Duke (The Henchmen MC Book 5)

by Jessica Gadziala

  "I bet it's gonna be in the glass room," Summer said, smiling. "Don't look at me like that," she said to me, smiling wider. "We've all thought about getting it on in there, admit it."

  She wasn't wrong.

  But she was wrong at the same time.

  Because the first people to break in the glass room wasn't Repo and Maze. It was me and Duke about three days later.

  Now if you told me even five minutes before it happened that it would, I would have laughed in your face. But Duke dragged me up there with the promise of a surprise.

  The surprise ended up being a very familiar blanket on the floor.

  At my brow raise, Duke gave me a wicked smile. "Yeah, it's the one from the fallout shelter. Don't worry, I washed it."

  "You don't mean..." I started, shaking my head as he closed the door in the floor and cut the lights.

  "Oh, but I do," he told me, hands going to my hips and pulling me against his body where I felt his hard cock already pressing against my belly. "See, Cash was right. This room isn't exactly soundproof. But it is pretty damn close considering how thick this glass is and how thick the roof is underneath it. I can make you scream as loud as I want and everyone will just keep sleeping like babies."

  "Duke..." I tried to keep objecting, though the idea of not having to hold back was definitely making my insides turn to mush.

  "Plus, look up," he demanded and I tilted my head to look up as his head ducked and his lips pressed into my neck, making my belly flutter, my sex clench, and a low whimper to escape my mouth as I looked at the dark sky above us, moonless, but littered with a thousand tiny stars.

  Then all reservations were gone.

  We undressed slowly and he made love to me just as slowly, wrapping us up in the blanket afterward.

  He took my hand, interlocking our fingers, then bringing my hand to his mouth to kiss it.

  "Tell me," he said quietly.

  "Tell you what?" I asked, body post-orgasm sated, my mind a little sleepy.

  "You know what," he demanded.

  And I did.

  So I did.

  "I love you," I said, never once in my life finding those words easier to say.

  "I love you too," he admitted, easy, no fuss.

  The words settled down deep, filling me until I felt bursting.

  He loved me too.

  Was there a better feeling in the world?

  "Don't fall asleep," I warned him, snuggling into his chest. "We can't sleep here."

  But we did.

  And when we came down the next morning and went out into the main room, yeah, Cash was there again, Cheshire cat grin in place.

  I looked over at Duke who squeezed my hand as he threw his head back to laugh.

  And I found myself joining.

  TWENTY

  Penny

  The next morning, we were in the SUV on the way to the care center to see my grandmother.

  Duke and Renny were in the front seat.

  Duke, because he never let me go anywhere alone despite the fact that there hadn't been anything violent or even suspicious since the massacre at the clubhouse.

  Renny, because he was 'backup'.

  At least that was what he insisted when he jumped in the front seat and declared, "Shotgun!"

  So there we were, on the way to see my grandma, everything in the world feeling right.

  And I saw them.

  I saw them.

  "Duke!" I shrieked. "That's them! Those are the guys!" I said, ripping off my belt so I could move between their seats and jab a finger out the windshield. "Them. Those are them!"

  "Penny, no," Duke said, shaking his head as we went to move past the small group of men. "That's not possible."

  "Don't tell me that that's not possible. I saw them. I saw them every time they punched or kicked or put a knife to me. That was them!"

  "Baby, it couldn't have been them," Duke reasoned.

  "Why not? Who are they?"

  In front of me, Duke and Renny shared a hard look, communicating something silently as my heart slammed so hard, I was sure I was going to throw up.

  Renny was the one to turn back to me, eyes intense.

  "Those were the Grassis."

  EPILOGUE

  Penny - 6 months

  A lot happened following the ride to my grandmother's that morning. But I don't want to talk about that right now.

  I want to talk about other things.

  Like Maze's delivery.

  See, three months before, Summer brought in a healthy little boy named Finn first thing in the morning with Reign beside her. After her short stay at the hospital, he finally brought her home to his house that was almost as secure as the compound.

  And three nights before Maze's delivery, all the men save for Renny went on some big 'run'. I didn't ask, but I knew that it was the arms-trading kind of thing.

  That left me at the compound with Maze.

  So when she threw my door open at three AM, the light from the hall putting her frame in shadow, I knew.

  "We need to go now," she said, her voice a pained hiss.

  I tried to convince myself when Repo pulled me aside and asked me to keep an eye on Maze, to make myself believe I was totally prepared to be her coach. I read a book and articles online. I even watched birth videos that made me equal parts amazed and queasy.

  But as I flew out of bed, trying to find shoes and my purse, I felt completely unprepared.

  "Okay. Relax," Maze ended up comforting me, bent over, holding the doorjamb. "Your shoes don't match," she added and I looked down to see one sneaker and one ballet flat. On a frustrated huff, I tossed off the sneaker and slipped into the other flat, grabbing my purse and going into the hall to sling Maze's hospital bag over my shoulder.

  "Okay. Alright. Let's get moving," I said, putting an arm around her lower back as we made our way slowly down the hall.

