legs, passion’s sweet pressure crying for release.
Hawk ached to be inside Angel again, feeling her heat and sultry softness surrounding him.
The endless urgency of Hawk’s need for Angel shocked him. He had felt nothing like it with any other woman, even when he was young and Jenna had teased him to the point of violence.
Hawk reached up and switched on the small, battery-powered light. Soft yellow illumination revealed the triangular bow bed. Angel’s hair was a pale golden fire burning against Hawk’s dark arm. Her lashes cast long, fringed shadows and her lips were very red, still slightly swollen from the passionate kisses she had given and taken.
When Hawk bent and brushed his mouth against hers, he felt Angel smile and heard her gentle murmur as she snuggled closer to his warmth. He knew that she wasn’t awake. Her movement toward him was an unconscious reflex as deep and true as her loving of him had been.
“Angel,” Hawk whispered. Then, even more softly, “My sweet, generous woman. What am I going to do with you?”
There was no answer for the long term. There was only now, this moment, and the generous warmth Hawk knew awaited him within Angel.
Without waking Angel up, Hawk found one of the foil packets that had been scattered across the bed in their haste. He smiled, remembering.
A few moments later Hawk’s hand slid beneath the covers, finding and touching Angel’s breast, kneading it gently as his lips nestled in the curve of her neck. Slowly, languidly, Hawk caressed Angel’s body, calling to her wordlessly until she moved with his touch, neither asleep nor yet awake, suspended in a beautiful sensual dream.
Her body melted, wanting him.
“Angel,” Hawk said, his voice husky as he parted her legs. “Angel.”
Her eyelids fluttered open in response to Hawk’s deep-voiced call. He waited until he knew that Angel was awake, aware, looking into her eyes… and in that instant he slid into her, taking her completely.
His slow, sensual invasion undid Angel. Her soft cries of ecstasy rippled through Hawk, undoing him in turn. He flew with her, spiraling quickly upward into a sky that was neither cold nor dark, but hot and bright and infinite.
When Angel had the breath and the strength to speak again, she whispered her love against the warmth and power of Hawk’s shoulder. His answer was an exquisitely gentle movement that made her cry out and cling to him all over again.
“Hawk,” Angel said finally, her breath uneven, “we’re going to miss the tide again.”
He murmured something against her neck.
“What?” she asked.
Reluctantly, he lifted his lips from her fragrant skin. “I set the alarm a bit early,” he admitted.
Angel’s eyes lit with understanding and laughter.
“Such a clever hawk,” she said. “I’ll have to reward you.”
“You already have,” Hawk said smiling.
Angel’s breath stopped at the beauty of his smile. She touched his lips with fingers that trembled, measuring anew the depth of her love for this hard and gentle man.
“What are you thinking?” Hawk asked, wondering at the emotions he sensed quivering through Angel.
“How much I love you.”
Hawk’s eyes closed.
“I shouldn’t let you,” he said fiercely.
With a harsh sound Hawk pulled Angel against him and buried his head between her breasts.
“Oh, God, what am I going to do?” he asked starkly. “I can’t love you and I can’t let you go.”
Gently, Angel stroked Hawk’s hair, trying to comfort him, to tell him that she understood.
And, sadly, she did.
She understood that every time she told him of her love, it brought him pain rather than pleasure. Hawk didn’t want to hurt her. Angel knew that as certainly as he knew that she loved him. Yet he believed himself incapable of love.
And, believing that, he would hurt her as surely as she loved him.
She understood that, too, and accepted it as she had learned to accept so many painful things.
With a skill won at great cost from the past, Angel reached for the serenity of the rose. When she had achieved it, she stirred in Hawk’s embrace.
“I know what you’re going to do,” Angel said, kissing Hawk gently, smiling against his lips. “You’re going fishing. We’re going to catch a beautiful dawn salmon.”
Hawk lifted his head and looked at her. Tears came to Angel in a burning instant as she saw the pain and sadness and regret in Hawk’s clear, dark eyes.
“It’s all right,” she said, stroking his face. “Please, Hawk. Believe me. I know you’ll do everything you can not to hurt me. I don’t ask any more than that of you. Don’t ask it of yourself. Please.”
Hawk saw his own sadness and desire not to hurt reflected in Angel’s haunted eyes.
And then he saw deeper, her certainty and her love. She understood his limitations, his lifetime beyond the closed circle of human warmth, his inability to love her as she deserved to be loved. Yet she loved him anyway.
Hawk bowed to that, and to Angel.
Very gently he kissed her palm, accepting her as she had accepted him.
Chapter 25
The minutes and hours, days and weeks with Hawk swept by, each with its own aching beauty. Angel didn’t allow herself to count the days, to add them up and discover the end of summer coming toward her with each sunset. Loving and losing Grant had taught her not to live in the past.
Loving and knowing she would lose Hawk had taught Angel not to live in the future. Instead she lived in each moment, loving Hawk more with each touch, each smile, each shared memory.
“Angie?”
Angel looked up, startled out of her thoughts by Derry’s call. The tiny silver bells hanging from her ears rang sweetly with her sudden movement.
“I’m in my studio,” she answered.
Derry swung easily into the room. He had long since overcome any awkwardness with his crutches. Nor had there been any awkwardness over Angel’s changed relationship with Hawk. Angel knew that Hawk had talked to Derry, but she didn’t know what had been said.
Any fear Angel might have had that Derry would resent her loving a man other than Grant had been erased when Derry hugged her and told her that she had never looked more beautiful.
“Where’s Hawk?” Derry asked.
“On the – ”
“Phone,” Derry finished, grimacing. “Who is it this time?”
Angel shrugged and smiled sadly.
“Tokyo, I guess,” she said. “He’s already talked with London, New York, Houston, L.A. and whoever was vacationing on Maui.”
In the last week Hawk had spent more and more time on the phone. Despite her determination not to count, Angel knew that Hawk had already stayed past his original time limit. The complex, interlocking business transactions that he had mentioned when he first came to the island were coming to fruition.
“From what I’ve gathered,” Angel said, “things are getting to the crisis stage.”
“Hawk and I will probably take the same plane off the island,” said Derry.
Tomorrow Derry would finally get his cast removed and fly to Harvard. His dream of becoming a doctor had been made possible by Hawk, who had bought Eagle Head for more than Derry thought the land was worth.
