I head to turn the light off in the laundry room, where the washing machine is running midcycle, when the door to the backyard flings open. I yelp out in fright as it bangs against the counter behind it but then it quickly turns to anger when I see Hawkin there, shoulders leaning against the wall framing the jamb, head down, looking more than worse for the wear.

“Quinlan,” he slurs, head lifting slowly for his eyes to meet mine. “I need you.”

My heart skips a beat at the desperation in his tone. Hurt me and want me back, shame on you. Hurt me and I take you back twice? Dream on. In theory it sounds brilliant but when the man you want is standing before you with a pout on his lips and those words falling from his mouth my tough-girl facade wavers.

C’mon, Westin. Don’t cave. He was an asshole. Discarded you and now realized what he did and is looking at you like a puppy dog kicked to the curb.

I lean against the washer behind me, willing my damn heartstrings to quit tugging on everything inside me, and cross my arms over my chest in a futile attempt to keep him at arm’s length. “What? Your thirty-second flavor expire and now you’re coming back for more?” My tough-girl front returns momentarily with much more bravado than I actually feel.

“Q,” he sighs. “I need to explain.”

“You’re damn straight you do. You think I deserve—anyone deserves—to be treated like that? Discarded that way?” My voice rises as the hurt overrides the anger and fires in my veins. All of the pent-up emotion of the day that I tried to pretend didn’t matter bubbles up and explodes.

“There’s an explanation,” his voice is quiet, resigned, and I recognize the sadness but I’m on a roll here and nothing is going to stop the rejection I felt from coming out now.

“I don’t care, Hawkin! You may be some hotshot rock star but you know what? It doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole,” I yell at him.

“If you’ll be quiet I’ll explain!” he yells back, stepping into my space. He reaches out to my arm and I yank it out of his vicinity.

“No! There are no excuses good enough. We’re just friends, remember?” I shout like an adolescent throwing a tantrum. He runs a hand through his hair, eyes on mine, and muscle pulsing in his clenched jaw. “You think—”

Before I can finish my thought, his mouth is on mine. I struggle against him, arms pushing, legs moving, head darting from side to side but he holds me still: hips pinning me against the spinning washing machine at my back so that my arms are trapped between our bodies and his hands hold my head firmly in place. The fight in me rages stronger.

“No!” I yell against his lips, hating my body for betraying my mind as it begins to hum with the heat of our connected bodies, remembering just how good we can be. “How dare you!” It’s a halfhearted protest.

His fingers grip my hair and pull just tight enough that I am forced to look into his eyes. “I was trying to protect you.”

The sarcastic laugh takes me by surprise. “Really? Wow, you sure have a funny way of showing it, Hawke. What are you trying to protect me from? You?”

“Yes.”

“Nice try, rocker boy,” I sneer at his pathetic excuse. My anger drowns out the sincerity tinged with shame that is in his tone. My emotions war as what I think I should do and what I want to do clash against each other. I try to push him off me again, hating and loving and wanting and not wanting the warmth of his corded muscles against my body.

“Quin. Me. The shit in my life. All of it … Hunter was behind you,” he grunts out as he blocks my knee from connecting smartly. “I didn’t want him to mess with you. To hurt you to spite me.”

And the fight leaves me. My mind spins with the comment, with how hard that confession was for him to make.

Our breaths are panting with our exertion, our faces are close and his eyes search mine to make sure I understand. Suddenly there are so many questions I want to ask and he must see them all because not a second passes before his mouth crushes to mine and takes once again without asking. The difference is this time I let him.

I open up to him as his mouth searches for the answers to the problems his own eyes tell me he can’t find. I never understood when people said a kiss tasted this way or that way. I thought it was part of that fairy-tale princess world that I don’t subscribe to.

But I was wrong.

When our tongues connect, when his lips bruise mine, I can taste his desperation, understand that he needs something, someone, right now to help dissipate the pain and confusion that is rifling through his eyes.

And I may not understand it, in fact I may never know the truths that lie in those depths of gray but I do know that a man rarely admits he needs anything and when he does you better sit up and listen. And I’m listening.

