May looks at me, then at Hawk, and smirks to herself as she cracks the door open, then slips across the hallway. I hear her door close softly, and Hawk locks my door again. I sit up, yawn, then stand and push the bed covers back into position as best I can.
Hawk's hands fall on the outsides of my thighs. I stand straight up as his hands slip up and squeeze my ass. I grab his wrists and pull them away but he ignores my struggles, puts his hands on my hips, and pulls me against him. I relax as he breathes softly against my ear, then kisses my throat.
"Stop it, I'm all sweaty."
"I know. Come here."
I stifle a laugh as he turns me in his hands, and shoves my arm up, and pushes his face in my armpit and breathes in deep. It tickles, his breath on my side, even with the shirt. I have to choke down a laugh as I feebly struggle in his arms, not really trying to escape. He tugs at my shirt and then he must think better of it, because he puts his mouth on my side and I feel the wet heat of his tongue as it soaks through my shirt, and he starts working his way along the side of my breast, pushing me down onto the bed as he falls on top of me and pins me down, on my side.
His arms around my waist, he keeps me pinned down there and his mouth works along the side of my breast, and his fingers tickle my stomach. He sucks hard, pulling at my skin even through my shirt and the material of my bra.
"There's something in the way," he mumbles, and shoves my shirt up.
His hands are hot on my stomach and sides, tickle up the small of my back and tear a giggle out of my throat before I silence it with my hand. He pins me on my back and pushes my shirt up, and my arms with it, then traps them over my head, twisting the fabric in my hand. He reaches over and clicks the light off, and now I can't even see a dim outline through the shirt. Only my mouth sticks out from the collar of my shirt, and his lips press hot on mine, and he kisses me hard as he twists the fabric in his hand, trapping my arms.
I slip my legs up around him and squeeze his sides as he slides his tongue over mine, his breath tickling my lip. All at once he lifts up and turns me over onto my stomach, yanks the shirt loose and sweeps my hair away from my neck. The cool air is followed by the heat of his mouth on my neck and the tough touch of his hands on my ribs as I move my arms down and press into the bed, arching my back as he kisses a hot trail over my shoulder.
He goes so slow, like we have all the time in the world. My legs shake just thinking about a knock at the door, or worse, the crunch of something shoved into the lock to pick it open. We could be caught any second, and yet his mouth trails burning hot between my shoulder blades as he pops the clasp on my bra and pulls it apart, slips his hands under me and squeezes my breasts, his fingers slipping to lightly touch my nipples in slow circles as his mouth moves down the small of my back.
As he moves his fingers drag down my sides, stopping as he takes hold of my waistband and tugs my shorts down, my underwear too, and slides it down to my knees. Hawk's hand lands on my ass, not hard enough to be a slap, but it sends a jolt through me. I quiver a little and he squeezes, and I hear him unzip his fly.
"You like that?" he says, softly.
"I… I did," I whisper. "Do it again. Harder."
His hand rises and falls, harder this time, and it sends a jolt through my body.
"Careful," I whisper. "Somebody will-"
Crack!
His hand slaps across my ass and my head shoots up with a yelp. Why does that feel so good? He does it again with his left hand, hitting the other side, and I wriggle on the bed, biting my lip and egging him on with my look. He plants his lips on the red hand mark on my ass cheek and kisses my butt, and I burst our laughing, only stifle myself by biting my hand. Somebody is going to hear us.
Then he ducks down behind me and his tongue drags over my pussy lips. I moan even with the edge of my hand in my mouth, and bite down on the sheet instead.
The house is silent. I can hear my own heart beating, hear him breathing, hear the soft wet sound as his tongue slowly presses hard on my mound and slides over my entrance, pulls away leaving a brief cold, wet flash, and does it again, over and over, a little faster each time, until he buries his face against me and licks me over and over and over, squeezing my ass in his hands. I grip the sheets and bit down on the blanket to keep myself quiet, tension quivering in my stomach.
