CHAPTER FOUR

“This was the worst kind of punked…” - Hawk

 

Hawk could sense in what direction this was heading when the air shifted under him making him lightheaded and he was powerless to stop it.

Beat after beat blood pounded through his rushing ears.

Get out.

Get the fuck out.

She was untainted, and he had irremovable stains.

He wanted her. Not that he deserved her.

She would have been better asking him to kill someone. That much he could handle.

“Is it such a hard question?” All signs of her joy slipped off her face the longer he kept Gia waiting for an answer. Before he knew it, she left her seat and was standing in front of him. Close enough to touch. Close enough that if he reached out with his nasty hands he could have them snaked under her tiny shirt that hid nothing from his eyes, seeing clearly the outline of her hard nipples.

“I’m going to move my practice to Colorado, so I can be closer to my brother, Zara and the baby.” She went on.

Hawk stared, closing her out just for a second. It was a split second he needed on hearing how near she would be if she did relocate.

Jesus god, he would be driven mad.

She went on like she didn’t know just how much of a brain bleed she was giving him.

“I just thought it would be nice if we could spend time together. You always seem to be running away.” She edged a little smile. Shy and sweet.

He'd always known if he were this near to Gia it would break out both of their beasts. Only, hers has always been the more powerful when it had him wanting to come to heel, to do anything she wanted, to offer up his battered soul for her own keeping.

He'd known it and that's what kept him skulking through the shadows, watching her from afar, not deserving her, because the moment she was right there in touching distance, all his neurons got twisted up and what he'd lived by for ten years went by the wayside.

Rules he'd put in place for himself; don't want the little bit of a thing. It was easy enough yet found it the hardest to adhere to. Something in his brain ... in his chest fought against the rule.

Don't touch her.

You can't offer yourself to her for whatever she needs.

Every rule shit the bed and became obsolete the second she was right there, her beautiful beast in charge. He never quite got used to the buzzing in his belly when she was near. Sometimes it was an addiction, he had to answer to its call, just move closer, it would whisper. Other times, like now, his feet were urging him to fucking move, to get out of there before that thing pounding in his chest got him into trouble.

Why can’t I have her?

Not good enough. Was always the answer.

Because you were destroyed. Was always the follow up. And as much of a selfish, uncaring prick Hawk was, Gia was the one person to somehow have climbed under the spikes of his soul, to make him care whether he hurt her, used her, damaged her in any way with his body and fucked up mind. She was the only one he could leash his selfish wants for.

“No,” he croaked out from around the boulder in his throat. “Are you insane?” His voice was pure fucking rust. “You’re the head shrink, you don’t say shit like that to the likes of me. I’m manipulative, incapable of remorse. Is that the kind of person you want around you?”

The hands hanging loosely at his sides clenched and released, itchy to grab her. As it was his traitorous feet moved him forward until he towered over her, his head anchored down as she looked up.

He was a sick fucking animal.

Leave her alone.

He couldn’t.

God, her lips were perfect and pouty. He wanted to know if she still tasted the same.

Of strawberry Chapstick and heaven.

There was nothing clean in the way he looked at her. With a mix of awe and filthy lust. I’m a sick man. And growing gravely ill by the day.

She edged her chin up, a silent challenge in her eyes, hurt splashed in her expression before it was schooled. He almost laughed. She had no clue the possession she held over his sanity and somehow it calmed him down.

He’d expected her to roar a form of refusal at him being so close to her. What beauty would want Hawk within millimetres of them and not protest? But she didn't, she arched her slim neck, meeting his stare, unable to force his feet to move because his fucking useless, pathetic soul was panting like a happy puppy at being so near, he could barely contain himself to not reach out and run a fingertip down her silky cheek to see if she was as soft in person as she was in his fantasies.

“Why do you hate me?” She asked suddenly in a hurt, quivering tone.

Her stubborn chin would be damn funny if he wasn't so horny. So, fucking horny. His cock was practically cutting itself in half behind the zipper teeth.

Hate her? She had to recognize how tightly wound she had him? Maybe his scowl wasn't properly conveying it.

He was equally disgusted in his own behavior and wildly approving of it. The entire ride here he’d berated how stupid he was, to grab onto any second of time from Gia that he’d pretend he could have it all.

Hate her? She must be insane. He grimaced. Cleared his throat. Unable to drag his eyes from her face. Hate her? If only she knew.

Touch her.

Taste her.

Fuck her on the floor.

His mind screamed an argument with his body and he ignored both mind and dick.

He was crazy.

