Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
TARYN
Viv zips me into a silky sage green dress and won't hear a word about payment.
“Consider it an investment, chérie.” She turns me to the mirror and looks pleased with herself. “You’re my advertisement. Every woman in town will ask where you got it.”
The dress has a sweetheart neckline and a skirt that swishes when I move. I don't look like a jilted bride or a diner cook, I look like I’m ready for a date.
At six o'clock exactly, a black pickup pulls into Viv's drive.
Hawk gets out, and my heart forgets its job again. He's in a clean dark shirt with the sleeves rolled, beard trimmed, and he stands by the truck as if he's reporting for a dangerous mission.
“You're staring,” I tell him.
“I am.” He doesn't stop. “You look beautiful.”
My cheeks go warm as he loads my pie carriers into the truck bed like they're crates of dynamite, then opens the passenger door for me.
The Outlaw Saloon is outside town, and tonight it's lit up like a fairground. Strings of lights swoop along the porch, music spills out the open doors, and half of High Vale is milling around inside under a gold banner.
The bride-to-be finds me before I've set down the first pie. Bethany is blonde and curvy with a ring that catches the light, and she takes both my hands like we're already friends.
"Taryn? I've heard so much about you. Small town… everyone has something to say!” She leans in. “It’s a big deal that Hawk brought you. Striker says he never does parties.”
Her eyes go past me to where Hawk is setting the cake down on a table, and she smiles knowingly.
The bar’s already busy. Lila's here in a vintage dress and red lipstick, dancing to old rock tunes with her little girl.
Striker shakes my hand and thanks me for the pies.
Despite his intimidating appearance, the way he gazes at Bethany is utterly soft.
Savage appears, kisses my knuckles, and is about to say something when Hawk puts him in a headlock and drags him away.
All my pies are eaten before nine. Hawk stays near me the whole night.
Every time I look for him, he's already looking back, and an electric jolt runs head to toe, every single time.
I'm boxing up the last of the cake in the back kitchen when he comes through the door with an empty pie tin, and the room shrinks to the two of us.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hello.” Hawk sets the tin down. He's close enough that I can smell pine and musk, his eyes dropping to my mouth.
Then the kitchen door bangs open.
“Cat naming in five minutes!” Savage bellows, then takes in the two of us and grins. “Oh. Carry on. Four minutes, actually.”
Hawk closes his eyes and breathes out through his nose like a man praying for patience.
Everyone crowds around for the naming. The cat sits on the counter next to the raffle box, big and black, supervising the room with his one good eye. Striker hushes the crowd and holds up the box.
“For over a month this animal has run my bar without a name,” he says. “Tonight it ends. One slip, a fair draw.”
“Fair?” somebody coughs, in Savage's direction. Savage puts his hand on his heart, as if he’s deeply wounded. Bethany draws the slip and reads it, then starts to laugh.
“Harley.”
The bar erupts. Ten different people claim to have written it, including Savage, who immediately tries to negotiate the prize money. The cat yawns, stretches, and knocks a beer coaster off the bar like a signature on a contract.
It's somewhere in the middle of all that noise that Striker pulls a battered black case from under the bar and sets it on the counter in front of Hawk.
“No. Fucking. Way.” Hawk growls, crossing his arms.
“Savage talked,” Striker says, with no remorse whatsoever.
“Savage is a dead man.”
Striker pushes the case an inch closer. “You’re welcome to kill him after you play. It’s my engagement party, and as your sergeant-at-arms, it’s my wish you play me a tune.”
Hawk looks at the case, and then, across all those people, at me. Then he opens the case, takes out a battered fiddle, and tucks it under his chin.
He clears his throat. “This is an Irish song called The Rose of Tralee.”
The first notes send a hush through the bar.
The notes are low and sweet, and it’s as if everyone has frozen in place, listening.
Marvin's mouth is hanging open, while Viv has her hand pressed flat to her chest. A big red-bearded man wipes his eyes with zero shame.
And I stand there with my heart climbing up my throat, because I know this tune.
My grandpa used to sing it to my grandma at every family gathering until he passed.
The cool shades of evening their mantle were spreading,
And Mary all smiling was listening to me;
The moon through the valley her pale rays was shedding,
When I won the heart of the Rose of Tralee.
Hawk plays it straight at me, his eyes never leaving my face.
When it ends, the bar roars, and Savage starts a rowdy chant about an encore. Hawk puts the fiddle back in its case, hands it to Striker, and walks through the whole crowd of them to me.
“Outside,” he says, gruffly.
The porch is empty, the night cool and full of crickets. Strings of light from the windows twinkle across the boards. Hawk leans on the rail and looks at the dark mountains, and I wait, because I've learned already not to rush him.
“You know I’m fourteen years older and grumpier than a kicked hive.”
“But you also play the fiddle and date your preserves. I think that cancels it out.” I step in close and lay my palm flat on his chest. His heart is going as hard as mine. “Kiss me again, Hawk.”
There's no stopping it this time, nothing held back. His arm wraps around my waist and lifts me clean off my feet. I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him back with everything I've got. Inside the bar somebody whoops.
