Chapter 15
15
ALLEGRA
L ying here, half draped over Coen in the dark, leg tucked between his, ear resting directly over his bare chest, the steady thumping of his heart beneath my ear lulls me into a sense of calm I haven’t felt, maybe ever.
My body thrums, still aching deliciously from his touch, his attention, from the multiple times he made me come again after our long, hot shower where he basically had to bathe me like a child because my body was too wrung out to function.
It was sweet.
Attentive.
And also, somehow, one of the most intimate things I’ve ever experienced.
Which is saying a lot, considering what this man has done to me.
He slowly runs his fingers down my spine, simultaneously making me shiver and want to crawl closer to him—which is impossible at this point.
Just like it would be impossible to extricate myself from his arms if I tried. He holds me possessively, burying his face into my hair, letting his lips linger on my forehead, touching me and kissing me any chance he gets.
Almost like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he stops.
But I won’t run again.
Not if I can help it…
Not after this man has just given me everything in one single night and left me awed by his strength, his determination, his focus, his relentless drive to ensure my pleasure, and given me everything I needed when I was nearly at my breaking point.
It all demonstrated to me that Coen Hawke is exactly who I thought he was.
Maybe not at the beginning.
I definitely misjudged a lot about him when I met him in Atlantic City.
But once I got to know him, after I saw him with his family and really understood who he was at his core, I knew he was a good man with a good heart and wicked intelligence.
Which makes the way he sometimes talks about himself all the more confusing and painful…
“Can I ask you something?”
My question breaks the comfortable silence that’s finally settled over us after the frenzy, and he shifts slightly under me, tipping his head down to meet my gaze.
“Of course.” His brow furrows. “But why does it sound like I should be worried?”
I grin, ghosting my lips across his strong pecs and feeling him twitch beneath me. “The first time we met?—”
“The bar?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I mean the first time we talked in your room in Monaco…”
Trepidation darkens his eyes. He has no idea where I’m going with this, and maybe I don’t, either.
“Yeah?”
Maybe I shouldn’t bring it up.
It could potentially unsettle this detente we have seemed to have found, the momentary peace before all the troubles of the world beyond this room manage to creep back into our psyches.
But searching his face, I know I have to.
I can’t let what he said go, not when it’s clear he really believed those words when he said them to me back then and probably still does.
“You said something that’s kind of stuck in my head.”
This entire week, after meeting the Hawkes and spending time with them. After seeing how they all interact. It’s been impossible to forget his words. They’ve played on a loop along with the pain in his voice when he said them.
Coen tugs on a lock of my hair, twirling it around his finger. “What’s that?”
I swallow thickly, pushing myself up onto one elbow so I can see his face better, judge his reaction.
Even in the dark, it’s impossible not to see how handsome he is, how in the moment he is, relaxed and dare I say, even happy. Those glittering blue eyes focus on me with all his attention he’s already given me all night.
No one who is this attentive, this caring, this loving with someone he has every right to despise should ever think the kind of things he said.
“You told me you were the spare, that you did nothing with your life while your brother was everything your parents and the rest of your family hoped he would become.”
His eyes darken, gaze narrowing on me slightly. “I guess I did say that.”
I chew on my lip, contemplating how to phrase this.
Maybe it isn’t my place to say anything—it probably isn’t.
After all, despite the many ways we came together intimately tonight, we barely know each other. And what we do know has been based on less than completely honest situations. A relationship—or whatever this is—built on very unstable ground.
He reaches up and brushes the hair back from my cheek, tucking it behind my ear. The feather-light ghosting of his calloused fingertips draws goosebumps across my bare skin, wanting to feel that touch everywhere again, aching for it as much as I am for answers.
“Well, I guess it stuck with me, especially because that certainly isn’t the impression I got at dinner.”
His body tenses under me. “It’s complicated.” A long, slow breath slips from between his lips. “And it isn’t anything I particularly want to get into right now. It would ruin the mood.”
I grin at him and lean in to kiss him gently, letting my lips linger longer than really necessary. Maybe as an apology for the fact that I don’t intend to let it go so easily. “I don’t think anything could ruin my mood right now.”
He chuckles low, dragging me fully across his naked body, his semi-hard cock pressed between us, and almost instantly coming to full attention again. I groan as he kisses me long and deep, but I force myself to pull back, not to immediately give in to the desire to just slide down onto him right now and take him.
I push up and straddle his hips, keeping his cock pinned under my pussy, laying my hands across his chest as I stare down at him. “Your family loves you. And God, there are a lot of them…”
He grins at that, despite the trepidation coloring his gaze.
“I didn’t get the impression anyone is disappointed in you. In fact, it seems like you’re pretty invaluable to them, and there is no denying how much they all love you.”
