“How old is she?”
“Eighty-nine. Ninety is comin’ up in April.”
And it was end of February.
“She’s not young, Shep. She’s gonna slow down.”
“This fast?” he asked.
“It’s been fast?” she asked back.
“Lately it seems like it.”
“Can she get out and about? Go to the doctor?”
“She fusses because I don’t have a year to help her get down the stairs so I carry her, but yeah. I take her to synagogue. I take her to get her eyes checked. I take her for her checkups.”
“When’s her next checkup?”
“Around her birthday.”
“Maybe it’s best to go out of schedule and get her in sooner,” Keely suggested.
He was going to do that. Jean wouldn’t like it but it was going to happen.
“Need to borrow Boz’s car,” he muttered.
“Why?”
He focused on her. “She has trouble gettin’ up in my truck and she’s old but she’s got her pride. I help her out of bed. On the john. Into the shower. Just think the stairs and lifting her ass into my truck are those last straws that bug her that she can’t handle.”
“Use my car.”
She had a little, sporty, black Nissan Juke.
No way in fuck Keely shouldn’t have bought American.
But it had zip and it suited her.
“I’ll go with you,” she carried on then immediately put her middle three fingertips over his lips. “And before you say anything, there is no way in hell anyone having anything to do with Chaos is gonna see us escorting an old lady to a doctor’s appointment, and if they do, we have an excuse. You needed my car and my help. And for you, I can distract Jean from getting grouchy while you look after her even more. For Jean,” she shot him a sunny, smug smile, “she digs me. She’ll be glad I’m around. So it’s a win-win.”
There was nothing she said that was wrong.
He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and tugged it down.
“What about work?” he asked.
“I’ll tell them I need a few hours of leave so I can take my granny to the doctor.”
“They gonna believe that?”
She gave a shrug.
That was part of the biker mama that never left her. She did what she did and if The Man gave her shit about it, especially if it was important, they could go fuck themselves.
She’d find a way to get time off.
“I’ll make the appointment and let you know,” he decided.
Another sunny smile, this one not smug. “Cool.”
He rested her hand on his shoulder but didn’t release her wrist. She shifted it, dipped a thumb into the dent in his collarbone and started to stroke.
“Why doesn’t she get around very much?” she asked.
“Because she’s old,” he pointed out the obvious.
“Could that be contributing to this? I know she uses a walker and she’s not all that fast, but maybe a few more trips down to your place a week. Some outings. Just liven things up a little bit, give her some exercise.”
“Babe, she’s near ninety with a ticker that isn’t doin’ her a lot of good and lungs that aren’t firing on all cylinders. This makes her weak and slow, so she’s not supposed to tax either.”
“Oh,” she muttered.
He grinned at her and asked, “We done talkin’ about Jean? ’Cause I need at least a whole half hour of talking about somethin’ else before I can fuck you again.”
Back came the sassy smirk. “She is so your proper biker grandma.”
“Shut it,” he warned.
“Shepherd ‘Hound’ Ironside, badass brother of the Chaos MC, adored by his Chaos family, feared by everyone else for the lunatic he absolutely is if you do his brotherhood wrong, owned by an old Jewish lady.”
He rolled her, hitched a leg, digging his junk into hers, and growled, “Babe, I said shut it.”
“You’re a lot of things, Hound, right now seriously hot, but also totally adorable,” she teased.
“Had your warning,” he muttered.
She opened her mouth to say something.
But he kissed her.
And when he had her like he liked her, he moved down and ate her.
He worked them up to it, but eventually he drove her into his bed fucking her face and then her cunt.
She passed out, leaking him all over his thigh, which she was straddling, face shoved into his neck, hair all over his chest, shoulder and arm.
Hound took a moment to feel her dead weight right there.
Then he passed out with her.
The next night, Keely did not make Jean walk down to his crib.
She made Hound haul the groceries she needed down to Jean’s.
