Page 34 of Out of Reach

Grinding his teeth, Hawk watched Jude slip beneath the covers. The muffled sound of a door closing carried from next door.

With quick, angry movements, Hawk pulled off his shirt and unbuckled his pants. Jude lay watching him, eyes burning holes into Hawk with their intensity. When he’d stripped to his underwear, Hawk didn’t stop there. Pulling the cotton away from his throbbing erection, he pushed them to his feet. Standing naked at the foot of the bed, cock jutting from his body and fists clenched at his sides, he waited, breath coming in short, lustful gasps.

Slowly, Jude’s tongue appeared from between his lips, wetting them. Hawk’s cock jerked in reaction. Underneath the covers, Jude stripped out of his sleep pants and tossed them on the floor.

“Come here,” he said.

And that was all Hawk needed to hear.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Jude

One minute, Hawk was standing at the foot of the bed displaying his incredible body, and the next he’d ripped the covers off Jude and hoisted Jude’s ankles onto his broad shoulders.

Jude had dreamed about it—vivid, wet dreams that left his cheeks burning when he awoke on cum-soiled sheets.

Hawk’s azure eyes ate up each change of expression on Jude’s face as he took Jude’s hard cock into his big hand and stroked. Unable to look away, fingers gripping the sheets, Jude panted like he was running a race.

He cried out as his balls drew up close to his body, everything inside him coiling for a violent release.

“Is this what you wanted?” The head of Hawk’s cock jabbed at Jude between his ass cheeks like a hot poker while he kept up the merciless rhythm with his right hand. Jude lay on the bed like a plaything, taking everything Hawk gave him, loving the feeling of being powerless even while he knew he could stop everything with a word.

Jude’s climax had been building from the moment Hawk had touched him, but he wasn’t prepared when it slammed into him, pleasure exploding simultaneously from his balls to the tips of his fingers, from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Hawk’s name tore from his throat as the world whited out and he felt long lines of cum painting his chest and face. He heard Hawk jacking off over him, then a long groan as another splatter joined the mess, some of it landing on Jude’s face.

When Hawk set Jude’s legs back on the bed, they jerked like a marionette’s, the muscles protesting at having been locked in the cramped position for so long. Hawk began to massage them, and Jude moaned, eyes closed and head still reeling from spent pleasure.

When he felt Hawk lie down next to him, Jude opened his eyes. The terrace doors stood open and splashing and voices drifted up from the swimming pool below—none of which Jude had noticed when they’d entered the room, so intent had he been on Hawk and what he’d hoped they were going to do.

He’d been momentarily disappointed when Hawk hadn’t put his big cock up Jude’s ass, but it was probably for the best that he hadn’t. It was going to be hard enough to pick himself up after Hawk went home to North Carolina without the memory of having Hawk inside him again.

Turning his head, he looked at Hawk’s unreadable face. “Are you mad?” he asked.

“Of course not,” Hawk said, reaching over to skim the cum off Jude’s cheek with his finger. “I don’t think I could have gone another night without something happening. That’d been building between us since the day I walked into your apartment.”

Jude smiled. “Yeah, it had.”

“No regrets?” Hawk asked.

Jude shook his head. “No regrets.”

It wasn’t long before Hawk began softly snoring. Jude slipped out of bed and into the bathroom, closing the door softly behind him. Turning his back to the mirror, he looked over his shoulder at the reflection of the tattoo just above the dip of his ass.

A hawk in flight.

Jude would like to say he’d been drunk when he’d gotten it, but that hadn’t been the case. He’d just moved to New York City, and, lovesick and heartbroken, he’d thought the painful process of getting a tattoo might exorcize the memory of Hawk while commemorating a time in his life that he was determined to leave behind yet at the same time didn’t want to forget.

Right.All it had achieved was being a reminder of what he’d lost every time he got a glimpse of it in a mirror, or a hookup asked him about it. Sam had probably pieced it together as soon as he heard Hawk’s name.

After washing his face and chest, Jude reached for his robe hanging on the hook on the back of the door and slipped it on before returning to the dark bedroom to find his sleep pants. Only then did he take the robe off. No way did he ever want Hawk to find out Jude had had him permanently etched into his skin.

Moonlight shone into the room from the terrace doors, illuminating Hawk’s sleeping face. Tough, yet achingly handsome—that’s how Jude would describe him. He hadn’t changed much in four years, except for a sadness that Jude wondered about, as though life had trampled on him during the time they’d been apart. Jude had no delusions about why Hawk had taken a case his bosses wouldn’t have approved had they known about Jude and Hawk’s prior relationship. He understood that Hawk felt responsible for him. It had always been like that, and that had been part of the problem. Hawk had seen him as a poor, family-less kid who needed taking care of.

Jude had known deep down that Hawk hadn’t loved him with the hopeless devotion that Jude had for Hawk. All he was to Hawk was great sex and a brotherly sense of responsibility, and when he’d finally realized that, he’d packed up and left, spending the next several years doing everything short of selling his body to make ends meet. Who knows? Maybe eventually he would have resorted to that if he hadn’t met Sam, who’d opened all the doors for him.

In the end, had he sold himself to Sam?

Rubbing his hands over his face, Jude told himself he had to do better from now on. He couldn’t go back to being weak.