Lilli knew how to keep a secret. Even from Isaac, if necessary, and this was. “Okay. Mouth shut. But Show, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.” He pushed his plate of uneaten food away and pulled his wallet out, its chain rattling against the Formica table. “I gotta get back, Lilli.”
When Show parked his truck at the feed store, he got out and came around as Lilli was climbing down. He grabbed her arm and pulled her into a quick, hard hug. Then, without saying a word, he let her go and went inside.
Lilli stood at the side of his truck and watched him, feeling low and helpless. Then she heard Badge laughing. She followed the sound, and found him, Billy, and a couple of other young guys grouped around a picnic table at the side of the store, two large pizzas from No Place spread over the top. When Badge saw her, he finished the slice in his hand, wiped his hands on his jeans, waved a goodbye to his friends, and trotted over to take her and her horse supplies home.
~oOo~
When she heard Isaac’s Harley roaring up to the garage, Lilli had Gertie tied off in the middle of the barn and was brushing her while Badger installed the new feed buckets in the stalls. Flash and Ebbie were grazing in the paddock. They needed more room to run, but Lilli didn’t yet have confidence she’d be able to get them to come back to her if she turned them out in the big pasture. Isaac called them in with a loud whistle, his thumb and forefinger in the corners of his mouth. Lilli couldn’t whistle at all.
Isaac came into the barn door, pulling his shades off and hooking them in the pocket of his kutte. “Hey, baby. Looks like you were busy today.” He put a gloved hand on Gertie’s nose and hooked a finger through Lilli’s belt loop, drawing her close for a kiss.
Lilli’s day had been stressful—the heartbreaking talk with Show; signing off on the property purchase, which meant dealing with Mac Evans and his unsettling way of looking at her; and one last impulse call she’d made that had stirred a lot of old sadness up. She’d needed Isaac. She hadn’t realized how much until his mouth was on hers. She dropped the brush and turned into him, wrapping her arms around him and opening her mouth to take his tongue. Gertie nickered and nibbled at her arm.
Isaac kissed her back, hard and deep, and then pulled away to look down into her eyes. “You okay, Sport?”
She nodded. “Missed you.” He pulled her closer, and her body throbbed and grew wet.
As if he’d caught the scent of her arousal, his eyes flared and, without moving his gaze from her, he called out, “Badge! Hit the road. LaVonne is waiting for you in the Hall.”
From the corner of her vision, Lilli could see Badge’s head pop up over the front wall of Ebbie’s stall. “LaVonne? Really? I—um—need to finish installing this, though.”
Isaac grinned down at Lilli, then turned to Badge. “I got it. You go on. Don’t keep her waiting, and don’t make her sorry. You make her sorry, you make me sorry. Then I make you sorry. Catch me?”
Lilli looked over to see Badge’s grinning, moony face. LaVonne was apparently a big deal. Badge came through the stall door so quickly Gertie started a little and then huffed at him, irritated. “Thanks, boss! Nobody’ll be sorry, I promise. See you tomorrow, Lilli!” And he was gone.
They watched him go, then turned back to each other. “Sounds like LaVonne is a helluva reward.”
Isaac winked. “She can, as we say, suck the chrome off a tailpipe.”
“And you know this personally?” She knew the answer; she just wanted him to squirm a little.
But he didn’t. He shrugged, still grinning. “I have a past. You jealous?”
“Nah. But I might have to do some sucking myself, make sure you appreciate me.”
He set her back and untied Gertie. “That’s no way to make a baby. So first, I’m gonna fuck you screaming right here in this barn. Later, you can suck whatever you want.” He led Gertie into the paddock. Lilli used those couple of minutes wisely, and when he came back, she was naked. It was pretty damn chilly on this late-autumn evening, but she knew he’d warm her up right quick.
He stopped dead inside the paddock door. “Jesus Christ, woman. I love you.”
~oOo~
Much later that night, after a brilliant barn fuck—if she wasn’t already pregnant it damn sure wasn’t for lack of trying—chores, dinner, and another multifaceted round in their bed, Lilli lay on Isaac’s chest, running her fingers through the happy trail of hair down the muscled ridges of his belly. Isaac kissed the top of her head. “Thank you for what you did for Will’s wife and for the town. For us. I know it was hard.”
