Wild Like the Wind by Kristen Ashley

“Sorry?”

  He lifted his head. “Jean didn’t get it. She had another perspective. She lost her man before she could ever really have him, and then let her life slip away not letting herself have anything. She didn’t get why two living, breathing people who cared for each other would not grab hold.” He ran his hand to the side of my face and his thumb across my cheek. “I’m beginning to see her perspective.”

  I understood a little something about allowing the extremes of grief to lead you to letting your life slip away.

  I hated that for Jean.

  But it made me feel wonderful I’d put a stop to it and went all out to find some happy.

  I just wished we could tell Jean we were both going to go for some happy.

  Sadly, we couldn’t.

  I had a feeling she knew anyway.

  I gave him a shaky smile. “Good.”

  “The boys are really okay with it?”

  I nodded, I should have done it emphatically since “okay” did not cover it. But I’d let Hound experience that for himself.

  “The brothers won’t be.”

  I pressed my lips together and nodded again.

  “Keely?”

  “Right here, baby,” I whispered.

  “Let’s not fuck this up.”

  The smile that earned was not shaky.

  “Deal,” I agreed.

  “And baby?” he called.

  “I’m here, Shep,” I reminded him.

  “No more cookie throwing. I’ve had your cookies and that one hittin’ the deck, even half of one . . .” he gave me a rakish grin that made even badass Hound look downright adorable—wicked, but adorable, “cryin’ shame.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t make me pissed when I’m post-orgasmic.”

  “That was lame,” he decreed.

  “You’d rather I came at you with my nails?” I asked.

  “That would have meant I’d have to subdue you, which would no doubt turn into angry sex, which would turn into makeup sex and I woulda learned a lot quicker all you had on under that robe was panties.”

  “Women don’t normally put bras on after they have a bubble bath.”

  That surprised him. “You take bubble baths?”

  “Is that shocking?”

  “You’re a biker babe.”

  “There’s one operative word to that, ‘babe,’ and many of us like bubble baths.”

  “Just to say, it had not escaped me you’re a babe,” he remarked.

  “Don’t try to sweet talk me after you’ve annoyed me.”

  “How many cookies are left?” he asked.

  “If you make the five second rule the fifteen minute rule, five and a half, but time is swiftly running out on that half.”

  His body started shaking on mine.

  It was glorious.

  “Dutch and Jag cleaned you out,” he noted.

  “They haven’t stopped producing chocolate chips, Shep.”

  He grinned. “My babe’s got a smart ass.”

  His babe.

  Hound’s babe.

  Was that finally me?

  I wasn’t going to ask for confirmation.

  If I did, this bubble might burst and I’d be back where I was and that didn’t stand contemplating.

  Instead, I declared, “So we’ve come to the understanding that if I’m pissed, I should pounce so we can have angry sex and your woman has a smart ass. Now, are you going to keep me pinned to the kitchen table all night?”

  “Maybe.”

  “My bed is a lot more comfortable.”

  Something drifted across his face.

  “He’s never been there with me,” I told him quietly. “The bed isn’t the same. The room isn’t even the same. No one has been there with me.”

  “We got shit we gotta get past,” he muttered.

  Boy, did we.

  I nodded but shared, “I’m not feeling taking this slow.”

  He looked deep in my eyes and rumbled, “Agreed.”

  “So I need to text Bev about Jag and then we need to break the seal on my bed, and tomorrow, if Jag shows for breakfast, we’ll make it official. At least with the boys.”

  “He won’t. Boys got plans for him. He’ll also miss a day of school, Keekee.”

  Shit.

  Okay.

  He was nineteen, almost twenty, and I’d cut the apron strings (kind of).

  This was his choice.

  He’d make it up.

  “Right. So, family dinner as soon as we can plan. Make it official for both boys at the same time,” I said.

  He considered this for about three seconds.

  Then he nodded that he again agreed.

  I scored my thumbnail lightly through the thick stubble on his cheek and reminded him, “I want this. You want this. We’ll make this happen. We just gotta be more out there and look after each other along the way.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “Let me up, baby. I need to text Bev.”

  “She goin’ through with the wedding?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “Fuck,” he replied.

  With that he slid out and pulled me to my feet.

  He yanked his jeans up but didn’t do them up.

  He bent and tagged my panties from the floor, and as I was lifting my hand to take them, my breath stuck in my throat when he dropped to a knee in front of me.

  He held them out.

  I stood unmoving.

  He tipped his head back. “Step in, Keekee.”

  Shepherd “Hound” Ironside, kneeling at my feet.

  He’d been there figuratively for years.

  Now he was right there, for me.

  I put a hand on his shoulder and stepped into my panties.

  He slid them up gently, coming up with them, settling them on my hips and then smoothing my robe over them.

  He put his lips to mine. “Text Bev. Got beer?”

  “Yeah, honey.”

  He pressed those lips to mine.

  Then, doing up his jeans, he went to my fridge and got a beer.

  Graham never used that fridge. Graham had never even been in the kitchen like it was now.

  But Hound had, repeatedly.

  He was in this with me.

  He was in this with me.

