“So I’m gonna marry an insurance salesmen who wouldn’t know his way to a woman’s clit if he had a fifty-page instruction booklet, but he loves me. He’d never cheat on me. He’s over the moon I said yes. He came over Friday night with this basket his secretary made, filled with bridal magazines, and champagne and pretty flutes and a box of chocolates, and Post-it notes, saying we were going to spend the evening going through the magazines and he wanted me to stick a note on anything I loved.”
Wow.
That was sweet.
She kept going.
“So I have to spend some time introducing him to my clit. And I never felt with him the way I felt when I made Boz laugh. Whatever. He’s one thing Boz is not. Chaos is not. Good for me.”
“I—” I started to say something but I heard my front door open.
I turned that way.
The boys usually came in the back. It wasn’t unheard of for them to come in the front.
But they usually came in the back.
Maybe Dutch was there to tell me in person they’d taken his brother on as recruit (Jag would be celebrating, though tomorrow, even as sick as a dog as he’d be, he’d be cleaning up the mess of the celebration afterward, starting at oh-dark-hundred, no matter what that mess might be).
Though it was a given Chaos would take him on, so I couldn’t imagine why one of the boys didn’t just text me.
“Can you just be happy for me and try to help me find the way to happy?” Bev asked.
I couldn’t answer.
Not immediately.
Hound stood in the double-wide doorway to my kitchen.
Chaos cut. White thermal. Faded jeans that did things to his substantial package any woman, even one not into bikers, would give her favorite pair of shoes, her most beloved handbag and anything else that was requested for a shot at. Hair unkempt and wild from his ride, falling over his forehead and into those beautiful blue eyes that were wary and locked on me.
In other words, hot.
In other words, if he wasn’t such a motherfucking dick, and I wasn’t on the phone with Bev, I’d take about a second to think about it.
Then I’d pounce.
It was then I cursed the day I’d had double-paned windows put in to replace the old ones. With the rest of the built-to-last house, back in the kitchen, I never heard a bike approach. I never heard anything.
Damn it.
And he had a key.
A lot of the guys had keys.
Definitely Hound.
Damn it!
I stared (okay, glared) in his guarded eyes and fought throwing my half-eaten cookie at him.
“Keely?” Bev called.
“I can do that,” I told her.
The relief reached through the phone at me. “Thanks, babe.”
“I think one of the boys is trying to get through to tell me about tonight’s meet,” I said.
It wasn’t a lie.
Hound was one of the boys.
“Okay, text me even though you don’t really need to text me. Text me anyway,” she requested.
“You got it. We’ll talk more about your wedding later. Especially the bachelorette party.”
Hound’s head tipped to the side and his eyes went to my phone at my ear.
The gratitude was practically dripping from her repeat of, “Thanks, babe.”
“I’ll text later and we’ll plan some facetime,” I replied.
“You got it. Later, Keely.”
“Later, babe.”
I took my phone from my ear and made sure the call was disconnected before I caught Hound’s gaze again and opened my mouth to blast him.
He got there before me.
“You said what you had to say earlier, baby,” he said gently, his deep voice wrapped around the words like a snuggly blanket. “I couldn’t get into that with you with the boys here and the meeting coming up. The meeting’s done. Jag’s in. So now I’m here so we can talk this shit out.”
“You said all that needed to be said, Hound,” I pointed out. “The only thing left right now for you to do is leave your key and get out of my house.”
“Keely—”
“Get out of my house.”
“Baby—”
Right.
Enough!
I threw the cookie at him, it bounced off his shoulder, fell to the floor, and I shrieked, “Get out of my house!”
He stared at me a beat (and I’ll note, did this and did not get out of my house) then his eyes dropped to the cookie on the floor.
Okay, the cookie was a loser move and I shouldn’t have let him see me lose my cool like that, especially on a loser move that huge, but he wasn’t getting out of my house.
He looked back to me.
“You threw a cookie at me,” he stated.
Were his lips quirking?
Oh no, they were not.
But they were.
They were quirking!
“Do you find something funny?” I asked dangerously, slowly reaching out to put my phone on the counter so I didn’t throw that at him too.
“You threw a cookie at me.” His eyes glanced down at it and back at me before he amended, “Half a cookie.”
“This is not funny, Hound.”
He wiped his face clean of amusement.
“Jean had died,” he said quietly.
“That’s no excuse.”
He flinched.
Christ.
Hound flinched.
Still with the quiet. “My head was messed up.”
“You didn’t fail to communicate that to me,” I shared sarcastically.
“You’re right, I missed the signs.”
That admission had me clamming right up.
“Been playin’ it in my head since I took off earlier,” he told me. “Got no idea what votes I cast at the meeting tonight and they were important. I don’t give a fuck. All I could think about was you. What you said. What you’d been doin’. All I’d missed. And gettin’ my ass back here to work this out.”
That felt good.
But it wasn’t enough.
“It’s too late,” I shared.
