Wind Therapy (Sacred Hearts MC Pacific Northwest Book 2)

by A. J. Downey

  We were on the shores of the Pacific, the surf a dull and distant roar down the beach, the water stretching uninterrupted for as far as the eye could see.

  It was hot, one of the last days of good weather we were bound to have before the rain and the wet of autumn rolled in. This wasn’t an official club beach run, just something we had all decided we needed now that Eastern Washington chapter was up and running and we could all breathe a little better.

  Abuela had signed over guardianship of my brother to me without a fight and had gone back to Mexico. Julio had called and told me he has all the necessary paperwork waiting and he would pass it along on the next run out that way. He said things were already better. That the air felt lighter and the people were happier than they’d been in a long time.

  I was grateful it had all worked out so well. I mean, it rarely did… and as I looked on at Tic-Tac, Derry, Maverick, and Nine kicking the ball around with my little brother, I was reminded that seldom was anything perfect.

  “What’s he doing?” Dahlia asked, eying the trim blond man over her sunglasses.

  “Still giving Marisol a hard time,” Little Bird said with a sigh.

  “Aw, yeah, he’s a stickler for the rules,” Dahlia said with a wicked smile of her ruby red lips.

  She was dressed totally retro in a black fifties style two-piece swimsuit, her skin shining softly with a sheen of sunscreen making her tattoos almost iridescent in the light of the sun. She eyed Tic-Tac sharply and cocked her head.

  “I suppose I owe you one,” she said with a sigh, and I turned my head to look back at her. She rolled her eyes at me, but not unkindly.

  “Girl, if you’re going to be Maverick’s queen of this MC, you need to learn how to not take any shit off these guys. For example,” she craned her neck slightly and called out, “Hey, Tic-Tac!”

  “What?” he called back without looking and she turned to me with this look like, well?

  I sighed, hating confrontation and called out, “I need to talk to you.”

  “In a minute.”

  “How about now?” I asked tersely.

  He turned from the little impromptu soccer match and demanded, “What’s your problem?”

  “You!” I cried back. “You’re my fucking problem. You and your goddamn attitude. Fucking get over yourself! I made a mistake, not sure why the fuck you can’t let it the fuck go!”

  All activity ceased and the guys all turned.

  “I’m not going away,” I grated. “So, you better get used to it.”

  “Bravo,” Dahlia said under her breath with a smile. Tic-Tac opened his mouth and Dahlia stepped up, so to speak, and said, “Don’t even try it!”

  Tic-Tac shut his mouth, turned around and my little brother laughed at him and kicked him the ball. Maverick was grinning from his place on the sand, his sunglasses over his eyes making the emotion in them unreadable but judging by the fact he didn’t get in my shit, I had to guess he was some kind of impressed or proud.

  I leaned back in my beach chair with a huff in my black bikini and Dahlia handed me a drink.

  “To never being a doormat, ladies.”

  “Here’s to being a badass,” Little Bird said and held out her plastic Solo cup and we clinked plastic.

  “That felt really good,” I confessed.

  “Had to feel better when you put your grandma in her place,” Dahlia said dryly. I nodded.

  In some ways it had, in other ways it’d been utterly terrifying.

  I had a lot to think about on the beach as the afternoon wound down. We were staying in this odd little hotel made up entirely of vintage travel trailers, this time. Several of the guys manned this huge grill when we got back to it and the liquor and beer was flowing. Mateo had his own trailer near ours thanks to Maverick, and as soon as I got him fed and checked his insulin pump, I got him put to bed.

  “Marisol?” he said right before I went to leave the trailer.

  “Yeah, buddy?” I asked.

  “Am I ever gonna see Abuela again?” he asked.

  I went back to his bed and sat down beside him.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I told him. “Does that make you sad? I mean, do you miss her?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I like Maverick and the rest of the guys. Their nicer to you than our abuela ever was. I don’t understand why she hated you so much, it made me sad.”

  “It’s all grown up stuff, Mateo. You don’t need to know why, you just need to know she loved you very much, at the very least and it’s okay to miss her.”