Nothing I said was particularly radical, but Coen’s jaw still hardens as he looks at me.
“They wanted me to become my father, both Isaac and me. Imagine having two loaded guns willing to walk into any courtroom, any meeting, any situation, and defend what the family has built without any reservation.”
“That’s what your dad and Isaac do?”
He nods. “But it never felt right to me, sitting in that courtroom with Dad. I was just…” His shoulders lift and sag, but given the topic of conversation, I know the shrug is anything but nonchalant. “I was restless, always have been, doing any one thing, staying in any one place too long, it just”—he shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair—“isn’t for me. That’s part of why I play in so many tournaments. I love New Orleans, but I need to not be there all the time. It will always be home. I’ll always go back to it, to them, but I like to travel. I like seeing the world.”
“You like winning .”
A slow grin spreads across his lips, and he slides his hands to my hips, gripping them tightly. “I do, and I get very frustrated when little temptresses like you try to distract me from it—and succeed.”
I return his grin. “Still, I don’t think they’re disappointed in you. They just want you to be happy. It seems like that’s all they want from anyone around that table, and maybe they don’t think that you are…”
Something darkens his gaze, fear or regret. Maybe a bit of both. “I’ve given them reason to believe that.”
I raise a brow. “How so?”
He scrubs a hand over his cheek, breaking eye contact in a way that makes my heart clench. “I made a few really, really bad decisions last year. Managed to lose a lot of money at the tables.”
“Really?”
He nods. “A lot.”
“I…wouldn’t have expected that. You’re a very controlled player.”
“Normally, I am, but I was out of sorts. There was a lot happening at home with the family, and I let things spin out of control. And then, to try to fix things, I did something even worse.”
My chest tightens at the pain in his voice, so much so that it actually hurts to take a breath. I lean forward and brush my thumb across his lips, silencing him. “It couldn’t have been that bad. You don’t have it in you.”
He snorts. “It was that bad.” His jaw hardens as he debates how much to reveal. The struggle between wanting to end this topic of conversation or revealing something so real to me that he likely really needs to with someone dances across his gaze. “I betrayed Atlas and the rest of my family.”
“He’s the cousin who wasn’t at dinner? The boxer? I’ve seen a few of his fights on television.” I give him a half-grin. “That title fight was something else.”
His hand tightens on my hip, the other sliding to my opposing thigh. “It sure was. And it’s the reason I said what I did that first night we met, the reason I know they’re disappointed, the reason I know I can never make it up to them.”
“I don’t believe that. You can forgive just about anything when it’s someone you love .”
* * *
COEN
Allegra says the words so emphatically that it’s evident she knows from personal experience and isn’t just waxing poetic or trying to boost me up when she thinks I need some sort of reassurance.
I tunnel my hand through her hair, dragging her down until our faces are so close I could move a fraction of a centimeter and kiss her, but I don’t. “I appreciate the pep talk.”
She grins. “That isn’t what this is, Coen. I just want to understand you better, understand the Hawkes…”
“Why?”
Searching her gaze, I try to find her angle. What game she might be playing, even though we promised that part of our relationship was over. But the only thing looking back at me is sincerity. The kind that makes the last several hours we spent together feel even more meaningful.
She shrugs. “Because now that the game is over, maybe I don’t want a rematch. The next dinner could be less awkward…and I might actually stand a chance if I understood that family dynamic.”
“Before…when you said anything can be forgiven when it’s someone you love. You sounded like you were talking from personal experience.”
Allegra tries to hide it, but she tenses slightly like she didn’t want me to pick up on that and now regrets saying it.
“Your mom passed away when you were young…”
She pulls back out of my hold, running her hands through her insanely disheveled hair. “She did.”
“Where’d you go after that?”
It hasn’t escaped me that she avoided the question—twice—at the table.
Whatever happened after her mother died, it isn’t anything she wants to discuss with me.
Which only makes me want to know more.
Losing a parent like that must be devastating. After Dad was shot, for those weeks when we weren’t sure if he was going to recover or what he would be like if he ever did, it felt like I had already lost him. And that was agony.
If he were actually gone, if we had to close him into the Hawke family crypt with Grandfather and Aunt Star, I might not have been able to survive it.
Yet Allegra did…and at such a young age. It had to have shaped her. Helped turn her into the woman she is today.
She averts her gaze, picking at some imaginary loose thread on the expensive sheets we now lie in. “I was mostly in boarding schools, bouncing around the U.S. and sometimes Europe.”
I slide my hands to her hips, squeezing tightly. “Which I already know.”
And I make it very clear with the look I give her that I’m not going to accept her telling me the same information and avoiding the ultimate question again.
Her lips curve into a sad smile. “You know…I envy what you have. A big family that loves you. Who all support each other. Who will always be there for one another, no matter what.”
