Walk Through Fire

by Kristen Ashley

  I looked across the bar to my husband, who was standing at the back of it with Pete and Hop. He had eyes to Boz and a smile on his handsome face.

  I liked that look, had always liked that look, but I didn’t spend time taking it in. I knew I’d get it back. Frequently.

  So I looked from my man across the space to one of the couches at the back of the room.

  There, I saw High sitting alone, a bottle of beer held to his thigh, his other arm spread across the back of the couch, his feet up, ankles crossed, resting on the battered coffee table in front of him.

  He was watching the action at the pool table, a smile playing at his lips.

  He was sitting alone but he was not doing it as a loner.

  He was doing it as a man watching a live action dream play out in front of his eyes.

  He was doing it carefree.

  He was doing it happy.

  The way I’d noted he was a lot these days.

  In fact, always.

  I felt something and looked back to my man to see he was no longer chuckling and his eyes were on me.

  I read what was in his eyes so I knew I’d never make him say the words. That wasn’t how we worked.

  But he was telling me I’d been right.

  I knew that already, but it still felt good to get it from him.

  I gave him a small smile, slid off my stool, and wandered across the room as I heard Millie say to Zadie, “Your turn, darling. Show Boz all we Judd girls can bring it.”

  “You got it,” Zadie replied.

  I didn’t look their way.

  I made it to High, watching him tear his eyes from the action and bring them to me.

  I took a breath and sat down on the couch, close.

  I barely had my ass to the seat before he curled his arm that was on the back of the couch around my shoulders.

  Then, casually, like we’d done this countless times before, he lifted his beer and took a tug.

  I let out my breath, slouched in beside him, lifted my feet, and rested them on the coffee table.

  We watched Zadie miss.

  Her face fell with disappointment.

  “Boz is so totally gonna blow it,” Millie declared. “You’ll get him next shot, sweetie.”

  Zadie’s face brightened as she looked up at Millie and smiled.

  “Thank you,” High whispered.

  I pressed my lips together.

  Then I relaxed into his side, his arm curling tighter, and I whispered back, “You’re welcome.”

  Boz missed.

  Millie sunk her ball.

  So did Cleo.

  And after that, Zadie won the game for the Judd girls.

  High

  “Holy crap!” Kellie shouted, pushing through the door in front of them. “This place hasn’t changed a bit.”

  “Shots!” Justine cried, following her.

  Veronica turned eyes over her shoulder to him and she muttered, “Taxi night.”

  But she already knew it was a taxi night.

  This was because the ride most of them came in was not the ride they’d go home in.

  High just grinned at her as he guided Millie through the door after Veronica and Justine, hearing Elvira say from behind him, “This used to be Chaos?”

  “Oh my God, this place is totally seedy,” Lanie replied. “I love it! We finally have a local that’s not the Common Room even if it’s miles away.”

  They all moved in, expanding into the nearly-devoid-of-bodies space.

  High did it holding Millie close and the instant they were inside, his gaze went to the bar.

  Reb was staring at them, eyes big but face tight.

  He bent to his girl’s ear.

  “Grab a table, babe,” he muttered there. “I’ll get the booze.”

  She looked from Reb to him and nodded.

  She disengaged, glancing at Reb again, then following her girls to the table, her Chaos sisters, Tyra, Lanie, and Elvira following her.

  Tack, Hop, and Boz followed High to the bar.

  Reb met them there.

  “Rumor’s true,” she said bitchily to High.

  “Yep,” High replied.

  She looked from High to Millie and back to High.

  When she got his eyes, she declared, “You are one lucky motherfucker.”

  Apparently, rumor wasn’t only true, it was thorough.

  “Yep,” he repeated.

  She glanced among them and announced, “Inflation didn’t escape Scruff’s, assholes. So don’t think I’m a cheap date.”

  “Eleven beers, bottle, whatever’s cold, eleven shot glasses, and a bottle of tequila,” Tack ordered.

