it’s
my
mistake.” As Jess spoke, her gaze drifted to the walls.
His eyes narrowed, dark points that seemed to pull her soul into their depths. “You don’t go easy on yourself, do you?” He tilted her face up carefully. “You’re soft outside, easy with words, but tough where it counts.”
Jess didn’t answer.
The emotion in her eyes kicked hard at Hawk’s chest.
She was the bravest woman he’d ever met, wrestling demons that would have toppled many a strong man.
The thought of her locked in a shed left his hands clenched into fists. He wanted to right the old wrongs, repay the idiots who had hurt her years ago.
But she didn’t want his pity or his anger.
He’d listened to her story with all expression locked down tight, aware that Jess didn’t need complicating emotions. All she wanted was to forget, facing the past dead-on rather than denying it. Even when the situation grew worse, she’d held tight to her sense of humor as she disgorged the contents of her purse in search of possible distractions.
And then she’d faced him without a qualm and asked for the solace of his body, for sex in any way he chose to have it.
The memory still left him unsteady. Hawk was a generous lover who knew how to stir a woman’s body. He knew he could touch Jess with fire and make her moan his name as she raced along the razor’s edge of passion into oblivion.
But Jess wasn’t like the other women he’d known. She was smart and stubborn, yet beneath that prickly exterior he glimpsed a dreamer who woke every day with a resolve that better things were just around the corner.
Hawk didn’t want to be the man who ruined those dreams. She swore she would have no regrets, but she was wrong. Because she wasn’t a woman who gave her body lightly, she’d leave a part of herself behind, too generous and too innocent to wall off her feelings the way Hawk had long ago learned to do.
The women he chose as partners knew how to create that distance. They laughed easily and drank with calm deliberation, asking no questions so that nobody got hurt and nobody expected more than either one could give.
Until Jess, that kind of sex had been easy.
Until her cocky smile, endless questions, and trembling hands twisted something in his chest and made him want more, though he couldn’t find a name for it.
God knows, it wasn’t love. Hawk hadn’t believed in love since he was twelve and he watched his father push his mother down a flight of stairs.
His fingers tightened, then he released them quickly, all too aware of how easy it would be to mark her, to hurt her.
Because with every gentle touch, she left him aflame, reckless to give her the oblivion she craved. But there was always a cost, he thought grimly. And now the medication he was taking pushed him to the very edge of his control.
His muscles clenched as she traced old scars on his neck.
A knife fight in Mexico City.
A river ambush in Thailand.
Burns from fast-roping off a chopper in the South China Sea.
She cared about those scars, Hawk realized. She touched them slowly, her breath tense. And he sensed that she wanted to touch the man beneath the scars, the one that Hawk never let anyone see.
But who would touch her back—the lethal warrior or the stranger he glimpsed occasionally in mirrors and windows? A man he’d all but forgotten since anonymity and transience had become the mainstays of his life.
If his life had taken a different, less violent path, he might have met a woman like this, might have fallen in love and married her without thinking twice. Right now he could have been a high school teacher in Portland, with a fence and a mortgage and three noisy kids.
Instead of a man with too many scars and too few dreams.
Hell.
She was looking up at him, a mix of hope and desire on her face, and he wanted to tell her there was nothing here, that he couldn’t help her. That in the end he was bound to hurt her.
But he didn’t say any of that, mesmerized by
my
mistake.” As Jess spoke, her gaze drifted to the walls.
His eyes narrowed, dark points that seemed to pull her soul into their depths. “You don’t go easy on yourself, do you?” He tilted her face up carefully. “You’re soft outside, easy with words, but tough where it counts.”
Jess didn’t answer.
The emotion in her eyes kicked hard at Hawk’s chest.
She was the bravest woman he’d ever met, wrestling demons that would have toppled many a strong man.
The thought of her locked in a shed left his hands clenched into fists. He wanted to right the old wrongs, repay the idiots who had hurt her years ago.
But she didn’t want his pity or his anger.
He’d listened to her story with all expression locked down tight, aware that Jess didn’t need complicating emotions. All she wanted was to forget, facing the past dead-on rather than denying it. Even when the situation grew worse, she’d held tight to her sense of humor as she disgorged the contents of her purse in search of possible distractions.
And then she’d faced him without a qualm and asked for the solace of his body, for sex in any way he chose to have it.
The memory still left him unsteady. Hawk was a generous lover who knew how to stir a woman’s body. He knew he could touch Jess with fire and make her moan his name as she raced along the razor’s edge of passion into oblivion.
But Jess wasn’t like the other women he’d known. She was smart and stubborn, yet beneath that prickly exterior he glimpsed a dreamer who woke every day with a resolve that better things were just around the corner.
Hawk didn’t want to be the man who ruined those dreams. She swore she would have no regrets, but she was wrong. Because she wasn’t a woman who gave her body lightly, she’d leave a part of herself behind, too generous and too innocent to wall off her feelings the way Hawk had long ago learned to do.
The women he chose as partners knew how to create that distance. They laughed easily and drank with calm deliberation, asking no questions so that nobody got hurt and nobody expected more than either one could give.
Until Jess, that kind of sex had been easy.
Until her cocky smile, endless questions, and trembling hands twisted something in his chest and made him want more, though he couldn’t find a name for it.
God knows, it wasn’t love. Hawk hadn’t believed in love since he was twelve and he watched his father push his mother down a flight of stairs.
His fingers tightened, then he released them quickly, all too aware of how easy it would be to mark her, to hurt her.
Because with every gentle touch, she left him aflame, reckless to give her the oblivion she craved. But there was always a cost, he thought grimly. And now the medication he was taking pushed him to the very edge of his control.
His muscles clenched as she traced old scars on his neck.
A knife fight in Mexico City.
A river ambush in Thailand.
Burns from fast-roping off a chopper in the South China Sea.
She cared about those scars, Hawk realized. She touched them slowly, her breath tense. And he sensed that she wanted to touch the man beneath the scars, the one that Hawk never let anyone see.
But who would touch her back—the lethal warrior or the stranger he glimpsed occasionally in mirrors and windows? A man he’d all but forgotten since anonymity and transience had become the mainstays of his life.
If his life had taken a different, less violent path, he might have met a woman like this, might have fallen in love and married her without thinking twice. Right now he could have been a high school teacher in Portland, with a fence and a mortgage and three noisy kids.
Instead of a man with too many scars and too few dreams.
Hell.
She was looking up at him, a mix of hope and desire on her face, and he wanted to tell her there was nothing here, that he couldn’t help her. That in the end he was bound to hurt her.
But he didn’t say any of that, mesmerized by
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