Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(24)

“You’re a lot of work, cowboy,” she breathed.

He turned his head and shoved his face through her hair into her neck. “You want it fast, don’t swallow a huge load before you decide to ride me.”

“So noted.”

“That said, if you’re markin’ preferences, I got no problem with you swallowing a huge load before you bring my boy back to life and bounce on my dick.”

He felt her shake with her laughter, wrapped his arms around her so he could feel it better, and she replied, “Preference noted.”

He wanted to touch her, smooth his hands over her soft skin, take her in gentle after she’d fucked him hard.

But he didn’t do that, and not because he couldn’t remember ever doing that with a woman but because they liked each other, they liked fucking each other, but that wasn’t who they were to each other.

This was what he thought.

He’d find out immediately that Keely thought otherwise.

He found that out when she lifted up, and with her long, black hair a curtain around either side of her face brushing the skin of his chest, she trailed her fingers across the eagle inked at his collarbone and the top of his chest. The wingspan was spread wide, the tail feathers fanned out, claws outstretched, face fierce, like it was about to attack prey, above it over the top of his collarbone, a thin line of clouds.

She traced her finger down where he had a scroll of intricate fretwork arced across his pecs, and under that was where shit got interesting.

He had the Chaos tat of wind, ride, fire, and free.

To his left abdomen, he had the Chaos scales where one side was high, the scale dripping blood (on Hound that blood was black, all his tats were black, no color, and he was seriously tatted, full torso, back covered in Chaos, two sleeves). There was the word Red on the high side of the scale, meaning Cherry, or precisely meaning Cherry surviving the fact she’d taken a blade numerous times due to shit her girl’s now-dead fiancé got all of them up to their necks in.

The other side of the scale, the one that was down, had a reaper drifting up from it, and it was labeled Black.

Chaos’s Black.

Keely’s Black.

All the men got that tat somewhere on their body to remember what was important: brotherhood, family and keeping both safe.

He held his breath, the ridges of his abs standing out, when Keely put her palm over the reaper, her husband’s name, and pushed in hard.

They’d get there, he knew. It would be what would take this away from him, he knew that too.

He just wished it wasn’t so soon.

“Keely,” he whispered.

Her head, bent so she could stare at her hand, came up.

“The ‘Red?’” she asked.

That was the first time she’d seen the tat.

Shit.

“Tyra, Tack’s old lady,” he answered.

“When she was kidnapped years back and got stuck … repeatedly,” she guessed.

Hound nodded.

“You got that for her?”

She didn’t include Black.

“All the brothers got it.”

She studied him a beat before she looked back down, slid her hand off the scales and Hound tensed again, trying to even his breath as she headed to the other side.

There was shit there that was meaningful. A waving American flag. One of his brother, Joker’s bike designs, an American bobber Hound wished he’d bought before the customer picked it up because now it was gone forever to some rich fuck who probably had no clue the meaning of something that cool, he just had the money to buy it.

And coming up from his pubic hair, starting close to the root of his dick, a Native American lance with an eagle feather tied to it crossed with a bow, an arrow running parallel to it crossed with a long-handled club that had a rough stone attached at the top with sinew. These ran up his abdomen, through his navel, into his ribs, through the American flag that waved there, and farther up.

Apache weapons.

They weren’t the only tribe that used them, but she’d embraced her culture. She was definitely not immune to where Hound had been at when it came to her, she might put it together that he’d inked her in him from dick to where the lance point hit, his heart.

“Keely,” he called to take her attention right when she started to trace the arrow through its bow, straight up the middle of his chest.

“I’ve got no tats,” she muttered.

That had not escaped him. It was the only un-old lady thing about her.

“Why?” he asked.

Thankfully, her gaze came to him. “I’d settle on one then change my mind. Settle on another, and change my mind.”

“They’re not things you can change your mind about,” he said.

A ghost of a smile drifted across her lips.

“Your artist is the shit,” she said.

“Yup,” he agreed.

“You design these or did he?”

“She designed them all, except the Chaos tats. Those are inherited or Tack’s man did them.”

She nodded, her eyes floating down to his chest, already knowing about the ones that were inherited, Black had been buried with his.

“Keely.”

“You let a girl ink you?” she asked, and there was something in her face he didn’t get.

“She doesn’t have to wrestle a tiger before she does it, babe. Then again, a tiger’d probably best me, so it’s good she doesn’t.”