by Isabel Wroth
“Jesus. I thought it would make you happy to have a picture of your dad. Fucked that up, big time. Shit.”
She shook her head and burrowed deeper into his chest, rubbed her cheek over his heart and held on tight, “You didn’t fuck up.” He curled his big body around her, rubbing his face in her hair, not saying anything for a long time, but when he did, he made her bust out laughing. “What kind of Nazi name is, Jack? And who the fuck was he kidding, thinking you were the weak link? You’d have blown his balls off from the roof once you found out who his people were.” She laughed so hard she thought she’d pee herself. She climbed up his big, gorgeous body and he helped, scooping both hands under her butt to help her wrap her legs around his hips. She laughed while she kissed him, giggled when she pressed her forehead to his and let him wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Gee, babe, it’s like you don’t know me at all.” He smiled back at her, “Not a lot of gingers in Naziville, poor bastards had no clue what to do with you.”
“Oh, and you do?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s that?”
“Allow me to demonstrate.”
He marauded his way into her mouth and kissed her until her head was spinning and she forgot all about Jack. She forgot about the crowd of guys outside in her back yard. Forgot about the smell of smoke still lingering in her living room. Forgot that she’d locked her bedroom door to keep the sluts and their drugs out of her bathroom, until Roar walked her right into it and swore viciously when he turned the knob and nothing happened. “Why the fuck is this door locked?” He snarled in frustration, rattling the knob like it would miraculously open if he jiggled it enough. “Didn’t want anyone fucking in our bed, or snorting coke in our bathroom.” She gasped out, trying to wiggle her hips up to shove her hand in her pocket to get the key.
She looked down to get it out of her suddenly way to tight pocket, totally missing the way Roar’s eyes rolled up to her face and locked there, lids lowered and his lips curled in a knowing, satisfied smirk. “Here,” She panted, producing the key. He shifted her to fit the key in the lock, opened the door, shut it behind them and shoved her back against it. “I got in there, didn’t I?” He rasped against her lips, making her moan when he ground his jean covered cock against her pussy. He rubbed the seam of her jeans, that hard knot, right up against her clit and made her eyes roll back in her head. “W-what?”
“Your soft spot, you just let me in there,” He rolled his hips again, and this time she saw a blast of light go off behind her eyes, felt her pussy clench tight on nothing, her thighs tightening to get more friction. More contact. More pleasure. “What?”
She shuddered and keened soft and low with the nip and the nuzzle he gave her throat, the hard pump of his hips that gave her more of what she wanted. His hand snaking up under her shirt to jerk down the lace of her bra cup to firmly palm her breast. The cooler air of the room hit her fevered flesh, making her nipple pebble up in invitation. One that Roar didn’t ignore, licking firmly across the sensitive tip, knowing now what it took to make her moan and melt. “Our bed. Our bathroom. You didn’t even think about it, you just said it, cause you felt it.”
“Roar-“
“Give a guy that kind of sweet, he’s any kind of man at all he knows he better take care of it so it doesn’t turn sour. I fucked up, getting Nasa to hunt down that picture.”
“You didn’t fuck up,”
“Made you cry, made you hurt.”
She grabbed his hair in both hands and struggled to force strength enough into her arms to pull so he would lift his head from where he was suckling at her breasts. Make him look at her. She winced when his lips popped off of her nipple, panted because the shift made his hips rub against her clit again. Which made it difficult to think straight, “You heard me when I said I didn’t have any pictures of my family, and you found a way to give me one. I hadn’t seen my father’s face in over seven years. I forgot what it looked like, forgot what my family looked like. I was crying because you gave that back to me. Not because looking at Jack made me remember he took that away.” His chin jerked back like she’d landed a punch, his eyes went hot, and a deep purr like sound rumbled out of his chest. “In there,” He rasped, and she nodded, letting go of the fistfuls of hair she had to smooth her fingers through that thick mane of his. “In there,” She agreed.
