by Gayle Wilson
But maybe, just maybe, she was wrong, he thought, his mouth lowering slowly to destroy the emptiness between them. Maybe they both were.
Chapter Ten
When her eyelids finally drifted upward again, Hawk was watching her, blue eyes luminous in the darkness. She had seen them like that once before, she remembered. The night he had come to her mother’s house in Mississippi. Had come to find her and to keep her safe.
Now he was lying beside her in the bed where they had just made love. Where she had begged him to make love to her. Two days ago he had been a stranger, and she had been about to marry another man. And now...
His features were set, his expression unreadable. But his gaze traveled slowly over her face, almost as if he’d never seen her before. Maybe he was as disconcerted by what had just happened between them as she was.
Two strangers. Who had met by chance. In circumstances that had nothing to do with love. That had far more to do with death and dying. His world and not hers. And he was still almost a stranger. A man she knew only as Hawk.
“Your arm hurt?” he asked.
Only with his question did she realize that it did, and that she was holding it. Like a reprimanded child, she removed her fingers from the gauze he had put over the gash.
“It’s a little sore,” she admitted.
“I guess this didn’t help.”
“Not my arm,” she said softly, finally smiling at him. “You didn’t take the pain capsules,” he said.
“I took one when I lay down to read the papers. Two had knocked me out last night. I decided I didn’t want to be that drugged. Just...pleasantly unaware that anything hurt.”
“Is that what this was all about?” he asked.
It took her a minute to put it together.
“You think I asked you to make love to me because I took a pain pill?” she asked, her voice climbing at the end of the question. She found it incredible that he didn’t understand.
“Did you?”
“No,” she said quickly, because that hadn’t been the reason, of course. However, with his question, she did wonder if she would have been so open about what she felt if she hadn’t taken that capsule. “Maybe it made it easier,” she acknowledged.
“Easier?”
“Easier for me to admit what I wanted,” she said. “But... I think I’ve wanted you to make love to me almost since the beginning. At least since you kissed me.”
His eyes came up, locking suddenly with hers. She didn’t flinch from their assessment. What she had told him was the truth. And she wasn’t ashamed of it.
That was something she hadn’t admitted then, not even to herself, or maybe she hadn’t known, given everything else that had been going on. But she had been attracted to him in the hotel that day. She had wondered then what this would be like—Hawk’s lovemaking—and now she knew.
And she wanted him still. Wanted him again, she amended. As much, or maybe more, she realized, than before he had taken her. Taken her. The words echoed in her consciousness. Out of place. So foreign to what she had always thought should happen between a man and a woman. She didn’t think she had ever used the term in connection with making love. Now, however, she knew exactly what it meant.
Hawk had taken her. He hadn’t talked to her, hadn’t whispered words of seduction. And he hadn’t pretended that he was doing anything other than what he had done. He had consumed her. Invaded and conquered, just as his kiss had the first day she’d met him. Taken, she repeated mentally, acknowledging the truth of what had happened between them.
But at the same time, she knew that he had taken nothing she hadn’t willingly given. Nothing she didn’t intend for him to have. Eventually. It was just that the way he had made love to her was so different. Powerful and unrestrained.
He was different from any other man she had ever known, of course. Harder. More cynical. Maybe even smarter—except apparently about knowing what she felt.
“Maybe we should try for slow,” she suggested, her voice low and husky from thinking about the possibility. This was the image she had gotten when he had asked that question: Do you want it quick or slow? The thought of making love to him had been in her brain, triggered by those words, although she had known that wasn’t what he meant.
Quick or slow? A choice between the almost primitive force his lovemaking had just been or the tantalizing tenderness she believed he could be capable of. She had no reason to think that, and she wondered why she did. He was not a gentle man. She had known it all along, and nothing that had happened between them had contradicted her initial judgment
“It’s...been a long time,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be rough.”
The confession surprised her. Hawk would have no trouble finding a woman, of course, so his abstinence would have been by choice. And it seemed a strange choice for a man like him.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I want you to make love to me again. And just...give me a little more time to enjoy it,” she added, the soft suggestion teasing. She smiled at him, but the line of his mouth didn’t move, the blue eyes still searching her face. Apparently whatever he found there was reassuring.
“You didn’t enjoy that?” he asked, his voice suddenly more relaxed than she’d ever heard it, its timbre totally changed by the undeniable thread of amusement. “Are you trying to tell me that wasn’t satisfactory?”
He would know better. Her responses had left no doubt about how much she had enjoyed his lovemaking. “I’m going to assume that’s a rhetorical question,” she said.
He held her eyes a few seconds longer, and then, without answering, he rolled onto his back. He put his hands, fingers interlocked, behind his head. His gaze seemed to be examining the ceiling as intently as it had her face.
She turned on her right side, propping herself on her elbow, high enough above him that she could see most of his body. The same broad shoulders and chest she had seen at the hotel, long, smooth muscles lying under tanned skin. Flat stomach.
