“This isn’t real?” The comment is off my tongue before I can help it. And hell yes, cocooned in this little bubble of my house this feels real but what about the minute he steps foot outside? Will this all be a memory? I hate the insecurity popping up suddenly when he’s given me no indication that he’s ready to end whatever this is between us.

My stupid comment leaves an awkward silence. I’m just about to apologize when the doorbell rings.

“Shit.” I scramble up, unwilling to answer in just his shirt and my lacy boy-short panties.

“No, stay. I’ll get it,” Hawke offers as he rises to his feet and pushes my shoulders back down.

“Are you sure?” I’m racing to try to figure out who it can be at two in the afternoon. Whoever it is, they are going to be more than surprised at my butler and exactly how he’s dressed.

“Yeah. You got any candy?” he calls over his shoulder, making me laugh. Him and his damn sweet tooth.

“Let me think.”

But my thinking about candy gets derailed as I watch him walk toward the front door, loving the way his jeans hang low on his hips, the knowledge that he’s not wearing any underwear beneath them making him seem even sexier. Like that’s even needed. When he leaves my line of sight, I smile at the sound of his feet padding down the hall. It’s an oddly comforting sound and I’m glad for the interruption because it just saved me from a monumental screwup with the question I asked.

Realization hits me several seconds before I hear the slide of the dead bolt. I’m on my feet and scurrying down the hall, my first thought that it might be Colton and how ugly it might get if a random man opens my front door without a shirt on. I don’t care how old I am, Colton will always see me as the little girl that no guy should touch.

Unfortunately for my last date that ended up staying the night, his face met Colton’s fist when he told him to butt out. And I didn’t talk to my brother for a week because he needed to grow up.

I turn the corner just in time to see light framing Hawkin’s body and a rather rough-looking Luke looking at him with an expression of surprised displeasure, mouth lax, eyes glaring, shoulders square.

“Hey,” Hawke says with a shrug of his shoulders, hands jammed deep in his pockets. “Sorry, man.” He drops his head, awkwardness rising between them. And a part of me loses a tiny piece of my heart to Hawkin in the moment. He could be a royal asshole to Luke right now, be arrogant and gloat that he got the girl, but he doesn’t do any of it. Instead he is contrite and humble.

A disbelieving laugh falls from Luke’s mouth as he shakes his head when he looks over and sees me walking up behind Hawkin. His eyes take in my attire, the shirt Hawke had on last night not going unnoticed. Guilt pushes the contentment I’d felt this morning away because Luke is a good guy, and he definitely didn’t deserve to find out this way.

Hawke takes note of Luke’s change in focus and shifts sideways to spot me. I glance his way, tell him in the visual exchange that it’s okay. Hawke turns back and nods his head to Luke before walking past me with a quick brush of his hand against mine in reassurance before disappearing into the house.

Stepping into the doorway, I chew the inside of my lip as I get the courage to meet Luke’s eyes now that we’re closer.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he says.

I snap my head up. What? “I’m the one who should be apologizing, Luke.” I step forward, the soother in me wanting to hug him to take the sting out of all of this and the other part of me knowing I can’t add insult to injury, comfort him with my body I won’t offer to him in other ways. “I … It kind of just happened…. I didn’t mean for … I’m sorry.”

I feel guilty for lying, for not telling him that Hawke and I already had a little something started because then it just makes him feel like the date I’d accepted was a consolation prize. I’m feeling about two inches tall right now, even though I know I made the right decision last night, because sometimes all kinds of right for me can still be all kinds of wrong for someone else.

“Nah,” he says with a shrug of his shoulder, trying to play off the disappointment and hurt flickering in his bloodshot eyes. “I let my ego get the best of me. Got plastered trying to prove I was the guy you wanted instead of Hawke—not exactly great behavior for a first date. Sorry for being an ass.”

The sadness in his voice kills me. “Luke …”

“No. Don’t.” He forces a smile as he steps in and places a kiss on my cheek, my own tears threatening because I feel so bad. “Thanks for … I’ve got to go.”

He nods again and turns to walk away. “Luke,” I call his name, remorse heavy in my voice.

He stops, his head hung down. “I’m here if you need me.” It’s all he says before he walks away.



Chapter 17


HAWKIN

Why am I still here?

Why the hell am I propped back on the pillows of her bed watching her through the partially obscured view I have of her as she applies her makeup in that close-up mirror thingy in her bathroom?

I’m usually long gone by now: do the deed, have some niceties, and then out the door. And yet with Quinlan, the deed has been done over and over and needs to be done a few more times today if I have my way.

I glance at the drawer in her dresser, the one that she surprised me with when she pulled it open to a minimart of protection, and wonder if we could work our way through the remainder of them throughout the rest of the afternoon and into the night.

It’s a pretty lofty challenge but one I’d rise to the occasion for.

And shouldn’t I be freaked by the fact she has so many condoms? What does that say about her? I laugh at myself and scrub a hand through my hair at my hypocrisy. Why is it that I can have a supply of them and she can’t or else it looks bad?

When I look up and watch her apply her lip gloss in the mirror, my hypocrisy is forgotten because all it means is that she wants to be safe, stay healthy. Can’t blame her for that and can’t blame my dick for already hardening at the sight of her.

She has on a yellow tank top, the blond curls of her hair pulled forward over one of her shoulders, and that delicate font tattooed between her shoulder blades. There’s something so damn sexy about it. The words and the simplicity of its placement, not for show, but solely for her just like my tattoos are for me.

