Page 65 of Cherry Picked
“I noticed,” I told him firmly. “I pushed it down. I locked it away. But I sure as fuck noticed, Hawk. You killed me that day.” I ran a finger between the stretchy fabric of his boxers and his hot skin, and he sucked in another shuddering breath. “You’re killing menow.”
I pulled my hands out of his shorts and skimmed a hand down over his sparse happy trail until I reached the button at his waist. Hawk’s breath was coming in pants, his eyes soft and unfocused, and my hands were shaking worse than ever. I’d wanted this to be a seduction, but with every little gasp and each new inch of hot skin I touched, I was the one being seduced.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he moaned. “God, Jack, we could have—”
“That day, I was so keyed up I jerked off in the shower the minute I got home. I tried not to think about you. About the way the sun hit your skin when we were in the water. The way your eyes sparked. But there you were, right in the middle of my brain…”
I peeled open his shorts and reached inside to feel the hard shape of him through the damp navy blue cotton of his underwear. Both of us let out a groan.
“And just as I was about to come, Webb showed up at my house. Remember when the old warped front door was still there and refused to close properly? Well, he took that as an invitation to stomp himself right inside and up the stairs—”
The mention of his brother made Hawk groan again, this time in frustration. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. “I hate you for mentioning my brother while your hand is on my dick.”
I snickered but couldn’t help leaning up to kiss his mouth. “I cannot stop wanting to do this,” I mumbled against his lips.
Hawk grabbed my head and kissed me back with everything he had. But this time, he was the one who pulled back.
“Finish the story,” he demanded. “You know I can never leave a book in the middle.”
I laughed again and sat back, pulling his shorts with me. “Webb was angry. Furious.”
“Did he know? About you and the… thelooking?” Hawk demanded. “Did he guess?”
I shook my head. “Hell no. He was mad because I’d let you get sunburned. Badly. He said he’d expected more from me as Hawk’shonorary big brother. And he mentioned that you had to cancel a date with ‘the hottest guy in Little Pippin Hollow’ because I’d fucked up—”
Looking back now, I felt the faint stirrings of an old, illogical, unacknowledged jealousy.
“Noooo.” Hawk covered his face in his hands, and his words came out muffled. “Webb cockblocked you and me because he thought I was upset about canceling a date with Kenner Salisbury?”
I fought a smile. “He told me how much you liked Kenner, how well you got along. That even though you were young, he thought Kenner might just be The One for you—”
Hawk groaned behind his hands.
“And I said, ‘Isn’t Kenner a kid?He’s way too young for Hawk.’ And Webb reminded me that Kenner was actually a year older than you, which, in turn, reminded me just how young you were then—”
Hawk’s hands dropped away from his face, and he looked at me without a trace of a smile. “So help me, Jack, if you tell me you’re still too old for me…”
“No, baby,” I said, leaning in to skim my nose along the skin of his thigh. “Couldn’t walk away now even if I wanted to.” I looked up, meeting his eyes. “And I don’t.”
He huffed. “But then—”
“At the time, though, Webb’s fury was a pretty powerful red flag. It reminded me that you were into guys your own age, as you should be. That my job was to be your surrogate brother. That you wanted to find The One, and that was the opposite of what I was looking for.”
“Thomas Webb Sunday is a dead man,” Hawk decreed.
“Nah.” I ran my fingers up the firm length in his underwear, making him suck in a breath, and pressed a kiss to the tense muscle right above his knee. “There’s a big difference between me thinking you were gorgeous,wantingyou, and actually trying something with you. Hell, I never even got as far as picturing the two of us together back then. And if I had and I’d screwed it up, you and I would never have become…us. I wouldn’t be who I am now. I might have gone my whole life never knowing about that onePride and Prejudicevariation where Darcy turns into a dragon.” I shook my head sadly. “What kind of life would that have been?”
Hawk snickered, then laughed out loud. He sat forward again, grabbed my face roughly, and kissed me.
“How are you so perfect?” he asked softly.
His words made my stomach flip—and not in a pleasant way. “Hawk, no one knows better than you that I amnotperfect—”
“You won’t screw this up, Jack,” he said fiercely, understanding my panic before I could even articulate the reasons for myself. “You can’t. I won’t let you.”
I leaned forward and pulled up the edge of his shirt before stripping it over his head and tossing it on the floor, revealing the lucky penny necklace that gleamed against the lean muscles of his chest. Hawk’s legs wrapped around my back and pulled me closer so he could whisper in my ear.
“Thank you for telling me that, but story time is over,” he said in a voice filled with need. “I was promised a ruination.” He bit my earlobe, and a shiver raced down my spine as my dick went impossibly hard instantly. “Ruin me, Jack.”
