Sweet Ache

Chapter 13

HAWKIN

The bass thumps in my chest, a constant drum of vibration, and out of habit I tap my fingers on the glass in my hand like I do my mic on stage. I glance around to where dark lights reflect off glass-littered tables, and take in the fact that there’s enough talent between the four bands partying here to sell out any house.

Then I lock eyes with Jake, lead singer of the Mighty Storm, and tip my beer to him. He nods with a slow smile and by the look on his face, alcohol is his friend tonight. He relaxes with one arm around his wife and the other thrumming the beat on his leg. Like minds.

The song switches on the floor below, one that has a wicked beat, and I sink back into the cushion behind me, closing my eyes for a moment. The couch is comfortable enough but it’s not like I’d want to pass out on it—no, not here with the rumors of what happens on the VIP floor of Scandalous—although I’m well on my way to doing just that.

Especially because she’s not here. But why should she be? Why would she choose me over him? Yeah, I talk a good fucking game but when it comes right down to it, he can offer her so many things that I can’t.

Sex I can do—I’ve certainly imagined long, sweat-inducing sessions of our bodies engaged every which way. Love on the other hand—the stability, the longevity—no fucking way.

So why do I keep looking at the stairway for her?

Talk about an unexpected surprise to look up from the quick-and-easy twins who I had a unique and interesting time with last month to find Quinlan standing there in the meet and greet room. With his arm around her.

And his lips on hers.

Her fucking perfect tits in that tight tank top and her sexy as hell legs, bare and long, beneath the short skirt that begged for me to yank it up around her waist while I discovered her perfection beneath. Goddamn. Talk about wanting to go over there and rip his hands off her, let him know where things stand between us, but shit, a make-out session on the porch and a one-sided phone call doesn’t make her mine.

Yet.

Then she gave me the chance, rabbiting down the hall to escape after displaying the tiny flash of emotion in her eyes that I didn’t have enough time to read. And I couldn’t resist, had to follow her even with the opportunity for the twins again—shit, with any of the females in that room—sitting right in front of me, because I want only her.

I wanted to ask her so many things, most important what the fuck she was doing with that guy, but there was no stopping me from sampling her mouth the minute I pressed up against that ridiculous body of hers. Fucking hell, the woman kisses with every part of herself, like an R&B song that demands you to think of making slow, sweet love to someone. The kind of sex you can’t shake long after the condom’s tied off and your sheets fall cold.

I groan, the sound lost in the noise of the club, as I think of how fucking hard she made me with that selfish desperation she responded with. Nothing wrong with a woman going for what she wants. Talk about adding to her sex appeal and then some.

Take me. The thought has been on constant repeat since our first kiss. Pathetic, maybe. A necessary one, definitely.

And of course to make matters worse, I had to leave the sweetness of her in the bathroom to go back and watch that fucker’s arm go around her. I’m not a possessive guy—shit, in my business chicks come and go in and out of our lives like on a constant lazy Susan—so it’s not a feeling I’m too familiar with.

I sure as shit felt her react, tasted the need in our kiss, heard the way she called out my name, so where the fuck is she? Rocker trumps racer every time. Hands down.

What is it about her that has me wanting more? Ice cream is ice cream, so you need to keep sampling flavors so you don’t get sick of the one you like the most, and yet she seems like a new flavor that I can’t get enough of.

Addictive and has me craving more each time I get a taste.

You’re so fucked in the head, I tell myself, comparing her to ice cream, all the while thinking of just where I want my tongue to lick her. Damn.

I lean forward and set my empty beer bottle down to pick up the glass where my Jack and Coke sits half gone. And fuck if I know what causes me to take note of my tats, the symbols telling the sordid story of my life when my shirt pulls up my bicep, but I do. To others they’re just permanent ink on my skin; to me they are symbolic of everything churning inside me, past and present. All of them have their meaning, all of them tell of my hurt, my heartbreak, my motivation to move forward, to prove that I’m worthy of the things he robbed me of.

I draw in a deep breath, and try to shake the memories, the images that have forever left their indelible mark in my mind. It must be the mixture of alcohol that has me so contemplative. Quinlan not showing up.

It’s all eating at me, spurring on the self-doubt that always lingers just beneath the surface. Singles hitting number one on the charts, more money than I can spend, fame … They do nothing to replace the emptiness or the need to prove to everyone that I’m worthy of it all. If I can’t win over the one girl I want, then I sure as fuck am not enough to save the two people left in my life.

