Mystery Man
Page 32

I had no response to that so I didn’t make one.
Instead, I said, “And Tack?”
“The attitude, babe, you threw a hissy fit in Ride and not a lotta women surrounded by members of the Chaos MC would rant about her sister and Barbies and a f**kin’ TV show.”
My eyes got squintier. “How do you know this shit?”
“I got eyes on Ride, Sweet Pea, I watched the whole show and you leak that to Tack I will not be happy.”
This surprised me. “You have eyes on Ride?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you have eyes on Ride?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
This was true. Not only did I not need to know, I didn’t want to know.
“Okay, you made your point,” I told him. “Can we get on to the good news?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “The good news is, the fire was contained to the living room. My brother works for the DFD; he’s been to the scene this morning and reports your laptop is all right.”
He had a brother? He had a mother who was a nut who named him a somewhat unusual but definitely cool name and a brother who was a firefighter?
I was finding it difficult to process all this information coming at me – a year and a half and nothing but nocturnal visits and multiple orgasms and now all of this.
“You have a brother?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Do you have any other siblings?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“What? A sister? Brother? Two? Twelve?” I pressed.
“Another brother,” he answered.
Good God. There were three Italian, Cuban, Puerto Rican male Delgados roaming the earth. How did I not know this? As a woman, I should have instinctually felt their presence.
“Where are you?” I continued my interrogation.
“What?” he asked.
“In the lineup, where are you? Firstborn, middle, last?”
“First.”
Shit, no wonder he was bossy. The firstborn of three boys.
“Babe, did you hear what I said about your laptop?” Hawk called.
I blinked and looked at him.
Then I asked, “What are their names? Falcon and Eagle?”
His dimples popped out then he shared, “My name is Falcon.”
“Your name is Hawk.”
“No, babe, my middle name. Falcone.”
I blinked again. “Your middle name is Falcone?”
“I told you my mother was a nut.”
“What is that? Italian?”
“Yep.”
“So what are your brother’s names?”
“Von and Jury.”
Jeez. His mother was a nut.
“Did your Dad have no input into the naming of his children?”
The dimples deepened. “He strapped her with three boys, Sweet Pea, she wanted girls. She married my Dad, three boys from his seed, she knew she was in for a lifetime of fights, blood, drunkenness, puke and pregnancy scares. That’s what she got. Layin’ that shit on her, he wasn’t gonna fight her on names.”
He needed to stop. He was freaking me out. This was TMI. Major TMI.
“TMI,” I muttered, staring at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Too much information, Hawk.”
“Babe, we’re all in our thirties. Von is married. We grew up, learned control and to be smart. The drunkenness, puke and pregnancy scares are history.”
He’d left out the fights and blood.
Then something came to me. “You don’t use protection with me.”
“I did the first few times.”
This was true, he did.
“But –”
“Rifled through your shit, saw your birth control pills. Put you on radar, saw you shared that body with no one but me, decided it was unnecessary.”
My eyes got squinty again. “You rifled through my shit?”
“Gwen, baby, clue in. I was makin’ you mine. When I make a woman mine, I do my homework.”
I stared at him, uncertain what this meant and deciding for sanity’s sake not to ask.
Then I mumbled, “I need a homemade donut,” because I did. I needed three. Then I needed to get my ass to the mall. I felt another little black dress coming on.
I was interrupted in my plan of attack on the mall when Hawk plucked me out of bed, twisted me, I landed on my back and was pressed into the mattress by his weight.
“See you’re gettin’ stressy,” he muttered, his eyes scanning my face, his hands skimming my body.
Mm.
“My childhood home was firebombed last night and I don’t know what to do about you. Of course I’m getting stressy.”
His face disappeared in my neck and he murmured in my ear, “I can teach you better ways to deal with stress than downin’ donuts.”
I knew this to be true since he’d already expended a fair amount of effort on those lessons. Except for stressing out about why I was letting him visit me, after a night with him my body felt like I’d received a one and a half hour full body massage at the hands of a master while in a steam room.
I put my hands to his shoulders and exerted pressure, saying, “My stepmom and your commandos are in the kitchen.”
His head came up and he looked down at me, his eyes warm and my belly got squishy. “We’ll be quick and quiet,” he whispered.
He could be quick? He’d never been quick before. He was a man who took his time and he did this in a good way.
“I can’t have sex in a house that Meredith is in. And I can’t have sex with you because I haven’t decided what to do about you.”
I wasn’t paying attention so when his hands met the hem of my nightshirt then went in and up, the warmth of them light on my skin made me shiver.
“How about I help you decide,” he offered then his head dipped and his lips slid across my jaw and that felt nice, coupled with his hands still moving on me, I did another shiver.
I pulled myself together. “No, I need to make the decision on my own. I’m compiling a mental pros and cons list of whether I should explore things with you.”
His head came up, his lips in a minor grin but the dimples were there. One of his hands stilled but the other one came out of my nightshirt, lifted and ran along my hairline.
“What you got?” he whispered.
“You’re bossy, arrogant, intrusive, annoying and you crushed Troy like a bug without thought or remorse. Those are cons,” I shared honestly.
His minor grin amplified.
See! Totally unrepentant.