He stepped back and turned around, but not before I noticed a very clear bulge in the front of his shorts that wasn’t nearly as visible before.
Jack Wyatt had gotten hard for me.
Crys was right. Hedidfind me attractive. I hadn’t really let myself believe it, despite my attempts at being seductive. But if that wasn’t the issue…
“Why can’t we?” I demanded. “Is this really about my brothers? Or our age difference? What are you so freaking scared of?” My voice was angry, hurt, annoyed. I could hear it as clear as the thrush’s renewed trill.
“I’m notscared,” he insisted, keeping his back to me, and I was two seconds away from tearing into him for being aliarbecause he was clearly scared of something, when he finished with a whispered “I’m fucking terrified” that took the wind out of my sails.
The silence settled back around us, only this time, it wasn’t complete. The breeze ruffled the edges of his hair, and the bird kept up his whirling song.
“Terrified of what?” I wanted to step closer, put my hand on his shirt, my face in the center of his back.
He shook his head. “I can’t give you what you want, Bird. I know you. You want a fairy-tale romance. You want… true love conquering all. You want the happily ever after, and I… don’t,” he said simply, cratering my heart with one small word. “That’s your dream, not mine.”
“I told you before, Jack, we could keep it casual?—”
He shook his head. “You’d want more from anyone you were with. Hell, Iwantyou to want more, and I’d hope for your sake that you’d defy the odds and get it. But I… I can’t give you that. So if we start down that path… then what? We’d both end up hurt and bitter. I’d lose my best employee and my closest…” He cleared his throat. “One of my closest friends.”
I reached out to touch him, but before my hand made contact, he turned around and straightened his shoulders. “Not to mention—and I know you hate this, but it bears repeating, okay?—youareWebb’s Hawklet. And if I fucked things up…” He met my eyes with the dreaded conviction he got sometimes when he falsely assumed he was right about something. “You’re off-limits.Period. I don’t want the relationship we have now to change. Ever.”
I nodded slowly, reaching my absolute limit. “I understand.”
Jack let out a breath and nodded. “Good. Thank y?—”
“Iunderstandyou’re a selfish jackass who thinks only of himself and what’s best for him. Iunderstandthat you think I’m childish and silly. Iunderstandyou’re hell-bent on insisting I’m not allowed to be an actual adult male because god forbid my family hear I might—gasp!—have sexual relations like they do. And don’t even think about telling me my brothers aren’t all out there fucking right now because we both know they are. Hell, Webb’s probably got Luke in the dirt under an apple tree, Knox and Gage are christening every damn room in their new place while covered in Cecilia’s organic honey from the gift shop—and don’t ask me how I know about that because I don’t care to relive it—while Reed’s fucking his way through our nation’s capital, and Porter’s at Hannabury, probably bending over for one of his professors.”
Jack’s eyes widened, whether at my temper or my crude language, and I could almost see his thoughts beaming out of his brain.My Hawk doesn’t talk like that!But guess what? Today, I sure as fuck did.
“For god’s sake,” I went on, the emotion I’d dammed up pouring out of me in torrents. “Even Drew, who’s old enough to be a grandfather, reinjured his leg last week andclaimedhe hurt it gardening… like anyone who shares a roof with him didn’t hear the noises coming out of his room the night before.”
“God, stop!” Jack held up a hand. “I beg you. I do not want to know a damn thing about your family’s sex lives?—”
“Really? Then why the fuck do they get a say inmine?” I demanded. “If you don’t want me, Jack Wyatt, that’s your choice, and I accept it. But if you’re honestly trying to pretend that you’re doing this formysake—slapping me up on a pedestal I never asked to be on, telling me I’m too pure and good to ever have something hot and sexual andreal,pretending you know what I want better than I do—you can get on your fucking high horse and take a long canter off a very short bridge.”
His jaw hung open as his startling blue eyes stared at me. I didn’t wait around to hear his pitiful excuses. Instead, I lobbed one final line at him before taking off up the trail at a fast clip.
“I will lose my virginity this summer with or without you, Jack. Mark my words. It’s happening whether you like it or not.”
CHAPTER FIVE
JACK
“I am all astonishment.”
~ Caroline Bingley
I stood stock-still,blinking at the space where Hawk had been for a long moment after he stalked off.
One part of my brain firmed its jaw and wanted to yell in Hawk’s direction,See? This is what happens when you complicate a perfectly wonderful friendship! Better now than after you’d developed romantic feelings for me.
Another part twisted up and whimpered,Come back! I was wrong! Give me a do-over!
But, no lie, most of my brain was busy replaying Hawk’s sweet voice gritting out the words “something hot and sexual and real”on an endless loop while picturing him naked, “bending over” and, in a bizarre new twist, covered in organic honey. My cock swelled uncomfortably in my pants, and I couldn’t even pretend to be shocked about that since this was at least my twenty-fifth Hawk-based erection in the past seven days.
How the fuck had we gotten to this place?
Hawk was trying to change the rules of our friendship in the middle of the game, and I couldn’t decide whether to be angry or… worried.