Fuck this. I down the rest of the drink, resign myself to the thought that I’ll go find my own fun for the night. Get lost in someone else or call up the girls from earlier, I think I have their number somewhere. Fuck, or find a fangirl who’ll be thrilled to be with me so that I can close my eyes and think of Quinlan.

I toss back the shot of Jäger on the table in front of me and when I slam the glass back down, I resolve that I need to take this back to where it all started, get my head on straight and simplify the situation. This is a bet, a challenge. Nothing more. Nothing less. A bet I have to win because fuck if I’m getting a tattoo of a pink damn heart.

Vince plops down on the other end of the couch and jars me from the shit fucking up my head and just eyes me up and down. “She show?”

“Who?” I play dumb even though I know he can see right through it.

“Your only hope at not getting a pussy pink heart tattooed on that wrist of yours.” He throws his head back and laughs.

I’m about to tell him, fuck you, because hell no, I don’t want to lose the bet. Won’t lose. But immediately the thoughts about after I do sneak in, the ones that give possibility to the things I’ll never allow in my life because they’ll make you weak. Jesus Christ, I haven’t even fucked her. Talk about a pussy predicament. Griff from the D-Bags beats me to it. “Fuck you, Vinny boy. The only pussy pink my man, Hawkin, here wears is on his lips.”

I double over in laughter momentarily before I fist bump Griff. “Classic,” I tell him. “Hey, Kellan,” I say over his shoulder when I notice their band’s lead singer on the other side of him. “You guys heading out?”

“Pussies,” Vince mutters, making a show of checking his watch to tell them they’re leaving way too early in the night.

“Well, yeah, that’s next on my agenda,” Griff says, all four of us laughing. “And definitely in the plural sense too.”

“Early flight back to the tour,” Kellan explains as he shakes my hand. “Thanks for letting us play tonight. My best to your family.”

“Thanks for playing, man. Appreciate it!”

The guys finish saying good-bye to Vince and when they clear the space in front of us, I look up and my eyes lock on to Quinlan’s. Goddamn. She’s a few steps behind Luke, her hand’s in his, but he’s leading so she has the freedom to hold my stare.

And fuck the jolt that hits is like a live wire running rampant through my every nerve. It’s like I’m seeing her for the first time and shit, it’s not like she’s doing anything other than walking, but it’s as if she just made so many things that are off-kilter inside me even out.

The thought unnerves me enough that when they approach, I focus on Luke with glances aimed her way intermittently. But it’s not enough.

I love the feistiness that sparks in the golden color of her eyes, the desire too, but I’m also intrigued to recognize her uncertainty over whether or nor I’ll keep the promises I made earlier. And that tells me so much: that she’s all-in with whatever this is between us. So I give her the only response I can with Luke present. I dart my eyes down to where my mark on her breast is hidden to let her know I’ll live up to my words. No doubt there.

Even better is the hitch in her breath when she understands my intentions.

We make niceties for a bit and I just want to buy Luke a drink to occupy his mouth so he stops talking for a minute. He’s a decent dude and all … just currently sitting with his arm around Quin. And she’s mine.

Between the subtle and fleeting meeting of our eyes and the way her tits bounce beneath the tank as she moves instinctively to the music’s beat, it takes every ounce of my effort to be attentive to whatever Luke is trying to talk about. I just nod and smile, pretend I’m more drunk than I really am because I learned a long-ass time ago that gets me out of having to converse with people when I don’t want to. All the while my mind fixates on the aggressive desperation in her touch in the backstage bathroom what feels like a lifetime ago.

“Let me buy you a drink,” Luke offers as he stands up. “What’s your poison?”

Fuck if I’m going to tell him in the VIP lounge we have servers bring us our drinks, that we don’t have to make a trip downstairs to the bar. Because now I get to be alone with Quinlan.

“Jack and Coke. Thanks.” I nod to him.

He holds his hand out to help Quinlan up and I swear it takes everything I have to not tell him she’s staying here. “I’m gonna stay here,” she says, reading my mind. I bite back the laugh when Luke glances back and forth between the two of us, my comment about losing the girl to a rock star from earlier obviously having left its impression. “My feet hurt,” she explains, lifting up her tanned calf in a move that has thoughts of running my tongue up its inseam clouding my mind.

