Wild Like the Wind by Kristen Ashley
“We’re moving. We don’t need four bedrooms for just you and me. Too much history here. And the boys are both gone in a way I know they’re gone. They’ll get it. They’re on the path to building their own lives. But you and me, we need a fresh start.”
Something chased across his face before it blanked.
And that something was not good.
Shit.
“What?” I asked.
“Babe, how ’bout we come out to the brothers before we get into real estate,” he suggested.
“What was that look that you just blanked?” I pushed.
“What look?”
Oh no he didn’t.
He wasn’t going to lie to me by hiding from me.
“What were you thinking when I said we need to move?”
“I was thinking I just moved a bunch a’ shit outta my place to make room for the shit you moved into my place and then I moved a bunch a’ shit outta two places to clear out Jean’s and move in with you, so I’m not real hip on talkin’ about movin’ a bunch more shit someplace else.”
This answer made sense.
He was still hiding from me.
“That’s not it.”
Hound started getting impatient. “That is it, woman.”
“Talk to me, Shep. We said we’d be open and we need to be open. What was it you thought when I said we should find our own place, get a fresh start?”
I mean, did he want me to keep this place because Black gave it to me?
That’d be sweet, but unnecessary. I had what I needed from Black and always would.
Or did he want me to keep this place for the boys, thinking that it was their home and they might get pissed if we got rid of it?
This was something that was also sweet, but unnecessary. Or I hoped so. We’d have to talk to the boys.
“Keely, just drop it,” he muttered, taking his hands from his hips and looking like he was going to walk out of the room.
“Don’t walk away from this conversation, Hound,” I snapped, and he stopped moving to lock eyes on me.
“We need to be careful here, baby,” he said warningly.
“I know,” I agreed pointedly. “What are you holding back from me?”
“Babe—” he started like he was going to keep trying to blow it off.
“Please, don’t keep anything from me. If something’s bothering you, talk to me.”
“Right now, my woman getting up in my shit to push me to talk to her is what’s bothering me,” he clipped.
I stared into his eyes then turned mine to the laptop while I reached out and slapped it closed, shutting away websites about fabulous vacation destinations.
Then I pushed off the bed and murmured, “I’m gonna take a bubble bath.”
“Babe,” he growled.
I kept walking toward the bathroom.
“Keely,” he called irritably.
I was at the door to the bathroom when he spoke again.
“Got two boys.”
I turned to him.
“That aren’t mine,” he finished.
So it was about the boys.
“They are,” I whispered.
“They are and they aren’t and it’s the way I lived my life, my choices that I didn’t make a kid of my own. Now I got you and you’re right. We should move. We should move because it’s always gonna be the house Black bought for you and that’d eventually get under my skin,” he admitted. “And we’ll get on that after other important shit is sorted. But you said you and me don’t need all this space. The boys have moved on. And it just dug in that you and me don’t need all this space.”
We didn’t need this space. We were just two people. I knew he’d long since broken ties with his family. He was standing in the room when I’d irrevocably broken ties with mine. It wasn’t like we were regularly going to have out-of-town guests (though my family, and Graham’s, lived in town . . . still).
Except . . .
I didn’t make a kid of my own.
Oh God.
I stared at him.
“You want a baby,” I said quietly.
“Never thought about it,” he grunted.
“But now, you’re thinking about it.”
He said nothing.
But now he had a woman.
Now he had a home with a woman.
A woman he loved who loved him back.
And I was that woman.
“You want a baby,” I repeated.
“Keely, babe—”
“So we’ll have a baby.”
It just came right out of my mouth.
Shit.
He went perfectly still.
Every inch of him.
God.
Oh God.
Shit.
He wanted a baby.
“Hound,” I whispered.
“You’d give me a kid?”
That question was guttural.
Oh yes, he wanted a baby.
“Well, uh . . . my parts still work, I love you, you love me and—”
Christ, I was babbling . . . about having a baby.
“You’d give me a kid.”
“I’m not twenty-three anymore but my lady parts haven’t shriveled up yet, honey,” I joked.
“We’re not laughin’ about this,” he declared.
And that declaration was flinty.
“You gotta be sure about this,” he decreed. “You don’t say that shit to me unless you’re sure about this. What it means to you. What it might mean to Dutch and Jag. What it means for us. What it means for me. You just don’t throw that out. Not that. Not you and me makin’ a baby.”
No.
Hound didn’t want a baby.
Hound wanted a baby with me.
I stared at him in those jeans and that tank with those tats and his badass hair and his amazing eyes and that look on his handsome face, and for the first time in the years of us being together when we were not and in the past months of us being together in a way we actually were, it was only then I felt the true fullness of the decades of love he’d given me.
It was overwhelming.
And it was exquisite.
