****
Hawk tossed the damp towel into the hamper and tugged on a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt. He needed to talk to Zoe. But the things he needed to say couldn’t be said to anyone outside the team. God damn it! Every day something happened that hammered at his trust in his men. God he needed a drink, he needed something.
Leaving his room, he turned toward the kitchen, but noticed the light still on in the living room and changed direction.
He paused at the entrance and watched as Zoe rubbed a towel against the mass of hair she draped over her shoulder. She looked up as he took a step into the room.
I think Doc might be strung out on drugs. He nearly said the words aloud just to feel the weight of them. He couldn’t be. The team was tested for drugs all the time. And even compounds like steroids showed up in the tests. Surely Zack wouldn’t risk getting canned from the team. Not for drugs. Not for anything.
He’d been alone so long. Held his own council over things that had revisited him over and over. Things he couldn’t share with her. But the pain of this was too much.
“There’s something going on with Doc. When I asked him if he and Bowie had been fishing lately, he said he hadn’t seen him in nearly two weeks. That’s some kind of record, because those two are tight and, besides chasing women, fishing is one of their favorite pass-times.”
Zoe set aside the towel and combed her fingers through her hair. “Maybe he’s really been sick and Bowie’s stayed away to keep from getting it.”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck, the muscles there tight with frustration. “I’m going over to his apartment tomorrow and have a talk with him.” He was tired of these suspicions. He was going to get to the bottom of this shit
“Hawk--”Her tone sounded tentative and laced with something else he couldn’t quite pinpoint. He focused on her. Her hesitancy had his stomach churning.
“I think Derrick might be abusing Marjorie.”
The shock of it hit him like a punch.
“She had a bruise on her arm that looked suspicious. She said she’d hit it on something, but you could see the finger marks. I tried to talk to her, but she clammed up.”
“Jesus! What the hell is going on with these guys?”
“They’re just guys, Hawk, under tremendous pressure. All of you are.” She rose to her feet and came to him. When she put her arms around his waist and pressed close, some of the pain eased.
“We send you to awful places and ask you to do things, terrible, painful, necessary things, and then we ask you not to think about it, remember it, or internalize any of it. We ask the impossible.”
She leaned back to look up at him. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the circumstances surrounding our first meeting has affected how I feel about Derrick, made me suspicious of him to begin with. Maybe I read the whole situation wrong. Maybe it really was an accident.”
God, he hoped so. He ran his hands over her back and traced the slender shape of her through her t-shirt. Just touching her made him feel better. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow. See if I can draw him out. If these guys are in trouble, I have to reach out to them and get them squared away. They’re my men, Zoe.”
“I understand.”
Was that possible? Could she really understand how his loyalties were being pulled in a dozen directions? One of them might have attempted to murder a member of their team? The thought hit him in the solar plexus every time he thought it. It made him sick. But until he figured out who was responsible, they deserved the best he could do for them.
“I want whoever hurt Cutter to pay, Zoe. But unless he wakes up and tells us, we may never know.”
“I know.”
“He may already be paying for it. It would have to be eating at him.” How could it not? “If it’s one of them, and I find out which, he’ll pay. I promise.”
Her blue eyes settled on his face. “I know.”
He brushed her lips with his and rested his forehead against hers. He wanted to lie in bed with her and hold her and be held in return. Acknowledging those feelings brought with it a surge of pain and desire he didn’t know how to deal with.
She touched his cheek, her fingers caressing. “You don’t always have to stand alone.”
Hawk swallowed as need clamped around his throat and made it impossible for him to speak. They had both sustained emotional blows today. But was that a reason to make love?
“You’re such a temptation to me.” Her voice sounded husky and soft. She nestled closer and stood on her tiptoes to rub her cheek against his.
His heart took up a heavy rhythm and he fought the urge to cup her hips and drag her closer. So there was more there for her, too. Finding his voice he said, “Giving in to a little temptation now and then can be good for you.”
She drew a deep breath. “Can it?” Her lips brushed his jaw.
This shy, playful, kittenish thing she had going was killing him. “Yeah, it can,” he forced out between breaths. He grasped her hand and tugged her down the hall. Pausing at each switch for quick kisses, he turned the lights out.
The instant they crossed the bedroom threshold, he read Zoe’s feelings of awkwardness. Color deepened in her cheeks, and she avoided looking directly at him. When she pulled away, he thought she might beat a hasty retreat, but instead she moved to the opposite side of the bed and he realized she was removing her socks.
