Subject to Change (13 page)

He responded with a hard kiss, and the feeling of his lips crushing against mine, strong, determined, and possessive, was all I needed to lose my mind all over again.

“Me, too,” he said, fumbling at his pants and kicking them away. He settled against me again. “Are you sure you don’t want to move?”

“There’s no time,” I said, tracing circles around his most sensitive part with my fingertips, squeezing his ass with the other. “I need you.”

He let out a shuddering breath and let his forehead fall onto my shoulder as he pressed into me, inch by excruciating inch.

As we moved together, I didn’t care about the joints of the couch creaking beneath us or the broken mug on the kitchen floor or that his life was so messy that I didn’t even know where to start to help him clean it up. I just cared that, in this moment, he was good for me, and I was good for him.

In this moment, everything was exactly as it should be.

After we recovered, Hawk picked me up and moved me to the bed, where he slid me under the duvet and fluffed a pillow behind my head. God, I could have looked at him all day, especially those arms as they lifted and pulled the sheets down over me. They were pure muscle with just enough hair to make them completely sexy, and suddenly, all I could think about was having them wrapped around my waist again.

“Do you need anything? Water?”

“You. I want to look at you.” The words tumbled out of my mouth without me thinking, and a small part of me freaked. Would that completely terrify him?

He leaned down and kissed me. “Would you settle for me getting in there with you? It’s still freezing in here.”

“You’d better,” I giggled.

When he scooted under the covers, I held my breath. This was…awkward. This guy was not my boyfriend. At least, I’d never call him that. Or introduce him to my friends like that.

Oh, God. Why was I thinking about introducing him to my friends? Did you cuddle with a guy who wasn’t your boyfriend?

I didn’t have to think about it for long. Hawk, slid under the covers, wrapped his arm around my waist, and pulled me to him without a second’s hesitation. I smiled against the kiss he pressed to my lips.

“I just wanted one more kiss.”

It was weird. In a good way.

I smiled and stared at him. His strong jaw and full upper lip were so gorgeous I wanted to burn the image of it onto my brain. But even more than that, I wanted to get a better look at those tattoos.

I trailed my finger along the path that the heavy black lines made, lightly kissing the one that wrapped around the front of his pec.

He shivered, and it made me want to kiss him in other places, run my lips and tongue and teeth along every line. But I held back.

“Does it mean something? Or did you just think it looked cool?”

“Well, obviously, I think they look cool. I have a symbol on here representing every aspect of my life I wanted to remember.”

I sat up a bit. “It just looks like one big thing to me.”

“Because they’re all locked together. Just like every aspect of my life weaves together with the rest, affecting everything around it. Staying with me forever.” His hand drifted over mine where it rested on his chest, and his eyes locked on mine.

I swear, at that second, I absolutely knew with my whole heart he was talking about me. I completely lost my breath.

“I got them because it reminds me that life can be painful, and that pain will always be a permanent part of me.”

“But,” I said, tracing a finger down his nose and letting it rest on his lips, “not everything in life is painful.”

“Everything is at some point. Even love.” I opened my mouth to argue, but he quickly interrupted. “Like me and Olivia.” His voice was low now, brooding. “I love that girl so much. But she rips my heart out all the time, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I murmured, bending my head down to kiss the design that curved over the front of his chest, then down to his rib.

He laughed in a sexy gruff way that lit a fire inside me, even though I knew it was because he was ticklish. Which was frickin’ adorable considering everything else that was coarse and rude about him.

“That one,” he said, “is the scorpion.” He bent down to kiss me when I looked up. “It symbolizes protection. I got it for my dad. Back when he was actually taking care of business.” He cleared his throat, and I watched as those gorgeous fingers of his trace down near the bottom of his bicep. “This is a stone wall. My mom, foundation of our family. That fallen rock is for when she crumbled.”

“Hawk,” I breathed and rested my cheek against his chest. My heart literally hurt for him.

He swallowed hard. “There’s a flower, right here behind my shoulder.”

“A flower?” I leaned over him, letting my breasts brush against his chest.

“Hey. It’s, like, a manly flower. Anyway, that was for my sister. Delicate but still managed to blossom.”

“The same sister I met?”

“She was twelve then. She was significantly sweeter. And more delicate.”

I settled back against his side. “And where are you?”

