Turning to look at my ruggedly sexy husband, I kiss him quickly.
“Want to get the hell out of here?” I mutter against his lips.
“Fuck yes. I thought you’d never ask,” Dex replies a little too loudly at the same time he swings me up into his arms and carries me toward the clubhouse.
I wave and grin at everyone we pass, and think not for the first time today that I’m finally home. After years of searching the irony of it is, my home will always be wherever Dex is. And it just so happens, fate was shining down on me the day I found him again because he comes with a bunch of brothers, women I’m proud to call my friends and their children who are the coolest kids on the planet.
My life will never be perfect, nor do I want it to be. I want messy, loud, and annoying. I want to feel, to experience, to be free. That’s what Dex promised me today; a wild ride filled with twist and turns, and a few bumps along the way just to keep things interesting. A life overflowing with love and laughter, and the chance at a type of freedom I’ve never known.
Freedom without conditions. Freedom without fear. Freedom without pain. That’s all I ever wanted, and now I have it, and to me, freedom like that is its own special kind of perfect.
EPILOGUE
~ Gage ~
“Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you. Then I remember, you put up with me so I guess we’re even.”
– Truth
Five years later…
Walking up to the back door of our house, I take a few deep breaths to calm my ass down before seeing my wife. I hate that I still let the visits like todays’ get to me, but it’s my own fault. I keep going when I should have stopped years ago.
Four days after Aislinn and I got married at the clubhouse, church was called to decide if Vengeance would have a hand in making Jess pay for what she did. It took five hours and sixteen minutes, two broken chairs, a black eye for Cash, and Boss pulling his gun to come to a unanimous agreement.
Vengeance stood back eight months later and watched as Jessica Marie Williams was charged with three counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and/or death, one count of aggravated assault, and one count of possession of a firearm without a license.
The club also stood and witnessed her epic breakdown as she threatened to hang herself if the judge sent her to prison. The Jess we saw that day wasn’t the one we knew and loved, and seeing her lose it like that only confirmed the validity of everything Aislinn told me months earlier. The Jess I knew was gone, and in her place is a mentally ill woman in need of intensive, round the clock help.
You would think that would have been the end of it, but no. I’m not sure how it started, but whether it was out of obligation or because I was holding onto a friendship I used to cherish, I began going with Jonas to visit Jess once every three or four months.
No one can understand why I feel compelled to see Jess. My brothers are constantly telling me it’s time to let the dream go, that the woman I knew is never coming back, but for the life of me I just can’t bring myself to dessert her.
It’s hard to explain, even for me, but occassionally, I see a glimmer of the old Jess and that gives me a false sense of hope she’s hiding in there somewhere. It’s fucking ridiculous really when everything she does, says, the way Jess behaves indicates otherwise. But that tiny part of me that still harbors guilt over not seeing the signs earlier, refuses to see the truth for what it is; my friend is gone, lost in a world of delusions and lies she’s convinced herself of to justify her actions.
The drive is only forty-five minutes, but the difference between the trip there and the journey back is vast. On the way there, Jonas and I laugh, joke, and talk about our wives and their friends. Going home the mood is somber, most of the time both of us lost in our own thoughts, which constantly has me questioning why I keep doing this to myself. Needless to say, I haven’t come up with an answer yet, and until I do, I won’t allow myself to stop going.
Jess hasn’t got any better. If anything, her being remanded to Waters Health and Psychiatric Facility for Women – a division of the Department of Corrections – has only highlighted the severity of Jess’ condition.
She had served less than three weeks before the doctors diagnosed her as a sociopath with OCD and suicidal tendencies. It was a week after that when Jess lashed out and attacked another patient, reenacting the scene with Kennedy by stabbing a woman in the leg with a butter knife.
As much as they wanted to, authorities knew there was no point taking Jess back to court and extending her sentence. She was already tried and convicted, receiving the maximum sentence available for her crimes, which is twenty-five years.
Shaking off the melancholy that comes from seeing Jess, I pause in the doorway to the kitchen and listen to my wife giggle with Blaine and Jonas’ son, Lyric.
“You need to fucking relax,” Meg snaps at Aislinn. “How many times have I told you there’s nothing for you to worry about. Everything is fine, but it won’t be if you keep asking me stupid fucking questions.”
“Yeah, Aunt Linny, fucking relax and stop with the fucking stupid questions,” Lyric parrots.
Giving Meg a pointed look, Aislinn leaves her retribution for later, crouching down in front of Lyric as far as her seven-month pregnant belly will allow, reminding him,
“Remember what we talked about?” She says in the husky voice that always has my cock standing to attention.
“Um, nope,” he chirps, picking at something invisible on his shirt.