“I know it’s the right thing. I’m glad we have the horses. We’ll have to figure out what to do with the property, but not till all this crap is settled down. As long as Ellis is gunning for it, we should let it sit.”
“I’ll keep you safe, Sport. I won’t let him hurt you. I swear it.”
She sighed. She didn’t want to fight him, but he knew as well as she did that a vow like that was pointless. If Ellis wanted to get to her—and he would—then he would get to her. She had to be ready to fight back. And hope that they were able to get to him first.
Deciding that he needed to let her know he wanted her safe more than she needed to remind him yet again that he couldn’t keep her safe, she changed the subject. “I did something today that feels kind of scary.”
He shifted under her, shrugging his shoulder so that she’d lift her head and meet his eyes. “You okay?,” he asked.
“Yeah. Not scary like that. I called my dad’s lawyer back after all the real estate stuff was done and asked him to clear out my storage locker and ship everything here. It’s mostly books, and a few boxes of heirlooms from my Nonnie and my dad.”
Isaac grinned widely. “Lilli, that’s great. That’s awesome. Why is it scary?”
She wasn’t sure how to explain it, but it had been eating at her vaguely all evening. “I don’t know. I think maybe it’s because it means I’m really settled. I mean—I don’t mean that I don’t want to be here with you. I do, so much. And I know I’ve been struggling because I wasn’t feeling like I had a place here. I do now, and that’s why I wanted my stuff. But…it’s weird. My whole past is in those boxes, and I haven’t seen any of that for more than a decade. All this time, my most permanent address has been that storage locker. It feels weird to give it up. And it feels weird that it feels weird.” She laughed. “It’s all very weird.”
He hugged her close, tucking her head under his chin. “I get it, Sport. I do. It’s a big change. But it tells me only good things. In some ways, to me, it’s even bigger than you being ready for a baby. You’re moving in. Now you’re moving in.”
They were quiet for long minutes after that. Lilli started to doze, snug in Isaac’s arms. Then his voice rumbled up against her ear. “I want to give you my ink.”
She understood what that meant. It didn’t surprise her; they were already planning to be married. She’d figured it would probably be something that happened at around the same time. But she knew that, to a man like Isaac, ink was the bigger deal. That was the lifetime commitment. She wondered if Holly had Show’s ink.
“Take my ink, baby. Don’t make me wait for that. Take it now. Please.”
When she realized that there wasn’t even a decision to be made, something deep inside her calmed, and she knew that she was already settled, truly home. “I will.”
He rolled, laying her under him, and kissed her deeply. When she felt his cock lengthen and harden again on her thigh, she knew the night was not yet over.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Isaac sat up against the headboard and watched Lilli sleep. The morning was getting ripe—almost ten o’clock. She almost never slept this late, so she obviously needed the rest. He hated to wake her, but it was getting late, and he would need to get moving soon. More than waking her, he hated to leave without letting her know.
She’d had a rough night, waking three separate times in the clutches of her nightmare. He wished he knew a way to keep her safe from
her dreaming. But he didn’t know a way to keep her safe from anything.
Ellis had yet to make another move. Liza Keller had bought them some time by demanding of Ellis’s associates—and, surprisingly, getting—time to bury her husband before she dealt with his offer. By the time she did, the sale to Lilli was inked. Now, they had Liza and her family fully under the protection of the Scorpions in Florida, and, in Signal Bend, they were doing what they could to suppress the information about the sale. But that was borrowed time. When Ellis found out who the new owner was, he’d come for Lilli. The Horde needed to get to him first.
They’d been working Marissa Halyard for almost two weeks. They’d started easy. Victor had held off a vote for his patch by feeding her fake intel. It was his idea, and it was a risk, since they’d had no idea if he could pass off the fake stuff as real, but she’d bitten. They had confirmation now that she was the leak, and the intel they’d fed her had cleared a good path for Bart and Rick right to her father’s door. Now it was time to use her in a different way. Make her daddy sweat, get him to open Ellis’s door so they could walk through it.
