The Restart and the Remedy (Aces High MC - Dakotas Book 3)

by Christine Michelle

  “I honestly didn’t think you would be this torn up over Carol,” I admitted to him. Iceman had kicked his wife out and banned her from the club for her abhorrent behavior a few years back, but the bitch kept coming back for more and fucking with his head at every turn. Several of us were ready to see her on to the next life, but Shameless put a stop to our plans. He informed us that a man had to deal with his own ghosts.

  “It’s not even her, so much as it is everything I gave up for her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She couldn’t have any more kids after Steel. Too much scar tissue from how they butchered her when they took him out. I told her then that it didn’t matter. I loved her, in the beginning. She let everything fester and rot inside though. I gave up having kids for her. She wouldn’t hear it when I tried to talk about adoption or hiring a surrogate. She still had working eggs and my shit worked just fine. We could have had a biological child, but she refused since she couldn’t carry it herself. Easy enough for her to say since she already had Steel.”

  “You had Steel too,” I reminded him.

  “Steel never looked to me as a father figure. He had Hopper for that, and I’d already been the man who stole his mom away from his dad, in his eyes anyway. Didn’t quite happen like that, but she never wanted him to know that I was with her first and she cheated on me with Hop.”

  “Why in the fuck would you take her back after that?”

  Iceman’s eyes came up to meet mine then. “Sheer fuckin’ stupidity,” were the words he chewed up like gravel and spat out. “When Chastity showed up again, I stopped the drinking because I was worried you’d make the same dumbass, blind decision I had all those years ago.” He shook his head in disbelief. “First fuckin’ time I even really noticed Myra was here with us. That shit snapped me back awake. So, I guess something good came from that Chastity cunt coming back and dropping her bombs on everyone.”

  “I don’t drink often, if you need a reason to stay sober, or a person to do it with, I’m here,” I offered.

  “’Preciate ya, Rabbit,” he turned to leave then, but hesitated. “Go, relieve the prospect that’s on your woman. You can keep us up to date via phone if need be.” I stood, ready to burn rubber to the doc’s office my woman worked for, but Iceman stopped me before I could get to the door. “Rabbit?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Take a burner, watch what you say to that Phoenix fuck. He claims vengeance is his payment, but we don’t want whatever vengeance he’s seeking to blow back on us.”

  “Understood.”

  Chapter 31 - Myra

  I was both shocked and pleasantly surprised to find Rabbit waiting for me when I got out of work. Although, the last time that happened, it was because the DNA test results were in. This time, I wondered if it meant something else. “Hey bunny boy,” I teased. A smile never appeared on his face though. I glanced around and saw the truck sitting there. “You do know that I brought The Beast today, right?” Honestly, I was a little happy that the shitty weather in South Dakota would keep Rabbit off of his motorcycle for a while longer, because I wasn’t ready to deal with the jealousy that came with not being able to ride along.

  “I just wanted to see you home safely,” he finally told me as his eyes continued to dart around, as if he were waiting on a threat to jump out of the snowbanks or something. Fear crept into my bones instantly when I realized that was exactly what was going on.

  “Did something happen?”

  Rabbit stopped scanning long enough to look me in the eye then. “Let’s talk about it when we get home, okay?”

  “Okay,” I answered back as we started moving toward my vehicle. Worry settled into my belly because Rabbit was never this serious, and while he was always watchful, normally it wasn’t something you would notice about him. I wondered if they’d found Chastity? What happened to the baby? Was there another threat? All of those questions and more flitted through my head on the ride home. Never had a 35 minute drive felt quite so long before.

  By the time we made it back to the house with Rabbit following behind in his truck, I was a ball of nerves. So much so that I just sat there, eyes darting around the driveway and the distant land all around us. The house that Rabbit had moved us into suddenly felt far too isolated. If someone was lying in wait, I didn’t think there was a chance to get help to us in a timely enough manner. The dusky sky and the shadows the intermittent light threw across the space didn’t help matters much. Everything felt far too eerie.

