by Hagen, Casey
“What’s wrong?” Emory asked, laying her palm over the back of Hawk’s hand. The intimacy of the gesture the perfect justification for throwing my buddy under the bus.
“My aunt. And she’s heading this way,” he said, reaching for his wallet and tossing a pile of bills on the table.
Emory craned her neck. Her lips pursed. “That’s your aunt?” she asked with a note of skepticism in her now-chilly voice.
“It’s a long story and she doesn’t look very good in it. Look, I’ve gotta run, but we’ll talk,” Hawk said, dropping a quick kiss on Emory’s cheek before bolting for the door.
Tate caught sight of Hawk streaking past and changed direction to follow him out.
“Well, it was nice meeting you all. I hate to run, but—”
Emory narrowed her eyes at me, heat blossoming on her cheeks.
“Anyway, see you.”
* * *
“I need the bathroom, I’ll be right back,” I said, sliding off my chair and heading in the direction Falcon had gone.
“Oh no. Not without me you don’t,” Soraya said, her heels clicking as she scurried to catch up with me.
“I think I can go to the bathroom on my own,” I said, tossing the words back over my shoulder.
“Except you and I both know the bathroom is not where you’re going. Now spill,” Soraya said, catching up with me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emory lied.
“Really. The guy practically tossed you over his shoulder and hauled you back to his cave to have his way with you.”
“And then his aunt showed up.”
Soraya snagged my elbow and yanked hard. I whipped around and gripped the wall as the room spun. Not plastered. Yet. Nope, just buzzed and full of a festering rage I’d left hibernating in my heart.
Until now.
“Falcon, Emory. You and I both know I’m talking about Falcon. Dish, girl, because I’m so going to live vicariously through whatever the fuck is simmering between the two of you.”
“It’s nothing—”
“The fuck it isn’t. How the hell Hawk didn’t pick up on it I don’t know, but the damned pull between you and Falcon had my clit throbbing for fuck’s sake.”
I scrunched up my nose, wishing I knew a tad less about Soraya’s sin box, or at least had knocked back one more shot before she gave me the dirty details on her crotch throbage.
“We know each other.”
“Nooooooooo,” Soraya drawled, ending the word with a smirk.
“He was Ethan’s best friend,” I said, my voice hitching on my brother’s name, the sound of his name rusty with disuse.
“Okay,” Soraya said a bit more cautiously this time.
I’d told her everything about Ethan.
Well, everything except the whole truth. But I’d told her more than anyone.
I didn’t want to do this. To crack open this piece of me. Each word would rob me a piece of the anger I held between me and my feelings for Falcon with an iron fist. Without fury, what did I have?
Want.
Raw, animalistic desire to climb Falcon like a tree, yank his hair, and bite his bottom lip.
And that was just for starters.
“It’s cliché and dumb. My brother’s best friend, my first kiss,” I said, rolling my eyes.
It sounded so predictable, but God, the memory of when he tugged my head back by the underside of my hair and took my mouth the first time, something I didn’t even know lay sleeping inside me woke up. I’d been in a constant state of heat ever since. It was all his damn fault. He ruined me.
Then he’d left.
“Saying it out loud sounds pathetic. Even more so since I’m chasing him down now. I mean, he’s running so this makes me look pitiful, but I have things to say. He left me standing at my brother’s grave, and I have all the damned things to say.”
I coveted scathing words for Falcon for a decade, and he wasn’t getting a chance to walk away this time until he heard every last one of them.
Soraya blew out a breath. “Girl, you’ve so been holding out, and I want every damn detail—later. This goes against my every instinct, but go. And don’t leave here with him. I’m going to be watching, and I won’t let you. You’ll never forgive yourself.”
“I love you,” I whispered, giving her a quick hug, shocking myself with my own show of affection. I’d been careful over the years. Never letting anyone get close enough where they felt like a sibling.
Never letting anyone touch the place in my heart I reserved for Ethan’s memory.
