Personal Delivery
Personal Escort
Personal Disaster
And how about some Canadian erotic romance?
Frisky Beavers
Prime Minister
Dr. Bad Boy
Full Mountie
Mr. Hat Trick
Retrosexual
Or you might want intense, off-limits book boyfriends…
Forbidden Bodyguards
Hate F*@k
Booty Call
Dirty Love
If you enjoy some #Resistance with your romance…
Rogue Anthologies
Rogue Desire
Rogue Affair
Rogue Acts
About the Author
Mom by day and filthy romance writer by night, Ainsley is super grateful for caffeine, banana and blueberry muffins, and yoga pants. Born and raised in Ontario, she's traveled the world and come back home to write about book boyfriends (and girlfriends) with maple leaf tattoos. She's the USA Today bestselling author of Hate F*@k and Prime Minister. You can sign up for her newsletter HERE.
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Sacred Son
Robin Covington
Adam Woodson has dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of Native Americans in court and in the legislature, a career that has kept him too busy to regret the man who got away. Judah Nighthorse is rebuilding his life after prison, fighting to regain custody of his son from a non-Native foster family so he swallows his pride and asks the man he left behind for help. When fighting the good fight together sparks desire they can’t resist, they must decide if their future holds a second chance or a final goodbye.
For all of the missing and murdered native and indigenous women,
my stolen sisters: you are not forgotten.
And for the descendants of those taken from their homes who struggle to
break the cycle of trauma:
you will succeed.
To my brothers and sisters who shared your stories with me. I
am humbled by your generosity and in awe of your spirit. Thank you.
1
JUDAH
“I need you to help me get my son back.”
At the sound of my question the man leaning against the front counter at the Native American Justice Project headquarters on the Montana State University-Northern lifted his head from the book cradled in his hands and squinted at me. He was older, ten years older, but time had been good to him. He was long and lean but his brown hair was shorter and redder than I remembered. The beard and glasses were new but his eyes were the same mix of brown and green and still as direct. Serious. Sexy.
I remembered him but it was obvious that he didn’t remember me.
Why would he? That summer had been a lifetime ago.
He shut the book he’d been reading and took a longer look at me. It was a full-on, up and down inventory of me: work boots, t-shirt and jeans brushed as clean as I could get them after having worked my shift at the construction site.
“Sorry, I should have changed …” I shifted my folder under my arm and wiped my hands on my jeans, wishing I’d gone home and changed before coming here. I glanced around the space again. It was bright and clean. Too clean for clothes dusty from a day of manual labor. This had been a bad idea but I was desperate for his help. “I’m working days at the site and I had to rush to get over here before you closed.” I could see on his face that he was going to tell me to make an appointment or to leave my number or some other polite bullshit, so I took a deep breath and started over. I was here to call in a favor I didn’t deserve and I needed to get on with it. “Adam, I need your help to get my son back.”
Using his name changed his entire attitude. He focused on me again, dropped the book on the counter and stepped closer. His expression shifted with confusion, then doubt, then disbelief.
“Judah?
And then he smiled and my gut twisted and fell and I was back on the Rez staring at the boy who’d been my first kiss, my first fuck, my first broken heart, and one of the only times I’d not been a selfish asshole. It wasn’t a full smile on his face, it was a nervous one, a suspicious one, and it still killed me.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I answered. Adam’s smiled faded into more confusion than happiness to see me again and he shifted even closer, making a move to touch me. His expression said that he couldn’t believe I was there. I knew the feeling. I took a step backwards from him, even more aware of the dirt on my clothes and the last ten years stretching between us. “I’m dirty … I came straight from work.”
“Well, Jude … I never cared about that.” Adam paused, his eyes locked on mine and filled with the curiosity and interest in me that I never could understand. “You look good, Jude.”
Fuck, he looked good too and I found myself staring back at him letting the thrill of hearing his nickname for me roll over me like air conditioning after a long day on the job. Long moments passed and I blinked first, feeling my skin heat with my embarrassment and attraction. I resisted the urge to let my long hair slide forward and shield my face. I was done hiding who I was. Adam stepped back and pointed towards the back of the space. “Why don’t you come tell me what’s going on?”
I followed him, glancing around at the open space. It took up most of the first floor of the building, filled with tables and shelves covered in books and materials. It was quiet now but I’m sure it was loud and busy during business hours. He stopped in front of a door with “Adam Woodson, Director” written on a brass plate and shoved it open and stepped inside. He flipped the light on and it was like ten years disappeared and I was back in his old room again. Papers were everywhere, books stacked on the floor. Since he wasn’t calling the police, I assumed that he hadn’t been vandalized. It was a disaster.
“You’re still a slob,” I said before I could stop myself. Insulting the guy I needed to help me was not the best idea I’d ever had but the words and the snort of a laugh fell out of me. I was nervous and fucking this up. I shuffled a couple of steps away from him. “Damn it, I’m sorry. I’m gonna go. This was—”
“No. Judah. No.” Adam’s long fingers wrapped around my forearm, pulling me back towards him until we were eye-to-eye, his breath warm on my face.
