Page 7 of Hawk's Secret
The air between us went from charged to combustible.
"Hawk." His name came out barely above a whisper.
"I should go," he said.
But he didn't move and neither did I.
We stood there, face to face across the bar, the wood between us the only thing left. I could see the tension in his jaw, the way a muscle worked there, the way his eyes moved over my face with an intensity that made my skin burn. His hand was on the bar and so was mine. Close enough that the heat of his skin reached mine without touching.
I shifted my fingers. Just a fraction. Enough that my pinkie brushed against his.
The sound he made was barely audible. A breath pulled in through his teeth, sharp, controlled, the sound of a man holding himself together by a thread. His eyes dropped to our hands, to that single point of contact, and when he looked back up at me his expression had changed. The restraint was still there but something had broken through it, something raw, something that had been building for fifteen years and had finally found a crack wide enough to push through.
He reached across the bar. His hand came up to my face, his fingers sliding along my jaw, his palm warm against my cheek. Slow. Deliberate. Giving me time to pull away.
I didn't pull away, it didn’t even enter my head that I would want to.
I turned my face into his hand and I kissed his palm and I felt his whole body shudder.
He came around the bar. Three steps and around the end and into my space, and then his hands were in my hair and his mouth was on mine and my entire world caught fire.
For one second he was careful. Testing. His lips against mine, firm but controlled, the kiss of a man who was still trying to give himself a way out. Then I opened my mouth under his and pulled him closer by the front of his shirt and the control evaporated. He kissed me with a force that drove the air out of my lungs, his tongue sliding against mine, his hands gripping my hair, tilting my head back, angling me where he wanted me. He walked me backward until my spine hit the edge of the bar and I gasped against his mouth and he pressed closer, his body pinning me against the wood, his hips flush with mine.
The bar dug into my lower back but I didn't care. He was everywhere, all of him, the hard planes of his chest against my breasts, his thigh between mine, the width and the weight andthe heat of him overwhelming every sense I had. His hands moved from my hair to my face, framing my jaw, holding me there while he kissed me deeper, slower, with a thoroughness that made my knees give. I fisted his shirt, pulled him tighter against me, and the sound he made against my mouth was low, involuntary, and a sound I wanted to hear again and again for the rest of my life.
He kissed the corner of my mouth. My jaw. The spot just below my ear where my heartbeat was hammering, and my head fell back and I heard myself whisper his name and his grip on my face tightened in response. His mouth came back to mine, hungrier now, the last scraps of restraint burning away. I arched into him, my body pressing against his, wanting more, wanting closer, wanting everything this man had been refusing to give me for fifteen years.
I was shaking under his touch. His hands on my face, my hands twisted in his shirt, his mouth on mine, the heat of him everywhere. His thumb traced my cheekbone and the tenderness of that one small gesture against the ferocity of the kiss undid me completely. I made a sound I didn't recognise, raw, honest, and his fingers tightened on my jaw and he kissed me harder.
But then he pulled back.
Not far. An inch, maybe two. His breathing was ragged, his hands still cradling my face. I could see the war in his eyes, right there on the surface. Lena. The club. Every wall he'd built. All of it fighting the fact that his mouth had just been on mine and his hands were shaking and he wanted to do it again.
"Bree." My name, rough, wrecked.
I let him go, because I knew.
Not because I wanted to. But because I could see what it was costing him and I was in love with him, and I had loved him for fifteen years. Loving someone means not making their hardest moments harder. I uncurled my fingers from his shirt, smoothedthe fabric where I'd crushed it, stepped back, and gave him room.
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he turned and walked out through the back door without another word.
I stood there. My lips were swollen, my skin flushed, and my whole body vibrating. I could still feel his hands on my face. I could still feel the bar against my spine, the weight of him, the way he'd kissed me with fifteen years behind it.
I locked up. Got in my car. Sat in the driver's seat with the engine off and my hands on the wheel, and I fell apart.
Not because he'd walked away. I'd known he would.
I fell apart because the man I loved had just kissed me with everything he had, and I was the knife in his back, and there was no version of this where I didn't lose everything. If there had ever been a chance of us being together, I was about to ruin that and I had no choice in it.
I sat there until the shaking stopped, until I could breathe without the sob catching, until I could turn the key and drive home.
It took a long time.
FOUR
HAWK
The kiss was burning a hole in me.
