Biker Daddy: Devil's Mustangs MC

by Paula Cox

  When I break it off, she’s panting.

  “Nothing will ever break us,” she says, laying her forehead against mine. Love swells in my chest, real love, love which makes it hard to believe what a lucky bastard I am. “I can’t believe I ever thought it would.”

  “It’s you and me against the world, baby,” I say, placing my hand on her bare leg, a leg which still drives me to fuckin’ madness. “But you should’ve dressed warmer, that’s for sure.”

  “Monster.” She laughs. “Animal. Dog!”

  “Your monster, your animal, your dog? Don’t think there’s anythin’ so bad about that.”

  Aedan

  Livia’s about the toughest woman I’ve ever met, make no mistake, the toughest, fieriest, hardest, scariest woman I’ve ever met. But childbirth is also tough as nails and just lookin’ at my wife, I can’t help but be glad I don’t have to go through it. I’d take a shootout in a bar any day. I stand next to the bed, clutching her hand, and any minute I reckon my bones are going to break from how hard she’s squeezing me.

  “Ahhhhhhh!” she roars. “Ahhhhhhhh!”

  I went to all the classes, participated in all the breathing exercises, looked at all the diagrams and all the charts. I’ve been a good boy in that department, but, damn, this is way crazier than any of those classes ever showed. I feel like I’ve just been dropped into the dragon’s lair, except instead of a dragon it’s my hot-as-hell wife. Livia’s veins bulge out of her neck and her fingernails slice into my skin.

  “I can’t do this,” she pants, as the midwife tries to coax the baby out. Livia turns to me, face looking as though all her energy has drained from it, white in places, red in others. “I can’t…Aedan. This is too hard.”

  “You can do it, baby,” I say. I lean into her, whisper in her ear so the midwife can’t hear. “Remember all the shit you’ve been through, princess. Remember the bar; remember how you tricked Carlos. Do you remember Ireland, when you heard about Hare’s Gap? The hardest walk in all of Ireland, the man said, and what did you do? You marched me to the shop, bought some hiking gear, and conquered that damn walk.” I remember the day well ’cause all I wanted to do was relax and fuck, but Livia said that if I had the gall to trick her into coming to Ireland, I’d have to go with her. “By the end of it, I was more tired than you, remember?”

  “Aedan, thank you,” she says, “but walking is a little different from pushing a vending machine out of your vagina. Men!”

  I chuckle, can’t help but chuckle. Almost a year of marriage—the baby was almost certainly conceived in Ireland…or maybe it was on the plane, actually—and Livia still has it in her to make me feel like that foolish jackass who mistook her for a secretary once upon a time.

  “This. Is not. Funny!”

  She slaps me across the arm.

  “Come on,” the midwife says. “You can do this. It only needs a little push.”

  “A little push…”

  Livia turns glaring eyes to the midwife.

  Thank god she hasn’t got that pen on her. I reckon she’d stab the midwife, no question, a stone-faced sturdy woman who operates down there like this is business as usual.

  “Come on, princess,” I say, wiping sweat from her forehead over and over. Her beautiful thick hair is plastered to her skin with sticky sweat and her dimples, which I know she hates but I find so, so cute, are deeper than ever, as though pitted in frustration. I give her hand another squeeze. “You’re stronger than this.”

  “Don’t tell me how strong I am. Don’t tell me how easy this is. Don’t tell me anything. Just be quiet, you Irish beast, and let me break your hand.”

  I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

  After a few moments of blowing air, Livia makes another push. The veins on her neck bulge so much I’m sure she’s going to explode, like lava coursing beneath her skin. The only other time I’ve seen her veins bulge like that, I reflect, is when the pregnancy made her super-horny and we did it in a club, in the toilets, and she came so hard she looked as she does now, on the cusp of explosions. She pushes even harder and screams so loud I’m shocked when the ceiling doesn’t come crashing down.

  “Raghhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  But then, after the screaming and the pain and the sense that this is never, in a million years, going to end, the midwife pulls a mewling pink bundle from between Livia’s legs and carries it off to the side, where the cleaning station is. Livia gets on with the rest of the business—stuff which confuses me, truth be told, afterbirth and all that, stuff which I didn’t even know about before Livia got pregnant—and then, finally, she slumps on the bed.

  “You did well,” I say. “I’m proud.”

  The baby screams louder than its mother.

  “Is it a boy or a girl?” Livia asks.

  She didn’t want to know beforehand, and I saw no reason to argue with her. The way I see it, as long as the kid is healthy and happy, that’s all that matters.