  “I missed you too, when you were gone,” he said. “A lot more than I miss her.”

  I smiled and kissed the top of his head.

  “You don’t have to say things like that to spare my feelings, little bro.”

  “I know, it’s true though.”

  I sighed.

  “You good?” I asked.

  He nodded happily.

  “I love you,” he said and I smiled.

  “I love you, too.”

  I got up and went to the door, halfway out of it he called out to me, “I love you!”

  “I love you, too, Mateo. Now, try to get some sleep. We have a long ride back tomorrow then we got to get you ready for school.”

  He huffed out a sigh, patently unhappy that I was sticking to my bedtime guns and said, “I know.”

  I shut the door tightly to his little Airstream and went and found Maverick by the firepit.

  “Hey, baby.” He pulled me down into his lap. I made a noise of protest and said, “I was going to get a drink!”

  “What do you want? I’ll get it for you.” I looked up and Tic-Tac’s face was unreadable.

  “Jack and Coke,” I said softly and he gave a nod.

  “He’s not a bad guy,” Maverick said. “Just a hardass and a stickler for the rules. It’s the Army in him.”

  “He was in the military?” I asked, looking after him as he mixed my drink.

  “Yup. Couple of tours, no injuries but he definitely saw some shit.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “A lot of us don’t advertise our pain,” he pointed out. “You certainly did a damn good job of keeping your shit under wraps.”

  “You got me there,” I admitted and looked down into his face. He reached up and tweaked a thumb in a light caress along my cheek.

  I laid a hand on the side of his neck and caressed beneath his jaw with my thumb, leaning down to kiss him.

  It was never enough to just kiss him with a simple press of lips. It never failed that I would end up wanting more, coming back for more, so I didn’t bother to pull back. Instead, I let the kiss deepen naturally, my tongue sliding against his in a sensual dance that ignited things lower in my body.

  “Here.”

  I jumped slightly, the spell broken and looked up. Tic-Tac handed me down my drink.

  “Thanks,” I murmured.

  “No problem.”

  He walked away and I took a sip, coughing slightly. It was good. Good and strong.

  “What just happened there?” I asked.

  “Well, I do believe you asked to be forgiven and I have to say that looked like a peace offering to me,” Maverick said with a grin and I shook my head a bit mystified.

  “Boys,” I said sardonically, and he laughed.

  It wasn’t much longer that he bounced me on his knee and said, “What’s say me and you go someplace a little more private?” he said.

  With a raised eyebrow and a final sip of my drink I asked, somewhat tipsy, “Are you propositioning me?”

  He gave an exaggerated nod and said, “Yes. Absolutely.”

  I giggled and he pushed me up into a standing position off his lap. I got up, handed the cup off to Nine who reached out to take it and Maverick dipped and came up, hoisting me up over his shoulder like a sack of grain while I shrieked at the unexpected maneuver.

  A rowdy cheer went up around us, drowning out my protests as he marched us across the grounds to our ow
n trailer while I cried out, “No, stop! Put me down! Oh, my God, I think I’m gonna puke!”

  “You better not!” he cried and swatted me on the ass which was on full display up over his shoulder.

  “I am gonna kill you!” I declared and he laughed.

  “Can a guy get a last fuck?” he asked, setting me down. The world spun for a moment and I leaned in for a kiss.

  “Absolutely,” I declared, right before our lips met.

  He opened the door to our trailer and practically shoved me up the steps and through. I giggled madly against his lips and lost my breath to his kiss as we both fervently got each other naked as fast as possible.

  I groaned when he bent me over the bed, slapped my ass with a great resounding crack that reverberated off of the stainless-steel walls of the small trailer’s space, and he rammed into me almost before I was ready.

  I arched beneath him, shoving my pussy onto him in offering as he gripped my hips and set the rhythm for a punishing fuck that left us both moaning and gasping.

  “You like that?” he demanded roughly. “You like my dick inside you?”

  I laughed, a sultry, throaty sound that was wicked in its delight.

