by R. J. Lewis
“You can’t be here,” Hector told him moments later, glancing at him over his shoulder, eyes glazed and, like he expected, filled with fury. “You gotta go back to your other brother, right? The one you’d rather take a bullet for, even though he orders you around like a fucking puppy.”
Hawke didn’t respond to that. In fact, he barely blinked in his direction. Hector would always be bitter with his older brother. A lifetime of jealousy did that to someone. Arguing was pointless.
They stared at each other for some time, the tension always lingering between them. Shit was never easy. Never.
“And don’t you dare get wrapped up about Ty,” Hector spat angrily. “The girl stays. We function well with her around. She soothes everybody.”
“You’re playing with fire,” Hawke replied quietly. “You know she needs to be safe.”
Hector suddenly slammed his hand down on the bar hard. “Where else is she safer than here?! Huh? Answer me that fucking question, Hawke. You got a bunker somewhere you can hide her in? You want to keep her a prisoner ‘til she’s twenty-one? Well, fuck, she’s gonna be twenty-one in a matter of weeks, asshole! If nothing happened to her the last eight years, then ain’t nothing gonna happen to her before then!”
Hawke smirked. “Then why did Yuri come around asking for her, brother?”
Hector shook his head. “Like I said, there’s no way for him to have known about it. He just wanted her. That was it.”
“And what if you’re wrong?”
His younger brother clenched his teeth. “Fucking hell! I’m not, alright? You need to go. Fuck knows I’m tired of you coming here and putting me in second place. You said you’d leave it to me. You said you didn’t want to take the patch back, but you’re a distraction every time you’re around. This chapter isn’t your fucking concern anymore. Now let me take care of things.”
If he’d been taking care of things, Hawke never would have received the call to take care of this. He could have mentioned that, but again, it was pointless with Hector. You couldn’t say a damn thing without his fucking ego taking a nosedive.
“Get a shut eye, Hector,” Hawke finally said. “And I’ll go when I decide to go.”
With that, he turned around and walked out, heading back to his room. He didn’t know what he needed to do about the mess with Yuri, but he knew he needed sleep. He’d figure shit out when his mind wasn’t filled with rage over the cunt that’d put a gun to Tyler’s head and thought he could demand shit from him.
He opened his bedroom door and found Tyler still asleep in his bed. He stopped mid-step and stared at her. She was wearing purple boy-shorts and a white singlet, the only two articles of clothing he could find in his haste to dress her sweet body. The covers were between her soft legs, her dark hair partially over her face. But that wasn’t what made him lose his breath.
It was his jacket she was using as her pillow, her face pressed against the leather, breathing in his scent.
She’d cuddled his fucking jacket to her like a goddamn teddy bear. He didn’t expect to like the sight of it so much, and it irritated the fuck out of him that he did.
“What happened to you?” he whispered aloud. How in the hell had she grown so much in such a short amount of time? It was doing his head in. She was so fucking beautiful, it made his balls ache and his chest go tight. And his chest never went fucking tight, nor did his balls ache for pussy before. Women had been the same for him all his life. He’d grown so desensitized to the act of fucking, he hadn’t touched a woman for months…and months. It was like his will for sex had died. Which wasn’t a joke. He’d fucked like a rabbit since he was fourteen years old living the club life, and it was only when he became president that he started to feel like a numb shell for it. Yet one gaze at Tyler’s naked body made him feel ravenous to fuck.
Maybe she was reminding him what he was missing out on.
Or maybe that was just the excuse he was using so he wouldn’t admit he wanted her.
Sometimes a person could be standing in front of you your whole life without you knowing it. Then one day you walk into a bar and see that person not as a child from your memory, but a grown ass woman with curves in all the right places and a face so fucking beautiful it hurt your eyes.
Hawke sighed and shook his head at himself. Sleeping in this bedroom with her within arm’s reach would be a bad idea.
“What’re you doing?” she suddenly said in a groggy voice.
He tensed, surprised to find her awake.
“Nothing,” he replied tightly. “Get some sleep.”
Instead of doing as she was told, she stretched and rested on her back. Her tank shot up and part of her hip and stomach were visible. Her legs – disproportionately long compared to the rest of her small frame – looked like satin heaven.
Fuck, he thought of her breasts, small and perky, easy to cup. He thought of her hips, soft and rounded in all the right places. He couldn’t get the image of her wet, naked body out of his head.
She blinked at him slowly. “You can sleep here. It’s your bed.”
He shook his head. “Doubt you’d want me near you after tonight.”
“I don’t know what to think about tonight,” she whispered back, staring at him gravely. “I…I can’t get his face out of my head, Hawke.”
Her voice broke near the end, and it gutted him. Fuck, she wasn’t going to handle this shit well at all. He moved to her quickly and took a seat on the edge of the bed. He swept the hair from her face and cupped her cheek, turning it so that she was staring at him.
“Do you hate me for what I did?” he asked her, needing to know.
She shook her head. “No.”
“How do you feel about me then?”
A tear fell from her eye. “I…I’m scared of you.”
She was scared of him. He’d rather she hated him instead.
