Hawk

by Abigail Graham

  "Let go," I purr, "Let go of me."

  I sit up and rise, draw him out of me. His cock, hard as a rock and wet with my juices, slaps against his bare stomach and I stare at it, amazed that I took that inside me just now. Standing, I shakily turn around and move to sit in his lap, spreading his jeans open and pushing them down a little before I guide him inside me again, facing him this time. As I sink into his lap and his cock sinks into my body, more fireworks go off over our head as Stars and Stripes Forever thunders from the loudspeakers.

  I find myself grinning and moving my hips in time with the music. Hawk rises up under me, meeting the motions of my body with his own. He pulls me against him and holds me still and begins thrusting from below. I can feel his stomach tightening against my body as his cock draws back and fills me again, draws back and fills me a gain, growing harder with every thrust.

  It's so hot.

  I can't take much more. Some instinct drives me to bury my face in his neck as a shockwave of pleasure crushes through my body, slides under my skin like I'm going to burst. Before I even realize it, the meat of his shoulder is between my teeth.

  I… I bit him.

  I think he likes it. He fucks me harder, his arm around my waist, his hand on my ass, pushing me down to meet his thrusts. I can't control my movements anymore. My legs shake like leaves, my feet lifting up from the ground as my muscles tighten. It feels like every muscle in my body is torquing at once behind us the thunder of the fireworks ripples through the air and the blasts light the world like high noon. I thrash in his grip as a climax tears through my body, bursts through my skin and unfolds out into the hot air around me. I lock around him, quivering as he pumps harder, then drives inside me and holds me against him, quivering from the tension.

  He says my name in an almost quiet voice, “Alex,” then explodes inside me, hot and wet.

  It only makes me thrash harder. I bury my face against him and rake his back with my nails as another peak ripples through my body in a quivering wave, and I feel myself clenching him. He kisses me all over, showering heat on my shoulders, my throat, meeting my lips with his own. Raw instinct drives me to buck in his lap as his tongue rides over mine, squeeze every ounce of pleasure out of his quivering body. I nip the side of his neck, a quick squeeze of the skin between my teeth, and he yelps and smack, cracks his open palm against my ass. I jerk, shocked.

  I… I liked that.

  Behind us, the fireworks fade as the music drops out. One final rocket sails skyward and goes off with a whining pop, and the fireworks are over.

  For now.

  I want to laugh. I want to lay with him for hours. I want to keep him inside me.

  If I don't get home we're both fucked.

  I climb off him, find my shorts, and pull them on, hoping I can get home and get changed before I have to explain the big wet spot on the front of my clothes or the mud on my knees. Hawk gets up behind me and rests his hands on my hips. My legs can barely hold me up.

  "I have to go," I blurt out, "Right now."

  "Alex-"

  "Hawk, please. I have to beat everybody back to the house. I have to go."

  "What are we going to do?"

  "I don't know," I whimper. "I don't know. Just don't leave me. Please."

  "I won't."

  He zips himself up, and touches my arms.

  "We can meet somewhere, I…I don't know, we'll figure something out. I have to go."

  No time, no time. I pull away from him and break into a run, going full tilt, the most awkward run I've ever had to run. I go faster, panting, as I clear the gates and turn to cut through a vacant lot and a backyard, taking the most direct route back to the house. I throw myself into it, until I'm running so fast that if I stop I'll just flop right down on the ground, until my lungs burn and my calves are fire and I can see the house. I run at the front door, think better of it, sling around the house and up the back steps, through the back door and up to the second floor.

  No Lance, thank God. He must have been at the park. I duck into my room, strip, grab a towel, and run bare-assed into the bathroom, turn on the water full blast and sluice the mud from my legs, hold the spray between them and shudder as I cleanse myself.

  Terror rips through my body. Tom will know. He'll know. He'll smell it on me.

