Forbidden Crush Read online

  “I’ve dreamed about you,” Hawk said softly in the darkness. “I’ve dreamed about only you, Charlotte.”

  My name sounded perfectly sweet on his lips, like a chocolate-covered cherry he wanted to suck on. I held my breath as he stood before me, arms bulging with muscle as he readied himself.

  He grabbed hold of my pajama pants and ripped them off with magical ease; one moment they were there, the next they were gone, like steam evaporating from a pot of boiling water. Hawk knelt, and I gasped as he buried his face in my panties, pulling them aside and then inhaling me like I was a drug he’d been craving. His breath was hot against my wet pussy lips.

  “I want to taste you,” he rumbled in his wonderful baritone voice.

  “Okay,” I breathed.

  “I want to make you mine.”

  “Double okay!”

  His tongue was impossibly long, a snake emerging from his mouth, as it moved toward my clit. It touched me with the barest amount of pressure, but even that was enough to make me gasp and arch my back against the sheets. He stared up at me with his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes as I accepted his tongue in between my lips, wedging them apart and licking up and down, exploring me for the first time.

  “Fuck, you taste good,” he growled into my pussy. “I’m going to eat you up.”

  “Yes,” I whispered as he used his fingers to pull apart my lips. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  His sandy hair moved back and forth as he tasted all of me, deep inside my pussy and then up and out to swirl around my clit. Back into my sex he went and then out again, a circuit of oral sex that left me groaning into the impossibly soft mattress.

  “Taste me,” I begged, though he was doing exactly that. I put a hand on his head and held him against my pussy. “Yes, there, right there, don’t stop, yes…”

  *

  I woke to the sound of my phone alarm going off, soft but persistent.

  I groaned. Sunlight peeked through the curtains and splashed across my eyes, making me wince and roll over to face the other direction. There was a persistent throbbing in my head, and my tongue felt swollen in my mouth. Finally I could stand the alarm no longer, so I reached across my body to yank it from the charger and mashed my thumb on the screen until it went silent.

  Sighing, I opened my eyes. Six empty beer bottles stood on the dresser across from me in an unstable pyramid, three-two-one. Had I drank the entire six pack? I remember finding a Natalie Imbruglia playlist on my phone and cranking it up while dancing by myself in the motel room. I could have sworn I only drank three. Or maybe four.

  I held my phone close to my crusty eyes. Wow, I slept in until 7:50. Normally I was an early riser, my body always up and ready at 5:00 while Scott stayed in bed a little longer. He would have made fun of me if he were here. “Who’s laughing now!” he would have said, tickling me awake until I fought him off. He would make a day of it, constantly reminding me of the fact while we prepared the food truck and began serving customers.

  Scott is gone, I remembered. He’s seeing some slut named Tammy. He doesn’t want me.

  A memory tickled my mind. 7:50. That was dangerously close to 8:00, which was when I had to be somewhere…

  Suddenly I remembered where I was. This was Eastland, not Savannah. I was in a motel room. And I had community service…

  “Crap!” I shouted. “Crapola!”

  I rushed out of bed and threw on a fresh pair of panties, then shimmied into my jeans. Could I get there in time? What else did I need? My mind was as slow as thick honey as I looked around the foreign motel room. I grabbed my purse off the dresser, knocking the pyramid of beer bottles over in the process.

  Shoes, I managed to think through my pounding head. I need shoes.

  I sifted through one suitcase, then another. By the end I was tossing my neatly-folded clothes on the floor in a rush to find my sneakers. Where were they? I knew I saw them yesterday when I arranged all my clothes. But they were nowhere to be found.

  The Sheriff told me not to be late. That was the most important thing. If I hurried, I could still get there on time.

  I slipped on the heels I’d been wearing for the past two days and rushed out the door.