“You wanna know somethin’?” he replied quietly, his chest heavy. “I’m scared of me too sometimes.”
Her hand went over his, and he thought she’d remove it from her face. Instead, she held it tightly and cried. He brushed away her tears, but they kept coming. Her other hand grabbed at his arm, and she hauled herself to him, crawling into his lap. She buried her face into his chest and shook.
He should have felt angry at himself for putting her through that sight, but he couldn’t feel anger toward himself. He did what he felt he had to do at the time, and with how unstable Yuri was holding that gun to her head, she might have been blown away impulsively if Hawke hadn’t reacted so quickly.
Hawke wrapped his arms around her and rocked her against him. He was filthy – clothing still covered in dried blood – but he couldn’t leave her. Not like this.
“How do I get it out of my head?” she begged, her voice tight.
“You don’t,” he replied calmly. “Fighting it makes it worse. You force yourself to think it.”
“There was so much blood.”
“Yeah.”
“I feel so dirty.”
Fuck, his chest hurt for her. “Yeah.”
“How do you handle it, Hawke?”
He paused. “I turn off.”
Otherwise he’d have gone mad years ago.
She nodded and stopped talking after that.
He ran his hand down her spine, never telling her it was going to be okay, never saying anything actually. His fucked up hand slid down her leg and back up, rounding her ass with all that junk and back up her spine again. After a while, she calmed right down and breathed quietly, liking the feel of him. He sensed it soothed her. Mostly he wanted to show her that the hands he’d killed someone with were also the very same hands capable of making her feel better.
The last thing he expected was her breaths to thin, or her body to tighten beneath his touch. She was responding to his touch, and not in the relaxing way he’d hoped.
Suddenly the room felt too small, and her body felt too good. Her shampoo – some kind of feminine shit that smelled like fucking heave
n – wafted into his nose, making him lean in closer to her head for more of it.
He closed his eyes as his hand continued to move, but it didn’t feel like it was moving in the same way it had been before. It was far from clinical. No, he really felt her skin this time, memorizing every curve on his way to her hip.
The second she squirmed for more, he stopped suddenly and opened his eyes.
Fuck.
He pulled away abruptly and started to set her back down in his bed when she grabbed his hand and forced it between her inner thighs.
Right on her pussy.
He tensed and looked down at her, at her glistening needy eyes and parted lips.
“Hawke,” she whispered, breaking the silence.
She stared at his mouth.
He stared at hers.
Fuck again.
“You ain’t thinkin’ straight,” he told her, frowning.
“I want you to touch me.”
“You want me to distract you, babe.”
“I want both.”
He didn’t know why he kept his hand there.
Well, he did fucking know.
He liked the feel of her pussy through the sad excuse of fabric. More importantly, he liked the feel of her. And his dick hardened as a result. He was a man, after all; it was fucking chemical.
His fingers barely moved, but they moved nonetheless. Enough for him to feel her folds.
Enough to make her breaths stop.
Enough to make time stop.
Fuck, she was sexy.
She sucked in a breath, closing her eyes for a moment to the feel of him. The look wound him right up. Warmth spread from his head down to his fucking toes. He wanted her.
Wanted.
When was the last time he wanted someone so bad?
Never.
Not like this.
Fuck again and again.
“You wanna know why you’re horny?” he asked her, running his teeth over his bottom lip as he looked her sexy body over and, fuck, she had an ass. “It’s because you’re still firing with adrenaline. You’re wound up tight and you’re sensitive all over. You’re on a hair trigger, and your sweet pussy’s throbbing for a release. And you wanna know what happens after you orgasm, darlin’?”
She didn’t respond. She just stared at him, waiting.
“You feel dirty,” he said. “And you regret it. Because then you don’t know if the fucked up situation hours ago excited you, or made you lose your mind.”
“Hawke –”
“Maybe when you’re thinkin’ straight you’ll be sure.”
“Hawke –”
“But right now, you ain’t sure.”
He removed his hand from between her legs and set her down on the mattress, her face pressed against his jacket again. She immediately turned her body away from him. She was embarrassed. Or disappointed. He didn’t know what. All he knew was he wasn’t going to fuck a girl after he’d murdered some tool in front of her.
Hawke was fucked up, sure.
But not that fucked up.
“You get some sleep now, Tyler,” he forced out.
It took a surprising amount of willpower for him to turn around and leave.
eleven
Hawke
He paced the hallway outside his room eighty-seven times. That wasn’t a guess either – he’d fucking counted.
Eighty. Seven. Times.
He was wound up. His dick hadn’t softened, his mind still raced with images of her vulnerable eyes, and his hand tingled from the touch of her pussy.
And it had been his injured hand too.
Nobody – especially a woman – had ever touched his injured hand without cringing.
Ty hadn’t even flinched… and it did his head in.
This was Tyler.
TYLER, YOU DIPSHIT!
Not some random bit of fluff that he wouldn’t think twice about fucking and discarding. That’s what they’d all wanted, wasn’t it? To be used without commitment, without question, without expectation for more.