Someone will hear us. I groan anyway as Hawk rises to his knees behind me. He takes my wrists and pulls my arms behind my back, folding them like they're tied together, gripping my arms, digging his fingers into my skin. A surge of excitement floods my body as I feel the tip of his cock pressing at my body, teasing me. I can almost feel his pulse.
The pressure grows and Hawk enters me slowly, and I moan around the makeshift gag of sheets I've stuffed in my own mouth. He holds my arms and sinks into me slowly, slowly, until I feel his stomach press against my ass and a single sharp thrust buries him deep inside me, filling me. He starts to thrust slowly, holding my arms to pull me into him, my feet rising from the floor as the pleasure makes the muscles in my legs bunch, my toes curl. He leans forward and runs his fingers through my hair, tickles my cheek with his thumb. I spit out the sheets and let out a soft moan, then bite them again, filling my mouth, moaning into the improvised gag.
He lets go of my arms and grabs my hips, plants his feet and stands up, pulling me up with him. I lean my hands on the bed and clench the sheet in my mouth and he starts to pump faster, pulling me against him with every thrust, his cock driving hard into my body as our flesh meets with a soft slap at every touch.
One hand on my back, the other rises and smack, a jolt passes through me from his hand leaving another red mark on my ass. I arch and wriggle against him, driving back. He holds still as I press into him and wriggle my hips in a slow circle, feeling his shaft shift inside me as I grind on him. The look on his face drives me wild.
His hands seize my hips, and Hawk lifts me up, pushes me forward. My legs go out straight behind me as he presses into the bed, his chest against my back, and wraps his arms around me. He buries his face in my hair and thrusts roll through his whole body, pinning me to the bed, driving deep inside me. Straddling me, he uses his thighs to squeeze my legs together, my feet wriggling in the air as my body clenches tight around him, and I feel every movement, every subtle shift of his rod inside me.
I squeak into the sheet as I feel a hint of his teeth on my shoulder. He doesn't bite me as hard as I bit him before, but he grazes his teeth over my skin and sucks my throat, nipping my skin a little as he thrusts harder, driving deep. His arms tighten around me as heat floods my body, spreading in flooding waves from between my legs, tightening my muscles as I writhe under him, turning into a nest of coiled cables as my body clenches on him.
Hawk nips my earlobe and I groan into the sheet, and he buries himself deep. I feel him throbbing, his excitement building with mine, ready to explode inside me. My eyes squeeze shut and I bite the sheet until my teeth hurt to quiet myself as a burst of pleasure rips through my body in an unstoppable wave. Hawk grunts softly in my ear and shakes all over as he reaches his peak, and I can feel his pleasure somehow aching through my own as it builds and builds, bursting through my skin in hot, radiant light.
Hawk lays on top of me, in me, as I shudder around him, until I let the sheets fall out of my mouth and shift just enough to turn and look over my shoulder at him, a goofy smile on my face. Slowly he turns on his side and I shift with him, pressing against him so his cock doesn't draw out of my body. His arms tighten around me, pinning mine to my sides, and he breathes into my hair.
"Alex," he whispers.
"Yeah."
"I love you."
I suck in a breath, startled.
He takes a deep breath, drawing in my scent.
"Even if you stink," he adds.
I elbow him in the stomach and he slowly draws out of me, then rolls onto his back. He stands, yanks the blanket out from under me and pulls it over my body, tucking it under my chin, and dresses. I watch hi
m tug on his clothes, lace up his boots again, and stoop to the floor. He rises with my underwear with his hand, buries his face in it, and takes a deep breath.
Then he sticks them in his pocket.
"Hey," I whisper, sharply. "Give those back."
He crawls over the bed and pulls the window up again, and swings his legs out.
"You'll have to take them from me," he says, and drags himself up the side of the house.
I sit up, clutching my blanket to my chest, and pull the sash down.
With a sigh, I collapse back into the pillow and stare through the glass into the dark. "I love you too," I whisper.
Hawk
Now
I can't stand much more of this.