I lick my lips and when I look up from her sexy-ass heels, Quin’s eyes are focused straight at me and are now full of libidinous hunger. It’s almost as if the longer we’re within each other’s proximity, our attraction is irrefutable, growing stronger. And she must sense that the desire in her eyes is unmistakable to Luke as well because she averts her gaze suddenly as if she knows she’s giving too much away.

But the damage has already been done. I’m sold. Check please. Time to go.

My dick’s already rising to the occasion because if the look in her eyes showed me just a smidgen of the tigress beneath, I’m already done for.

But Luke remains and stares at her momentarily, confusion in the narrowing of his brow while he mouths to her “You sure?” to which she replies, “I’m fine. Really.”

I can feel him looking but I just keep my eyes focused on the mix of lights flashing over the crowd of gyrating bodies below. I continue to gaze elsewhere because it’s easier than looking into Luke’s eyes and lying to him.

Shit, I’m nowhere close to being a saint but usually if I steal a man’s woman, it’s not literally right from under his nose. The crux of the matter though is that Quinlan definitely isn’t his—to anyone on the outside it’s easy to see—but obviously he still thinks it. And I don’t want to be a dick or rub his face in the fact that she’ll be going home with me tonight and not him.

By the way he looks at her, it’s gonna sting enough, so I don’t need to rub salt in the wound.

He’s stuck in an awkward position, where he doesn’t want to recant on his offer and lose the cool-guy vibe he’s been trying hard for the past hour because he’s nervous his girl is going to want to be played by me. He’s definitely right on target with his thinking, but staying here or getting a drink at the bar isn’t going to change the fact that I’m going to kiss Quin the minute he’s out of sight.

I bob my head to the beat and continue to ignore him until he walks past Axe holding guard at the top of the stairs. Axe nods softly to me, and my body remains stationary as my eyes follow Luke’s movement. The after-show adrenaline rush is still riding high within me but fuck if it’s not being overwhelmed by the lust storming through my system.

He disappears, and I don’t even have a second to think before Quinlan and I meet halfway across the distance separating us on the couch. The unsated need drives us. Without speaking we both know that time is fleeting between us and our mouths find each other’s through the darkness.

The urgency of this stolen moment serves only to intensify things between us. There is no hesitancy, no words exchanged, no preamble because it’s clear what we both want and need from each other right now. Contact. Skin to skin, tongue against tongue, fingertips to bare flesh.

There’s no thought given to my voyeuristic bandmates scattered around us or the fact that we’re in a very public place because the fuel to our desirous fire has already been lit. There’s no turning back now.

Take and sate and claim. Those are the thoughts that fill my mind as her mouth brands itself to mine.

Without prompting she climbs atop my lap, her skirt hiking up as she presses herself against my dick that’s already rock hard and begging to fuck her. And shit, it feels like heaven. The heat of her pussy grinding against where I want it the most. And I love that she’s not shy, love that her hunger to sample is as riotous as mine right here in the wide open, because there is nothing sexier than a woman who refuses to give a fuck what other people think of her.

I’ve done the sex-in-public thing before, done the drunken plunge on a couch without shame, but there’s something about Quinlan right now—the muted sensation of what could be between us, her fingers fisted in what she can grab of my hair, her tongue taking just as much as she’s giving to me—I don’t know what exactly holds me back but as much as every ounce of testosterone in my body is begging for me to unzip my fly and go for it, I can’t. Fuck yes, this is only a bet I reaffirm in my mind between her tongue obliterating my thoughts but I know a quick fuck on the couch won’t be enough for me.

Not with Quinlan.

From the pounding in my heart and the constriction in my chest I know I’ll just want more. I might only get one shot at her alone without Luke there and I’m sure as fuck going to enjoy every goddamn second of it: to watch her parted for me and take me all in, watch her eyes roll back in her head as I make her come, hear her voice yell my name as she loses control.

And fuck yes I want her—now, later, every which way possible—but not here. Not like this.

It takes everything I have to make my body respond to my brain’s request. To ignore the question running through my mind on why Quin’s different and that this—fucking on a couch—isn’t enough for me. To ignore the tightening of my sac as she grinds herself on me, to disregard her tits pressed against my chest or the taste of her on my tongue.

