by Wilde, Kati
I am okay. I am. I just…really wish he was here. And I was hoping that we would hear something about him coming back for the wedding. Anna’s his sister and Gunner’s his best friend. If he could come, he would. Even if only for a day. So I’m guessing he can’t. But I’ll do everything I can to share their wedding with him, so that Stone feels like he was here, too.
Flipping the camera so my face is onscreen, I start recording. “So everything is pretty much ready to go at Jenny’s house. I spent most of the day there and we finished up the decorations, so now there’s only…” The loud rumble of a Harley-Davidson engine slows me down for a moment. “That must be Hashtag coming in. I’ll wait for a second, because it’s just going to get loud again when Beaver and Picasso take off. In the meantime, look at Daisy sleeping over there. She’s so cute. Oh, whoops, she sees the phone and— It’s not your Daddy on here, girl! Sorry!”
Because the dog is up and barking and dancing wildly, racing across the kitchen and spinning back toward me. Laughing, I record that for him, instead. “Aw, she gets so excited whenever she thinks she’s going to see you. I’ll play Daddy’s video again in a minute, girl.” I hear Beaver and Picasso finally leaving. “Okay. Now we just have to wait for her to calm down. Daisy, give me just a minute! Go say hi to Hashtag because I just heard him come in and…and…”
It’s not Hashtag.
The phone clatters to the table and I stand with my hands covering my mouth and sudden tears swimming in my eyes, staring at the big man coming into the kitchen.
Stone. With his hair a little shorter and his face a little harder, but everything about him still bursting with vitality. Bursting with life. The sight of him fills up every dark and aching place inside me with light, and with a joy that overflows into the tears that are streaming down my cheeks. Daisy launches herself at his legs and Stone crouches to pet her, scratching her ears and kissing her and saying she’s a good girl—but all the while his eyes are on me.
“There’s a good girl,” he says gruffly as she dances and wags. “You’ve been so good and I’ve missed you so much. But let me go say hi to Mommy now.”
He doesn’t say hi. The way his throat’s working, I’m guessing he’s got a lump in there to match the one in mine. Instead he cups my face in his big hands, and his touch is enough to break me, to put me back together again. A laugh and a sob burst out of me at the same time, then his mouth is on mine. His kiss is long and slow and deep, like the kiss when he married me, then so hungry. Need tears through me with each lick of his tongue past my lips. My fingers fly to his belt and he doesn’t stop kissing me as his strong hands grip my ass and lift me up onto the counter, doesn’t stop kissing me as his fingers find me so hot and ready. His groan into my mouth roughens when I eagerly guide his stiffened cock to my entrance, and I cry out when he surges deep. So deep. And it’s been so long.
For a long minute he doesn’t move, just kisses me slow and sweet while my body remembers how to take his massive length, with his arm wrapped around my back and holding me so tight against him.
As if he’ll never let me go. As if he remembers how I love that, too.
Slowly he begins to thrust, and pleasure sparks bright with every long slide of his cock, with every breathless kiss. With my legs cinched around his hips, I urge him harder, faster, then the sparks burn brighter and brighter until I’m gasping, crying into his mouth while my inner muscles clamp down on the thickness inside me. He groans and plunges deep, and I can’t remember him ever coming so fast, either. So I’m laughing against his lips even as I feel the hot pulse of his cum within me, then he’s kissing me and kissing me, before finally drawing back the barest distance.
His gaze caresses my face. “I know you’re worried that I don’t feel the same way that I did when I married you. And what I feel for you has changed, Maxine,” he says thickly. “Because I love you more than ever.”
I give a watery laugh, that joy filling up my eyes with tears again. “You just want me to chain you to our bed.”
“That, too,” he says and hauls me off the counter with my legs still wrapped around his hips and his cock buried deep inside me. “Now steer me to our room. I’ve got ten months of loving you to catch up on.”
