Chapter Twenty-Two

Coming back to her room after dinner with Jared and Lili, Jeni had two things on her mind—an early bedtime and a good, long cry.

Being surrounded by people in love sucked. She'd always known that, but only in the vaguest sense. She knew she was missing out, but the details had been hazy, unformed. Now, she knew exactly what lay behind all those secret looks, the soft glances and casual caresses.

And it hurt. She missed Hawk. Not just the things she'd expected to miss, either—his smile, or having him hold her, or the way his voice went rough when he whispered her name. She missed knowing he was there, that he was happy, and that she'd played a role in making that happen.

She climbed the last landing and stopped short. A small, brown-wrapped box sat propped against her door, along with an envelope bearing her name. Nothing else, just four little block letters in handwriting she didn't recognize.

But she had her suspicions. She snatched up the package and the letter and hit the stairs again, this time heading up to the third floor—and Hawk's door.

She had to bang on it five times before it opened. Hawk stood there, his wariness melting into confusion when he glanced from her face to her hands and back. His brow furrowed. “You didn't open it.”

“Not yet.” The paper crumpled a little under her shaking fingers. “Can I come in?”

Silently, he stepped back and pulled the door wide.

Jeni walked in, but she didn't know what to do with the package. Set it on the table? Hand it to him? Go ahead and open it? “What is this?”

Oddly, the question seemed to relax him. His lips twitched, almost forming that warm smile she loved so much. “That's what the letter's for.”

If she looked at it, she'd never forget the words scrawled on the page. They'd be burned into her memory, whether she wanted them there or not, and not even the passage of years would dull them.

She held it out. “If it's that important, I want to hear it straight from you.”

“All right.” Hawk took the envelope and pulled out his pocketknife. He edged the blade under the flap before glancing up at her. “Don't get your hopes up, thinking this'll be all fancy. I'm still not good at words.”

Sometimes the simplest things held the greatest truths. “I don't like fancy words. I like yours.”

“I hope so.” He flipped his knife shut and unfolded the letter. “I'm still going to read it. Just don't laugh at me.”

He looked so nervous that she couldn't even be offended. “I wouldn't.”

“Okay.” He gripped the paper until it crinkled in his fingers and cleared his throat. “We made a list of all the things we did wrong, and there were a lot of them. But while we were listing all our mistakes, we forgot to list the things we did right. And there were a lot of those, too.”

The box rattled in her hands, and his face blurred.

He went on. “The first one was just being able to talk to each other like that. Honest, without getting mad. I can't find words like that with anyone else, but with you it's easy. We did other things right, too. We laughed with each other, and we helped each other. We wanted each other.” His voice went hoarse. “But mostly we loved each other, even if we weren't saying the words.”

She couldn't see him at all now through the haze of tears.

“When you tried to save my life, all I could hear was you saying that I'd be fine without you. But you were also saying that you loved me too much to let me die. And if we love each other that much, so much we'd die for it, then it seems pretty stupid not to try to live for it, too.”

“Hawk—”

He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Sometimes a car's so wrecked there's no putting it back together. But that doesn't mean you can't take the parts that are good and bring them with you when you make something new.” He cleared his throat again and looked up at her, his eyes red. “I'm not asking for collars and ink. I don't need any promise or proof. Just don't give up on loving me, and maybe we can build something good.”

Jeni couldn't speak, not even to tell him that he might think he wasn't good with words, but that those were the most beautiful ones she'd ever heard. She set the box on the table instead and crossed the room.

His cheeks were warm under her hands as she cupped his face. “Yes.”

“Yes?” His hands covered hers. His whole body seemed poised, tense—as if he was barely holding back from pouncing on her.

“Yes.” She licked the tears from her lips. “If you love me, that's all that matters.”

“I do,” he said without hesitation. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and he smoothed another tear from the corner. “I love you, Jeni, with everything in me. All the bad parts and especially the good ones.”

It hurt to breathe again, but this time, it was because she was so full of hope. “Do you love me enough to kiss me?”

He smiled. “Close your eyes.”