And it was Hound sitting in the couch where he normally sat while Keely moved around Jean’s kitchen like she’d done it a million times, preparing their meal, doing this jabbering.
Keely could jabber and Jean could too, so as they got in their competition of who could jabber the most, Hound sat there with his eyes on reruns of Mike and Molly wondering if either woman knew he was there.
“So, Hound says your birthday is in April. And it’s a milestone. I’m totally making you a birthday cake. What’s your favorite?” Keely announced.
At that, Hound’s neck muscles grew tight but he still had to power through that to turn his head from the TV to look at her bustling in Jean’s kitchen.
She thought they’d still be together in April?
Christ, he fucking hoped so.
At the same time, for the torture to be over of waiting for it to end, he hoped that they would not.
“Oh, I don’t do much for my birthdays, dear. You have as many of them as I do, they’re not as special.”
Keely shot him a glare and he’d understand why when she asked Jean, “Shep doesn’t do up your birthdays?”
“I didn’t say that,” Jean told her, eyes to the TV. “He gets me a store-bought cake with my name on it and everything. And he brings me a huge feast from that kosher deli off Virginia. Matzah soup and chicken schnitzel for dinner. And he always brings flowers when he comes for lunch.”
Hound looked from Jean to Keely right in time to catch her mouthing silently, “You are so fucking adorable.”
He squinted his eyes at her.
She shot him an amused smile and got back to work.
“Okay, so do you want a store-bought cake this year too?” Keely asked.
“Do you bake as well as you cook?” Jean asked back.
“I have two boys with sweet tooths, so if I didn’t when they were born, I learned.”
“Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream icing,” Jean ordered.
“I’ll be all over that,” Keely replied.
Hound looked to Jean.
She was grinning.
There it was.
It had been the right decision to let these two get together.
Maybe not for Hound.
But for Jean.
“Now, just to say,” Keely launched in again. “I have some leave that I have to take at work the next couple of weeks and Hound says you prefer to go places in cars. So that he can use mine, he says you also have a birthday checkup but we’ll set that up early so he can have mine and I can take some leave and come with. We’ll go to that deli in person for lunch. Sound like a date?”
Hound kept studying Jean, wondering if that had been a deft maneuver on Keely’s part or if she’d fucked it.
Slowly Jean turned her head and caught Hound’s eyes. From her place in the kitchen, if she was looking, Keely wouldn’t be able to see Jean holding Hound’s gaze.
Her face was wrinkled. She had old-lady skin that was thin and papery.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t have an expressive face.
And right then, it was soft.
“Sounds like the perfect date,” Jean answered Keely, gaze on Hound.
It wasn’t a deft
maneuver. Jean knew exactly what Keely was up to.
But still, she hadn’t fucked it.
Yeah.
This had been the right decision. Keely had horned right in but in truth stepped right up, because Hound wouldn’t have found it that easy to trick Jean out of her house for an early visit to the doctor.
Keely was probably lying about the leave she had to take. If she had that leave, she’d have mentioned it.
She just did what she had to do to get done what had to get done.
He wanted to get up, go to the kitchen and stick his tongue down Keely’s throat.
He just watched Jean turn back to the TV and did it himself as Keely cried out an enthusiastic, “Awesome!”
Jesus, he was going to fuck her so hard tonight she’d think she’d never stop coming.
He adjusted in his seat so his cock wouldn’t get stiff at that thought and lifted his feet up to Jean’s coffee table.
“Boots, Shepherd,” Jean said.
He growled but used his toes to flip off his boots.
He heard Keely’s soft laughter.
“You frickin’ women are gonna be the death of me,” he muttered.
“From at least one of us, you can only hope,” Jean muttered back.
Hound went still and he felt the stillness of Keely in the kitchen, but not in a bad way.
In a way he was trying to figure out if his Jean bug just used sexual innuendo.
From her own version of a sassy smile he could see from her profile she did.