Chapter Fourteen
The sun was shining on her face, her body one big delicious ache, the next time she opened her eyes. Roar had just sat up after touching a string of kisses across her cheek, and she found herself smiling to see the way the sunlight sparkled in his shaggy golden hair. “It’s seven, you feelin okay?” She glanced at the clock on the bedside table to see that it was in fact seven in the morning, and she hadn’t gotten up to puke her guts up at 5:45. “Feel good.” She murmured, her eyes closing with a hum at how he stroked his hand down her hair. “Pigs are gonna be pissed that I’m late with breakfast.”
“Already fed them. Wanted you to sleep good after last night.”
Her cheeks turned pink, remembering how he’d tirelessly, tenderly, passionately made love to her until neither of them had been able to breathe, let alone move or think. He bent down while her mind was sluggishly trying to turn over, but the images of them tangled up in her sheets kept replaying over and over. So much so that when Roar bent down to kiss her again, she was imagining how he’d used his mouth to drive her to an impressive rolling orgasm. So much so, that her body, which should have been exhausted and out of commission for months, ignited and melted in readiness for more. “You know, for a pregnant woman, you sure do blush a lot.” He teased, which had her pinching his nipple, drawing him back in for more kisses even as he laughed at her.
He hauled her across his lap and twisted to put his back against the headboard. He kept her wrapped in the blankets of the bed and cuddled her to his chest. She enjoyed the way it felt to rest her head back on his bicep, her fingertips touching the edge of his jaw while their lips clung and smacked sensually. “Gotta question for you,” She took another little kiss and relaxed back into his hold, her eyes half closed with relaxation, “Kay.”
“We need more room, this place is sweet, but there’s no room for the kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Noticed you have a bunch of home improvement books. You good if me and some of the boys start making some additions? Don’t have much time, and I don’t want to be busting the walls down with my boy sleeping in the house.”
“I’m good with that.”
“Good. One more thing,”
“Hmm?”
“We need to come up with a name for him.”
His hand rubbed over her stomach, and her heart utterly kicked over. May have even flopped right out of her chest and into his big hands, right then and there. He was smiling softly, gently at her, happiness and contentment plain in his expression. “I already did.” His lips kicked up and he licked them, dubiously looking down at her, “Better not be something lame, like Max, or Sam.” She reached up and touched a kiss to his scruffy cheek, murmuring in his ear. “Lyon. With a ‘y’.” She felt his muscles jerk, and then his cheek move with a smile. “I like it.” He murmured hoarsely, and the second their lips touched, she sucked in a breath of surprise. “What?” She looked down at where his hand still cupped the side of her belly, and held her breath, feeling it again. “I um, I think he likes it too. You didn’t feel that?”
“What?”
“I-I think he moved.”
She shrieked when she was suddenly moving, oomphing when her back hit the mattress and the blankets went flying. Roar flipped down to lay between her legs, up on his elbows, his hands framing her belly with this intent look of concentration on his face. She knew he felt the next little flutter, because his face went blank and his lips parted in awe. That look on his face, and how he spent the next hour glued to her stomach just in case there was another kick or wiggle to be felt, she was almost convinced that he wanted this. The whole package. Was consid
ering telling him yes, the next time he ordered her to marry him.
Three days later, she was determined to kill him.
Chapter Fifteen
She threw her arm up in greeting when she marched through the compound, and a few of the brothers called out to her, kept right on marching back to where she remembered Top’s office being and banged on the door, fuming while she waited for his loud, “What?” Before she threw open the door and stormed in. “Bobby, gotta call you back.” He said into his phone, and hung up, his brows up in his hair when she slammed the door behind her. “Who needs killin, red?” He asked, and she wondered if her hair was on fire, and that’s what gave it away. “Your mother fuckin enforcer. I swear to god, if I go to jail because I had to bash his skull in,” Top got up and waved a hand at her, “Slow down, take a load off before you pop that kid out premature.”