“I love you too, honey. Now give him a piece of your mind,” Soraya said, letting me go. With a quick glance, she pointed her finger at me. “Just be careful you don’t give him anything else,” she warned, turning on her heel and heading back to our friends.
I scanned the room from my vantage point next to the hall leading to the bathrooms. I spotted the friend Hawk pointed out earlier in the night, still at the bar with female company which meant Falcon hadn’t left. Because, although I didn’t want to examine the thought too closely, my gut told me he wouldn’t leave him behind.
Not after Ethan.
Turning toward the small room off the main part of the pub, my gaze landed on the jukebox. It should have been the most popular feature of the partially open room tucked into the back of Rigby’s. Who didn’t want to cycle through the library and pick out all their favorites? But instead, it sat along the center of the wall, gleaming with red, silver, and yellow light, waiting for the crowd to finish their pub food and loosen their inhibitions with liquor.
Some of us might have loosened ours a tad early which made finding Falcon a shaky idea no matter what I felt the need to say.
The space sat neglected early in the night, but once people finished shedding the stress of the day and embraced the weekend, the floor would be filled with sweaty bodies.
The noise grew along with the alcohol consumption, but the dull roar still wasn’t loud enough to drown out the ending of a more recent top 40 hit and the rhythm that followed.
Wandering toward the room, the chaos of the pub fell away and the familiar notes wrapped around me. I might as well have been stepping into Falcon’s arms with the way Bruce Springsteen’s gravelly voice resurrected my entire past, filling the room with memories of a life I hardly recognized anymore. A life I’d buried so grief didn’t swallow me whole.
I’d lost so much more than my brother that day.
The music died the first day my brother lay buried in the ground and my first love walked away.
“You grew up good, kid,” Falcon said from behind her. The words should have been a compliment, but the way he tossed them at her—full of disdain, laced with pain—he’d turned them into condemnation.
He didn’t get to do this. He didn’t get to set up this reunion with a soundtrack designed to bring me to my knees, his harsh words barbs even in their simplistic form, shot straight through my heart, hooking and shredding me along the way.
He left me bleeding once. I wouldn’t give him the power to do it again.
I didn’t take a deep breath before I turned. I didn’t steel my courage. He’d notice, and I’d wordlessly give him victory.
Thank you liquor for giving me a fresh boost of brazen defiance because I was about to need every last bit of it I could get.
Falcon sat perched on a wooden stool in the darkened corner, a forgotten broom leaning against the wall right next to him. One scuffed boot propped on one of the bars, his other leg stretched out straight as he watched me. He swirled his almost-full glass, the movement so slight, his tendon flexing with every small rotation.
“Good, huh?” The muffled click of my heels on the scuffed wood floor as I closed in on him echoed with the beat of “You’ve Got It” which couldn’t have been more perfect if I’d planned it myself.
His dark eyes narrowed on me as I approached. His jaw clenched, the muscle in his cheek jumping with his rough grunt.
An ar
m’s length away, his gaze fell from me to his glass and he took a deep drink of the amber liquid.
“You should probably avoid Texas Hold’em tables, Falcon, because you’ve got a shit poker face.”
Nudging his knee, I stepped between his legs. His heat reached for me, pulling me in until I could pick up a hint of his spicy cologne. Of course he hadn’t put it on fresh before going out. A man like Falcon didn’t need to reset for a night out. He didn’t need devices. He exuded raw sex riding on a wave of personal demons, a heady combination designed to bring even the most virtuous woman to her knees.
Not that I’d give him the pleasure of getting on mine, but the man just might find himself down on his before we were done.
I wrapped my finger around the base of his glass, sliding my fingers up higher and higher, until his hand cupped mine. I took his drink and found the spot where his mouth had been. Eyes on his, I tipped it back for a long, slow swallow.
“And you’ve got all kinds of faces,” he said, tilting his head, his eyes lingering over my exposed throat.