Tyler wouldn’t be like that, though. She’d latch – he saw it in that fucking stare – and that’s why he needed out of here right now.
It was like this every time he saw her, and every time he was taken aback by how stunning she was. It was maddening, and he’d find himself going through the mental steps trying to convince himself to walk away and not let her sweet wanting eyes make him weak enough to take her.
But tonight was especially difficult.
Because tonight she’d made the move.
Out of desperation and vulnerability, sure, but she’d done it nonetheless, revealing her want in a bold manner that triggered every primitive urge in him.
He tried to make it work in his head. What would it mean to taste Tyler? How far would he be willing to go? But every time he thought it, he’d hit that motherfucking roadblock. Wanting her meant staying, and staying was out of the question.
Finally, after an agonizing hour, he left. Sleep wasn’t going to come, not after Yuri and Tyler. Too much adrenaline coursed through his veins. He needed to get back to New Raven – to Borden and the guys. Maybe they’d figure something out with Abram. Borden always had the best plans.
But as he cruised down main street, memories flooded him. He past shops he was familiar with: the barber shop his old man frequented with him by his side; a club owned strip club that Gus organized Hawke’s first lap dance at with some strawberry blonde babe by the name of Cherry (and Cherry died of a drug overdose a year later); a salon that had once been a diner they’d ended up shooting up when the owner skimmed off their slice of the pie (that was the first time he’d confronted violence and he had been fourteen years old and armed with a pistol his father had given him upon instructing him to “learn to be man”).
Hawke felt nostalgic. Sticking around had never been the plan. He’d usually showed up to the clubhouse and then left right away, and while he knew the shit with Abram needed to be sorted out, something about Tyler struck a chord in him. He felt reluctant about leaving her, and he couldn’t understand the emotion coursing through him. Curiosity about her? Temptation to be near her after he’d seen her naked and touched her pussy in bed? Or maybe it was just Yuri’s request fucking his head up.
He didn’t know for sure, but he thought about it as he roamed the quiet streets, down neighborhoods and parks. Norwich was a pretty little town now. Not so much a dump anymore, though he noticed the south end was still packed with homeless people sleeping in tents on the side of the road.
He didn’t know what possessed him to stop his bike in front of the motel room where life took a strange turn. It was a night he had tried very hard to forget, though it niggled at the back of his mind every single time he thought of Tyler.
Leaning back on his bike, he took a deep breath, staring at the room Dennis had died in. It had been the night he’d begged Hawke to care for Tyler right before he choked on his blood and died.
Take care.
Take care of her.
I took it.
I took.
Don’t trust.
Don’t trust.
Don’t…
There was never a day that had gone by that Hawke never thought of those words.
Tyler had been thrust into his life forcefully and without question, but now he was beginning to realize just how ingrained she was in his world.
Because he didn’t want to see her out of it anytime soon.
twelve
Tyler
I woke up in the stillness, feeling like last night was a thousand miles away. I was pretty sure my mind had built a wall, eager and desperate to bury the blood and fear I’d experienced. The last time it’d done this was when my father died, and now I felt like I was putting another event inside that box I never wanted to reopen. Regardless, whatever my brain was doing, it was working, and I didn’t want to leave the quiet peace I was in.
My head was a lot clearer. The adrenaline and tension had washed from
my limbs, and I felt malleable and limp. For a while, I floated in semi-consciousness, my face still pressed against Hawke’s jacket.
Hawke.
Hawke rejected you.
That was the first clear thought that entered my mind when I finally opened my eyes. The second thought was,
God, what was I thinking making him touch me like that?
I was suddenly embarrassed at myself. I didn’t know why I did that, or why the urge to be touched was stronger than ever. I threw the covers over me and groaned into my pillow. How would I face him? That’s not something you could easily brush off.
I lay like that for a while under the covers; it was my version of a black hole I could crawl into. Then I heard the door creak open, and footsteps approached. My eyes immediately shot open, and I tensed, wondering if it was Hawke.
“Sweets, are you up?”
The tension dissipated. It was Jesse.
“Hmm,” I groaned back.
The bed sank and his arm dug beneath the covers, finding my frame. “You alright?” he asked me, running his hand down my bare arm.
“Mhm,” I returned, not in the mood to speak.
“You gonna stay in today?”
“What?”
“It’s back to work for you,” he explained softly. “But you can take the day off. I would understand. I just wanted to know because I’m down there getting ready –”
“I’m coming,” I cut in, my voice stronger.
I felt him pause before he peeled the covers off of me. His blue eyes met mine, and goodness, they were particularly bluer than usual. His hair was a mess, like he’d just gotten out of bed and came stumbling to my room like I was his first priority. He was wearing just his black briefs, his built tattooed chest and pierced nipples in plain view, inches from my face. It was a wanted distraction, but not one that stirred any warm feelings in the pit of me the way Hawke did.
Jesse looked at me closely, studying me with this perplexed look on his face. “You sure?” he asked, biting at the piercing on his bottom lip.
I nodded. “I’ll be down there in thirty.”
He nodded back. “I’ll get ready then and wait for you outside.”