“Right in the middle. The tiger.”

I craned my neck. “The…oh, I see. Those two dots are eyes. And what’s that one mean?”

“Solid strength. I had to be solid and strong.” His voice trailed off as he slipped into sleepy unconsciousness.

He pulled me tight to him, and I made a small, satisfied humming noise at the feel of the soft parts of my body molded by the solid planes and arches of his muscles.

Hawk’s eyes drifted shut, and he laid his head back on the pillow, his arms still tight around me.

I managed to turn around, facing away from him, snuggled down into the sheets, and let the dark, safe warmth of being wrapped up in him lull me to a deep sleep.

Chapter 12

A couple
weeks later, Hawk and I were spending most of our afternoons together delivering dinner to Rowland House and most of our nights either flirting across the bar when Hawk had to work or wrapped up in each other when he didn’t. He’d gotten a new phone as soon as he could scrape together the cash — a week’s worth of tips at the bar.

I would have offered to buy him a new one, but any discussion about money made Hawk uncomfortable. We never went out because he was broke. Between paying the mortgage and shelling out for the couple of classes he could afford to take, we only ever ate bar food.

I mostly really loved it — mostly. Hibernation was a natural reaction to the disgusting Philly weather. All my other friends were doing it, and having a guy to spend all my time indoors with was amazing.

Sometimes we sat around watching movies, sometimes I did homework while Hawk watched basketball, but most of the time we spent heating up the apartment all on our own.

As the weather improved little by little, though, and buds started to green up on the flowering trees in mid-March, I felt like going out, dressing up, maybe even showing him off.

Of course Cat knew all about Hawk, but between the disgusting Philly winter months and February being filled with pledge recruitment stuff, there hadn’t been any events I could have dragged him to. That all changed, though, with our first date party of the new year.

I brought it up to Hawk one Saturday morning. He’d had a late night at the bar the night before, so I had snuggled in under a blanket on his couch the night before, pulling my hair out over Orgo, just like every other night. He brought up some wings and fries after his shift and dug fruit out of the fridge for me when I woke, and we sat with our legs tangled on the couch, eating quietly.

“So Kappa Delta’s first date party of the season is this weekend,” I mumbled through a mouth full of apple slices.

“What is a date party?”

“Are you serious?” I laughed before I realized — he probably was serious.

“You know I never had time for any of this frat shit when I got here. I think they only take full-time kids anyway.”

“Um, it’s like homecoming in high school.”

He stared at me blankly.

“Just…you know. Not that big of a deal. I wear a dress. You wear a tie. We go out to dinner. We dance. We make out,” I teased, nudging his side with my foot. But when I did, Hawk’s body was unusually rigid. He stared forward, not saying anything.

“Joey, you know I’m broke.”

Hawk didn’t have a ton of money left over in the budget for school, so he took it semester-by-semester, paying for as many classes as he could manage. He was a fourth year but still taking general education classes mostly.

“It’s a good thing it comes out of sorority dues, then.”

He looked at me doubtfully.

“Seriously. I paid for it when I wrote the check at the beginning of the year.”

“Well, I don’t even own a tie.”

I tilted my head. “Seriously? Not one?”

“No, Joey. Christ. My dad was a loser, my mom is dead, and I’ve been trying to pay for my own life and manage my baby sister on the side. So no tie,” he finished emphatically, raising his eyebrows, daring me to argue.

I didn’t really care if Hawk wore a tie or just a button-down or a t-shirt with a tie printed on it. I had just never considered that there was a guy in the universe who didn’t own a tie. Seriously.

“Um. Okay. No tie is fine. I just want you there.” Even as I said it, my voice shook. What was with Hawk’s sudden jerky attitude? I hadn’t seen that for weeks.

“I don’t know. I probably have to work.”

“You can’t get anyone to cover for you?”

Hawk sighed and picked up paper plates. He walked over to the kitchen and pitched them in the trash without saying a word.

“I could, but I can’t. I’m doing okay with my bills and mortgage is always covered, but I want to try to get ahead a little. You know?”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, using the food as an excuse to refrain from talking for a few seconds. But I still couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted to take him out, just once. To introduce him to everyone, to the other side of me. I may not have felt 100 percent comfortable as a sorority girl all the time, but I did love my friends. And once in a while, I wanted to go out. I couldn’t let it go.

