Salvaged

by Jay Crownover

  “If we take too long Royal will come looking for me and you know it.” She was breathless and I barely heard her warning. If Royal did come looking, she was going to get an eyeful because there was nothing on this planet that would pull me away from this woman, not when she was whispering my name in pleasure and lifting up on her toes so that she could push back against me.

  After Poppy’s dad put her in the ER, she’d gotten close with both Royal and Saint. Saint made it a point to stop by and check on her every day she was in the hospital and even asked if Poppy would consider working with the victim outreach program through the hospital. Royal stood by her side through all the court proceedings and even went to court on the day Pastor Cruz was sentenced to twenty-five years in jail for the attempted murder of his daughter. Royal was surprisingly protective of my girl so she would come looking for her, but luckily Asa was good at keeping her distracted. Knowing the Kentucky charmer, I would put good money on him having coerced his wife into finding their own dark corner to race against the clock in. They were still acting like newlyweds even though they’d been together for years and married for several months now.

  Asa had given Royal her dream wedding, a low-key ceremony on the beach in Hawaii that we’d all flown out for a couple of months after Salem and Rowdy’s little girl, Glory, was born. It was the perfect winter getaway and Royal made a beautiful bride. It was no surprise to anyone when Shaw announced shortly after the trip that she was expecting baby number two. Rule was over the moon about it, telling anyone that would listen that he was going to have a little girl with his mom’s pretty green eyes. There was something about the balmy beach air that made everyone seem particularly amorous. Rowdy was already planning on another baby even though his first wasn’t yet at the age where she slept through the night. He and Poppy’s sister were in no hurry to get married, claiming they’d been born to be together and a ring wouldn’t change that. Salem was his last and he was hers.

  Nash and Saint had been forced to skip the wedding because Nash got an offer to do several guest spots in some world-renowned tattoo shops all across Europe this summer. Since Saint didn’t have school she took a leave of absence from work and went with him. The girls were taking bets on whether the pretty, redheaded nurse was going to come back in the fall knocked up, because, apparently, vacation sex was extra potent. Saint insisted she wanted to wait, and Nash insisted that all he needed was ten minutes to change her mind. I knew if Saint had been around at the wedding today, she would definitely notice my girl was missing, so I was glad that was an interruption I didn’t have to worry about.

  “The only person I’m worried about coming is you, honey. Lift your knee up on the counter.” I was breathing hard and there was a light sheen of sweat dotting my forehead. “I’ve got you, so don’t worry about those shoes.”

  She lifted her eyebrows at me in the mirror and then did what I asked her to, her mouth dropping open as I sank even deeper and hit her spot even harder. I rubbed my thumb up the part of her spine that was exposed and let my head fall back on my neck. Her heat and the snug pull of her body were my favorite sensations in the world. Every time I buried my cock inside her I knew it was the only place I wanted to be and the one place that was all mine. It was where I belonged.

  I slid a finger between the perfectly heart-shaped cheeks of her bouncing ass. Her eyebrows shot up even higher, to the point where they were almost lost in her caramel-colored hair. She liked it when I touched her there, liked it even more when I took her there, but we really didn’t have time for that at the moment.

  I could hear my phone ringing in the other room and I knew by the ring tone that it was Rome. Typically, I dropped everything when the big man called. He was a primary investor in my business and had just recently come to me with an expansion proposal. He wanted to know if I would be interested in spearheading a custom motorcycle shop that focused on commissioned builds and restoration projects. I didn’t know all there was to know about motorcycles; I mean, I could make one run with no problem, but beyond that I was pretty clueless. As it turned out, all Rome wanted was for me to keep an eye on the shop and the guys working out of it. He had a bunch of bikers that liked to come in and out of his bar, and since he rode himself he thought it would be a good opportunity. I had a lot on my plate already with Royce and getting Poppy to the point where she was ready to move in with me; as soon as she said yes, I was putting a ring on her finger and a baby in her belly. Royce was almost a year old and I couldn’t love him more if I tried. It wasn’t always easy juggling his childhood between two homes and I always felt his absence when he was with Kallie, but we made it work and I was more than ready to make it work with Poppy. She was amazing with my son. I knew she would be.