This close I could smell his cologne and see the freckles on his nose. He was still gorgeous and way too good for me and I had no business being here. His gaze was searching, his breathing speeding up to match my own. I swallowed hard at the same time he did and it was enough to freeze me on the spot. Too many memories with this guy. Too little time in the past with this man to have this kind of impact on me in the present.
“Judah, you’re right. I’m a slob. Believe me, I hear it from everyone.” We both looked down to where he was touching me at the same time and a flood of awkward filled the space between as wide as Bear Paw Lake. He let go without looking at me and walked over to a chair, making a big show of scooping a pile of books onto the floor with a loud thud. “Just sit down and tell me why you’re here.”
I couldn’t have left after all that without looking like a pussy and I needed his help. Not just for me but for Gideon, so I sat my ass down, placed my folder of information down on the desk and swallowed the pride I had no right to possess. Adam lowered his body into the chair behind the desk and I jumped in before I lost my nerve.
“I need your help to get my son back.”
He leaned forward, arms propped on his thighs, long fingers linked together. “I see … where is he?” He flung his hands up, waving off his question. “No, start with the important stuff. How old is he? What’s his name?”
I smiled at that. My favorite topic. “His name is Gideon. He’s seven, loves to fish and hunt and Spider-Man. He lives with a foster family here in Havre.”
“And where are you living?”
“Rocky Boys.”
He considered me but I had no idea what was going on his head and I just waited him out. He tapped on his knee with a long finger before asking, �
�Uh huh. And where is his mom?”
Not my favorite topic. “She passed away. Two years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” Adam dipped his head in sympathy and let a couple of beats pass before he asked the question people always asked. He looked me in the eye when he did it. “So, if his mom is gone and you’re here, why is he in foster care?”
“I was in prison.” I’d learned over the last few months to just say it. Spit it out. Nothing made it easier, less embarrassing for me or startling for the person who had to hear it. It was what it was. “I robbed a Quik-E-Stop over in Box Elder. I got five years and served two and a half. I’ve been out eighteen months.” I sucked in a deep breath and kept my eyes locked on him. I wasn’t an educated man like he was, trained to use words to win fights and change people’s minds but I had my truth and I could speak it out loud. “I want the chance to be Gideon’s dad. It’s all I want. It’s why I’m here.”
Unspoken between us was the truth that I’d never be here otherwise. I had no right to be and Adam wouldn’t want me here. He was being polite but I guessed from his lack of excitement on seeing me that ten years wasn’t long enough to erase what I’d done.
Adam didn’t really react to my story except for a huff of breath and a hand rubbed across his beard. The scratch of his skin against the rough of his hair was the only sound in the room and I had no need to fill the space. Incarceration had taught me patience, if nothing else.
“Prison will be a problem,” he said and I appreciated his honesty. Not like I needed it. I knew what the problems were with my case.
“I know.”
Silence fell again and I gave him space to decide what he wanted to do. He didn’t owe me anything. What had happened between us had been a long time ago. And I know it meant more to me than it meant to him. He’d been … everything to me.
And then I’d let him think that he hadn’t meant anything to me.
“The Project … we’re busy. Lots of stuff going on and we really don’t have time for another case, Jude.” Adam’s face expression was half apology and half the look you get when you figured out that the guy you’ve been buying drinks for all night is never going to suck you off in the alley later and you bet on the wrong race. He was looking for an exit plan and I would light it up like neon for him. For old time’s sake.
“I figured. You’re doing good stuff. I see it on the news all the time.” I rose to my feet and headed for the door.
“Make sure you get a lawyer. The Project can’t act as your attorney anyway … we don’t do that.”
I just kept walking. “I’ve got a lawyer. I was just hoping …that’s cool, man. It was good to see you.”
Adam ripped off his glasses and jumped to his feet, coming around the desk and closing the distance between us. He reached out and touched me again and I let him because pulling back would show more of what was going on in my gut than I wanted to let him know.
“Jude, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I get it, man. It’s cool.” I looked around the office and gave him the best smile I could paste on my face. “You’re doing good here. I’m glad.”
I turned and walked out of the door and ignored it when he called my name.
2
Adam
“Are you okay? Did you hit your head?”
I turned in time to see my brother, Neal, lean up against the iron railing of the porch of our father’s house. In the dark you couldn’t see the vast acreage, rolling hills, and mountains that normally filled up the view but I knew it was there. Solid and unmoving. Just like the constant expectations that had dogged me my entire life. But unlike the kid who’d caved under the weight of all that shit, I knew who I was now. At least I had until my past had walked into my office today and fucked with my world.
After seeing Judah Nighthorse earlier, my headspace had been jacked up all night and I had no idea what the fuck my brother was talking about.