I licked the whiskey off my upper lip. “In my business, you bet your ass I do.”
“What business is that?” he asked, his voice gruff, almost pained.
“That’s what you want to talk about. Our jobs?” I shook my head and let out a throaty laugh. “No, we’re not going to talk about our jobs.”
“Seems like a good place to start.”
“Seems like a safe place to start. When have you ever played it safe, Falcon?” I said, tucking his glass back into his hand.
“I don’t,” he said with a shrug, taking a sip from where my mouth had been only seconds earlier. “But I’m not the only one playing the game, am I? Just want you to be able to keep up.”
“Oh, honey, I assure you,” I said, cocking my hip and leaning on the inside of his knee, “my keeping up will never be the issue. Interesting performance tonight, by the way. They teach you those skills in flight school?”
His eyes flashed at mine and his lips twitched. “Hey, it got him out the door before he got your number, sweetheart.”
“Did it?” I said with a smile, enjoying the way my question stoked his frustration.
His brow furrowed, his lips turned hard. “You didn’t give him your number, Emory.”
I took a small step back, needing to escape the spell he always managed to cast over me when he was near. “So much brooding and you weren’t paying attention. You think you cock-blocked your boy tonight, but you’re wrong. So very wrong. The night’s young.”
“Not funny,” he seethed.
There, right there was a man who wouldn’t ask before sending my buttons flying. And still, it wasn’t enough. The words I’d harbored for years, words I wanted to hurl at him with all my strength faded into the recesses while the urge to push him harder flared in me, just to see what he’d do. Would his careful control snap or would he run? “I’m not trying to be. You think because you taught me how to kiss all those years ago you have some sort of claim over me?”
“When it comes to him, yes,” he said, his back rigid now. His body ready to pounce.
Recklessness took hold and I leaned in, my hands gripping his muscular thighs through his warm jeans, my eyes locked on his, only inches between us.
Falcon breathing out, and me breathing him in.
“Fuck that and fuck you, Falcon. You may have taught me how to kiss, but I’m a big girl, and tonight, I’m going to teach Hawk how to fuck. How do you like that?”
“The fuck you are,” he growled, baring his teeth. Hot fury filled his eyes as his tightly clutched control snapped. His hand cupped my jaw hard. Not to hurt me, he’d never hurt me.
But he sure as hell intended to mark me as his.
Little did he know, he’d marked me ten years ago, and I’d been trying to obliterate the scar from my heart ever since.
How right was it that the first time he touched me, really touched me in ten years was like this, with the clash of turbulent feelings he’d never speak out loud finding their way out of his soul despite the tight rein of control he prided himself on.
“Me, sweetheart. I taught you how to kiss me just right. You’ve made as many tracks as you’re going to with that hot little mouth of yours.”
“I’m not yours—”
His hard mouth slammed to mine, and the tirade boiling in my blood waiting to be unleashed on one final “fuck you” to him and any power he had over me perished. The inferno engulfing the two of us twisted in a storm of pleasure and all too familiar pain.
We tore at each other, sucking in rough gulps of air, our tongues warring in an intimate clash for control. Achingly familiar, yet strangers, we were all action and counteraction, speaking the words in our hearts we’d never let cross our lips in any other way.
I wanted to hurt him as much as he’d hurt me all those years ago.
Heal him the way I longed to be healed.
His body made a list of pleasure promises with the way he wielded his power, with every shift and bunch of his muscles.
When his fingertips dragged up from the backs of my knees, I forgot to breathe. My heart pounded behind my ribs as his rough hands locked onto the backs of my thighs, bunching my skirt high around my hips. With one smooth lift and spin, he loomed over where he’d dropped me hard on the stool.
Chest heaving, he stared down in the space between us, at my open thighs. Dipping his head, his chin tucked against his chest, he hooked his finger into the cotton crotch of my wet panties, his knuckle sliding over my clit.
