Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(86)

I had to swallow again.

“Now,” Hound continued, “she’s gone and I’m seein’ I was selfish with that. Jean wanted to meet your momma and I let her do that, and she loved having time with your ma. She woulda loved you boys. I wished I’d a’ let you have her, but I wish more I’d a’ let her have you. I didn’t. I gotta live with that. But at least she died knowin’ your momma, knowin’ I had her, knowin’ she had you boys to give to me, so knowin’ that I had you too. So I’m hangin’ on to that.”

When he was done talking, no one said anything.

I was going to jump in but Hound got there before me.

“You feel me on that, Jag?” he asked.

“Yeah, Hound,” Jag answered.

He swung his head Dutch’s way. “You feel me, Dutch?”

They gave each other an intense look I didn’t get before Dutch replied, “Absolutely, Hound.”

Then Hound looked to me. “You okay, baby?”

I was not.

I could barely see him with the tears swimming in my eyes.

But I nodded, looked between my sons and said in a trembling, husky voice, “You guys would have loved her. She loved Hound like he was her own boy. And she made him not cuss and take his boots off before he put his feet on her coffee table. It was hilarious.”

Hound shot me a sweet grin.

“Seriously?” Jag asked.

I looked to him, sniffed and nodded.

“She a ballbuster?” Jagger asked Hound.

“She was a proper biker grandma,” I told my son.

Jagger guffawed.

I grinned.

“Ma makes us take our boots off before we put our feet on the table,” Dutch told Hound.

“I know, son. As it should be,” Hound replied.

Okay.

I was at my end.

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed. “Someone either pass me the bottle of wine or cut me another piece of cake. No! Both!”

Hound smiled at me.

Dutch grinned at me.

Jagger grabbed the knife on the plate and sliced into the cake (I knew he was being helpful but also doing this so he could get icing and pistachio mousse on his fingers so he could lick it off).

He did this muttering, “Bitches.”

“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.”