“You wouldn’t have had to.”
This time, it was her that leaned in, pressing her lips to mine in a heartbreakingly tender kiss.
“Those Castors sure do like their blackmail, don’t they?” she teased lightly, but I could see the glassiness of her eyes. My girl was still hurting.
“I’m sorry about all of it, baby. I can’t imagine how fuckin’ hard it must have been for you, seeing all that.”
“I was seven months pregnant with Cooper when the news broke. By then, I’d stopped following the band online at all, sticking to all the rules I thought I was supposed to be following. But an announcement like that was pretty hard to miss.” She looked away, her eyes lowering. “You two were on every magazine cover in the country for months.”
Pulling her close, I looked into her eyes before I spoke, needing her to know I was serious.
“Wren, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for how things turned out. But I’m here now. Finally. And I don’t want to waste another second.” Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, I watched as she considered my words, still unsure. “It may take time for you to trust me. To trust inus, but I promise you, baby. I’m not going anywhere. Never again.”
I watched and waited, letting her think it over, not wanting to rush her, even though everything in me was calling out for her.
Desperate. That’s what I was.
A desperate man at the mercy of the woman he’d wanted for nearly half his fucking life.
“Okay,” she finally replied, a small smile playing on her lips. “Okay, Hawk. Yes. I’ll trust you.”
The relief I felt was instant, my smile stretching so far, my face hurt.
“You won’t be sorry,” I swore, leaning in to kiss her.
“Hawk,” she started, but my heart was pounding so hard, I barely registered her words.
“Right,” I said, halting where I was and taking a breath. “We can go as slow as you want, Bird. No pressure.”
“Hawk.”
“We can wait a little. I know we’ve already fucked. And other stuff, but we can slow down. You can take the time to get to know me. I’ll prove to you that—”
“Hawk!”
“Yeah?”
“Wait time is over.”
With that, she lunged at me, her mouth covering mine in a frenzy that surprised me. Wren kissed me hard, her hands burrowing into my hair and pulling it just the way I liked, making me groan. When I did, she took full advantage, her tongue invading my mouth as her hips started to circle, the friction driving me mad.
Moving one hand down, I slid it under the hem of her dress, palming the warm skin of her ass and kneading it, guiding her as she moved over me, creating a rhythm we could both enjoy.
“Bird,” I breathed, dragging my tongue across her full lower lip. “Baby, I—”
“Yes,” she responded, understanding what I meant, even though I could hardly get the words out. “Me, too. Now.”
With that, Wren lifted up onto her knees, reaching for the button on my jeans and tearing at it, absolutely feral in her desire to get at my dick. Leaning my back against the tree trunk, I helped her open the button fly of my jeans, the two of us working together to slide them down enough for my dick to bounce free.
“No underwear again?” she asked, a small smirk on her face as she looked at me, her eyes huge in the dark. It took me a second to understand that she was referring to our first time together.
The time we conceived Cooper that, to my everlasting shame, I still didn’t fully remember.
Shaking off those thoughts, I simply shrugged.
“Rock and roll, baby.”
Leaning in, I kissed her again, any finesse I might have had completely gone as I tried to taste as much of her as I could. I moved my lips from her mouth to her neck, then down along her collarbone, loving the tiny sounds she made as I nipped at her tendons along the way.