  The door to the Suburban opened and Rabbit was there, turning off the engine for me, pocketing my keys, and helping me from the vehicle. Then I was in his arms where all my worries melted away and I felt safe once again.

  “I told you not to worry, don’t do this to yourself. Let’s get inside.”

  “It’s been more than 48 hours,” I mentioned, finally realizing that he probably needed me to contact my family. Rabbit didn’t want me to have to get them involved because then I’d have to deal with the stress of my family knowing where I was and trying to get me back home.

  “Shh,” he hushed me again as we made it up to the gorgeous wrap-around porch that looked as though it belonged on an old antebellum house from the south-eastern US. The only difference was that the usual white pillars that went from ground to rooftop were actually trees on this house. The builders had felled trees, measured, and used them to form the behemoth pillars and give the antiquated looking architecture a way to blend in with the forest around it. The deck was all natural woods too, leading right up to the stone and wood, two-story beauty of a house. It was like a country, mountain cottage, but on a much grander scale.

  Once we got inside, Rabbit sat me down on the buttery soft, caramel-colored leather sofa as he made quick work of starting a fire in the beautiful stone-worked fireplace, to chase away the chill in the room. The house had central heating, but it worked hard to keep up with the open space and high ceilings. We’d been lucky that the past two weeks hadn’t seen anymore snowfall, although it was still cold enough that some of the snow that had been dumped on us previously was still hanging around.

  “Myra?” Rabbit called me as if it wasn’t his first time doing so.

  “Yeah?” I answered blandly as he sat beside me.

  “You don’t have to contact your family.” It took a few moments for what he was saying to sink in.

  “You found her?”

  He shook his head and the golden-brown hair that had fallen out of his usual manbun skittered around his shoulders with the movement. “I called Phoenix.”

  “Phoenix? You mean ‘my’ Phoenix? The one from my father’s club?”

  “Yep,” he grunted the word out. “He’s not ‘your’ anything though.”

  I waved the caveman bullshit off. “You know what I mean. Your club has a nomad named Phoenix too. I heard the guys talking about him. I just wanted to be sure we were discussing the same person.”

  Rabbit nodded, understanding my logic a bit better. Then he sighed as his hand slid to my knee and began caressing up and down my thigh absently. “Phoenix has her already,” he explained. Technically, I supposed he was telling me club business and I shouldn’t have known this, but I was damn grateful he was trusting me with the knowledge. My heart melted a little more for him because it was something my own family and my ex would have never done for me. They’d never trusted me with anything, and now I knew why, because none of them were trustworthy.

  “Why are you telling me? I asked without thinking.

  “Because I don’t want you freaking out and worried like you were today when I showed up to see you home.”

  “You said he has her. What does that mean?”

  “He said he’d bring the baby to us in two days, but that Chastity was payment for doing so. He wanted to keep her for vengeance.”

  “Vengeance?” I questioned, as a shiver rolled through my body.

  “Don’t know what she ever did to him, besides witness Blaze’s demise, but he sounde
d pretty serious about his price that needed to be paid.”

  “Is it horrible that I don’t care what happens to her, so long as that baby is returned unharmed?”

  “No. I think everyone felt that way.”

  “But you spent a long time being with her,” I finally managed to choke out.

  “I did and the whole time I was with her, she was plotting and scheming. I think we both learned the hard way what unrequited, pretend love looks like. We saw what we wanted to see in our previous relationships, even though that wasn’t the reality by a longshot. Being with you, even for a shorter time, has shown me the difference.”

  “Me too,” I admitted. “What she did to Spinner was not okay. Doesn’t he want his own justice?”

  I think he’ll just be happy knowing his daughter is safe and that she’s young enough that she won’t remember any of this.”

  “They’re lucky,” I commented absently.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Chastity and Cherry are identical twins. With Chastity out of the picture for good, Cherry can just take over as the little girl’s mom and no one will ever have to know the difference.”