She complied, and he stroked his thumbs over her cheeks and kissed her forehead. Then her eyelids, the tip of her nose. He took a step that brought their bodies close together, and another that pushed her back toward his bed. “I'm so sorry I made you cry.”

“Shh.” She tipped her head back. “Don't be sorry. Be mine.”

He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her up against him, and the world swooped dizzily. She clung to his shoulders, even when he dropped on the bed with her straddling his lap. And then the world kept spinning, because he thrust his hands into her hair and kissed her.

It was the first thing that had felt right in days. When Jeni parted her lips, he deepened the kiss, his tongue sweeping her mouth with the desperate edge of a starving man who would no longer be denied.

He kissed her until she was squirming in his arms. Until she was gasping for breath every time their lips parted only to lose it when he claimed her mouth again. His hands began to move—slipping over the skin bared by her silky halter top, tracing up and down her spine.

His fingers found the tie at the back of her neck and deftly tugged.

The fabric slid over her like a caress. She broke away, running her lips over his cheek to his temple. “I remember the first time I saw you. I had just finished a set, and you were sitting at the bar with Zan and Noelle. You wouldn't even look at me.”

He chuckled, but his cheeks heated under her fingers. “Maybe that first night. After that I couldn't stop looking at you.”

“I noticed,” she confessed. “I couldn't stop looking at you, either.”

He turned to kiss his way down her jaw and over her throat. His lips smoothed over the bare skin of her throat—over her pulse, which had always been protected by his collar before. “I never saw it.”

She remembered every time their gazes had clashed and held, that indescribable but undeniable connection. “You saw it.” She stripped her shirt over her head and dropped the peach-colored silk to the floor. “You just didn't believe.”

His teeth closed on her neck, sharp enough to jolt pleasure through her and arch her back. “I believe now.”

“Good.” She tugged his shirt up, carefully maneuvering over the bandages at his side. “Because it was always you, Hawk. Even Lex saw it. I just couldn't look away. Like part of me already knew.”

He waited for her to toss his shirt aside, then pulled her close, skin against skin, the rough hair on his chest teasing her nipples. “There's no collar now, Jeni. No rules except the ones we make. Tell me what you want.”

If they'd gone wrong before by trying to confine their budding relationship, then maybe what they needed was to set it free. “Everything we've done—the pain, the control. That wasn't about the collar for me. I need that, Hawk. To belong to you and know that you'll take care of me.”

“Okay.” That simple, like it was all he needed. He claimed her mouth again, licking her lips until she moaned. His fingers curled around her throat, lethally gentle, and he lifted his mouth from hers, just enough to make her strain against his grip to reclaim his kiss. “I want to go back to that first night. I want to watch you dance, watch you fuck yourself with your fingers until you come screaming. And then I want to fix the biggest mistake of my life.”

His hands were steady, but hers were trembling. “What mistake?”

“Every day before the day I kissed you.”

The hope bubbled over into joy, and Jeni slid off the bed to stand in front of him. “There's no stage,” she pointed out as she plucked open the clasp of her belt. “Guess it'll have to be a lap dance.”

Hawk dropped his hands to grip the blankets. His gaze never left her face as he smiled slowly. “The kind where I'm supposed to keep my hands to myself?”

“Oh, absolutely.” She slipped out of her flats and shimmied her pants and panties down her legs. “Can you?”

His arms flexed as his fists tightened, and his voice turned rough. “I guess we'll find out.”

Dancing without music was out of the question—and so was not touching him. Jeni crawled over him again, her knees on either side of his hips, and stopped with her breasts only inches from his face.

He inhaled sharply. Exhaled slowly. His tongue dragged across his lower lip, demanding she remember how good it felt when he did the same thing to her nipple. “Touch yourself, Jeni.”

She braced one hand on his shoulder, then lifted the other to his mouth. Just two fingers, and she snatched them away before he could part his lips, trailing them down the center of her body instead.

Slowly, so slowly. He watched, riveted, as she slipped them between her open thighs. When she touched her clit, her whole body jerked, and Hawk echoed the movement with a tortured groan.