“Neal, what the hell are you talking about?” I took a drink from my beer and turned to give my older sibling the once over. We didn’t see each other as much anymore, his practice as a literary agent taking him all over the place and I missed him. Not that I was going to tell him that.
“Dad made at least three comments at dinner about how you’re wasting your talent at the Project and you didn’t even blink. You just kept shoveling in the mashed potatoes and gravy and stared into space like a zombie extra on The Walking Dead.”
“Well, they were amazing mashed potatoes and gravy.”
And it wasn’t worth investing the energy to be mad at my father for not approving of my choice of career. That was old news and I didn’t take the bait when he dangled the hook. Surprisingly and thankfully, this had never been about who I was attracted to. He had no problem with me being gay. No, what drove him ape shit crazy was the fact that I had been a so-called “prodigy”: college at seventeen, graduating Harvard at twenty and Georgetown Law at twenty-three. He’d predicted my being a partner in a big law firm or rising up the ranks of politics by thirty. He had never considered that I would found a non-profit and work in borrowed space from a state university. Wasting my talent on poor, underrepresented native people was not what he’d envisioned for me and he never wasted a chance to comment.
“Fuck you, Adam.” Neal shoved me with his big shoulder, his M.O. had always been to use his bulk to get his way. Law school had honed his use of the English language but we both regressed to acting like kids when we were together. Only the dread of dealing with our father’s ire if we broke something in the house kept us from resorting the head locks and WWE moves on the ground. “What is going on with you? Something up at work?”
“I got a new case, a potential case. A case I’m not going to take.” I was rambling and just trying to convince myself of the smartest way to handle this situation. I hesitated to spill my guts but if anyone was going to understand how today had knocked my world off its axis, it would be Neal. He’d been there. He’d been there for me. Offered to kick ass, take names, and chisel them in stone. I let it rip. “Judah Nighthorse asked for my help.”
I’d caught Neal in mid-lift of his beer bottle but he dropped his hand and gave me his full attention. “Judah Nighthorse?
“Yeah.”
“The same Judah Nighthorse who fucking stomped on your heart ten years ago?”
I groaned. Leave it to Neal to aim straight for the kidney.
“Neal, he just did what I couldn’t do.” I shifted to look back out onto the landscaping lights, unable to have this conversation with Neal staring me down. I gave him the party line I’d been selling myself for the last decade. “I was going to college on the East Coast and I had no idea how crazy my life was going to get for the next few years. He’d dropped out of high school and was dealing with his dad and getting a job so he could move out … hell, he did what needed to happen. I had no idea what that was, but he did. Jude did it when I couldn’t.”
It was the mantra I had repeated to myself over the years. If I said it enough, it would be true and I would believe it.
What I didn’t say was how unprepared I’d been for the way my heart had tumbled and my blood had overheated at the sight of him standing in my office today. Taller, harder but the same beautiful boy I’d fallen for ten years ago. The man I hadn’t forgotten. Not for a goddam second.
But, I’d never really forgiven him. I still hurt when I thought of it. And I thought about him more than I would ever admit.
Neal’s big body leaning on the railing made it groan like the sound the ice on the lake made when it started the spring thaw. I took a step back just in case it decided to give way.
“You keep telling yourself that, princess.” He took a drink. “You’re taking the case.”
“What makes you say that?” I swiveled to eyeball him, wondering what he knew that I didn’t. “I’m not taking the case.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“No. I’m not.” I shifted into lawyer-mode, moving in closer to wargame t
his with my brother. I needed his advice on this one because I didn’t know what to do. This was more than advocacy. It was personal and I avoided personal as a rule. I went for the facts. “Neal, he’s trying to get his son out of foster care.”
“That’s something you know backwards and forwards. How many times have you lectured me on the impact of systemic discrimination against Native American parents in this country?”
“All the time. I’m just shocked that you listened to me.”
“It’s hard to ignore you. It’s what makes you so annoyingly good at what you do.” Neal pointed at me, pushing against my chest. “But, you’re not good at stone-walling me. Spill it, little brother. Are you going to take the case?”
I dodged the question. Yes, I did.
“He’s got a prison record. Armed robbery conviction at twenty-two when his boy was two-years old. Got out at the halfway mark on a five-year stint because he was a first-timer and a model inmate. Got his GED and learned a trade in construction.” I’d found his file on my desk after Judah had left and I read it from cover to cover. I was never going to have enough will power to resist anything about Judah Nighthorse. I’d known that thirty seconds after I’d first met him.
“Well, good for him doing the shit he needed to do to change his life. All of that just makes it a bigger challenge for you but you can work with it,” Neal countered and then he asked the inevitable question. “Where’s the boy’s mom?”
“Gideon’s mom was April Windrunner.” That fact had punched me in the gut when I’d read it in the social worker’s report and the newspaper clippings contained in the file.
Rogue Nights (The Rogue Series Book 6) Page 27