  And we were going to make this happen.

  We were.

  Even if it killed me.

  Total Winner

  Keely

  I woke the next morning to Hound moving me to my belly.

  I’d barely opened my eyes when he yanked my hips up so I was on my knees.

  “Baby?” I called sleepily.

  “Morning fuck,” he grunted.

  That worked for me.

  And it was good it did.

  Because Hound didn’t hesitate to proceed with giving me just that.

  “Okay, boys first, family meal as soon as. Then I’ll tell Bev.”

  I was in the kitchen mainly putzing around, because Hound was making me breakfast.

  He just started right up doing that after we came down.

  I didn’t say anything.

  The time to get into him losing Jean, and how he was coping with that, was not prior to breakfast after we’d made up in a way that meant we weren’t hiding in his apartment anymore and we were going to be putting it out there, to possibly volatile reactions.

  I’d get into that when I had him lazy and sweet and in a good headspace so he could deal, probably when he was naked after I’d made him blow with my mouth.

  “No Bev,” he declared.

  I looked from preparing my travel mug of coffee to him standing at the stove beside me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “No Bev,” he said to the dual skillets he had going, eggs and, now without Jean and the nixing of pork, the addition of bacon. “She’s got a big mouth.”

  “Uh, Hound, baby, she’s Bev. She’ll get this is big. She’ll be happy for us because she loves me, she loves you. She’s als
o Chaos.” Or she was, she was cutting ties and it might be time but still, once Chaos you never really stopped being that. “She’ll know to keep her mouth shut about this until we’ve dealt with the fallout.”

  He turned just his head to me.

  “No Bev, babe. Too risky.”

  I turned my full body to him.

  “Right, honey, we’ve had this conversation. The brothers will totally understand, after they get their heads around it, why we kept the beginning of us from them. Bev, on the other hand, will totally be pissed at me if she finds out those boys heard before she did. That I kept it from her. And she’d have reason. She is not gonna be a problem. She’s gonna be an ally. Someone I can talk to about it. Someone who’ll get it. But now you need to get what she means to me and that I simply cannot do that to her. Me saying she’ll be pissed is about her actually being hurt. If the tables were turned, I would be too.”

  I got closer to him, slid a hand along his waist to his back and kept talking.

  “She’s gearing up to take a huge step back from Chaos, and by that I mean move on from the Club. This guy might not make her happy but he loves her, spoils her, and he’s going to take care of her. And I think maybe she’s thinking that eventually all of that will make her happy. So she won’t slip up and share anything, because she’s not going to be keeping her finger on the pulse of Chaos in order to keep Boz a part of her life. She’s letting go.”

  “He’s such a dumbfuck,” Hound muttered.

  “Won’t get any argument from me,” I muttered back.

  “Right. Then boys first and then you can tell Bev,” Hound declared.

  I smiled up at him.

  He bent his neck to touch his lips to mine.

  I went back to my coffee.

  And that was when Hound laid it on me.

  “Jag had no business putting himself forward to become a recruit for the Club.”

  My heart skittered at his words and I turned my head to stare at him.

  He took bacon out of the skillet and put it on a paper-lined plate.

  And kept going.

  Briefly.

  “Did it for us.”

  “Sorry?” I asked.

  He reached into me and I swung back so he could open the cupboard to pull down plates, saying, “He needs to focus on school. The brothers will let him do that because he’s Jag. He’s Black’s. Normally, they’d put him off. Tell him to hang around, get to know the boys and re-approach after he’d got his degree. It wasn’t that he already knew the boys. It was that he was a legacy. I didn’t get it when he called me, said he wanted to start earning his patch, especially since Dutch isn’t close to havin’ his yet. He shoulda waited until that happened too. Knowin’ he knew about us, now I know he wanted as in as he could get so he could take our backs when we came out to the Club.”

  I was back to staring at him.

  He’d said all this while scooping out eggs, laying out toast and bacon and he offered me my plate, which I took automatically when he went on, “Not sure he gets a recruit don’t have say in dick. The brothers lose their minds, Dutch and Jag try to get in there, that won’t go good for them. Black’s boys or not. But it was a fuckuva solid they engineered for us in order to try to take our backs.”

  “It’s because of the cut and the bike,” I said softly.

  “Hit the table, baby,” he replied, also softly.

  I grabbed my coffee mug and moved to the table.

  Hound nabbed his plate and mug and followed me.

  After we sat down and were digging in, Hound, with mouth full, agreed with me.

  “It was. They saw your car at my place, knew I was fixin’ it up ’cause I had you there. Not dumb, either of them, you’re never around and they know you were with me, they knew we wouldn’t start anything unless it was somethin’ real. Then you say you wanted to let those go, they got the clue. So they moved to make sure we had as much firepower as we could get with the Club. Good boys. Good men. Love their ma. Backin’ me. Means a lot.”

  I had egg on a triangle of toast held aloft and my eyes on him.

  But my mouth was saying, “Oh my God. I think I’m gonna start bawling.”

  He sucked back some coffee, turned his eyes to me and smiled big.

