Wild Like the Wind (Page 101)

God, how she wished to have that day back when those bikers showed at Cammy’s school to teach kids about safety.

Safety.

What a fucking joke.

Angrily, she told him what she saw.

“I saw a bunch of people havin’ a great fuckin’ time and livin’ their lives and gettin’ married and goin’ on a ride, when two fuckin’ weeks ago my baby girl was laid out on their goddamned picnic table.”

He tried to look remorseful but he failed.

Even so, he continued to try that shit verbally.

“Baby, told you how bad I felt about that. I couldn’t know Benito would—”

She cut him off. “The man’s certifiable and has been since you made a deal with that dick.” She leaned back and tossed out an arm expansively, lowering her voice in a parody of his, “Oh, I know where the bones are buried, Benito. And I got an in with Bounty, they’re my boys and they’re lookin’ to expand. You want more manpower, I can bring it to you. You want one over on Chaos, I got the ticket.” She leaned back toward him. “Now he’s got those goddamned bones and he’s back in control of his goddamned operation, and Bounty’s a mess and seriously fuckin’ pissed at you and I’m puttin’ off those two fuckin’ cop buddies of Kane Allen’s who keep sniffin’ around here, looking for you.”

He slowly stood from his chair, doing it with his hand down so his fucking spider could crawl off then crawl all over everything.

It was creepy.

She hated it. Hated all ten of those damned things.

She’d always hated them.

For eighteen fucking years.

“I’m hurtin’ Cammy’s gone same as you,” he said quietly. “Raised that girl like my own.”

She’d had enough.

Cammy was dead.

Dead.

Throat slit and body drained of blood and laid out for a goddamned motorcycle gang.

“And then you sent her off to whore for your vengeance,” she spat.

She should have known.

She should have known.

When he put the spider down, she should have known.

The last time he put his spider down like that was after she lit into him when she was done listening to him rant about some bitch named Millie that Valenzuela’s thugs had taken. He’d gone at her, and after, he’d lost his mind for some bitch he knew twenty years ago, and made his play way before Cammy was ready for him to do it.

It was bad then, but Harietta didn’t learn.

She never learned.

She always pushed it.

He knocked her to the ground with the first strike and it didn’t take him long to start getting off on it so he fucked her dry to finish.

When he was done, he looked at her like she was a piece of dirt.

“Never learn, dumb bitch,” he muttered something she oh-so-knew, pulled out and got up, yanking up his jeans, leaving her on the carpet at his feet.

He retrieved his fucking spider.

Then he sat in his chair, grabbed his phone and made a fucking call.

Harietta dragged herself away, pulled herself up, hit the bathroom to clean him from her, and only then did she keep her date with the vodka, but with that bottle, she added a dishtowel filled with ice to put on her eye.

From the minute she’d met him, she’d never trusted Benito Valenzuela.

Now the asshole had murdered her girl and some other girl they didn’t even know, framing her man for that bitch’s death.

And he was so damned stupid and so hung up on the past, he’d go down.

And drag her down with him.

So maybe, Harietta thought, it was time for a different deal to be struck.

She’d spent years on and off watching Chaos.

Now she was thinking it was high time she paid it a visit.

Harietta wouldn’t make an approach to the old guard.

She’d go for the young one.

Kane Allen could take one look at you and read all the words the devil himself wrote on your soul.

But Cole Allen . . .

He was young.

He hadn’t learned yet how deep the devil’s words could burn. He wouldn’t see the black marks obliterating her soul.

He’d be just the ticket.

Keely

The shades were drawn as I lay on my side, staring into the darkened room.

Hound entered the bed behind me. He lifted my arm and tucked the hot water bottle low on my abdomen before he put my arm back and covered it with his, holding the heat right where I needed it and holding me against his heat curled at my back.

“Maybe I’m too old,” I whispered.

“Baby,” he whispered into the back of my hair. “We’ve only been tryin’ a coupla months.”

That day, I got my period, and the shitty-ass cramps that had always come with it.

“You want me to make the calls? Tell everyone the cookout is off?” he asked.

It was our first big do since we got the house. Hound had bought enough brats to feed half of Denver. Everyone was coming. Chaos. Bev and Tad. Dutch with his new girl. Jag with one of his harem of girls. And although everyone else was bringing their kids, Keith from work and his wife Megan were getting a sitter for the first time so they could let loose.

“Just downed the four ibuprofen you gave me, the hot water bottle, I’ll be good by this afternoon,” I muttered.

He pulled me closer and muttered back, again into my hair, “We’re winners, Keekee. Yeah?”

I closed my eyes.

He gave me a shake with his arm.

“Yeah?” he pushed.

I opened my eyes. “Yeah, cowboy.”

“Makin’ you come helps, baby,” he reminded me of the times before he’d experienced this with me and we’d found Hound going at my clit until he made me climax definitely helped.

“Not sure there’ll ever be a time when I don’t want your hand down my pants, Shep.”

He kissed the back of my head.

Then he let me hold the hot water bottle and shoved his hand down my pants.

He was right, making me come helped the cramps.

When he’d done that, turning on him and giving him a blowjob took my mind off them.

And after I got done doing that, the cramps were gone.

Hound lay on his back and I lay down his side in the curve of his arm, both of us fully clothed but his jeans were still open and I had my hand in the fly, cupped on his junk because it was my junk and I liked the feel of it, when I looked into his eyes.

“Time to make the potato salad,” I announced.

He lifted a hand and rubbed a thumb along my cheek.

“My old lady spoils me,” he murmured.

“Until the day I die.”

His face changed, giving it all to me, before he slid his hand back into my hair and pulled me down to kiss me.

He ended it with a grunt because he was a good kisser and got me excited and that made me latch on too tight down below.

I lifted my head.

“You break it, you buy it,” he said.

I put my mouth to his. “I already bought it, it’s all mine and I can do whatever I want with it.”

“Fuck, only you could get me hard five minutes after blowing me.”

“Mm-hmm,” I hummed, feeling his words stir to life in my grip.

“Babe, this is not getting potato salad made and we got thirty people showin’ in about three hours.”

“Right,” I whispered.

“Let go of my boys and let me up. I got potatoes to peel.”

Now how did I know my man would help?

“Right,” I repeated on a smile, let “his boys” go and let him up, which meant he pulled me up with him.