The tears I thought I caught in her eyes at Sunday dinner suddenly make a lot more sense now, hearing how gut-wrenching those words were for her to speak.
My heart aches for the pain in her, for that little girl left alone in the world. “You never had that?”
She shakes her head. “My mom and I were close, best friends. But once she was gone…”
Her breath hitches, and I pull her to me, dragging her down across my body and allowing her to bury her face against my neck. A warm drop hits my skin, and I tighten my hold on her, pressing my lips to the top of her head.
I cling to her for several minutes, allowing her to cry, to release whatever emotions she’s had bottled up for so long.
Skimming my fingers along her spine, I think about her description of the family.
“You’re not wrong about the Hawkes, about us always being there and supporting each other…” I release a sigh, wishing I could go back and change it all. “That’s why what I did is so bad. It was the opposite of the very thing that makes us a family. I bet against Atlas in the title fight.”
She pulls back slightly, with red-rimmed, teary eyes meeting mine from below a furrowed brow. “Why?”
A question I’ve asked myself too many damn times to count.
“Because I was in the hole. Because I was spiraling. Because he was, too, after he got shot a few months earlier. He was recovering, and I knew him well enough to understand that it wasn’t going well. He was struggling. Hard .”
I let my mind drift back to all those training sessions that were too painful to watch. Seeing Atlas struggle with anything in that gym just felt wrong. Everything about his injury and recovery felt like some bad dream none of us could wake up from, and it only seemed to be getting worse as I kept losing more and more money.
“I didn’t think there was any way he’d be ready for that fight, that he’d stand a chance. I thought it was a surefire way to make back everything I had lost. I bet against one of my best friends, my cousin, my family, and Hawkes don’t do that. We always bet on each other.”
She feathers her fingers across my cheek, then cups it in her warm, soft palm. “You made a mistake. We all do.”
“This mistake has the type of consequences I may not be able to recover from, that we may not be able to.”
“Everyone seemed fine at dinner.” She laughs, the sound washing away some of the sadness in her eyes. “The only tension was the way everybody kept grilling me.”
I chuckle. “God, that wasn’t even bad. You should see them when they really get fired up. I think they were holding back slightly because they didn’t want to scare you off.”
“Have they done that before? Scared people off?”
“Oh, hell yes. But like I said, you’re the only woman I’ve ever brought to Sunday dinner. And given all the issues going on, they probably didn’t want to do anything that might send me running again.”
“You would run? But I thought you were like basically in charge of the hotel and are helping with the second tower across the street?”
She really was paying attention at dinner.
“I am…and I actually like it. I didn’t think I would, to be honest. Nothing else has ever really seemed to click. Maybe it’s because I spend so much time in hotels and casinos, but it feels more like home, like where I’m supposed to be, than any other job I’ve ever had in the family business.”
Her hand slides around my side, and she squeezes gently. “See? Not so restless after all.”
I chuckle low. “I wish that were true. But I’m here, aren’t I? Chasing another tournament win.”
Allegra doesn’t need to know why it’s so much more than that, why it’s so important. The less she knows about the Satriano situation, the better. I can keep her insulated from it—from him. I can keep her safe.
She kisses me gently, letting her lips linger on mine. “That doesn’t mean you have to keep doing this.”
I tighten my grip on her, and she lies back down, settling her face into the crook of my neck, comfortably tucked in like she belongs here.
And God, I wish what she said were true…
For the first time in my life, I might actually want to stay. I might actually want to take a role in the Hawke empire for longer than a few days, weeks, or months.
And it might not be possible.
I try to hide my reaction to her words, how easily she says it when I know I can never stop, that I will have to keep doing it as long as Satriano demands it.
I’ll have to play for him, win tournaments for him, rig them any way he sees fit, for as long as he asks me to.
Just like Pope, I’ll be stuck in this strange relationship with the man who could easily destroy all of us.
And he’s going to make me do that, too.
Deep down, I know where this thing with him is heading.
He’s going to make me betray the Hawkes.
He’s going to make me fuck it all up all over again.
I trail my fingers down her back, feeling her relax more and more into me until she finally falls asleep, her even breaths floating across my skin, her hand pressed over my heart.
It’s the kind of vulnerability that’s so hard for her, but she’s doing it so easily with me.
She’s already revealed so much of herself to me tonight.
But she still hasn’t answered that question about where she went after her mom died…
Wherever it was, whatever happened there, it scares her enough that she doesn’t want to confide in me about it. Either she’s still running from those memories or still living through them, and it’s almost like she doesn’t want to get me involved the same way I don’t want her anywhere near the mess I’m currently embroiled in.
And that scares me almost as much as Satriano does.