“Liar,” she giggles.
And damn if I don’t love this kid more for making her laugh. Every time she does, Aislinn’s whole face lights with joy, transforming her usual beauty to something on an entirely different level.
I always said when we had kids, I want them to be carbon copies of Lyric. The kid is funny, smart as hell, loyal, and so devoted to Harleigh grown men could learn a thing or two from him. Lucky for me, I got what I asked for in our son, Dante. Sometimes I think he took fucking lessons from the troublemaking Lyric that’s how alike they are.
Tickling the boy, Aislinn says,
“Let me jog your memory then. You aren’t allowed to repeat anything old Aunt Meg says, and in return, I’ll make sure to hook you and Harleigh up with all the candy you can eat when you come and stay over tomorrow night.”
My wife always comes good on her promises, but what the poor kid doesn’t know, is that she won’t hand over his stash until the last few minutes before he’s due to go home to his mom and dad. Aislinn’s fucking smart like that. Let his parents deal with the chaos which comes from his sugar high.
Weighing her offer seriously, Lyric tries his hand at negotiating. It’s sad really. I kind of feel sorry for the kid, wondering why no one has ever taught him the finer points of a successfully executing a blackmail attempt?
“Only if Lee-lee can come stay too,” he states as seriously as a six-year-old can. “I mean, you don’t want me to say…”
Covering his mouth with her palm, my wife warns,
“Don’t do it. And remind me later to educate you and Lee-lee on the best ways to get what you want from the adults in your life,” Aislinn tells him, echoing my own thoughts.
“No, thank you,” Lyric shakes his head, his mop of dark, unruly curls flopping forward to cover his eyes. “I already know how to do that,” he informs her. And just when I think he can’t get any cooler, Lyric yells, “Mom, old Aunt Meg said fuck. I think she said shit too.”
High fiving her, Lyric runs over to Blaine, just as Meg releases a string of curses that would make my brothers proud.
“Jesus, enough with the old already. If you have to reference my age, I prefer seasoned to old, thank you very much.”
“And I prefer to be called spherical not fat, but we can’t all get what we want, so suck it up,” Aislinn retorts.
Interrupting them because if I don’t, I’ll never get a word in edgewise, I walk up behind my wife and wrap my arms aro
und her, splaying my hands over our baby.
“How you doing, beautiful?”
She spins around, throwing her arms around my neck and giving a little hop that tells me she wants me to pick her up. So of course I do, because who can resist a woman dressed in her man’s shirt, a pair of short denim cut-offs that isn’t wearing a bra.
“Thank fuck,” Aislinn sighs after she finishes pressing kisses all over my face. “Your son is in timeout if you’re wondering where he is. And no, he can’t be released from his kiddie prison,” she states, referring to the baby gate she installed across Dante’s doorway.
I’ve been trying to teach him how to jailbreak that shit, but I swear, the kid is as stubborn as his mom. If he doesn’t want to do something, you’ve got no fucking chance of getting him to, and that’s even taking into account the added incentive of a playdate with his favorite female. Blaine and Jonas’ three-year-old daughter, Skye.
Groaning, because the last thing I need to deal with when all I want to do is kick my wife’s friends out and fuck her on the counter is my cockblocking son, I prompt,
“What’d he do? And what do I need to fix?”
Dante is renowned for breaking shit, albeit if you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s fixing it. But the reality is, it wasn’t in five million pieces when he found it, the hammer, screwdriver, and once a drill saw to that, though. If you’ve never seen a four-year-old wielding a power tool, you should be fucking grateful because that’s some seriously scary shit right there.
“Just promise me you won’t kill him and then I’ll tell you,” my wife pouts, tightening her legs around my waist until my cock is rubbing up against her already dripping pussy.
If Aislinn thought removing her panties before I got home so that she could use her gorgeous body to tempt me was going to work, she can think again. What she seems to forget is that it’s a dead giveaway she’s up to something when she doesn’t wear underwear. My wife hates going commando, so even if it’s only a tiny scrap of lace parading as a thong, her pussy is always covered.
“Get it over with fast, baby,” I demand, slipping my hand up and inside the leg of her shorts.
Thrusting two fingers inside her soaking wet pussy, I grind my thumb down on her clit, hard. Ignoring her whimpers for more, making sure my body is shielding hers from view, I tell her,
“I had plans for you, beautiful, and every second you keep stalling I’m going to add in minutes to the time I’m not going to let you come.”
“You wouldn’t,” she hisses, knowing damn well I would.
“Abso-fucking-lutely, baby. Now tell me what the boy did, and I might let you suck my cock before I eat you,” I grin at her.