  He'll know I've been bad and they'll come and take me back to the hospital no, no, no, no, no, no…

  It doesn't stop until I've sat under the spray for five minutes, clutching myself. I fucked up. I should have grabbed May, gone with Hawk, and we should be a hundred miles from Paradise Falls by now. Why do I stay?

  I know why.

  Slowly, I rise, finish rinsing myself off, and wrap the towel around my body. I leave a trail of wet footprints in the hallway and lock myself in my room, tuck the chair under it for good measure.

  As I towel myself off, I pace. Inside, a storm rages as I try to process everything at once. I can't even tell if I'm mad at him anymore. Fuck, it wasn't his fault. He thought he was protecting me, the big lummox. I…

  Oh my God, I just lost my virginity. That was my first time. In the woods.

  Kind of appropriate for us, now that I think about it.

  He liked it when I bit him.

  What am I going to do? Tom will never let us be happy together. He'll hurt me and if somehow I escape his reach, he'll hurt my sister, my little sister who used to sleep in my bed wearing footie pajamas and leave Fruit Loops under my pillow after eating the goddamn things all night. I don't even care what happens to me, I can't let that motherfucker strap May to a table, feel her up, and hold a knife against her thigh and threaten to kill her. That's not going to happen to me. The son of a bitch killed Hawk's mom, too.

  That crushes me. I sink to the bed and then to the floor and weep softly, trying to contain myself. I want Hawk right now. I want him to hold me and make it go away. I loved his mom. Her name was Laura, and she was so beautiful and kind and sweet. The weight of memory rounds my shoulders as I remember all the times she was subtly pushing us together, trying to make it happen, helping us click. Tom hated me, but she adored me. The way my dad liked Hawk before he died in the bridge collapse.

  Why couldn't they be the ones to live, and get married? Then we'd all be happy.

  I look up at that, and laugh to myself. Oh yeah, Alex. That's normal. I can't help but laugh, even though I'm crying.

  If anybody saw me now they really would think I'm crazy.

  Eventually I manage to get up and find a ratty pair of lounge pants and an old t-shirt to wear.

  I used to have a lot of Hawk's clothes. I doubt he had any of mine, but somehow I ended up with a dozen of his shirts. I don't have any of those anymore. Just thinking about that makes me sad. God, I used to sleep in a shirt he gave me, one of his. Why couldn't I see what we had together? Was it the familiarity that blinded us to what we were, or something else? Were we just too young?

  The image of him staring at me in the wave pool floods back into my mind. The way he looked at me. He looked at me like that today, tonight, he always does now. Like I stepped out of a dream, like we just met and he's known me forever. He looks at me like he's never seen me before.

  Curled up on the bed, I hope May's feeble excuses worked and I'll be able to sleep through the night without being dragged off to be sedated with Thorazine.

  When light reaches through the blinds and cuts into my sleep, I blink a few times, yawn, and decide I've made it.

  Then I rise, pull on a robe, and shiver my way to the kitchen. It's always freezing in the house, year round. I hear a knock at the door and stop, freezing in the middle of pouring a glass of orange juice. I set the carton down and carry the glass with me to the front door, but I've been beaten to it. I sink back into the kitchen as Tom glares at me, then swings the door open.

  Hawk stands on the porch with his duffel bag slung on his shoulder.

  "Hi, dad."

  Alexis

  Now

  May is in the hallway
, wrapped up in her fluffy bathrobe. I grab her before she can say a word, touch my finger to my lips for silence and duck into her room. Her bedroom is directly above the office, and if we open the heater vent and stay very, very quiet, we can hear what people are saying below.

  Tom’s voice.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Aww, dad, I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

  “This isn’t a game, boy. We had an arrangement.”

  Hawk snorts. “I’ve altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.”

  “What?”

  “Nevermind. Here’s the new deal, dad. I’m moving in. You didn’t give my room away, did you?”

  “Actually, I did.”

  I sigh, softly. May glances at me, annoyed.

  They gave Lance Hawk’s room after he moved out, at the end of the hall, the biggest of the bedrooms on the second floor.