  The truth was I couldn’t tell the big man “no” to much of anything, so now I was running two garages and everything badass in Denver on two wheels or four came through me and my guys. I found myself with more family and more opportunity than I ever expected.

  As soon as Rule started on and on about Shaw’s pregnancy, everyone assumed that Rome was going to step it up and put a third baby in his wife, Cora. As it turned out, the little, blond firecracker was done with the baby making, claiming their daughter, Remy, was like having five kids. She had her hands full with the precocious little girl, the one that had made a big production of kissing Hyde right after Zeb kissed Sayer. They also had a little boy who was the sweetest thing ever and both claimed one of each was perfect.

  I ignored the call. I ignored everything except the way Poppy’s body tightened around mine and the way she whimpered as I plowed into her over and over again. I let out a low moan as her wetness spread across my cock in a hot rush. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks were flushed, and her hands had curled into fists on the edge of the vanity. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly and her thighs shook against mine. I dug my fingers into her hips, let my cock dive into her over and over again until my spine stiffened as a ball of pure pleasure wrapped around the base of it. I told her she was everything and promised her anything as I emptied myself inside her.

  It wasn’t two minutes but it was close. We went off hard and fast, pleasure spiraling and spinning through us like a storm.

  I pulled out with a groan and watched as the evidence of time well spent marked her thighs. I always liked the way I looked smeared all across her tawny skin. It was hands down one of my favorite sights to see.

  I reached around her for a towel and cranked on the sink as she lowered her leg back to the ground, keeping her dress up around her waist so that she wouldn’t get anything on it. The caveman part of me wanted her to stay just like that but I knew time was running out and we had to put in an appearance.

  I cleaned her up, made sure there were no telltale signs of what we’d been doing on the front of my black pants, and took her hand so I could lead her back to the ballroom. Luckily, Zeb and Sayer hadn’t arrived yet, but everyone else was already milling around the room and I could tell by the knowing smirks and twitching eyebrows that everyone knew what we had been up to.

  Ayden gave me a wink when I walked past her and muttered under her breath, “Jet likes a quickie in the bathroom too. It’s always worth the embarrassment of walking in late.”

  The stunning brunette and her husband were still based out of Austin and no one got to see them as much as they would have liked. Jet was still on the road but he’d picked up a young band out of Denton, Texas, that was on the verge of blowing up huge. They had the potential to be superstars, and if they did that, attached to Jet’s record label, it would enable him to stay home more, which was what both he and Ayden wanted. Being married to a rock star was far less glamorous than anyone wanted to believe. At the beginning of the year Ayden had suffered a miscarriage when Jet was on the road; their loss rippled through our extended friends and family like a wave of sorrow. Poppy being Poppy had stepped in as the only person who could understand exactly what Ayden was going through. She offered an ear and a shoulder, and as
a result the two had forged a bond that only that kind of loss could solidify. They spoke on the phone regularly and I was no longer surprised to find my girl crying over the absence of a baby that wasn’t hers. She cared so much that sometimes I wondered where she put it all.

  I tilted my chin in Dixie’s direction when she caught my eye and gave me a leer. I still missed her, but watching her cuddle into the massive man by her side, I knew she had also found the place where she belonged. She loved Church and she loved the place he called home. She’d even picked up a slight southern twang in the short time she’d been in Mississippi. They were the next couple up at the altar, a small wedding that was going to take place in the backyard garden of the woman that had helped to raise Church. She was well into her eighties and couldn’t travel, so we were all going south to watch Dixie say “I do.” Kallie got really emotional every time we talked about it because it meant her sister was really never coming back to Denver and that was a hard pill for her to swallow.