It was then, he howled with laughter.
Jean turned her head and smiled baldly at him as he did.
And in the kitchen, Keely dissolved in giggles.
It was then Hound realized life was good.
So yeah, it was a life that was good for now.
But he would take it.
Seed of the Brotherhood
The next afternoon, Hound was sitting at the bar in the Compound, Boz at his right side, Hop and Tack behind the bar, Shy and Joker both on his left, Joker sitting next to him, Shy standing, leaning into the bar.
Shy was exuding bad vibes.
Then again, their conversation wasn’t exactly cheery.
“She hangin’ in there?” Boz asked Tack, and Hound had his gaze on the beer sitting on the bar in front of him, but his attention was on Shy.
He was sure he was not the only one doing this.
“Snap’s seeing to her. She’s healing up. And Snap is also seein’ to the other kinda healin’ she’s gotta do,” Tack murmured.
Hound lifted his gaze to Tack without lifting his head and saw Tack was locked on Shy, his son-in-law, the father of Tack’s grandbaby, and his Chaos brother.
“She’s gonna be okay, Shy,” he went on. “She’s strong and she’s handling it great.”
“Shit went south,” Shy returned shortly.
“This is old ground,” Hop said carefully. “It happened. It’s done. We’ve already talked about it and we’ve already dealt with it.”
“It’s worth goin’ over since it didn’t just go south, it got totally fucked up,” Shy fired back.
“It did. And that was out of our control,” Tack returned. “You asked me, I’d never guess Bounty had that in them.”
“No, you’re wrong,” Shy bit out. “It was in our control when we used her to make our play against Bounty, against Valenzuela. And part of that control was us not doin’ that. That being somethin’ I’ll remind you I was not happy about then. Now we got a beef with Bounty, which I don’t fuckin’ blame them for the reason they first got that beef, and we got a woman who got beat to shit on our watch.”
Hound felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise.
This was true.
She was Bounty, but she had Chaos protection.
It had been Speck that fell down on that job.
And it had been Speck that felt the displeasure of his brothers. A displeasure that was extreme.
They didn’t really have to do dick, though. Speck felt like shit and when Snapper had backed him against a wall, squeezing the breath out of him with his hand at his throat, it might have taken three brothers to pull him off.
But Speck had not done one thing in his own defense.
It was like he wanted Snap to take him out.
Nope, they didn’t have to do dick.
“That’s been taken care of,” Tack said low.
“Yeah, which got us a bigger beef with Bounty,” Shy shot back.
“You don’t think we should have gone in and dealt with those assholes?” Joker asked in disbelief. “Take a hand to a Chaos woman, you get taught a lesson. And she mighta been takin’ Bounty dick, but she made that deal to back our play, and when she did, she became Chaos.”
“For fuck’s sake, no,” Shy replied. “Agreed, the lesson needed to be taught. The problem is, it was us who led it to that shit.”
“Maybe Hound didn’t have to slice that Bounty’s face. What’s his name? Throttle? Blood for blood but no one sliced Rosalie. And he played the massive dick card, but now he’s goin’ all out to atone,” Boz muttered.
Hound did not agree with Boz’s assessment.
Hound was also surprised with Boz’s assessment. It wasn’t like him.
Throttle had been Rosalie’s boyfriend. And Throttle had not only handed her ass to his club to kick the shit out of when he found she was informing to Chaos about Bounty’s security operations for Valenzuela’s drug transports, he’d been the first to land his blows.
Rosalie had just wanted her man out of that. She was in love with him. Thought he was a good man, just one messed up in bad shit. He wouldn’t listen to her so she went another route.
It wasn’t Hound’s call to make if it was the right route, or the wrong one.
It ended up bad for her, except Tack was right. They beat her down huge, but she was recovering. And now she knew her man had that in him, he wasn’t the man she thought he was, and she could move on.
And seemingly doing that with Snapper, which was good since he was into the bitch, and big.