  I’ll be a better dad than Patty, I think. I have to be. I have to do for that kid what Patty never did for me. I have to give him love. Dammit, I’m going to give that kid so much love he’s going to hate me by the time he’s a teenager. Fine, let him hate me. Just let him never think I don’t love him, is all. Let him be one-hundred percent on that. Or her…let her…

  But then the nurse says, “It’s a boy,” and carries the tiny pink thing over.

  Livia takes the boy in her arms and smiles down at him with such love that you wouldn’t guess she was roaring like an ogre just a few minutes ago. She looks spent and can hardly keep her eyes open, but she spends a good ten minutes stroking his face, playing with his hands. I watch this eagerly, finally feeling, for the first time in my life, that I have a family, a real family, a family of my own. Then Livia offers me the child, and suddenly I’m afraid.

  “I…”

  She tilts her head at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just…what if I drop him?” But it goes deeper than that, deeper than I can put into words.

  Luckily, I don’t have to; Livia knows me as well as I know myself by now, probably better.

  “You are not Patty,” she says. “You are your own man and you’ll do one-hundred times better than he did. I promise you. I won’t let you get out of line.”

  I take my child, hands shaking, heart pounding in my ears, more nervous and scared than I’ve ever been on a hit. I hold him close, feeling the warmth of him, and then something changes inside of me. It’s like something is added; the hole which I’ve spent decades trying to fill with Patty’s love is finally filled. I smile, and then I laugh, laugh like I’ve never laughed before, and the baby makes a bubbling, coughing noise which sounds like my laughter.

  “Luca,” I say, looking into Livia’s eyes. “I think we should call him Luca.”

  Livia nods, tears sliding down her cheeks. “Luca,” she repeats, and then bursts into the tears of a woman who has just given life, happy that the baby’s alive and well, and yet sad that she’s no longer pregnant all at once.

  The midwife takes Luca away to be monitored and I stroke Livia’s hair, twining it around my fingers, until she falls into an exhausted sleep.

  I’m the luckiest goddamn man alive, I think.

  Livia

  I’m the luckiest woman alive, I think, as I watch Aedan dance around the room with Luca.

  The room itself is a testament to Aedan’s love for our child. He painted the walls, built the crib, bought the toys, built and painted the box the toys go in, applied the wallpaper, built the shelves. Luca grins his gummy grin as Aedan dances here and there. Looking at them both, I feel a swelling of love in my chest, not just lust, but real, true love, the sort of love a happily married woman feels, the sort of love a happily married mother feels. I feel it all the time, and yet it still takes me by the surprise. It’s like I’m watching myself, thinking, Who is that lucky bitch? Who is that woman? And then I realize it’s me, and I’m happier than I ever dreamed I’d be all over again.

 
“Are you getting jealous, princess?” Aedan says, as he lays Luca down in the crib. He does this with care, bundling the blanket and propping it behind him so he doesn’t hurt himself. Watching him work, it’s difficult to believe those hands capable of murder. But they are, I think, a thrill moving through me. He’s still the man I married, after all.

  “No,” I say, giving him a pout. “I’d never get jealous over you, you Irish—”

  He darts across the room, grabs me, and kisses me firmly on the lips.

  “Get away from me!” I giggle.

  He moves behind me, wraps his arms around my belly, and lays his chin on my head. The sky is blue and the sun is bright, a shaft darting through the curtains and making the room glow yellow. The house—paid for with Aedan’s savings, a detached four-bedroom out of town—is unusually quiet.

  “I love you,” Aedan says. “I’m so glad you once almost stabbed me with a pen.”

  I laugh, and then turn in his embrace. He looks down at me with those hard eyes. Still hard, still dark, but now with a glint of sunshine in them.

  “I’m glad I almost killed you once, too,” I say.

  Then we kiss and passion erupts between us, passion which makes me wonder if Luca will have a sibling before long.

  THE END

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  More Books by Paula Cox

  I WASN’T A HERO AND SHE DIDN’T ASK TO BE SAVED.

  She's fought tooth and nail to survive.

  I take what I want.

  She didn't ask for a savior.

  But she doesn’t know that I saved her for myself.

  I f*ck and leave, simple and sweet. But when I saw her surrounded by those animals, something in me snapped.

  Watching over some chick ain’t the kind of thing I do.

  But Aimee was something else.

  A spitfire with a body begging to be tamed, and a smart mouth I wouldn’t mind wrapped around me.

  She knows I’m a monster.

  But this monster’s her only chance of survival out here.

  And I won’t stop until I make her MINE.

  ***

  THIS JOB DIDN’T ASK ME TO TAKE HIS DAUGHTER, BUT THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I’LL DO.

  I was supposed to kill the Don of our oldest rival crime family.