I bit my lip until it bled, but the whimper slid from my throat anyway, my pride slipping out with it.
Hot black eyes found mine. And with my panties locked in his hard fist, we faced off, neither of us willing to concede to the other.
“You’ve always been mine,” he said, his hard voice unyielding.
He yanked his hand away so hard, I teetered on the stool.
He flexed his hands, clenching them into fists at his sides. “I don’t care who you’ve fucked, Emory. You’ve always been and will always be mine.”
4
“What are you doing here?” Hawk asked as I walked through the door of Hawk Air, Inc. early Saturday morning.
“I work here,” I said, hoping my flippant reply didn’t piss off the karma gods, prompting them to work their magic on Hawk, convincing him to kick me out of the business.
Because I wasn't a partner yet and it would really be as easy as two words. I kept it surly as though last night—sprinkled with a hefty dose of my dickery and downright foul mood—never happened and headed for the coffee pot in the corner.
Opting to walk home had done nothing to temper my frustration. I’d spent half the night tormenting myself with the image of Emory in the dim light of the back room at Rigby’s, open to me, the defiant look in her eye daring me to take it a step further. The feel of her damp panties clutched in my fist, the whimper on her lips with barely a fucking touch.
What would she sound like if I really touched her? With intention. If we could put the past and pain away. If I could pretend last night, my partner, one of my best friends hadn’t staked his claim first.
Emory—brazen and all grown up—she wouldn’t be like most women, ultimately surrendering, giving up complete control.
No, she’d fuck back. Every step of the way.
She’d gone from good girl to a confident woman with a fiery stubborn streak. Those qualities called to the nefarious nature lurking inside me and the combination of the two meant total ruin.
I grazed her, a fleeting touch, but her answering hiss combined with the sensation across my knuckle as I brushed over her wet pussy carved itself into me, making it nearly impossible to walk away. I reached for the only thing I had left in my arsenal to save me. An ejection handle of sorts.
My emergency antidote.
The view of Ethan lying in his casket.
I just had to throw myself on the sword of pain from my past one more time, somethi
ng I hadn’t had to do in a long-ass while.
I’d resisted seeing Ethan on display in the funeral home with every fiber of my being. I’d railed against any suggestions to walk up to the front of the room by keeping an air of belligerence around me, ready to snarl when anyone had the nerve to approach.
Then Emory had taken my hand. Our guilt fused the minute our fingers intertwined, and our duty and love for Ethan took over, propelling us both forward.
Alone, yet together.
Mrs. Brooks’ grief splintered into hysterics when her bloodshot, swollen eyes drifted from mine and traveled over my Air Force blues. I hated having to wear them. I knew what it would do to her to see me standing there in a uniform I never had a true passion for. Living a dream that belonged to her son.
Her pain hollowed out my chest, leaving me lost. The way she reached for him in the casket, wrapped her arms around his still, rigid body, dragging him half out—the wail breaking from her lungs as reality became too much and she shattered into a million jagged pieces raining at my feet.
I’d done this. I’d broken this family. I’d broken this mother.
A woman I called mom.
People I loved and who loved me in the way I wish I could have loved and been loved by my own blood.
Orphaned completely from the family I’d been born into and the family I’d chosen.
Last night I’d clung to the moment in time, dragged it from my misery bank and paraded it front and center in my mind to force myself to do the right thing. Only last night, the effects hadn’t been as…lasting.
The memory had always lured me in endlessly, like rip currents dragging me out to sea; by the time I gained control, the temptation of the moment, the opportunity, had been long forgotten. But last night, the ancient memory had been a polar swim. A quick dip in frigid waters. A brief shock. The cold temporary, followed by warmth winding around me to chase away the chill, sweeping away the misery before my feet even hit the street.
When I finally made it home, a whole new torture began and Emory’s words tumbled over and over through my head for hours. “I’m going to teach Hawk how to fuck,” she’d said.
