Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(43)

He nodded, more than ready to do a snail’s walk with her back to her place and still pissed because he didn’t often want to leave Jean. Need to leave her because he had shit to do, yeah. But she was the calm in his life that was always a storm.

His preference, it was the life he chose.

It still was good to have a place that was calm.

“Don’t be angry with me for worrying about you, motek,” she said softly.

He wasn’t angry at her for that.

He was angry that she pointed out shit he was trying not to think about.

“I can sustain bein’ pissed at you for about ten seconds,” he replied.

Her brows went up. “Have you been upset with me before?”

“When you had that cough that lasted two weeks and refused to go to the doctor and they found out it was pneumonia.”

“Oh, of course,” she muttered.

“And when you got up in my face that you could still make your bed, then you took that fall and hit your head on the nightstand and I found you on the floor three hours later, out of it, and had to take you to the hospital.”

“I forgot about that,” she mumbled.

“And that time you got ticked at me for goin’ outta my way to borrow my brother’s car ’cause it’s easier for you to get in and out of than my truck when I had to take you to synagogue.”

Her eyes got intent on him. “You can stop now.”

He grinned.

Her eyes wandered beyond him.

“She didn’t buy you a new television,” she remarked.

He looked to his boxy TV that he vaguely remembered picking up outside a dumpster then calling in a marker from a TV repair guy he knew who was a biker to fix it.

“That’s my gig. Pickin’ one up tonight with a mount. I’m thinkin’ sixty inch.”

She shuffled with her walker toward his new couch. “Well, now it’s lunchtime, not tonight, so I say we eat some of the leftover food she makes you and enjoy your new furniture by giving your TV one last go. There’s a Law and Order marathon running on TNT.”

As far as he could tell from being in her pad as often as he was, there was always a Law and Order marathon running.

“Her name is Keely, darlin’,” he said quiet.

She kept shuffling toward the couch, didn’t look back, and replied, “I know.”

He felt his mouth twitch.

Then he watched until she made it to his couch and he kept watching as she shuffled around, aimed her ass to it and made it on the couch.

Then he went to the kitchen to nuke some of Keely’s leftover food.

He wasn’t going to give Keely the chance to win Jean over.

But he had a feeling her food would help the cause.

In the end, he didn’t know if he was wrong or if he was right.

He did know the huge-ass portion of spaghetti with homemade garlic bread he made her …

She cleaned her plate.





Pawns

Hound’s alarm went, and he opened his eyes seeing and feeling a naked Keely draped on top of him.

Fuck.

They were nearly two months into their gig and she hadn’t spent the night once.

But last night she wanted him up her ass, and he was feeling creative. They’d been settling in these past weeks with less sex (but it wasn’t less good, it was always spectacular) and more cuddling and pillow talk, so last night they went bionic.

He remembered his last orgasm.

He didn’t remember passing out.

He was lucky it wasn’t a weekend. He was having trouble getting Keely to go home on the weekends now. She didn’t have to get to work and Jagger didn’t have to get to school so he didn’t show for breakfast, which meant she had no reason to go and didn’t want to.

But now she had reason to go, get home, get ready for work, but mostly, get gone from Hound’s crib so he could see to Jean.

He was pissed about this for a variety of reasons.

The most important was he’d passed out so he wasn’t conscious to enjoy the first time Keely spent the entire night with him.

Equally important was that they had a situation where he had to get her to haul ass at all.

Out there in the world, they were nothing to each other but members of an alternate-style family.

In his apartment, they were biker and old lady.

And as Hound had feared, having it all and not having it was getting under his skin like a tick, digging in and sucking out his soul.

Hound reached to the alarm clock.

Keely moved.

“Shit, it’s six?” she asked his alarm clock.

“You gotta haul ass, baby.”

“Shit!” she snapped. “It’s six!”

She kicked off the covers that were only over her legs and rolled over him, taking her feet by the side of the bed.

Slower, Hound followed her.

She took off for the bathroom.

He reached for his drawers.

He had them on and was pulling on his jeans when she raced in and started to yank on clothes.

“Jag’s home before you get there, what are you gonna tell him?” Hound asked curiously.

“Seeing as I’m gonna have to go to work unshowered and with fuck hair, this is not my biggest concern right now,” she replied. “But this is also not like the time he got his nose where it wasn’t supposed to be and I found him brandishing my vibrator, telling me it was a light saber. He’s not six anymore. If he hasn’t figured out mama’s gotta get laid every once in a while, it’s time he learned.”