Hawke (10 page)

It would have taken
a lot
of experience.

Hawke was behind me, hands at my back while I lost myself in dark thoughts. He peeled the bandage off and went still. I glimpsed at the mirror, needing to see his reaction. His face was pale, his eyes wide with horror. Oh, so
this
bothered him? Not Yuri, though, no. But…this. My tattoo. My tattoo was what broke through Hawke’s wall. How fucking brilliant.

“The club insignia, Tyler,” he said in disbelief. “Why?”

“Because I belong here,” I simply replied, though my voice sounded hollow.

He exhaled and ran a hand over his face. “Fuckin’ hell.”

I waited for him to explode. I knew this was a step too far in his books, and it wouldn’t sit well with him, but I stood by the tattoo, even now.

“When did you get this done?” he asked.

“It was finished tonight,” I answered.

He frowned and his fingers shot up. I felt him touching at my skin, tracing over the tattoo. “You got ointment for this? It’s going to need another coating soon.”

I shook my head. “Hector said he’d treat me in the morning.”

Hawke’s jaw clenched. “Of course he did. He did this then, didn’t he?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I wanted him to, Hawke.”

His fingers stopped moving, and solemnly he asked, “Has he touched you, Tyler?”

I knew what he was asking me, but I was shocked that he would even think it. Hector was playful and flirty, but he
never
put the moves on me.

“No,” I told him firmly, not masking my surprise. “Not like that. Never.”

“Good.”

Why
good
? If I wasn’t such a pussy, I would have asked. But Hawke was intimidating, and breathing alone was a hard enough task to handle.

Hawke circled me until he was standing in front of me. As I looked up at his dark eyes, I felt his hands on my shorts. Felt him unbutton them before he slid them down a few inches. They fell on their own the rest of the way. I was naked. In front of him. Yet he was staring at my face instead of my body, and it made the situation surprisingly worse.

“Put your arms down,” he told me.

I hesitated. I couldn’t remember the last time a guy saw me naked. Probably never. I had fucked in the dark a few times with my high school boyfriend. Something about the light made it too intimate, and I didn’t want to have intimacy with just anyone. Not living this lifestyle, anyway.

But Hawke…

Hawke could make me do anything, I realized.

I dropped my arms and I was still too busy trying to breathe to feel entirely conscious of the way I looked. His gaze immediately shot to my breasts. He scanned my body slowly, going over every inch. I knew that he liked what he saw because his eyes looked heated and his body went tight. Any other day I would have loved the tiny little victory I felt about that, but right now I mostly felt exposed, and not in the obvious way, but in a way that made me feel like he’d peeled a layer off of me with just one look.

“When did you get so beautiful?” he muttered, his brown eyes meeting mine.

I didn’t reply, but something heavy stirred in me. It was enough to block out the bad images for a few moments. My stomach tightened at the way his eyes continued to run the length of me, like some meal he wanted to devour.

I wondered if he was going to touch me.

I knew I wouldn’t stop it from happening.

It was the kind of thing I felt I somehow…
needed
right now. Because I wasn’t thinking of Yuri and blood and eyeballs on the hardwood floor.

I was solely thinking of Hawke’s masculine face, his soft plump lips and delicious bronze skin. Adrenaline fired through my bloodstream; it felt like a kick in the deepest part of me. I wanted to move forward. Wanted to inch my way so that I could feel my nipples press against the hard plains of his chest.

Hawke seemed to understand the look on my face. His jaw tensed and then… he let out a small sigh and stepped back. His eyes instantly cleared as he ordered me to, “Get in the shower and clean yourself, Ty. Don’t get your back wet. I want every drop of blood gone.”

I went so still, surprised by his reaction.

He was leaving me? Just like that? What did I expect though? For him to
console
me all night? For him to touch me and give me a way to expel the goddamn energy that was buzzing through my body right now at a dizzying pace?

Disappointment gnawed at me. Leave it to me to want to be touched by a man that’d just killed a human being and had us coated in his blood. The reminder made my bones stiffen, sending reality crashing down and the images to come bursting through.

Blood. All that blood. Everywhere. On me still. His choking, dying sounds. Gurgling on blood.

Swallowing back a sudden sob in my throat, I turned and moved to the shower stall hastily. I was going to throw up. I needed the hot water. I needed to wash it all off – that red blood that was sprinkled all over me. But as I opened the door, my knees buckled and I nearly collapsed again.

“Shit,” Hawke cursed as his arms caught me again.

“I’m fine,” I panted, even though I felt like the walls were closing in on me.

I didn’t know what was happening, why my vision spotted, why my legs couldn’t stand upright. I broke out in tremors in his arms, swamped by overwhelming fear.

“You’re having a panic attack,” he whispered. “Calm down, Ty.”

