“We'll just take it as it comes. But … she's not some evil witch come to steal me away. She's the Veil Keeper. She is the only one that can save the fae …”
“I know,” Linda muttered, pushing back from my hug and busying herself making up a tray for the coffee, “but you still could have damn well introduced her to me before you went pledging yourself, you know?”
A hot flush of shame heated my cheeks. “It wasn't really something I planned to do.”
My mama narrowed her eyes at me and sniffed in irritation. “Right, well then. Let's meet the girl that stole your heart.”
My cheeks heated even further and I cast a furtive glance toward the sitting room, praying my mama's voice didn't carry through to the damn Keeper. That girl did not need a bigger ego than she already had.
Feeling sufficiently chastised, I followed the little human through to the sitting room, carrying the tray of mugs for her only to find my Keeper missing.
“She went to use the bathroom,” Caley informed me, obviously seeing my look of confusion. Damn chick was more observant than she let on sometimes. But she also had an evil look in her eye that said she was up to no good.
“Caley …” I growled, narrowing my eyes at her as her grin spread wider.
“I sent her to the one upstairs,” she snickered and I groaned for what felt like the thousandth time since getting here. I swear, visiting Mama and Caley fucking aged me.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, placing the tray down on the table and stalking up the stairs. Caley couldn't have just directed Ciarah to the half-bath downstairs; no she needed to send her upstairs to where mama had literally hundreds of embarrassing photos of me and Caley framed and hung on the wall of the hallway.
Sure enough, when I got to the top of the stairs, Ciarah stood there inspecting a particularly amazing snap of me as a six year old, stark naked and running through a sprinkler on the lawn.
“Did you get lost?” I snapped, folding my arms over my chest and glaring. She jumped at the sound of my voice, obviously not hearing me arrive.
“No.” She turned to face me, her sapphire blue eyes alight with mischief that made me want to drag her into my childhood bedroom right there and have my way with her. “Just admiring the décor. Do you have a brother as well?”
I frowned. “What? No. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I just wondered who the cute little kid was in all these pictures.” She shrugged and tossed her silky hair over her shoulder. She was dressed in a strapless blue boob-tube thing and the most delicious looking leather pants I'd ever seen on a chick … so damn sexy.
“Very funny,” I sneered, lest she catch me checking her out. “You know full-well that's me.”
As if the picture of a grinning eight year old with shimmering silver skin and white horns wasn't obvious enough for her.
“Hmm,” she hummed. “Maybe if I'd ever seen you smile it might have been clearer.”
“What?” I scowled. “I smile all the time.”
She raised an eyebrow at me, her lush rose red lips pulling up at the corners slightly, like she wanted to laugh.
“Seriously?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in the cutest fucking way I'd ever seen.
Fucking Veil Keeper.
“Whatever, come on. Coffee is getting cold and I found some cupcakes that Linda made.” I rolled my eyes, knowing perfectly well that my current facial expression was confirming her theory that I never smiled.
She cocked her head to the side in a way I'd come to realize was her searching her scattered memories.
“I don't know if I like cupcakes. How weird is that?” She blinked up at me and my heart constricted painfully. Damn it. Her question was innocent enough, more of an observation than anything really, but it only served as a reminder of the horrors she'd endured before finding us.
Finding me. I'd never forget the fact that I was the first man to find her, after she'd shown up in the alleyway outside Caley's work. That surely wasn't a coincidence. Right?
“Come on, you can find out now.” I jerked my head back toward the stairs and she nodded thoughtfully. As I began down the steps, she fell into stride alongside me and slipped her small hand into mine, twining our fingers together.
The move surprised me enough that I almost tore myself from her grip.
Holding hands?
When was the last fucking time I held anyone's hand?
I scowled again, but I didn't mean shit by it. It was just sort of my thing. It didn't really work for a man's reputation to walk around grinning like an asshole all the time—look at fucking Reece. He was a goddamn caricature.
