But he’s masturbating to the sound of you. And it’s hot as hell.
“I’ve thought of your cock so many times,” I confessed on a moan. “What it would look like. What it would taste like?—”
Jack’s breaths were coming in little pants now, like he was trying to be quiet but couldn’t.
“—what it wouldfeellike inside me.”
“Hawk,” Jack whispered. I wasn’t sure he intended for me to hear him—in fact, I was almost certain he hadn’t—and that only made it hotter.
“Gonna come,” I ground out, feeling the tingles down my thighs and in my groin. “I can’t hold back. Fuck,fuck.”
The sound of Jack’s movements sped up as my brain filled with static. I shoved my t-shirt up to my neck and shouted outhis name as my release washed over me, hitting hot and wet across my belly and chest and sending my nerves flying.
As I lay there coming down from the euphoria and feeling the night air settle across my exposed skin, I heard Jack’s heavy breathing.
Had he…?
I opened my mouth to ask him, but then I closed it with a snap. If he wanted to acknowledge what had just happened between us, that was up to him.
After a few more moments, I heard him moving around. I took the opportunity to clean myself up with a bandana from my backpack and snuggle back into my sleeping bag.
Jack didn’t say a single word. Neither did I.
I lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling of the tent, feeling my anger rise yet again.
So this was where we drew the line, huh? A mutual masturbation session was fine, but actually seeing or touching each other was not? Wasthisthe boundary that was supposed to protect our friendship? Because I was not feeling protected.
In fact, the more I thought about how fucking close he’d been, how it would have been the work ofsecondsfor him to unzip that tent door and experience that orgasmwithme, the more hurt and rejected I felt.
Jack Wyatt needed to leave… and he needed to stay gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JACK
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
~ Fitzwilliam Darcy
I couldn’t sayfor sure the moment I fell for Hawk Sunday.
It might have been the first time he hummed along while I sang in the kitchen long after the diner had closed or one of the times I saw his head thrown back in the sunshine, cheeks rosy from a hike, burning with life like a candle flame.
It might have happened in the middle of an afternoon he’d spent sprawled on the rug in my mom’s living room, holding a very serious conversation with her about worsted-weight yarn while Peony chewed the hem of his pants and he pretended not to notice, or the time I’d teased him about reading too much Jane Austen and he’d retaliated in true smart-ass, book-nerd fashion by answering meonlyinPride and Prejudicequotes for an entire day.
Or… maybe it had grown so gradually that there was no way to say exactly when it happened, like slipping from wakefulness into a really beautiful dream.
I could tell you the moment IrealizedI’d fallen, though.
It was the first time I heard my name on Hawk Sunday’s lips as he came. While he was still gasping through his orgasm, the thought popped into my head:I am utterly and completely his. That’s it. Forever. So what the fuck am I doing?
That moment of enlightenment—me, covered in spunk and shaking from the most intense orgasm of my life, him breathing heavily in his tent just inches away—did not feel at all like the sweet, sappy, blossoming-flower transformation I’d always imagined love was for the few people lucky enough to find it. This was more like an earthquake—sudden and terrifying and inescapable, tearing down all the pretty walls I’d built to protect myself in one fell swoop.
And in the aftermath, as I lay awake, staring at the darkness and listening to the relentless rain, picking my way through the rubble in my brain felt a bit like an archaeological expedition—probably a lot like the ones where historians took a second look at some pottery shards depicting Achilles and Patroclus, and said, “I can’t believe anyone thought they werejust friends.”
Once I let myself look, my true feelings for Hawk were as obvious as gravity. They showed in the way I never wanted to be apart from him. The way I wanted to hear every single thing he had to say. They were there in the way his smile brightened my day and the way the idea of him being with anyone else—whether it was Simon or some random app hookup—made me lose all capacity for logic. It was even there in the way I hadn’t dated anyone, even my usual fun-and-sex dating, inmonthsand claimed it was because the men I hooked up with didn’t “fit” in my life.
Of course they didn’t. I already had Hawk.
