by Khloe Wren
“Hold on, babe, and no screaming. I don’t want Ariel scared.”
A blush heated my face. Soon after Ariel had moved in he’d made me scream loud enough that the next morning Ariel had refused to be anywhere near him, or speak. Worried about what had happened I had a talk with her, and eventually got her to tell me she’d been scared he’d hurt me and she didn’t know how to deal with him after that. Poor little love.
With a hand wrapped around the back of my neck possessively, he thrust in deep, drawing a moan from me as heat flared through my body. He set a fast and furious pace, my mind emptying of all thoughts aside from the pleasure rapidly building within me. Turning my head, I buried my face against my arm, muffling the sounds I couldn’t help but make as my man showed me exactly who was the master of my body.
With a low growl, he shifted a hand under me, finding my clit and teasing the little nub until my body stiffened and I flew apart, crying out against my arm as he thrust in a few more times before holding himself deep. His dick twitched within me as he came.
Once he was spent, he pulled free and gently guided me over so I was laying on my side. Lost in bliss, I let my eyes close and was only vaguely aware of him cleaning me up and spooning up behind me.
It was later that I woke again, a small hand slipping into mine. As sweet a gesture as her wanting to hold my hand was, it still scared the shit out of me every time. There was something spooky about being woken up like that, but I couldn’t tell her not to do it. I refused to risk setting her back with such a comment.
“Hey, sweet angel, you sleep well?”
She nodded and glanced down at my belly, as she did every morning since I’d started showing. I threw back the blankets, leaving just the sheet covering me. Ariel shifted so she could rest her little head against me, her ear pressed up against the sheet. She’d told us she could hear her little brother, that he told her secrets. The first time she’d mentioned it, Scout freaked the fuck out, but I thought it was sweet—and imaginary. I was quite sure my boy wasn’t talking to his sister just yet. Ariel was completely enthralled with her baby brother already and I knew she’d be an awesome, mostly likely, over-protective big sister to him. Just like she already was with the other Charon babies. I couldn’t wait to watch them together as they grew older.
Scout buried his face in my neck, his beard tickling my skin as he kissed me. Then he reached over to run a palm over Ariel’s hair. The contrast between his darkly tanned skin and her white-blonde hair had me mesmerized for a few moments.
“Morning, angel. You ready for breakfast?”
After pressing a kiss to my tummy and whispering something too quietly for me to hear, she turned a big grin up to Scout.
“Oh, yes. Waffles!”
Not waiting for an answer, she flew off the bed and out of the room, leaving me chuckling, along with Scout.
“Can’t believe how far that kid’s come so fast. You want some waffles too, babe?”
I rolled over and ran a palm over his cheek, before stroking my fingers through his beard, twirling some hair around one and giving it a small tug.
“She is a marvel. And I’d love some. I need to head into the cafe this morning. Do you think you could watch Ariel for a few hours?”
I had pies to take in, and it would be much faster if I could do it on my own. After turning to press a kiss to my palm, he smiled as he moved to get out of bed, which gave me a great look at his very fine ass before he dressed and covered the view.
“Sure, babe. We’ll just hang out here and have some daddy-daughter time. I’ll go get a start on the waffles so you can get cleaned up in peace.”
The twinkle in his eyes told me he’d much rather help me in the shower than go cook, but that wasn’t going to happen this morning. Not now a certain little girl, who had Scout firmly wrapped around her finger, had made her breakfast demands known. He couldn’t resist her. None of us could. I ran a palm over my belly. Soon there would be two in the house making demands on us.
I couldn’t wait.
Chapter 2
Scout
I couldn’t help but smile as I watched Ariel pour syrup over her waffle. The serious expression on her little face as she squeezed the bottle got me every time. Then, when the liquid dropped onto her breakfast, filling the holes in the waffle before leaking over the edges, she grinned and a small chuckle escaped. I fucking loved how she enjoyed the little things. Ariel was such a serious child most of the time, getting her to laugh—hell, even smile—had become my daily challenge. And I vowed I’d never stop doing it, never stop finding ways to make this little girl light up.
It had taken weeks before she’d relaxed around food. To start with, she’d sneak out during the night and raid the kitchen, stashing all sorts of things in her room. After the stench of rotten food revealed what she’d been doing, we sat her down and explained that she didn’t need to hoard food like that. That she could go to the kitchen to get whatever she wanted when she was hungry. Marie also pointed out that if she ate food that she’d hidden in her room and left to go bad, she’d get very sick.
Thankfully we got the message through to her and we hadn’t smelled any new surprises since. I loved that now she was enjoying food, not just eating all she could whenever she could, it opened up all sorts of edible adventures we could take together. I was about to ask her if she wanted to make a cake while Marie was out when my phone rang. Glancing at the screen I saw it was Mac so, with a wince as I wondered what the fuck had gone wrong now, I answered it right away.
“Mornin’, Mac. What’s up?”
“Nothing good. Just got word from a friend back home that you’re gonna want to know about asap.”
