Page 68 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
She used the toilet, cleaned her teeth with the little foaming berries in a wood dish on the sink, combed her hair with her fingers, and returned to find Hawk leaning against the wood railing near the bed, head bowed, shoulders slumped, attitude utterly defeated.
Jack was overcome with empathy. He looks so sad. I don’t want him to be sad. I want him to be happy.
Like me!
Smiling through her fuzzy sunshine haze, Jack stepped toward him.
A pair of slender arms slid around his waist and tightened as a cheek rested against his back.
Hawk’s head snapped up. He stopped breathing. He clenched his hands around the railing so hard he thought it might splinter.
“Don’t be mad. You just looked like you needed a hug is all,” Jack said softly from behind him.
Her arms were around his waist. Her face was against his back. Her chest and stomach and legs were pressed against his body—tight against his body—and she was making a little satisfied sound in her throat, a sigh of contentment that had his eyes bugging right out of his head.
What in the hell did I give her?
Slowly, he straightened. He turned, breaking her grasp on him, but as soon as he’d faced her, she wound her arms up around his shoulders and buried her face into his neck. She stepped on top of his feet like a child, standing on his toes, and hugged him again.
“You give good hugs,” she sighed into his neck. “You’re very cozy for such a big bad wolf.” She giggled, correcting herself. “Cat. Big bad cat.”
Hawk had to fight to breathe. He murmured her name, arms out, hands spread wide as if in surrender. He couldn’t touch her. If he touched her . . .
“You have to hug me back!” she protested, burrowing closer, and the feel of her body against his—her breasts against his chest, her pelvis pressed to his, her lips against his throat—brought the animal inside him wide awake, hissing in pleasure. Between his legs, an erection charged to life.
Get a hold of yourself, Hawk! She’s completely out of it! Whatever that concoction was you got from kalum this morning was a lot stronger than a mere healing tea!
Unfortunately his body wasn’t on board with that idea. His heart felt like a jackhammer inside his chest, and that erection was threatening to split his pants open. The urge to rip off his clothes and hers and sink himself deep inside her was almost overpowering.
Because he already knew how amazing she felt. He already knew what she could do for him, the pleasure she’d give, and so did the animal writhing inside him.
Slowly, being careful not to touch her back, he rested his hands on her hips. Maybe if I just wait here like this for a second she’ll—
She made a low noise deep in her throat and flexed her hips against his, and Hawk thought he might lose it completely if she moved against him again. He’d never felt such fierce, intense need.
He sunk his fingers into the flesh of her hips, holding her still. He growled, “Jacqueline . . . stop.”
She tilted her head back and blinked at him, smiling lazily, her eyes half-lidded and filled with heat. “Stop it because you like it, you mean?”
He swallowed. She fit perfectly against his body, warm and soft against his hardness and angles, and it felt so right he forgot to lie.
“Yes.”
Victorious, she smiled wider. “No,” she whispered, grinning wickedly, and rubbed her pelvis against that straining hardness between his legs.
With a deep warning growl rumbling through his chest, Hawk fisted a hand in her hair and tightened the other around her hipbone, pinning her in place. He glared down at her, fighting the powerful instinct to take her, to make her arch and scream beneath him, to make her his.
She wasn’t his. She could never be his. They were from two different worlds, and one day soon she’d go back to hers and he’d never see her again.
And the way he felt about her, the confusion and distraction and inability to think about almost anything else when she was near told him that on that day when she left, she’d be taking his heart with him.
Better to stop this insanity now, before she took his soul, too.
“Stop! You’re not in your right mind! That drink I gave you, it’s making you do this—this isn’t you!”
She threaded her fingers into his hair, arching against him. Very throaty, she said, “This is me, Hawk. This is what I want to do every single time I look at you. This is what I’d do every day for the rest of my life if I could. This.”