Her eyes moved downward, examining what the towel had covered that day. Nothing was hidden now. There was nothing about his body she hadn’t been made aware of. Nothing about hers he didn’t know intimately.
Her fingers lifted, touching the mat of coarse hair on his chest. They moved almost as if asking permission. After what had happened between them, she shouldn’t have to ask. Permission had definitely been granted, she decided. Reciprocal permission.
He turned his head in response to the small caress. She smiled at him again, moving her hand slowly, enjoying the texture of the dark, hair-roughened skin. The muscled firmness underneath. The feel of his nipples, hardening under her fingers. She liked touching him, savored the realization that she had the right to do that now.
“So how about slow?” she said again, her voice deliberately teasing. She didn’t understand his hesitation in responding to her invitation.
“What did you mean before about dreams?” he asked.
But that conversation seemed to have happened a long time ago, and it was hard to remember exactly what she had been thinking. As a matter of fact, it had been pretty damned difficult to think at all just then.
He had asked about Amir. Why she had agreed to marry him. And foolishly, she had tried to explain. There was no real explanation of what she had done, of course. She had already admitted that. And this—what had happened tonight—was more proof of how wrong she had been.
It was almost ironic. Just as she had decided this particular dream was the one that would never come true, out of all the other seemingly impossible ones that already had, she had stumbled across this man.
This man, she thought. A man called Hawk. About whom she knew nothing. From whom she would learn nothing. Nothing he didn’t want her to know. Nothing about who he really was.
All she knew was that he matched those long-ago dreams. Those cherished girlhood fantasies she had never openly confessed to anyone. Dreams of finding someone this strong. This good.
Her lips tilted when she realized the unintended sexual connotation of that word. That was certainly true, as she had reason to know, but it wasn’t what she meant.
Just good, she thought. Old-fashioned, one-of-the-good-guys kind of goodness. White hat. Hero. She wondered what Hawk would say if she called him that. Her smile widened as she thought about his probable reaction.
“There’s something funny about those dreams?” he asked.
She realized he was still watching her. Waiting for her answer. And lost in memory, she had almost forgotten his question. “I was beginning to believe I’d never meet someone like you,” she said softly. “Not in this lifetime.”
Again there was a silence, but his eyes were still focused intently on hers. “Someone like me?” he repeated finally. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
His voice was harsh, and she knew she couldn’t explain to him what she’d been thinking. She couldn’t imagine being foolish enough to confess to the romantic nonsense that had been running through her mind. Or to confess the dreams she had once had.
“As strong as you,” she offered. As good, her heart added.
His lips moved, pursing a little as if he were thinking about that, and then, in amazement, she watched them lift, moving upward at the corners. Almost a smile.
“But then you’ve been hanging around guys like Amir,” he suggested.
Who probably wasn’t good. Or strong. Not any of the things she had once dreamed the man she would fall in love with would be.
“Would you quit bringing Amir up?” she said. Once again she deliberately made her voice teasing. She didn’t want to think about Amir. About what a fool he had made of her. She didn’t want those feelings to spoil what was happening here.
“Did you?” Hawk asked. The smile had disappeared, and his voice had changed. Hardened. It was cold once more, no hint of amusement in this question.
It took a second to figure out what he was asking, and when she did her own smile faded as well. There was nothing she could say about her relationship with Amir that Hawk would believe. Probably no one would believe the truth. It was pretty unbelievable, and that also made her feel like a fool. To realize how easily she had accepted Amir’s explanations.
“Does it matter?” she asked instead.
Hawk’s mouth tightened. “It shouldn’t,” he admitted.
“But it does?”
“Forget it,” he said. “Forget I asked.”
He turned his head, eyes focused upward again.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said. An evasion. And it sounded whining and childish.
“Try me,” he suggested, eyes still on the ceiling.
Men weren’t supposed to care about the whys of stuff like that. It was surprising to her that he wanted to know. Even a little flattering, that whether or not she had made love to Amir seemed to matter to him.
“We didn’t have that kind of relationship,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked.
They had been engaged, if only for a few weeks. And most people would expect that would lead to some intimacy.
“He implied it was because of his religion.” Even as she said it, she felt stupid. Used. Gullible.
“And you believed him.”
She could read nothing in Hawk’s tone. No skepticism. No mockery. But he was very good at hiding what he thought.
“Because I wanted to believe him, I guess. Because...”
“Because?” he prodded when she stopped.
“Because I didn’t feel that way about him.”
“You were going to marry him,” Hawk said.
Almost an accusation. At least it felt like one. Because I was alone. Scared. Betrayed. Numb with grief and fear. And none of those were reasons she wanted to take out and examine. Or expose to someone else’s examination. Not even to defend herself from what Hawk seemed to be suggesting.
“It’s pretty complicated,” she offered instead. Another evasion.
“I’m not going anywhere. Not tonight.”
She took a breath. The darkness helped, and the fact that he wasn’t looking at her.