It was a helluva thing for Isaac to wake up, curled close with his woman, his first thought love and concern for her, and his second thought the realization that he would spend the day torturing a twenty-three-year-old girl. His life was chaos.
He slid back down and turned to his side, brushing his hand over the silky, firm skin of her waist and hip. He traced his fingers over the sentence inked in Italian script up her side, from her hip to her ribs: L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle. The love that moves the sun and the other stars. Dante. The last line of The Divine Comedy. A memorial to her father. And the kind of love Isaac felt for her.
Her first tattoo was a butterfly on the back of her left shoulder. Intricate, black and grey, the kind of tattoo a young woman got before she’d figured herself out. He traced its delicate lines, and she brushed at his hand in her sleep, sighing deeply, but she still slept.
Finally, he ran his fingers lightly over the back of her neck and down between her shoulder blades, where her new ink was healing well. The very next day after she’d agreed to take his ink, he’d called Tony, the Horde’s guy, and had taken her to his little shop in Millview. He’d already known exactly what he wanted it to be: Mjölnir, with his name worked into the pattern. His mark. Where he could see it, touch it. No matter where they were. She was his.
“Hey.” She said it on a breath, then rolled to her back, her body sliding against his as he held her. “Morning.”
He brushed her hair from her eyes. “Morning, Sport. Rough night.”
She made a face but said nothing; she didn’t like to talk about the dreams at all. After a few seconds, she asked, “Time is it?”
“’Bout ten. I gotta get movin’, but I wanted to spend a little time with you first. Could be a late one tonight.” He kissed her, and she opened her mouth and drew his tongue in. Groaning as his cock swelled, he pulled back. “Don’t have that kinda time, baby. Unless you want to shower with me.” He loved showering with her, but getting her to agree to get in there with him was tough—she had a weird privacy thing—so he grinned when she nodded. “Good girl. I’ll get it started.”
He got the water very hot, the way she liked it, and stepped in. She came into the bathroom a minute or so later and slid the curtain back, standing there gloriously naked and beautiful. She looked tired, though, still. But she was smiling, and she looped her arms around his neck as he pulled her close with one arm. He held his swollen cock in the other hand and pushed it against her folds, making her gasp and flex.
There wasn’t a lot of time, but he didn’t want to rush this, either. Relishing the hot slide of her wet body on his, so pliant and delicious, he slid his cock between her legs, letting her thighs hold him snugly, sensuously. Then he bent his head to take a beautiful, rosy nipple between his teeth. He suckled her hard, the way she liked. Her hands curling into his hair, she moaned his name.
And then she went completely limp in his arms. Surprised, he nearly dropped her, then nearly dropped her again when she remained limp and her slick body slid through his embrace.
“Lilli! Baby!” She was out cold.
Holding her tightly, he swept her legs up and carried her out of the bathroom, both of them dripping wet and the shower still running. When he got back to their bed, he laid her down and pulled the comforter over her. She was pale. Had she been before? Had he missed that?
She was breathing, but her pulse was pretty fast, and he was alarmed. Sitting on the bed at her side, he held her hand. “Baby, come on.” He was going to have to get her to the hospital. Out here, 911 was a joke in an actual emergency.
He ran to turn the shower off, then jumped, still wet, into his jeans. A thought was occurring to him, but he was no less scared. She was still out, and that couldn’t be good. He was grabbing his shirt off the floor when she came to. He dove to his knees at the side of the bed.
“Oh, thank God, baby.” Her eyes fluttered shut again, and he shook her gently. “Hey. Stay with me. What’s going on?”
She blinked and took a deep breath. “Not feeling so well, I guess. I’m okay, though.”
“Scared the shit outta me, Sport. Gettin’ to be a habit with you.” He ran his fingers through her wet hair. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Just got lightheaded. I’m better. Tired, but better. Might sleep some more.”
None of this was like her. He asked the question that had occurred to him. “Lilli, when’s your period due?”