“Babe—”
“I’d forgive anything from you, Hound. Anything,” I stressed. “Not because you stood on my back walk with the blood of Black’s murderer all over you. Not because all you gave my boys. But because all you are to me. That, what you said, what you thought I’d done, I can’t forgive.”
“You came apart when he died,” he reminded me.
“Of course I did,” I snapped. “I loved him. He was my husband. He was the father of my sons. And he’d had his throat slit. So of course I did, Hound. But that was seventeen, almost eighteen fucking years ago.”
“You put yourself back together two months ago, Keely, and don’t try to tell me that wasn’t when it happened. That was when it happened. You gave him that amount of grief, suddenly you’re at my crib, strippin’ buck naked, comin’ on to me, what the fuck did you think I’d think?”
“Not that I was out for my biker bang,” I hissed.
His mood started deteriorating, and I could tell it not only by his vibe but by his voice.
“No indication, nothin’ before that and suddenly you’re naked in my living room, Keekee.”
“You know me better than that.”
“Didn’t hear dick about you givin’ up Black’s cut and his bike until after I blew my stack with you. So what’s that, babe? You held on even when you were with me so let’s get to the real of this. You weren’t ready to let go until you realized how far we’d gone and thought it was lost.”
He wanted to get to the real of this?
Well, we’d do just that.
“If his bones could talk, Hound, they’d tell you about the visit I took to them right before I showed at your apartment that first time and shared with him right at his gravestone that he was going to have to suck it up and let you have me because I wanted you, and he had to let me be free.”
Th
at was when Hound clamped his mouth shut.
“So yeah, that last scene at your place . . .” I nodded. “Yeah. It was time to totally let go. But that was more about my boys being twenty-one and nineteen, almost twenty-two and twenty, and finally getting what was their due from their father. I can’t say it didn’t have to do with that shit that went down with you. What I can say is it would have come earlier, except I was spending so much time trying to get through to you, I didn’t have time to do that. When we were done, I took that time. And now it’s done. All of it.”
“We’re not done,” he growled.
“You made the call, Hound. I just answered it.”
“I found her.”
“Yeah you did,” I purred, leaning back suggestively, then leaned forward and bit, “And you lost her.”
“I’m not talkin’ about you, Keely. I found Jean dead.”
I shut up.
“Would only ever be me and I thanked fuck she had me or who knows how long she’d be lyin’ dead in her bed before someone found her,” he shared.
Okay.
Shit.
God.
He’d found her.
I hadn’t thought of that but of course he did.
God.
“Hound—”
“My head was messed up with you and I know for a goddamned, fuckin’ fact if I hadn’t lost Jean and it hadn’t been me that found her, spent the day with paramedics, at the hospital, callin’ her rabbi, sortin’ shit out ’cause Jews try to get their own put in the ground as soon as they can, I woulda listened. I was in no mood to listen. And you might not think that’s an excuse, babe. But I loved her, and I held her cold dead hand and I knew she’d died right beyond a damned wall from where I was, died all alone, so you’d be wrong.”
I would.
He was right.
I was wrong.
It was an excuse.
“Now,” he kept at me, “you say you can’t forgive I put him between us, you didn’t put the shit out there you needed to put out there even knowin’ I had that shit messin’ with my head. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about. You gave it to me earlier standin’ by me on my bike. You didn’t tell me your goals with comin’ to me and you knew I’d put him right there between us. And you touched your mouth to him on my body and you knew then I lost it about that and you still didn’t say dick. So I blew my stack and I fucked up huge. But you played a game with massive stakes not lettin’ me in on what would be the ultimate prize and life kicked me right in the balls in the middle of shit takin’ us to where we’d hammer it all out, and I fucked up. I did it huge. You laid it out. And I’m here. So, where we goin’ now, Keely? You gonna hold on and cut me out and die alone one day? Or are we gonna find our way past this and figure out what’s next with the boys, with the brothers, and fight our way to the other side?”
There was a lot about that I could argue.
But in that second, I wondered what was the point.
Because I wanted to fight my way to the other side with Hound.
I had no idea what I should say to communicate that, I just needed to say something.
It came out, “Hound—”
But that was all that got out.
He lifted up a hand, palm my way.
“Before you say dick, first, I’m fuckin’ Shep to you and second, even when I was still pissed at you, convinced you’d played me for my cock, I couldn’t sleep remembering the way I put my hands on you. So I’m standing here giving you my vow that will never happen again. Never, Keely. Whatever comes of this, we work it out, whatever comes our way, you never have to fear that from me again. Not ever. If you give me nothing from makin’ that ride from the Compound to here to have this out, I gotta beg you to give me that.”
I gotta beg you to give me that.
“I knew that was about Jean,” I whispered.
He stared at me half a beat before he closed his eyes and turned his head away.
Oh yeah.
Even ticked at me, thinking what he thought of me, that’s what had him sleepless.
He could have done worse, a big guy like him, absolutely.