“Well, look at that,” Mama said as we rounded the corner and our ridiculous hand-holding suddenly seemed like so much more. “You really did capture my boy's heart and his cock, didn't you?” she asked, rising to her feet and looking way too goddamn young to be anyone's mother—let alone mine. Problem was, when my dad knocked her up, she was only sixteen years old, so in reality, she was too young to be my mom.
Didn't stop her from acting like it though.
“I doubt I've captured either of those things just yet,” Ciarah said, in that strange lilting voice of hers. Half goddess, half snarky ass young adult. It was weird as fuck, a combination I didn't know quite what to make of.
Thing was, she was only half right.
At the sound of her voice, the feel of her fingers on mine, I felt my cock rising to attention.
Even my damn mother didn't miss the bulge in my pants.
“At this point,” Ciarah continued, dragging me over to the sofa and sitting in the center cushion with Killian on her left. I took up the right side and for a moment, we just listened to the frantic whir of the air conditioner. “I seem to have captured his interest, but that's all I can really speak to.”
“Seems to be enough for him to have committed his life to you,” Mama said, glancing over at me with her blonde hair curling around her shoulders, her face still stunning despite the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. She was young, sure, but this was a hard fucking life. Being a biker's wife was tough enough, but to have to hide her children from the world? To keep a secret as big as the fae … it'd damn near sucked the life out of her. “You understand I'm not happy about any of this.”
“Why not?” Ciarah asked, tilting her head to the side, shiny dark hair sliding over her shoulder. She looked at my mother with genuine curiosity, beams of buttery yellow sunshine cutting through the white shutters on the windows, cutting across my mother's face like stripes.
“I wanted Arlo to find a nice girl and settle down, have a family, not get mixed up in all of this shit. He'll never have those things now.”
“Why not?” Ciarah repeated, head still tilted. “I'm a nice girl. If he wants to settle down, nobody is stopping him, and the Veil Keeper can bear children if she wants.” She smiled and flicked her eyes over to mine. “If she wants. You haven't come close to earning that privilege. Besides, I swore I wouldn't have babies until I was thirty. Maybe thirty-five. Hell, now that I'm in this body, I can wait as long as I want.” Ciarah put her hands on her waist. “These hips aren't going anywhere.”
“You'll give my Arlo babies?” Mama asked and I swear to fuck, there I went scowling again. If these people wanted me to smile, they best give me something to smile about.
“I don't want babies, Mama,” I said with a long sigh. The last goddamn thing I needed were rug rats running around and getting underfoot.
“Nonsense. You're the Horned God. Fertility and the natural order are your domain. You spit on the earth's spirit itself if you refuse to breed.”
“It's his body, his choice,” Ciarah said, blinking like she was coming out of a haze and glancing over at Killian. He looked like he was trying ridiculously hard to hold back a smirk. “Well, it's true. I wouldn't want to be forced to have babies, even if I were just a man.”
“Just a man?” Reece asked, throwing his head back with that awful guffawing laughter of his. The shitty thing
about it was that it made Mama blush which drove me up the fucking wall. I knew she'd bed him in a New York minute if she had the chance, too. Well, maybe that was another reason she didn't much like the Veil Keeper. “Oh, ‘tit fille, you a real cutie, you know that?”
“Well, it's not like men do any of the work with the baking,” Ciarah said and this time, Reece, Killian, Caley, and my mother laughed. I was the only idiot in that room that wasn't chuckling.
“Not like you could make babies without us,” I said and Ciarah turned a glare on me. “What? You have your role and we have ours.”
“Your role,” she said with a roll of her eyes, “is to thrust a few times and come. We have nine months and a hard labor we have to put in, you dick.”
“Arlo, don't be an asshole,” Mama said, reaching over and smacking me on the back of the head. “You're speaking to a goddess. Show some of those manners I worked so hard to beat into you. You know better than anyone else that a man's role isn't in the baby making—other than a literal sense. It's his job to pleasure his lady.”
“Damn straight,” Reece said with a bright grin. Once again, everyone but me was smiling. Bunch of assholes. “We just gotta pleasure dis girl straight to da full moon, and then we make some progress, no?”