  I hurried down the road and prayed Billy in the motel lobby couldn’t see me. There was no shoulder on the road, so my options were to run in the ditch or on the pavement. Fortunately, there were no cars on the road. I knew I looked ridiculous trying to half-run in heels. After 100 feet I gave up, took them off, and ran barefoot. Hopefully I didn’t step on any broken glass.

  No matter how small the town was, it was too long when traveling on foot and in a hurry. Soon I saw the diner in the distance, in the double-wide trailer on the right. I made myself stare straight ahead as the few patrons watched me through the windows, the girl jogging barefoot up the road like she was fleeing Freddie Kruger.

  After the diner I passed another of those strange metal skeletons. This one had a long face and teeth like metal fingers, and it seemed to be laughing at me as I ran the final 50 feet to where I was supposed to be.

  The community center was a sad little building with one boarded-up window and half the shingles missing from its roof. A butch woman wearing a John Deere tractor hat stood outside with a clipboard in her hand and an annoyed look on her face. She watched as I shambled the final stretch to her.

  “I’m sorry!” I gasped, catching my breath. “I’m sorry. So sorry. For being late. I got lost.”

  She leaned away from me. “You smell like a Monday morning frat house.” Then she looked at the heels in my hand. “Are those the shoes you brought to work?”

  “I couldn’t find any others,” I said. “Is there a loaner pair or something I can use today?”

  “Nope.” She ticked a box on her clipboard, then handed me an orange reflective vest. “Put this on. You’re on trash duty today. That’s your ride.” She nodded at a white pickup truck with a man inside parked a few spaces down.

  “Thank you,” I said, grabbing her hand to shake. “Sorry again for being late. Won’t happen again!” Because hopefully I won’t be doing any of this again, I thought as I approached the truck.

  I opened the passenger door and froze.

  Hawk sat in the driver’s seat, an amused grin on his handsome face. He wore a tight black t-shirt with an identical reflective vest over top.

  “Huh,” he said in his deep voice. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were stalking me.”

  Seeing him brought back memories of my dream. My sexy dream. “You. Just what I need.”

  “You’re not who I was hoping for, either.”

  I climbed in and he started the truck with a rumble.

  “Guess you saw Judge Benjamin yesterday?”

  I could still feel his face between my legs, long tongue penetrating me deeply, tasting every inch of my privates. The image was fresh and vibrant like an oil painting.

  I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Listen. I’m very hungover right now, and I woke up literally five minutes ago. So if we could have a moment of silence for my sanity I’d be very happy.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  The truck rumbled down the road, bouncing along as it hit old potholes that had never been filled.

  “This is all your fault,” I said.

  Hawk grimaced at me. “I thought you wanted silence.”

  “The judge was sympathetic until he realized I knew you.”

  “You don’t know me,” he pointed out.

  “No, but I had your stupid jacket with me. When the judge saw it, he turned on me like that.” I snapped my fingers.

  “How’d he find out it was mine?”

  “I told him.”

  “Ahh,” he said with satisfaction. “So you didn’t listen when I told you to keep your mouth shut?”

  I shook my head and stared out the window, my head still pounding too much to respond.

  We drove a few miles down the frontage road along I-16 and then parked. So m
uch trash littered the side of the road I wondered if a garbage truck had wrecked nearby. Hawk hopped out, reached into a cooler in the bed of the truck, and tossed me a water bottle.

  “Drink.”

  I wanted to argue, but water was what my body demanded more than anything just then. I gulped it down so fast that water ran out the side of my mouth and down my chin.

  “Thanks,” I gasped when I was done.

  “Mmm hmm.” Hawk grabbed trash bags out of the bed of the truck, and sticks with little needles on the end for jabbing trash. He pointed into the distance. “We’ve got this stretch of road from here to the Murphy ranch, about a mile thataways. We’ll get as much as we can today and come down the other side of the road tomorrow.”

  “Alright.”

  He watched me pull on my heels. “Are those the only shoes you have?”

  “I couldn’t find my sneakers. And I was already late.”

