In the midst of the adults’ taut worry, the children, too young to understand, were playing contentedly, rolling around with the puppies. The tension had obviously stimulated them, however; as late as it was, Gia, Bo, and Loki were all wide awake, showing no signs of readiness for sleep. The puppies were dropping around them, exhausted, but the kids were still full-steam.
The only child—and he was no longer really a child—who felt the weight of the night was Nolan. He had responded, it seemed, by throwing himself in with the men, gathering weapons, loading them, running what errands they needed. Every time Adrienne saw him, he wore the same expression—empty.
The whole evening and half the night had passed in this way. Adrienne kept herself busy helping Shannon with the twins. They went back to Show’s old room to feed them, so that Shannon could feed Joey without baring her breasts in the Hall. Shannon’s breasts were sort of epic—and they hadn’t become less so while she was breastfeeding. They drew attention. So she sat in a ratty armchair with Joey, and Adrienne got comfortable on the bed with Millie and a bottle.
Usually a devoted nurser, Joey fussed and complained repeatedly, refusing to stay latched.
“Dammit. Dammit!” There were tears right on the edge of Shannon’s voice. Adrienne looked over and saw that there were tears at the edge of her eyes, too.
“Can I do something?”
“My milk isn’t letting down. I can feel it. I’m like an overfilled water balloon, but it won’t release. My nipples are like rocks. He can’t get hold.”
“Do you want me to warm one of Millie’s bottles?”
“No! No! I don’t want him to prefer the bottle, too. I want to do this right with one of them.” Now tears were thickening her words, and Joey began to cry. “God!”
Adrienne knew very little about what Shannon was going through, but she thought she knew someone who did. Still feeding Millie, she scooted off the bed. “I’ll be right back.” Before Shannon could stop her, she left Show’s room and went out to the Hall. She found Tasha and Lilli in the kitchen, talking quietly, both standing with their arms crossed.
“Shannon needs some help. Joey won’t feed, and she’s starting to freak out. She said her milk isn’t letting down.”
Tasha came forward. “That’s anxiety.” Adrienne had known Tasha could help. “Where is she?”
“Back in the dorm—in Show’s room, I guess?”
“Okay. I’ll go talk to her. You focus on Millie. Lilli, would you warm a bottle for Joey?”
Adrienne interjected. “She doesn’t want to give him a bottle. She’s afraid he won’t take her after that. Like Millie.”
Tasha looked at Lilli. “Warm a bottle. Him screaming to eat isn’t going to ease her worry. I’ll talk to her. And Lilli—”
“Warm, wet towels?”
“Yeah, thanks.” She opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water and one of Millie’s bottles. She took the water with her and left the breast milk on the counter near the range.
Lilli was at the sink, soaking dish towels in hot water. “Cory’s in the Hall with the kids. Can you manage Millie and also get these back to Shannon?”
Millie had just about finished her bottle, so Adrienne set it on the counter and turned the baby onto her shoulder. “Sure.”
“Thanks, hon.” Lilli wrung out a small stack of hot towels and handed them to Adrienne. She took them and headed back to Shannon.
She could hear Joey screaming from the hallway. When she got into the room, Shannon was crying, Tasha had Joey, who was going off like a fire truck. Tasha was trying to get Shannon to calm down enough to get her top and bra all the way off. Then Lilli came in with the freshly warmed bottle, and Shannon sobbed harder. Millie, who’d been quietly dozing on Adrienne’s shoulder, began to fuss, too.
Lilli pushed through everybody and squatted in front of the chair Shannon sat on. “Shan! Get hold of yourself!”
“Lilli, come on. Back off.” Tasha got Shannon’s top off.
With a flashing glare at Tasha, Lilli said, “No.” She turned to her weeping friend. “Shannon. Pull it together. You’re not helping yourself or your kids. Take a breath and let us help. Come on. You can do it. You’re not alone here.”
