Hawke

by R. J. Lewis

  “You got a nasty cut,” he remarked, pressing the dripping cloth against the top of my forehead.

  I jumped, surprised by the pain I felt. I didn’t realize there was a cut. I’d been too concerned with Hawke removing Yuri’s eyeballs to notice.

  Hawke just killed a man and didn’t blink once.

  I knew he was scary. Hell, I saw him smash a helmet against the head of that cockroach. He needed to be scary because being scary meant being powerful too, and god, he was such a figure of power around these parts.

  But witnessing the violence out of his own two hands was something I couldn’t prepare myself for. It really hit me – and it felt like ice cubes crawling down my spine – that I had been infatuated with a killer since I was thirteen years old. He fucking beat cockroach and proceeded to have him executed, but my eyes had been shut. I’d been in denial and was comforted by that denial.

  This, though? This was madly confronting because I’d seen…everything.

  And now he was cleaning me up with the gentlest eyes narrowed on my wound as though it was a gunshot to the heart instead.

  There was suddenly nothing exciting about this at all.

  “It hurts, huh?” he asked softly.

  I just blinked. I could hardly form words in my head let alone out of my mouth.

  “That fuckin’ punk,” he murmured with a frown. “I can’t stand people like that, darlin’. They are the scum of the earth, you know that? They don’t deserve to breathe.”

  I blinked again. Dear God, he just killed someone, right in front of me.

  The men here were fucking crazy, but not like this. Not like him.

  “I had to,” he finally whispered gravely, catching my haunted expression. “You listen to me carefully, Tyler, and you remember what I say. You never let men like Yuri go. You make that mistake once and they’ll keep comin’ back with this entitled attitude and overinflated ego. They’ll never go away, darlin’. They’re there to stay until they fuck shit up so bad you can’t fix it. And, besides” – he let out a long breath as he stared at my cut some more – “he hurt you.”

  As he pressed the towel against my forehead, his other hand rested on my bare thigh. His fingers soothingly rubbed at the skin. I was still a little too numb to feel it, though I hated to admit I wanted to.

  “And what I did say about anybody disrespecting you?” he added, thoughtfully. “Your face is a temple, and he marred it. My fault for not reacting sooner. I give people too many chances. I let them talk. I should have known better. Should have seen the way he was shaking, obviously the maggot was in withdrawal.”

  He moved a little closer to me, until I could feel the warmth of his body.

  “Now he’s gone,” he told me sternly, and I was drowning in his dark eyes. “And you understand he needed to be gone, right?”

  I stiffened a nod, too out of it still to speak. Hawke dabbed at my forehead and then rinsed the towel with more warm water. He seemed concentrated on his task, like it was surgery work that needed his absolute attention. He’d never tended to me like this. I felt like a china doll handled with care. It was strange being on the receiving end like this.

  “You gonna be giving me those doe eyes all night, or you gonna talk?” he then asked, running his teeth over his plump bottom lip as he studied me.

  How could I talk?

  I was speechless.

  Petrified.

  And, worse yet, I was intensely attracted to this man regardless of all the fuckery.

  What did that say about me?

  I stared at him, drawn in by his rugged face and the tattoos visible above the collar of his shirt. God, he screamed trouble. And I foolishly listened.

  He rested his hand on my thigh again – a little higher than before – and rubbed more circles over it, until slowly my body began to thaw and relax beneath his touch. My heart rate slowed down and goose bumps broke along the flesh he was touching, sending light little tingles through me.

  “Why did he do it?” I finally asked, my voice quiet but surprisingly steady.

  “Why did he do what, Ty?”

  “Why me? It doesn’t make sense to single me out like that.”

  Hawke’s eyes roamed my face. Again a look I couldn’t understand. He moved even closer to me, until his chest practically touched mine. Then he leaned down, and I felt his breaths on my cheek before his mouth touched my ear. My eyes fluttered shut as his scent enveloped me. I felt warmth travel all the way to the spot between my legs.