  He shook his head but said nothing as we began our work. I held the black trash bag in my left hand while stabbing pieces of garbage with the stick in my right, and then scraped them off into the bag. It was simple enough, but not precisely easy since the trash kept sticking to the needle.

  “So you’ve got community service too?” I asked.

  “No,” he said flatly. “I just love picking up trash.”

  I stabbed a coke can and dropped it in my bag. “You piss off Judge Benjamin too?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What were you doing in jail?”

  He grinned at me. The same grin that had touched his lips before he went down on me in my dream. “I was sittin’, mostly. Not much else you can do in a jail cell.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I mean what did you do to get thrown in there? Blow through an imaginary stop sign? Resist arrest against the power-hungry sheriff?”

  He gave me an even stare. “You don’t need to break a law to end up in jail in this town. You should know that more than anyone.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” I said, though I could tell he’d avoided answering the question. I wondered how he’d gotten on the sheriff’s bad side. Especially since he lived here, instead of being an outsider like me.

  My heel caught on a depression in the road and my ankle twisted. I fell to one knee and yelped, wincing as my stick went flying.

  “You alright?” Hawk asked.

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “Just fine.”

  Hawk was there in three long strides. He grabbed my hand and did a bicep curl to pull me up with ease. Standing close to him, I could smell his cologne, or maybe deodorant. Smoke and oil, just like his jacket.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  I limped for the rest of the day, but I wasn’t about to let a self-inflicted injury slow me down. We fell into a rhythm cleaning the road one piece of trash at a time. There was a lot of it to clean. More than I would’ve expected from a random road in the middle of Georgia. As soon as we filled our bags, Hawk walked back to the truck and drove it up to us so we could toss them in the bed, then we opened new bags. As the sun climbed higher we began taking breaks, drinking bottles of water from Hawk’s cooler. I don’t know what I would’ve done without those. Sweat matted my hair to my scalp and ran down my temple.

  Despite the heat, it was a pleasant day. Especially when the occasional cool breeze blew. The morning dragged on, and the bed of Hawk’s truck filled with bags of trash, four, then six, then eight.

  “Good time to stop for lunch,” he said after retrieving the truck. His muscles bulged as he tossed the bags of trash in the back, making the tattoos dance across his skin. “Fuck, I’m hungry.”

  “We get a lunch break?” I asked. I was imagining the diner menu in my head. I could crush a patty melt and milkshake right about then. Good hangover food.

  “Not exactly,” Hawk said, climbing back into the driver’s seat. I joined him in the passenger side, expecting us to drive back to town. “But I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  I smiled. “Deal.”

  “If we see the sheriff or someone else coming to check on us, we can rush back out there.” He reached through the cab divider into his cooler and pulled out a ziplock bag containing a sandwich.

  My stomach rumbled. “We can’t go somewhere?”

  “We can,” he said as he opened his sandwich bag. “But it’s a small town. We’d get caught. Then Mindy would dock us an hour on our time sheet.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I opened my purse, and breathed a sigh of relief to see the can of fruit and bag of chips that I’d bought from the motel lobby. A meager meal, but better than nothing. I peeled off the top of the can of fruit and asked, “How many hours of community service do you have?”

  He bit into his sandwich. “Too many.”

  I grabbed a slimy piece of fruit and popped it in my mouth. “I’ve got 120. And my license is suspended until I’m done.”

  “Sounds like Judge Benjamin,” Hawk muttered.

  “He told me you were a bad guy.”

  Hawk snorted without looking up from his sandwich. “Did he now?”

  “Uh huh. Probably ‘cause you’re part of that biker gang, right? The Copperheads?”

  His head whipped around and his eyes were full of fire. “Why the fuck do you think that?”

  “I dunno,” I said defensively. “They were visiting you in jail. You ride a bike like them.”

  “How do you know what I ride?”

  “I saw you on the road last night. When the sheriff was driving me back to the motel.”

