: Chapter 26

I’m so overwhelmed with emotion.

Something about this man beneath me speaks to a part of my soul that’s been left untouched until him.

“I need to be inside you,” he murmurs into my neck, littering kisses all along my chest.

“Cam, please,” I beg him, running my fingers through his hair.

I continue rolling my hips against him, the feeling of us being so close yet not connected, driving us both mad.

“I don’t have anything out here.” He licks his lips, searching my eyes.

I understand what he’s referring to. Insinuating I need to get up off him so he can grab what we need to make this happen. But I’m intoxicated by lust, drunk in need, and I ache to feel him, with nothing separating us.

“I don’t care,” I whisper, fingers twirling the tips of his hair, grinding against him again.

“Cole…” he says cautiously, knowing we shouldn’t.

“I need to feel you,” I whisper against his lips.

“You trust me?” he asks, leaning back to look at my face, scanning it for something, anything, that might make me pull back.

“I do. I mean, I’d hope you’d stop me if this was a bad idea.”

“It’s a bad idea,” he says with a light grin.

I roll my eyes at him, smiling lightly back.

“I’m on the pill, if you’re wondering.”

He’s still panting as I slowly grind myself on him during our quick discussion. The thought of being inside me with nothing making the wheels turn in his head.

“Okay,” he whispers, seemingly nervous.

Without knowing it, he’s helping me fall, reckless and wild, with no inhibitions. Everything I was, calculated, cautious, afraid, is being thrown from my entity. He makes me tap into an unknown part of myself I’ve never reached. A strength that comes from letting go.

“I’ve never done this before,” he swallows.

I gaze at him, listening to him admit something I never expected.

“Me either,” I admit.

His eyes light up with surprise and confusion. But it’s true. I’ve never experienced this with Patrick before. If anything, it would definitely have crossed the clean and Catholic line. The little bit of latex makes him feel as though he’s not sinning and sending himself on a clear path to eternal damnation. But with Hawke, we’re both willingly diving into the depths of Hell together.

I reach between us, gently wrapping my hand around him. He sucks in a breath, looking down, then back into my eyes with an unsure face, his chest heaving with breathlessness.

I love this side of him. The seriousness, the truth, the part of him that tells me what’s happening between us is not what he’s used to. He’s opening up to me, telling me this means something, that what we have between us isn’t regular.

I lean up onto my knees, steadying myself above him as he lines himself with my entrance. He looks up at me with the kind of respect you’d give a queen that was holding a knife to your neck. He knows I could kill him with one cut; end him beautifully with the vulnerability he’s offering, but admires my power over him nonetheless.

He brushes himself against my wet center, making us moan in unison. The feeling of the most intimate part of him touching me with no barrier is making me ache for this moment of pure connection.

We eye each other as I begin my descent around him, sinking down onto his thickness. It’s achingly painful, this angle, how hard he is, and the fact that there’s nothing but our skin touching. It’s the most beautiful, raw, crashing together of two individuals, needing to be one.

He grabs the back of my neck, his mouth dropping open as he attempts to keep his eyes open on me. He lifts his hips up gently while I sit back onto his lap. I moan loudly, feeling an arousal I’ve never experienced, reaching the base of him, settling for a moment to adjust.

It’s different than in the car. The car was wild, hungry, aggressive. This is slow, precise, passionate. I lift and lower myself onto him, my excitement dripping down his length, making his thickness easy for me to swallow deep within my walls.

“This feels right,” I whisper, catching my breath. “You and me.”

His eyebrows knit together, searching my eyes in disbelief, before he licks my top lip, finding his way into my mouth again.

“This is how it was supposed to be,” he says between kisses. “You in my arms, me, deep inside you.”

I take my hands, interlocking fingers in his, pinning them back against the couch, and bracing myself as I slowly slide him in and out of me. My heart is beating out of my chest, seeing him stare at me with those eyes on fire.

It’s a terrifying realization, knowing nothing will come close to comparing to how I feel in this moment. I can’t lose him. It’s now a rational fear of mine. I’m falling for him, in all the ways I don’t want to.

He bends his knees up, giving his heels some leverage as he thrusts his hips into me. Loving all the ways this position is making me moan, he can’t stop staring at me. Completely observant, enthralled by my sounds, my faces. Appreciating the chance to be the one to bring me pleasure.

His hands pull away from mine, needing to touch me. Massaging my breasts in his palms, he runs his thumbs across my sensitive, aching nipples as I roll my hips into him.

“Fuck, you feel like nothing I’ve ever felt.” He groans, grabbing the flesh of my backside in his large hands, roughly pulling me down onto him.

“Hawke,” I cry out as he fills me, again and again.

The sensation has his eyes rolling back into his head. I claw at his chest, feeling the urge to release, the spine-tingling stirring of the orgasm at bay.

“Yeah, baby, let go.” He groans, tightening his jaw as he watches me lose control.

I scream out, wrapping my hands around the sides of his neck, gripping him tightly as I fall into the intensity of my orgasm.

He pulls me flush against his chest, wrapping both arms behind my back, sealing us together as he drives into me. I fall apart around him, letting the fireworks behind my eyes take over my vision as I succumb to the beautiful, numbing sensation.