Ten months without him. But the pain of missing him doesn’t even feel real now. Because it vanished with a single touch.
Now there’s only Stone. For however long I get to hold him.
* * *
“I think we missed the wedding rehearsal,” I say sleepily. He’s holding me with my head pillowed on his shoulder and my fingers tracing through the hair on his chest, because I can’t stop touching him.
“Yeah, and they better get used to me being late and missing things. I’ve got a wife with a pussy made of sugar and who squirms like the hottest fucking thing while she’s chasing her come. And why the hell do we need to practice walking down an aisle? It’s not like you can get lost on the way. You and I managed all right without a rehearsal.”
“We did.” I smile, remembering, but his better get used to me being late forces me to ask the question I’ve been avoiding, because I’m so afraid of the answer. “Are you staying for a while?”
“Forever, I hope.”
Sheer happiness swells through my chest. Except that last part doesn’t seem so certain. “You hope?”
He sighs heavily. “We didn’t get Papa. We figure he must have gone to ground—and since we got the rest of those fuckers, and most of the Cage’s network is dismantled, they didn’t want to keep paying for all the manpower. But I suppose if they get wind of him, maybe they’d pull me back in. Maybe they wouldn’t, though.”
“Oh,” I say softly. “You sound disappointed.”
“Just disappointed we didn’t nail that fucker to the wall. Sure as hell not disappointed that it was time to come back home.”
“I’m sorry, too. About Papa. Not about you here. That’s the best thing.”
“For me, too.” He brushes his thumb over my lips, his gaze searching my face. “How you doing? You’re looking real good, and you seem to be moving all right. But I probably ought to have been more careful down there in the kitchen.”
I shake my head. “There’s still a twinge now and then, but otherwise I’m a hundred percent. I’ve been doing yoga and some other things the doctors recommended.”
“Good.” Gently he kisses me. “And what about the rest of you? Your heart, your head. They’re doing okay, too?”
“Yes,” I whisper, my throat tightening up. “I really am. Especially now. And you?”
“I ain’t never been better than I am now, angel. Though I might be even better than this in about five minutes, when I’m inside you again.”
Unsurprisingly, that’s even better for me, too.
44
Stone
Maybe I ought to have gone to the rehearsal. As the best man, I assumed that I’d be escorting the maid of honor. But Saxon isn’t about to let any other bastard ever walk Jenny down any aisle, and it’s me and Zoomie instead. So aside from nearly getting an asskicking from the prez before he led Jenny up near the altar, the rest of the ceremony seemed to go all right. Not that I was paying a whole lot of attention. My heart felt real big while I watched my dad bring Anna down the aisle and give her to Gunner, but after that, I just kept eyes on Maxine, who’s looking so fucking pretty sitting between my mom and my cousin Penny. Her hair’s back to red, her emerald eyes are bright, and she looks so damn happy.
Life just ain’t never been better.
* * *
“You back for good, then?” Spiral asks me at the reception, then looks real disappointed when I say that I am. “Well, goddammit. Glad to have you back, brother, but I was this fucking close to getting your enforcer patch.”
Yeah, that patch ain’t going anywhere. “Sorry, brother.”
He snorts. “You’re not a bit sorry.”
True. And not gonna lie, it was a fucking knife to the gut when Saxon sent me a message saying that I’d b
een gone so long that he needed to give my patch to someone else. I didn’t blame him. The club needs an enforcer who’s present and accounted for. And I wasn’t.
But keeping my patch isn’t why I’m so glad to be back.
Instead my reason is in my arms a little bit later when the dancing begins. I ain’t much of a dancer. But I’m real good at holding Maxine against me, so I just sway a bit while I do, nuzzling her soft hair, loving the smell of her.
Hell, loving all of her.
