“How am I supposed to deal with this Amelia? You went behind my back, enlisted, no it was probably their idea, the help of my family. You went and did everything I asked you not to!”
“You didn’t ask me to do or not to do a damn thing when you left. You just got on your bike and showed me the taillights over some stupid belief you have that we can’t make this work!”
“The club might be good now. You see the calm time, the fun, the games, the peace! This club, my family, it’s death Amelia!” Houston roared and stepped back. “I wanted you away from it. Away from me!”
“After the shit in Laredo I think I can handle my own fairly well. There is bullshit and uncertainty like that on the ranch too Callaghan!”
“Callaghan that’s just it! I’m the last one in my family. This name dies out with me!”
“Stop sounding like you are in some Shakespearian tragedy for five minutes and just look at me! Really look at me!” Houston crossed his arms and faced me, staring at his boots for a second in a feeble attempt to pull it together before looking up at me.
“Six weeks ago, I walked into this building for the first time. And for three weeks that followed, I found myself attracted to some stubborn, thick headed, leather wearing, Bastard of a man. Attraction to a level that I couldn’t even control.”
“Attraction…” he started to butt in.
“Shut up! Was I through talking? No!” I stared at him, daring him to speak before continuing. “I fell in love with you in three short weeks. Through the fighting and all, I just did. I fell in love with the man I could see behind the bullshit armor he’s been wearing all too long. Maybe it was stupid. It was, it was the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life. Falling in love with an over grown child.”
“An over grown!” he started again but another glare from me and clamped his mouth shut.
“I was willing to go back with Brad that night at the crossroads. I wanted to go because I wanted you safe away from him. I didn’t want you to kill Felicia because I would see you differently, but because I knew Brad would drop me a second later. I wasn’t scared to die but I loved you so much that I didn’t want you to see it. To see me die too!
“I know somewhere in there,” I pushed him in the chest as I walked towards him making him step back into the desk, “Is a heart. Maybe you think it’s non-existent, but I know it’s there and a lot larger than you give it credit for being. And I know in that heart, is a love. A pure, stubborn, ridiculous love, and it’s all for me.”
I walked forward another step, leaving Houston nowhere left to go he sat back on the desk and I guided his knees apart as I stepped in-between them.
“I told you,” Houston said a moment later, his voice a deep raspy that I knew so well. It was the voice that yelled at me to run away the first night he kissed me, the voice that promised he would ruin me for all men (and boy had he) the voice that whispered my name as we finally came together in his childhood bedroom.
“Told me what?”
“It never had anything to do with loving you. I love you like I have never loved anyone in this lifetime.”
“Then don’t push me away. Don’t break my heart just because you’re too damn stubborn and most importantly don’t break your own for the same reason. I spent two weeks in Bastard boot camp. After the last six weeks, I can’t live without the club either. And if it means giving up Homeland I will. To have you I’d do anything,” I motioned to the ink on my chest. “Clearly!”
Houston leaned forward and pressed his lips to my chest, gently kissing my tattoo. The feel of his kiss made my breath catch and I bit back a sob as tears stung my eyes.
“You shouldn’t have to. You shouldn’t give anything up for me,” he said as he kissed my collarbone.
“Then don’t make me,” I whispered as I tangled my fingers in his hair.
“This isn’t fair… I can’t not touch you when I’m around you anymore. All the restraint I had is gone,” Houston’s lips found my neck and I let out an involuntary whimper.
“Then take me. Here, now.”
“Amelia,” his voice was barely audible as I ran my hands down his chest and to his belt. “Baby, nothing will be fixed if we do this.”
“Everything will be fixed when you’re inside of me,” I undid the belt and swiftly popped the button on his jeans.
“That’s not what I mean,” his hands told another story as they finished pulling my blue jean jacket from my arms and fell to my lower back, sliding up between her shirt and her skin.
