Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(136)

Isaac hadn’t heard his son’s voice in almost a year.

He squatted down before his children, ignoring the brief but vicious clench in his back and right hip, and pulled them in close. “Hey, you two. I love you.” Taking in their scent and touch and sound, he held on until they both squirmed, and then he let them go. This one day, twice a month thing was just not f*cking enough. Sometimes he wanted to tell everyone else he knew to f*ck off and leave him with all of his visitation points for his wife and kids. But he couldn’t do that. He and Len had retained their voting rights, and the club had business.

As always, Lilli stood back a little and waited for him to greet their children. He hated the school year, too, when she couldn’t get to Marion fast enough to see him on Friday nights. During the summer, she’d come to see him alone on Friday, leaving the kids in the motel with whomever she’d brought along— sometimes it was Show, sometimes it was Lori, their usual babysitter. He’d have her all to himself for three hours or so, and they’d sit and hold hands and really talk. They almost always fought at least once during that time, but that was how they talked things through.

He went to her now. So f*cking beautiful. Almost ten years, they’d been together. She looked the same.

A line or two at the corners of her grey eyes, but otherwise, she was the Amazonian stranger he’d shared a burger with one summer night long ago. Since he’d been away, she’d been working out a lot, more than she had since Gia was born. Show said she was back to her old ways, causing a stir, running around town in tiny clothes. And she was working out at the clubhouse, too. His warrior woman.

He’d put more muscle on, too. Not much else to do but work, read, eat, work out, jack off, and sleep.

But he could feel the old damage in his back aging him fast. He was beginning to wonder if he’d still be able to ride when he finally got quit of this place.

“Hey, baby.” She smiled, and he wrapped her up in his arms. Fuck. Halfway through. Almost halfway through. He could get through and have this woman, these children again. He had to. Just had to do what he’d already done. Halfway through.

He turned his face and nuzzled her neck, breathing her in. Hard since his skin had touched hers, he couldn’t stop his body from pressing to hers, and she moaned and responded in kind.

“LUNDEN!”

He pushed back fast. Dammit. No kiss. But he wouldn’t risk it. He needed these precious hours.

Breathless and flushed, she let him lead her to a chair, and they sat. He pulled Gia onto his lap—at eight, she was getting too old to sit on Daddy’s lap, really, but the guards allowed it, and Bo no longer would. And she was happy to be there. Lilli sat next to him; Bo sat at her other side, looking at his hands in his lap.

He was losing his boy.

“How’s Len doing?” Lilli’s voice saved him from the pitch-black trail that thought would have sent him down.

“Word is, he’s better. He should be back in gen pop within a week, I guess.” Len was in the prison infirmary with a nasty internal infection. The meds they got—Len to compensate for his missing spleen, Isaac for his back—were not of the quality they’d become used to on the outside. Tasha had had no luck getting them prescribed the better stuff, and it was driving her batshit, he knew. They’d sat in this room and gone quietly ‘round about her smuggling better stuff in. Neither Len nor Isaac wanted her to expose herself like that. But maybe she was right. Maybe, before Len kicked from a f*cking infection, or Isaac lost his legs again, they needed it.

“Thank God. It’s killing Tash not to be able to do anything. They wouldn’t even let her see him.”

“Nah. They wouldn’t. Not in the infirmary. Maybe if they’d thought he was bad enough to send him to an outside hospital. But he’s okay.” He’d almost died, actually, but the bar for ‘bad enough’ around here was high.

“Isaac, you’ve got to let her.”

She didn’t say more, because she knew better than to say anything here, and she knew she’d said enough for him to understand.

“Yeah. I know.” He looked past her at their son. “Hey, Bo. How’s Kodi?”

Bo gave him a little wave and then shrugged. He’d never looked up.

“He’s good, Daddy.” Gia answered. She always answered when Bo would not. Lilli had told him that she was fiercely protective of her quiet little brother and was getting into fights at school with kids who teased him. “Mamma says he’s trying to fill your shoes.”

“He is?” Isaac cocked a sardonic eyebrow at Lilli, his brain going to an amusingly twisted place. She laughed. “No, you weirdo,” she muttered under her breath, “I’ve got my Rabbit for that.”

He winked, but his cock was going to sprain something. He was having trouble keeping that under control today.

More loudly, she said, “She means he sleeps every night on the rug in the front hall. He has since you left.”

“Not on that expensive damn bed you bought him?”

“Not since you left. He sleeps at the front door, between us and the world. Taking care of your people.”

That made his eyes burn and itch. Needing to change the subject, he gave Gia a little squeeze. “So Christmas is coming up. What did you guys ask Santa for?”

He and his family passed the hours of their visit like that, Gia speaking for herself and her brother, Isaac and Lilli speaking in half sentences and code. When it was time for them to go, he took a risk for a kiss worth the one they’d lost, and he pushed his tongue between her lips. Her tongue was there, ready to dance.