“My agent had just died. Someone I trusted. A...mentor, I suppose. And when he died, I found out he hadn’t done some of the things he’d promised to do. Some investments he was supposed to make with the money I’d earned hadn’t been made. The money was gone, and at the same time, I realized my career was going nowhere. There was nothing else I knew how to do. I never had anything but this,” she said softly.
She touched her cheek with the tips of her fingers, but Hawk wasn’t looking at her, so he didn’t see the gesture. And he said nothing in response to what she’d told him, his eyes still on the ceiling.
“When Amir showed up,” she continued, “marrying him seemed like a good idea. Everyone told me it was. Something safe. Somewhere to go.” She hesitated, waiting for some response, some reaction to what she had said, but there was none. “I guess none of that makes much sense to you, does it?”
Hawk would always know where he was going. That incredible surety would never falter. And he had probably never depended on another person in his entire life.
“Maybe,” he said.
Comforted a little by the soft agreement, even as grudging as it sounded, she went on, trying to make sense of what had happened, maybe as much for herself as for him. “And then the morning of the wedding, I realized that...what I was doing was wrong. Wrong for me. For him. All of it was wrong. For the wrong reasons. I wasn’t in love with him.”
The last she added almost as an afterthought. Just in case Hawk hadn’t understood the wrongness she had discovered. Finally, after a long time, he turned his head. His eyes moved over her face, again searching. But she had nothing to hide. What she had told him was the truth.
“You want another one of those pills?” he asked.
The question seemed out of context. She hadn’t even been thinking about the dull ache in her arm. It was an unimportant background element to the things that had been going on between the two of them.
“I’m...” she began, intending to deny the pain he seemed concerned about. Then she realized that his eyes had lightened and the tightness around his lips had eased. “Why?” she asked instead, suspicious of that relaxation.
“Slow,” he said. “I just thought you might want a little something to make this time easier, too.”
The inflection of the word was mocking. But it was also gently teasing. Inviting her to participate in that subtle mockery. Inviting her—
“But if not, I guess we’ll just have to employ some of that old tried and true,” he said.
“What’s that?” she asked, anticipation stirring.
“You know,” he whispered.
He turned his body toward hers, propping himself on his elbow just as she was. They were lying face-to-face. Body-to-body. Hardly three inches between them.
“No,” she said, her mouth suddenly almost too dry to get the words out, her heartbeat accelerating. “No, I don’t know.”
He leaned toward her. She thought at first he intended to kiss her. She couldn’t remember that he had kissed her when they’d made love.
He didn’t now. Instead, his mouth lowered to the square of gauze he’d placed over her injury. He brushed it with his lips, the gesture tender, especially for a man like Hawk. Then he leaned back a fraction of an inch. His mouth was almost touching the front of her shoulder now.
“Foreplay,” he said softly.
The single word was moist and hot against her skin. She waited, wondering if he would put his lips where his breath had touched. Wondering if he’d kiss her there. Wanting him to.
There had been nothing like what he was suggesting in the explosion that had occurred between them before. That had been hard and fast and exciting. Without preliminaries. And very definitely out of the narrow range of her experience.
“You know what that is?” he asked, his mouth closer than before. Warm breath moved against her collar
bone now. Tantalizingly near.
She closed her eyes, anticipation so strong it was almost culmination. She nodded, and then, afraid he couldn’t see, she whispered, “Yes.”
His hand found her breast, thumb moving back and forth over the pearled bud of its nipple. His fingers were a little rough, their hard masculinity incredibly sensuous.
His palm enclosed, squeezing the soft globe. The pressure was exquisite, pain and pleasure inextricably mixed. The breath she took in response was a soft hint of sound, broken, automatic.
He reacted by easing his body against her, pushing her down to her back, in the most vulnerable position a woman can assume. Open. Unprotected. Unquestioning.
He put his leg over both of hers. The contrast between the hair-roughened skin of his thigh and the smoothness of hers was also sensuous. She expected him to lift his body over hers, as he had done before.
Suddenly, despite her teasing request for slow, she wanted him to do that. To do it quickly. Wanted him to push into her again, hard and incredibly strong. So sure of what he was doing. In control.
That wasn’t what he did, however. He eased closer, the front of his body leaning against the side of hers, his erection pressed into her hipbone. His hand cupped her breast, pulling it toward his descending mouth. His lips fastened over the nipple he’d teased, and he began suckling like an infant, the pull of his mouth hard and strong.
The words reverberated in her head. He was exactly that. So hard. So incredibly strong. Exactly as she wanted him to be.
It seemed she could feel the movement of his mouth deep within her body. Moving low inside. The sudden flood of moisture that resulted from that pressure was hot, rich, more profuse than it had ever been before. Readying her trembling body for what she knew was to come.
The glide of his tongue replaced the demanding caress of his lips. It circled, leaving a trail of moisture over all the sensitive nerve endings. Then the warmth of his breath touched where his tongue had been, evaporating the trace of wetness into shivering sensation.
Enough, she wanted to tell him. More than enough. Now. Do it now. Make love to me before I die of wanting you.