I kicked off my boots and popped the top of my own jeans as I pulled the shirt over my head. Finally, our lips crashed together. I sobbed softly as he parted my lips with the swiftness of his tongue. I gave into him easily. Forgetting how something as basic as a kiss could make me melt. How delicious he always tasted despite the lingering of tobacco and just a hint of whiskey I tasted today.
He helped me out of my jeans and he was free of what remained of his in seconds. I tugged his shirt off. “This office is a fuckin’ wreck for this.”
“I’ve seen your apartment. It’s not a hell of a whole lot better,” I giggled as he wrapped his arms around my waist, picking me up and sitting me on the top of his desk.
“I need you to take you slow and all night. This isn’t the place,” he unsnapped my bra with the flick of his wrist and I shrugged it from my shoulders.
“There was no time to make it anywhere else,” I cried out as his mouth found my breast. “Fuck!”
“Quiet sweetheart, they’ll hear you,” he whispered in my ear as he ripped my lace panties to shreds.
“I really don’t give a shit,” I groaned spreading my legs for him as his fingers walked up my thighs.
“That’s my girl.”
Houston rewarded my eagerness, taking my mouth in his again and plunging two fingers into my folds. I squirmed against him. His touch was addicting, I would need it as long as I lived.
I leaned back on my arms to brace myself as he stepped away from me. He removed his boxers and I soaked the sight of him back in. His body was a work of art, every formed muscle, every precise drop of ink, the small trail of hair that ran between his “V”. I longed to taste every inch of him. But there was something I wanted more. Something I needed more.
Houston stepped back between me open and waiting legs, he placed his forehead on mine as he slid inside. I wrapped one arm around his torso and rested my other hand on the back of his neck.
“Don’t let go,” I begged him as he slowly started to thrust inside of me. “Please Houston, don’t ever let me go. Not like that again.”
I was overwhelmed. The ecstasy that rushed through my body battled with the emotions that threatened to drown me. The passion collided with my fears. The lust mixed with the ache in my heart that told me if this didn’t work, if we didn’t stay just as we were in that moment, that I would break and never heal again. I loved him so damn much.
Tears flooded from my eyes as I bit into his shoulder. I felt his lips as he buried his face in my neck for a moment. His hands gripped my waist tightly, as he drove on. I clenched around him wanting to scream out his name, so I did.
As his name left my lips I felt him explode and he wrapped me tightly in his arms. He rested his forehead on mine again and kissed me softly. “I love you, Half-Pint.”
“I still hate that nickname.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Oh, I do. But I have missed hearing it something horrible,” I grinned and kissed him playfully on the nose.
“What now?” he finally asked after a few moments had passed us by.
“That’s up to you,” I said, and brushed a strand of hair from his eyes. It was getting long and unless he planned on growing a pony tail, it desperately needed cut.
“I tried to forget you, I said I could do it. Leave you be to have a happy normal life. To fall in love with some cowboy and raise a family in the safety of the Homeland. I convinced myself riding off that I could do it. Come to back to my
life without you and be okay with it. It’s not possible, to fall in love in three weeks like this,” Houston started, and my chest clenched. Coming here might only break my heart even more but I would never regret it. Never regret the feel of his skin on mine one last time…
Houston’s eyes travelled to my naked breast, but his interest was more immersed in the words on my skin. He lowered his mouth to gently kiss it once more.
“I don’t necessarily approve of what you did. I loved seeing you in that life, in my life at the wedding… but the reality is you’re safer away from it.”
“The reality of it is I’m safer with you. I’m better with you. And if this is the only part of you I get… I’ll take it. Until my last breath, as much as you and our siblings, I belong to the club. I belong to you too.”
“I’ll make it real, you know that. Someday, I’ll make it right.”
“What right?”
“Those words, the promise you made to me. To the club we might be as good as married, but someday I’ll put that ring on your hand and make it real.”
“That,” I tipped my head back and laughed. “Is a horrible marriage proposal!”
“It wasn’t a proposal! It was a promise of a proposal!” he slapped at my bare ass and I shrieked.
