Page 10 of Hawk's Secret
The light shifted. The compound settled into evening around us.
I held her and I didn't want to let go.
FIVE
BREE
I heard them talking on a Wednesday.
I was behind the bar, restocking the fridges, crouched down with the door open so they couldn't see me. Duke and Rook, at the pool table, voices low but not low enough. Rook was the one talking, his tone clipped, controlled, the way he sounded when something had gone wrong and he was already three steps into figuring out how.
"Third time," he said. "The Jackals knew about the Billings pickup before we'd even confirmed the route. That's not a guess. That's not surveillance. Someone is handing them our schedules."
Duke said something I couldn't make out. Then Rook, quieter, but I caught the tail end.
"...narrowing it down. Angel wants it locked by the weekend."
The fridge hummed and the ice in the well cracked. I stayed crouched behind the bar with my hands wrapped around a bottle of beer and my stomach turning over, slow, sick, the way it had been turning for weeks now except tonight it was worse becausenarrowing it downmeant they were close. They were close, and I was right here, six feet away, restocking their bar with their bourbon, wearing the trust they'd given me like a coat I'd stolen.
I finished the restock. Stood up. Smiled at Hank when he asked for another round. I poured him his bourbon, wiped the bar, and laughed at something a trucker said. The performance was flawless. It had to be, because the alternative was crumbling right here in front of everyone, and I couldn't afford to crumble. Not yet.
The meetings with Colt were getting worse. The last one, two nights ago, he'd grabbed my jaw. Held my face while he talked, his fingers pressing into the hinge of my bone, his thumb on my chin, forcing me to look at him while he told me what he needed next. Specific routes. Times. Which brothers were riding and which were staying at the compound. Information I'd have to actively dig for, not just overhear.
When I'd told him I couldn't get that without raising suspicion, he'd squeezed harder. Left bruises along my jawline that I'd covered with makeup the next morning, blending, layering, checking in the mirror until the marks disappeared under foundation. I was running out of places to hide the evidence of him. Running out of excuses for the long sleeves, and the makeup.
And through all of it, there was Hawk.
Hawk, who looked at me every night across that bar with warmth and want and a trust so total it felt like standing in sunlight. Hawk, whose hands on my body were the only thing that made me feel clean. Hawk, who'd started leaving his door unlocked at night because he knew I'd come, knew I'd slip through the lodge in the dark and climb into his bed, and every time he pulled me against him and pressed his mouth to my hair I wanted to scream the truth into his chest and let whatever came next come.
I couldn't. Every time the words gathered in my throat I remembered the video that had been taken. In my mind I saw it sent to my parents. Saw the look on Hawk's face when hewatched footage of me with another man, moaning, exposed, every intimate second of it preserved in pixels. I thought about what would happen if it got put online. The shame was a living thing inside me, curled up behind my ribs, and Colt fed it every time we met.
But Rook's voice was in my head now.Narrowing it down.And I knew, with a certainty that sat in my stomach like a stone, that this was ending. One way or another, this was ending and the only question was whether I confessed or got caught.
I closed the bar that night. Locked up. Walked through the back corridor into the lodge, up the stairs, past the closed doors, to Hawk's room. The compound was quiet. Late, past midnight, a silence that settled into old buildings like a held breath.
His door was unlocked. I pushed it open.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, jeans on, shirtless, his phone in his hand. He looked up when I came in and His eyes moved over my face, reading me the way he always did, fast, thorough, missing nothing. Whatever he saw made him put the phone down.
"Hey," he said.
I didn't answer. I crossed the room and I kissed him.
He knew immediately that something was different. His hands came up to my waist, careful, questioning, the way he pulled back half an inch to look at my face. I didn't let him. I kissed him harder, my hands on his jaw, my body pressing into his, and I poured everything I had into it because this might be the last time. This might be the last time he ever let me touch him and I needed him to feel what I couldn't say. I wanted to remember what this had been, when eventually he found out what I had been doing, and that I’d been betraying his club.
He responded. He always responded, because whatever this man felt for me, he felt it with his whole body. His hands tightened on my waist and he pulled me onto his lap, my kneeson either side of his hips, and the kiss went from desperate to devastating.
I pulled my shirt over my head. No bra. I hadn't bothered. His eyes dropped to my breasts and the look on his face, the raw hunger, the way his hands came up to cup them, his thumbs brushing over my nipples, made me gasp and grind down against him. I could feel him hardening beneath me, through the denim, and I rolled my hips against him until he groaned into my mouth.
"Bree." My name, rough, a question in it.
"Don't talk," I said. "Just touch me. Please."
His jaw flexed. Then his mouth was on my throat, my collarbone, closing over my nipple, and I arched into him with a sound that came from somewhere so deep it frightened me. His hands gripped my hips, pulling me tighter against him, the friction of denim against the thin fabric of my underwear sending sparks up my spine. I was already wet, already aching, my body so attuned to his now that the proximity alone was enough to make me desperate.
I reached between us, worked his belt open, shoved his jeans down far enough. He was hard, thick, and when I wrapped my hand around him he hissed through his teeth and his hips jerked up. I stroked him slow, watching his face, watching the control fracture behind his eyes, watching this big, quiet, dangerous man come apart under my hands.
"Fuck," he breathed. "Bree, I need to be inside you."
