now.
A cigarette dangled from Amber’s fingers as she looked me up and down. “Big night?”
I just kept walking.
Why was it so easy with her, and yet it had felt like agony when I’d done the same to Kara?
I needed a shower. An ice-cold shower that got rid of her smell and her taste and her memory.
War glanced up when I stormed through the room. I didn’t even know what he was doing here at this hour, and I didn’t care. Fang was there too, as well as Ice, and Aloha, and all the other guys. All of them up oddly early.
“Hawk,” War called.
I just kept going.
“Hawk!”
I stopped, grinding my teeth together in annoyance that he’d used his prez voice I couldn’t ignore instead of the best friend voice that I could tell to go to Hell. “What?” I snapped.
His gaze narrowed. “Didn’t you get my text? I called everyone to church. Where the hell were you?”
I swore under my breath. I hadn’t even glanced at my phone since we’d gotten back from the hospital last night. It was probably still in the van. Church was sacred. It meant the club had something important to discuss that nonmembers weren’t privy to.
I wasn’t happy with myself for missing the message. As VP I was supposed to have War’s back and set an example for the other guys.
But where I’d been last night wasn’t his business, prez or not. I wasn’t going to blab to the entire club about what Kara and I had been doing.
Amber strode past on her way to the kitchen. “He was in Rebel’s sister’s cabin. Fucking up a storm by the look of him. Saw him doing the walk of shame back up the path.”
Oh, she was a spiteful bitch when she wanted to be. I glared at her, and she flipped me the bird. “What? You were, weren’t you?”
“Is that true?” Fang asked, slowly getting up from his seat, his eyes darkening with anger. “Tell me that’s not fucking true.”
I couldn’t deny it.
Fang’s shout was deafening. “You piece of shit! You know what she’s been through! She’s not one of your club sluts who you can just use when you want to and throw away like they never mattered, Hawk! She’s Rebel’s little sister, for fuck’s sake!”
My fingers clenched into fists, but I didn’t have a leg to stand on. He was right. Him and Amber both. I fought the urge to drop into a fighter’s stance and defend myself from the blows Fang was no doubt about to rain down on me.
“Fang,” War said quietly .
Fang stopped.
That was what made Fang good at his job. His complete and utter loyalty to War was admirable and had probably saved me from a black eye just now.
“You, in there.” War pointed at me, and then at the room behind me holding nothing more than a single long table with enough chairs for all members. Prospects didn’t get a seat at the table until they were patched in and had to stand around the edges of the room if War deemed them worthy of attending.
Apparently, the room was also about to be used to chew my ear off about what a piece of shit I was, because War seemed no happier than Fang. I didn’t blame him.
I shoved past Ice who was gawking like the dumbass he was and took my frustration out on him. “Why the hell are you even here?” I snapped at him, the words unnecessarily harsh. “Fucking good-for-nothing prospects.”
He stepped aside quickly, a fleeting expression of hurt on his face.
I wanted to groan. He hadn’t deserved that. I was just taking my shit out on the weakest person in the room, and that was some cowardly bullshit if ever I saw it. But what’s done was done. I didn’t apologize. Especially not to a prospect. I’d buy him a beer later.
Like that would ease all the guilt I seemed to have opened a window to when Kara had walked back into my life.
War shut the door behind him, blocking out the others, and then leaned back against it, folding his arms across his chest. “So you fucked your church mouse?”
I glared at him. “Don’t call her that.”
War raised his eyebrow. “You do. ”
“Doesn’t mean you can.”
He let out a deep laugh. “Oh, you dumb asshole. Look at you. You fucking like her.”
“I’m getting my dick wet. Nothing else.”
“Bullshit. You could get your dick wet with Amber or Kiki any damn time you want a whole lot easier than it would be to get into Kara’s panties.”
A low growl emanated from my chest. “Talk about her panties again and I will put a bullet in your brain, War. I swear, don’t push me. I am not in the mood.”
His eyes widened in mock shock. “You like her and you’re jealous?” His chuckles turned into full-blown laughter at my expense.
As much as I would have liked to hit him, he wasn’t wrong. And fuck, I clearly needed help. “Can you stop fucking laughing at me and just tell me what to do, you asshole?”
Surprise pulled War out of his laughing fit, and this time the shock on his face was actually sincere. “Oh, shit. You’re actually seriously asking me for advice?”
I waved a hand at him impatiently. “Well, who the hell else am I gonna ask? Fang wants to murder me. Aloha got Queenie so long ago he’s probably forgotten how. You’re the one with partners coming out your ears. Tell me what to do.”
He squinted at me. “So, let’s just recap. You like her.”
I grunted at him, not able to make my lips move to say those words when the feeling inside me felt way more dangerous than just “like.”
It felt like obsession, and that was not a good thing for a man like me.
War took my monosyllabic response as confirmation. “ And you’ve somehow managed to sweet talk her into bed.”
“Don’t know that there was much sweet about it, but I didn’t force her, so don’t look at me like I did.”
War’s gaze darkened. “I don’t think that. If I thought you were the type of man who would force a woman, VP or not, you’d be out of this club quicker than you can rev an engine.”
