Angel's Halo: Guardian Angel by Terri Anne Browning Read Free Book Online Page B

I could handle going back to being lost.

Chapter 5
    Gracie
    I felt the bed dip as Hawk climbed into bed beside me. I lifted my eyes long enough to check the time on the clock beside the bed through my lashes. Four thirty. I bit my lip and shut my eyes tight. He was late coming home again.
    Inhaling, I was surprised to find that he didn’t smell of perfume. Normally when he was late getting home he smelled like sickly sweet, cheap perfume. Like he had the night before. That he didn’t tonight confused me.
    When I felt Hawk shift closer behind me I clenched my hands and tried to will myself back to sleep. A minute passed. I knew that because I was trying to count sheep, and I had just barely gotten to sixty when I felt him shifting again. His chest pressed against my back and his hands wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer against him.
    The scruff from his day-old beard scraped over my neck, making me shiver. “I know you aren’t asleep, baby.”
    When he called me ‘baby’, I couldn’t help but melt into him. He rarely called me that. It was always ‘sweetheart’ or ‘angel’. I was a stupid, weak idiot when he used that one little word. I let my eyes flutter open and focused on the wall across the room. “Everything okay at the bar?”
    “Yeah, everything is good. Bash just had some club stuff to talk to me about.” His nose nuzzled my ear and I tried hard to hold in my gasp of pleasure. “You smell good, baby.”
    My teeth sunk into my bottom lip to keep from moaning as his teeth nipped at my earlobe. It was something that I’d been daydreaming about for weeks now, but I couldn’t help wondering if he was drunk. Hawk hadn’t ever come on to me like this before. Even in his sleep, when he touched me it was only ever to pull me closer and kiss my forehead.
    “Wh-what are you doing, Hawk?” I breathed when he pulled my lower body even closer to his lower half. His hips rocked against my bottom and I realized that he wasn’t wearing his normal sleep pants. He was in his boxers and it did nothing to mask the fact that he was very much aroused.
    “Trying to show you that you aren’t the only one that cares, baby.” His breath was hot on my neck but it made gooseflesh pop up along my entire body. “I care about you, Gracie. I’m sorry I haven’t showed you before now, but I was trying to take things slow. I didn’t know if what that fucking monster had done was still haunting you or not. I didn’t want to scare you with what I’ve been feeling and taint what we could have with that sick bastard’s memories.”
    I think my heart literally stopped. Was I dreaming? There was no way he could be saying all this for real… Right? Needing to know, I turned in his arms. He relaxed his hold on me enough to let me move so that we were face to face. The light from the bathroom was still on, so I could see his face clearly.
    I’d seen more than my share of drunken men in my lifetime. My father had been drunk nearly every night of my childhood and before his and my mother’s death, it had been a near all-day thing. So when I looked into Hawk’s green eyes I knew what to look for. They looked tired, but there was no glassiness, no bloodshot whites. His face wasn’t flushed with drunkenness and except for the hint of mint from his toothpaste I didn’t smell any lingering alcohol on his breath.
    He was completely sober.
    Was I dreaming then? I bit into my lip harder and when I felt a drop of blood beading up and the sting of the pain, I knew for sure that I was wide awake.
    Hawk growled, his eyes trained on my lips. “Don’t do that, baby,” he commanded in a rough voice. “Are you okay?” He lifted a hand, his thumb rubbed over my now sore bottom lip. When he wiped away my blood, his eyes darkened. “I would kill someone if they hurt you, Gracie. You hurting yourself like that does not put me in a good place. Why did you do that?”
    I licked away the remaining smear of blood. “I wasn’t sure if