He met her around the desk and pretty much crowded her into sitting on the same chair Roar had a week ago after her ultrasound. “What’d he do now?” She took a deep breath and let him have it. “He is building an addition onto my house, and by addition, I mean he is tearing up my yard with the backhoe from my nursery, ignoring me when I tell him that he has to get permits from the city, and has already brought out lumber and cement to make the foundation, but the ground isn’t level, and he doesn’t know where the fuck the water lines are, and neither do I, so when I mentioned that I already had contractors in the wings, waiting to get the go ahead from me to start building, he lost his mother fuckin mind. Like I just suggested that since he had no balls, he might as well turn in his cut for a tutu and a tiara. He is about as gentle as a bull in a china shop and he’s going to tear my house down before this is all done. Please, I am begging you, before he destroys my house, I will pay you fifty grand, to get him on a job that gets him out of my fuckin hair for one week. One week, so the contractors can lay a proper foundation and plumbing without making me drop this kid early because I killed his daddy.”
When she was all done with her rant, she could tell Top was trying not to lose his mind laughing. He handed her a clean, folded up bandana from his pocket that smelled like smoke, Old Spice and leather, which made a few more tears squeeze out because it reminded her so much of her dad. Top pulled his hand down the tuft of his beard and sat back in his own chair, clearing his throat and doing his best to lick the smile off his lips, but he couldn’t lick it off his eyeballs. He thought this was funny as shit. “Fifty grand, huh? That’s a lot of cake to just be throwin around.”
“I can afford it.”
“Tell you what, it’s his turn on rotation to take a job, and I was letting it slide, on account of the developing situation between you two. But I got a few cases on the back burner he can take.”
“Thank fuck, I was going to poison him to keep him in bed or on the pot.”
He was still laughing by the time she stalked out of the compound. She went to the grocery store because she wanted ice cream, and when she got home Roar was on the phone, pacing back and forth on her porch with Squatch comically following back and forth. “Top, come on. Can’t Saint take this? Or Meeks?” She walked by him with her arm load of groceries, and he scowled at her before leaping to get the bags, “No, but-“ Whatever argument he was making with Top, he was losing. “I’m trying to remodel the house…how much? Shit, that’s a lot of cake. Yeah, shit. Fine, I’ll be there.” He hung up while she was putting groceries away, staring at his phone in his hand, clearly torn with indecision. “What’s up?” She hoped her tone was as nonchalant as she wanted it to be, “Top needs me for a job.” He grated, and she nodded while she opened up her new tub of mint chip ice cream, “How long will you be gone?”
“Week, if the skip plays nice. Two if he doesn’t.”
“Okay. I guess the remodel can wait.”
“No, I want it done, asap. Fuck, where’s that contractors number?”
She smiled into her ice cream, thanking god that Top liked her and then turned around to frown at Roar skeptically. “What?” He scowled and made a huge deal about how the remodel had to be done, now. So that it would be done by the time the baby came. A huge deal, as in, they argued about it. And at the end of it, not only did she get seriously fucked, she got her contractor.
She sat on the porch and watched the contractor and his crew, Top sitting next to her in one of the rocking chairs he’d brought over. He’d come over to check on her the second day Roar had been gone, and again on the fourth day, both times she’d made him dinner and enjoyed his company. Today was day six, and she was glad for the company. Truth be told, she’d gotten so used to having a bad ass in her space again, the quiet was difficult, and Top distracted her from it.
He wasn’t the hard, scary man Roar had made him out to be, though she knew he could be just as hard and cold as any hurricane when he needed to be. She discovered that he was an ex Army vet, a former drill Sargent in a past life, a widower with a penchant for meddling in the lives of the men he’d come to call his family. “So how many times a day he callin you?” He slurped the marigold tea she’d made him, glancing sideways at her while she smirked into her own cup. “Morning and night.”
“Things goin good with the kid?”
She smiled while she used her big toe to push the rocking chair back and forth, rubbing her hand over her stomach, that seemed to get bigger every day. “Yeah. Except now instead of waking me up at 5:45 to puke, he tap dances on my spleen while I’m trying to sleep.” Top chuckled, shooting her belly a curious glance, “You pick a name yet?”