I stood up. “Well, maybe you could get off for a couple hours? I just want my friends to meet you.”

He sighed and stood there, rubbing the back of his neck for two, three, four, five agonizing seconds. “And the other girls’ boyfriends are gonna have ties?” He took a few steps toward me.

I walked over to him and gently placed my palms on his chest. “Some will, some won’t. I don’t want you to have one anyway. I want to be able to get your shirt off faster at the end of the night.”

He leaned down and kissed me, long and slow. “Is that right?” he murmured against my lips when he finally broke the kiss.

“Mmmm. Barbecue.” I giggled as I licked a smudge of sauce from the corner of his lips. But he still looked down at me expectantly.

I smiled. “Yes, of course that’s right. You’re the only one whose shirt I want to be taking off.”

“Speaking of that, I want to show you something.”

Then, right there in the middle of his living room, Hawk pulled off his shirt, tugging it off over his head and shaking his hair out afterward in that way that always made me want to tackle him.

It was then that I saw the small square of gauze right under his collarbone.

I gasped. “What happened to you?”

He smiled as he pulled the gauze away, looking at me softly. “It’s a new addition.” There, worked into the other tribal symbols at the top of his bicep, was a fresh tattoo of a kangaroo.

“It’s my Joey.”

“For me?” I fought the catch in my throat.
Play it cool, Jo.

I heard about girls whose boyfriends got tattoos for them. This was serious — really serious. Basically, for a guy to get a tattoo representing you? He had to be in love with you.

He dipped his head, peering at me through dark eyelashes. “Don’t freak out, Jo. It’s for you, yeah, but it’s important to me no matter what.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it may be a Joey, but it still has a meaning all its own. The kangaroo means always moving forward, never moving backward. You’ve done that for me. I’m not dwelling on shit that I used to. That…” He swallowed and looked down as he replaced the dressing. “That means a lot.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” I whispered. “I…I love it, Hawk. Thank you.”

I stood up on tiptoes and kissed him, long and slow. He ran his hands through the hair at the back of my neck, threading it through his fingers.

I made a small noise of pleasure deep in my throat, and he pulled my waist to his. I felt exactly how badly he wanted me to stay, pressing right there into my stomach. I broke the kiss, whimpering as he sucked on my lower lip gently before I did.

I knew I had to go — rounds were in a little over an hour — but with that kiss, desire for Hawk, to be as near to him as possible, to show him exactly how much I loved that tattoo, washed through me, possessing me. My fingers inched along the front of his waistband as his hands pulled in to cup my jaws, cradling me like I was a jewel, a precious artifact. I’d never been more sure about the way a guy felt about me, and it translated to pure need to let him know, in as many ways as possible, that I felt the same way — that I wanted him for exactly who he was, no more and no less.

The moment I had his jeans unzipped and my hand surrounded his hot length, making him moan, I was hungrier than I’d ever been. Not just to taste him or to have him inside me. No, I was hungry to give him the kind of release and freedom and mindlessness that he’d given me, so many times in so many ways.

As his jeans and boxers fell to the floor, I fell to my knees, and with half a step backward, he leaned against the wall. “Joey,” he rasped, “do you want to move to the bed?”

I shook my head, licking my lips. “I can’t wait.” I looked up at him with huge, innocent eyes. “Can you?” And then I flicked my tongue out and swirled it around his tip lightly. He let his head fall against the wall with a thud, and I giggled softly as I took him in my mouth.

He released a long, low moan, bracing himself against the wall, and I went to work, licking and sucking and teasing, until his fingers tangled in my hair, winding it tighter the deeper I took him.

“Christ, Joey,” he panted in a deep, growling voice. Satisfaction rushed through me at having caused Hawk to lose his mind at my touch. I wanted to be exactly the person he wanted to keep with him as part of that tattoo forever — the one who always made him want to look forward, never back.

Because this was my new beginning, too.

All of a sudden, his fists loosened, his fingers working their way out of my half-tangled strands to brush down my neck, then grip my shoulders and tug my body upward so that we stood face-to-face. His fingers brushed lightly down my cheek, and he kissed me so tenderly, his lips clinging to mine, so slow to break away that I thought my heart would break.