I sucked in air and my head swam. I went to close my eyes, but more images of blood ran through me, until I felt like I was covered in it. In all that blood.

He settled me on the floor, and I couldn’t focus. I grabbed at his arm, panicked to find he was moving away from me, detaching his body from mine.

“Don’t leave me,” I whispered.

“I ain’t leaving you,” he assured me.

He stood and I looked up as he threw his clothes off, stripping every article of clothing until he was naked. Then he bent back down and collected me in his thick arms and stepped into the shower. My arm wrapped around his neck as he sat us down on the tile ground. He held me tight as I shook uncontrollably, the water pounding over us.

“It’ll pass,” he promised me, his voice gentle. “You’ll be alright because you’re tough, Tyler. You’ve always been that way.”

I didn’t respond. I rested my face against his hard chest and closed my eyes again. This time I didn’t see bloody images, not when I was surrounded by Hawke’s touch.

He moved around, grabbing my loofah and running it down my legs and arms. He made sure my back wasn’t against the water, but he piled my hair over my front and ran it under the spray. Eventually, my grasp around his neck loosened and I turned my face up to look at him. He was concentrating on his task of soaking up the loofah and squeezing the hot water over parts of my body. It was relaxing, and slowly I felt the scattered pieces of my mind come together again.

“You…” I paused, sniffing as my eyes wandered his thick neck along the curve of his pronounced jaw.

He looked down at me as I spoke, staring into my eyes, waiting.

I was shaking so bad, my muscles ached. But I opened my trembling lips and forced out, “You…you always…take care of me.”

Hawke’s face relaxed and he barely blinked as he searched my eyes. Droplets scattered all over his face, falling from his eyelashes and over the soft curve of his cheeks.

This moment.

This moment meant everything to me.

“Breathe, Tyler,” he then told me, his voice like silk and filled with warmth. “Breathe with me.”

He brought me closer to him, resting my head against his chest. With his heart beating in my ear, I breathed along with him, and let the air out at the same time. I repeated the action, my eyes running along his biceps as I went, idly taking in his tattoos and thick scars that ran along so many parts of his body.

I was seeking safety in the arms of a beast. He’d murdered ruthlessly, yet doted on me with a level of compassion you wouldn’t expect from that kind of evil.

There were two men in Hawke, and despite the terror I felt, my heart still swelled because I wanted both of them.

I’d
always
want both of them.

After I’d calmed down, my eyelids had gone heavy. Hawke had lulled me into half-consciousness. He carried me out of the shower, drying us both with a towel. Then he laid me down on the bed and dressed me.

I was barely awake by the time he finished.

I felt his hands over my face, gently caressing my cheek while he said, “Sleep, baby. You need it.”

Hawke

No matter how hard he tried, Hawke was always being forced back to the club. There was no escape. He was doomed to be the ghost president, taking care of Hector’s messes and somehow keeping out of club affairs. Fucking hell, this whole night could have been prevented. How could you not do a body search of outsiders coming through the clubhouse? If they fucking had, Yuri’s gun would have been found and that entire situation would not have escalated.

Though Hawke couldn’t deny he was glad the seedy shit was out of the picture. Killing that entitled punk ass was easy. Yuri always had been a loose cannon. The fucker had been impulsive for years, but Hawke would have preferred quietly taking care of him in some part of the bush somewhere. Not in front of the club and Tyler.

Fucking Tyler.

After he dressed and left her on the bed, Hawke paced the hallway outside her room. No,
his
room. That little wench had hijacked it. Turned it into her temple. Once upon a time the walls had been pink. Fucking pink. Like…
really
rosy pink. And there’d been half-naked posters of beta guys on his wall with their airbrushed abs on display. He couldn’t believe she’d brought her teenage shit to the clubhouse, among murderers and drug dealers. And not one of the bastards downstairs had discouraged her from doing it either. They just welcomed Tyler in with open arms, like, “hey, Tyler, yeah, baby girl, come on in and sidestep the bodies and bags of cash on your way inside the clubhouse of horrors” – the fucking idiots.

But the walls weren’t pink anymore, thank every holy fuck in the world. They were grey. The curtains didn’t have polka dots on them; they were plain and boring. She didn’t have any more CDs of wailing male singers – you know, the ones with the cheap looking tattoos, pussy-black eyeliner and gelled up conditioned hair – singing about how depressed their pampered lives were. Her dresser was now covered in make-up, brushes in all shapes and sizes, and – to his horror – a supply of birth control pills.

Tyler had evolved and it was a miracle. She still dressed girly as fuck in her pink shit, and don’t even get him started on those sexy as fuck pampered nails, but she was…sharper looking and more aware. She was surer about herself than she had been a year ago. He saw it in the way she carried herself. She knew she was beautiful, but she never used it like a weapon. He really liked that. It was refreshing. Too many fake bitches roamed these rooms, bleeding every poor fucker dry – and not just of cum, but money too.

