Mystery Man (Dream Man #1)(133)

* * * * *

Tracy, Ginger, Shirleen and I were in the safe room.

It wasn’t that big but we were all scrunched in there watching the movie 300 on a flat screen TV. This was a movie I suspected Shirleen watched a lot and I mostly suspected this because she quoted most of the dialogue while the actors were saying it. I also suspected this because it was already in the DVD player. And lastly I suspected this because she didn’t ask us what we wanted to watch, she just settled us in and turned it on.

The room had a double bed, a reclining chair and shelves full of DVDs. Ginger was in the chair. I was tucked into a protective ball on the bed, pressed into the corner of the wall. Tracy was close to me, holding my hand. And Shirleen was lounging on her side across the foot of the bed.

Ginger and Shirleen were watching the movie. I didn’t think Tracy was but I wasn’t sure because I was suspended in time.

Suddenly and without warning the door opened, my eyes shot to it and Hawk prowled through.

I sucked in breath and my heart stopped beating.

He was clean and bloodless, his hair still wet from a shower and he was wearing a fresh pair of black cargos and a dark blue, skintight t-shirt. There was a raw, scary-looking cut on his lip, an equally raw, scary-looking cut and swelling on his cheek and around his eye. The cut on his cheek was taped closed by three, thin, short, white bandages. He also had angry red welts around both his wrists.

Other than that, he looked fine. Standing, breathing, prowling, fine.

Except, vaguely in the recesses of my mind, it struck me he looked kind of pissed.

I didn’t care.

I shot out of my protective ball and up on my feet on the bed. I took one step, jumped over Shirleen’s body, my foot hit the edge of the bed and I launched myself through the air at my man.

He caught me with a grunt and went back on a foot.

My arms and legs went around him and I started raining kisses on every bit of skin my mouth could find.

“Babe,” he called, one of his arms curled under my ass, the other one around my back.

I ignored him and kept kissing his neck, his jaw, his throat, his cheek…

“Sweet Pea,” he called, his arm at my back becoming a hand sliding up and into my hair.

I continued to ignore him and my mouth touched his.

His head jerked back and his hand twisted gently in my hair.

“Gwen, baby, I’m okay,” he whispered and my eyes moved to his.

I stared down at him, drinking him in, feeling his power, his heat, all that was him wrapped in my limbs. Then I felt my face dissolve and I shoved it in his neck right before my breath hitched loudly and my body bucked with tears.

His head turned and his hand in my hair tightened. “Baby,” he whispered in my ear.

My head jerked up and I wailed, “I can’t believe you took a shower before you came to see me!”

“Gwen –”

“Next time I get a scary picture text where you’re bleeding from your ear and hanging from something, new rule!” I shrieked. “You come see me immediately after you’re rescued!”

“It wasn’t exactly a rescue effort,” Luke Stark put in and my head snapped to see him standing two feet from Hawk and my side. “More like a clean up one,” he finished.

“What?” I asked.

“Glad I work for Lee,” Vance Crowe muttered and my head snapped to the other side to see him standing two feet from us there. “Lee doesn’t like mess. Fuckin’ hell.” Vance leaned forward to look at Luke. “Did you see Jorge? He walked into that shit and didn’t even blink.”

“Forgot that smell,” Luke muttered and shook his head. “Fear.” Then his lip curled.

Oh boy.

I looked at Hawk. “What’d you do?”

Hawk looked at me. “Not a big fan of bein’ tasered, hung on a hook and men takin’ fists to me, babe.”

This was not an answer.

“What’d you do?” I repeated.

“Yeah, what’d you do?” Shirleen asked from behind me and she sounded more than a little curious, actually, she sounded excited.

“Thought we agreed ignorance is bliss,” Hawk said to me.

“What,” I started. “Did,” I went on. “You do?” I finished and he grinned at me, the dimples popped out and seeing them again after thinking I’d never see them again, my heart skipped a beat.

“Commando Lesson One,” Hawk answered. “You got a hostage you know is trained, you incapacitate him. They should have drugged me. They didn’t. They tied my ankles but left me hanging. Tyin’ ankles doesn’t do shit. The power, babe, is in my thighs. I get a head between my thighs, the neck is vulnerable –”

“Okay,” I said swiftly, “I’m done with Commando Lessons. That was the first and last.”

Hawk’s dimples came back. Then he set me on my feet. Then the dimples disappeared.

Uh-oh.

“All right, Sweet Pea, Commando Woman Lesson One, you get a text like you got, you call it into base and you do it immediately.”

I was right except uh-oh didn’t quite cover it.

“Hawk –”

“You do not go visit your local, friendly motorcycle club to recruit assistance.”

“Ha –”

“You do not drag your dispatch cosmo girlfriend into your man’s shit firstly, because it might get her ass fired but especially because it might get her ass hurt.”