He shucked his t-shirt and tossed it atop the basket in the closet. As he turned, her bundled socks shot past him, ricocheted off the lid and fell into the hamper. He looked up.
Focusing on his face, Zoe stretched out on his bed; her arms bent beneath her head, leaving her midriff visible, the skin creamy and smooth. The lamp on the nightstand played upon her features etching the curve of her cheek and turning the reddish blond highlights in her hair to copper. She smiled at him. Blood rushed south, and he grew harder.
Visions of him peeling off her sweat pants and thrusting inside her played through his mind. He climbed onto the bed beside her and buried his face in the pillow with a groan. He just had to block out that smile until he knew he had himself under control.
Zoe’s hand ran over the back of his head and neck in a caress, and he turned his head to look at her. The tenderness he read in her expression intensified the ache.
“It’s been a long day,” she said.
“A week at least.”
She smiled again, then grew serious. “Our living together--it could become--awkward.”
Was she looking for an excuse to back away again? Or was she giving him an opportunity to do the same? He turned on his side to face her and tamped down the old feelings of pain and abandonment. “If you let every difficulty keep you from reaching for what you want, Zoe, you’ll never truly live.”
“I was thinking of you.” She ran her fingertips along his shoulder, her eyes tracking the movement. Her light, caressing touch raced through him to the bottoms of his feet. She focused on his face, her eyes dark, her pupils nearly swallowing the pale blue irises. Her voice sounded husky as she said, “Turn out the light.”
His heart stuttered then beat hard against his ribs. He leaned back and extinguished the bedside lamp. For a moment, the darkness was profound until his eyes adjusted to it.
She kissed him, her lips parted in invitation. All the nights he had lain awake, craving her, rolled over him like a tank. With a groan, part relief, part need, he crushed her close. Hungrily, greedily, he tasted her passion in the eager sweep of her tongue against his, and in the way she molded herself against him.
His hand shook as he ran it up beneath her t-shirt. Her skin felt like warm silk, her breast full and soft. Her nipple beaded beneath his palm and she groaned. He wished he could see her expression as he touched her. He strived to be gentle, but felt starved for her touch, for the feel of her body against his own.
He tugged her t-shirt upward and she wiggled free of it and pressed her breasts against his chest. Her bare skin brushing against his felt like hea
ven. When he rolled on top of her, positioning himself between her legs, she slid her hands down his back, cupped his buttocks, and rocked against his erection in a way that nearly sent him over the edge. He had to slow things down. But sweet Jesus, he didn’t want to. He slid downward, latched onto her nipple, and sucked.
Zoe’s breathing caught and she thrust her fingers into his hair. The sweet, empty ache inside her grew with every touch, every kiss, until she thought she might fly apart at any moment. She couldn’t touch him enough, couldn’t get close enough. His lips against her stomach, his breath on her skin, his tongue dipping into her navel, all had her nearly sobbing with need. When he dragged the sweat pants and panties down her legs, she couldn’t wait to be free of them.
Then he was on top of her, kissing her, trembling against her as he touched her between her legs, his fingers so wonderfully, carefully gentle. That he trembled with wanting her fired her blood and made the empty, writhing need inside her grow in intensity.
She ran her hand down his chest, over the flat muscular plane of his stomach and beneath his shorts. The size and heat of his erection was both startling and arousing. He groaned her name, his voice a low rumble against her ear that vibrated along her nerve endings and raised goose bumps on her skin.
“Come inside me,” she managed, the words a breathy, pleading whisper.
He shook free of his sweats, and leaned over her to reach in the nightstand. The wispy crackle as he tore open the condom sounded loud, underlining the huge, terrifying, wonderful step she was taking, they were taking. With his first push of entry, the sweet intimacy between them caught at Zoe’s heart and she drew him down to her, her lips seeking his. The wanting, the needing, tangled into a surge of love and desire so strong she could barely breathe. The quick burning pain of his possession seemed nothing compared to the closeness she shared with him.
“God, Zoe, tell me I’m not hurting you.” His lips skimmed her cheek, her brow, and came back to her lips.
“You’re not.” Not yet. She cut off the thought and ran her hands up and down his back urging him closer. He moved deep inside her, triggering an answering thread of renewed need. He groaned her name again, his voice ragged. His slow, gentle rocking movements quickened. She clung to him and turned her lips against his throat, tasting the heat of his skin. She lost herself in the play of his muscles beneath her hands, and the damp brush of his taut belly against hers. Her breathing grew labored as she gave herself to him, moved with him, moved against him. At the first pulsing wave of his release, pleasure erupted inside her, so sweetly satisfying, she gasped his name.
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