  “I love it,” I gasped. “I love it, now harder!”

  He complied, wonderfully so, our bodies clapping together in sharp reports of sound that echoed back at us, our feral cries mingling, our bodies dewy with sweat as we found this special synchronicity that has us flying along that razor’s edge of orgasm so hard, so fast, it was even more thrilling than the best wind therapy we’d shared together to date and it seemingly set our souls free like nothing else could.

  We switched positions, me on my back, his hands on the backs of my thighs, folding me practically in half, pressing my knees to my chest as he worked his way in and out of my pussy. This position changed the angle somehow, made things not only more intimate, but made it feel as though he somehow went deeper, tightened me up, made it feel as though he filled me to the point of over full and I lived for it.

  I gazed into his eyes and gasping, blurted out, “I love you! Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop!”

  “Never, baby, never in a million years,” he grunted sharply between thrusts and we were like that for I don’t know how long. A minute? Fifteen? An hour?

  It didn’t matter. All that mattered in these moments was that it was just him and just me and that for however long we could keep this up we were simply us and I wanted it to be us for the rest of our lives.

  Jesus, fuck, I loved him.

  Epilogue

  Sometime much later…

  Fenris…

  Bar was hoppin’. I sometimes bounced at this cowboy bar out in Ravensdale, just north of Black Diamond. I lived out on the edge of Auburn in the Green Valley area, so it wasn’t too long of a haul for me and it was something to do on a Friday night when the club didn’t have anything going on.

  It was a pretty okay gig, a flat rate of pay for the night, cash under the table and it bought some goat or chicken feed for the farm on occasion.

  Mostly, it gave me an outlet for some of my aggression when shit was otherwise calm around the club. Nothing like pitching some drunk frat bros or wannabe cowboys out on their ass, or better yet, their face in the gravel lot.

  This was one of my pop’s first stops when he got out of the joint. His old high school buddy, Mitch, ran the place and always had a job for him when he got out. When my pops started getting up in years, after my sister died, I’d just naturally transitioned into the spot my dad had held down at the door.

  He still came in and drank, taking up a stool at the end of the bar to shoot the shit with Mitch while I worked the door.

  Not tonight, though. Tonight, it was just me, checking ID’s as the citizenry’s ladies and gents filed in.

  Mitch had been making a killing ever since he’d put in the dance floor and sound system and added the mechanical bull in the corner.

  He had a regular Texas-style Roadhouse going on out here, and it was popular.

  “Hey, Fen.” Bobby, the junior doorman handed me an ID I shone my flashlight on it and double-checked it for him. It was legit. I looked at the picture and up at the girl who didn’t look a fuckin’ day over sixteen.

  “Try not to stay too late, darlin’. Place gets pretty nuts after eleven,” I said, handing it back to her. She smiled prettily and blushed and it did absolutely nothing for me.

  “I don’t know, Lindsay… I don’t think this is a good idea,” I heard and I looked up into a beautiful set of green eyes, taking the two rectangles of laminated whatever the fuck driver’s licenses in Washington were made of.

  Lindsay was a brunette, the math told me she was twenty-eight and she looked like a bitch. Her makeup overdone, titties on full display, one of those types looking to hook up and ride a cowboy. She fit right in with the rest of the posers inside. Fake as shit, I had no interest in her or anyone else who came through these doors, typically.

  The other license, the name, like her eyes, caught my eye for its uniqueness. Aspen. Aspen Lawson. I handed each lady their license back and let my gaze linger on Aspen.

  She was beautiful in an unconventional way – thicker, with some real tits and an ass, a true hourglass figure in a thin sweater that clung to her over jeans and a pair of stylish knee-high boots. She looked cold standing out here waiting to get in. It wasn’t exactly a night for going without a jacket, but a lot of girls did. It was warm inside the bar and it was one less thing to have to try and keep track of.

  She had these luxurious blonde curls that framed her face, held back by a slim glittering line of rhinestones, some kind of headband that was hidden but for the evenly spaced stones in her hair. Simple, cute, her makeup, if it was there, understated and accentuating her natural beauty.