He saw her understand. Since they were trying—very enthusiastically—to knock her up, they probably should both have been looking for signs, but everything was so busy and nuts that he, for one, hadn’t even thought to watch the calendar. But he’d just done a quick count, and they’d been going at it unprotected for more than two weeks, so…
“Couple days. It’s too early for me to have any symptoms, though, right? Even if I am?”
He grinned. “You’re asking the wrong dude, Sport. I got no idea about any of this. I’m gonna have Badge get you a test, though, before he gets here.”
She sat up fast, then—too fast. She put her hand to her head, worrying him again. “Lilli?”
“No fucking way is Badger going to pick up a pregnancy test for me. I have errands to run today. I’ll pick one up then. When he’s not looking. Nobody needs to know. Okay?” She pushed lightly at him. “I thought you had to get going.”
He really did, but he didn’t want to leave her. He wanted to be with her when she took the test. He wanted to make sure she was okay. And Badger wasn’t there yet, anyway. But, fuck, he really did need to go.
“You sure you’re gonna be okay, baby?”
She rolled her eyes. Her color was better, and she was feeling well enough now to get pissed off. “I’m fine. I’m going to sleep more, and then I’m going to have my day. I’ll have Badge around if I need help. So get out. Go do your thing.”
“Bed’s wet. You’re wet. C’mon. I’ll help you with that before I go.”
She started to protest, but then she gave up and nodded. He helped her up and followed her to the bathroom. Once there, she flipped him off and closed the door in his face. Grinning stupidly, feeling a bizarre and nearly debilitating mélange of hope, happiness, concern, and blinding fear, he stripped the wet bedding and remade the bed. Lilli came out of the bathroom, her wet hair braided down her back. He helped her into one of his t-shirts and guided her back to their now-dry bed. That she let him fuss as much as she did told him how crappy she really felt.
“Hey. Wait to take the test until I’m home, okay? I want to be here.” Her eyes closed, she nodded.
The kitchen door squealed, and Badger called out, “I’m here, boss!” Isaac bent down and kissed her forehead. “Badge’s here. I gotta go, baby. Call me if you need anything. Okay?”
Her only answer was a quiet moan as she drifted back into sleep.
~oOo~
&nb
sp; Vic’s little friend Marissa was already bound when Isaac got to the clubhouse. It was his custom to be last in—he fucking hated waiting for people. Show was sitting at the bar with Bart when he got there. Dom was putting away clean barware. The Hall was otherwise empty. That wasn’t so unusual in the late morning, when people were off at their work, but there was a heaviness in the air that was different. Isaac knew what it was—the work of the Horde today was dark business.
Show and Bart stood when he came in. As Isaac approached, Show said, “We’re good to go. Ceej and Dan are leading patrol. Vic, Len, and Havoc are in there with her.”
Isaac looked at Bart. “You set up?”
Bart nodded. “Yeah. I’m in her Skype, got the signal protected. We should have a good window to transmit what we want without anyone making record of it. Can’t keep Halyard from recording if he wants, but otherwise we should be clear.”
They planned to Skype Marissa’s session with the Horde to her father. Isaac wanted him to see their faces, but he wanted to avoid the chance that someone could snag the feed and record it. Video evidence of what they were about to do could take them all down, send them inside for a long time. Until recently, the Horde had been a small-time club. They were careful with the meth, and otherwise they’d barely been outlaws. They all had records, but only C.J. had done serious time—an eight-year stretch back in the day. Isaac didn’t relish the thought of landing the whole club in Marion. So he hoped Bart’s protections were solid. Because this day was going to be fucked up.
A cyclone filled his head. He’d left Lilli sick, maybe pregnant, and thoughts of her clamored even more loudly than usual for the lead. But those thoughts were in direct conflict with his plans for the day—the torture of a young woman while her father watched. Dark shit. She deserved it, and her father deserved it. They’d gotten Daisy killed horribly, and her mother brutalized. Yet Isaac questioned what the Night Horde had become if they’d reached a place where what they were about to do was the right course. He didn’t know how he was going to live with this day on his conscience.
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