Page 40 of Filthy Love

He shrugged out of his leather duster, tossed it over the back of a chair. Rolled his Henley shirt sleeves up his forearms. The chain connecting to his wallet in his back pocket clinked when he moved to grab the coffee cup, he slopped in enough milk for her and the sweetener and then placed it in front of her on the table.

“That man back there is very dangerous. All of them are. If you see them again, even if it’s a thousand yards away, you call me.”

“That much I got. He said you killed his men. Was that just all bull-crap.”

Sucking his teeth, Hawk lowered his eyes and kept his trap shut. What could he say that she hadn’t already heard back there? He’d killed those men. Killed more than that in his life.

He killed when he was only eleven. An accident through his only defence, but a death was a death.

The human body was a dickhead.

As unfeeling as Hawk was most of the time it took one glance at Gia and everything he'd lived by for most of his life crashed down around him.

His body no longer his own.

Didn't matter that he told it to calm down. His heart pounded.

Don't you dare look over at her.His eyes swerved, staring.

Don't you get hard.His cock grew stiff.

His body; a useless piece of disobedient meat under the control of one five feet, four inches force of reckoning. A mere mortal man whose addictions ruled him, leading him around by the heart.

A need washed over him. One he never thought possible. Because he never trusted anyone enough before to confide in; to vomit out his life and tell Gia everything from start to finish.

Then she’d really be done with him, he thought. Then she’d run so fast he’d never catch up to her.

And as logical as that seemed. The right thing to do. He couldn’t do without her. That flaw made him weak, dependable on a fix of her even if it meant holding her apart from him where he could have her, couldn’t he? He could live a lie and pretend to be a normal man and have her for a while.

And as madness eroded through his skull, like any insane bastard, the whispers of what could be forefront and taunting, seeing images he’d rather not, he replaced them with ones of Gia. She calmed him and soothed his noise.

But he couldn’t give her all that. His restraint was threadbare, but it existed. He’d rather she just thought of him as a volatile bastard than what he was. Unhinged.

He gripped the counter behind him, his chest inflating before he met her eyes. “Yeah, they were right. I’d do it again.”

He watched Gia suck in a quick breath. The coffee cup trembled in her hand before she placed it on the table.

Watching the woman he worshipped with horror on her face, was probably going to be the one defining moment of Hawk’s miserable life. On his death bed he’d recount back to this time and that look on her perfect face.

In any scenario he could have rehearsed he never expected her next words. “If it means you stay alive, then yes, do it again.” Shock punched through his lower stomach. “So, they’re dangerous, and Rider and your club are in a deal with them over what I’m assuming is something illegal?” He didn’t confirm but she nodded. “Got it. And I was what, a way to pull Rider into line?” This time Hawk nodded and reached into his back pocket for his phone. “I gotta put this through to Rider. Why don’t you start your packing?”

She rose her stubborn chin at him and Hawk wanted to laugh.

She stared.

And he stared back.

Gia won. He left her sitting at the table while he leaned into the counter and put the call through to her brother.

It took a matter of a minute to fill Rider in and then another minute to wait out his tirade on the other end, Hawk lifted the phone away from his ear to stop the impending deafening.

“You done?” He asked his friend.

“That motherfucker, I’ll string him up by his goddamn balls.” Not done then. Hawk let him go another minute. While watching Gia sip her coffee and watch him.

She wasn’t just watching him, she was fucking eating him up.

Everything on his body hardened.

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