Adrienne watched as Shannon, her deep blue eyes—the eyes Adrienne had inherited—focused on Lilli, began to control her breathing. As Lilli held her hands and breathed with her, Tasha gave Joey the bottle. He took it readily, and Tasha turned to Adrienne.
“Can you lay a couple of these towels on her chest?”
Millie had settled to sleep as soon as the room began to quiet, so Adrienne went up and, with her one free hand, opened a couple of very warm, damp towels and laid them on her birth mother’s breasts. Shannon sighed at the contact and calmed markedly.
“Good.” Tasha stepped up, still feeding Joey. “If you can, Shannon, try to massage your breasts over the towels.”
Shannon did, easing her hands from Lilli’s grip. After a few minutes, it was obvious that her milk had let down. Tasha handed Joey back to his mother, and he most enthusiastically returned to his preferred method of feeding.
Shannon looked up at the women around her, her eyes glittering with a calmer kind of tears. “Thank you.”
Adrienne’s heart felt squished and stretched. In the midst of what could be devastating trouble, these women—all of them, including Adrienne herself—had dropped their cares and come together to help one of them through a small, intimate crisis. Cory, too. Though she was not in the room with them, she was caring for all the other children, freeing Lilli to help her best friend. They were a team, united in time of trouble perhaps even more tightly than in time of gladness.
They really were a family.
Joey ate well. When Shannon turned him onto her shoulder, he gave a robust belch, and the women all laughed. Lilli took a sleepy boy from his mother, and Shannon got herself dressed. As she was buttoning her last buttons, Lilli’s phone rang. Then Tasha’s. Shannon’s. And Adrienne’s.
The women stared at each other. Then, as one, they answered their phones.
~oOo~
Even though Badger had called an hour earlier to let her know he was okay and would be home as soon as he could, Adrienne was sick with anxiety. Lilli, Shannon, and Tasha, all having gotten similar calls, looked no calmer than she did.
She guessed it was a holdover from those silent hours before. It was as if knowing they were coming home had released the terror they’d been fighting to keep at bay. Until the men were physically with them, none of them would find ease.
The children, though, had finally succumbed to their bodies’ demand for rest. The Hall had gone quiet, human and canine youths heavily slumbering. Millie and Joey, both fed and changed, slept peacefully in their matching carriers. The women and the Horde present all sat together at the bar and waited.
Finally, the front door opened, and the men came in. Isaac first, limping more heavily than Adrienne had seen before. Lilli stood immediately and went to him. He folded her up in his arms. Show was next, at the bar, pulling Shannon to him before she could even get up. Then Len. He took Tasha by the hand and pulled her to the side, and they held hands, staring at each other.
Badger came in last. Adrienne was on her feet, waiting, her heart in her mouth. He came straight for her and lifted her off the ground. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, and he held her so tightly she thought she might bruise, but she didn’t care. She tucked her face against his beard and held him just as tightly.
Her eyes closed, absorbing as much of the feel and smell of her man as she could, she barely heard Isaac’s voice. But Badger turned and focused on him, and Adrienne lifted her head.
He sounded old. “We need to meet early. Since everybody’s here, let’s stay here. Reconnect, get a few hours’ rest. We’re in the Keep at nine. Thumper, get some women in here to cook breakfast in the morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
With that, Isaac led Lilli down the side hallway toward his offi
ce, where Gia and Bo were already sleeping with Kodi. Badger, still holding Adrienne, walked them down the dorm hallway. He had not yet spoken.
“Are you okay, Badge?”
He shook his head. “I need. I—I need so bad. I need.”
That scared her a little. Badger could get pretty rough when he was feeling intense like this. But she understood his need, and that only she could help him. So she clutched him more tightly and put her lips to his ear. “Okay. Okay.”
He got her into his room and closed the door. As he set her down, he asked, “Is Hector here?”
“He fell asleep in the Hall, in a pile with Max and Penny.” Penny was Len and Tasha’s pup. “I think Kellen was going to sleep on the couch out there, so he could keep an eye on them.”
“So we’re alone tonight?”
“Yeah.”
