Page 3 of Hot Chicken (Sunday Brothers #6)

CHAPTER TWO

HAWK

When Jack and I walked through the front door of our house several hours later, arms loaded with bags, five furry faces immediately trotted over to greet us.

“Lydia Sunday,” Jack chided when the tiny tortoiseshell clawed at one of the grocery bags he carried while Jane, Lizzy, Mary, and Potato twined around his ankles. “Honestly, ladies. You’d think you’d never been fed in your fucking lives.”

“I’ll feed them,” I offered, unwrapping Sir Pecksworth and setting him on the counter by the stove with a fond pat. “If you put the groceries away.”

Jack glanced up from where he was fiddling with the window air conditioner unit and gave the cookie jar a smirk and a headshake.

“Deal,” he said. “I’ll even make up a batch of that marinade you like so we can grill some…” He gave Pecky a significant look, then shot me a wink as I scooped dry cat food into bowls. “C-H-I-C-K-E-N for dinner.”

Then the air conditioner let out a blast of cold air, and he sighed happily.

I felt a slow smile spread over my face as I watched him.

In the golden-hour sunshine streaming through the window, with the cool breeze blowing his hair and making his sweaty T-shirt stick to his chest, Jack Wyatt was impossibly handsome.

The sight of those strong shoulders, the stubbled jaw, would never get old.

Would never cease to make my heart skip and my mouth water.

Wanting this man, wanting simply to be near him, had consumed my every thought for years.

And now, here I was, not only sharing Jack’s bed but his home and his life.

Planning a future with him. Allowed and encouraged to reach out and touch him, kiss him, any damn time I wanted.

I got to sleep with his arms around me. He’d agreed to be my personal Mr. Darcy, forever and ever, amen.

Part of me—the shadow of teenage, virgin Hawk, who’d rubbed his dick raw just imagining Jack naked and couldn’t have fathomed the things Jack and I got up to once we were naked together —still couldn’t believe I was here, living the fucking dream.

But the truth was, life with Jack was so much more than anything I’d dreamed of.

It was goofy, spelled-out dad jokes and him knowing my favorite chicken marinade.

It was watching him evolve from reluctant cat owner to obsessed cat parent.

It was the library he’d built me and the Thin Mints he stashed there.

It was him embracing my maximalist decorating style and letting my collection of crocheted blankets consume our whole house.

It was “craft stuff” and “Hawk’s books” line items in our budget every month without complaint, though we were supposed to be saving for our wedding.

It was the unexpected thrill of being the person who comforted Jack when he was sick or tired or disappointed.

It was him encouraging me to bring a needy ceramic cookie jar into our home because I wanted it… and because he wanted me to have everything I wanted.

It was more than I’d known I could dream about.

It occurred to me, as I watched Jack snuggle a cat under each muscular arm so the “ladies” could look out the window—a thing he did regularly for these cats he’d once side-eyed—that it had been a really, really busy summer filled with important projects, and important work at the restaurant, and important shit to do at home…

and I maybe hadn’t taken the time to appreciate the most important person in my world. At least, not the way I should.

And suddenly, I couldn’t wait another fucking minute to do just that.

“For fuck’s sake. Why is it always Lydia?” Jack asked, interrupting my thoughts with a nod toward our smallest and most trouble-loving feline, who’d leaped up on the counter to bat at Sir Pecksworth, turning him so his beak faced the wall. “Does she need more stimulation, do you think?”

Without waiting for a reply, he shuffled the cats around in his arms until he could snag Lydia, too. Then he brought all five felines and their food out to the screened porch, where their water bowls and jungle gyms were already set up, and closed the door behind him.

”You really should have named that one Kitty,” he said when he came back.

“Even if a cat named Kitty is too on the nose. Kitty was the nicer Bennet sister. Instead, you named her after the sister who was an unmitigated pain in the ass, and now it’s become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I’m warning you right now, if a cat militia comes to the neighborhood, I will not allow her to?—”

“Jack,” I interrupted. “I don’t want to talk about the cats. Or Pride and Prejudice .”

Jack blinked. “ You ? Don’t want to talk about Pride and Prejudice ?” He frowned. “Are you okay, baby? You do look kinda flushed. Are you thirsty? Or hungry? ”

I wound my arms around his neck, pressed my body against his, and nodded. “Starving,” I whispered, pulling him down for a kiss. “All of a sudden, I’m starving. But not for food.”