By back home, Mac meant Los Angeles. Which, given his past, meant it was mob related. Just fucking great. John Bennett, the father of my VP’s niece, and Eagle’s old lady, Silk, had fucked with the L.A. mob before he’d died and they’d come after her over it a while back, but we’d sorted that shit and she was now settled in with Eagle and their son. That shit had gone down two years ago and we hadn’t heard dick from them since we’d dealt with the fuckers. I had no clue what would have caused them to come after us now.
“How urgent? I’ve got Ariel with me.”
“It’s about as urgent as it gets, but it’s definitely not child-friendly information.”
A warm palm on my arm had me turning to face Marie.
“I’ll take her with me. I think Zara’s going to have Cleo with her, and Ariel loves to play with her. Isn’t that right, Ariel? You want to come into the cafe with me for a little while? Then maybe afterward we can come back here and you can help me bake something?”
Our daughter’s face lit up as she nodded and I knew it was a go.
“Okay, Mac. That’s all sorted. I’m on my way to the clubhouse now. Do we need everyone there?”
“Your call, prez. I’m not sure how fast the other side is gonna act.”
Non-secure phone lines were a bitch.
“Okay, I’ll just call in Bulldog, Keys, Arrow and Nitro for now. We can easily call in the others if we need to.”
“Good deal. See you soon, prez.”
Hanging up the phone, I pulled up a text and tapped a message to my VP, Secretary, Treasurer and SAA telling them to get their asses to church asap. Then I pocketed my phone and pulled Marie around in front of me.
“Sorry, babe. Be careful today, not sure what Mac’s heard, but just be extra careful, yeah?”
“Always, Scout. But you do the same.”
Cupping her face, I leaned down to kiss her deeply, letting her taste fill my senses for a moment. With a sigh, I pulled back from her but before she could step away from me, I dropped down to give her tummy a kiss.
“You be good for your mom, young man.”
That got a chuckle from both my ladies. I scooped Ariel up off her seat to give her a tickle-hug before putting her back and pressing a kiss to her temple.
“And I’ll see you later, angel. I’ll see wha
t I can do about having some lunch at the cafe with you both, sound good?”
She gave a nod and leaned up to press a light kiss to my cheek. She didn’t like the feel of my beard against her lips, so the few times she wanted to show me some love, it was always high on my cheek or on my forehead. She was doing it more often now, and I loved and cherished every one of her kisses.
With my mind already churning over what the fuck could be coming our way now, I left my girls happily eating breakfast and made my way out to my bike. I had a bad feeling about what Mac was bringing to the table. Fuck, I hoped whatever it was would be done with before my son was born. I wanted to be able to take a little time off from the club and enjoy it at home with Marie, Ariel and our boy. Not chasing after some fuckers who thought they could take on the Charon MC and win. After scrubbing a hand over my face, I snatched up my helmet and headed out.
Twenty minutes later I was sitting in church with my closest friends and brothers around me while Mac paced the floor in front of us.
“Mac, brother, just spit it out already.”
With a huff, Mac came over and placed his hands on the table, leaning forward until he was staring me in the eye.
“The last book is coming into play.”
Fuck. I was right, this was gonna be big and messy.
“The Ice Riders?”
“Yeah.”
For a long time before John Bennett died, he’d been gathering secrets and financial information on several organizations, and writing it all down in ledgers. None of us had any fucking clue until two years back, when it was discovered that his bag had missed the flight that ended his life. Somehow the L.A. mob had worked out what he’d been up to, so when they’d heard about the bag they’d come after Silk, kidnapping her so they could get their hands on the thing. Naturally, things didn’t go as planned for them—or us, and we ended up with six fucking ledgers full of dirty deeds. John had collected shit on the L.A. mob, the Satan’s Cowboys MC, the Iron Hammers MC, the N.Y. mob, the Ice Riders MC and us. In order to get the L.A. mob off our backs, we’d handed over copies of their ledger and the N.Y. ledger. The Iron Hammers had changed leadership over a year ago and were now friendly with us, so that ledger was dead in the water. The Satan’s Cowboys MC was a large club that pretty much controlled Texas. If you wanted to be an MC in this state, you had to play nice with them. We’d handed over their ledger in order to strike a deal that kept them from dealing drugs in Bridgewater. The only book left untouched was the Ice Riders MC, who were a club up in Boston that we knew fuck all about, as we’d never had anything to do with them. To be honest, I had no fucking clue how word would have gotten to them that the ledger we had on them even existed, let alone that we were in possession of it.
Nitro voiced my thoughts. “How’d they even find out about it? I don’t think any of our boys have ever even met anyone from their club before.”
Mac turned to face Nitro. “Guess there was something in the L.A. mob’s ledger that referred to it, or maybe in the New York book we gave them. No fucking idea, but we knew Sabella wasn’t gonna stay gone forever with how we left shit. He’s always going to be in the background, looking for ways to fuck us over.”
Yeah, the mob boss hadn’t been happy that we’d handed him his ass with what went down with Silk. Don’t think he’d ever gone up against an MC before and he wasn’t prepared for us to fight back like we had.
“You saying Sabella went to this club? Told them we got dirt on them?”
“I got a call this morning letting me know that not only did Sabella tell them we had John’s book on them, but that we were gearing up to do something about it.”
