“Bird.” I grasped his jaw in both hands and held him in place. I kissed him softly, on his full lower lip and his cupid’s bow, oneither side of his mouth, on his stubbled chin. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”
“There’s no need to wait!” he said breathlessly. “Please?—”
“Hawk,” I insisted, “do you know the first time I noticed how gorgeous you are?”
Distracted, he pulled back slightly and blinked like the question confused him. His big, brown eyes were dilated with lust and confusion. “Uh. Yeah. Last night… or this morning, I guess. I was there, remember?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Last night was when my blinders fell away, and I realized all that I might lose if I kept trying to keep you in this tidy little friendship box in my mind. It wasnotthe first time I wanted you.”
He frowned, and his nose wrinkled. “So, then… two weeks ago. When I, um… when I propositioned you.” He bit his lip. “When I changed things.”
I shook my head, fighting a smile. “Wrong again,” I said softly. “That was when I realized you might wantme, which, yes, forced me to think about some things I’d been too afraid to let myself think about. But your cherry-popping proposition didn’t change my feelings for you. They were there all along, just waiting for me to stop pushing them away.”
“But then…”
I huffed out a laugh and pressed a kiss to the tiny dent between his eyebrows. “Four years ago, Hawkins.Four.”
“No,” he said flatly. “Impossible.”
“So. Very. Possible,” I informed him, punctuating each word with a tiny kiss to his lips. I nudged him to the overstuffed chair in the corner and pushed him down gently before kneeling in front of him. I had to find a way to distract myself, or this whole thing would be over in a minute. “You know, Webb and I bonded really quickly after I came to the Hollow because he knew what it felt like to have a business and family depend on him, right? Heunderstood where I was in my life, my circumstances, because he was in a similar place. But you…” I shook my head and began stripping off his socks. “You understoodme. I knew you were special from that first day. That I wanted to protect you at all costs. But you were a kid then, so I figured, ‘Well, Jack, you’ve never had a brother. Maybe this is what it feels like.’”
“But it wasn’t?” he whispered.
I shook my head. “That was only when I first knew you,” I said in my best Colin Firth impression. “It has been many years since I have thought you one of the most handsome men of my acquaintance—and by that, I mean utterly gorgeous, down to your soul, Hawk Sunday.”
“Oh my god.” Hawk’s eyes widened, and he leaned forward in the chair with a gasp. “Oh. My. God. Is this actually happening? Did you just… did you just quote Darcy at me?”
“Maybe.” I was pretty sure I’dbutcheredDarcy at him, but with Hawk, it was generally the thought that counted. I pecked him on the lips and pushed him back in his seat to resume my story. “Remember that time we went swimming at Lake Nitka a few years ago?”
“Yeah. We… um…” Hawk licked his lips, his gaze focused on my hands, which had begun massaging his feet and then the thick muscles of his calves. “We did the, ah… the zip-lining thing. Just us. It was one of the first times it was just you and me on one of our adventures.”
“That’s right. And you decided to take your shirt off before we climbed up the tower…” I massaged higher on his leg, my fingers delving under the hem of his shorts and sifting through the coarse hair there.
“Yeah.” Hawk’s voice was strangely gravelly, his neck flushed red. If I worried for a second that too much talking and confession might ruin the mood, one glance at the bulge in his shorts proved me wrong.
Hawk had always been a lover of words.
I kept my eyes locked with his while I kissed the inside of his knee. The hiss of his breath made my heart kick into a higher gear. “All of a sudden, you lookeddifferent. Muscles in your arms. In your shoulders. In these legs…” I ran my palms up the outside of his thighs, over those muscles that were thick and strong after covering endless miles of mountain terrain, until I could tug at the hem of his boxer briefs. “And holy shit, Hawkins, your ass.Hngh.”
“I wanted you to notice,” he admitted. “But you never… I didn’t think…”
“I noticed,” I told him firmly. “I pushed it down. I locked it away. But I sure as fuck noticed, Hawk. You killed me that day.” I ran a finger between the stretchy fabric of his boxers and his hot skin, and he sucked in another shuddering breath. “You’re killing menow.”
I pulled my hands out of his shorts and skimmed a hand down over his sparse happy trail until I reached the button at his waist. Hawk’s breath was coming in pants, his eyes soft and unfocused, and my hands were shaking worse than ever. I’d wanted this to be a seduction, but with every little gasp and each new inch of hot skin I touched, I was the one being seduced.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he moaned. “God, Jack, we could have?—”
“That day, I was so keyed up I jerked off in the shower the minute I got home. I tried not to think about you. About the way the sun hit your skin when we were in the water. The way your eyes sparked. But there you were, right in the middle of my brain…”
I peeled open his shorts and reached inside to feel the hard shape of him through the damp navy blue cotton of his underwear. Both of us let out a groan.
“And just as I was about to come, Webb showed up at my house. Remember when the old warped front door was still there and refused to close properly? Well, he took that as an invitation to stomp himself right inside and up the stairs?—”
The mention of his brother made Hawk groan again, this time in frustration. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. “I hate you for mentioning my brother while your hand is on my dick.”
I snickered but couldn’t help leaning up to kiss his mouth. “I cannot stop wanting to do this,” I mumbled against his lips.
Hawk grabbed my head and kissed me back with everything he had. But this time, he was the one who pulled back.