“We have less than a week,” Killian said, a darkness in his voice that said he suspected trouble.
“And what happens on the full moon?” Caley asked, leaning forward in her chair. She was genuinely curious, but she wasn't privy to club business. The Veil Keeper and all her secrets, most definitely club fucking business.
“Nothing you want to know about,” I said, reaching down and avoiding the mugs of coffee—fuck if I even knew why I’d bothered making it—and grabbed a tall, cold glass of iced tea instead, the ice cubes clinking pleasantly, the sides of the drink sweating in the oppressive humidity. The AC was working at full capacity, but even with the dehumidifier chugging away in the corner, it was fucking moist as hell in here—and in a bad way. “Now try this tea and see what you think.”
“That’s my famous sweet tea,” Mama began, leaning back in her rocking chair, her lips painted as red as the day she waltzed into the clubhouse and captured my father’s … well, his interest and his cock, if not his heart. “That won the over the entire Wild Hunt MC, every last man from President to hang-around.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t your cunt?” Caley giggled, receiving a proper swat on the knee for being an asshole.
“You’ll love it,” Mama declared, crossing her arms over her chest. She truly believed there wasn’t a person in the world that couldn’t be charmed by her famous sweet tea recipe.
We all waited in silence for Ciarah to sip the drink slowly and carefully, like she was putting a lot of thought into something as stupid as cold tea. But shit if it wasn’t important to my mother.
“It’s fucking amazing,” she said and Mama, Caley, and Reece all flashed big grins. Killian smiled like he was in a frigging underwear ad or some shit, and I sat there … scowling again. Jesus H. Ciarah was right. “I wouldn’t be a proper Southerner if I disliked sweet tea, now would I?”
“Once had a girl from New Zealand show up at the clubhouse wanting to be a part of the Willing Hunt. She was pretty, curvy, big tits. But one of the boys offered her up some of my sweet tea and she refused, said cold tea was downright gross. Well, I’ll tell ya what, they kicked her ass right to the curb, sent her outside to spend the night with the gators.”
A laugh bubbled out of Ciarah at this, sounding like the wind chimes on Mama's upstairs veranda, and fuck it … I smiled.
I couldn't frigging help it.
Fucking Veil Keeper was wearing me down. Hell, I was already worn down. I was hers, whether I wanted to admit it or not.
As I laughed at the mental image of some poor girl left out in the bayou at nighttime, my eyes flickered over to Arlo, my Lord of Spring, and my heart almost stopped.
No wonder that man never smiled. Fucking hell, he'd be causing car crashes and breaking up marriages everywhere he went if he smiled more often. The sight of it was nothing short of dazzling. Heart-stopping. Panty-dropping.
“What?” he snarled at me, his stunning smile fading back into his trademark scowl, but it was too late. I'd seen it.
“Nothing,” I replied with a smirk, and he glared.
Too late, Cernunnos, I've seen what you're hiding and now I want more.
As I grinned, and Arlo glared, I wasn't focusing on what was going on around us, so didn't see the small dog coming until it was too late.
It leaped into my lap in a fluffy bundle of white … er … fluff, knocking the glass of tea out of my hand and saturating my white tank top.
“Shit, Linda I am so sorry,” I apologized, placing the now empty glass back on the tray and frowning at the brown liquid seeping into the couch cushion around me while Arlo manhandled the small dog out of the way.
“Not a worry at all.” Linda flapped her hand. “I'll grab a tea towel for that if Caley can grab you a clean shirt?” She gave her half-fae daughter a pointed look and Caley nodded her blond head.
“Sure thing, come on Cia,” she agreed, hopping up from her seat and holding out a hand to me. “Arlo can take Noodle outside to play with the chickens or something.”
The idea of Arlo playing with both the excited fluffball that was Noodle and chickens made me want to laugh, but I bit my lip to hold it back and followed Caley down the hall to her room.
