Hawke (11 page)

“I already know about that. I had you guys take care of that.”

“Yeah, but he still goes on about it.”

Hawke’s face darkened. “I thought you beat his ass until it was black and blue.”

“I did. Some people don’t learn, you know that.”

“He still work at that gas station?”

“Yep.”

Hawke sighed. “This town is fucked up. This club is fucked up. This situation with Yuri and the fucking gang demanding more shipments is fucked up.”

“You know Abram better than me. Is he going to get pissed?”

“Yuri was his moronic cousin that he felt responsible for. Abram is going to be livid.”

Because Abram was worse than Yuri. He wasn’t an obvious lunatic like Yuri, but fuck, that man was sadistic in ways even Hawke shuddered to think. He exacted revenge with patience and struck when you least expected it. If you were on his shit list, chances were you were going to end up stuffed in a barrel and thrown in some ditch.

Gus was concerned as he looked away and rubbed the back of his neck. “Is he crazy enough to go to war?”

“Yeah,” Hawke said steadfastly. “He is, which is why this needs mending as soon as fucking possible.”

“Fuck.” Gus went quiet, mulling it over. “We didn’t have a goddamn choice, though. He was gonna shoot Tyler.”

“That’s what we tell him.”

Gus sighed. “Look, Hawke, I don’t want you worrying about this shit. You got enough on your plate as it is working for Borden and all that. I mean, that guy is fucking crazy enough as it is. Just…go back to the city and forget all this. Hector and I will take care of Abram. We’ll explain Yuri’s erratic behavior. It wouldn’t come as a surprise to him.”

“This was my doing,” Hawke replied solemnly. “I killed Yuri. I’ll fix it.”

Gus took a step closer to Hawke and muttered, “
We’ll
fix it together. I’m not going to risk you getting found out here with you ridin’ around on your own, Hawke. Most people in town won’t open their mouths because of what we do around here to help out, but…it takes just one to fuck us over.”

It wasn’t just fear that kept the residents quiet. It was what the club did in town. They helped out whenever they could. Sometimes families came around asking for help with medical bills, rent, anything they were short on. The club wasn’t all bad. In fact, once upon a time they were clean, until Hawke’s old man Red became greedy, wanting the taste of the better life. He dabbled in side incomes, and then he got even more hungry, tackling on distribution where the money really was. Red had decided it was better to have dirty money than be in squalor and watch another gang come strolling in town to fuck things up. At least the town had the Warlords, who were a lot more decent than the others.

Better the devil you know, or so the saying went.

The only member that didn’t morally agree with it had been Tyler’s old man Dennis, but at the time there had been nothing he could do about it. Plus, he grew to love the attention. Dennis used to love the girls and couldn’t keep it in his pants. Power did things to men. It made them overlook the moral bullshit just so they could enjoy the high of the present. And the high involved a bag of coke and a blowjob from some big lipped beauty that would never have dared blink an eye at Dennis if it weren’t for that patch.

Women were powerful in their own right when they knew how to work an easy man. And Dennis had been a very easy man.

With a pat on the back, Gus said, “We’ll discuss it in the morning.” 

He left Hawke standing there and returned to his room. Hector was still drinking his sorrows away feet from him, and Hawke sensed the aggression in him without having to look at his face to confirm it.

“You can’t be here,” Hector told him moments later, glancing at him over his shoulder, eyes glazed and, like he expected, filled with fury. “You gotta go back to your other brother, right? The one you’d rather take a bullet for, even though he orders you around like a fucking puppy.”

Hawke didn’t respond to that. In fact, he barely blinked in his direction. Hector would always be bitter with his older brother. A lifetime of jealousy did that to someone. Arguing was pointless.

They stared at each other for some time, the tension always lingering between them. Shit was never easy.
Never.

“And don’t you dare get wrapped up about Ty,” Hector spat angrily. “The girl stays. We function well with her around. She soothes everybody.”

“You’re playing with fire,” Hawke replied quietly. “You know she needs to be safe.”

Hector suddenly slammed his hand down on the bar hard. “Where else is she safer than here?! Huh? Answer me that fucking question, Hawke. You got a bunker somewhere you can hide her in? You want to keep her a prisoner ‘til she’s twenty-one? Well, fuck, she’s gonna be twenty-one in a matter of weeks, asshole! If nothing happened to her the last eight years, then ain’t nothing gonna happen to her before then!”

Hawke smirked. “Then why did Yuri come around asking for her, brother?”

Hector shook his head. “Like I said, there’s no way for him to have known about it. He just wanted her. That was it.”

“And what if you’re wrong?”

His younger brother clenched his teeth. “Fucking hell! I’m not, alright? You need to go. Fuck knows I’m tired of you coming here and putting me in second place. You said you’d leave it to me. You said you didn’t want to take the patch back, but you’re a distraction every time you’re around. This chapter isn’t your fucking concern anymore. Now let me take care of things.”

If he’d been taking care of things, Hawke never would have received the call to take care of
this
. He could have mentioned that, but again, it was pointless with Hector. You couldn’t say a damn thing without his fucking ego taking a nosedive.

“Get a shut eye, Hector,” Hawke finally said. “And I’ll go when I decide to go.”

With that, he turned around and walked out, heading back to his room. He didn’t know what he needed to do about the mess with Yuri, but he knew he needed sleep. He’d figure shit out when his mind wasn’t filled with rage over the cunt that’d put a gun to Tyler’s head and thought he could demand shit from him.

He opened his bedroom door and found Tyler still asleep in his bed. He stopped mid-step and stared at her. She was wearing purple boy-shorts and a white singlet, the only two articles of clothing he could find in his haste to dress her sweet body. The covers were between her soft legs, her dark hair partially over her face. But that wasn’t what made him lose his breath.