  “Don’t got table service,” she warned, starting to pile shot glasses on the bar. “You boys are gonna have to cart this shit to your women.”

  “Just serve the drinks, Reb, without the attitude, you got that in you,” Boz shot back.

  “You lose your memory?” she returned.

  “You don’t got that in you,” Boz surmised on a mutter.

  Reb didn’t reply. She turned to the shelves at the bar’s back and nabbed a full bottle of Patrón.

  They hadn’t asked for top-shelf Patrón but none of the brothers stopped her.

  “What’s takin’ so long?” Elvira called.

  When she did, Reb frowned at Boz before asking, “What’s that about attitude?”

  Boz decided not to engage.

  It was a good call.

  The men carted the shit to the table.

  The women drank, babbled, and cackled.

  Kellie hit the jukebox.

  Roscoe showed with a biker groupie. Pete showed alone. Snapper showed, also alone. Malik showed to join his woman. And through this, Reb’s meager regulars hit the joint.

  Millie had been right. She needed Chaos back. It was plain to see.

  Justine took her turn at the jukebox and the women lost their minds and sang Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” at the top of their lungs while the men grinned and Elvira glared, mumbling, “One a’ you boys needs to get a sister up in this joint so I can counter Bon Jovi with some Fiddy.”

  It was then, feeling it, High turned his attention back to the bar.

  It was not a surprise Reb had her eyes on him.

  She also had a shot in her hand.

  She lifted it his way, then she threw it back.

  After that, she set the glass aside and moved, frowning, toward a man at her bar.

  She was happy for him. For them. That was what she was saying and that was all either of them was going to get even if it was Millie who talked High into taking Chaos back to Reb’s dying bar.

  High turned his attention back to his girl. She had her arms thrown around Lanie, who had her arms thrown around her. Millie’s head was thrown back and her mouth was open, loudly shouting the words to a song whose popularity, after decades, never died.

  He spent the night only getting loose while his girl got hammered.

  But High didn’t need booze or anything else.

  All he needed was the high of watching Millie let it all hang out in her classy sweater, her tight jeans, her high-heeled boots, all of this in a shady, run-down biker bar that was owned and operated by a bona fide bitch.

  And when he’d had enough and she definitely had, he took her home.

  Kind of.

  Once there, he got blown but she didn’t swallow. He finished after he made her come, watching her ride his cock.

  They slept tangled up.

  He woke getting blown.

  She didn’t swallow that time either. He fucked her on her knees, his eyes glued to his mark on her back, drawing it out as long as he could, wishing he could fuck her until his last breath, which brought the bonus of forcing two orgasms out of her while he was at it.

  Then, once they cleaned up and spent some time cuddling, she sat next to him in his RV as he drove them home from Scruff’s parking lot where they’d spent the night.

  * * *

  “Gonn
a go up, see if it’s safe to return,” High muttered as he put his empty beer bottle on the table beside him with all the others (not on a coaster—they had them for the fancy furniture from Millie’s old pad that was in their new living room; they had them nowhere else in the house).

  He got out of the recliner that was angled toward a now blaring TV to commence what he knew from practice felt like a yearlong journey to get to the kitchen, and he did this as Alan, in the other recliner, muttered back, “Don’t get lost.”

  He felt his lips twitch but he didn’t say anything as he moved to the door that led to the stairs.

  “Logan.”

  High stopped and turned back to the man, a man who had not called him by that name since he told him not to do that shit months ago.

  The instant Alan got his eyes, he lifted his bottle of beer.

  “Proof,” he stated.

  “Proof, what?” High asked.

  Alan swung his bottle around before his gaze went to the ceiling and back to High.

  “Proof you’re real.”

  The words were quiet and they were few.

  But they said a lot.

  Enough he’d let the man get away with calling him Logan.

  He didn’t reply. He just nodded and left the room.