It's been three days and I'm losing my mind. I stand in the kitchen, ready to head out on a morning run, and Alexis comes down the stairs, stockings on her long pale legs, a tight pencil skirt and a sleeveless blouse, her hair done up, full makeup. She looks like somebody's sexy secretary fantasy. I wouldn't mind, except it's not my fantasy, it's my fucking father's.
I know what she means now by him making her dress up to his tastes like a goddamn doll. She gives me a mournful look before her face goes still like a porcelain mask and she knocks on the office door. My father opens it and stands over her, smiling a wolfish smile and appraising her openly, focusing especially on her legs. She doesn't show much else; Alex never dressed provocatively, but the neckline of her top is conservative, even for her.
Like a perfect gentleman, he sweeps her inside, which gives him a nice view of the back. I slip out of view before he turns to look at me and walk out onto the back porch, into the heat. Sweat beads on my back as soon as the sunlight hits me. It'll top one hundred today and the humidity is off the scale; it goes any higher and I'll be pushing fish out of the way to walk down the sidewalk.
I have to do something physical, burn some energy, because if I don't, I'm going to walk back in there, rip my father's face off, throw Alex over my shoulder and carry her out like a goddamn caveman. If somebody wants to stop me they better bring six more guys and a bag lunch, because I'm ready to go all day. If he touches her, I swear I'll skin him alive. Alexis tells me he never puts a hand on her- maybe a pat on the shoulder now and then, but he's never gone beyond that.
I made her tell me ten times, and still a little voice whispers this will be the day he takes it a step further.
She's mine. Her silky skin, her soft hair that always smells like lavender, her rich lips and the lush curves of her body, the heat of her as she pulls me close. I should be making up for lost time and here I am standing out in the summer heat raging and horny, fighting the urge to barge back in there and put this shit right.
My hands curl into fists. My forearms bulge, the veins standing out, cutting lines through the tattoos. What good is all this power if I can't use it?
Need air, need to move.
I walk out of the yard, jog down the street, and break into a run. I should be watching over Alex, but if I hang around her neck every second, my father will get suspicious. I'm sure he already knows I'm here for her, why else would I come back? It's not to see him or my brother. As I run faster, the shock of the pavement jolts up my legs, drives me to surge ahead and put on even more speed until my legs are on fire and every breath is like hot coals. It's so fucking hot.
I thought Afghanistan was hot, but it wasn't close to this, the air pressing on your skin, sweat running in a waterfall down your back. I should have remembered, but it never seemed so hot when I was a kid. Hiking with Alex, it was always hot out and sweat would soak through our clothes, but neither of us ever seemed to care. I used to bump into her and her skin would be sticky, cling to mine for a moment just from the touch.
Out in the game lands there's a swimming hole- a broad clear pond, if it's big enough to be called a pond, no more than maybe ten feet deep in the middle. Everyone went there, and half the time jumped in with their clothes on. Alexis never bothered with a bathing suit, she'd just leap in wearing a t-shirt and shorts, leave her shoes on the back and get her feet all muddy. Then when the sun dipped and the mosquitoes came out, she'd come striding out of the water, mud up to her knees, water streaming from her hair and hands and clothes, her t-shirt glued to her skin.
I can see it as clearly as I see the road in front of me now, hear the peeper frogs in the distance crying out in unison as the day grew long. By the time we walked back to town, we'd just be damp and snapping and swatting at mosquitoes, enough mosquitoes to carry you off. Then the next week I'd be itching at a dozen bites. Alex never got one, like she was too pure to by sullied by the proboscis of an insect.
Proboscis. Alexis made me memorize that one for a tenth grade biology test and for some reason it's stuck in my head all these years later. She was sitting on her bed with the giant textbook propped open in her lap, quizzing me on the vocabulary terms for the test. I learned plenty of math and anatomy and shit later, in corps school, but back then I only cared so much because she was insistent I learn it.