Every last ounce of restraint. But I do it.

My hand is fisted in the mass of her blond curls and I pull the strands just hard enough so that she notices and complies. A gasp falls from our mouths as our lips separate. Our faces are inches apart, eyes glazed with desire and searching each other’s for any explanation of how this attraction vibrating between us can be so strong.

I see the minute she understands that I’m not going to take this any further—fuck am I stupid—because her lips form a no and she tugs her head against my grip.

“Not here. Not like this,” I groan as she presses down against my lap, her body begging for what I’m withholding and fuck if she’s not making this harder than it already is. “Ditch him. Come home with me right now.” I grit the words out, pained to even have to ask.

She reaches down between her legs and rubs her hand over me. I grind my teeth, so amped up that I swear to God I feel like a damn teenager being touched for the first time. “Hawke,” she moans my name into my ear, and hell if it’s not the sexiest sound on the face of the earth. “I want you.”

How the fuck is a man supposed to resist when she says that?

Our mouths are back on each other’s, greed winning and hell if I’m going to repent for this sin because I plan on making a whole helluva lot more of them by the end of the night. We don’t bother to speak, since the music is so loud that even if we did, the only thing we’d be able to feel is the vibrations against each other’s chests and there’s something innately hot about the notion that we’re talking through actions only.

My hands slide under the back of her tank top and find purchase against her soft skin as she holds tight to my neck in what I take as a possessive show that she won’t let me pull away from her again.

And shit, I’m a guy who loves to be in control but this—right here, right now, with her taking the lead—is seriously hotter than fuck.

The music may be loud and my blood is hammering in my eardrums but I hear Axe’s warning whistle across the distance. It takes a moment for me to stop our kiss so that Quinlan can understand that Luke is on his way upstairs. A part of me doesn’t want to stop, wants him to walk up, see his date currently dry-humping my dick and consumed with an urgency to have me. I know it’s a bastard of a thought but it would mitigate the complications and choreographed dance we’re stepping to not hurt Luke’s feelings.

And why do I care? Why do I give a rat’s ass about the shock value of him seeing this when I’m going to end up with the girl in the end? I know the reason, and it bugs the shit out of me and causes me to tear my lips from Quin’s.

Because it’s something Hunter would do.

“Quin. Luke. Coming,” I pant into her ears as I physically lift her off my lap but have a hell of a time removing my hands from her arms and breaking the connection. I stare at her, her lips swollen, cheeks flushed, and those eyes of hers a dark storm of desire staring wide-eyed and inviting.

And something about the look on her face and the goddamn dub step of my heart tells me that this is so much more than a bet.

I shove up off the couch and walk away from our section toward the railing overlooking the floor below, my head spinning from the alcohol and the potency of her addictive fucking kiss. I catch Vince’s sly grin from his seat and he just shakes his head at me and taps the heart on the inside of his wrist. The fucker. Gizmo has his arm around a hottie as well from the meet and greet. Looks like he’s at least going to get lucky because by the way this shit is going tonight, my balls are going to be so goddamn blue I might as well pick up the sport of handball.

I brace myself on the railing, and blow out a breath as I try to figure what the hell it is about Quinlan Westin that’s reeling me in like no chick has before. Women come, women go in my life without much thought. I’ve had steady relationships, monogamy isn’t the problem, it’s when they start having feelings that I start shutting down. And yet right now I’m ready to raise the white flag before I’ve even parted her thighs.

Not gonna happen, Play.

But then when I look over my shoulder to where Luke is handing her a drink and raising mine up to me all I can think of is him out of the picture.

I run a hand through my hair, determined to focus on anything else besides the clusterfuck of my thoughts—the killer performance we gave tonight, the fact that my vocal chords feel incredible even after the extended set we did, or that I can still taste Quin’s lips and smell her perfume on my hands.

Get the girl, Hawke. I laugh out loud to myself. That’s the funniest fucking line I’ve ever said because I always have the girl, normally no work needed and yet now I’m seeing how the other half lives—and this shit sucks.

It’s just all of this shit with Hunter and Mom not doing well and now this bullshit seminar I have to do to prevent further damage that’s fucking with my head. The disturbance in the force crap is not for me.

And neither is she, but sometimes you can’t fuck with fate.

Time to get the girl.