He stared down into her eyes, his own spectacular eyes hooded by a worried, weary brow. When he brought a hand up and traced his fingers lightly over her forehead, her temple, her jaw, she closed her eyes and let herself feel his coarse caress. He was being gentle, not rough, and the little snarl of disquiet in her belly loosened.
His hand trailed from her chin, down her neck, between her breasts. She opened her eyes as he hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Badge, what happened?”
He shook his head. “Not tonight.” With his free hand, he found the drawstring on her long skirt and pulled it loose, widening the waist with his finger until it dropped from her hips into a puddle on the floor. She kicked off her ballet flats and left them in the puddle with her skirt.
Then he leaned back and lifted her sweater over her head, leaving her in a simple pair of black cotton boyshorts and a matching bra. With his thumbs, he circled her nipples, bringing them to hard pebbles through the black fabric. She whimpered and lifted her chest toward his touch, and he pinched, pulling lightly, until the sensation made all the nerves and muscles in her breasts and between her legs sing, and she cried out. “Badge!”
“I love your body so much.” He released her breasts and lifted her damaged right arm, bringing it to his lips. From her wrist to her shoulder, he kissed and nuzzled, his lips, mouth, and beard sliding over her scarred skin. It felt beautiful and awful, making her feel loved and ruined all at once. “Badge, don’t.”
“This is my fault. What happened to you. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I cause you pain. I wish I could stop. I wish I could let you go. But I can’t. I can’t let you go.”
She wrenched her arm from his grasp and grabbed his head, threading her fingers into his beard and pulling him to face her. “Stop that. I’d go if I wanted to. I don’t want to. I love you.”
The heat in his eyes flared white hot, and he grabbed her head. His mouth came down hard on hers. His fingers tangled and pulled in her hair. She felt like he was trying to pull her into him completely. No longer gentle, now the need he’d expressed earlier was loose. His teeth ground on her lips, his beard scraped at her cheeks, his fingers pulled strands of her hair loose.
And she was glad of it all. She wanted him to need her like this. She wanted to be the only thing that could quiet the beast inside him. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she brought herself as close to him as she could and let him take what he needed.
He walked her to the bed and pushed her down. His eyes locked on her, he stripped, barely taking the time to lay his kutte on the dresser. She removed her underwear while he did so. When they were naked together, he dropped heavily on top of her, his mouth seeking hers with the same savagery. His hands moved roughly over her skin as if he needed to feel all of her, to etch impressions of her into his fingerprints.
She pulled the band from his ponytail so that the silk of his long hair would slide coolly over her body. It left soothing trails where his rough hands had been. He released her mouth and tucked his face against her neck, grunting as his body flexed and rocked against hers, every inch of him hard and demanding. His intense need made her own need nearly unmanageable. She wanted him inside her, deep and forceful, but he seemed not ready, despite the impossibly hard rod digging into her belly. He seemed to need this grapple first, grunting against her neck, his hands and mouth clutching, his legs tangling with hers.
Then his hand went between her legs and he buried his fingers in her. Their feral writhing had made her dripping wet and desperately ready, and she arched backward with a squeal, feeling right on the precipice immediately. Then he added another finger—God, it felt like all of them were inside her—and curled them sharply upward, pushing firmly against the most tender spot of her body.
She couldn’t help it. The orgasm ran her down like a runaway truck. She felt herself flood over his hand, and she had a fraction of a thought to be almost embarrassed by how much wet her body had released, and then he flexed his fingers again, and she screamed. Loud and long, over and over, her body coming off the bed with enough force to dislodge him from atop her.
When she was able to relax on the mattress again, but before she had regained her senses, Badger pushed into her, and she felt him so intensely that she turned right around and started on another orgasm. He was so hot, so hard and silkysoft at the same time, so rough and so gentle. She loved that he would be the only man she’d ever feel the way she felt him now. So much. She felt him so much.
Her senses cleared, and she froze.
“Badge—condom. Do you have a condom on?”