  “We would have to be guaranteed that Chastity truly was never coming back if that were to ever work out.”

  “If Phoenix says he’s enacting vengeance, then I guarantee she won’t be coming back from that. I might have been sheltered from a lot of the club’s underbelly before, but I still heard enough things about Phoenix. There’s a reason he was their tracker and usually ended up handling the club’s problems. He used to get angry because he did the enforcer’s work more often than the enforcer did it, but he could never get an officer’s position in the club.”

  Rabbit nodded but didn’t otherwise respond. We sat there in the cozy living room, allowing the warmth from the fire to settle into our bones. The silence was comfortable and his nearness made me feel secure. Before I knew what was happening, I was in Rabbit’s arms as he took me to the first floor guest bedroom.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Carrying you to bed, Sleeping Beauty.”

  “Well, Beast, our room is upstairs!”

  “Sweet, sweet baby momma, first of all, that’s a different story. Second, you are carrying the weight of two people and I’m but one humble man.”

  “Did you just politely call me fat again?” I laughed, too sleepy to be indignant about it that time.

  “No, love, I called you pregnant. We don’t need me breaking my back on the stairs or accidentally dropping and hurting either one of you.”

  “Fine, but after the baby, you owe me at least one trip up those stairs in your arms.”

  “Your wish is my command,” was his answer. “Until then, since you’re wide awake again, how about I just make you feel like you’re flying high enough to be up there anyway?”

  “Oh yeah? How do you think you’ll manage that feeling?”

  Rabbit stuck his tongue out at me, wiggled the damn thing around suggestively, and then grinned. “Easy, baby, I can take you to heaven, it’s up to you to grab the wings while you’re there though.”

  Rabbit did not even give me a chance to respond. Instead, he literally yanked my pants off of my body while I was mid-laugh, effectively shutting me the hell up. Okay, he might have been cheesy as hell, but he was my kind of cheesy, especially when he got all alpha possessive like that.

  “Rabbit,” I moaned as he kissed my thigh.

  “Shhh, you’re going to enjoy some me time,” he told me while pointing to his mouth and continuing to grin like an idiot. “Then you’re going to take a nap, and when you wake, dinner will be waiting for you.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to be a bad boy and eat my dessert before dinner, so don’t worry about me.”

  Well, who was I to argue with that? My man settled my legs over his shoulders and kissed down each of my thighs until they had both received equal treatment. Then, he worked his way to my middle and started to feast on me. That was the only way to describe what he did because there was no mistaking that he enjoyed every second of what he was doing almost as much as I did.

  Rabbit’s mouth could win awards, and certainly, I’d be more than willing to give them to him after he brought me to two orgasms before climbing up behind me in the big spoon position and sliding inside. It was our first time going without protection, after both of us being tested, and if his groans were anything to go by, it was a feeling he would hate having to give up once I had the baby. He made slow, lazy love to me while gently massaging a breast and lightly strumming my clit.

  “I want you to come one more time before I do, baby,” he hissed into my ear as I wiggled back and flexed my Kegel muscles for him. “Jesus, Myra, you keep doing that and I won’t last.”

  I took it as a challenge and did it again, which forced Rabbit to smack my ass and attempt to hold my hips still, as if that could stop me from flexing internal muscles. I did it one more time and giggled as he groaned before he started to pound harder into my pussy.

  “Okay woman, you asked for it!” Rabbit grabbed hold of my upper leg and held it up off the other one so that it was in the crook of his arm and gave him more room to move, then he used his fingers to deftly guide me into another orgasm as he hammered into me with such force that I had to throw my hands up above me on the headboard to keep from banging into it.

  “Come for me, Myra,” he grunted into my ear, his breath labored, as I tipped over the edge he already had me wobbling on. My contractions triggered his release too. Rabbit bit down on my shoulder as he came, and then he licked over the spot to soothe the ache he created. “Sorry,” he whispered before kissing the same spot too.