“You doing anything this week?” I know she volunteers at an animal shelter and also helps the VP’s wife out at their stables, but she hasn’t taken up a steady job yet…and probably won’t before heading back to school next year, so she can take as much time as possible to heal. And that cash from her grandpa gives her a nice cushion, but I don’t want her to have to use it. So now that this job with the feds is over, I’ll need to figure out my own situation pretty soon. I don’t think I’ll be going back to work as a lumberjack for Widowmaker—or any other job that’ll take me away from her for days at a time. But I’ve got enough money socked away that I won’t need to sort that just yet. “Because I sure would love to spend every minute with you.”
She looks up at me, those emerald eyes dark. “I assume you’ll be trying to find Papa.”
The one thing I needed to do for her. The one thing I didn’t get done. The whole fucking reason I left her alone for so long. “I won’t stop looking, angel. But until we get some kind of—”
“No, I mean…” She trails off uncertainly for a moment before continuing, “I think I know how to find him. Or at least figure out who he is.”
I stop swaying. “How?”
“Well, while I was watching the ceremony, I remembered something about Papa. Something that I didn’t think to tell Creek, because it was when Papa was in the farmhouse and sending me to be bait, and we were more focused on describing his security team and talking about the Iron Blood. But Papa has a daughter.”
“You told him that.” I saw those interviews she did with Creek…while she was still barely able to sit up in bed. Hours of fucking interviews. “You said that you thought Papa arranged her marriage to one of his business associates.”
“Because he said all that creepy shit about her being a virgin and taking to her new role as a woman. Her new role,” she emphasizes, “because her marriage had taken place in the past month.”
She says that like it means something, but I’m pretty sure she mentioned it being a recent marriage to Creek, too. “And?”
“Well…look at all this.” She gestures around us, at the big heated tent set up in Jenny’s backyard, where everything’s dripping with fairy lights and flowers. “Jenny put a lot of work into it herself, but still there’s so much preparation. And so much money spent. That’s got to leave a trail. But we’re not talking about a small town wedding. I met Papa. And that man did not marry off his virgin daughter to his business associate in a tiny ceremony in a Vegas chapel. No, I bet anything that it was a big church wedding, because he was so focused on her being pure. And there was something about him that was just…old world and old money and steeped in tradition. So I bet it wasn’t even a church, but more like a cathedral of some kind. And there have to be records. A big wedding, last October…and a fuckton of money spent on a reception afterwards. All paid for by the father of the bride, because that’s traditional, too.”
I bring her in tight against me and start swaying again, my heart thumping. Because she might be right. She’s probably right. And she’s not talking about finding one marriage out of the hundred thousand that happen in Las Vegas each year. The way she’s talking about Papa would narrow that down to a real small number.
“All right, angel,” I tell her gruffly. “This will be your choice. We pass on all of what you just said to Creek…or we give it to Blowback.”
“Blowback,” she whispers, and I clench my fist in celebration behind her back.
Fuck yes.
“But I want to come, too.”
“Hold up—”
“Not to fight. I’ll stay in a car or wherever is safe.” She pulls back to look up at me, her gaze steady on mine and shadowed with remembered pain. “But…I can’t bear to wait here again while you’re so far away. And we’ll be with your club. I know you will all protect me.”
“Yeah, we will.” With our lives if we have to. But she won’t be getting that close to any action when it goes down. “All right. I’ll get Blowback started. It might take a while, because that’s still a shitload of information for him to wade through…and that’ll give time for Gunner to come back from his honeymoon.”
Suddenly she laughs. “Yes, please. Or your sister might kill me.”
“Nah, it’d be me that she went after.” But it won’t be an issue, because we aren’t rushing into this. “And until then?”
Her smile turns impish. “We’ve still got ten months to make up for. And Jenny’s house has a whole lot of rooms.”
I fucking love the way my wife thinks.
45
Stone
When Blowback finally nails down Papa’s name and location, Gunner and Anna are still on their honeymoon and won’t return for another week yet. Which means I’ve got time to do something that needs to be done.