  Alan was there because the women were over. They’d showed two hours ago. When they did, he and Alan immediately absented themselves for reasons that were obvious.

  But now he was hungry.

  He was a fuckuva lot hungrier by the time he hit the kitchen.

  Even so, once he got to the doorway, he stopped.

  This was not because Freddie had shouted, “Pink stinks!” and when he did, High made a mental note to bring the boy with him and his father the next time this crew got together.

  No.

  It was because the huge-ass space was a mess. Plastic tiaras scattered everywhere. Feather scarves. Crumbs and spent wrappers mingled with half-eaten cupcakes. Glow sticks snapped and glowing. Wineglasses. Wine bottles. Pop cans. Opened bags of chips. Sprinklings of pink and white M&M’s.

  It was like Cleo’s thirteenth birthday was happening, not like the women were planning it.

  High saw Chief picking his way across the top of the kitchen table with no one grabbing him to put him down (as usual).

  Poem was sitting in Veronica’s lap, being stroked, looking like she was asleep.

  And Logan was taking Poem in as Katy declared, “I want a pink birthday too, Aunt Millie.”

  “Aunt Millie gives you one every year, honey,” Dot returned.

  “Well, I want another one,” Katy told her mother.

  “You can have whatever you want, sweetheart,” Millie told her niece.

  “Millie,” Zadie called, and his woman looked to his baby girl who was wearing a tiara and had a feather thing wrapped around her neck. Then again, so was Millie. “On my birthday, I wanna be queen.”

  “You’re always queen,” Deb muttered, grinning at her daughter and sitting across from Millie at their huge-ass kitchen table (also wearing a tiara and a feather thing).

  Zadie turned to her mother. “I wanna be more queen.”

  “Do not deviate from that dream, sister,” Kellie advised, smiling at his baby girl. When Zadie looked to Kellie, she finished, “Live for it.”

  “I already do,” Zadie informed her.

  High swallowed a grunt of laughter.

  “What Kellie’s saying is, you can have whatever you want, too, darling,” Millie told Zadie.

  Zadie gave her attention back to Millie and beamed.

  Millie beamed back.

  Seeing that, High no longer felt like laughing.

  No, looking at his daughter and his woman, he backed out of the doorway.

  He retraced his steps down the hall, but this time, he did it looking at the walls.

  Walls Millie had covered with the pictures she’d had in her pad in Cheesman.

  Pictures that now mingled with framed photos she’d unearthed from that crate. Photos of him and his woman from years ago.

  There were also photos of him and his woman now. His girls. His brothers. All of them together. Even photos from back in the day of Keely and Black.

  He moved up the stairs, the walls there also covered with photos.

  At the top of the stairs, he turned to his and Millie’s bedroom.

  He walked straight to his side of the bed.

  The very first night they moved in, he got in bed beside his woman and when he did, he saw she’d put it on his nightstand.

  A blown-up eight-by-ten in a silver frame.

  It was a picture of them at a Chaos cookout years before, Millie sitting on a picnic table pressed into him, High standing beside her with her in his arms.

  He remembered that shot. It was the first photo she’d placed in the first album of them she’d made.

  It was the first picture of them ever taken.

  He looked across the bed and saw another frame, this one crystal.

  In it was also another eight-by-ten.

  In it was High sitting on the couch in their living room with his girls piled on him, his arms wrapped around all of them. Millie in his lap. Cleo in hers. Zadie on top. Cleo had hold of Poem. Zadie had hold of Chief.

  They’d been horsing around, so none of his girls were looking in the camera. They were all too busy giggling.

  High was looking into the camera.

  He was not laughing.

  You didn’t laugh when you held a living dream in your arms.

  It was the last photo of them ever taken since Elvira had snapped that shot a week ago.

  As ever, when Millie wanted something done and done right, she didn’t fuck around.

  The picture was in its fancy-ass frame and sitting on her nightstand the next day.