  The tip of his nose ran along the curve of my ear, and then he parted his mouth and answered, “Maybe he singled you out after he saw the outline of your tits in your transparent top. And maybe, as he got closer, he saw that your painted on shorts accentuated the folds of your pussy. And then maybe, for a sick little fuck like him, he couldn’t resist the teasing show you put on any longer. What do you think of that theory, Ty?”

  Blood drained from my face. Hawke pulled back, his eyes inches away from mine. I saw the amusement in them, and my warmth was replaced with sudden anger.

  “So it’s my fault then?” I hissed. “Girls walk around with their tits hanging out but it’s my fault I got singled out like that because I decided to wear more than they did?”

  “You’re an idiot, Tyler.”

  “Why am I an idiot?”

  He abruptly grabbed me by the chin and forced my face in the direction of the mirror behind me. My body broke out in tremors as I saw the drops of blood still coating my face. Yuri’s blood.

  “Look at you, darlin’,” Hawke then said, his voice laced with fury as he looked at me in the mirror. “Look at how fucking beautiful you are. None of those girls with their tits hanging out have anything on you. You are simply fucking breathtaking.”

  Turning my body away from the mirror, I shook my head and pushed his hand away. “That’s not why he singled me out and you know it.”

  “You know what I know?” he snapped, the warmth from before evaporating. “I know that I told you a thousand times to stay away from this club. I know that if you just listened, none of this would have happened. If we’re lucky, Abram will let this go, but Abram won’t because to him it’s probably a sign of weakness that he sent his moronic cousin in here to renegotiate a deal and wound up dead.”

  “You didn’t have to kill him!”

  “He made you bleed.” He stopped there. Like that was all the excuse he needed to cut a man’s eyes out and gut him like a pig.

  “You’re crazy,” I let out in a rush, my head swimming in shock. “You’re fucking crazy.”

  He threw the towel down and looked away, a conflicted look crossing his face. “I know that already,” he whispered harshly.

  He turned around, hiding his face as he opened the shower stall door and turned the water on. The room filled up with steam very quickly. He kept his face averted, determined not to let me see it, but his body was half turned in my direction when he ordered me to, “Get in, Ty. You need to wash yourself.”

  “I’ll do that when you’re gone,” I replied evenly. I wasn’t going to strip in front of him and breeze past him.

  He suddenly looked at me. “You can’t. You’re shaking and need my help.”

  “I’m not shaking.”

  “Then get off.”

  “I’m not shaking,” I repeated confidently.

  Trying to prove myself, I slid easily off the sink. The second my feet touched the tile floor, my legs suddenly buckled and I nearly collapsed to the ground, hands struggling to grasp the edge of the counter. Every part of me quaked, and I couldn’t understand it. I felt fine two seconds ago.

  Hawke was instantly at my side and wrapping an arm around me. “I got you, Ty.”

  “Let go of me,” I demanded.

  “So you can fall back down?”

  I glared at him, embarrassment flooding me. “I don’t want you to touch me.”

  “You do want me to touch you,” he replied in a hard voice, searching my eyes. “Isn’t that what you begg
ed for in that motel room?”

  “I was a kid.”

  He let out a chuckle and it didn’t reach his eyes. He leaned back into me, his nose barely touching mine. “So why are you still looking at me like that?”

  My chest tightened and I shook my head. “I’m not looking at you like anything, Hawke.”

  “No, but you are.”

  “I’m not. You’re crazy. You just killed a man.”

  “He had a gun to your head.”

  “You killed him.”

  “And it’s not changing the way you look at me.” The corner of his mouth went up in a soft smile. “Not one bit. You always manage to surprise me, Tyler.”

  I didn’t respond. I hated that he was right. I couldn’t stop looking at him with that stupid fucking revering look. For as long as I could remember, the sight of Hawke did something to me. He made my insides go soft. He made my heart pump harder. He…seemed to touch some part of me that nobody else ever could.

  Like a coward, I turned my face away from him. I didn’t want him to see that look from me. Not now.