  “Oh well, I’m sure there’s some room somewhere unless you and Helen got busy and nobody told me.”

  Silence, but I can somehow hear Tom’s annoyance.

  “I made myself very clear,” he says. “You need to go back where you came from.”

  “Oh, how awful,” Hawk says in a mocking sing-song. “You’d throw out your unemployed veteran son? I’m sure all the vets and their families in Paradise Falls would love to hear that.”

  I can practically hear Tom’s teeth grinding.

  “What’s your angle here, boy?”

  “I don’t have one. I wanted to come home.”

  “You can stay, for now, but if you lay one finger on your stepsister, you’re out. You’re to have no contact with her, at all.”

  “So which room do I get?”

  “Take one of the ones upstairs. I don’t care. This is temporary. You’ll be moving out soon.”

  “Okay, I’ll go check it out, then.”

  Footsteps. The door opens and closes, and May snaps the vent shut. We both scramble away from it, and lean up against the wall.

  This is insane. He can’t be moving in here.

  “This is great,” May chirps in a soft whisper.

  “What? Are you crazy?”

  “You can get back together.”

  I scowl at her. “There’s no getting back. We were never together.”

  May rolls her eyes at me. “Riiiiiight.”

  I must be turning red, I can feel the heat on my face. I seize May by the shoulders and look her in the eye.

  “May, this isn’t a game. We both know it. We can’t screw around, here. If Tom told Hawk he has to stay away from me, I have to stay away from him. Understood?”

  “But-”

  “No buts!” She gives me a sullen sigh and her shoulders droop as I let go of her. Rising, she flops on her bed and looks at me.

  “You like each other.”

  I sit down next to her. “I don’t know if I like him or not.”

  “You mean like, or like-like?”

  I glare at her, over my shoulder.

  “Alex-”

  I fold my arms and huff. “May, you know what he did to me.”

  She sits up, and pulls the collar of her robe up around her neck.

  “Do I? I heard what they were saying, same as you. Sounds to me like Tom made Hawk leave.”

  I swallow. Or try to. My throat is dry. I need something to drink I need a shower.

  “May,” I sigh. “Just let it go, okay?”

  “Why?”

  I scowl at her.

  “I saw the way he looked at you. Before you smashed the hot dog on him I mean.”

  May rests her hand on my shoulder.

  “He wasn’t there when I needed him.” I say, softly.

  I shrug out from her touch and give her a look. She rises to her feet and turns away from me, signaling I should go so she can get dressed. With a weary sigh I trudge to the door on aching feet, half expecting Hawk to be standing in the hallway waiting for me, but he’s not there.

  I slip into my room, grab a towel and my own robe, and slip into the bathroom. The blessed heat of the shower soaks into me as I stand under it, letting it cascade down my back. I’m so tired. Tired of everything. My feet hurt. My head hurts.

  After I soap up and rinse off I turn the water off and, teeth chattering, wrap myself up in my robe, dry my legs, and walk slowly back to my room, like I’m dragging something heavy behind me. Inside, I lock the door and sit down on the bed, and start brushing my hair.

  Tap.

  What the hell?

  Tap, tap, tap. It sounds like something hitting my window.

  I turn, and there’s Hawk, hanging upside down and grinning, rapping on the glass with his knuckle. Tucking my robe tighter around my body, I turn and throw up the sash. A wave of warm air flows in.

  “Hi, can I come in?”

  “No.”

  He does anyway, crawling through the window and bouncing on my bed until his legs are in and he swings them around and sits up.

  “Get. Out.”

  “That’s not the response I was hoping for.”

  I turn to face him. “I heard what your father said. You need to stay away from me. Somebody might hear us. Go back out the window. How did you even-”

  “I’m a master of sneaking out of this house, trust me. Come on, Alex.”

  “Don’t ‘come on Alex’ me, Hawk. I told you, we’re done.”