But what he’d done to me, I wondered, even though I’d forgiven him, if that was something he could forgive in himself.
“I already forgave you for that,” I told him.
He opened his eyes and looked at me.
Hope.
Oh my God.
His eyes, Hound’s eyes, that crazy-cool, bright lapis blue, were shining with hope.
He really, totally fucked up.
But he really, totally loved me.
“The boys know about us,” I shared. “You having the recruits clean it then clear it out and you got new stuff, Jag came around to check it out. Saw my car at your place. I think both of them did. My guess, repeatedly. Jag even came up and heard us in your apartment together.”
The hope fled and aggravation took its place.
“Fuckin’ you?” he asked.
“Laughing,” I answered.
He blew out a breath.
I almost giggled.
Instead, I shared, “They’re mad at me because they thought I broke up with you right when you lost Jean.”
That sent his brows up. “No shit?”
“I’d appreciate you disabusing them of the notion that their mother is the cold-hearted bitch who dumped ‘their’ Hound, and that’s what Dutch called you, ‘ours,’ right when a woman he cared about died.”
“I’ll get on that later,” he replied.
“They like us together. They, well . . . want us together.”
Hound said nothing to that.
But the hope came back.
He was hot. I loved looking at him. I’d always loved looking at him. Even when I had Black.
But he’d never been more beautiful to me.
“So, it’s kinda just the brothers we have to win around,” I kept babbling.
“Babe?” he asked.
“What?” I asked back.
“How can you make just a robe look so fucking gorgeous?”
And man, he thought I was hot too because this robe was nothing.
I shrugged. “Maybe because I have nothing on but panties underneath.”
Again the hope fled but this time something that made my nipples tingle took its place.
“Am I fucking you on the kitchen table?” he asked.
My pussy saturated with wet and my legs turned to jelly.
By a miracle, I remained standing.
“Yes, please,” I whispered.
And suddenly there I was, back to the kitchen table, panties down my legs, feeling Hound’s hand work between them, then feeling his cock drive into me.
Okay, maybe I let him get off easy.
But I suspected I was now going to get off a whole lot easier, so it was worth it.
We could hammer out the details later.
Now, I was all in for my man to hammer me.
My back arched into him and I lifted both my hands to fist them in the back of his hair.
He thrust into me, bent over me, eyes locked to mine.
“Do you know how many times I thought about fuckin’ you on this table?” he asked on a grunt.
“How many?” I asked (or kinda panted) back.
“I lost count,” he answered.
“Hmm,” I mumbled, wrapping my legs around his hips.
He started going harder, his face growing darker, his arm curling around the top of my head to drive me down into his thrusts.
Nice.
“Kiss me, Shep,” I begged.
“No,” he declined.
“No?” I asked.
“Gonna watch you get fucked on your kitchen table and gonna watch you come for me right here. I’ll kiss you after.”
My whole body shuddered.
I was in for that plan.
His lips twitched.
“That’s my Keekee,” he muttered. “She likes it like that.”
“Just ride it, cowboy,” I breathed, and God, a week without him, it just took his cock and him pounding into my clit to tumble right over. I got there like a shot, dug my heels into his ass and whispered, “Shep.”
“Go,” he grunted.
I went. I did it loud. I did it hard. I did it long. It was fabulous. And in the middle of it, I felt Hound topple over with me.
Lord, I loved listening to him come. The rolling, snarling, low groan he always gave me made my pussy ripple automatically in response.
When I was done and started to resurface, I realized he wasn’t gliding.
He was in, all the way, buried deep and still watching me.
Yeah.
Hound was in.
All the way.
Buried deep.
“Baby,” I said softly.
That was when he kissed me.
I let go of his hair with my fists but held the back of his head in both my hands and kissed him back.
I thought he’d make it last a long time. I mean, it was a makeup kiss after all.
He didn’t.
And when he spoke again, I was glad he didn’t.
“I’m so fuckin’ sorry I laid that shit on you, baby. You said we land the heavy on people we care about the most because we think they’ll forgive us but it isn’t cool. And that wasn’t cool. But fuck, I was feelin’ so much I could not see past it, and then you opened that door and it boiled over and I came at you like I did and—”
“Hound, Shep, baby,” I cooed, running my hands over his hair, letting them come to rest at the sides of his head. “I get it.”
“I loved him.”
I went still.
Hound was inside me on the kitchen table in the house Black had bought me where I raised his boys . . . with Hound.
“I would not forgive him for this,” he whispered.
“Are you going to make me happy?” I asked.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ try,” he answered.
“Then yes you would.”
He stared in my eyes before he shoved his face in my neck.
Okay, suffice it to say, I’d underestimated the battle Hound would wage within himself taking what belonged to a brother, even one that was no longer breathing to claim it, we both knew in a way I was still his and a part of me always would be even as I was free to be another’s.
I knew it’d be rough.
I still underestimated it.
“Jean didn’t get it,” he said in my neck.
Wild Like the Wind Page 23