It was his jacket she was using as her pillow, her face pressed against the leather, breathing in his scent.

She’d cuddled his fucking jacket to her like a goddamn teddy bear. He didn’t expect to like the sight of it so much, and it irritated the fuck out of him that he did.

“What happened to you?” he whispered aloud. How in the hell had she grown so much in such a short amount of time? It was doing his head in. She was so fucking beautiful, it made his balls ache and his chest go tight. And his chest never went fucking tight, nor did his balls ache for pussy before. Women had been the same for him all his life. He’d grown so desensitized to the act of fucking, he hadn’t touched a woman for months…and months. It was like his will for sex had died. Which wasn’t a joke. He’d fucked like a rabbit since he was fourteen years old living the club life, and it was only when he became president that he started to feel like a numb shell for it. Yet one gaze at Tyler’s naked body made him feel ravenous to fuck.

Maybe she was reminding him what he was missing out on.

Or maybe that was just the excuse he was using so he wouldn’t admit he wanted
her
.

Sometimes a person could be standing in front of you your whole life without you knowing it. Then one day you walk into a bar and see that person not as a child from your memory, but a grown ass woman with curves in all the right places and a face so fucking beautiful it hurt your eyes.

Hawke sighed and shook his head at himself. Sleeping in this bedroom with her within arm’s reach would be a bad idea.

“What’re you doing?” she suddenly said in a groggy voice.

He tensed, surprised to find her awake.

“Nothing,” he replied tightly. “Get some sleep.”

Instead of doing as she was told, she stretched and rested on her back. Her tank shot up and part of her hip and stomach were visible. Her legs – disproportionately long compared to the rest of her small frame – looked like satin heaven.

Fuck, he thought of her breasts, small and perky, easy to cup. He thought of her hips, soft and rounded in all the right places. He couldn’t get the image of her wet, naked body out of his head.

She blinked at him slowly. “You can sleep here. It’s your bed.”

He shook his head. “Doubt you’d want me near you after tonight.”

“I don’t know what to think about tonight,” she whispered back, staring at him gravely. “I…I can’t get his face out of my head, Hawke.”

Her voice broke near the end, and it gutted him. Fuck, she wasn’t going to handle this shit well at all. He moved to her quickly and took a seat on the edge of the bed. He swept the hair from her face and cupped her cheek, turning it so that she was staring at him.

“Do you hate me for what I did?” he asked her, needing to know.

She shook her head. “No.”

“How do you feel about me then?”

A tear fell from her eye. “I…I’m scared of you.”

She was
scared
of him. He’d rather she hated him instead.

“You wanna know somethin’?” he replied quietly, his chest heavy. “I’m scared of me too sometimes.”

Her hand went over his, and he thought she’d remove it from her face. Instead, she held it tightly and cried. He brushed away her tears, but they kept coming. Her other hand grabbed at his arm, and she hauled herself to him, crawling into his lap. She buried her face into his chest and shook.

He should have felt angry at himself for putting her through that sight, but he couldn’t feel anger toward himself. He did what he felt he had to do at the time, and with how unstable Yuri was holding that gun to her head, she might have been blown away impulsively if Hawke hadn’t reacted so quickly.

Hawke wrapped his arms around her and rocked her against him. He was filthy – clothing still covered in dried blood – but he couldn’t leave her. Not like this.

“How do I get it out of my head?” she begged, her voice tight.

“You don’t,” he replied calmly. “Fighting it makes it worse. You force yourself to think it.”

“There was so much blood.”

“Yeah.”

“I feel so dirty.”

Fuck, his chest hurt for her. “Yeah.”

“How do you handle it, Hawke?”

He paused. “I turn off.”

Otherwise he’d have gone mad years ago.

She nodded and stopped talking after that.

He ran his hand down her spine, never telling her it was going to be okay, never saying anything actually. His fucked up hand slid down her leg and back up, rounding her ass with all that junk and back up her spine again. After a while, she calmed right down and breathed quietly, liking the feel of him. He sensed it soothed her. Mostly he wanted to show her that the hands he’d killed someone with were also the very same hands capable of making her feel better.

The last thing he expected was her breaths to thin, or her body to tighten beneath his touch. She was
responding
to his touch, and not in the relaxing way he’d hoped.

Suddenly the room felt too small, and her body felt too good. Her shampoo – some kind of feminine shit that smelled like fucking heaven – wafted into his nose, making him lean in closer to her head for more of it.

He closed his eyes as his hand continued to move, but it didn’t feel like it was moving in the same way it had been before. It was far from clinical. No, he
really
felt her skin this time, memorizing every curve on his way to her hip.

The second she squirmed for more, he stopped suddenly and opened his eyes.

Fuck.

He pulled away abruptly and started to set her back down in his bed when she grabbed his hand and forced it between her inner thighs.

Right on her pussy.

He tensed and looked down at her, at her glistening needy eyes and parted lips.

“Hawke,” she whispered, breaking the silence.

She stared at his mouth.

He stared at hers.

Fuck again.

“You ain’t thinkin’ straight,” he told her, frowning.

“I want you to touch me.”

“You want me to distract you, babe.”

“I want both.”

He didn’t know why he kept his hand there.

Well, he did fucking know.

He liked the feel of her pussy through the sad excuse of fabric. More importantly, he liked the feel of
her
. And his dick hardened as a result. He was a man, after all; it was fucking chemical.

His fingers barely moved, but they moved nonetheless. Enough for him to feel her folds.