  No matter how many times I say it, I still feel a flutter in my chest when he looks at me, and more than that, heat rising from between my legs. My robe doesn’t show much. It’s a big white fluffy monstrosity that’s a size too big. I got it after I got tired of Lance leering at me in my old one, and bought one for May, too. All he can see is my neck, but his eyes on my throat make me press my legs together and squirm on the bed.

  It’s not helping that I can’t take my eyes off him. His chest is just huge, and when he leans forward his arms flex and the big triceps muscles go rigid. The tattoos draw my eye naturally, my gaze flowing along the length of his powerful arms to his big hands, but it’s his eyes that draw me the most. Blue eyes like clear skies.

  I am very, very angry with him, but I can see he’s been hurt. There’s sorrow in those eyes, and shame, and something else. Part of me, a big part of me, wants to throw my arms around him and bury my face in his neck. After all these years and everything that happened I want to help him.

  I stand up and tighten the belt holding my robe and grab a Coke from my mini-fridge. I offer one to Hawk, too, and he takes it. His fingers brush mine, warm and rough against the smooth cold surface of the can.

  He cracks it open and takes a long pull and says, “After I left here, I went into the Navy. Recruiter told me I’d be on a nuclear submarine. I thought that was ideal. Long periods away from civilization, no contact with the outside world.”

  Hawk stares at the can, turning it in his fingers. “Instead they sent me to corps school.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Corpsman is like a medic,” he sighs. “After I went through the program, I spent six months at the naval hospital in Philadelphia. I became a corpsman technician. Sort of a mix between a physician’s assistant and a nurse practitioner.”

  “Did you have to do, like, surgery on people?”

  He takes another drink and smacks his lips like he just took a pull of whiskey.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.”

  “After that I was attached to the Marines.”

  “Don’t they have their own guys?”

  He shakes his head. “No, they’re our own guys. Marines are technically in the Navy. Anyway I was sent to Afghanistan, did a year there, then a year in Iraq.”

  I swallow a cold mouthful of soda, but it doesn’t seem to do anything for my dry throat, or the growing sense of dread, like a heavy ball of tar in my stomach.

  “Did something happen?”

  He looks at me, then looks down at the floor.

&nbs
p; “I decided I want out in Iraq. The unit of Marines I was with was on patrol, and a firefight broke out. Couple of our guys got hit, but not bad. The other side got it worse. We practically knocked down the building they were using for cover.

  “I went in. I found a kid in on the first floor, he couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. There was a rifle right by his hand, blood on his palm, blood on the stock where he was holding it. He took a shot to the stomach. Bad.”

  He sighs, and it turns into a shudder.

  “Gut shot is a bad way to go. If the bullet hit him a few inches away, he might have lived- he’d need a bowel resectioning, and it’d have been touch and go, but the way he was hit with the time it would take to evac him after our own guys there was nothing I could do.

  “He said stuff in Arabic, but I only knew a few words, basic stuff. I had no idea what he was saying. Five minutes ago this kid was shooting at me, trying to kill me. Now he was just lying there saying the same things over and over again. I pieced it together later. He was praying. Then it changed. He started asking for his mother over and over again.”

  “He-”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.”

  I sit down on the bed next to him. He stares at his soda can, turning it in his fingers. Slowly, I take one hand and rest it on top of his. His skin is warm. He turns and looks at me and I feel a warm heat slide down my back, like I’m starting to melt. The hurt in his eyes burns.

  I lean over and touch my lips to his cheek.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  His breath tickles my lips when he talks.

  “I think about all the things I should have done. I should have stayed. I should have fought, but I couldn’t. I had to leave.”

  All I want is to be taken in his arms. It’s like being hugged by a fortress. The shaking stops. My breathing slows. Hawk runs his hand lightly over my damp hair and touches his lips to my forehead.

  “Alex,” he murmurs. “I want it to be like it was. I want you to trust me again.”

  “Hawk, we can’t, we can’t. He doesn’t make idle threats. He’ll kill us all. This is bigger than you realize.”