Hawke had wanted her to be independent. He’d hoped for it. Hell, he imagined her growing out of the clubhouse, finding some white collar douche to shack up with, and then settling down in the suburbs with two point five kids and a tiny little dog. But…no, that wasn’t the case. Instead, she was working at Jesse’s auto shop as an apprentice – who in the fuck saw that coming? – and she was getting closer to the guys every day.

He thought this crazy obsession to be part of the club would fade. He thought she’d stop staring at him in that cat-in-heat kind of way.

But Tyler
still
looked at Hawke with that longing so deep he could feel it in his bones. He saw it every time he came around, and he saw it when he stepped into the bar and his eyes caught hers. She’d immediately straightened herself, suddenly conscious of the way she looked. It mattered to her that he liked what he saw, and he wasn’t going to lie to himself – he fucking
loved
what he saw.

He’d wrapped his arms around her naked. Felt the curves of her body as she shook in his grip. She was so fucking gentle. So beautiful and sweet. He couldn’t erase the grating feeling of want in his bones, or the way she nestled into him, needing him the way nobody else ever had.

His hopes for her were dashed. That fucking girl was here to stay, and she was proving it to him day by day, entrenching herself deep in club affairs. She was laughing at him, wasn’t she? Every fucking inch of her called out to him. Her tits, her legs, the dark little hairs between her silky thighs, her slender back – and that fucking tattoo – it all started to call out to him.

I’ve grown up.
She shouted at him with her eyes.
I’ve grown up and you promised me more.

*

It was midnight when the Russian fucks sobered up and picked up Yuri from the floor and carried him out of the bar. He was in a body bag, because the Russians conveniently had a spare one of them lying around.

“Can you believe this shit?” Jesse had muttered when he first saw them unrolling the damn thing. “They’ve got a body bag, man.”

“You can’t seriously be surprised,” Hector replied back.

“Just a little bit, Hector, because we don’t have that shit in our back pocket, and I’m starting to wonder if we should. I mean, where do you casually buy a body bag from? Is there a wholesaler around? This shit needs looking into.”

The Russians backed their car to the entrance of the bar. It was pitch black when they stepped out and quickly threw the body in the opened trunk. When they returned to clean up the mess, Hawke was already there, standing inches away from the puddle of blood, tapping the face of his watch to hurry them the fuck up.

“Could have been done an hour ago,” he snapped at them. “Get a move on.”

They did. Because the Russian fucks also had a case full of cleaning supplies.

“What in the fuck is this?” Jesse hissed at Hector. “They’re packing bleach too, man.”

“We always travel prepared,” one of them explained after he overheard him. “Too much blood. Too many bodies. Once we cleaned with toilet paper because it was all we had.”

The others chuckled, like it was a fond memory between them. Yeah, ha-ha, we butchered a man and cleaned the crime scene with toilet paper, ha-ha.
Fucking imbeciles.
Hawke took a deep breath so he wouldn’t fucking lose it at them.

Gus stood by the entrance door, carrying a shotgun in one hand as he watched them carefully. They cleaned quickly and efficiently. The fuckers never dared make eye contact with Hawke once as they scrubbed and polished the floor. The gravity of the situation weighed on them hard, and they were going to return to an inevitable shit storm with Abram – the last thing they needed was Hawke to explode.

When they finished, Hawke looked to Gus, and Gus inspected the scene before he okayed it. The second he had approved, the Russians rushed out of the bar and into their car and sped out of there, practically doing a burnout as they turned the corner of the parking lot and disappeared.

Jesse walked over the space Yuri died in, looking down at his feet at every step he took. Looking chuffed, he shook his head. “Drunks did a good job, Hawke. I think this is the cleanest spot in the bar.”

Hawke just stared at him, not saying a word. The shit that came out of this guy’s mouth sometimes…Fucking hell.

Hector was already lighting up a cigarette and joining Jesse on the walk-on-the-spot-the-sick-fuck-died-in. Then, acting like nothing happened and they hadn’t fucked up so bad, they spoke about pussy, and wanting pussy, and nothing else but pussy.

“You want pussy, Hawke?” Jesse asked him with a grin, stopping. “Still some bitches around, hey? We can salvage the night. Let’s smash ‘em.”

Hawke exhaled deeply and rubbed at his face. His fingers tingled with the urge to beat the fucking idiots for bringing this shit to the club, but Hawke knew how important it was to keep his cool. Working for a kingpin like Marcus Borden taught him that.

“Hawke?” Jesse pressed, still staring at him.

Hawke glowered at him. “You think this is funny, Jesse?”