When I read the words, Make it count, I can’t help the satisfied sigh that falls from my lips because we sure as fuck made it count last night. My dick pulses at the thought, wanting it again with her so damn close and so goddamn tempting. She shifts in her chair to grab something and the movement leads me to fixate on her sexy-ass lace panties that mold to the cheeks of her ass.

And that is exactly why I’m still sitting on her bed in my jeans, ignoring the bullshit texts from the guys asking if I fell in and got lost.

They can fuck off because I kind of think they’re right. I think I’m lost and not sure I want to find my way back.

But I look at her and can’t fathom how her independence, her strength, could make me weak if this were to continue. The idea, the notion, the possibilities begin to spiral out of control, beg me to question things and beliefs so ingrained in me that I’ve only ever questioned them in theory.

And yes, watching her, with the scent of her soap on my skin and taste of her pussy seared in my memory, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like. How is she making me … Shut it down, Hawke.

My chest constricts as I push the notion away, the haunted promises I’ve lived my life by, and opt to lose myself in thoughts of Quinlan instead. The woman is all kinds of contradictions balled up into one knockout punch. Shit, she’s playful and a dynamo in the sack, is feisty outside of it, and doesn’t get freaked out by my name or career.

But these feelings swirling around like a man after a fourth of Jack with the room spinning around me can’t be right. This is supposed to be easy, supposed to be uncomplicated, supposed to be casual.

Casual, my ass. From the get-go it’s been a challenge and so many things I’d usually walk away from. And yet here I am, relaxing on her bed, radio playing softly to a rock station, and actually relaxing.

Maybe I’m just enjoying the silence. Not being in a house with three other guys, people constantly coming in, is a relief. I thrum my thumb on my leg to the beat, laughing at my crazy surreal life when one of the D-Bags’ songs comes on. I don’t think this will ever become old hat, being a little starstruck, a little giddy when the person I was having a beer with last night is now singing on the radio.

Leaning my head back, I realize maybe my contentment comes from the lack of incessant talking that usually follows sex with the random women I’ve grown accustomed to. The ones that just want the notoriety they’ll get from bragging about hooking up with me. I don’t care if I disappoint those women because one, they’re crazy if they think I’m going to fall madly in love with them and let them have my babies. And secondly, I don’t let them get close enough for there to be any other expectations that I won’t deliver on.

You can’t control crazy so I don’t even try to.

But then there’s Quinlan and shit if she hasn’t gotten to me somehow, broken through the ludicrous bet I made with Vince that I could get her to sleep with me, because now that’s all I want her to do.

Well, obviously I want more than that because I’m blowing off the guys, ignoring the random texts Hunter’s sending my way that are escalating in pissiness, and watching her put makeup on while I kick back on her bed in and out of an oversexed fog. For the first time in forever I’m not thinking about figuring out the next lyric, the next chord, the next number one hit, losing my mother, jail, anything, because Quin’s successfully pulled me into her nice little bubble and held me here willingly.

Shit, she can let Trixie out and hold me here with restraints for a while if she really wants to. And that’s saying a whole helluva lot.

Living the dream, man.

I chuckle, ruining the silence I’m enjoying, which causes her to turn around on the little stool she’s sitting on and angle her head as she meets my eyes. Fuck. My gaze flickers down to where her darkened nipples peak through the yellow tank top, the hickey I gave her last night visible above the fabric. Her tan legs make me want to spread them so my hands can run up their length to her pussy as the prize at the end of their journey. She parts those thighs some and I groan softly at the knowledge of just what it feels like to be nestled between them.

“You know you don’t need any makeup. You’re gorgeous without it.”

She laughs when most others would be flattered by the comment. I must be losing my touch, here.

“Thanks but you’re full of shit.” She rises from her chair, eyeliner in one hand as she walks toward the bed. “A man will say or do anything when he thinks he might get laid.”

“Is that what I’m doing? Trying to get laid here?” I feign innocence as my dick tents unmistakably against the denim of my half-buttoned-up jeans.

“Mm-hmm,” she says, mischief in her eyes and desire reflected in the way she works her bottom lip between her teeth so that one side of her mouth quirks up in a suggestive smirk.

“Anything, huh?”

“Anything,” she says as she crawls onto the bed and sits cross-legged in front of me. Her perfume—clean and not overpowering—fills my nose and makes me recall how she must put it between her cleavage because when my mouth was sliding over her perfect tits that’s when I smelled it the strongest.

My eyes wander down her body, to the panties that are hiding everything I want and over and up her tits to her eyes. “I can think of a few anythings that I assure you I wouldn’t do for sex.”

“That so?” she asks, eyebrows raised, playful smile on her lips. “What about for ice cream?”

I chuckle softly. “Now, that? I’ll do anything for,” I tease in return. “A man’s got to have his vices after all,” I tell her, pursing my lips to fight my own smirk when I see the challenge in her eyes.

“Hm …?” She angles her head, tapping her eyeliner pencil on her knee. “I do seem to have some ice cream in the freezer…. I wonder just what you’d do for it.” She taunts me, with both her words and her body.

“Oh, sweetness, are you trying to tempt me?” Thoughts in my head turn to getting a double fill of both of the things I’m dying to have right now: ice cream and Quinlan. Talk about her being the cookies to my cream. Damn.