He answered without slowing his frantic thrusts. “I’ll pull out, babe,” he gasped. “I’ll pull out. I need this. I need to feel you. Just you. Fuck, you feel so awesome.”
The thrill of fear she felt at what they were doing only brought her more quickly higher, and she didn’t stop him. Instead, she wrapped her legs around his hips and moved with him, and against him, until their bodies were slamming together. When she came the second time, she was able to stay quiet, biting down on his shoulder and clutching his back, but the experience was no less intense. In some ways, it was the most intense she’d ever felt. With her legs and arms and mouth, she clasped him to her as tightly as she could.
And then he went completely still. “Babe, let me go. I…let me go. Now.”
She didn’t. She knew she should. But instead of unlinking her ankles and letting him pull out of her, to release on the sheet, her muscles constricted and held him more firmly than she’d known that she could.
“Adri—“ She flexed her hips, bringing him deep, and he groaned in defeat. “Oh, oh, fuck. Fuck. Oh, God.” He tensed and spasmed.
She felt him. She felt him come inside her. She felt it. She loved it. She’d just done something insanely reckless. And she loved it.
When he finally relaxed, he tried to pull out again, but she wasn’t ready. She held him to her, in her.
He raised his head and propped himself on an elbow. “What did we just do, Adrienne?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. I just…I couldn’t let you go.”
Damp tendrils of her hair were plastered to her face, over her eyes. She tried to shake them loose but failed. Badger brushed them back for her. “Is that something you want?”
She thought of Millie and Joey, and Loki, and Gia and Bo. Of the family she was now a part of. Shannon and Show, who had been a kind of sidelined parents as long as she’d known them but now were the only ones she had. She thought of the way the women had helped Shannon earlier. They way they always helped each other. She thought of the pull she felt, deep inside her, when she held the twins. The way their very scent made her heart cramp.
She thought of the way she loved the man inside her right now.
“Yeah. It is. Yeah. What…what do you want?”
He brought his other arm up so that he could rest on both elbows. Looming over her, his hair sheltering them from everything but each other, he smiled. “I would love for you to have our kid. Kids. As many as you want. A whole football team, if you want. But let us get through this next thing. When I come home from that, let’s do it right.”
“Marry me.” He dropped his head and brushed his beard over her cheek. Her eyes fluttered shut at the sweet thrill of it. “Marry me, Adrienne. Marry me.”
Her throat bound with sudden happiness, she couldn’t speak. So she nodded.
“Say the word, babe.”
She swallowed and made it happen. “Yes. I love you. Yes.”
He kissed her breathless. When he next raised his head, panting as much as she was and fully hard inside her again, he pulled out. She whined, disappointed, and tried to pull him back.
He shook his head. “Condoms until I get back.”
“What if it already happened?”
“I guess I better make sure I come back. But I’m still putting a condom on now.”
~oOo~
The whole Horde family had breakfast together in the Hall. Three girls cooked and served. Lilli seemed to be supervising, but not with much enthusiasm. She looked even more upset than the night before. In fact, she looked furious.
Isaac followed Lilli with his eyes wherever she went. He looked deeply unhappy. He had a bruise and cut on his right cheek Adrienne didn’t remember him having the night before. Lilli was favoring her left hand.
Tasha, too, was preoccupied and cross, and Adrienne saw her brush Len’s touch away twice. So the meal was awkward and quiet, and Adrienne was confused. The men had come home whole last night. Shouldn’t everyone be happy this morning? She was, and now she felt guilty for it. She and Badger had fallen asleep after their second round, and they’d barely gotten up in time to make it to breakfast. They hadn’t talked. She was feeling like she’d missed something important.
After breakfast, the Horde went into the Keep. The Prospects and Nolan took the pups outside. Lilli said something to Cory and then went alone down the hallway to Isaac’s office, leaving Gia and Bo in the Hall. The club girls cleaned up the leavings of the meal. Tasha left the clubhouse altogether, without a bodyguard. Adrienne wondered if she should say something to her or anyone, but decided that Tasha was a fully grown woman who could go where she pleased.
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