Subject to Change

by Alessandra Thomas

  I left a few seconds of dead air and then asked, “Where is she now?”

  Hawk looked up, shaking his head. “Her damn skeezy boyfriend’s. It fucking sucks, but it’s cold outside and at least there she’s safe. Has something to eat.”

  His voice broke at that, and I saw his ’Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.

  “You really love her, huh?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Even when she pisses me off, I love her. She’s all I have left.”

  I nodded. “I know that feeling.”

  Hawk looked up, his eyes meeting mine. “Yeah?”

  “My dad died. Four years ago. Cancer.”

  Hawk looked at me, his eyes full of pity. “Sucks.” He opened his mouth and then closed it again, looking back down at his folded hands.

  “Yeah. A lot.”

  “I…” Hawk cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

  I nodded. Then, after another stretch of silence, I said, “Why didn’t you tell me? About your sister?”

  He shrugged. Looked away. “We were just partners on a class project. Strangers. I mean, that’s all we were, until… Well, anyway, I have way more baggage than anyone needs to know about.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. In fact, I could say the same about myself. But we weren’t talking about me right now. So I dodged. “I thought…the morning after we…you know…”

  Hawk looked back up at me with those sparkling, gorgeous eyes, and it felt like they were boring into my soul. “Yeah. I know.” His eyebrows furrowed. “I’m really sorry about that. One of our distributors for the bar fucked up one of our orders and…”

  “It’s…whatever.” I hated that I’d felt like a one-night stand, but even though I was still annoyed, I allowed him this concession. Stuff came up, and apparently, in Hawk’s life, that stuff always took the “batshit crazy” form. “I found some of Olivia’s things under the sink when I was looking for toothpaste. I think they were hers anyway. And I thought…I don’t know. I guess I thought you had a girlfriend.”

  “Oh, Christ. Of course you did. I’m….shit, Joey. I’m really sorry.” He stood up and sat next to me on the couch. Then, as our thighs grazed, he seemed to realize he was actually acting like a normal guy for a change, and he sat up straight, stiff.

  And for all the moments I had envisioned touching him, holding him, grabbing him and kissing him, now I was frozen myself. Completely paralyzed.

  It only took a few seconds of feeling like that to want to get the hell out of there.

  “So…maybe we should set up times for the project now before I lose track of you again.”

  “Oh. That’s why you came up.”

  “No! I mean…” Shit. “Is that why you wanted me to come up?”

  “No.” He watched me steadily. I could have sworn he moved a fraction of an inch closer. “I wanted to explain why I didn’t text you back.”

  “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who would normally go to such great lengths to tell a girl he’s sorry for not texting her back.”

  “I’m not.” His eyes held mine steady.

  I could barely breathe. “So why did you?”

  “I don’t know. I guess… I didn’t know I’d end up liking you so much.” The corner of his mouth pulled up into a crooked smile.

  My heart twisted and jumped in a way that kept anything coherent from coming out of my mouth. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Hawk could hear my breaths becoming shallower and shorter.

  I managed a mangled stammer before Hawk leaned forward, cupped my jaw with his hand, and kissed me. He formed his lips to mine like he’d been planning exactly where they would go, how they would move, since the moment we’d started talking.

  He pulled back, sliding his hand down to the base of my neck. My pulse pounded against his palm, and our breath steamed up the space between us.

  “I’m sure you want to go,” he murmured, his eyes searching mine.

  “I don’t,” I whispered. I felt like a wisp, like an ethereal vapor, like all my energy, all my substance, was wrapped up in this moment, in the decision we would make right now. Depending on what happened, I could either escape reality or be forced cruelly back into it.

  I didn’t want to face my life right now. The only thing in my whole life I knew for sure that I did want was Hawk, right here, right now. I hoped he felt the same way.

  He kissed me again, the same soft, molding pressure surrounding my lips, making my heart race, totally enveloping my every thought. This time, though, he tugged my bottom lip between his teeth just the slightest bit. He pulled back again, leaving his forehead resting against mine.

  “I’m sure you don’t want to stay over again, though.” His voice rasped out in a shallow whisper, and there was ten times more questioning in it than anything else.

  The old Joey would have made a guy take her out for drinks. She would have followed a plan for flirting, dating, and sex, everything matching up with “how things are done.” Just like she had with everything else in her life.

  But the version of me that was sitting in this apartment and trading breaths with the motorbike-riding, class-skipping, bar-owning, hotter-than-hell guy just wanted to tear his shirt off and lose herself in him just like she’d done a few days ago.