Plus my boys were gone. On the path to building their own lives. They’d been the only true, long-lasting joy in mine. I still had them but I had them in a way I missed them, because they weren’t my little boys anymore.
I could make another one. Another one with lapis-blue eyes and a handsome expressive face who every time I looked at him, he reminded me not only how much I loved him, but how much I loved his daddy and the love we had for each other that made him.
“He has to have your eyes,” I whispered.
“She has to have your hair.”
Oh my God.
Shit.
Oh my God.
Hound and me were going to make a baby.
“No cursing rule in this house until she’s thirty-three,” I said, sounding croaky.
“Get your ass over here,” he said, sounding bossy.
“We can’t make the baby now,” I said, sounding panicked. “We have to tell Chaos first.”
“We’re not making the baby now, Keekee,” he said, sounding amused. “We have to tell the brothers and then we gotta move to a different house. Sayin’ that, we’re gonna practice up real good so when it gets down to doin’ it with a purpose, we got it set.”
“I think we already have it set, honey.”
“We’re still gonna practice.”
Oh yeah we were.
I got my ass over there.
Hound didn’t attack me.
No.
What Hound did was reach with both hands, grab my head, yank me to him and then wrap both of his arms around my head.
He held me to his chest that way.
I’d never been held that way in my life.
There was something poignant about it, profound.
Amazing.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My man wanted to ma
I circled him with my arms and clutched his wife beater in my fists between his shoulder blades.
When we’d stood that way for so long and it was either crack a joke or burst into tears, I made the only decision I could.
“Thanks for partnering up, cowboy, and folding the laundry.”
He dropped his face to the top of my head and held me tighter.
“Christ, I fuckin’ love you.”
I let his tank go and wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could.
“You sure?” he asked my hair gently.
I smiled.
“I’m sure,” I answered his chest nearly inaudibly since my face was smushed there.
“Startin’ all over again?” he pressed.
“With you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then absolutely.”
He held me tighter.
I let him, and when I was worried he’d dislocate my nose, I gave him a squeeze.
He didn’t release me but he did release some of the pressure, so I turned my head and laid my cheek on his chest.
I saw his tatted arm cocooning me.
And I hoped like fuck our little girl got her daddy’s eyes.
“Boys would love a baby sister,” I muttered.
“We gotta get on Chaos,” he said.
Fuck.
He was right.
My lady parts worked but time was marching on.
Not to mention when those assholes made my man stand the gauntlet, he had to heal up so we could fuck with a purpose and also I had to have plenty of time to hold my grudge against the brothers before I eventually forgave them . . . for Hound.
“So, uh . . . this going fast thing, we’re breaking all the records, yeah?” I quipped.
“That’s us, baby. Wild like the wind. Can’t rein that shit in.”
He was so right.
So right.
And anyway . . .
Why would we?
“I love you, Shep.”
Hound held me close for a long beat.
Then he grunted.
After I’d taken him there with my mouth, I slid the tip of my tongue up the underside of his cock and lifted my eyes to his face just as I hit the edge of the rim of his cockhead.
His head came up off the pillows and he murmured roughly, “Up here, baby. Come sit on my face.”
I felt a nice shiver but I didn’t go up there and sit on his face.
I’d do that later.
Right then, I moved my tongue to the bottom of the lance tatted into the hair between his legs and I stroked it up, up, right to his heart.
I put my chin there and again turned my gaze to him.
He’d shifted his arms so his head was resting on his hands, his attention on me.
“You got Native American blood in you, cowboy?” I asked quietly.
“No,” he answered, watching me intently.
“An interest in that culture?” I went on.
“No,” he repeated.
“Me,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
God, yes, he’d loved me for a long, long time.
And I now had that in all ways I could, and I’d have it in more ways when we made our baby.
But the best part about it was that I finally got to give that back.
I lifted up, tracing the lance back down with my fingers, the bow and arrow up, the club down.
“Keekee,” he called gently.
I turned my eyes to his.
“It was before, wasn’t it?” I asked, but I didn’t need to. I just wanted to hear him say it. “Before Black died. Before anything. You’ve always loved me.”
His big hand came from behind his head so he could cup my cheek.
“Always, Keely.”
“Cock to your heart,” I whispered.
His thumb drew circles on the apple of my cheek. “Cock to my heart.”
I smiled at him so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed with all his beauty and do something else entirely.
“I’m so glad I stripped buck naked in your living room,” I remarked jokingly.
“I think it’s safe to say, not as glad as me,” he replied, and he was not joking.
I wasn’t either when I returned, “No. I’m not sure it’s safe to say that.”
A beautiful darkness clouded over his face before both his hands were under my arms and he was dragging me up his chest and up even farther.
He planted me on his face, hauled me down to his mouth and I grabbed the headboard as my head fell back when he went at me.
