Mason felt a dark pulse of energy roll through the room and scanned faces until he locked on the source. Jonny Morgan stood along the wall, scowling darkness on his face as he swung his head to watch Garrett walk past with Faynez, the teen couple so caught up in each other they didn’t even notice him.
That’ll be something to watch. He hated entertaining the thought even for a second, but the look on that man’s face meant trouble was brewing. Judge’s boy had done well living with Captain and DeeDee. He’d been an intensely focused hockey player from the time he stepped foot in their house. The kid had always been volatile, but respectful to and seemed to love his adoptive parents. When the kid had headed to Canada for a couple of years in the junior leagues, Mason had heard rumors of problems with the billet families, but Cap’n had passed it off as teen angst. After he came back to the Fort to play for the local team, Jonny had moved into an apartment on his own, and Mason had heard more than one complaint from DeeDee that she never got to see him. The Shoemaker kids were in and out all the time, so it wasn’t the house that was rejecting him.
Sammy walked up just behind Jonny and studied his best friend for a moment, tracking his gaze to where Sammy’s baby sister stood next to Garrett, head leaned against his arm. He glanced back at Jonny, then unerringly found his father in the crowd and Mason watched as a look passed between them, a promise of watchful care that Mason echoed when he caught Hoss’ eye, too.
He smelled his wife’s light, floral perfume before she got to him and Mason smiled as he lifted his arm in invitation. As he expected, it earned him a teasing slap on the side just before Willa tucked into her place beside him. “Dang it. Why can’t I ever sneak up on you?” He shrugged and lifted his beer, bringing his arm under her chin to do so. With her head lifted at the right angle, he leaned over and brushed his lips across her mouth, grinning wider when her lashes fluttered against her cheeks.
“Hey, babe.” At his soft words, he felt her lips move against his, and knew she was smiling. Best feelin’ in the whole goddamned world.
Better than okay
Hoss
Blowing out a slow, steadying breath, Hoss looked around the gallery with satisfaction. Over the past weeks, he’d enlisted Faith’s help to sort through and select canvases he would place with Tamara, and pick out a few more for display on the walls. That meant he’d had to cycle pieces from the gallery to the other parts of the house, and that had started him thinking.
After consulting with both Faith and Sammy, Hoss had gone to work creating spaces to put new collections throughout their living space, but he didn’t fill them with things already in the gallery. He’d shown his kids the images he had of Cassie’s arrangements, and both had been as blown away as he had been by the way Cassie had changed their perception of the art, had made it more meaningful with her accenting pieces.
The weeks since the event at the Diamante clubhouse in Ohio had been tough, and he had spent many of them torn between wanting to be where he needed to be. The problem was, he was needed in two places. On the one hand, he couldn’t fathom leaving Faynez to her own devices. First, she’d shown terrible decision-making with her risky choices, and it had still felt like more than a normal teenage rebellion, which meant they’d had to have painfully exposing conversations.
At least she finally opened up and told me what was wrong. That had been a conversation he wouldn’t have expected in a thousand years.
“Daddy?” Faith’s voice trembled, and Hoss instinctively reached out and wrapped an arm around her. He pulled her across the couch cushions to his side, holding her close. “Can I ask you a question and you won’t be mad?”
“Baby girl, you need to ask me whatever you need to know, and let me worry about my reaction.” He shook his head. “You know you can come to me with anything.”
“This is about Mom.” She’d spoken so quickly the words piled together into one long sound and it took him a moment to understand. When he did, he deliberately tried to keep his body loose, relaxed, giving her the space to ask whatever it was that had been eating at her. He’d seen the sideways glances she’d been giving him all day and had feared for a while it would be something about the kidnapping, something she hadn’t admitted to having happened yet, something that would break a part of him inside. It was almost a relief that whatever had occupied her brain all day wasn’t that, but about Hope.