That settled something inside me. War’s respect meant something to me. I’d known him a long time. That sort of friendship didn’t come around often, and I’d pushed it once before, when he’d been falling for Bliss and Scythe.
It wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat.
I sighed. “I’ve spent my entire life screwing women. More than I should, probably. But…” I stared at the ceiling, not able to look my friend in the eye.
“But you’ve never had a girlfriend.”
I snapped my gaze to him. “She’s not my girlfriend,” I said too quickly.
Amusement crept into War’s expression again. “But you want her to be, don’t you? Isn’t that why you’re in here asking me for dating advice?”
I went to argue but then realized he was actually hitting the nail on the head.
Kara didn’t feel like a quick fuck that I sank my dick into and then walked away.
“Fine!” I spat at War. “Tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do if I want to make her my girlfriend.”
War grinned widely and crossed the room to clap me on the shoulder. “Well, first, you let me sing, ‘Kara and Hawk, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G—' ”
“I just lost all respect for you. You’ve been watching too many of Lexa’s little kid shows.”
War screwed his face up. “Yeah, fair enough. That was a bit much. Okay, back to the actual problem. But you really don’t have one. She obviously likes you. She was barely a shell of a person when she got here, but we’ve all seen the way she is with you. You’re some sort of safe place to her. That’s the hard bit. The easy bit is all you have left.”
“Which is…?” I prompted.
He grinned. “Ask her on a date.”
I stared at him. “What, like I’m fifteen and asking her to go to prom? I don’t date.”
“Yeah, and that’s why you’ve never had a girlfriend. But if you want one, you actually have to be, you know. Nice.”
“I’m nice,” I protested. “I made her come three times last night.”
War rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s very generous of you. I dub you the new saint of cunnilingus. Good for you. But if you want more, fuck, man, just take her out. She’s been stuck in this damn compound for weeks. She’d probably like to go for a meal somewhere. Or to a movie. Or even just for a walk. Take her anywhere other than bed.”
I wanted that. I wanted to take her out to a restaurant. A nice place in Providence somewhere…
Her mumbling Hayden’s name in her sleep speared through my brain, causing an instant headache. Yeah. Great fucking date that would be. I take her out, we sit down at a restaurant, she looks across the road and sees him standing there, outside the place with his name on the damn window .
While I get to sit there like a damn chump while she runs across the road and throws herself at him, even after everything he’d done.
The jealousy was so debilitating I slid into a seat. “She’s still in love with Chaos,” I admitted to War.
He jerked at the revelation, his eyes widening. “What the fuck?”
“She talks about him in her sleep.”
War shook his head slowly. “That’s problematic.”
“Yeah, you don’t say. I have to tell her he’s alive, don’t I? I have to let her decide if it’s him she wants to go back to.”
War’s eyes darkened. “Normally I would be all for giving her choices, but he held her captive. He held five women captive in that room for weeks, and I don’t give a flying fuck if it was because Caleb ordered it. He had a choice. And he fucking chose wrong.”
Anger flushed my skin at just the memory of how we’d found Kara after the weeks she’d spent locked in that house with four other women. She’d been hurt. Weak.
And so damn insistent that Chaos was a good guy, even when we all knew better.
War cleared his throat. “She can’t live here and be involved with him, Hawk. That puts all of us in danger. I looked into that restaurant he’s opened.”
I lifted my head. “And?”
“It’s majority owned by Luca Guerra.”
I stood so fast my chair went flying. “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me? That human trafficking piece of shit Caleb worked for?”
“One and the same. ”
Chaos could draw her back in a heartbeat. She was still so brainwashed that all it would take was one smile, one touch, and she’d be right back in the clutches of a human trafficker. Bile rose in my mouth.
War gripped the table, his face pale like he was imagining the same things I was.
Women held captive.
Women forced into sex work.
Little girls stolen and sold to the perverted creeps who lurked on the dark web.
I knew he was picturing his daughters.
But there was also Bliss. Rebel. Amber. Kiki. Remi. Lavender.
Hayley Jade and Kara.
All of them in danger if she went back to Chaos.
The thought was horrifying.
There was no longer any doubt in my mind, and it was clear there was none in War’s either.
He glared at me. “If she still thinks he’s dead, then leave it be. It’s safer and kinder that way. She can’t live here if she goes back to him. She can’t have contact with any of us. It’s cruel to make her choose between the man she’s been brainwashed into thinking she loves and the family who actually does.”
Turmoil raged inside me. Not telling her felt wrong. But knowing we’d all lose her if she knew, knowing she’d be out there beyond the fences, unprotected and at the whims of men who did unspeakable things to women, was unbearable.
Kara had named her goddamn daughter after that prick. She still dreamed about him five years later.
Chaos had her as brainwashed as Josiah did .
That sort of influence was all she’d ever known.
I wasn’t fucking telling her.
I was going to take her on a date. Dress up nice. Say sweet things.
I was going to make her happy.
And we were all going to forget that Hayden Chaos Whitling had ever walked this earth.