Wild Like the Wind (Page 61)

“We’re about to have a no cussing rule in momma’s house,” I warned.

Jagger shot me a smirk.

I understood that smirk.

My sons were of Chaos and now just Chaos.

From the time they understood the words, I had a no cussing rule that ended when Dutch hit seventeen, he cursed better and more prolifically than his father (and Hound) and I gave up.

No way I could enforce it now. That had long since left the building.

Dutch got up to get the bottle of wine.

Hound adjusted to the side, stretching his long legs out toward Dutch’s side of the table, crossing his ankles, and asked Jag, “You talk to your profs about makin’ up the day?”

“Yeah,” Jag said, turning to his side and stretching out his long legs toward Hound. “Emailed this afternoon. Told ’em I got some twenty-four-hour flu. It’s all good.”

Dutch put the wine on the table, sat and then shifted in his seat, stretching his long legs out toward me. “Joke says, after he finishes this build, he’s gonna let me in on the next one.”

“Lucky,” Jag grunted.

“Do your time, son, do your time,” Hound murmured, like a biker lullaby.

I poured wine and ate cake.

And I kept my legs right under me.

The better to take it all in, the dream unfolding around me.

A total winner.

I’ll Do Anything It Takes

Keely

The next morning, I sat cross-legged in my bed, having pulled Hound’s tee over my head after we’d done our business and he’d gotten up to use the bathroom before I hit it to take my shower before work.

I was sitting facing the bathroom.

He came out, naked, his amazing tats on display, his thick, gorgeous cock still kinda hard, his beefy fur-covered thighs too much of a distraction (so I refused to focus on them), his eyes directed right at me.

“You got the twenty-four-hour flu too, babe?” he asked on a lip quirk.

“I love you.”

He stopped.

Dead.

“You said it yesterday,” I continued. “You didn’t give me the chance to reply. And so we’re open, it’s out there, you get it, you know, I loved you before I came to your apartment that first time. I loved you, which was the reason I went to Black’s grave to let him know he was going to have to deal. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and I started to fall in love with you years ago, when you laid it out about Dutch joining Chaos and that I needed to sort my shit. But every day I’ve been with you, I’ve fallen more and more in love with you in a way I think that’s going to happen, I hope, until the day I quit breathing.”

He stood there, staring at me, body frozen, face frozen, giving me nothing.

“I said, or started . . . a while back, in your bed, I started to tell you,” I went on. “I said, ‘You’re the . . . ’ but I didn’t finish because we weren’t there, well I was there, but you weren’t there yet so I wasn’t sure you’d believe me. If it would be giving up too much when I didn’t have you in that place I needed you to be. So I’ll finish it now. What I was going to say was that you’re the best man I’ve ever known, Hound. I’ve had twenty-one years of watching the kind of love and loyalty you give to the people you let in your heart, and I want there not to be another day, another second, where you live not knowing what an honor I feel it is that you gave me a place there.”

He made no move, no sound, not even a facial tick.

Um.

Okay.

What on earth did that mean?

“Hound?” I called, beginning to get freaked.

All of a sudden, he was a blur of movement. Then my hair was flying, a drifting cloud all around me, and my arms were forced up as he tore his tee from me.

After that, I was back in the bed with Hound kicking my legs apart with his knee.

“You got the twenty-four-hour flu,” he growled, his body coming down on mine.

Not frozen, not giving me nothing.

His blue eyes were burning straight through me.

“It’s going around,” I breathed.

“Yeah,” he grunted, then, even though I didn’t even notice him getting hard again, he’d done it because he entered me.

Filled me.

Became a part of me.

Physically.

He was that already.

He had been for a long time.

And would be.

For always.

“Wow,” I whispered, rounding him with arms and legs.

“Yeah,” he groaned, thrusting.

“I take it, you, uh . . . absorbed what I just said.”

He drove in, stayed in and ground in (another wow), gritting, “Yeah.”

I put both hands to his stubbly cheeks. “Love you, baby.”

He stopped grinding and closed his eyes.

“Love you,” I repeated.

He opened his eyes and he didn’t say it back.

He didn’t have to.

Those expressive eyes he’d kept closed down on me for so long to hide the way he felt for me were open and sharing, no . . . shouting just what he felt, and how deep it ran . . . for me.

Then he kissed me and started up again fucking me.

That twenty-four-hour flu was a killer.

I stayed in bed all day.

It was the next evening and I was just about to turn down Bev’s street.

“Make sure she gets the message it stays between her, the boys, you and me,” Hound voice sounded throughout my car.

“I think I got that,” I replied, hitting my blinker.

“When you leave, text you’re on the way,” he ordered.

“Affirmative, cowboy, but where will I be on my way to?” I asked.

“Where else?” he asked back.

“Well, you’ve got a pad and I’ve got a pad so whose pad are we crashing at tonight?”

“Fucking then crashing,” he amended.

I made the turn, grinning.

I hadn’t had the longest, driest spell in history, but I was sure it was up there.

Still, it was clear Hound was dedicated to eradicating it in a way I might someday (soon) wonder if it even happened.

“Fucking and crashing,” I agreed.

“Your car sits under threat of being stripped or disappearing altogether and being dismantled at some chop shop every night you park it outside my place. So yours.”

“You leave your truck and bike there,” I reminded him.

“My truck has a Chaos badge in the back window and my bike is known to be my bike so if any motherfucker even looks at either funny, especially my bike, they know they better take a selfie so they’ll remember what they looked like before I rearranged their face.”

“God, it turns me on when you’re badass,” I moaned, semi-teasing, semi-totally-serious, driving down Bev’s street.

“Smartass.”

“No, really.”

“Text me when you’re on your way, Keekee,” he demanded.

“You got it, honey. See you later.”

“Her. The boys. You. And me,” he stated.

I rolled my eyes and turned into Bev’s drive.

“Later,” he finished.

“Later, Shep.”

I heard my radio come on just in time for me to shut the car down.

I turned to grab my purse, the bottle and the bag of stuff I’d gone out to get after work that day, threw open my car door, folded out and moved up Bev’s walk.

She lived in a one-story, two-bedroom in Englewood close to the brilliance of El Tejado and Twin Dragon, some of the best of south of the border and Chinese cuisine you could get in Denver.