  She was tall, too. Five foot nine, maybe? Still, not too tall when it came to me. I still looked down at her from my six-foot-five height.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, eyes wide where they met mine and I nodded. She plucked her license from my rough, tattooed fingers and I looked after her as she disappeared inside with her friend.

  “Hey, man.” I turned back to the half-jock, half-cowboy wannabe who was next in line in his polo shirt and scowled, taking his license from him and skimming it.

  “Go ahead,” I growled and let him through. I had some difficulty putting the pretty blonde out of my mind…

  Hours later, the bar was closing and Mitch came to find me at the door.

  “Hey, we got one that’s drunk as fuck and can’t find her friend.”

  “On it,” I growled and heaved myself off the stool at the door. It’d been a quiet fuckin’ night. One near fist fight over a girl, but they’d all been pussies and I’d thrown them out without incident. That’d been it, so far.

  I headed into the bar trailing Mitch, and I didn’t know what I would find. I can tell you, the absolute last thing I expected to find was the reluctant blonde, Aspen, drunk as fuck in a back-corner booth.

  I mean she was gone.

  It was pretty impressive, actually.

  I slid into the booth with her and cupped her cheek.

  “Hey!” I called out. “Hey, Aspen!”

  “You know her?” Mitch asked.

  “No, I just remembered the name for some reason. Not one you see very often.”

  “Well she’s the last one in here, you remember if she came with a friend?”

  “Yeah, a brunette, L-something,” I answered absently as Aspen groaned.

  “Shit, I’ll have Becca check the ladies’ room but looks like Aspen here got ditched.”

  “Don’t bother, the bitch she came with probably got drunk and fucked off with one of these wannabe cowboys. Do me a favor and call my pops, have him bring the truck.”

  “You sure?” Mitch asked with an incredulous scoff.

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  I leaned Aspen up against me and sighed. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d brought a drunk back to mine and m
y pop’s place to sleep it off, but it definitely was the first time I’d be bringing a woman as pretty as she was home with me.

  It took my pops a good half an hour to get there, and he wasn’t happy about it.

  “What the fuck?” he demanded and I scowled up at him.

  “Shut up and get the fuckin’ doors for me, old man.”

  “I am not—”

  “You ain’t doing shit except driving. I’ll handle the rest.”

  He growled a rumbling noise of displeasure and I ignored him. I got her up, unsteady on her feet, groaning. It so wasn’t happening. I got my arm beneath her knees and lifted her just as she passed out again. She had some weight to her, and while I wouldn’t be able to do this forever, it was a straight shot to the front door and out to my dad’s truck where he’d parked it. Thankfully, he’d had the presence of mind to keep the passenger side pointed this direction. I went out, Mitch holding the front door for me and put her right into the truck.

  My pop’s closed the door when he knew she was clear and he wouldn’t bang into her.

  “Hope like hell you know what you’re doing,” he said and I nodded.

  “Just drive, I’m right behind you.”

  I waved at Mitch who waved back, and I went over to my bike, mounting up.

  The ride home was brisk, and when my dad pulled up, he did it right in front of the door, passenger side pointed the right way. He got out of the truck calling something or other out but I couldn’t hear it over the bike. I shut it off.

  “What?”

  “I said, you clean that shit up! I’m going to bed!”

  “Fuck,” I muttered.

  Sure enough, I opened up the passenger door of his truck and the woman was an absolute mess. The vomit sweet and off-smelling, and I wondered if there was more than just alcohol at play here.

  “Come on, darlin’,” I muttered and helped her stagger out onto the gravel driveway. “I gotcha.”

  I helped her into the house, carried her up the stairs and sat her on the john in the upstairs bathroom. She was out of it.

  I stripped her, got her cleaned up, helped her puke into the tub and spent the better part of an hour helping her into my room and into my bed where she would be more comfortable. Her clothes I put in the laundry across the hall. I got out some aspirin and a fresh clean glass of water and put them on the bedside table for her. Finally, I wrote a long-ass note trying to cover all the bases and left that too.