Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(53)

“I have two boys with sweet tooths, so if I didn’t when they were born, I learned.”

“Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream icing,” Jean ordered.

“I’ll be all over that,” Keely replied.

Hound looked to Jean.

She was grinning.

There it was.

It had been the right decision to let these two get together.

Maybe not for Hound.

But for Jean.

“Now, just to say,” Keely launched in again. “I have some leave that I have to take at work the next couple of weeks and Hound says you prefer to go places in cars. So that he can use mine, he says you also have a birthday checkup but we’ll set that up early so he can have mine and I can take some leave and come with. We’ll go to that deli in person for lunch. Sound like a date?”

Hound kept studying Jean, wondering if that had been a deft maneuver on Keely’s part or if she’d fucked it.

Slowly Jean turned her head and caught Hound’s eyes. From her place in the kitchen, if she was looking, Keely wouldn’t be able to see Jean holding Hound’s gaze.

Her face was wrinkled. She had old-lady skin that was thin and papery.

But that didn’t mean she didn’t have an expressive face.

And right then, it was soft.

“Sounds like the perfect date,” Jean answered Keely, gaze on Hound.

It wasn’t a deft maneuver. Jean knew exactly what Keely was up to.

But still, she hadn’t fucked it.

Yeah.

This had been the right decision. Keely had horned right in but in truth stepped right up, because Hound wouldn’t have found it that easy to trick Jean out of her house for an early visit to the doctor.

Keely was probably lying about the leave she had to take. If she had that leave, she’d have mentioned it.

She just did what she had to do to get done what had to get done.

He wanted to get up, go to the kitchen and stick his tongue down Keely’s throat.

He just watched Jean turn back to the TV and did it himself as Keely cried out an enthusiastic, “Awesome!”

Jesus, he was going to fuck her so hard tonight she’d think she’d never stop coming.

He adjusted in his seat so his cock wouldn’t get stiff at that thought and lifted his feet up to Jean’s coffee table.

“Boots, Shepherd,” Jean said.

He growled but used his toes to flip off his boots.

He heard Keely’s soft laughter.

“You frickin’ women are gonna be the death of me,” he muttered.

“From at least one of us, you can only hope,” Jean muttered back.

Hound went still and he felt the stillness of Keely in the kitchen, but not in a bad way.

In a way he was trying to figure out if his Jean bug just used sexual innuendo.

From her own version of a sassy smile he could see from her profile she did.

It was then, he howled with laughter.

Jean turned her head and smiled baldly at him as he did.

And in the kitchen, Keely dissolved in giggles.

It was then Hound realized life was good.

So yeah, it was a life that was good for now.

But he would take it.





Seed of the Brotherhood The next afternoon, Hound was sitting at the bar in the Compound, Boz at his right side, Hop and Tack behind the bar, Shy and Joker both on his left, Joker sitting next to him, Shy standing, leaning into the bar.

Shy was exuding bad vibes.

Then again, their conversation wasn’t exactly cheery.

“She hangin’ in there?” Boz asked Tack, and Hound had his gaze on the beer sitting on the bar in front of him, but his attention was on Shy.

He was sure he was not the only one doing this.

“Snap’s seeing to her. She’s healing up. And Snap is also seein’ to the other kinda healin’ she’s gotta do,” Tack murmured.

Hound lifted his gaze to Tack without lifting his head and saw Tack was locked on Shy, his son-in-law, the father of Tack’s grandbaby, and his Chaos brother.

“She’s gonna be okay, Shy,” he went on. “She’s strong and she’s handling it great.”

“Shit went south,” Shy returned shortly.

“This is old ground,” Hop said carefully. “It happened. It’s done. We’ve already talked about it and we’ve already dealt with it.”

“It’s worth goin’ over since it didn’t just go south, it got totally fucked up,” Shy fired back.

“It did. And that was out of our control,” Tack returned. “You asked me, I’d never guess Bounty had that in them.”

“No, you’re wrong,” Shy bit out. “It was in our control when we used her to make our play against Bounty, against Valenzuela. And part of that control was us not doin’ that. That being somethin’ I’ll remind you I was not happy about then. Now we got a beef with Bounty, which I don’t fuckin’ blame them for the reason they first got that beef, and we got a woman who got beat to shit on our watch.”

Hound felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise.

This was true.

She was Bounty, but she had Chaos protection.

It had been Speck that fell down on that job.

And it had been Speck that felt the displeasure of his brothers. A displeasure that was extreme.