“God, I love you, even if you’re a huge pain in my ass,” I smiled and took his face in my hands kissing him.
“I’ll show you pain in the ass,” he growled, and I could feel him twitch and grow again and he pushed me onto my back.
“You’re going to have to burn this desk when we’re done.”
“My ass.”
Epilogue
Houston
“The hell I am!” Tate shouted at me as we moved the furniture about the living room for the tenth time.
The last four months had been different. I went back to the Homeland and together, Tate, Amelia and I based the Nomad chapter out of the ranch. Tate and I rode when we needed to, but with the club looking to keep our noses clean and earning green in more legal ways, things were going better.
Sticky and Speedy we’re still boosting cars when the urge struck them, and Tommy occasionally made things fall off trucks, but for the most part the Nomads were flying straight. Destiny called a few hours ago, the Four Corners were having issues.
New blood in their town. There wasn’t a game going down that the Bastards didn’t know about and some young punk Vipers were trying their hand at running some girls that weren’t entirely in the clear. Destiny didn’t like the idea of high school girls for sale and she was probably itching for a fight out of boredom, but she figured it could be cleaned up with a pissing match, and she thought I would like to come help show our size.
George and Eloise had cleaned out Brad’s foreman house last month and offered it to Amelia. After two weeks of painting she was moving in. And with the diamond engagement ring on her left hand, it earned me the invitation to leave the bunkhouse Tate and I shared.
“I don’t like the couch there like I thought I would,” Amelia said with a small frown. “Put it back in front of the window.”
We both groaned and picked the couch back up. “It’s just for a couple weeks when we get back from our ride,” I barked at my VP.
“I’ve been helping out around here,” Tate grumbled.
“You’ve been gone more than Houston has been,” Amelia stated. I was still spending about ten days a month on the road. Putting in my miles, keeping tabs on my closer nomads, cleaning up messes that arose. I hated being away from Amelia, but it was better than not having her at all.
“We’re heading out for a couple weeks, I have some people to check in on and I want to take Amelia around. You’re taking care of the ranch while we’re gone.”
“Checking in on people with Amelia as you’re back up?”
“Have you seen your sister with that Henry of hers?” I dropped my end of the couch and pulled my fiancée to me and playfully nipped at her lower lip.
“You two make me sick,” Tate made a face like he was fuckin’ twelve.
“Plus, we have cattle sales to hit. I’ll have them shipped back. We have a heard to re-build,” Amelia added. Dez had wiped Felicia’s bank accounts, she paid herself for her time, the cub members who worked the detail off, and replenished what was stolen from the Homeland and then put some anonymous donations into the accounts of some of the elderly marks Felicia had hit in prior cons. The Homeland was safe, and Amelia and George had decided to rebuild the herd.
George worried about his age and not being able to run the day to day and Amelia being overwhelmed without the help she used to get from Brad, when he wasn’t screwing his family over. But as it is, things weren’t that bad when Tate and I where around. Turns out Tate was a good rancher after all and I didn’t hate it as much as I expected I would.
“You better just leave the couch there and pack your bags. It’ll be a long ride for you tomorrow. All day on the bike, not that you will complain,” she told me wrapping her arms around me tightly.
“I’ll have complaints, the road, the Nomad life isn’t as great anymore. I need you on the back of my bike for it to have the same appeal. But I know I have something to come home too now,” I kissed her, and my fingers traveled over the words on her chest.
“’Till Death’ Bastard Prince.”
“’Till Death’ Half-Pint.”
Get in touch with Kendra Plunkett-Witt
Facebook: @kendraplunkettwitt
Instagram: @witt_writer
Email: [email protected]
Goodreads: Kendra Plunkett Witt
Be sure to check out the rest of her books all available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited!
Moonshine Down
Illinois Ranger (Formerly released as The Equalizer)
The Mirror Lake Ranch: Once in a Memory
The Devil’s Bastards MC: Destiny Dallas Callaghan
Houston Callaghan: The Devil's Bastards MC Page 26