  High looked from frame to frame and as he did, he knew he’d gotten it wrong.

  His Zadie had it right.

  Never give up.

  Never quit dreaming.

  Because dreams had a way of being.

  You just had to keep hold.

  Millie

  When the boat stopped, the girls jumped up from their seats and moved toward the exit as I called, “Hurry! It’s gonna happen any second. I don’t want you to miss it! We’ll catch up!”

  They didn’t need to be told twice.

  Cleo and Zadie dashed ahead.

  Logan and I, his hand wrapped warm around mine, followed them slowly.

  We’d already been there that day because I’d wanted the girls to see the blooms on the trees.

  But, of course, we also had to get there in the night.

  We sauntered off the boat, Logan and me, hand in hand, and I knew he was keeping an eye on his girls as I did the same.

  We got there in time. We stopped underneath. The girls were roaming, eyes up, waiting.

  Logan didn’t roam.

  He pulled me into his arms.

  I didn’t lift my eyes up as in up, but I did lift my eyes.

  To his.

  “Today’s no different,” he murmured, his voice low but also scratchy.

  Responding to his tone, I pressed closer, wrapping my arms tighter around his back.

  “What, Snooks?” I asked quietly.

  “Today’s been fuckin’ great, love givin’ all my girls a spectacular spring break, but it’s no different.”

  “Different than what?”

  “Different than all the rest.”

  I tilted my head to the side, confused.

  “All the rest of what?”

  “All the rest of days, every one, every day since I first laid eyes on you. Today’s no different. Fuck of it was, even when I didn’t have you, I felt it. Which was why I never let go. And today’s no different. No different from every day I had from the first day we met. Waking up in love with you. Day’s almost done, gonna go to sleep more in love with you.”

  My breath caught.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  My arms conv
ulsed.

  My eyes filled with tears.

  And my throat felt funny as I forced through it, “Ditto.”

  He shook his head, grinning. “You are such shit at that.”

  I was.

  But it didn’t matter.

  With his flowery biker goodness, he made up for it.

  And anyway, I had other ways of telling him I loved him.

  So I did that, rolling up on my toes as he dipped his head, and in between, our mouths met.

  I saw sparks on the backs of my eyelids just as they did.

  It wasn’t (all) Logan’s kiss.

  It was the Eiffel Tower above us bursting into beauty.

  Tabitha Allen grew up in the thick of the Chaos MC, and the club has always had her back. But one rider was different from the start, and now Tabby wants more than friendship with the one man she can’t have.

  Please turn this page for an excerpt from

  OWN THE WIND

  “I Dreamed a Dream”

  HIS CELL RANG and Parker “Shy” Cage opened his eyes.

  He was on his back in his bed in his room at the Chaos Motorcycle Club’s Compound. The lights were still on and he was buried under a small pile of women. One was tucked up against his side, her leg thrown over his thighs, her arm over his middle. The other was upside down, tucked to his other side, her knee in his stomach, her arm over his calves.

  Both were naked.

  “Shit,” he muttered, twisting with difficulty under his fence of limbs. He reached out to his phone.

  He checked the display, his brows drew together at the “unknown caller” he saw on the screen as he touched his thumb to it to take the call.

  “Yo,” he said into the phone.

  “Shy?” a woman asked, she sounded weird, far away, quiet.

  “You got me,” he answered.

  “It’s Tabby.”

  He shot to sitting in bed, limbs flying and they weren’t his.

  “Listen, I’m sorry,” her voice caught like she was trying to stop crying or, maybe, hyperventilating, then she whispered, “So, so sorry but I’m in a jam. I think I might even be kinda… um, in trouble.”

  “Where are you?” he barked into the phone, rolling over the woman at his side and finding his feet.

  “I… I… well, I was with this old friend and we were. Damn, um…” she stammered as Shy balanced the phone between ear and shoulder and tugged on his jeans.