  When I passed the only other closed door, my anxiety went to full-on panic mode and I stopped, slamming my fist into it until it flew open to reveal a tired-looking, shirtless Renny.

  He might not have been as big and built as Duke, but he had a lithe strength that he covered almost completely in tattoos.

  "Fuck, honey what the..." but then his focus went to Maze and I almost wanted to laugh at the sheer masculine terror that crossed his face. "Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Okay. Um. I need a shirt," he said, running a hand through his copper hair and disappearing for a moment, coming back with a tee on and his boots on his feet.

  "You're driving," I informed him as Maze and I started slowly moving down the hall again.

  "Yeah. Ah, watch... let me..." he said, squeezing past us. "I'll go start the car so it's, ah, warm," he said, rushing off to do that.

  "If my uterus didn't feel like a washrag getting wrung out," Maze said, stopping to take a deep breath, "I would find it hilarious how flustered he is. Nothing phases him."

  "Well, you're about to push a human out of your body. And I think he thinks I am going to make him watch with me," I said with a laugh.

  When we got in the car, I called Repo who answered on the second ring, sounding fully awake. "She's in labor, isn't she?" he asked.

  "Yeah, we're on the way to the hospital now."

  "Fuck. God damn it. There's no way I will..."

  "Just get here when you can," Maze called, obviously knowing what he was saying.

  I handed Maze the phone.

  She didn't hang up for the drive or the entirety of her delivery.

  That was until the baby came and I had to briefly hang up to call him back with video so he could see his daughter.

  He flew into the room late that night, startling me and Renny awake from our sleeping positions- him on the windowsill, me in a chair that made everything hurt when I went to move.

  Renny stood, putting a finger to his lips and grabbing my hand to pull me out of the room as Repo climbed in bed with Maze, leaning down to kiss his daughter's head.

  "You were fucking green the entir
e time," Renny teased me, bumping into my shoulder.

  Okay, so at the last moment, I grabbed his hand hard enough for him to hiss and dragged him in the room with me.

  "Shut up," I said, knowing it was the truth.

  Let's just say that childbirth, while a wonderful thing and all that jazz, was also equally terrifying.

  "Well, let's hope you get over that by the time you're in the stirrups."

  Duke- 10 months

  Renny dropped down on the couch next to me, head tilted, watching as Penny walked into the kitchen.

  "Does she know yet?" he asked, looking over at me.

  "Know what?" I asked, shaking my head.

  "That she's pregnant."

  My head snapped to him, brows drawn together. She knew. She had told me earlier that week. But she was only about seven weeks along. It wasn't like she was showing or anything.

  "How the fuck do you know this shit?" I asked, for once, genuinely wanting to know.

  Renny shrugged. "She's breaking out. She's always had perfect skin. But she's breaking out from the hormones. She stopped drinking coffee and started eating a fuck of a lot of spinach and kale. And she's popping some horse pill in the mornings. All adds up." He paused. "Unexpected, right?"

  "Yeah," I said with a nod.

  We definitely hadn't been planning to start a family quite so soon. But that being said, when she told me, nothing had ever felt more right.

  "You gotta get a place," Renny said, telling me something I had been thinking every day since Penny told me.

  We had never moved out of the compound. It had become comfortable for us, a new kind of normal. But with a family on the way, it was time to get more serious about our lives.

  "Breaker might have the right idea with the house on the hill," Renny said. "But then again, Reign's place is pretty solid too. And Shane Mallick with his warehouse. Lots of options."

  Renny and I would never be best friends. Really, he just rubbed me the wrong way. But we slowly but surely learned to put that past shit behind us. With our ranks decimated and a need to handle business when it went down, we had learned to trust each other.

  And Penny liked him.

  So that, in a way, recommended him.

  "She likes round-cut rings, by the way," he told me, nodding toward the cell in my hand where I had an engagement ring site open. Then he stood and walked away.

  And, for once, I actually really appreciated his observation skills because I had been looking at those square-cut ones.

  Duke- 11 months

  My stomach was in knots.

  I wasn't exactly the kind of man who got nervous often. My life had been wild enough that very little got to me.

  But as I parked in the lot of the tall, white, sparkling-windowed building, I was fucking anxious.

  The name of the place was New Horizons Retirement Home. Which, well, I told Penny when she showed me the website that I thought that was pretty fucked up. 'New Horizons' made it sound like a none-too-subtle reminder that everyone inside the building would in the pretty near future be going into the horizon.

  Way to remind all the old people that they are going to die.

  But when the doctors told Patty that she could move along at any time, that her hip was all better, well, it took everything we had to keep her there for another week while we got her set up at New Horizons, the only place in the county that didn't have a waiting list.

  All in all, it was a decent place. Everyone got their own small apartments with one to two bedrooms, depending on whether they had live-in help or not.

  Patty didn't.

  When Penny even tried to suggest it, Patty snorted and informed her that she planned on finding herself a nice gentleman and that she didn't want some woman looking at her sideways for enjoying her old age.

  Penny had been so mortified by the idea of her grandmother getting it on that she never mentioned help again.