  “I don’t know what you’re sorry for, but you should definitely strive to be sorry more often,” I teased him.

  Chapter 32 - Rabbit

  I woke to find the bed next to me cold and empty. My heart ticked up a few beats as initial panic set in at finding Myra already gone. I jumped up, threw on some clothes, and made my way out to the kitchen to find her sitting at the table with a calendar we usually hung by the refrigerator. She was erasing something as I slid in behind her, bent down, and nibbled just under her ear. “What are you doing?” I asked against her tender flesh, causing her to both shiver and moan. Oh yea, my girl responded so well to my attention. It made me feel like the king of the fucking world. Chastity had always faked those reactions. Seeing it happen for real with someone made me wonder how I ever fell for the fake shit to begin with.

  “Changing my appointment from tomorrow to next week.”

  “Why? Aren’t you supposed to go more often now that you’re so far along?”

  Myra smiled up at me. “I love that you think of these things. And no, the every two week visits don’t begin until my third trimester which will be toward the end of February. It is perfectly okay to reschedule this appointment. Your brother is going to need you by his side when the baby is brought back.”

  “Night and fuckin’ day,” I groaned out.

  “What does that mean?”

  Shit! I did not mean to use my outside voice for that thought. “Earlier, I was thinking I should have known it wasn’t real with Chastity. You just keep proving to me the huge difference. I don’t mean to keep bringing her up. It’s not like I’m sitting around with that bitch on my mind in a good way,” I added quickly so that she wouldn’t get the wrong idea.

  “Rabbit, I know what you mean. It’s okay. I’ve had plenty of those moments of clarity about Blaze too. It’s worse for you, and I get that. She’s in the center of all this drama going on. If you weren’t thinking about her, or making comparisons, I’d be worried. It’s normal. It also shows that you appreciate what we have now and I can’t be upset about that.”

  Her smile was radiant and genuine as she looked into my eyes. “Like I said, night and fuckin’ day. You’re the sunrise full of color and promises of sweeter things in my future. She was always midnight shadows and worry about what
might be around each corner. I don’t know how I found myself lost in that before.”

  “Fantasies aren’t reality, but sometimes, we get swept up in them,” Myra told me as she patted my hand before speaking again. “What day next week works best for you, in case they give me a choice?”

  “Go with the first available, I’ll work my schedule around it.”

  The next day, we all made our way to the clubhouse to await the arrival of my niece. Wherever Phoenix had been holding Chastity and the baby, it had to be completely off the grid. The club hadn’t been able to find a single trace of Phoenix, Chastity, or the baby. Then again, we still didn’t know who his partner in crime was either.

  By noon, everyone’s patience was wearing thin. I’d called Phoenix three times only to be sent to a voicemail each time. “What if we trusted this bastard long enough to disappear with her?” Spinner finally asked. “He kept saying ‘we’. What if she was working with him all along?”

  “I highly doubt that,” I told my brother, even as I had been wondering the same thing.

  “Phoenix would never work with her. He likes genuine, honest people. If he finds you aren’t those things, he cuts you loose immediately,” Myra added.

  “Incoming, Chevy Camaro headed in the lot,” Rage yelled out as everyone got so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. “Woman with a baby,” he called out again. Before long, there was a knock on the door. Shameless went to let the woman inside. As I positioned us close to the door, I was able to overhear what was being said.

  “I have a package from Phoenix,” the woman claimed. She had no discernible accent. Shameless opened the door to allow her entry.

  “Who are you?”

  “You may call me The Harbinger.”

  “The Harbinger?” Shameless repeated with a little disbelief in his tone.

  “You have your road names, I have mine,” she explained with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

  “Come in,” Shameless told her as he held the second set of security doors open for her. The woman, who was clad in head to toe black leather, and not much of it, took her time cataloguing each face she saw. When her eyes landed on Cherry and Spinner, she smiled grimly.