He swayed forward. Not touching her, but close enough that his breath feathered over her tightened nipple. “Faster. If those were my fingers, I wouldn't be patient. Not the first time. I'd do whatever it took to feel your pussy squeezing them tight while you came screaming.”

She tried to swallow a moan, but it escaped as a whimper. “And you say you're not good with words.”

“You inspire me.” He straightened, his body coiled with tension, his eyes so dangerous. “Or maybe it's all those months I spent dreaming of all the things I should have done to you.”

“We can do them now.” She shifted her hips, riding her hand the same way she would ride his. “Every night.”

“We'll have to,” he rumbled. “Or we'll never get through them.”

Jeni's laugh dissolved into a groan as a bolt of pleasure weakened her knees. She swayed, almost falling back—and Hawk wrapped his arms around her, dragging her tight against his chest.

“I got you.” His hand splayed across her lower back, holding her in place. Her hand was trapped between them, her fingers still buried deep, and all she could do was squirm helplessly when he urged her hips into a slow rock. “I'll never let you fall again.”

“I know.” She buried her face against the crook of his neck and inhaled his scent. “You'll always catch me.”

“So let go.” Hawk pulled her hair, tight enough to sting tears into her eyes. “It feels good, doesn't it? Your fingers so deep, but you can't move even though you want to.”

Every word twisted the delicious tension a little higher. “I love it.”

“Because you know you're mine.” His lips brushed her ear. His whisper was so soft, so warm, but his words were deadly. “Give me your body. Tell me it's mine. Promise you'll take everything I give you.”

“I promise.” He moved her hips faster, and a shudder wracked her as the heat centered low in her body began to unfurl. “Hawk—”

“Take it, Jeni,” he ordered. “Take your pleasure.”

The orgasm hit her hard. The initial shock of it stole her breath, but it was what came after that made her close her teeth on the soft skin at the base of his neck—wave after wave of ecstasy. Of release.

He groaned, holding her mouth against his throat. She was still coming when he flipped her onto her back, driving her down to the bed with his hips. His cock strained at his jeans, a heavy weight grinding against the back of her hand, pushing her fingers even deeper. “I could do this forever. Just this. Fucking you with your fingers, because they might as well be mine. Every part of you is.”

She clenched her other hand in the covers—still shaking, still shuddering. “Please…”

His hips lifted, but before she could pull her hand away from her sensitive flesh, his was there. He ground the heel of her hand down against her clit and curved two fingers over hers, working them in alongside hers with slow, relentless little rocks. “I'm the only one who can do this to you. I don't need a whip. I don't need pain. You'll open right up for me, won't you? Just because I want it.”

“Yes.” Everything was Hawk. He surrounded her, filled her, his body putting his words into action. He owned her—completely, utterly—and he knew it. He loved it.

He loved her.

She came again, this time with a choked scream. Hawk groaned against her ear, his fingers pumping into her, dragging out her orgasm, twisting it to unbearable heights. “Just like this, every night. You'll take the pain and you'll take the pleasure…”

“Everything,” she gasped.

“And then me.” He closed his hands around her hips and turned her over onto her stomach. His zipper rasped. “Then you'll take me.”

She pushed up on her knees, past ready to have him inside her, to hear the relief in his voice when he finally thrust home. Instead, she got the stinging slap of his open palm against her ass.

The growl caught in her throat, then tumbled free as a laugh. “Tease.”

“Never.” He soothed the spot with a scrape of his fingernails. “I thought about making you choose between this…” His hand fell again, on the opposite side, the sound of the blow sending a shiver up her spine even before the pain reached her. “And this…”

It was all the warning she got before his cock pressed against her pussy. He drove deep, all the way in with one long thrust, and her knees almost slipped from under her again.

He hauled her back into place. “You never have to choose. Say it.”

“I never—” She shivered again, and even that slight movement generated enough friction to drive a cry from her throat. “Never have to choose just one.”

His hand fell again, brutal and sure, lighting up every nerve ending with sensation so intense, it was past pain, past ecstasy. He'd spanked her before, every bit as hard, but he'd been different then. Uncertain, hesitant, desire and doubt all tangled together.