  So I closed the gap between us in the space of half a breath, my fingers curling in his shirt, my heart tripping and stuttering. The second my lips parted against his he took advantage, slipping his tongue against mine and making me gasp and arch my back to get even closer to him. His hands trailed down my back and gripped my waist, his fingers frantically digging into the skin there and pushing my shirt up higher and higher. Hawk leaned back, tugging me on top of him. My hands brushed his sides as they pushed his shirt up and out of the way, then yanked it up over his head. Within five seconds, my shirt was off, too, and we gasped and grinned with the ridiculousness of this whole wonderful mess.

  Our lips crashed together again, like the two seconds we’d just spent apart had been completely unbearable. His hand cupped my breast, his thumb teasing under the edge of my bra, and then his mouth was on the top of it, his tongue working down beneath the thin fabric. I moaned and threw my head back, and with that, his other hand lifted me at my waist and laid me down on the couch.

  “Do you want to move?” He whispered as his mouth progressed to my other breast, his tongue darting out to tease my nipple, making me dizzy and mad with the need to be closer to him. No way I was breaking this delicious contact with him.

  I clawed at his back, and he grunted. “Don’t you dare go anywhere,” I whispered into his ear before sucking at the skin right below it.

  “Do you have anything?” He mumbled against my lips. “Because that last one was the only one I had.”

  I laughed and kissed him hard. I’d bought one of the small boxes of condoms and stashed it in my purse after last week. Not that I’d anticipated ever sleeping with Hawk again, given the way he ditched me, but not having any protection on me was one of the most colossally stupid moves I’d made in ever. I had no intention of ever repeating that, even if it took me a year to find another guy I was remotely interested in sleeping with.

  “That was really all you had?” I asked.

  He nodded, his eyes the picture of honesty.

  Thank God I’d dropped my purse right next to the couch. There was no way I was getting up for it, and the new Joey might have done something exceedingly stupid.

  While I fumbled in the huge tote bag, Hawk’s lips traveled south, paving a hot path down from my breastbone. His tongue circled my navel, and his teeth nipped at the skin around my hip bones.

  “Dammit,” I groaned. “Give me a second.”

  “That’s fine,” Hawk murmured. “Plenty to do down here.”

  Jesus. This boy was trying to kill me. His hands slipped under the wide band of my yoga pants, and I said a silent prayer of thanks that I had put on some decent underwear today — all black, stretchy, cotton lace. He worked my pants down over my but
t and sucked in a breath when he saw my panties.

  “I won’t rip these,” he said reverently.

  I laughed, still tearing through my purse to find the small cardboard box. Finally, my fingers brushed against it, and I whispered “Thank God,” just as Hawk started scooting my panties down and covering every inch of skin he revealed with his lips. He looked up with a wicked smile.

  “Oh God, I didn’t mean that. I meant, I found the condoms.”

  He brushed a light kiss across my hipbone. “So I should stop?”

  “No!” I practically shouted.

  His shoulders shook with laughter.

  “I mean, no. That’s really good.”

  He was already kissing me again, his mouth moving down the front of my thigh, then up the inside, and dangerously close to the spot that would make me totally lose control. The feeling of anticipation was almost as delicious as the sight of those solid black tattoos rippling with his muscles as he settled his body into the perfect spot.

  And then he was there, his tongue pressing and searching, his fingers brushing and teasing, and the entire room disappeared into a tailspin of bliss.

  No guy had ever even come close to paying this much attention to me before. Compared to this, everything else I’d called “foreplay” was as exciting as waiting at the bus stop. I didn’t know if there was something magical or supernatural about Hawk or his lips or — oh! — his teeth, but this was damn near heaven.

  The room that had been freezing just minutes ago warmed around me, with my body as the flame at the center of it all. It was a core of energy, the pressure mounting inside of it, intensifying by the second. An anxiousness formed all the way down in my toes, and the pressure inside me completely exploded, sending flames of pleasure through my limbs.

  My head was spinning. The room was spinning. I wanted to live inside this feeling forever, memorize it, carry it with me. Not just the orgasm — as incredible as it was — but the feeling that I deserved to be lost inside something someone did just for me, and that someone cared enough about me enough to give it to me.

  “Hawk,” I half-gasped, half-moaned after a few seconds’ recovery.

  “Yes?” he murmured, kissing his way up my stomach until he finally, blissfully, reached my lips. “Want more?”

  My fingers brushed at the hair above his ear, sticking up every which way, wild and untamed, while I looked into his eyes. I grazed my lips gently across his. “Yeah, I really do.”

  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 fe
el 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.