Her breaths came in shallow flutters as the skin along her chest and neck turned a matching pink to the shade on her cheeks. Arousal. That much he could recognize. He always knew when a woman had designs to fuck him.

Surprising them both, his forehead dropped to hers gently and he breathed in her evocative scent briefly before gruffly saying, “I don’t hate you.”

Far from it. Obsessed. Hooked.

Choppy breaths steamed in and out of his chest.

Back the fuck up, idiot. You can’t be this close to her.

It was as though he didn’t hear himself. And Gia was no better. Why the fuck wasn’t she pushing him away, allowing him to be up in her shit, smelling her hair. How utterly stunning was she? “You have to be the one to back up, little bit. My feet are...stuck.” He didn't want her to see the bulge in his pants. If she moved, he could swerve around and stalk off leaving her none the wiser to the power she wielded over his body.

Her siren ways would be yet again thwarted.

Color fused the top of her bone perfect cheeks and she gave him the most stunning smile he’d ever witnessed. “You haven’t called me that since I was younger.” Hawk lifted his head, puzzlement at his mistake creasing his brow, heating his skin. Fuck.

She was wrong though. He referred to that nickname all the time. In Hawk’s mind she was only ever his little bit of a thing. The kid to have gotten under his skin ten years ago, and to this day she was still embedded in his bones.

“Don’t you think avoiding me, being vicious in how you dismiss any conversation I start with you has gone on long enough, Hawk? We’re adults and when I live in Armado Springs we’re gonna run in to each other a lot. I thought maybe we could begin now.”

She expressed so innocently. So sweetly.

She had the hottest sex voice Hawk ever heard before. He caught it in the tones the first time she spoke to him and it almost knocked him on his fucking ass because for fucks sake it was Rider’s seventeen-year-old sister. He heard it now and it’s no less powerful to his system shaking at its core. It’s the kind of voice that wrapped around his dick and tugged hard until he was left debilitated. Hawk could only imagine -and he has a lot- just how she’d sound under him, crying out from a back breaking orgasm.

Prickly heat filled his belly as easy as helium.

“Why are you doing this?” Anyone would need to be bent in the head to want to spend time with Hawk. “I’m not worth it.”

She made that sound. Her laughing snort. “Men,” whatever that meant. He frowned so hard. “Define, worth. You are such an honorable man, Hawk. Whether you believe it or not.”

He needed out of this house. He needed to be anywhere that wasn’t surrounded in Gia and all her Gia things because with every inhale, he took her into his lungs, stirring his madness like she was making a fucking soup with his intestines and heart.

But he was a weak fucking man as his tongue proved.

His breathed a sigh of relief, eyelids closing.

“Okay.” He muttered. At least if she knew him, the real him, and how fucking perverted he was when it came to her, if Gia only saw a slither of it, she would stop him from loving her.

“Okay?” Her squeak almost pierced his ears and her fingers gripped onto his shirt causing his eyeballs to ping open at the point of contact, his heart sped up like she was handling his cock instead of gripping only his clothes.

Looking back there was not one single fucking second break of him agreeing to when Gia almost plowed him down and laid her lips on his. When in real time, she only raised up on her toes and pressed herself lightly into his chest, but Hawk’s dead soul came alive like fire had lit his touch paper.

That first touch of lips.

Her breath in his mouth.

That one touch poleaxed him.

She groaned as he opened for her. She fucking moaned for him.

Which sounded great to his Gia-starved brain.

Hawk let her kiss him.

It wasn't as though he couldn't have shifted, Gia was all of five feet four and a petite thing that came up to the top of his chest.

Let her kiss me, he thought. And she'd see I don't want her that way.

Only somewhere along the way his body had other ideas.

She kissed him first as an unemotional partner and then Hawk couldn't get enough.

One taste of her and he knew he’d been starving all this time.

It was a switch going off in his head. It was a bomb in his gut. Her taste flooded into him and there was no turning back, no rejecting her. He fell into her mouth and robbed her taste and made it his own. Twisting his hard body, he used a hand on the curvy part of her spine to hold her closer and press her into a table, taking over the kissing, desperate to get his hands on her.

He was a fucking idiot.

But he was an idiot with the flavor of Gia in his mouth, in his head, in his fucking soul and he couldn’t stop the grunt pumping out of him sliding his mouth along hers, nipping, licking, stroking the tip of her lip so she’d open wider.

He thought he said more but couldn’t be sure, not by the way he gripped the back of her dark head and angled her back, so he could dive in deeper and chew on her taste like the famished monster he was.

 

******

 

He grunted an abrasive sound which stroked Gia all over. He didn’t even realize his own appeal. This wild man with a resting scowl face who kissed like a freaking god.