But in the next instant, all his gentility fell away. In one smooth motion, Hawk pushed my pants down to the floor, wrapped his strong hands around my ass, and hoisted me up, spinning around and pinning me to the wall. My thighs instinctively wrapped tight around him. He pressed, hard and hot, against me, and we both trembled. Every muscle in my body was charged with just one purpose — get as close to him as possible, in as many ways as possible.

I thought I would die of need.

His breath blew hot into my neck. “Do you want to stop to get something?”

I whimpered. “I’m on the pill, and I’ve…ah…” Words nearly failed me at the incredible sensation of knowing that I was seconds away from the mind-blowing contact my body craved.

He responded with a gruff laugh. “I’m tested and in the clear. Nobody but you since we met. You too, right?”

“Yes,” I said with a moan of relief. Then, in one all-consuming instant, he was inside me, thrusting needily, like he’d been waiting an eternity to find someone he fit so perfectly with. Because we did — fit perfectly. Every look, every touch, every sound was exquisite. Instead of satisfying me, every touch left me starving, desperate for more of his skin against mine, more of his lips and tongue and hands taking advantage of every possible point of access.

Our bodies pressed so close that the delicious tension began to build sooner than usual, but something about the hard-and-fast of this time felt so right — probably because that was exactly how I was falling for Hawk.

He lifted me up and pulled me down over him again and again, closing his eyes and pressing his face into my neck, panting with each desperate stroke, like he was savoring every second and dying for the next at the same time. His fingers dug into my skin, pulling me impossibly closer to him the faster he went. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think of anything but the incredible orgasm barreling toward me, ready to consume me completely. My nails dug into his shoulders, my head fell back, and I let out a throaty cry as the wave of pleasure crashed over me and my body clenched around his. Then he shouted out, too, and with one final, solid thrust, let his forehead fall on my shoulder.

We both fought for breath for a few seconds, and then the gasping turned to exhausted laughter.

He lowered me slowly, one foot at a time, but I remained pressed against the wall. He cupped my jaw in his hand and pulled my face to his for another long, lingering kiss, a promise that this wasn’t the last time we’d be doing something that amazing.

“Being with you is so easy,” he murmured when we finally broke apart, pulling his boxers and jeans back into place while I did the same with my clothing.

“Nah,” I said, brushing one more kiss against his lips. “I hassle you about stupid sorority stuff. And ties.”

“I will go to a thousand date nights — “

I smiled. “Date parties.”

“Whatever. I will do all of it if I still get to take you home afterward.”

My heart jumped. Given the crazy sex we’d just had, it’d be easy to take his words at face value — that we were having fun screwing around and that we enjoyed each other’s company, not much more. But the gentle tone of his voice combined with the adoring way his eyes sparkled into mine told me he meant something different.

In that instant, I knew that I wanted to always come home to him, too, and not just in the sexual sense. This was definitely more than a fluke-of-a-fling and an impromptu tattoo — it was more real than any feeling I’d ever have. But something kept me from putting the itchy, persistent emotion working its way through my heart into words.

“So, um…” I said. “The tattoo…does it still hurt?”

Hawk scoffed. “Please. It was no big deal compared to some of that huge work I had done. Plus,” he said, “it was worth every second. I’m glad you’ll always be with me.”

My heart skipped and stuttered nearly out of control. No guy had ever said anything like that to me. I didn’t know what to say, so I just smiled and buried my face in his shirt. “Thank you,” I mumbled, smiling. After about a minute, I stood back. “I have to go to rounds.”

“What for? You hate those.”

“I don’t know, Hawk. Something has to help me get into med school, and ’it’s not gonna be my Orgo grade. O’Donnell offered me Saturday rounds, and I hear those are different. It’ll be good for me.”

Hawk yawned. “Let me drive you there.”

“On your bike? As cold as it is?” The truth was, I hated that damn bike being a main mode of transportation in the winter. I sighed. “Nah, you’re exhausted. The bus’ll be fine. If you want, you can watch till I catch it. The stop’s right there.”

“I know. But won’t you feel creepy if I’m watching you wait for the bus?”

I zipped up my coat and shoved the last book into my backpack. Then I flashed a smile up at him. “Why would I feel creepy about my boyfriend watching me get on the bus?”

I walked the few feet over to the door, and he caught my fingers.

“Who said I was your boyfriend?” he murmured, kissing me again.