“Ask me anything.” He gave her a squeeze. “Your momma is one of my favorite things to talk about.” Even a year ago that would have been a bald-faced lie forced through painful memories, but these days, he’d found the stories about Hope came easier, and he expected Cassie had a lot to do with that.
“The day she died.” Faith paused and swallowed, her throat clicking loudly. “It’s my birthday.” He nodded, because she was right. Although separated by hours, Faith’s birth in the early morning hours had landed on the same day her mother left this world. “Daddy.” Her voice cracked and she turned and buried her face against his shoulder. “Never mind.”
“No, baby. Ask. Get this out. You can’t let it sit like that. Tell me what you need to know about that day.” He had a tiny niggling of an idea, but couldn’t bring it out yet, because if he were right, then this needed to be his baby girl’s ask.
“Did I…did she die because of me? Did I kill Mom?”
Hoss rocked backwards as tears filled his eyes. Dammit, no. “No, baby girl.” He heard the trembling in his own voice and cleared his throat, trying to swallow the tears. “No, sweetheart. You did not kill Hope. She had a condition. It’s got a name a mile long, but it basically means she had a cluster of veins in her head that put her at risk of stroke. Her death coincided with the end of the pregnancy and your birth, but those events weren’t what triggered it.” He shifted and lifted her, bringing his girl to his lap so she could curl her arms around his neck, knowing tears were already flowing down her face. “Your momma had fainting spells and headaches. She’d get mad at herself every time it happened, and boy, she was funny when she was pissed. I didn’t ever tell her I thought that about how she acted, because then she’d have gotten pissed at me, and that wasn’t funny.” He chuckled. “I hated when she got mad at me.” Hoss held his daughter tighter, giving her an admission of something he’d held close for all these years. “If I’d only taken her to a doctor we might have learned the cause of her episodes, but we might not have. The doc I talked to after she passed was clear on that. There wasn’t a single thing we could have done differently that would have extended her life after that cluster of veins gave way.”
“I didn’t know that.” It took more than a minute for Faith to stutter out those few words, gulping sobs between each sound and Hoss smiled, feeling streams of salt pouring down his own cheeks. Pain and relief lay just under each of her words, and he’d given her the one taking away the other.
“Now you do. You’ve been carrying this by yourself, haven’t you? Never said a word to Sammy, because he’d have come to me. And never said a word to me. Why not, Faynez? Why do this to yourself, honey?” He knew the answer, but it couldn’t be debated until it was out of her head and on the wind, so he needed her to say it aloud.
“I…I didn’t want—” She stopped and shoved her face against his neck with a sob. Mumbled, her next words broke his heart. “I didn’t want to make you sad. You and Sammy got sad about Mom a lot. You got sad and didn’t like to talk about her much. Until Cassie. She’s fixed you somehow, and I couldn’t. Daddy, don’t be mad. I just couldn’t make you sad like that.”
“What a burden you’ve carried, baby girl. Caring for Sammy and me at the cost of your own peace of mind. Never hide your fears and concerns. Never. It’s a lot easier to lay things out there and see what comes of it, instead of bottling it up inside.” He tightened his arms around her. “Thank you for trusting me with this now, Faith. It means a lot to me.”
They sat like that for a long time, the light fading from the windows and shadows creeping across the floor to rest at his
feet. Finally, when Faith’s tears had run their course, she loosened her grip on his neck and sat up, pushing at her hair with one hand. “Garrett’s coming over tonight.” He smiled and lifted a hand, stroking her hair behind her ear. “I should get busy with dinner.”
“Nah, let’s order in tonight. You know what he likes from that Indian place, right?” She nodded. “Order that, and do me a favor?”
She blinked at him and then grinned, the expression at odds with her still swollen eyes, but he loved her even more for not trying to hide her pain from him anymore. “Want me to text Cassie and see what she’d like for supper, too?”
Oh, baby girl. His Faynez was going to be such a good woman. You see her, Hope? See what you made? “You got your old man’s number already? Man, I can’t slip anything past you these days.” He lifted her and set her on her feet, looking up from his seat. “I’d appreciate it, honey.”
