Page 58 of Hawke

I wanted her to walk away, or at least my head had. My heart, however, was a different beast altogether. It’d honestly surprised me that I actually possessed one considering all the baggage underneath. I finally felt something other than hate and loathing for someone, and now my heart was as broken as I knew hers was.

“This is what the fuck you wanted, man,” I tried to tell myself.

But was it?

I shook my head. I wanted Charlotte Maxwell. I couldn’t deny that. What I could deny myself, however, was the woman I loved because I needed to protect her. There could never be a future for us when I was enslaved to my past. The nightmares were so real, the voices still haunting my every waking moment.

When I was with Charlotte, I would try to silence my demons, but I couldn’t. So many times I’d been with her and they’d been right there with the two of us. I was fucked up in the head and would continuously endanger the sub without even trying. She was better off alone than with me. I knew that, and once she realized it too, my worst fear but also greatest relief, would be imagined.

The restlessness inside me continued to grow, though. I was like a lion in a cage trying to claw my way out. It should’ve been nothing new to me, and it wasn’t unless you looked at the reason. I needed to put her out of my head. Going back over to the chair, I sat down and stared at the cold, empty bed. Just an hour before, Charlotte had been sprawled across it, her long ribbons of blond silk flowing around the pillow. I picked it up from the bed and brought it to my face, inhaling what I could smell of her on the pillowcase.

Staying back in that moment, I remembered staring at her while she slept, having to resist the urge to tie her arms and legs to the bed posts with a few of my suit ties. I’d wanted to touch her again… to mark her… to claim her as I’d done before that.

My mind then drifted to what I’d done to Charlotte to tire her out. I fucked her, or had it been something else? Whatever one called it, I’d never experienced the sort of orgasm I’d had with her. It’d completely blown my mind. Never in my entire life had I been able to let go enough to truly enjoy the moment, and my reward had been the first true orgasm I’d ever had.

What one hand giveth, the other taketh away!

And that’d been true all my life. I’d come so far, but then would fall back into the same old doubts and pain again much like I was doing now. Back then, my moods swung back and forth like a pendulum from numbness to pain.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Nathaniel.”Caine Stephens had been the only friend I’d had for the longest time.

“I can’t silence the voices,”I’d replied while staring at the sharp edge of a knife.

“You can take back control of your life,”he’d said.“Let me help you.”

“No one can save me,”I’d blindly answered.

“You’re right about everyone else, but you don’t need them.Youcan save yourself.”

I would run my hand down the dull side as my friend’s words seemed to drift into one ear and out the other. The conversations between us were much the same until that one night. Right before I could cut myself, Caine had grabbed the knife and tossed it over the railroad tracks.

“You’re giving them the power to destroy you. Stop!”Caine had told me.“Channel the pain into something positive. You’re going to be dead at the rate you’re going. I know something that can help you because it has helped me. Let me show you this place I’ve been to a couple of times.”

“Isn’t this for members only?”I’d asked once we arrived there.

“I know the owner, so I can get you in.”I had no doubt about that.“Are you ready to take back your life?”

Caine had left no room for me to protest, and that turned into a pivotal moment in my life. For a kid who hadn’t felt any sense of hope since I was twelve years old, it gave me delusions that I could have a normal life after all. It was crazy how four years of my life could completely wipe out three times as many years of dreams. Instead of wanting to be an astronaut or superhero, my biggest dream was now simply to be normal, something I’d come to realize was very overrated.

And Caine had been partially right. I had gone on to lead a semi-normal life over the course of a decade, but that broken child inside still resided. Tonight when my dick had been buried inside of Charlotte and I actually came, I damn near felt like I could take on the world.

And what the fuck did you do? You let your world walk out the door.

I could imagine hearing Caine say that to me. And he would be right. I growled, then tossed the pillow back onto the bed. Did it really matter now? Some things were meant to be, while others not so much.

What was done was done.

I stood back up and returned to the window. From my vantage point, I could see almost a half mile down the street in either direction. It was late night, or early morning, depending on who you asked, so there were hardly any cars or people in sight. Maybe that’d been what allowed me to see someone that resembled Charlotte on foot headed away from the hotel. Any woman with sense would know better than to walk the Denver streets at this time, alone. Of course, that only confirmed it was Charlotte because my little sub was irrational even on her best days. She was even more beautiful on her worst.

I knew she didn’t live too far from my hotel, but it was still a good enough distance away to concern me. Cursing, I finished getting dressed and decided to go make sure she at least got home safely. She had to have gotten a good head start, but in those monster fucking heels, I would easily be able to catch up to her.

Pulling my coat tighter as the wind gusted heavily around me, I started to walk, my long strides eating up the pavement as I went. I couldn’t see her, and the entire walk to her place, I just hoped she’d made it inside. Once I saw that she was okay, I’d let her go. I had to. Whenever she was around me, she’d act way too careless. I had that effect on her and as good as she was for me, I was equally as bad for her.

Charlotte’s building came into view, but a sound in the alley stopped me in my tracks. I tried to lighten my footsteps, but when I turned the corner, a man was hunched over a woman checking for vital signs. I stepped closer and my heart thudded in my chest. On the concrete was a familiar pillow of blond silk.

“Charlotte,” I called, panicked as I hurried over to her.

The man had been forgotten for a few seconds as I knelt beside my sub. She was out cold, and I was paralyzed in fear when I noticed the plastic around her neck. I jumped to my feet, then quickly had the man pinned to the wall.

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