Page 40 of Speed Trap

“Mine too, Sunny.” His gaze dropped to my lips a second before his mouth crashed into mine in a searing kiss that swiped the last few weeks of torment and heart break from my mind.

The door closed with a loud click behind him, and I suspected he had kicked it shut. The sound snapped me back to where we were.

“Hawk!” I pulled back from his kiss and realized my hands were linked around his neck. I held tight to him, despite the burning need to push him away. “You can’t be here! My God, he’ll be furious. He’ll— I—Hawk.I can’t be seen?—”

“Me. As I am, or nothing, Coops. I’m not hiding the most important part of my life from the world. I won’t hideyou.” He growled the words against my lips, his voice raw with need and—fear?“Work with me if you like. Or don’t. I couldn’t care less. Or more. What I want isyou.As you are, right now. Please,” he begged, cradling my body tight to his.

My eyes widened, read the desperation in his face, in his touch.

And when he lowered his mouth to mine I kissed him back, tangling my hands in his hair where it had lengthened at the back. My body remembered every part of his, pressing to the all the right places in a fervent desire to fill the empty gaps in my heart.

His kisses turned hungry and rough, his tongue lashing against mine as he lifted me off my feet and carried me across the room to my desk. Things crashed to the ground where he swept them to the floor. “I’ll replace them. Anything. I’ll do anything, Coops?—”

“You don’t need to buy me,” I whispered, tears tracking my cheeks again. “I make my own way in the world.”

“I know,” he murmured between kisses that made my head spin. “I know and I’d never have it any other way. Hell, Coops. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” My tears flowed in earnest as he cupped the back of my neck, holding me in place while he kissed me senseless.

So senseless, I didn’t hear the door open again.

I didn’t hear the footsteps that spelled ruin on my thinly industrial carpeted office floor.

But I did hear Benson’s bellow when he roared my name. I was pretty sure everyone on my floor—in the entire building and probably half the street below—heard him.

Hawk stilled, his shoulders a tight line as he broke the kiss. Any remnant of fear was gone from his dark gaze, replaced by blazing determination and something more?—

Pride.

“Get the fuck out of my building, KC.”

I held Hawk’s gaze, the memory they had once been friends—that Hawk had once thought they were friends—reverberating inside my skull.

“Not without Sunny.” Hawk held me tight, searching my face.

I nodded, the tiny movement of self-aware prey before it fled.

Between these two giants, I could be nothing else. My own self-doubts, the ones I buried beneath a thick layer of sand and another hole I’d hidden my head in, washed over me in a flood.

Not the time to freeze, Cooper. Hold your ground.

But that will I had employed for the last few weeks—for my life—failed me in a single swoop that sealed my fate.

“You can have her. She was only useful to me once she started fucking with you, fucking up her life, while I could get information out of her.”

Hawk’s gaze fell on me, weighing. Assessing.

I blinked at him. “I had no idea?—”

“That you were doing me a huge favor? Why do you think there were no reports of you seen together? I have an army of media, Sunny. I don’t need a little thing like you. Get out of my offices, both of you. And Sunny?” He waited until I peeked out from behind Hawk. “Remember your contract. You’re off the track for good.” Benson smirked. “Have fun using her, KC. She’s good for nothing, like the last things you’ve touched. Ten minutes. Then I call the police. What a fun media circus that will be.”

Hawk’s hands closed tight on my arms. Too tight. I let out a small yelp as the door clicked again behind Benson.

“What did he mean?”

“It doesn't matter. How did you come in? Did you park out the front in that God awful yellow thing you own? He’ll have a media storm waiting for you. He would have organized it before he came in here.”

“Yeah?”

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