I groaned and ran a hand through my hair. Fuck me.
“So naturally they’re gonna turn up on our fucking doorstep to strike first, right?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
I turned to Keys. “Call everyone in for church this afternoon. We need this shit out in the open so everyone’s on the lookout. Nitro, sort out the prospects to cover the women when they’re moving around. Once we deal with these jokers, we need to figure out a way to handle Sabella permanently. He’s declared war on us with this shit, and I ain’t lettin’ it stand.”
Marie
After giving Ariel one of the pies to carry inside, I grabbed the bag with the rest of them, then followed her into my cafe. Ariel was so sweet with how she loved to help out. She took every job given to her with the seriousness of brain surgery. In a way, it saddened me how solemn she was most of the time, but it was also completely adorable to see her in her mission mode, getting shit done. She was going to be a force to be reckoned with by the time she was a teen. Lord help us.
As my pregnancy progressed, I’d handed over more and more of the day-to-day stuff to Zara. These last few weeks had really hit me hard. Being pregnant in your forties was not easy. My blood pressure wasn’t the best and I got so damn tired so easily it was ridiculous. Thankfully both Zara and Mercedes were good, solid workers and I could trust them to take care of things. Zara was standing behind the counter setting things up for the day when we walked in. As soon as she saw us, she moved around to our side and lowered down to Ariel’s level when the little girl got to her with her pie held out proudly.
“And what flavor do we have today?”
“Blueberry. Mommy has cherry and apple ones, too.”
“Wow, you went all out this week, huh?”
Ariel gave a serious bob of her head as Zara took the pie from her hands.
“You know, Cleo’s over in the play-pen if you want to go say hi. It would be a big help if you could keep her busy for us. Do you think you could do that for me? Play with Cleo while Mommy and I get to work.”
That got another nod before she turned and, with a grin on her little face, dashed over to the play-pen in the corner where Cleo sat banging two toys together.
“Not sure encouraging those two to form a bond is in our best interest, Zara. Can you imagine the trouble they’ll get into later on?”
Zara laughed and took the bag from me, removing the other two pies and placing them into the display cabinet before I could even think of doing it myself.
“I’m pregnant, girl. Not an invalid. I’m more than capable of putting the damn things in the display.”
Zara winced as she closed the door and folded the bag up.
“Scout got to you didn’t he?”
“It’s only for these last few weeks. He’s worried you’re trying to do too much. It’s sweet, if you think about it.”
Knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change how Zara was going to spend the next few weeks, I just shook my head at her and made my way over to the coffee machine.
“Oh, um...”
Mercedes came out from the back room and made a move to stop me but I cut her down with a glare before she could finish her sentence.
“So help me, if you try to stop me from having my coffee... One cup. I get one damn cup of coffee each day. Do not come between me and it.”
With wide eyes, she put her palms up and backed away and guilt rode me. Mercedes had first arrived in Bridgewater after she fled the cult she’d been raised in. She didn’t handle making mistakes well, and always shut down hard if someone got mad at her. Since settling down with Tiny she’d gotten better, but she still had a long way to go. I reached out and rested a palm on her arm.
“Mercedes, I’m not mad at you, sugar. It’s just been a long eight months growing this boy of mine, and I’m about done with Scout’s over-protectiveness.”
“How about you go sit down and I’ll make it for you? I promise I won’t use the decaf like Scout told me to.”
That had me chuckling and I pulled her in for a hug, happy she was back to her normal self.
“Sure thing, sugar. It’ll be our secret.”
I moved out from behind the machine and took a seat at an empty table facing the kids, but not so close that they’d think I was hovering. Ariel didn’t do well when she thought she
was being watched. Poor love tried to do everything she thought adults would want her to do, not realizing we just wanted her to be a child and have fun with learning how to live her life free.
Apparently Scout had the whole damn universe out to prevent me getting my caffeine this morning, because before Mercedes could place the cup on the table in front of me, the front door crashed open. Naturally, the noise made her jump and the cup slipped, dropping to the floor and shattering. In reflex, I jumped up from my seat to avoid the hot liquid and quickly found myself with a thick arm around my throat. A chill ran down my spine and a wave of dizziness hit me when the barrel of a gun pressed against the side of my belly.
“Don’t move.”
Mercedes back-peddled, clearly in shock. A second man came in and pointed his weapon at her head. Seconds dragged on, feeling like a lot longer as panic shot through me. Forced into inaction, I stood useless with a gun pressed against my unborn son and an arm so tight around my throat I struggled to get enough air in my lungs as I watched what went down. Without moving my head, I glanced to the kids. They were okay. Relief flooded me that my beautiful, smart girl had already opened the play-pen and was carry-dragging Cleo, who had only just starting to walk, toward the counter. She looked up at me with wide, fear-filled eyes and I gave her a smile, hoping she took it as encouragement to keep going.
“You. Stop right there.”
Zara was stumbling toward a table. Extreme emotion would bring on a cataplexy attack, and clearly she’d been trying to fight it off but couldn’t any longer.
“Don’t shoot her! She can’t help it. She has medical conditions. Please, let Mercedes go to her before she collapses and hurts herself.”