“I’m on it!” She took a couple steps and twisted, looking back at him. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“Anything for you, baby girl. I love you.” God, how he loved her. She’s you all over, Hope. Their daughter was beauty and light wrapped up around a heart so big and good it was enough to take your breath away.
“Love you, too.” In a whirlwind of flying hair, she was gone, running through the house to get her phone.
That had been a week ago, and watching his baby girl relax was a blessing. Still, the idea she’d carried so much fear still tore at him, and when he talked it over with Cassie later, she’d empathized with both of them. Her take on it was Faith’s intelligence wouldn’t have let the confluence of dates go unnoticed, and her love for her father would have tried to protect him from what might be the most painful memory of all.
The buzzer from the gate announced a visitor and Hoss’ heart rate doubled. She’s here. He walked to the front of the house and waited a beat as he pulled in a deep breath. Then he opened the door and strode out just as Cassie pulled up in the drive, the rumble of her pipes rattling his bones in a well-known way, just like the sight of her in her leathers and helmet rocked his heart familiarly. I love her.
She tipped her head and gave him a grin, then worked through the process of parking the bike and dismounting. And she loves me, he reminded himself. I’m the lucky one here.
“Get on up here, woman. I’m needin’ to wrap my arms around you.” That had been the second piece where he’d been torn, because as much as Faynez needed him here, Cassie had needed to be in her own space where she felt safest. She’d come here for two nights afterwards, but then had carefully told him she was going home. The look on her face told him she wanted him with her but would never ask, and he was grateful for her understanding that his kids had to come first, always. Which is why what I’m gonna ask her is the best possible solution. Parking select brothers in her kitchen was something she’d given in grudgingly on, and that was her silent understanding that he’d needed to know in his soul she was safe.
He opened his arms wide and caught her as she ran to him, putting actions to his words and wrapping his arms tightly around her back and shoulders, cradling her head with the palm of one hand. Fingers in her hair, he tipped her head up, feeling her lips grazing along his throat in a way that had his dick interested. He angled her face and dropped his mouth to hers, starting slow, feeling the chill of the wind on her lips, chasing along the seam of her mouth with his tongue and eating down her moan as she opened to him. God, this woman.
With a groan he broke the kiss slowly, ending with a soft peck, plucking at her lips gently, then sliding his mouth along her cheekbone until he whispered in her ear, “Fuckin’ missed you, Cassie. You feel so good.”
She laughed, and the sound went right to his dick, too, bringing him to half-mast in two heartbeats. “You saw me last night.”
He tightened his arms around her. “Yeah, but then you slept in your own bed. I was lonely.”
Her grip on him loosened a moment, then tightened hard, like she couldn’t get close enough. “I was lonely, too.” Fuck yes, that’s the right answer.
Stepping back, he tugged at her fingers, pulling her with him. When she smiled at him, the look on her face soft, he was struck then at how much she’d changed from the first time he remembered really seeing her. Snapshots rotated through his mind. That night in the gallery, where she’d only interacted with his agent, she’d kept her gaze on the art the whole time, ignoring even the one man who’d offered her wine. Then when Hoss had invited himself to her house, the stark fear on her features as she recognized him, the tiny breaks in her mask as she’d looked at his pieces on her walls. And now, standing in the sunshine outside his home, a place he wanted more than anything to be her home, too.
“Come here, baby, I want to show you somethin’.” Just inside, she paused and bent to unzip her boots, leaving them beside the wall, and he looked at them there, lined up with his and old pair of sneakers Sammy had left behind, Faynez’ favorite sandals at the end. She straightened, and he bent, pulling his boots out and moving them, placing hers between his and Sammy’s shoes. He stood and pulled her in front of him, looking down over her shoulder. “Better,” he murmured, his lips against her neck.
“Okay.” She laughed softly. “Makes it look like I fit in here.”