  But that was before I got a glimpse of his daughter.

  An untamable spitfire hiding under an innocent spoiled princess.

  Once I saw her, I had a different plan in mind.

  I plan to put her under me—night after night, again and again

  Her father thought I was here to negotiate a truce between our crime families.

  He had no idea I was sent to destroy them from the inside.

  His innocent daughter was the only one who suspected me.

  A princess who’s been sheltered from the world her father built.

  One look at her, and the last thing I wanted was to keep her quiet.

  I’ll finish this job, and then I’m taking her as a bonus.

  She may try to uncover me for who I really am.

  But not before I take her.

  Strip her.

  And leave her throat raw from screaming.

  ***

  He left me broken and shattered.

  I never thought he’d be back in my life.

  I swore I wouldn’t give him a second look much less a second chance.

  But that was before he came back like a whirlwind.

  Not to sweep me off my feet, but to put me on my knees

  JESSIE

  It’s not every day that a ghost walks back into your life.

  I did everything I could to put that horrible day out of my memory.

  But with a single word, he brought it all back.

  Brought it back and forced me to remember.

  He tells me he’s back to right the wrongs of the past.

  A second chance. A new start.

  I should know better than to trust him.

  After all… he broke my heart once already.

  How can I be sure that he won’t do it again?

  TEX

  There was absolutely no way she should want me.

  Hell, I wasn’t even sure if she still remembered me.

  But I remember her.

  There was no forgetting a girl like her.

  She haunted my dreams for twenty years.

  Left me hard more times than I can count.

  I won’t pretend that I’ll fix the past and mend our wounds.

  I won’t pretend that things won’t be worse before they get better.

  But I nearly lost her once.

  And now that she’s back in my life…

  There was no way I’ll lose her again.

  No way I’m ever letting her go.

  Why bargain when I can buy her outright.

  I’m a professional killer. Rescuing helpless women isn’t what I do. But when the daughter of my next target gets kidnapped and auctioned off, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

  I’ll buy her and make her talk.

  That was before I saw her. One look and I can’t tear my eyes away—can’t stop imagining her body pinned underneath mine.

  One look and I know it’ll be impossible to keep my hands off her.

  She thinks I’m here to save her.

  She could not be more wrong.

  I’m going to break my code. Then I’ll break her.

  And show her what it means to be owned.

  ***

  I was supposed to save his daughter, not keep her for myself.

  When you kill for money, you know that your story probably doesn’t have a happy ending. But when I met Stella, I knew I might have a shot.

  She’s everything I’m not… pure, innocent, and without a glimpse of how evil the world can be.

  Her ex wanted her dead, her father wanted her safe.

  Me?

  I want her legs wrapped around me while she screams my name.

  I want to save her so I can keep her for myself.

  But all I did was put her in more danger.

  Now I’m doing everything to keep her alive.

  And when the dust settles, I’m going to make her mine…or die trying.

  ***

  She was marked for someone else, but I’m taking her for myself.

  I need a relationship like I need a bullet in the head—especially with a high-maintenance brat like Ana. The kind who’s got their head in the clouds instead of down here with the rest of us in the real world.

  She thinks she can tell me what to do. She thinks she’s in charge.

  I’ll tame her body, her mouth, her mind—and make her beg me for more.

  One problem--her ex is a crazy bastard who thinks he can get her back by taking me out.

  He thinks that I’ll give up what’s mine.

  He couldn’t be more wrong.

  ***

  I had every reason not to trust him

  I should’ve known better than to let a brute like him into my life.

  He turned my life upside down in the worst way possible: spread me open and took what he wanted—what I needed.

  He wasn’t supposed to stay.

  I wasn’t supposed to scream for more.

  But when he holds me down and grinds his hard body into mine.

  Makes me his possession and obsession.

  Makes me forget who I am and what he is.

  I can’t tell if this is all a dream come true.

  Or if I’m trapped in living nightmare.

  But as long as he’s by my side, I don’t ever want to wake up.

  ***

  I SHOULD KNOW THAT I WAS PLAYING WITH FIRE

  HOPE

  Killian O’Connor was the chance that I never had. The glimmer of hope that I thought was gone. He makes me believe that everything will be okay.

  He doesn’t hide what he is, and I should know
better than to get close to him.

  I should know that I was playing with fire.

  We belong together, I know it and I’m sure he knows it too.

  But then why is he holding back?

  KILLIAN

  This club is my life, my blood, my family.

  I didn’t expect to drag Hope into it. But now that she’s here, I can’t get her out of my mind. The first taste of her lit a fire, and the second damn near burned my world down.

  I can’t let her get too close. I can’t put her so close to the danger.