I let him take, let him lead so the control he seeks is beneath his fingertips, willing and wanting and tangible. Where our connection earlier today was more a mutual meeting of frenzied desire, right now I can feel his need for so much more from me. To control so that he can calm, to sate so that he can feel whole, to have the release so that he can ease some of his restlessness.

And I’m here for him. I throw my threats from earlier out the window because he needs me and right now I’ll give him whatever he asks for to clear the pain from his eyes and the grief from his countenance.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes into me and I just nod my head in acceptance as his mouth claims mine once again. He kicks the door shut behind us without skipping a beat. His hands palm my breasts through my tank and mine slide beneath his shirt to feel his skin heated and taut with anxiety. I pull his shirt over his head and he does mine in turn and then my fingers unbutton his jeans earning me a pained groan as my hands find him hard and ready beneath the denim.

I shove his jeans and underwear down his hips and encircle him. He tears his mouth from mine, his head falling back as my name slips from his lips in a desperate moan. As I place a trail of openmouthed kisses down his exposed neckline, his fingers tighten on my arms when I sink to my knees on the floor before him.

I look up the plane of his defined torso to study him, jaw set, eyes burning, nostrils flaring, and when we lock eyes, I take him into my mouth. His hands immediately fist into the messy ponytail at the back of my head, wrapping the hair around his hand as he hisses in pleasure. “God, Quin.”

I may not be able to fix his problems or even know the answers to them, but this? Making him feel so much pleasure he can’t think otherwise for a bit? This, I can do for him.

His grip tightens; one of my hands is on his forearm while the other is holding his cock so that I can take it in my mouth. He holds my head still and fucks my mouth so that he hits the back of my throat before grinding his hips with a moan of ecstasy and then pulling back out. Where I’d normally explore more, tempt and taunt, I can sense from the volatility of his emotions, as well as the muscles tensed beneath my hand, that niceties aren’t welcome. He’s in this for the endgame, for the pleasure that might dull the pain, even if for a bit.

He holds my head still and moves his hips into my face. I know he’s close, can feel him hardening in my mouth but this time he presses himself a little too hard, a little too long so that I gag on his length. I hear his curse, feel the immediate release of my hair and his hands on my shoulders dragging me up, apologies on his lips as tears burn my eyes and I cough from the intrusion.

It’s really not a big deal, just a hazard of the act, but it’s almost as if something breaks within him because of it. He’s gone from angry and pent up to confused and regretful, trying to gather me into him and apologize. I’m sure it’s a mix of the alcohol and whatever happened to him today that has pain and grief written all over him and is the cause of his emotional instability. I’m probably so far off in my thinking, but my gut check reaction is that the only way to calm these manic extremes is to put him back in charge, tell him what I want, force him to finish this out.

And I have no clue what I’m doing, but I act on instinct, and what I can read in his expression.

“No, Hawke …” I try to push myself out of his arms. When I look into his eyes, I see emotion swimming within them, and press my lips to his in a no-holds-barred kiss. I force my tongue between his lips, thread my fingers through his hair, wrap a hand around his cock, and begin to pump it in my hand.

At first he doesn’t react but then my actions begin to spark him back to life. “Fuck me, Hawke. I need it hard, fast, rough.” I breathe my demands into his mouth and nip his bottom lip as I pull back and meet his eyes again, but this time I see the haze of desire begin to darken them as need washes over him.

And from one beat to the next, Hawke grips my hips and lifts me up onto the top of the washing machine. I don’t even have a moment to realize my victory because with the machine on spin cycle vibrating beneath me, he wastes no time jacketing up, parting my sex, and slamming into me in one slick, desperate stroke.

We both cry out as he bucks his hips before stilling momentarily, trying not to succumb to my wet heat. He waits a beat before pulling back out and setting a frantic, punishing pace as his hands hold my thighs apart and I press my back against the wall behind me. I watch his dick slide in and out of me and with the vibration of the machine beneath me, urging my release on, I slide a hand down between my thighs and add the friction to my clit needed to push me into the oblivion he’s holding out for me to find first.