Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(27)

A man like him?

What was the kind of man she thought he was?

He shouldn’t let curiosity win.

He shouldn’t.

But he did.

“Where would a man like me live?”

“I’d say a kickass loft downtown or something like that, but back in the day before you told the boys it was part of earning their allowance to mow my lawn, I had the best lawn on the block. And the best shrubs. When I added the flowers, it was the awesomest yard for three blocks square.”

This was true. He’d put in her sprinkler system. He also did the weed preventer and lawn fertilizer every year so it grew lush and green.

She lived in a graceful, old place in Governor’s Park, with big, established trees and thick shrubs. A two-story Victorian that all the brothers would have given Black shit for buying, except for the fact he bought it for Keely about a month after they found out she was carrying Dutch.

She had a decent-sized front yard, for a home in a city. The backyard was bigger.

And before he taught the boys how to take over that shit, he kept it up nice and lush and green so Keely could roll up the drive at the side to her garage and just think it was that. Nice and healthy. Not think anything else, like she had to do dick with it to keep it that way.

“Boys kept that up,” he told her something she knew. “They still on that?”

“Dutch has been on his own for a while, but Jag still has to earn his allowance and mama don’t take out no trash or mow no fucking lawn.”

He grinned at her.

“So, a house,” she decreed, sliding her hand back down, curving it over his pec, absently stroking his nipple in a way that was absent for her, but was not at all for him. “A little one. Brick. With a big backyard with a built-in fire pit and grill and the best lawn on the block. Maybe in Englewood.”

Hound liked that was the kind of man she thought he was, even though he knew different, and deep down, so did she.

But he’d never thought of getting anything like that for himself. He had his brothers. He had his bike. He had his obsession with Keely. He ate. He drank. He kicked ass. He did his bit for his Club in all the ways he could. He got laid. He partied. He had his apartment, his room at the Compound he rarely hung in unless he got a hankering for a biker groupie and needed a close place to have a hot bang. And he had Jean.

A little brick house with a big backyard and built-in fire pit and grill where his brothers and their women could come and hang, he could slap some brats on the grill and they could get loose around the pit throwing them back, did not sound like it would suck.

Keely walking out back with a bowl full of potato salad she’d made (and hers was the best, he remembered even if he hadn’t tasted it in seventeen years) would suck even less.

This thought did not make him do what he should do.

Remind her she should probably think of getting home.

It made him smooth his hands from where they were resting on her hips to the small of her back and then up her spine.

She pressed her chest closer.

“I’ll hit Zillow,” she said.

“Say what?” he asked.

“I’ll hit Zillow. Keep an eye out. Get you a new place.”

He blinked at her and it was how he always did it when she surprised him.

Slow.

“Babe—”

“With pot being legal, real estate is insane but I think a badass biker can put the lean on someone tryin’ to outbid him. Also thinking you probably got so much dough saved up, you could best even weed-shop owners who got buckets of cash.”

“First, baby,” he said softly, “I dig that some women don’t think men feel shit when they bite, tug and roll a man’s nipple, but just to say, that man is me, they’d be wrong.”

“Oh,” she whispered, stopping her thumb at his nipple and getting such a cute look on her beautiful face, he grinned at her.

“Second, you feel like spending time checking out Denver real estate on the computer, have at it. But I’m not movin’.”

“Hound—”

“Babe, I don’t like where I’m at but I’m here and I’m not goin’ anywhere. Maybe one day I’ll settle in. But now my life is outside this place. I got years in me but I’m still wild like the wind. It’s not time to tie myself down. I know that time’ll come. I’ll embrace it when it does and I’ll be glad for it. It’s just that now is not that time.”

“Wild like the wind,” she whispered, and now the look on her face made Hound slide one hand farther up so he was cupping her neck and scalp from under her ear.

“Baby?”

“I was once that,” she told him.

Yeah she was.

Wild and beautiful and happy and carefree.

“I know you were,” he replied.

“Feels like centuries ago.”

Where his thumb could reach, he stroked her face. “I know.”

She looked deep into his eyes. “I get that back, right here with you.”

That hit his gut and it felt far from bad.

He wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her in tight.

“Keely.”

Both her hands slid up to his cheeks and she got so close her nose brushed his.

“I’m gonna suck you off right now, cowboy,” she whispered. “And you’re gonna watch every second of it.”