Jack groaned, his hands sliding down to grip my hips and pull me closer, kissing me slow and deep. “Hawk?—”

I broke off with a needy whine. “Need you. Now . Please, Jack.”

Jack’s eyes darkened, and his hands tightened on me with the kind of bruising intensity I knew, from personal experience, meant he was going to take me apart in the best possible way.

I barely had time to shiver before he was tugging off my T-shirt, skimming his callused fingers up my sides, tangling his hands in my hair, pushing me until my lower back hit the island.

“Here?” he asked, his voice rough as he trailed wet kisses down my neck.

“Oh yeah. Totally here,” I confirmed, gasping when his teeth scraped my collarbone.

We’d had kitchen sex before. Like, a lot of kitchen sex.

Christening this island and the marble countertops, the braided rug in front of the sink, and, on one memorable occasion, the door of the refrigerator (which had caused a messy but worthwhile ice-cube avalanche when my elbow had wedged against the dispenser).

But there was something different about this time. An intensity that hadn’t been there in weeks… or possibly ever.

Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the realization that I’d missed spending quality time with Jack over the past few weeks.

Maybe it was the happiness that fizzed like champagne bubbles under my skin every time I realized that Jack—the man I’d wanted since before it was legal—was now as dependable and necessary a part of my life as oxygen and didn’t hesitate to show he felt the same way about me .

Whatever it was, it made my blood sing in my veins as Jack’s hands made quick work of my jeans.

“God, you’re beautiful, Hawk Sunday,” he murmured, pulling back just slightly. His eyes roamed my body hungrily, reclaiming every single inch of me. Then he dropped to his knees on the hardwood floor.

The first touch of his mouth made me cry out, hands clutching the edge of the stone counter and head lolling back to rest against the upper cabinet.

Jack had always known how to take me apart, but by now, he’d memorized every pressure point that made me tremble and the precise rhythm that drove me wild.

He used that knowledge ruthlessly now… and I loved every damn minute.

“Jack.” My legs trembled—literally, no kidding, trembled, like they might give out. “Inside me. Need you in me.”

He pulled back, his lips shiny with spit and precum, his eyes wild. “You sure, baby? I was enjoying myself here.”

The gravel-roughness of his voice sent a shudder of want through me.

“Very sure.” I pulled him to his feet. “Hurry.”

Jack chuckled as his hands fumbled with his belt. “So demanding, Hawkins.”

“You love it,” I countered.

“I love you ,” he corrected. Then, he lifted me up to sit on the counter and kissed me so hard I forgot my name.

“L-lube,” I instructed a short time later.

My breathing sounded like I’d been running marathons—plural—and I barely had the energy to wave a hand, but Jack knew exactly what I meant.

I hadn’t lived here a full week before Jack and I had realized the importance of keeping lube stashed all over the house.

He tore open the second drawer next to the oven and located the tube behind the measuring cups and spoons. His hand shook as he squeezed some out onto his fingers but steadied when he prepped me—gently but not too gently, just the way I liked it—his mouth never leaving mine.

When he finally pushed inside me, we both groaned and stilled for a minute. The physical burn, the fullness of it, was overwhelming. But the sensation of having him inside me, of being connected to him this way, was even more so.

“I missed you,” I whispered, wrapping my legs around his thighs to draw him deeper. “Is that crazy?”

His expression softened. “If it is, I’m right there with you. I’m so fucking lucky. We ’re so lucky.”

“You are the best thing in my world,” I told him, meaning it.

Jack smiled. “You are my world,” he said simply.

Then he started to move. The kitchen filled with the sounds of our breathing, with the staccato slap of skin against skin, with whispered endearments and little broken moans.

The counter wasn’t exactly built for comfort, but at that moment, I couldn’t find one single fuck to give.

The entire universe had narrowed down to Jack’s hands, Jack’s mouth, Jack’s thrusts sending pleasure arcing up my spine.

His rhythm faltered as he got close, and his fingers dug into my thighs in a way I knew—and was fucking thrilled to know—would leave marks.

“Hawk,” Jack gasped, pressing his forehead to mine. “I?—”

“Yeah,” I breathed. “Fuck yes. Come for me. Come in me.”

His whole body tensed, and his face froze in an expression of ecstasy that bordered on pain, and then he came with a shout. Seeing him, feeling him pulsing hot inside me, sent my own release crashing over me like a tsunami.

After, we clung to each other, damp and breathless, like survivors of a peculiar kitchen shipwreck. Jack’s heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my own chest.