But this time it was different.
This wasn’t a secret look.
This was all for me, for all the world to see.
All for him.
All for me. All for me.
I stared at him, my thoughts and body afire as he mouthed the words, You’re beautiful. And I could have sworn I felt his breath, cool against my overheated body, cascading over my skin, causing it to ripple and pebble with gooseflesh all over again.
“Dinner’s ready,” I whispered hoarsely, then lifted my hand to my throat, to the necklace that I never took off, surreptitiously hiding the large swallow of emotion that had welled up within me.
Christopher leaped off the couch and bounded past me while Hawk remained unmoving, his eyes still on me.
“I don’t wanna go,” he said softly, surprising me.
Those words, so full of raw emotion, caused a tidal wave of pain to come crashing over me, coursing through me at an alarming rate.
Its impact on my heart was devastating.
He looked so vulnerable, so unlike any way he’d ever looked before, that I couldn’t stop myself. I rushed forward, dropping onto the couch beside him and wrapping my arms around his neck.
“Let’s leave,” I whispered frantically against the soft cotton of his T-shirt. “Let’s just go, run away. We could move somewhere remote, where no one would ever find us. We could be a family.”
His body heaved as a heavy breath fled his chest, and in that breath I heard his answer. We wouldn’t be leaving, or running. We wouldn’t be together.
“D,” he said gently. “I’ve been hidin’ most of my life. I don’t wanna hide anymore.”
“I can’t lose you,” I whimpered. “Not after I just got you back.”
“Someday,” he whispered, sliding his arm behind my back and pulling me into a one-armed hug. “I’m going to finally take you for that ride. Just you and me, D. Me wearing my cut, you with all that red hair flying in the wind. Both of us finally out in the wide fuckin’ open. No more hidin’.”
And after hearing that, there was no way on earth I was going to make it through a three-course meal without crying.
I fell apart for what felt like the millionth time, ruining all my carefully applied makeup, smearing it all over Hawk’s T-shirt as I clutched him so tightly my knuckles began to throb.
“I want tonight to last forever,” I whispered brokenly.
Because it had to last forever, or at least for the next ten years.
**•
The last three weeks had been full of surprises, the biggest of which Hawk had thought was him and Dorothy finally coming together.
He’d been so fucking wrong.
The biggest surprise was just . . . Dorothy.
With as much rational thought as he could manage while being slowly ridden by the beautiful woman on top of him, he stared up at her in wonder.
The dress’s halter top was pooled around her waist, leaving her breasts exposed. Her body was arched, hands clutching his knees, and her head was thrown back, making the tips of her long red hair brush the tops of his thighs. With closed eyes and parted lips, she ground back and forth over him in a maddening, painstakingly, yet magnificently slow pace.
She was not the same woman he’d fallen in love with. But he was pretty sure he loved who she’d become even more.
And he was insanely terrified that he was going to lose her again.
She’d promised him over and over again that she would wait. But he didn’t expect her to wait, to be alone for years. She’d already been alone for far too long, and he wanted her happy.
Even if that meant she’d be happy without him.
Of course, he’d never in a million fucking years voice his feelings to her or anyone else on earth. Because as much as he wanted her happy, he wanted her waiting at those gates when he was finally able to rejoin the world.
It was selfish. Hawk knew that.
But he’d always been selfish when it came to this woman. He might have let her be, but he’d never given her up or really truly ever left her side.
He’d always been right there, whether she wanted him there or not.
And now that she wanted him there, for good this time, to make something solid out of their choppy history . . .
He was going to be fucking selfish.
Even locked up, he was going to be selfish.
With one hand under the skirt of her dress, clutching her hip, he reached up with the other and cupped her breast, lifting and squeezing the soft flesh. In response she moaned loudly, her breathing grew more uneven, her movements sped up, becoming less rhythmic and jerkier than before.
“Faster,” he rasped.
She tried to do as he asked but she was beginning to waver, her body quaking as she reached the beginnings of an orgasm. Releasing her breast to grab her other hip, he gripped her tightly and despite the pain in his leg his movements were causing, thrust his hips upward, over and over again, as fast as he could manage until he too was finishing with her.
As he released inside her, staring up her beautiful body, he was struck with most profound sense of homecoming. Maybe he hadn’t realized it back then, when he’d first set his sights on her, how much this woman would come to mean to him, but he knew it now.
Breathing hard, blinking rapidly, Dorothy released his legs and straightened above him. Her hair, the way it fell forward covering her breasts; her eyes, the way they shone even in the dim light; her lips, plumped from her own biting, glossy from licking them; her body, the way it curved like a woman’s should, soft in all the right places—he took it all in, taking his time in order to capture it all, to memorize every inch of her.
Just like this.
This was how he wanted to remember her.
“Fucking hell, woman,” he said hoarsely, unable to stop the words, unable to keep himself from letting it out. “I fuckin’ love you.”
Her eyes caught his, her lips slowly curved into a smile that, sure as shit, was sexy as hell.
Yeah. This was how he wanted to remember her.
This was what would get him through.
Chapter Twenty-Two
For Jase, finding a house to rent hadn’t been difficult. Neither had filling it with the minimal furniture he had brought with him.
And after Deuce had called in a favor at the local auto body shop in town, obtaining employment had been a piece of fucking cake.
What hadn’t been easy was having to say good-bye to everyone. Even Hawk, despite his scowl, had shaken Jase’s hand. During the party, he’d come to find out that it was Hawk who was leaving, was turning himself over to the law in order to take down the Russians blackmailing Deuce and Preacher. Despite how he felt about Hawk and Dorothy being together, you couldn’t hate a man who would sacrifice his own life for the good of the club.
In a way, Jase felt like Hawk had everything Jase never had. The woman they both loved belonged to Hawk, the respect of everyone in the club belonged to Hawk, and whereas Jase had left the club behind, Hawk would never. Even in the face of his imprisonment.
He was a far better man than Jase would ever be, as well as being a better father than Jase would ever be.
Hawk deserved both Dorothy and the club.
And Jase deserved . . .
Well, he didn’t know what the fuck he deserved, but his father’s words had been playing on repeat over and over in his head. He only had one life to live, he only had this one life to make things right, and, Jesus Christ, he was going to do his damnedest to do just that.
His first week in town had been quiet, and other than watching his girls from afar, he’d left them alone. The twins lived together in a large apartment building not far from the college they were attending, but Maribelle lived alone in a studio apartment above an antiques store. Unlike the twins she was often alone, her only social interaction with the customers at a nearby café where she worked.