Stripping away the collar had freed him. Now, every deliberate touch screamed confidence. She cried his name when he plunged into her again, and he picked up the rhythm, alternating swats with driving thrusts.

Her skin heated, not just where he was spanking her, but all over. The mounting pleasure swirled together with the afterglow and the pain-fueled rush until it coalesced into an anticipation, a hunger, sharper than anything she'd ever known.

His hand slammed against the bed, and he leaned over her until his mouth grazed her cheek. The heat of his chest burned against her back as he slipped a hand underneath her and stroked her clit. “You never have to do without. Not while I'm here.”

The words vibrated through her, tipping her over the edge. She couldn't scream, couldn't even draw a breath as it crashed through her this time, because all she wanted to do was focus on this feeling—the two of them, tangled together, connected in a way that went beyond bodies and fucking. By a need deeper than desire.

And he was right there with her. He moaned with every pulse of her body around his, the sensation drawing him into harder and harder thrusts. Then he jerked, cursed, and came with a shudder that rocked through her body.

He lay there on top of her, panting, his breath hot on her cheek. She was trapped, and yet she'd never felt safer than when he threaded his fingers through hers and squeezed her hands. “Everything okay?”

It didn't hold a trace of the anxious concern that usually gripped him. This question was satisfied, almost smug. Jeni smiled. “Very.”

“Good.” He brushed a kiss to her temple and eased away to sprawl on his back with a soft groan. “Now I regret not going for the regen. If I had, I might still be—”

“Oh, my God.” She sat up and reached for him, then stopped with her hands hovering over his bandages like an idiot. “Your ribs.”

“Hey.” He caught her hands and pulled her back to his side. “I may not be good as new, but Doc has some damn nice drugs over there. I'm all right. In another week or two, I'll be fucking you up against the door to prove it.”

“Laugh at me if you want, but Lex said—” The memory of the panic that had gripped Jeni choked off her words. “She said you almost died.”

“I know.” He turned slowly, so they were face-to-face, with only a few inches between them. “I'm sorry I laughed. I know how scary it is.”

The panic subsided as she placed her hand over his heart and felt its healthy, steady beat. “I know that what I did hurt you, and I'm sorry. And I'm not—” She shook her head to cut off his protest. “I'm not getting into that again, I swear. I just think we need to say it.”

“Say what?”

“Things are dangerous right now. Hell, they always have been, even before this standoff with the city.” She took a deep breath. “I don't know how much time we have, whether it's thirty minutes or thirty years. However long it is, I want to live it. I don't want to be afraid all the time.”

“Wait.” He groaned again as he rolled from the bed and padded to the table. He kicked free of his jeans and swept up the box, returning to stretch out next to her with the little paper-wrapped package on the bed between them. “Open it.”

Jeni tugged at the twine and snapped it when it snarled into a knot. Then she pulled the paper away to reveal a plain white box. Inside, nestled on a bed of black, was the medallion from her collar, remade as a pendant strung on a delicate silver chain.

“I figured you could wear it under your shirt.” He brushed a finger between her breasts. “So it matches mine. It doesn't have to be about anyone else, just you and me. The best parts of us, in something new.”

She stared down at the pendant, and the last piece of the puzzle slipped into place. He hadn't asked for proof—but that didn't mean she couldn't offer it. “I want the ink, too. It doesn't have to be anything like a collar. It can be whatever we decide.” She met his gaze, and the barely leashed longing glittering there made her suck in a breath. “And I want to marry you.”

He caught her hand and tangled their fingers together. “Really?”

It was a piece of his culture, part of the home he'd lost, and another way to show him that she would always be there for him. “Really.”

He pulled her hand up to his mouth and kissed the backs of her fingers, his eyes shining. “Will you marry me tomorrow?”

For a moment, she thought he was making a joke. Then she remembered. “You want to do it there?”

“If you're willing.”

“I am.” She cupped his cheek, then grinned when he turned his head to kiss her hand again. She'd been happy before, just being with him, but this was more. Joy, contentment. Looking forward to a future that only they could build.

And that was the real promise—that they'd been through hell, come out the other side, and, still, the only place they ever wanted to be was in each other's arms.