“Here.” She grabbed a t-shirt out of her top drawer and passed it to me. “Sorry if it's a bit small, I keep most of my clothes at the clubhouse because it's closer to work.”
“It's got to be better than this.” I smiled, taking the garment gratefully and glancing down at my soaked top. I'd gone bra-free again seeing as this body had smaller tits than I was used to in my former life. They were perky enough that they really didn't need anything more than the support of a good halter top, but that now meant the dark circles of my nipples were showing though the wet fabric.
“Uh, yeah,” Caley snickered. “I'm pretty sure all three of the guys cracked a fat one the second your top went see-through, so like … be quick changing or one of them will hunt you down.”
She chuckled at her own joke, then headed back to the living room, leaving me alone to peel the tea-soaked fabric from my skin.
Caley hadn't been kidding when she'd said the top was small … it was literally a cropped t-shirt which barely covered the lower curve of my breasts and left my flat stomach totally exposed down to the low waist of my pants. I'd worn a pair of tight, acid washed jeans, since I'd been on Kill's bike coming out here, and a quick glance in the mirror suggested the tiny top was actually kinda sexy on me.
Totally useless for my wings, but I supposed it would do for now.
As I wandered back down the hallway to rejoin the others, Arlo stepped through a door that must lead into the backyard.
For a moment, we both froze and his eyes raked a burning path over my body as he took in my borrowed shirt.
“Arlo,” I whispered as he took two steps closer to me and laid a finger over his lips, indicating I be quiet. My eyebrows shot up, but I did as he said and closed my lips as he advanced closer still, backing me up until I was pressed against the wall just outside the living room.
Arlo's huge frame crowded me, and his intense green gaze held mine for a long, charged moment before his fingers reached out and skimmed the flesh below my tiny t-shirt.
My breath hitched, and he raised the fabric up, exposing my naked breasts to the cool evening air which blew in from the open doorway he'd just entered through.
Carefully, deliberately, he palmed each of my tits, rolling my nipples with his fingers sharply and I felt my knees turn slightly to jelly. He leaned in close, placing his lips on my ear.
“Shhh,” he breathed, dropping my breasts and flicking open the fly of my jeans.
Before I had more than a moment's notice, he'd already yanked the tight denim of my pants down t
o my knees.
With his green eyes locked on mine, Arlo put his boot on the crotch of my jeans and shoved them down to the floor, stepping close and whispering against my ear.
“Get your foot out,” he growled, and I listened, yanking my right foot free as he bared his own rock-hard erection from his jeans. Arlo clamped a hand over my mouth with one hand and curled the fingers of the other under my thigh, lifting my leg up and savagely thrusting his massive cock into me with one quiet grunt.
My fingertips clenched on his biceps as he pounded into me, my toes barely reaching the floor.
Arlo was wild and fierce in that moment, but he wasn't the Horned God, a primal beast of fertility and desire. No, he was a man, a biker and he was ramming me into the wall like a clubwhore.
And I loved it.
Letting my heavy lids flutter shut, I let him drive into me with needy fury, heat and pleasure ricocheting through my body, making me feel weak, dizzy, vulnerable. And I hated that, that vulnerability. But I let Arlo have it in that moment because it felt good and because … he seemed like he needed it.
With a deep, low grunt and a final few thrusts of his hips, he spilled himself inside of me with a shudder, pulling away suddenly and leaving me hot and bothered and shaking. I slumped down the wall, my legs unable to keep me standing.
“Get up,” Arlo growled as his mother's voice echoed down the hallway, calling us back into the living room. I sat there on the floor, panting, still wearing my heels, jeans tangled around my legs. After a moment, he mumbled something under his breath and leaned down, scooping me up from the floor.
The idea of getting rammed into the wall by some random biker was hot, but I also liked that random biker showing a bit of tenderness by picking me up. He carried me a room just off the hallway and heeled the door shut.
“There's a bathroom just in there,” he said, pointing at the cracked door in the corner of the room. “Don't take too long back here. We should get going anyway.”
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