He sets me down. “Come home with me, sunshine.”
“I thought you'd never ask.”
The ride up the mountain is quiet. My hand rests on his thigh the whole way, and every time I move my thumb, the muscle under it goes rigid and his knuckles whiten on the wheel. I’ve never enjoyed a drive more in my life.
His cabin is sprawling, a porch wrapped around it, and it’s warm inside. I get one look at a wall of books and a shelf of beautiful mismatched pottery; then my back is against the door, his mouth is on mine, and the tour is over.
He kisses me slow and deep, one hand cradling my jaw, the other flat against the door beside my head like he needs the support. When he pulls back, we're both breathless.
“Been thinking about this since the moment I saw you at the diner.”
“Me too.”
He finds the zipper of my dress and draws it down, his knuckles trailing fire along my spine, and the silky fabric pools at my feet. I step out of it in my bra and panties, and he looks at me for so long that my skin heats everywhere his gaze touches.
“Look at you, gorgeous. Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen."
“My turn.” I reach for the buttons of his shirt.
He holds still and lets me. That's the part that undoes me, this huge, fierce man standing there with his hands held loosely at his sides, letting me peel his shirt off. Acres of muscle. Tattoos rolling over his shoulder and down one arm.
“Taryn?”
“Yes?”
“It's been a long, long time for me.” His hand strokes my hair. “Forgive me if I act like a starving man.”
I peer up at him through my eyelashes. “I'm counting on it.”
Hawk’s restraint snaps and he unhooks my bra with one twist, fills his hands with my breasts, and rolls my nipples between his fingers until I gasp.
Then his mouth replaces his hands, hot and patient, sucking each peak until my knees give.
He catches me, hauls me up, and I wrap my legs around his waist as he carries me to the bedroom.
He lays me on a faded quilt and strips off the rest of his clothes. His jeans hit the floor and my mouth goes dry. He's big everywhere, thick and heavy and already straining, and the want in me pulls so tight it nearly hurts.
“Oh my.”
“We'll fit,” he rumbles.
He hooks my panties down my legs, kneels at the end of the bed, and pulls my hips to his mouth.
The first stroke of his tongue arches me clean off the quilt.
He pins me down with one heavy forearm and goes to work, slow and thorough, his beard rasping against my inner thighs.
He licks me like I'm his last meal, finds my clit and circles it softly, until I'm shaking and grabbing fistfuls of his hair.
Every time the heat builds toward breaking, he eases off and starts the climb again.
The third time he does it I could scream. “Hawk. Please.”
“Something you need, sunshine?” His voice hums against me and there’s a smile in it.
“You know what I need.”
“I do.” Another slow lick, nowhere near where I want it. “Want to hear it anyway. I like hearing your voice.”
“Your mouth,” I gasp out. “Your fingers. Make me come, Hawk, please.”
He gives me exactly what I asked for, his lips closing around my clit, two thick fingers curling inside me, and I come so hard that I cry his name out, my thighs locked around his ears, the whole room spinning. He works me through it until I'm limp and floating.
Before he can take charge again, I push at his shoulder. He lets me, eyebrows up, and I straddle him as he settles back against the headboard.
“Now it’s my turn,” I say.
His hands find my hips. “Wasn't aware we were taking turns.”
I wrap my hand around him, hot and impossibly hard, and watch his head tip back against the wood. I tease us both, dragging him through my wetness, sinking down an inch and lifting away, until his fingers flex on my hips hard enough to leave prints and a growl builds in his chest.
“Taryn.” A warning.
“Now… is there something you need?” I ask sweetly.
His eyes narrow. Got him. “You. Now.”
I sink down onto him slowly, taking him inch by inch, and the stretch of his huge cock knocks the breath out of me. He watches the place we join with his jaw tight, murmuring rough praise, letting me take him at my own pace until we're both trembling.
His thumb finds my clit. “Ride me.”
Slow rolls first, then deeper, his hands helping me lift and fall, the soft lamplight sliding over all that inked muscle beneath me. He says my name and the second orgasm starts to come faster, his thumb circling, until I shatter on top of him, grinding down hard as stars explode behind my eyelids.
I'm still pulsing around him when he moves. One arm bands around my waist and I'm on my back beneath him with my knee hooked over his elbow, and he thrusts into me deep.
“Held back as long as I could,” he growls.
“Never hold back. Not with me.”
He doesn't. He takes me in long deep strokes that build into something fierce.
The headboard knocks against the wall in a steady rhythm.
I rake my nails down his back and he groans, picks up the pace, hits an angle that has me sobbing his name.
The third orgasm rolls over me without warning, wave after wave, my pussy pulsing around his cock.
That finishes him. He buries himself to the hilt and comes with a desperate growl, his face pressed to my neck, his enormous frame shuddering over me.
He rolls onto his back, taking me with him, one big hand stroking up and down my spine like he's making sure I'm real. Outside, an owl calls somewhere on the dark mountain.
“Stay,” he says into my hair.
“Tonight?”
“Start with tonight and see how you feel.”
I smile against his chest, completely content.