Hawke (26 page)

“Cool it,” Gus told him.

“This is fucking stupid,” Hector growled, looking up at them. “Wish you’d just fuckin’ say it already! I’m a fuck-up. I fucked THIS up. Just fucking say it.”

Nobody said anything.

He clenched his teeth. “Fuck it, huh? I did this. I’m done, man! I’m fucking done with this shit. Just…fuck it.”

He stormed out of the room, knocking Marshall’s shoulder with his, while I stared at the infinite pieces of stool scattered on the floor.

“Holy shit,” Jesse muttered under his breath, drawing my attention. “Some morning then, huh? Hector’s fucking unhinged. Looks like he needs a sterilizer to put him down for a while.”

Gus exhaled. “He’s beating himself up about it. Hector’s spiraling and self-destructing. It’d be best we just give him some space. But we gotta figure out what to do. We need to make more money, Hawke. If you know a way…” his words trailed off.

Hawke didn’t respond. He looked far off in thought, his face unreadable.

The plotting man was back.

I felt like I was thirteen again, watching the wheels spin in his head. His eyes met mine, and he understood my expression, understood what I wasn’t saying out loud.

This was a giant mess, and we needed him.

His jaw tensed and he let out a slow breath. Then he pulled me to him and I collapsed in his lap, his arms wrapped around me. He kissed the back of my head, uncaring that the guys were all looking at us with surprise.

Hawke was marking me.

“Well, shit, Gus was right,” Jesse said moments later, his voice low as he looked out the window, scowling. “Cockroaches are here, guys. One car pulling up right now, and that ugly ringleader Duggard is stepping out. What do you wanna do?”

Unconcerned, Hawke’s hands ran down my arms, and I felt his mouth at my ear and him whisper one single word that made my breath catch in my throat. “Okay.”

Then he slid me off his lap and stood up, marching straight for the door. “Grab your guns, boys,” he ordered. “We’re holding our ground.”

“What are you gonna do?” Jesse repeated, alarmed this time as Gus and Marshall withdrew their guns.

Hawke grabbed a large bottle of rum and a lighter where Hector had sat and growled, “I’m going to take care of this once and for all.”

Tyler

Duggard barely made it to the door when Hawke slammed it open and stormed out. The guys followed after him. I stood by the window staring out, unsure of what to expect.

Duggard stopped in his steps when he took Hawke in, looking perplexed at the sight of him, before he started saying, “I’m looking for Hector –”

“No!” Hawke roared, grabbing him by the neck and shoving him back so hard he fell to the ground. “You’re looking for more money, and you ain’t getting it.”

Duggard tried to scramble away unsuccessfully. “You’re asking us to cover up five dead bodies!” he shakily hollered. “That’s a big job, and it’s going to cost more –”

Before Duggard could continue, Hawke pressed his boot on his chest, popped the bottle open and poured it over the officer’s uniform. Another cop stepped out of the car, not nearing the site, but raising his arms and shouting, “What are you doing? Leave him alone! We were just here to negotiate –”

“No negotiations!” Hawke shouted, his face turning grave as he added more weight on Duggard’s chest and pointed at the other cockroach. “You’ve been orderin’ us around, taking advantage of our fucking hospitality, and you wanna know something, you sick little fucks? We got years of tapes with you assholes tryin’ to squeeze more coin out of our pockets. It’s a two-way fuckin’ street now, you fuckin’ maggots. You sell us out, and you’ll be sharin’ jail cells with us, and we ain’t gonna be so nice anymore.”

“It’s just business!”

“It’s robbery!”

The cockroach agreed, shouting that he was right and that they wouldn’t ask for more. But Hawke was hearing none of it. He continued pouring the rest of the rum over Duggard’s body as he writhed beneath him.

“No,” Hawke said, a dark edge to his voice, “you won’t agree until there’s been some damage involved. That’s what you fucks are like. You push and FUCKING PUSH!”

Then he bent down and flipped open the lighter. Duggard’s uniform immediately caught on fire and he screamed hysterically as Hawke stepped off him and returned to the clubhouse, throwing the lighter on the bar.

I gaped at him in shock and he looked back at me with an eerie look of determination.

“You said you wanted me back,” he started, his voice deep and slow, “this is what it’s going to take, babe. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

*

Duggard was fine. He’d thrown his clothes off with the help of his partner and then stumbled back to the car. They took off out of there and Warlord territory had been silent and still ever since.

Everyone knew what Hawke had done.

He’d sparked
fear
.

And fear, he taught me, meant power.

It’d rubbed off on me, that fear. I was back to being startled by him and what he was capable of. Not that he would ever do something to hurt me, I knew, but still. The guy was willing to take it as far as possible, something Hector hadn’t the balls to do.

“I told you it would come to this,” Hawke had told me solemnly. “I’ve gotta do bad things to get back on top, Tyler. That’s just the way it has to be.”

“For how long?” I’d asked.

“However long it takes.”

Hawke didn’t stop there with Duggard. Him and the guys rode out the next day and paid the cockroach and others another visit, this time to renegotiate on their deal. It’d crept up over the years, and they’d made a killing covering for the club, and Hawke was displeased.