  Hawk examined my face like he was trying to decide if I was telling the truth. He must have come to the conclusion that I was, because he said, “I’m not a Copperhead.”

  “Okay, okay. I didn’t realize it was a touchy subject.”

  He looked in the side mirror. A car came driving up the road, then passed us. It wasn’t the sheriff.

  “Maybe,” Hawk said, “you should mind your own business.”

  “I was just making conversation.”

  “Whatever you say, Peaches.”

  I flinched. “What’d you call me?”

  “Peaches.”

  I pursed my lips. “Let me guess. Because I’ve got an ass like a Georgia peach. Sweet and juicy enough to sink your teeth into. Do you honestly think girls like to have their bodies compared to fruit?”

  Hawk only stared at me. “You’re eating a can of peaches.”

  I glanced down. Of course. I was so hungover I hadn’t connected the can of sweet fruit with what he’d said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t suppose you have another sandwich in that cooler?”

  He shoved the rest of the sandwich in his mouth. “Nope.”

  He climbed out of the truck and resumed cleaning up trash, leaving me feeling foolish inside.

  8

  Charlotte

  The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. My ankle ached from where I’d twisted it, and soon I had blisters on the sides of my feet where the straps rubbed. It didn’t help that I was hungover, sweaty, and tired.

  We pulled up to the community center, where the woman—Mindy, Hawk had called her—was waiting with her clipboard. Hawk signed the time sheet first, and then she handed it to me and pointed at the bottom.

  I started to sign, then stopped. “This says I only did seven hours today. I worked eight.” I pointed at Hawk’s section. “You marked him down for eight.”

  “You were late,” the butch woman said flatly. “Be on time tomorrow.”

  I gritted my teeth but signed it anyways. I just wanted today to be over.

  I turned to ask Hawk what people did for fun in this town, but he was already climbing back into his truck and driving away. I watched his truck turn and disappear down main street.

  “Hungry?” Mindy asked.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Diner has good food,” she said. “Granted, I’m biased ‘cause it’s my diner. But it’s the truth.”

  I followed her into t
he diner. A man in the first booth immediately raised his mug and said, “Coffee?”

  “Damn, Flop. That’s the third cup.”

  “Got a late night ahead of me,” he said defensively. “They always come by on Tuesday night.” He waved the coffee mug in the air.

  “Hold your horses. I’m comin’.” Mindy shook her head and led me to a booth farther away from him. “Don’t mind Flop. He owns the bar across the street. Also, he’s an asshole.”

  “I heard that!” he called from the first booth.

  “That’s ‘cause I wanted you to hear it. Eat your damn sausages and mind your business.”

  “Thanks,” I said when she handed me a menu. I was hungry to the point that all the food looked amazing. “What’s good here?”

  “Everything,” she said blandly.

  “Um. What’s your favorite?”

  “Depends on the night.”

  I handed her the menu. “Bring me whatever you’d eat if you were simultaneously hungover, starving, and exhausted.”

  She took it. “One breakfast special, coming right up.”

  The breakfast special was practically my own buffet of food: two pancakes, two waffles, and two slices of toast. Bacon, sausage links, scrambled eggs, and a bowl of grits swimming in butter. I wolfed down the waffles and pancakes first with lots of syrup, then tackled the bacon and sausage. I slathered grape jam on the toast before eating it, then finished up with the eggs and grits.

  While I ate with one hand, I used the other to rub my feet. My ankle was swollen, and the blood blisters were turning from purple to black. That was attractive. I needed to make sure I found my sneakers tonight.

  I need to make sure I don’t get pass-out drunk tonight, I thought with a grimace. One night of drinking and feeling sorry for myself was plenty. Best not make it a habit.

  Thinking about last night reminded me of why I’d been drinking. Scott and I had split-up. Although, I guess technically we hadn’t split-up yet. I’d walked out of dinner, and then he left me a voicemail confirming that he was seeing someone else. Eventually I would need to talk to him, but for now all I could do was focus on the last bit of my dinner.