He had no damn idea how horny he made her.

Or maybe she was just mad for wanting a growly, unsociable mammoth of a man.  

Her lips froze against his at the same time her insides turned to steam, her spine was liquid. He was kissing her back and Gia was lightheaded over it.

Lips crashed in a detonation of need. Want. Yearning. He may not have been the one pursuing, but he was all the way there with her, Gia, realized, with his tongue slicking over hers. She draped her arms around his neck, struggling to get as close to his strong body as she could. She arched into him as his tongue pushed inside her mouth, tangling with hers, and Gia’s knees practically collapsed out from under her.

Masculine, dynamic, deadly and big, all of him was just big.

She’d known for a long time what she wanted; a soul-deep love. A family. And both of those things started and ended with Hawk. She wanted to have a lover who worshipped her and who she could adore in return. Again, that meant she had to try with Hawk first.

The roughness of their bodies and the weight of his chest right where she wanted it did little to ease the pulsing between her legs.

Never had she envisioned he’d have this drugging skill to kiss her socks off. Never did she think if she took the chance and threw herself at him that Hawk would just be as eager to climb inside her mouth too. But there was no sloppiness from Hawk or confusion, his tongue tip tested the waters and she opened instantly permitting him entrance and when their tongues touched it was fourth of July fireworks all over again.

His hands held her steady, she feared she might fall over with shock, his hold was strong, fingers curled around her hip reminding her she was freaking kissing Hawk one of the most fearsome men alive. Also, her lifelong fantasy. So… no biggie at all.  

It had been an impulse to kiss him.

One that could have gone either way, she’d anticipated he push her away. But to never try ... she’d swore this was the year she either dated who she wanted, or she’d give that fantasy up. And since he wasn’t going to go for it. Her only solution was to pounce and deal with the fallout.

Owned. This was what it felt like to be owned by another person.

When Hawk let go for a few seconds, when he wasn't glowering and allowing his kiss to overtake him. His large hand palming the base of her spine, urging her close, and his tongue licking the edge of her lip, she felt owned by him.

She was drunk on a cocktail of angry, hot tasting man.

Dreams didn’t taste as good as this, she thought, moaning against his lips, angling her head back to give him greater access.

Would she even measure up to the number of women he’d had already? All concern disappeared with his grunt of palpable satisfaction tearing through his chest and rumbling through hers.

He drenched her senses until Gia couldn’t think. There was no more room for thoughts.

Tongues met and retracted, rolling across each other. His was fighting hers with licks.

He ate at her mouth skilfully as though he hadn’t kissed in a month of Sundays. Whatever he was doing, it was dragging sexual groans out of her, sounds she’d never made before.

Knees trembled, her heart in free fall. It was the single most perfect, unrestrained kiss of her life and over too soon when he wrenched away, rubbing a hand over his mouth surrounded in the softest beard, his eyes pinned hers. Darkness and thunder in their depths. She noticed his shallow breathing and his eyes skimmed down to her lips she unconsciously licked.

Nostrils flared. His hand raked at his hair in two big fists full. “What the fuck are we doing?”

Butterflies went wild in her throat, set loose by the rasping intensity of his tone.

“Kissing. We should do it again right now.” Attempting to pull him forward by grasping the front of his shirt he stood rigid. Goosebumps scampered over her bare arms as she swallowed down the nerves locking up her throat.

Ohmigod, she’d really kissed Hawk. And he’d kissed her back. Every teenage hormone she’d ever had over him flared to life, setting her on fire with horny, clutching shivers.

She’d never felt so compelled to touch anyone before, now her fingers were tingling to lock behind his neck again.

“Gia. This is not…” He murmured thickly.

She crushed his mouth only for a second, to get his taste again. Lashes fell over her eyes.

Oh, god. He was delicious. Hard body. Gentle mouth. His beard tickled her face, hands landed on her hips, strong and possessive.

And over too soon again when this time he wrenched back he paced ten steps away from her, yanking at his hair again and emitting a frustrated curse.

Gia frowned. “Hawk, it’s not a big deal. We like each—”

“Stop,” he growled. “Just fucking stop. Don’t finish that sentence. Do you realize what I just fucking did? Is this why you got me here? For fucks sake, Gia. You just let a goddamn sociopath into your house. Inside your fucking mouth.” Each word dripped with scorn. Disappointment. His scowl so dark it completely washed out his entire face. “You ought to have more fucking sense than that. Shit.”

It was the last words he said before storming out. The front door rattled with force.

Leaving Gia standing in the middle of her living room wondering what the hell just happened.