38. Kara
38
KARA
D ating felt nice. We finished our meal, and Hawk drove us to the theater, stopping the van in the parking lot and slipping his hand into mine as we got out.
I glanced down at our joined fingers and then at the crowd milling around us. There were a lot of people here, waiting in line for tickets or the concession stand, or just hanging around the lobby, waiting for the theater doors to open. A woman around my age did a double take when she laid eyes on Hawk, her expression turning into one of confusion when her gaze traveled down his arm to find him holding my hand. She stepped in to her group of friends and said something, and they all glanced back at me.
He cleared his throat. “That okay?”
I dragged my attention back to him. “That you’re holding my hand?”
“Mmm.”
I rubbed my thumb across his knuckles, tracing over an old scar that ran across three of them. “You aren’t embarrassed to be seen with me?”
He stopped. “What? No. Why the fuck would I be?”
I shrugged, pulling my jacket across my breasts and then glancing back at the group of women.
They were all watching.
I could practically imagine what they were thinking.
Hawk looked good. I’d thought he was attractive in dirty jeans, wifebeater T-shirts, and his club jacket. But he was a whole different sort of hot tonight. Tonight he didn’t only appeal to the women who wanted a bad boy.
Tonight he appealed to anyone with an X chromosome.
I was very much aware I was not the sort of person who would normally attract his attention.
The red-haired woman who’d first noticed him and was busy gossiping with her friends was probably exactly his type though. She was older than me, clearly more experienced, and definitely more confident. She watched us openly, and when he turned her way, she lowered her eyes to peep at him through her lashes.
I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know how to flirt or be cute and pretty. I didn’t know how to use makeup, and he hadn’t given me time to ring Rebel and ask her to come over with her case of foundations and mascara to help me.
He stopped walking and tugged me around to face him, sliding his hand from mine and circling it around my waist instead. He dipped his head, tilted it to one side, and laid his mouth on mine.
In an instant, every worry disappeared. They melted into the hold he had on me, and on instinct, I circled my arms around his neck, fingertips stroking the hair at his nape.
I forgot where we were. Forgot there were other people watching. I let my heart flitter away with my brain and Hawk kiss me until nice feelings replaced the doubts and worries.
He might not have been good with words, but the man’s actions told me everything he wanted me to know.
His tongue stroked against mine, and I joined him, needing more of his taste and more of the way he made me feel. I kissed him back, more familiar with him now after kissing earlier that day, but no less thrilled by the way his lips felt when they were on mine.
His hands slid to my ass. When he finally pulled his head back an inch, his lips hovering over mine, I was dizzy in a cloud of lust.
“We’re in public,” I murmured. But that was about as much complaint as I could put up when my brain was already thinking about ditching the movie and going home so he could do that again with no clothes on.
He grinned against my mouth. “Every time you let that bullshit self-doubt creep in, I’m going to kiss you like that. No matter who’s watching.” He rubbed his lips over mine. “And then I’m going to take you home and punish you, my way, for thinking so fucking little of me.” His warm breath misted over mine. “I don’t just want you in my fucking bedroom, Kara. I want you everywhere. If it wouldn’t get us arrested, I would have you up on that concession counter, your skirt around your waist, your pussy the only sweet thing I want to taste. All these people, especially those bitches staring at us, be damned. Let them fucking watch. ”
He'd said it loud enough that everyone around us would have heard. There was no doubt in my mind that had been deliberate.
I didn’t even care. He was so attractive; he could have any woman he wanted. But he’d picked me, not just as his dirty little secret, but as something more. That knowledge silenced the memories of Josiah’s harsh, sharp words and the disgust I was so used to seeing when men looked in my direction.
All I could think about was letting him do exactly what he’d said on the counter back in my cabin. My knees went weak at the thought of my legs spread wide, his face buried between my thighs, his tongue licking through my center.
He’d push his fingers inside me like he had before, and my hips would rock until I was so wet I was dripping. Desire pulsed through me, hot and needy.
Wanting a man was an entirely new experience for me, and one I was quickly getting addicted to.
He winked at me. “Do you really want to watch this movie?”
I shook my head quickly. “Not at all.”
“You want to go home, Little Mouse? You want to go home and let me sink my tongue between your folds, finger you until you’re moaning, and then fuck you until you’re begging me to let you come?”
A beat pulsed between my legs, made all the stronger by the fact I was sure that woman could hear his dirty promises. My arousal soaked my panties, and an ache bloomed inside me so strong I knew I wasn’t going to make it home before I came. Everything between my legs throbbed, begging to be touched .
“I need a minute,” I whispered. “Just give me a minute to go to the bathroom.”
He grinned at me, like he knew exactly why I needed to go in there. He leaned in and kissed my cheek. “You going to put your fingers inside you? You gonna go hide in the bathroom and make yourself come because you can’t wait until I get you home?”
