She lifted her head from the buttons and in the dim glow of the moon, I saw the anguish on her face. “So many others did.”
I almost climbed off the bed and went to her, but I stopped myself. We were getting to know each other, and she’d said no touching. “I know. But we damaged them more than they damaged us yesterday, and wearegoing to finish them.”
“I hope so.” She walked over and sat in the chair in the corner, putting some distance between us.
Smart woman.
I watched as she settled onto the chair with elegant grace. She pulled the shirt down when it rode up her thigh to expose the curve of her ass. I tongued my fangs when they throbbed with the need to sink into her flesh, but I didn’t move.
“Why don’t you tell me about yourself,” she said.
“What would you like to know?”
“What’s your last name?”
“Hawkson.”
She pursed her mouth as she crossed her legs. I admired the muscles in her calf while she kicked her leg in the air. “So that’s why they call you Hawk.”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s your first name?”
I glanced at the ceiling; my first name wasn’t something I shared regularly, and few knew it, but I couldn’t keep it from her. “Sue.”
“Sue?”
“Yes. My mom was a big Johnny Cash fan.”
She gawked at me before chuckling. “She named you after the song ‘A Boy Named Sue’?”
“You know the song?”
“One of my daddy’s favorites.”
The hint of her southern accent was thicker when she said this.
“Then you know the story in the song,” I said.
“The boy’s father leaves him, but before he goes, he names him Sue in the hopes it will make him tougher. Your dad left?”
“He died in a plane crash before I was born.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “It would have been nice to know him, but that was never an option, and I accepted it a long time ago. My mom told me stories about him, and he was a good man. Dax, my stepfather, was my dad. I was two when they started dating, and he always treated me like his son, even after my sisters were born.”
“Wasyour dad?”
“He died of cancer when I was fourteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
This time, I couldn’t shrug it off. I hadn’t known my real dad, but my stepfather’s death devastated us all.
“It was a… difficult time.” Those words couldn’t begin to explain how shitty that time in our lives was. “The war occurred two years before he died. Until then, we never had to struggle for anything. Dax was a doctor; we had a big house, and he’d planned well enough that his life insurance and savings would keep us going after his death.”
“But money didn’t matter after the war.”