Maxine insists on coming with me. I ain’t real sure about that at first, especially since she doesn’t know all of why I’m going. But I can’t leave her behind again.
And we’re a team, she reminds me. But so were Handlebar and Crash, which is partly what’ll make this so fucking hard. And partly it’s because I’ve never begged a man for a reprieve before. As far as Maxine knows, we’re just riding to New Mexico to give Handlebar the heads-up about Papa and to invite him along. But I owe Handlebar. And after we take down Papa, the time will come for us to settle up.
For a while there, I didn’t give a fuck if he killed me. I give a fuck now. And not just for myself. I can’t let him do that to Maxine. But I don’t want to kill him, either.
So I’ll ask him to wait a while. Maybe about eighty years. Then we’ll settle up in a nursing home or some shit.
Before we hit the state line, I contact the Bedlam Butchers to let Handlebar know we’re headed his way. He tags me not long afterward with the address of a truck stop where we’ll meet up the next morning.
Maxine and I get a room nearby and I spend pretty much the whole night inside her. By morning, coffee and pancakes at the truck stop cafe are a real welcome sight. We’re in a booth with a view of the door and the lot, so we get a good look at the brother before he comes in.
“He’s lost a lot of weight,” Maxine says softly.
“Yeah.” He’s such a big, barrel-chested bastard that he’ll never be thin, but in the year since we’ve seen him it’s like any softness he had was pared away, giving his bearded face a rawboned look. “A giant fucking hole eating at him.”
She sighs heavily, then nudges my side—and it takes me a second to realize that she wants me to scoot out of the booth so she can get past me. I always put her in the seat next to the wall so I can protect her with my body if I need to, and it isn’t easy letting her out when it feels like a threat is approaching. But she wasn’t just my angel.
And Handlebar wasn’t expecting to see her here. He’s a few tables away when the scowl he’s wearing drops away into surprise and breaks into a huge grin. “Cherry! Holy fuck! Get over here, girl.”
She throws a hug around his waist and he gives her a good squeeze in return, while over her head he’s measuring me up and down—and stopping at the wedding band on my left hand, eyes narrowing. Then glancing at her ring, too, when she takes his hand and leads him to our table, saying she’s not Cherry anymore.
“Maxine, huh?” Handlebar says, taking the seat opposite. “And you look real fucking good. Freedom suits you.”
“I think so, too.” She grins at him and slides in beside me. “And I know you don’t appreciate bullshit, so I’ll just say it: You look li
ke you’re still going through hell.”
“Then I look how I feel. Probably because I don’t have a pretty nurse making me take my vitamins anymore.”
“I’m sorry. I miss Crash, too.” Maxine reaches across the table to take his hand. “How is his mangy cat?”
His mouth quirks. “Had a mangy litter a month ago. You want a kitten?”
“We already have a dog who’s the equivalent of ten cats biting an electric wire.”
“For the best. I keep asking if people want them, but I’ll never fucking give those kittens away. Some days, I figure that damn cat’s the only reason I’m still here.” His gaze moves over to me but he’s still talking to her. “You married this asshole?”
She smiles. “I did.”
“He treating you right?”
“So right.”
“Fuck. I was hoping you’d say otherwise, because I’m just looking for an excuse.” Now he’s addressing me. “But I don’t need an excuse, do I?”
Not when I can still feel Crash’s spine popping apart in my hands. “You don’t.”
“I figured you were coming to settle up, not to tug at my heartstrings.”
“I’m here to talk about that, too. But also that we found Papa.”
He goes still. “You put him in the ground yet?”
“Not yet. We’re hoping you’ll join us.”
Then I shut my mouth as the waitress swings by to give our coffee a warm up and take Handlebar’s order. When she leaves again, Maxine asks quietly, “Settle what up?”
Her troubled gaze is going from Handlebar’s face to mine, and despite her asking, I can tell that she knows what it means. She knows damn well.