Shuddering into me, he continues until his thrusts get sloppy, his hard form wilting beneath me. I feel the warmth of him filling me, the sensation of the wetness dripping out around him. It’s one of the most erotic, most provocative sensations, one I’ll be thinking about long after we’re done.

With his chest heaving like an Olympic runner finishing his marathon, he drops his head back against the couch, pulling me to his lips.

The kiss is soft and sensual. Even after the passion, he’s still delivering.

“You’re killing me, Cole,” he says, finally pulling away from my lips, earning a grin of admiration from me. “There are no fucking words.”

Eventually, after our lips are yet again swollen from endless kisses, I hop off him, grabbing a towel from the bathroom to clean up before getting comfortable in our sweats again.

He pats the space next to him on the heaping pile of blankets and pillows. I curl up into his warmth, my cheek against his chest and his arm around me, our legs intertwined. Cuddling is something we know how to do, and well.

Hawke is continuously touching me, my face, running fingers down my arms, combing my hair through his fingers. I can tell he’s memorizing all of this for a time he might not have it. The thought of him mentally taking notes in this moment to the fullest, with the knowledge that it may never happen again, kills a piece of my heart.

“What’s this mean?” I ask, running my fingers over the tattoo on his rib cage that looks like some sort of molecule.

He sits up a bit to see which one I’m rubbing, then grins, laying his head back against the pillows.

“That’s my attempt at keeping myself functioning through the dark times in my life. It’s a dopamine molecule.”

“I love that,” I whisper, still running my finger over it, silently wishing he’d never got to the point of needing it. “And this one?”

I point to another one near it that looks like an old, decrepit skeleton of a dead rat, flat on its back.

“That’s got double meaning. For one, it’s the prey I’ve conquered, metaphorically and physically. I mean, my last name is Hawke.” He grins with a slight shrug. “But it’s also a representation of how I feel about rats.”

I won’t pretend I didn’t just see his jaw flex at the mention.

“You have so many,” I say softly, touching a few others.

I admire the collection before me, a man with his story written on his skin, only the lucky ones who get to read his pages.

“This is my favorite.” He points to the Phil Collins outline, the one that I’ve really been wondering about.

“I got it for Ben.” He turns his head, slowly connecting his eyes with mine, and I feel him making the choice to open up this deep wound for me.

I make soft circles over the tattoo, curling into him more, as he turns back to the ceiling before talking about it.

“He loved Phil. So strange for a young guy to have such an obsession with Phil Collins, but Ben did whatever he wanted to and everyone loved him for it. Even said they were related when I first met him and I believed it. Damn kid.” He chuckles at the memory.

My heart feels like someone is squeezing it in their fist, watching him talk about his friend, especially knowing he’s passed on.

“Ben was my best friend. Not a day went by where he didn’t make me laugh. He always found a way to pick me up, especially on those days when I couldn’t do it myself. We understood each other on a different level. He saw me for who I was, not for what I could do for him. He was the closest thing I had to a family after my father passed.” Hawke swallows, staring into the ceiling fan, and I feel the weight of this friendship to him.

“After his death, I fell apart. I closed myself up, becoming numb to everything and everyone around me. I had to, to survive. I had to, until you.”

He turns his head to face me, looking sad and entirely vulnerable at his own admission. I grab for his hand in mine immediately, holding it to my chest, against my racing heart. Snuggling into his side as far as I can, I want him to know how much letting me in means to me, how much he means to me.

“I’m going to end things with Patrick,” I say, running my fingers along the inside of his palm, before turning to face him where I’m laying.

He stares at his hand, watching what I’m doing while running his tongue along his teeth, thinking.

“Don’t do that for me,” he says cautiously.

“It’s not just that. It’s everything you’ve made me realize about myself.”

He studies my face while I mentally recite everything that’s wrong with our relationship.

I sigh before saying, “I just have to figure out how to go about this.”

“I understand,” he whispers before brushing the back of his hand against my cheek. “It’s not going to be easy.”

“I know.” My voice cracks as I speak, biting the inside of my cheek at the painful thought.

“Hey,” he says, sensing my pain and sitting up to turn me to face him. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

I wish life could be easy. I wish I could just call Patrick up and say, guess what, it’s over. But the reality is, this guy is all I’ve known for the past few years. My life is unfortunately intertwined with his.

I stupidly invested all that I am into a relationship that was never meant to work out. I ignored the signs, ignored my own thoughts, thinking I was overreacting and being crazy. He was great on paper. Should be great in real life too, right? I worked so hard to make us work and now I’m left with nothing but the regret of failure.

I will need to make arrangements, plan to find a place in this small town to live, because as soon as the truth comes out, I know where I’ll stand. I’ll be on the curb. But what about Hawke? I can’t be the cause of him not having a place to live. I can’t tell Patrick the truth about Hawke and me because he doesn’t need any more setbacks in this life he’s working hard to correct.

I don’t want to make his life worse; I want to make it better, any way that I can.

He lays back down, pulling me into him and wrapping a blanket up and around us. We lay together on the floor in the pile of pillows, falling asleep with our arms and legs intertwined, never seeming to get close enough.

We’ll never get close enough.