“Lyon, with a Y.”
Top grinned hard, chuckling as he set his chair to rocking. “Bet Roar got a kick out of that.”
“Did he ever.”
“Lyon Morningstar. Catchy.”
She drew in a sharp breath when her kidneys took a good whallop, shaking her head when Top asked if something was wrong. “He likes his name. Every time we say it, he wiggles around.” She took his scarred, rough hand and pressed it to the side of her belly, smiling when he got a goofy look on his face to feel the kicks and wiggles. He patted her belly and went back to sipping his tea. “First baby this club is gonna see. After all the fighting, all the struggles and the hunts, the shit some of my boys have had to wade through. It’s good. Turning a corner. Downside is, this shit always comes in threes.” Now she laughed and set to rocking again, enjoying the sight of her house expanding, her life expanding. She’d have a family here. A place for friends to gather. A place where laughter and love would flow free and easy.
She sat there and acknowledged for the first time, that she really owed Susan for hounding her until she put her foot back into the pool of her old life. No, the stream, that had had major rocks thrown into it, trenches dug out that had taken her far away from that original flow. But it was correcting itself, slowly but surely. And speaking of, “Last time I talked to Susan, she said she was on a job with Pike. Couldn’t tell me where or why. You know anything about that?”
Top just nodded and rocked, not saying a lot for a long time, and she could sense that he was thinking hard. So she left him to it, was patient, though it was definitely a chore. Thank god he didn’t make her wait too long, “Pike specializes in cold cases. Him and Saint, patient bastards that go after shit and hold onto it till they get what they want. Took Susan with, cause he didn’t know how long he’d be gone, doesn’t like bein away from that silly bitch,” Top said that last bit with affection, and she began to realize that it wasn’t just his boys he looked after and cared for. Their women, once those boys had a woman who gave him sweet, who did right by him and made him light up with happiness, they had Top’s love too. He loved for his boys, to be in love and happy. Such a softie where it counted. “Chips off the old block,” She murmured, and Top grunted at her with a lift of his brow, “Your boys, haven’t met one of them yet, who wasn’t a stubborn bastard that liked asking questions and meddling. Clearly, they learned from the best.”
His ears turned pink, and she wished she’d had her pho
ne to snap a picture of how totally adorable it was. He sipped his tea and rocked, getting himself back to badassville, and grunted again. The main communication of bad asses everywhere, and there was a grunt for any occasion. That one had been a, yeah-you’re-right, mixed with a, shit-girl-quit-bein-such-a-pussy. “Sent them down to your old stompin ground on the sly. Bein a couple on a blog across America tour, is pretty good cover. I wanna know exactly how many bodies were in the Tornado compound, and who’s not accounted for. Some of those records aren’t online for Nasa to hit, so in goes Pike.”
Her happy mood started to sour a little, and she rolled her lips under to stem the stupid quiver they gave, because her pregnancy hormones gave her less control than she would have liked. Made her act more…girly. “Why?” She asked quietly, and Top reached over to fold his big hand over hers. “Just have a bad feelin about it all. Have since you sat down in my office and said someone sent you an email, the day of your wedding to out that Nazi fucker. Since you said you weren’t sure who that one asshole was in your dad’s crew that wasn’t dead like he was supposed to be, and you said three out of the five safe houses you’d been told about were torched on the same day. I hesitated to say anything, didn’t want to stir up old shit for you, just because I’m a nosy fucker that likes to make sure everyone’s ass is covered and not still hanging in a sling. But you got a boy on the way, got a family, and you’re Perdition now. I got plans for you to stay that way for a long time.”
Day nine of Roar being out of her hair was the day the contractors finished laying the plumbing and her foundation, and promised to come back the following week after it had cured to begin putting up the framework for the addition. It was going to be bad ass when all was said and done, two stories, connected to the existing house at two sides, with a center atrium she could fill with flowers and have a space for the baby to play safely as he grew up. She also had an idea of putting in an adult sized swing, after having watched the new Cinderella on TV last night.