  He didn’t press the matter. No, that wasn’t something Hawke did. He didn’t like to talk. He liked to just stare nowadays.

  “Lift your arms,” he then said, grabbing at the hem of my shirt.

  “Hawke –”

  “I don’t want to keep staring at you covered in a dead man’s blood, Ty.”

  I shuddered, appalled and freaked out. I lifted my arms immediately, feeling sick to my stomach. Blood and gurgling sounds invaded me. Yuri’s face burned in my brain. I had half the urge to smash my head against the wall in an attempt to rid it from my mind.

  “Put your arms down, Ty.”

  I didn’t realize he’d already taken my top off. I dropped them immediately and covered my breasts with my arm. My head felt light and I sucked in air. I was ruined, wasn’t I? I’d asked for this, didn’t I? I was a spoiled little club bitch that felt like I belonged here, and one death later and I was already disintegrating into a giant baby. This is what they did, and I knew that already, but I dug a hole and put my head in it, loving the ignorance like the fucking idiot that I was.

  You’re freaking out. Just calm down.

  “What the fuck’s on your back?” he suddenly asked me.

  I didn’t respond. I was still thinking of Yuri’s eye-less face. I’d never seen a face without eyes. I always thought it would just be two black holes, not…fleshy, or pink, or bloodied. How did Hawke manage to remove those eyes in less than five seconds? That took serious skill, didn’t it? And experience.

  It would have taken a lot of experience.

  Hawke was behind me, hands at my back while I lost myself in dark thoughts. He peeled the bandage off and went still. I glimpsed at the mirror, needing to see his reaction. His face was pale, his eyes wide with horror. Oh, so this bothered him? Not Yuri, though, no. But…this. My tattoo. My tattoo was what broke through Hawke’s wall. How fucking brilliant.

  “The club insignia, Tyler,” he said in disbelief. “Why?”

  “Because I belong here,” I simply replied, though my voice sounded hollow.

  He exhaled and ran a hand over his face. “Fuckin’ hell.”

  I waited for him to explode. I knew this was a step too far in his books, and it wouldn’t sit well with him, but I stood by the tattoo, even now.

  “When did you get this done?” he asked.

  “It was finished tonight,” I answered.

  He frowned and his fingers shot up. I felt him touching at my skin, tracing over the tattoo. “You got ointment for this? It’s going to need another coating soon.”

  I shook my head. “Hector said he’d treat me in the morning.”

  Hawke’s jaw clenched. “Of course he did. He did this then, didn’t he?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I wanted him to, Hawke.”

  His fingers stopped moving, and solemnly he asked, “Has he touched you, Tyler?”

  I knew what he was asking me, but I was shocked that he would even think it. Hector was playful and flirty, but he never put the moves on me.

  “No,” I told him firmly, not masking my surprise. “Not like that. Never.”

  “Good.”

  Why good? If I wasn’t such a pussy, I would have asked. But Hawke was intimidating, and breathing alone was a hard enough task to handle.

  Hawke circled me until he was standing in front of me. As I looked up at his dark eyes, I felt his hands on my shorts. Felt him unbutton them before he slid them down a few inches. They fell on their own the rest of the way. I was naked. In front of him. Yet he was staring at my face instead of my body, and it made the situation surprisingly worse.

  “Put your arms down,” he told me.

  I hesitated. I couldn’t remember the last time a guy saw me naked. Probably never. I had fucked in the dark a few times with my high school boyfriend. Something about the light made it too intimate, and I didn’t want to have intimacy with just anyone. Not living this lifestyle, anyway.

  But Hawke…

  Hawke could make me do anything, I realized.

  I dropped my arms and I was still too busy trying to breathe to feel entirely conscious of the way I looked. His gaze immediately shot to my breasts. He scanned my body slowly, going over every inch. I knew that he liked what he saw because his eyes looked heated and his body went tight. Any other day I would have loved the tiny little victory I felt about that, but right now I mostly felt exposed, and not in the obvious way, but in a way that made me feel like he’d peeled a layer off of me with just one look.