I opened my mouth to deny it, because that wasn’t something I ever did, but the thought left me panting. “Is that what you want me to do?”
He groaned. “I’m getting us some popcorn to go, and then I’ll meet you outside the restrooms.” His gaze went lusty. “Go come for me. And when I get you home, be prepared to come all night.”
I’d never run for a bathroom so quickly in my entire life.
An attendant at the auditorium door pulled on the handle at the same time, opening up for people waiting. I fought against the surge of bodies all excited to get to their seats while all I could think about doing was being alone so I could ease the ache inside me that was threatening to engulf me whole.
I pushed on the door to the bathroom, finding two women touching up their makeup in the mirrors and the rest of the bathroom blissfully empty.
I headed for the stalls, my core throbbing with need from Hawk’s embrace and the dirty words I couldn’t stop thinking about.
The door opened again behind me, and one of the women shouted, “Hey! This is the ladies’ room!”
I spun on my heel, smile wide, knowing it was Hawk who’d followed me. I didn’t even care what these women thought. I just wanted him to sweep me into his arms, put his mouth on mine, and walk me backward into a stall so I could have his erection inside me.
I froze at the sight of the man who stood in the bathroom, his blue-gray eyes locked on mine.
Like he had every right to be there.
Like he had every right to stare at me.
Like he had every right to be alive.
A cry fell from my lips. A gasp from somewhere deep inside me that had longed to see this man for every day of the last five years.
“You can’t be in here!” the woman said again, her gaze bouncing between the two of us.
I had no words to say. Shock held me in its grip.
All I could do was stare at Hayden.
He moved before I could. He took two steps toward me, grabbing my wrist, and dragging me into the nearest stall, locking the door behind him.
“Damn,” one of the women said from the sinks. “I wish my man did that to me once in a while.”
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. The women outside and anyone new coming and going disappeared in the roaring of blood in my ears.
My throat clogged with emotion, and I trembled from head to toe, shock refusing to let go of me.
Caleb had shot him. Left him on the side of the road to die.
He was alive.
His gaze searched mine. “I only have a minute. I know Hawk is out there.”
I blinked. Hawk. I was in here… I was supposed to be doing …
Now I was here, with the man who’d haunted my dreams for what felt like a lifetime.
The man I couldn’t forget.
The man everyone said I should hate, and yet even when I thought he was dead I never could.
Something pulsed in the air between us. A crackling of chemistry that had always been there. That connected us every time we were together.
“You’re not dead,” I whispered, hands hovering over his chest, not daring to touch him in case this was a dream and he was nothing more than a figment of my imagination.
“Hawk didn’t tell you then?” he whispered back, that familiar grumble of his voice seeping through my skin, burying itself inside me until I couldn’t breathe. “I saw him the other day, with Hayley Jade…Kara, she’s so big.”
Nobody had told me. Nobody had said a word.
They’d all let me think he’d died that night on the side of the road.
They’d all lied.
Tears spilled down my cheeks.
In an instant, he cupped my face, his thumbs wiping away my tears. “Don’t cry,” he murmured. “Shit. Please, baby. Please don’t cry.”
He’d never called me baby before. But there, in that moment with my chest splayed wide open and everything inside me splintering into pieces, it was the sweetest word I’d ever heard.
I couldn’t stop the tears.
He wasn’t who they thought he was.
He was the man who’d saved me. Who’d kept me and my daughter alive. He was the man who’d connected with me on such a soul-deep level I’d named my daughter after him.
He wasn’t real and yet he was right there, his heart beating too fast beneath the press of my palm against his chest.
“You need to go,” he told me. “Hawk will be waiting outside, and if you’re too long, he won’t think twice about coming in here searching for you.”
My fingers clenched in his shirt, and I shook my head frantically. I couldn’t lose him again.
But he was right. Hawk was waiting for me on the other side. Waiting to take me home. Waiting to do things to my body I hadn’t even imagined possible.
Red hot rage poured in, freezing the lust and desire.
Everyone had lied. Hawk. Rebel. War. Bliss. Had they all known and just said nothing? Thinking me the stupid brainwashed woman who didn’t deserve to know the truth so she could make her own decisions?
Hayden’s gaze locked with mine. “I know you’re staying at the clubhouse. Pack a bag for you and Hayley Jade and meet me. I’ll come to you, tonight. Late. I have a way of getting in.”
He couldn’t do that. He’d be risking his life.
He gripped my face harder. “Say no and I’ll walk away.”
I should have said no. I should have let him go.
But my lips didn’t move. My heart was too busy beating its way out of my chest and my brain was locked up in thoughts of the past, when this man had been the only thing keeping me alive.
“Don’t say no, Kara. Say you’ll meet me. At the back gate. I’ll tell you everything. We’ll work something out. Just fucking say yes. Please .”
I couldn’t say anything.
Hawk was a liar.
And Hayden was still alive.