  “Serious as shit, Keekee, you become one of those cryin’ and carryin’ on women, I’m gonna have to think of dumpin’ you again.”

  That got me over the need to burst into tears.

  “We’re not quite at the point where we can joke about that, Shepherd Ironside,” I snapped.

  “Did I fuck you awake this morning?” he queried.

  “I was kinda, sorta awake by the time you started fucking me,” I retorted.

  “But mostly, you were still asleep when you took my cock.”

  I decided just to glare.

  “So I’d say we’re totally at the point we can joke about that,” he decreed.

  I took an angry bite of egg and toast and shot back with a full mouth, “Now’s the time for me to think of dumping you.”

  “Babe, how long was I at you on this table before you went for me? About a minute? You missed my dick. No way you’re dumping me.”

  “Would you like me to throw eggy toast at you this morning?”

  He grinned. “Feel like bawling?”

  I did not.

  And that made me more irritated.

  “You’re an asshole, Shep.”

  He just kept grinning and resumed eating.

  I stared at him, unable to remain annoyed because Hound was sitting at my kitchen table, eating breakfast after he spent the night with me.

  He was also grinning just a week to the day after he’d walked in and found his Jean bug had passed away.

  I’d done it, times two.

  I’d won my man.

  And even at a rough time in his life, I was making him happy.

  So I let it go and ate the delicious breakfast he’d made me.

  I waited until my lunch hour to phone my oldest boy.

  He answered right away.

  “Yo, Ma.”

  “Hey, Dutch. How’s Jagger?”

  “He puked three times cleaning up his own puke and another cleaning up some biker groupie’s puke, and now he’s passed out on the couch on that biker groupie.”

  Visions of Jagger in his little boy pajamas gleefully pushing himself along with his feet on his mini-motorcycle on Christmas day danced through my head juxtaposed with him passed out on a biker groupie.

  This did not compute and made me want to puke.

  I powered past that.

  “Too much information, boy,” I muttered.

  Dutch started chuckling.

  “He gonna rally?” I asked.

  “For what?” he asked back.

  “I want you boys over tonight for dinner.”

  Dutch was silent, contemplating this.

  He’d been this way since he was a little boy. Except for a time in his early teens when he’d taken to various acts of douchebaggery, which pissed me off and scared the shit out of me, he thought shit through.

  It was hell getting a wish list for Santa out of him. He did three or four drafts before he gave me the final.

  As was our way, I waited while he contemplated this.

  “We gonna do the handovers?” he asked quietly.

  He meant were they going to get their father’s things.

  We weren’t doing that.

  It was me who was contemplating on that.

  I wanted Hound there.

  And Graham’s bike hadn’t been touched so it probably would not start right up. So they were going to have to handle that.

  But before it was touched and when Black’s cut was handed over, I wanted some kind of ceremony.

  I didn’t know what that was.

  I just knew both boys would be there and I wanted to be sure they were okay, as was Hound, that Hound would be there too.

  “No, and no questions,” I replied. “Do you have plans?”

/>   “Nope.”

  “Do you know if your brother has plans?”

  “Chaos owns him now, and he can be all about Jagger but he’s not that stupid to make plans after he was taken on, so probably not.”

  “Good. Six thirty. I’m making fried pork chops.”

  “You should have led with that.”

  I smiled. “See your asses there when you get there.”

  “Yeah, Ma. Later.”

  “Later, Dutch. Love you, kid.”

  “Back at you.”

  We hung up and I called Hound.

  “Yo, baby,” he answered.

  “The boys are gonna be over tonight for pork chops. Six thirty,” I told him.

  “I’ll be over earlier, help you cook.”

  “Cool, honey, thanks.”

  After saying this, suddenly, I got freaked.

  And freakily, over the phone, Hound read it.

  “Babe, they’re good. They’re cool. It’s gonna be fine.”

  “I kinda know that, but having them say they want us together and having them see us together are two different things,” I replied.

  “Are you gonna spend the next six hours winding yourself up about this to end up fuckin’ it up?” he asked.

  “That would not be the optimal scenario.”

  He sounded like he was smiling when he said, “No. It wouldn’t. So stay cool, mama. This is gonna be the easy part. The awesome part. Don’t make it hard. We got enough of that on the horizon.”

  “Awesome, Shep. Thanks so much for reminding me of that,” I muttered.

  That was when I heard another man in my life chuckling over the phone.

  Waking up alone in my bed for nearly eighteen years, I’d felt like I’d done it a loser. It wasn’t until I clapped eyes on my boys every day that I knew that wasn’t exactly true.

  Hearing first Dutch, then Hound laughing in my ear in the expanse of about five minutes, I knew now I was a total winner.

  “You good?” he asked.

  “I’m a badass biker bitch. Of course I’m good,” I answered.

  That had him howling with laughter.

  Yep.

  I was a total winner.

  “See you around five thirty, six. Yeah?” he asked.

  “Sounds good, babe. See you then.”

  “Right, baby.” Soft and sweet. And softer and sweeter, “Love you.”

  I blinked.

  I slowly opened my mouth.

  But I heard the tone that said he’d disconnected.