“You do, baby.” He rubbed his jaw along her cheek, chasing her with his scruff when she giggled and ducked away. “More than you know.” He moved and led her by the hand down the hallway. “You were here a couple of times, but things were hectic and busy. You didn’t get to see what I promised you all those months ago.” Cassie tipped her head to one side and studied him. He arched an eyebrow and nodded at the door. “Go ahead, this is me inviting you into my lair.”
“Your lair.” She repeated his words with a laugh. “I thought the offer was to see your sketchy sketches.”
“Oh, yeah, we’ll get there, too.” He nudged her arm with his fingertips, slipping his hand to press his palm flat against her low back. “Open the door, baby.” Hoss followed her into the studio, bracketing her waist with his hands when she stopped just inside, hands clasped in front of her mouth. “Here you go. This is where some of the magic happens. House, lights to gallery mode.” The shades lowered automatically as spotlights brightened to shine on the new groupings he and Faynez had set-up. Two prominently empty spaces separated them. Cassie took a tentative step forwards and then glanced back at him over her shoulder. “Yeah, go look your fill, baby. I want to hear what you think of everything.” She blinked, and he saw her lashes were clumped together, a sure sign she was near tears. “No cryin’, Cassie. These are the things that make me happiest, and sharin’ them with you is an honor.” He swept an arm out, asking, “Where ya wanna start?”
He was startled when she turned and came back towards him, gaze locked on his face, the most serious expression he’d ever seen her wear making him cautious. She didn’t stop moving until she was pressed tight against him, arms wrapped around his neck. She rolled up to her toes and grazed her lips across his in a barely-there kiss, then followed that with firm pressure, mouth molding to his.
It didn’t take him but a moment to get on board with her idea, and he took over the kiss, tipping his head to the side and deepening the caress until it seemed there was no beginning and end to either of them, just one long caress. Tongue slipping inside her mouth, he tasted her, swallowing down her moans when his hand rose to plump her breast, fingers lifting the bottom curve to weigh the softness in his palm. Her hips arched forwards against him and he wedged his thigh between her legs, giving her a firm surface to press against.
Cassie’s fingers worked across his back, dipping to where his shirt tucked into his pants, rucking it up to flatten her palm on his skin. He groaned when her fingers curled, nails gliding in a light scrape across the ridges of his ribs. “What do you want, Cassie?” Mouth to her neck, he tangled his fingers in her hair and tilted her head to the side, placing hard, sucking kisses on her skin. “Hmmm?” He sank his teeth into the muscle of
her shoulder, holding firm for a moment. “What does my baby need?”
“You.” Thready and thin, she whispered to him, eyes closed and lost in the moment. “I want you. I just need you, Hoss.”
He bent his knees and scooped her up bridal style, laughing as she squeaked adorably. “You already have me. Lock, stock, and barrel, you’ve a lifetime membership in my arms.”
“Take me to bed?” Her smile faded and she stared into his eyes. “Love me?”
“I already do,” he promised her, padding up the hallway and carrying her through the door into his bedroom. It was the work of moments to lay her on the bed, and a few giggling heartbeats later, he had her undressed to her underwear. She tugged his belt free, then unfastened his jeans. Hoss shoved them down and watched Cassie’s face as he stripped naked, his rigid cock bounding free to slap up against his belly. She pushed up on her elbows and reached behind her with one hand, loosening her bra. It joined the rest of their clothing on the floor and she lay back against his pillows with a confident smile. Snapshot, right there. “God, I love you.”
Arranged at her side, he stroked along her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. “First time in your bed,” she murmured, turning her face to kiss his fingers.
“First of many times in this bed.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, dusting kisses up her shoulder until he reached her mouth. With a moan, she opened to him, and he delved inside, reveling in her taste and willingness to go here with him. Her willingness to accept him, and everything that came with him. “Our bed, if you’re ready.” She tensed beside him, and then relaxed slowly, her mouth moving against his. “I want you here, Cassie. With me.”
Rebel Wayfarers MC Boxset 4 Page 94