  “When did you get so beautiful?” he muttered, his brown eyes meeting mine.

  I didn’t reply, but something heavy stirred in me. It was enough to block out the bad images for a few moments. My stomach tightened at the way his eyes continued to run the length of me, like some meal he wanted to devour.

  I wondered if he was going to touch me.

  I knew I wouldn’t stop it from happening.

  It was the kind of thing I felt I somehow…needed right now. Because I wasn’t thinking of Yuri and blood and eyeballs on the hardwood floor.

  I was solely thinking of Hawke’s masculine face, his soft plump lips and delicious bronze skin. Adrenaline fired through my bloodstream; it felt like a kick in the deepest part of me. I wanted to move forward. Wanted to inch my way so that I could feel my nipples press against the hard plains of his chest.

  Hawke seemed to understand the look on my face. His jaw tensed and then… he let out a small sigh and stepped back. His eyes instantly cleared as he ordered me to, “Get in the shower and clean yourself, Ty. Don’t get your back wet. I want every drop of blood gone.”

  I went so still, surprised by his reaction.

  He was leaving me? Just like that? What did I expect though? For him to console me all night? For him to touch me and give me a way to expel the goddamn energy that was buzzing through my body right now at a dizzying pace?

  Disappointment gnawed at me. Leave it to me to want to be touched by a man that’d just killed a human being and had us coated in his blood. The reminder made my bones stiffen, sending reality crashing down and the images to come bursting through.

  Blood. All that blood. Everywhere. On me still. His choking, dying sounds. Gurgling on blood.

  Swallowing back a sudden sob in my throat, I turned and moved to the shower stall hastily. I was going to throw up. I needed the hot water. I needed to wash it all off – that red blood that was sprinkled all over me. But as I opened the door, my knees buckled and I nearly collapsed again.

  “Shit,” Hawke cursed as his arms caught me again.

  “I’m fine,” I panted, even though I felt like the walls were closing in on me.

  I didn’t know what was happening, why my vision spotted, why my legs couldn’t stand upright. I broke out in tremors in his arms, swamped by overwhelming fear.

  “You’re having a panic attack,” he whispered. “Calm down, Ty.”

  I sucked in air and my head sw
am. I went to close my eyes, but more images of blood ran through me, until I felt like I was covered in it. In all that blood.

  He settled me on the floor, and I couldn’t focus. I grabbed at his arm, panicked to find he was moving away from me, detaching his body from mine.

  “Don’t leave me,” I whispered.

  “I ain’t leaving you,” he assured me.

  He stood and I looked up as he threw his clothes off, stripping every article of clothing until he was naked. Then he bent back down and collected me in his thick arms and stepped into the shower. My arm wrapped around his neck as he sat us down on the tile ground. He held me tight as I shook uncontrollably, the water pounding over us.

  “It’ll pass,” he promised me, his voice gentle. “You’ll be alright because you’re tough, Tyler. You’ve always been that way.”

  I didn’t respond. I rested my face against his hard chest and closed my eyes again. This time I didn’t see bloody images, not when I was surrounded by Hawke’s touch.

  He moved around, grabbing my loofah and running it down my legs and arms. He made sure my back wasn’t against the water, but he piled my hair over my front and ran it under the spray. Eventually, my grasp around his neck loosened and I turned my face up to look at him. He was concentrating on his task of soaking up the loofah and squeezing the hot water over parts of my body. It was relaxing, and slowly I felt the scattered pieces of my mind come together again.

  “You…” I paused, sniffing as my eyes wandered his thick neck along the curve of his pronounced jaw.

  He looked down at me as I spoke, staring into my eyes, waiting.

  I was shaking so bad, my muscles ached. But I opened my trembling lips and forced out, “You…you always…take care of me.”

  Hawke’s face relaxed and he barely blinked as he searched my eyes. Droplets scattered all over his face, falling from his eyelashes and over the soft curve of his cheeks.