Sweet Ache

And from one beat to the next, Hawke grips my hips and lifts me up onto the top of the washing machine. I don’t even have a moment to realize my victory because with the machine on spin cycle vibrating beneath me, he wastes no time jacketing up, parting my sex, and slamming into me in one slick, desperate stroke.

We both cry out as he bucks his hips before stilling momentarily, trying not to succumb to my wet heat. He waits a beat before pulling back out and setting a frantic, punishing pace as his hands hold my thighs apart and I press my back against the wall behind me. I watch his dick slide in and out of me and with the vibration of the machine beneath me, urging my release on, I slide a hand down between my thighs and add the friction to my clit needed to push me into the oblivion he’s holding out for me to find first.

I know later I’ll recall how even at his worst, Hawkin is thinking of me, but right now, I can’t think. All I can do is feel: the rapturous sensations of his thickness sliding against my nerve-laden walls with each hammer of his hips, the movement of the washer, my own finger knowing just how to pleasure myself. Recognizing my body’s signs that tell me my orgasm is just within reach, I hold my breath as my legs tense and my feet flex. I look up to see Hawke’s face pulled tight with pleasure, the muscles in his neck and shoulders strained, his eyes squeezed tight as his body draws orgasms from the both of us.

I go first. His ability to give me the hard and fast I asked for earns me an explosive orgasm that has white-hot heat streaking down my spine and exploding in my core before ricocheting out to every single nerve in my body and holding them hostage.

I can’t recover fast enough to watch Hawkin reach his, so my eyes are closed, body slumped on the machine when his harsh shout of “Fuck!” fills the small room. His fingers tighten as he rides his out.

I can feel the tension leave his grip on my thighs and open my eyes just as his head falls forward for a second before he reaches out in a move so unexpected that I hesitate momentarily when he gathers me to him and wraps his arms around me.

Our bodies are still joined in all aspects and as he holds me tight in my confining laundry room, I can also feel our souls begin to intertwine, and my heart slip a little farther down the cliff toward the ocean of love below.

“This band’s got a good vibe about them,” Hawkin murmurs quietly as he taps his fingers to the beat on the bare skin of my back. It’s the first thing he’s said since we fell in the couch after moving from the laundry room what feels like forever ago. We’re a tangled mess of temporarily satisfied desire as I lie half on top of him.

“Mm-hm.” It’s all I murmur as our hearts beat against each other’s, and the warm night air teases our bare skin. Honestly, my mind’s still thinking about the evening’s unexpected turn of events. The sex that was tinged with greed and desperation on both of our parts but for different reasons.

And with the sex came the shift in my state of mind and emotions. I’m falling hardcore for Hawkin, no question. We may have walked into whatever this is between us without any suppositions to where it’s going, but I doubt either of us will be able to walk away unscathed.

Obviously something happened tonight to drive him to drink, something bad enough that led him to need me. It had to be more than his simple explanation that Hunter was behind me today to set this off. My thoughts race but all I can determine is that only he holds the secrets to reveal.

I feel like I’m an open door to him and yet he still seems like a hallway full of locked ones. Am I walking into a dead end? I just don’t know. I’m trying to keep my feelings on lockdown, trying to prevent the heartbreak I sense on the horizon because I need him to give me at least a few keys to unlock his past. It doesn’t mean I’ll use them, but they’re necessary to feel like we’re on an even playing field. And I just don’t know if he’s at a place in his life where he’s willing to share.

Because if he can’t, something like tonight is going to happen again. The silence wraps around us and I question myself, ponder whether I’ll be able to live with another tonight, especially if he doesn’t explain his actions any further. I wonder if letting him between my thighs when he hasn’t let me in his private life makes me seem like a pushover, or a woman willing to forgive at the drop of a dime. I let the thought settle and know that it doesn’t, it just makes me human.

But at the same time, I’m going to have to make sure he understands that the word “doormat” is the furthest thing from what is stamped on my forehead.

A small part of me revels in the fact that whatever he’s distraught over, he came to me tonight, needed me tonight. Not one of his other thirty flavors from his past. That’s a pretty heady feeling when you combine it with the emotional highs and lows of the day.

I’m so caught up in my thoughts I don’t even realize that I’m tracing the tattoos on the inside of his forearm, the treble clef and the symbol for strength, moving over them in a rhythmic movement. And something strikes me suddenly, so I shift my body so that I can look at the wrist of the arm Hawkin has resting on my back. He obliges my nonverbal request and lets me look at the skin sans tattoos on there.

“What?” he asks as I shift back over, curiosity now getting the better of me.

“You never explained the pink heart thing the other day. Do they all have them? You don’t?”

He stares at me a beat before he laughs. I welcome the sound after the heaviness of our exchange, and wait for his answer. “They’re … oh God.” He chuckles, his chest beneath my chin vibrating from it. “For as long as I can remember, the four of us made bets—about anything: songs, women, you name it. We did it so much that it became a habit, but at some point we realized that there was no recourse for losing.”