My father could yell at me for hours because I pulled a C in this or that class and I didn't care, but one look of stern disappointment from Alexis and I was yearning to learn. She was the same way, dismissive of anything soft- science and math she loved, English or social studies not so much. When she was working the math stuff, she'd go quiet as a mouse, sit there with this look of furious concentration on her face, her pencil scratching across the notebook page so fast I couldn't understand how she was keeping all of those numbers and symbols straight.
In our last couple of years, she advanced so far past me that helping me with my homework was trivial. She was doing advanced calculus stuff, equations so complex I couldn't even figure out what they were for, stuff that's still beyond me even now.
Funny. If it weren't for Alexis, I'd never have placed so highly on my tests and been chosen for corps school.
Running through Paradise Falls is so strange. I feel like I've never been here before. Commerce Street is just depressing- it was mostly empty when I left, but now it seems like only every third store front is filled.
As I draw nearer to the river I hear a voice call, "On your left!"
I glance to my side then shift on the sidewalk, and Jacob Kane surges past me, running full-tilt. He barely spares me a glance until he stops at the corner and takes a deep breath. By the time I've caught up, he starts running again. I pace myself to match him.
"Funny meeting you here," I shout, panting.
"Small world, isn't it?"
Lungs burning, I slow. He matches my pace.
"Summers off," he says, grinning. "Best part of the job. Almost."
"I saw your wife last night."
"I know. You've been busy since you came back town, huh?"
"Not busy enough."
He nods.
Ahead, the foot path crosses the bridge, running along either side. The sound of the falls drowns out any hope of conversation until we reach the other side. At that point I'm winded, and slow to walk to let myself catch up before I break into a run an head back.
"How are things with you and the girl?"
"Complicated. I can't read her anymore."
"I know that feeling."
"All that matters is that she's safe. I can't stand…" I trail off.
"What?"
"She's alone with my father right now."
"She volunteered."
I stop completely and stare at him. "I don't fucking care. That sick bastard put her in a fucking mental hospital, threatened to kill her and has been making her play secretary and-"
"And?"
"And it's my fault!" I bellow at him. "Mine. The way I felt about her," I clutch my chest, "Feel about her, and I just let her go."
"You're being too hard on yourself, kid. You didn't have a choice."
"I always had a choice-"
"What did he tell you when he made you leave town?"
I pace the footpath. We're at the base of the hill now,
the memorial isn't far. I don't want to go up there today.
"If you could go back, what would you do?"
"Fight."
"You'd lose," he says, flatly. "What were you, eighteen, right? Just graduated high school."
"Yeah but-"
"But you were one person. Against many."
"It was a trick." I lean on the concrete and look down into the river. "He wanted me gone so he could marry her mother and play this sick fuck game, trying to brainwash her or something."
"You didn't know that."
"I could’ve lived with it, you know. If she moved away from here, found somebody else, made her own life. I could live with that."
"Could you?"
The river rushes below, the water frothing over rocks as it cascades away from town.
"No. I'd lose my mind over that, too. Every day was a struggle. When I was in the service, every minute I had to stop myself from going absent without leave and running back here. I knew if I came back, he'd make good on this threat. If I checked up on her, somehow he'd know. I thought he was using her against me as leverage to keep my mouth shut about my mother, but that wasn't it at all."
"She insists on helping us," Jacob says. "If it was up to me, we'd already have you in a safehouse and move against your father on our own."
"Dude," I blurt out, "who the hell are you?"
"Me? I'm a math teacher."
"My ass."
"Hey, I teach at the school. I'm there 192 days a year with in service time. Check for yourself."
I walk most of the way across the bridge, and take a straighter path home. By the time I get back, I've been gone over three hours, I'm covered in sweat and my legs are like overstretched rubber bands. It's not my legs that make me trudge up the back steps, it's the invisible weight on my back. It feels like a dead elephant now.
This bullshit with the computer better work, or we're leaving. I'm taking Alexis and May and we're running and we won't stop. Maybe Canada. There must be someplace my father and his friends won't be able to reach us.
Hawk Page 17