If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed over the years we’ve been together, it’s how much my wife loves sucking my cock. Shower blowjobs, kitchen blowjobs while I’m doing the dishes, blowjobs on the back of my bike, Aislinn doesn’t care where we are as long as I unzip my jeans immediately on request.
“Fine,” she huffs, grinding herself down further on my fingers that are still buried inside her. “He decided to replace the seat on your bike,” she rushes out as if her sentence of doom is all one word.
My body goes still at her admission, and if I were a heartless asshole, I’d pull my fingers out of her pussy and leave her high and dry for letting Dante anywhere near my fucking bike.
“How the fuck did that happen, and what the hell did he replace it with?” I fume.
Thank fuck the only bike here is my backup because even though he is my son, I’d be forced to kick his ass if he fucked around with my daily rider.
“I was peeing, Dex. Remember, heavily pregnant, your baby using my bladder as a trampoline,” she snaps, gesturing to her belly. “It’s Meg’s fault anyway, she was supposed to be watching him and fell asleep on the job.”
“Didn’t answer my other question, though, baby,” I remind her. “What did he replace it with?”
“Skye’s trike seat,” she says, trying desperately not to laugh.
And with that…welcome to my life.
It’s crazy barely controlled chaos, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love my wife more than my bike, I’m convinced my son is an evil genius, and my second boy still growing safely in his mom’s belly who is yet to be tainted by the insanity doesn’t stand a chance of making out of this house a normal, well-adjusted man.
And even though my family is probably going to turn me prematurely gray, put my blood pressure in jeopardy, and cause me to have a heart attack if God forbid Aislinn gives me any daughters, I’m going to cherish every second of it.
You only get one life so do with it what you will, but never forget it’s the people you meet along the way who make it worth living.
Gage’s Playlist
Ronnie – Metallica
Wrong side of Heaven – Five Finger Death Punch
Alpha Dog – Fall Out Boy
Awake Too Long – Rise Against
Big Empty – Stone Temple Pilots
Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden
People Live Here – Rise Against
Burn – The Cure
All I Do Is Win – T-Pain, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg
The Memory Remains – Metallica
Dead Souls – Nine Inch Nails
Doubt – Twenty One Pilots
Cash…
A Vengeance MC Novel by ~ Natasha Thomas
Copyright © 2016 by Natasha Thomas
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
eBook Published and any subsequent printing done and developed in Australia
First Released, June 29th, 2016
Natasha Thomas
Sydney, Australia
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http://[email protected]
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about this book…
Marshall ‘Cash’ Collins and his brother Jump were all each other could rely on after their mother died from a suspicious drug overdose just before Cash turned seventeen. Dropping out of high school to find work so that he could look after his younger brother wasn’t what Cash had planned out, but keeping his brother out of foster care and them together was the only thing that mattered so he did what needed to be done.
Kennedy Lewis would never forget the man who came to her rescue fifteen years ago. That night changed her life, and she’d been searching for him ever since just for the chance to thank him.
The woman who had haunted his dreams for more than a decade appearing out of nowhere was the last thing Cash expected when he walked into Rough Shod for a quiet drink one night. Not to mention, suspicious. Determined to get to the bottom of why she was here and her refusal to leave him alone after so long, Cash does the only thing he can think of to get the answers he needs.
He kidnaps her…
Trapped, frightened, and alone with a man she once thought was her savior, Kennedy has to decide if she can see past Cash’s paranoia that she’s a plant for a rival MC, and if she can forgive him for making her relive the terrifying events she’s struggled so long to overcome.
However, her choice is of no consequence to Cash, because he has already decided Kennedy will be his. In his mind, it’s just a matter of time before she comes to realize it and gives into the undeniable chemistry between them.
PROLOGUE
~ Marshall ‘Cash’ Collins ~
“Brains are awesome. I wish everybody had one.”
– Quotes and Humor
As a kid, I thought the worst thing that happened to me was my mom grounding me for riding my skateboard through the house and scratching up her newly laid floors. I was pissed I couldn’t go out and hang with my friends for a week and complained the entire time, but even then, I knew I’d gotten off lightly.
My mom was cool; she was one of those mothers all of my friends wished they had. Maryann Collins wasn’t your typical Sally Homemaker mom, though. Not even close.
She didn’t cook, couldn’t care less that my brother and I didn’t clean our rooms or pick up after ourselves, and let us do whatever we wanted as long as we were respectful, didn’t hurt anyone, or get arrested. Honestly, I think she was just grateful my brother and I came home in one piece most days.
Vengeance MC Box Set - Volume 2: Gage ~ Cash ~ Knight (Vengeance MC series Book 8) Page 28