He took me there after shoving two wet fingers up my ass, eating me and fucking me.
After I came down while he worked his mouth gently between my legs, he slid me back down his body and shifted only to reach to the covers and pull them up on top of us.
I rested my weight into him and he curved his arms around me.
“You wanna take a bubble bath?” I asked in a murmur into his neck.
“You’ll get my ass in that tub only if I’m unconscious,” he murmured back.
I smiled against his neck.
“So bikers don’t take bubble baths,” I remarked.
“This biker doesn’t,” he replied.
“Mm,” I hummed.
“Jag’s birthday is comin’ up,” he reminded me. “You got plans for that?”
“He always requests my prime rib and twice-baked potatoes with my carrot cake. But I’ll ask just to confirm.”
“Forgot about your prime rib,” he muttered.
And I’d forgotten until then that when Hound had been at my table for dinner, there was the odd time here and there that he’d been at my house doing something, or being there for the boys, I’d asked him to stay for dinner, and he did, but for every one of my boys’ birthdays, he’d been at my table.
Various and sundry Chaos men would also be there, with their old ladies or not, depending on how they felt about their old ladies.
But Hound was always there.
And it was then I realized just how much history we shared and precisely how precious all of it was.
I was in a variety of happy glows, including the one that realization gave me, when Hound gave me another one.
“Just sayin’, standing order for that on my birthday.”
I was going to get to spoil Hound on his birthday.
I could not wait.
I snuggled closer to him. “I can do that.”
He gave me a squeeze.
I was starting to get drowsy, but before I drifted away, I said quietly into his neck, “We’ll tell the brothers soon.”
“Yeah.”
“Talk to the boys first. Let them know we’re coming out. Take their pulse about the possibility we’re gonna sell the house,” I went on.
“Right.”
“We’ll see how that talk goes, but it might be too soon to mention the fact we’re gonna be looking at expanding the family,” I said.
“Agreed,” he replied.
“Are you gonna wanna get married?” I asked, and his arms spasmed around me.
I had my answer but he still said, “Yeah. You?”
I nodded, my head and hair moving on his shoulder and chest but verbalized it with a, “Totally.”
His arms spasmed again but stayed tight this time.
“In case you didn’t get it, I’ll say it,” I began. “Thanks for folding and bringing up the laundry.”
“You don’t have to thank me for doin’ something that contributes to our life.”
Was he for real?
I snuggled even closer.
He was for real. Every inch of him.
Hound’s arms loosened but not that much, only so he could trail his fingertips along my sides.
I felt him relax under me and I did the same on top of him.
We were both close to sleep when I murmured, “I can’t wait to be on the back of your bike, cowboy.”
His arms got tight again.
I smiled against his skin.
And lying on top of my old man, happy, sated, in love and with so much to look forward to in life it wasn’t funny, I fell asleep.
I Will Not Ever Forget
Hound
“You got yourself a pet?” Camilla Turnbull asked nastily, her focus on Hound.
Hound didn’t move. He just stood in her living room that he’d walked into, following Knight Sebring and his man Rhashan Banks.
She’d been eyeing him up from the minute he moved in. Her four goons had been doing the same.
What she didn’t do was get off her ass, which was planted in her fancy couch in the room with a view. Not even to offer Knight a seat.
Knight took one anyway, across from her in a chair.
“Why don’t we at least try for civil?” Knight suggested.
She didn’t take her eyes off Hound. “We vacated Chaos.”
Hound said nothing, just held her gaze.
Knight spoke.
“Chaos requested a rep at this meet, I agreed. They’re concerned you’re not committed to your retreat from their turf, and I’m concerned you’re not committed to your promise to me that you’ll deal with your girls in ways I find less provoking.”
Her attention finally turned to Knight.
“Now, why would I break a promise I made to the all-powerful Knight Sebring?” she asked bitchily.
“Your current attitude, you honestly expect me to answer that?” Knight asked back, and Hound could sense him losing patience, but he didn’t have to sense shit. Knight wasn’t hiding it.
“They’re whores, Sebring,” she returned.
“They’re humans, Camilla. If they’re at a place in their lives they gotta turn tricks, you run them, why would you make that worse for them?” Knight fired back.
Her upper lip curled in a humorless grin. “They’re not all your mother.”
“None of them are my mother,” Knight bit. “And that doesn’t mean dick. You knowin’ my history doesn’t mean dick. You sharin’ you know it when it’s no secret doesn’t get you dick. But you takin’ from this meet that you got attention you don’t want means more than dick. I’m here. I’m givin’ you my time. I’m showin’ you respect. You throw that in my face, that’ll be a statement you’re makin’ and I’m not sure you’ll wanna know where I take it from there. What I will let you know is this will be the last meet you get so maybe you wanna curb the attitude and make this time useful for both of us.”