I didn’t know what he did to them, but the guys came back looking a little green, meanwhile Hawke was stone-faced per usual.

What he was doing worked, and the cockroaches settled on the deal, probably by force than anything.

The news now was that the five “drunken”assholes (all conveniently had a criminal history for being violent losers) had been killed over a car robbery. I did a face palm the second I heard about it. A car robbery that resulte
d
in five deaths and a burning vehicle? Did these corrupt coppers even
try
anymore? But they buried it; total media blackout on the crimes, and after a couple weeks it was forgotten news.

Oh those murders? Yeah, just a bunch of violent SOBs trying to act tough and ended up getting their heads blown apart! No big deal.

Hawke’s warning on that car ride whipped through me over and over again, and I’d barely paid attention to it until now.

“I don’t think you realize, Ty, what I would become if I went back to that,” he’d said. “You wouldn’t like me as president this time around.”

“Why?”

“I’d have to be unforgiving and do things – violent things so others wouldn’t cross us.”

“I understand.”

“No…you don’t.”

He was right. I hadn’t understood.

Everything swiftly changed after that event.

The club changed.

I
changed.

Hawke had taken back his cut, and Norwich had become the wild west again.

Tyler

Hawke wouldn’t stop touching me.

I couldn’t stop coming.

I whimpered as he sucked at my clit and I exploded around him, tugging sharply at his hair bunched in my fists. My whole body quaked.

His kisses travelled up my belly, over my breasts and back over my raw mouth. They were swollen, and bitten, and now they were numb as he roughly ravaged them.

Hawke situated himself between my legs and took me again, his moves slow, his exhaustion apparent as he thrust in and out of me.

They were lazy thrusts, though his cock was still somehow hard as ever after six hours of off and on again fucking throughout the night. He’d come three times. I’d come…countless.

He grunted things.

Said I was beautiful.

Said I made him feel whole.

I realized he wasn’t even aware he was saying them.

It was like he was fucking himself to death, ridding some kind of darkness because he felt good inside me. Maybe I made the bad disappear.

All I knew was that this was a cycle I would come to be familiar with. Every time he did something bad – in this case, setting a man on fire and paying those guys a visit that had half the club looking queasy – he
needed
to be inside of me.

My life would be centered around this truth for months to come as he righted the club and made his presence known in town.

His slick body moved against me, the scent of our sex thick and inescapable. I didn’t know how he managed to do it time and time again, but I found myself thrashing beneath him, whimpering uncontrollably as he drew another orgasm out of me. Hawke loved the sounds, loved the way I tightened around him, because he’d growl deep in his throat and fuck me harder, pounding into me, that damn headboard banging so loud against the walls.

Then he came, flooding me with more of his come.

My eyes were heavy, my mouth dry and open, sucking in breaths, my sight blurry as I watched the sun’s rays creeping into the room.

*

I wasn’t allowed to go to work during the week following the incidents. Hawke was adamant I stay put because whoever was behind the attacks was still out there. I needed to be kept an eye on until it was resolved, and I didn’t know how long that would take, but I wasn’t going to be dumb enough to go against his orders.

This was what came with the territory being here. I’d accepted that ages ago.

The morning after the cops ran off was wrought with tension. Most of the guys had conglomerated in the meeting room, making calls.

One of them was to Abram, and I’d heard his shouting from outside the room.

“Why the fuck would I have sent men to your place, you stupid fucking dimwits!!” he’d screamed, his anger startling Holly even twenty feet from the room. “If I wanted you all dead, you’d be dead! I wouldn’t pussy around and shoot up your fucking rat’s nest! This is an insult. You’re insulting me with your fucking ignorance! Don’t you dare accuse me of this shit anymore, or I’ll actually fuckin’ do something this time!”

Well then.

Hawke came out looking thoughtful, while Gus was pissed, mouthing Abram off about being a liar.

“He didn’t do it,” Hawke simply told him, shutting him up.

Clearly disagreeing, Gus’s face turned red with anger. “He did do it, Hawke, and the proper thing to do is go over that cunt’s place and teach him a fucking lesson.”

Jonny and Marshall seemed to agree, nodding their heads, but Hawke didn’t respond to that. He sat down in the far back of the room, wheels spinning in his head. Then he shifted his gaze to me, and something about his expression unsettled me.

Something was wrong.

I felt it deep inside of me.

There was something he wasn’t telling me.

Hawke

It’d been a week since the five deaths and four days since the cockroaches ran with their tails between their legs when Borden sent Hawke a message.

You’re not coming back, are you?

Hawke stared at the message and didn’t respond. Everything had happened so suddenly. He’d felt like his life had been split down the middle, and he had to make a choice: Borden, or his club.

He chose neither.

At the end, it came down to Tyler. He wanted her in his bed fiercely. She made him feel, and not just one thing in particular, but a whole range of emotions he hadn’t even remembered he could feel.

Plus, he did miss the club life. He could clean this place up, kick the losers out and bring the loyalty back in. He’d ban drugs from entering the place, and there’d be fucking cameras everywhere, followed by structure – dear god, this place needed fucking structure unlike anything he’d ever seen before.