Jesse’s smile faded. “No –”

“I killed a man under our roof,” Hawke interrupted, his calm voice laced with an edge. “I shed blood in the clubhouse. Think about that before you think about your precious pussy.”

Jesse just stared at him with this blank expression. Holy fuck, this club had lost a lot of IQ since he left. He’d never seen the men so fucking wayward. There was no structure within the walls. None of them were walking the line, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the police (the clean kind) came knocking. And if it wasn’t the police, it was an enemy.

Just one enemy would be enough to remove the Warlords from the face of the earth forever.

Jesse turned away from Hawke. “Hawke’s right. I uh…I better call it a night, brothers. I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

When he disappeared, Hector took a seat at the bar and Hawke gestured Gus over with a wave of his hand. Gus moved to him immediately, settling his shotgun down on the top of the bar as he went.

“We need to bury this,” Hawke told him sternly. “No one is ever to talk about this night again, unless we’re in a club meeting.”

Gus nodded adamantly. “I agree.”

“No slipups, either. I want the workers and the girls questioned. We have no room for mistakes.”

“You got it.”

Hawke gritted his teeth as he continued to hold back his anger. “And there needs to be something done about this club letting anyone in without getting searched, Gus. This ain’t a joke. This was a major fuck up. We used to have conditions. We never let just anyone come walkin’ in.”

Gus frowned. “Everyone’s been relaxed. We’ve been at peace for some years now.”

“Yeah, and everybody’s forgotten what it’s like to be at war, and that’s the problem. Nobody here is prepared.”

Gus looked over his shoulder and at Hector whose back was turned to them. He was lazily drinking a beer, keeping a distance from Hawke. Gus let out a long sigh, and Hawke could hear well and clear what the old man wasn’t saying.

The guys loved him, and he was useful when he knew what to do, but Hector fucking sucked at being president.

“I’ll talk to him,” Gus promised, turning back to Hawke. “We’ll figure something out, don’t you worry. I’m not wearing this patch just to look good. You know I can handle it if he’s on board with what I have to offer.”

Hawke exhaled slowly as he scanned the bar, thinking of how packed it had been only hours ago. At least he’d cleared it before he dealt with Yuri. He thought of the sick bastard’s demands, thought of Gus telling him without words that Hector was failing hard at being president, and then he thought of Tyler and…

He rubbed at his face again, exasperated by it all. “What’s going on with Tyler?” he then asked, looking back at Gus intently. “I’m not getting it. Is she sticking around for a reason?”

Gus couldn’t hold back the small smile on his lips. “She’s…part of this, Hawke.”

“Part of
what
?”

“The club. We’ve had her for years, you’ve known that. We love her. She reminds us of her old man, and I fucking miss that dick’s face.”

Hawke clenched his jaw. “Gus, don’t get all emotional on me, alright? Tyler is a problem.”

Gus widened his eyes. “A problem? No fucking way, Hawke. She has not created one bit of drama. The goddamn barmaid causes more drama, believe me. Tyler lives and breathes our life. She is loyal and she is strong. Christ, she is hacking this life better than most wives in here.”

“And what about after tonight?”

“Well, I don’t fucking know. You took her up, what was she like?”

“Shaken.”

“Shaken like broken?”

Hawke hesitated, thinking of how she acted around him. By the end she’d appeared…lustful. “No, not broken.”

Gus shrugged. “Then she’ll be fine, and I know for certain she won’t open her mouth…”

Gus rambled on about Tyler like he was part of her fucking fan club. Hawke drowned him out and glanced at Hector, at the way he circled the bottle in his hand and stared glumly at the counter. He was beating himself up about his failure, which meant he was going to find someone to slide his dick into to forget.

Some things never change.

“And anyway, Jesse will keep an eye on her when she gets to work and we’ll know if she’s alright,” Gus finished.

Hawke stiffened and stared at Gus seriously, the image of those birth control pills flashing before his eyes. “Has she been with Jesse?”

“What?”

Hawke pointed at the entrance door. “I walked into the bar, and when I looked around the place Jesse was staring at her, and not staring at her decently, you feeling me?”

Gus chuckled, making light of the situation. “They’re good friends.”

“How good exactly?”

“Well, he wouldn’t say no to her, if we’re going to be honest.”

“What about her?” Hawke pressed, hating how demanding he sounded, but he needed to know, especially as her naked body swirled in his mind. “Has
she
said no?”

Gus gave him a strange look. “She’s rejected Jesse already. Many times, actually. She doesn’t want him and…you already know that.”

“So it’s just been that one guy?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, the high school pencil-dick jock. Don’t get me started about him.”

“Why?”

“The slimy little fuck bragged about bagging her after prom night. Said it was going to buy him a first class ticket into the Warlords.”