Problematic to all these problems, Rosalie was Shy’s ex. She never got that deep in with him, but they had time together, he’d liked her, she’d fallen for him. But for Shy, it had been Tabby, Tack’s daughter. And it had been Tab for him for years. So that didn’t end real good for Rosalie and she found another biker in another club.
But Shy had been inside her and Hound could get that. Any biker babe that hung around who he’d dipped his wick in had put her ass on the line for good, for Chaos, and got it whipped, he’d go gonzo and it wouldn’t be beat-downs and sliced faces.
Bodies would pile up.
“You’d let me in on that shit, I’d have carved his face right off,” Shy clipped.
Hound’s lips curled up at his beer.
He’d always liked that kid.
Tack had made the call to keep Shy out of it.
In the end, not surprising to the woman she was—a biker princess grown up—it was actually harder to keep Tabby out it.
The woman, new mother or not, lost her motherfucking mind.
It was cute.
But she had nothing to worry about.
Hound took her blood for her.
“Blood for blood. Women in the hospital,” Shy bit out. “I’m beginning to wonder if Rush isn’t right and this shit isn’t worth the massive mindfuck, time suck and pain in the ass it is.”
He had no more to say and all the men knew it when he prowled out.
However, Hound knew they all had heavy thoughts.
Rush, Tack’s son, was not a big fan of their beef with Bounty (to say the least) or their maneuvers to push back Valenzuela.
He wanted it all turned over to the cops and to be done with it.
But Chaos had for years claimed turf around Ride, the store, garage and their Compound, which was all housed on the same lot. Once Tack guided them free and clean of the shit Crank had mired them under, they made it clear no drugs or whores anyw
here on what they considered “Chaos”—a five square mile area around their property.
The brothers back then who put their asses on the line to get clean felt that turf was their due.
So they’d taken it.
Then came Benito Valenzuela.
Valenzuela pushed, Chaos pushed back. Valenzuela pushed more, Chaos pushed back. This went on for-fucking-ever. Shit went down where Tack felt they had to make a move, the brothers voted, it passed (not unanimously), and to make a statement, they pushed back—harder—and claimed ten miles around Ride.
Rush was not happy but Rush did not have a lot of support for his idea of retreating just to Chaos—meaning their store, garage and the Compound—getting out of the vigilante street-cleaning business, leaving that to the cops, and just looking out for what was legally theirs.
With the shit going down, Millie kidnapped, working with the cops to dismantle Valenzuela, Rosalie getting her ass in a sling, constant surveillance of their women so they could be sure they were safe, and more area to patrol, Rush was finding new interest in his ideas.
This had included Snapper.
It now seemed it included Shy.
“Okay, nobody open me up for this, but I’m just gonna say . . .” Boz started, and Hound’s head stayed down but his eyes slid to Boz, not liking how this was beginning. “We’re informin’ on another club to the cops. Tack, brother, that shit is not us. Half that fuckin’ MC was locked up in that takedown. It’s not the MC way to get in bed with cops, hand deliver biker brethren to them. We shoulda found another way.”
“And what way would that be, Boz?” Tack asked, his voice stone cold.
It was a good question for Boz. He was a soldier. He wasn’t a general. He wasn’t a strategist.
Without Tack saying it, it was said.
If you don’t have any ideas, shut the fuck up.
“I don’t know, I’m not a mastermind, Tack,” Boz threw back, not stone cold, pissed as shit. “Since you are, how ’bout you come up with a scheme to get us outta this fuckin’ mess, because seriously, brother, it’s gettin’ tired.”
“Boz,” Hound murmured, and felt Boz’s attention land heavy on him.
“And you. You’re supposed to get this in hand, man. What the fuck you been doin’ for the last fuckin’ four months? Only time I seen you pitch in, including on guard duty to the old ladies, is when you could get your jollies kickin’ Bounty ass.”
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