He’d show everyone there was more to this life than partying and drinking and fucking.

The thought gave him purpose.

“I feel like the weight of the world is off my chest,” Hector had said after he learned his brother was taking back his cut. He’d approached him in the meeting room. Hawke had been sitting alone at the head of the mahogany table, flipping through the books, looking over the club’s income.

He looked up at Hector setting his cut down in front of him; he was returning it to its rightful owner, but Hawke didn’t glimpse at it once. His focus was on his little brother.

Hector swallowed roughly and looked back at him. He was sober today, and he looked like fucking shit, but that was a good thing, Hawke supposed. You had to feel like shit before you got better.

“I never wanted the title,” Hector quietly told him, staring down at his cut up arm. “I know what they’ve been saying for years now. The rumors that I sold you out or some shit, and it didn’t help I’ve been an egotistical dick, flaunting it in front of you, but that wasn’t because I stole it or anything, it was because I tried to be better than you when I know I’m not. I’ll never be.

“But fucking hell, Hawke, I would never have handed over that video. I never wanted you to go away just so I had this stupid strip of leather on my back. I searched for the culprit for years, and never found him. It ain’t proof, I know, but…it’s my word.”

Hawke set the books down on the table. “Why are you telling me this right now, Hector?”

“Because it’s been sitting in my head for years now, and I guess part of me wanted you to think I was ruthless enough to do that to you just so you thought I had a spine.”

“I never for one second believed it,” Hawke replied solemnly. “You got too much love for me, though you won’t admit it.”

Hector grimaced. “Yeah, well, I’ve left you in a shitty position right now. Not much love in that.”

“The situation ain’t so bad.”

“We’re being bled dry.” Hector gestured to the books. “At this rate, we won’t have much to sustain us for long.”

Hawke shook his head slowly. “That’s not true.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tyler.”

Hector went still and he let out a long breath before he grabbed the chair next to him and sat down. “I thought that wasn’t going to happen,” he said, confused.

“She’ll be twenty-one in a week.”

“But she doesn’t fucking know and we don’t even know how we’re going to get ahold of that account.”

“Borden’s working on it.”

Hector shook his head, letting out a long breath. “We can’t tell her the truth, Hawke, it’ll break her heart.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Lie. Make it sound less brutal.”

“Can’t lie anymore, Hector.”

“Then she won’t look at you the same. She will fucking loathe you, man.”

Hawke raked his teeth over his bottom lip, suppressing the panic in his chest. What other choice did he have? He wanted her, but he didn’t want secrets.

“Then she’ll hate me,” he said, his voice deadening. “But she’s mine, and I ain’t letting her go. A Navarro takes what he wants, and I want Tyler, no matter what happens.”

Then he grabbed his phone and responded to Borden.

No, I’m not coming back.

*

They armed the clubhouse and set cameras with men on surveillance 24/7. There hadn’t been an attack since, and no word on the streets about who was responsible, though Hawke was bleeding dry every contact he had out there, hoping for some kind of lead because it just didn’t make sense for it to be Abram.

It took Hawke a few days to gather up his thoughts and tell Tyler. This was fucking dreadful because the morning was beautiful and she was sleeping peacefully in bed, her ass in direct view of him.

How many times had he fucked her?

Too many times.

His dick wasn’t tired of it either.

The world seemed to fade away when he was entwined in her. It was the perfect salve to keeping that monster within him at bay.

But he hadn’t touched her since his talk with Hector. He kept his distance, feeling guilty that he’d even touched her in the first place. It felt like the ultimate betrayal.

He didn’t know how it happened or what possessed him to do it, but he ended up standing in front of the mirror, chopping off his beard. Fucking hell, what a goddamn mess it was. He didn’t shave it off, but he trimmed it so that it was an inch past his cheeks. Then he tied his hair back and returned to the bed, shaking her awake.

“Hey,” he whispered, unable to resist stroking that beautiful face.

Tyler slowly opened her eyes, blinking several times and then stilling when she looked at him. There was shock, but mostly confusion, like she didn’t know who she was looking at.

“Hawke?” she muttered in disbelief.

He cracked a smile. “You look beautiful all confused and shit.”

“And you look like Khal Drogo but without the eyeliner,” she replied, her hand already running over his face.

“Is that another one of your literary heroes?”

She choked on a laugh. “Yeah, sure.”

“I thought I needed a trim.”

“A trim? God, Hawke, I can see so much of you. I just…wow.”

He loved the way her chest rose and fell faster as she looked him over. That fucking look; God, it would never get old, would it?

He grabbed her hand and brought it to his mouth, resting a soft kiss in her palm before saying, “Thought we could go on a ride. I want you on the back of my bike, Tyler. Want it bad.”

Her cheeks reddened, and she smiled brilliantly at him. “I want that too.”

He tried to smile back, but that cinderblock sitting in his ribcage twisted from within, causing him to stiffen and look away.

“I’ll be downstairs waiting for you,” he told her, setting her hand down at her side.

Then Hawke got up and walked out, unable to shake the feeling of absolute dread.

Tyler was going to fucking shatter in a matter of hours.