Unbeloved (Undeniable #4)(68)

It was a look I hadn’t seen since we’d both been in our twenties, a heavy look, one laden with hidden meaning and secret emotion, both of us despairing over different things and secretly using each other to soothe the desperate burning inside us.

But this time it was different.

This wasn’t a secret look.

This was all for me, for all the world to see.

All for him.

All for me. All for me.

I stared at him, my thoughts and body afire as he mouthed the words, You’re beautiful. And I could have sworn I felt his breath, cool against my overheated body, cascading over my skin, causing it to ripple and pebble with gooseflesh all over again.

“Dinner’s ready,” I whispered hoarsely, then lifted my hand to my throat, to the necklace that I never took off, surreptitiously hiding the large swallow of emotion that had welled up within me.

Christopher leaped off the couch and bounded past me while Hawk remained unmoving, his eyes still on me.

“I don’t wanna go,” he said softly, surprising me.

Those words, so full of raw emotion, caused a tidal wave of pain to come crashing over me, coursing through me at an alarming rate.

Its impact on my heart was devastating.

He looked so vulnerable, so unlike any way he’d ever looked before, that I couldn’t stop myself. I rushed forward, dropping onto the couch beside him and wrapping my arms around his neck.

“Let’s leave,” I whispered frantically against the soft cotton of his T-shirt. “Let’s just go, run away. We could move somewhere remote, where no one would ever find us. We could be a family.”

His body heaved as a heavy breath fled his chest, and in that breath I heard his answer. We wouldn’t be leaving, or running. We wouldn’t be together.

“D,” he said gently. “I’ve been hidin’ most of my life. I don’t wanna hide anymore.”

“I can’t lose you,” I whimpered. “Not after I just got you back.”

“Someday,” he whispered, sliding his arm behind my back and pulling me into a one-armed hug. “I’m going to finally take you for that ride. Just you and me, D. Me wearing my cut, you with all that red hair flying in the wind. Both of us finally out in the wide f*ckin’ open. No more hidin’.”

And after hearing that, there was no way on earth I was going to make it through a three-course meal without crying.

I fell apart for what felt like the millionth time, ruining all my carefully applied makeup, smearing it all over Hawk’s T-shirt as I clutched him so tightly my knuckles began to throb.

“I want tonight to last forever,” I whispered brokenly.

Because it had to last forever, or at least for the next ten years.

? ? ?

The last three weeks had been full of surprises, the biggest of which Hawk had thought was him and Dorothy finally coming together.

He’d been so f*cking wrong.

The biggest surprise was just . . . Dorothy.

With as much rational thought as he could manage while being slowly ridden by the beautiful woman on top of him, he stared up at her in wonder.

The dress’s halter top was pooled around her waist, leaving her breasts exposed. Her body was arched, hands clutching his knees, and her head was thrown back, making the tips of her long red hair brush the tops of his thighs. With closed eyes and parted lips, she ground back and forth over him in a maddening, painstakingly, yet magnificently slow pace.

She was not the same woman he’d fallen in love with. But he was pretty sure he loved who she’d become even more.

And he was insanely terrified that he was going to lose her again.

She’d promised him over and over again that she would wait. But he didn’t expect her to wait, to be alone for years. She’d already been alone for far too long, and he wanted her happy.

Even if that meant she’d be happy without him.

Of course, he’d never in a million f*cking years voice his feelings to her or anyone else on earth. Because as much as he wanted her happy, he wanted her waiting at those gates when he was finally able to rejoin the world.

It was selfish. Hawk knew that.

But he’d always been selfish when it came to this woman. He might have let her be, but he’d never given her up or really truly ever left her side.

He’d always been right there, whether she wanted him there or not.

And now that she wanted him there, for good this time, to make something solid out of their choppy history . . .

He was going to be f*cking selfish.

Even locked up, he was going to be selfish.

With one hand under the skirt of her dress, clutching her hip, he reached up with the other and cupped her breast, lifting and squeezing the soft flesh. In response she moaned loudly, her breathing grew more uneven, her movements sped up, becoming less rhythmic and jerkier than before.

“Faster,” he rasped.

She tried to do as he asked but she was beginning to waver, her body quaking as she reached the beginnings of an orgasm. Releasing her breast to grab her other hip, he gripped her tightly and despite the pain in his leg his movements were causing, thrust his hips upward, over and over again, as fast as he could manage until he too was finishing with her.

As he released inside her, staring up her beautiful body, he was struck with most profound sense of homecoming. Maybe he hadn’t realized it back then, when he’d first set his sights on her, how much this woman would come to mean to him, but he knew it now.