  And while it was a retirement home where tenants could 'enjoy the benefits of an independent life while in a community of like-minded individuals', there was still a desk in the lobby where I had to sign in. Apparently it was some sort of security measure to keep out people who meant to fuck the old people over with bogus sales or some shit like that.

  I took the elevator up to the fifth floor and walked down the generic white-walled, gray-carpeted hallway where I was actually fucking catcalled by two blue-haired ladies, one in a motorized scooter, the other with a walker, before I stopped outside Patty's door and knocked twice before I could talk myself out of it.

  "Duke!" she said, giving me a warm smile, leaning only slightly on her cane, something she only ever did in the privacy of her apartment. She was too proud to use it in front of anyone else. "What a nice surprise. To what do I owe the honor?" she asked as she moved in and let me pass, both of us going to the small dining table near the French doors to the balcony.

  I reached into my pocket, pulling out the small, dark blue jewelry box and flipping it open.

  "Oh, my," Patty said, putting a hand to her heart. "Well, I wish I could say I was surprised, but you have always been so smitten with me."

  I chuckled at that, liking the old firecracker.

  "I know it's traditional for me to ask her father," I said, shrugging. "But she has never been close with her parents." This was proven by the fact that we had dated for a year and I had never met them. Actually, if I wasn't mistaken, she had only ever spoken to them once in that time too, on their anniversary.

  When I asked Penny about her past, she never spoke of them unless I specifically asked. From her stories, they seemed more career-driven than parental. It was something she accepted without any apparent resentment. But I knew that was only because Patty filled the voids her parents left. In fact, she didn't just fill them, she overflowed then.

  Patty made Penny the woman she was.

  So when it came to asking permission to marry that woman, I knew where I needed to go.

  Patty's saucy smile was replaced with a sweet one, her eyes a little misty and it was the first time I saw the woman show so much emotion.

  "You know, I've lived in this area my whole life," she started oddly, making my brows draw together. "And I damn sure know who The Henchmen MC are."

  I felt my guts twist at that, sure, sure down to my bones that she was going to tell me that I didn't deserve her granddaughter.

  "Maybe I don't approve of what goes on over there or the threat that comes along with belonging to such an organization," she paused, reaching out and taking my hand, squeezing as hard as her much weaker body would allow. "But there are a couple things I do know. One, my granddaughter has spent her whole life in a state of acceptance. She's always just went the status quo. She took a tame job. She chose men who were so unimpressive that I can't even remember a single one of their names. But since she moved back here, since she found you, I see that changing. I see her taking chances. I see her getting stronger, speaking her mind more, doing a job that fulfills her."

  "I can't take the credit for that," I said, shaking my head. As much as I would have liked to, I knew that wasn't all me. "She has a strong support system with her friends and colleagues."

  "True," she said, nodding, having met Lo when she and Cash helped us move her into the retirement facility. She had immediately taken to Lo and her abundance of "gumption" and flirted shamelessly with the equally flirtatious Cash. "But I think you can take credit for a lot more of it than you realize. But anyway, you cut me off," she said, small-eying me in the same way that Penny did and I got to see where she picked up the habit.

  "Two, there is nothing unimpressive about you. I see that and she certainly sees that as well. She looks at you like you hung the moon in the sky just for her to look at every night. And you look at her like she is what makes the sun rise in the morning. And three, while you might be in a sordid type of lifestyle, I have every bit of faith that you will be able to keep Penny safe. Because safe is important. But you will keep her physically safe so s
he can keep exploring, taking chances, having her own little adventures, stop just... accepting things."

  She released my hand so she could take the ring box from mine, holding it close with one hand and stroking over the stone with the other.

  "So, in short, yes. You have my blessing. Nothing would make me happier than to see my only granddaughter marry the man she loves down to her bones." She handed me the ring back and gave me a knowing smile. "You can stop sweating now," she added, making me throw my head back and laugh.

  And then I stopped sweating.

  I had her blessing.

  I was going to marry the woman who loved me down to her bones, the woman who I loved down to mine.

  Duke- 2.5 years

  "Shh," she said, back to me, as she leaned over the crib and put Gracie in bed.

  Penny was convinced that I even breathed loudly and that the very difficult to get to sleep Gracie got startled awake by it.

  I watched as she tiptoed away from the crib toward the door, flicking off the light and the ceiling lit up with glow stars. She flicked on the rain machine she bought as a last-ditch effort to keep the never-tired Gracie asleep. No one was more shocked than me when it actually fucking worked.

  She backed up into me, hissing out a breath, obviously expecting that I had done what she said and disappeared. My arm went around her belly and I leaned down to kiss her neck.

  She sighed into it for a second before moving backward, closing the door as she did. As soon as we were in the hall, her hands grabbed my arm, trying to dislodge it from her stomach.

  "Knock that shit off," I grumbled, nipping into her ear.

  Since she had Gracie, she had become almost insanely insecure about her stomach. Really, it wasn't even that different. But even if it was, who could expect anything different. She had carried my baby in there. I actually kind of liked that there was proof of what she had done.