  I was leading Poppy to the front part of the ballroom where Rowdy was smirking at me knowingly as Salem shook her head at her sister. Zeb’s sister seemed oblivious to what they were laughing at and didn’t bother to ask as she cuddled into her husband. Hyde was doing his best to avoid a very persistent Remy Archer, a plan that included trying to hide behind his cousin Joss. Joss sold him out to the adorable demon in pigtails because it was an unwritten rule that Remy got what Remy wanted. That’s what happened when you were the first kid.

  A quiet murmur went through the room as Sayer and Zeb arrived at the back. They didn’t want to do a formal announcement, they just wanted to present themselves to all of their friends and family as husband and wife, so that’s what they did. The gigantic, bearded badass and his elegant, polished bride. They didn’t look like they belonged on the top of the same wedding cake, but there was no doubt when he put his hand on her lower back and she leaned into him that they belonged together. Hyde escaped Remy long enough to run to his dad and a collective sigh went up when the big man bent and picked the smaller version of himself up in one arm. They were a united front, and they always would be.

  “She looks good in lilac.” I glanced over at the table closest to the one where Poppy and I were sitting and silently agreed with Quaid Jackson. He had his arm draped over the back of his girlfriend’s chair as they both watched the bride and groom make their way through the room. Quaid had tried to start something with Sayer a million years ago, and though it went nowhere because she loved the massive mountain of man on her arm now, the two of them had remained friends. They were both in the legal field and often referred clients to one another. Quaid’s girlfriend nodded her head in agreement, the lights from overhead catching in her smoky, silver-tinted hair. There was a significant age gap between the two of them, one that was obvious when you looked at them together, but there was also an understanding and acceptance there that no one questioned. Quaid had loosened up significantly since Avett moved into his million-dollar loft in LoDo and the free-spirited, wild child had settled down and really worked toward making something of herself. She was rocking an engagement ring that had a diamond the width of a quarter in the center of it, and if you asked her, she was getting married in Vegas by an Elvis impersonator, so she didn’t have to plan a wedding. It was probably a good idea considering how different her style and Quaid’s were. The two of them trying to combine their styles in order to say “I do” could be disastrous.

  “I think my hair would look awesome that color, don’t you?” Avett whispered the question under her breath and Quaid just nodded and kissed her temple.

  “Do it. It’ll look great.” The response came from Orlando Frederick, who was sandwiched between her and his boyfriend, Dominic Voss. I liked Lando a lot and not just because he was a fellow freckled ginger. He was gentle and kind in the same way Poppy was and there was a familiar shadow of loss that sometimes crossed his gaze that let me knew he was intimately familiar with how precious and precarious life could be. Fortunately, he had a boyfriend that came armed and dangerous. Dom worked as a police academy trainer and looked like he could stop all the crime in Denver single-handedly. They’d been together for a while, and though I knew through the grapevine that their respective families were pushing for them to make it legal, neither man was in any hurry to take that step. They were committed to one another, had a life together, and between the two of them had a plethora of younger siblings they were busy keeping in line and out of jail. Eventually, they wanted to have a family, so they made a pact that when the time was right for them to expand their brood, then and only then would they tie the knot.

  I put my arm around Poppy’s shoulders and pulled her into my side. Her hand found its way under the lapel of my jacket and her cheek rested on my shoulder. “You ready to move the Hudson to my house yet?”

  She gave a little laugh that made her shoulders shake and had her amber eyes shining up at me. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  It was a conversation we had a least once a day. I wanted her under my roof so she was always there with me and Royce and Happy, but she insisted she wasn’t ready for reasons I understood but still hated. I assured her that having unfettered access to my cock was a good enough reason, but she would just shake her head and laugh at me. She insisted that she had to prove to herself that she could take care of herself because she never had before. She also told me time and time again that I needed this time with my son and I inevitably replied that he was much happier when she was there as well because he took after his old man. It was true. My kid loved her just as much as I did and I swore the nights she didn’t make it over, he cried extra hard and acted more fussy than normal. I admired her independence and strength, but the nights we spent away from one another were the worst, and I hardly slept.

  “Tomorrow it is, then.”

  She smiled at me and my heart tried to beat its way out of my chest so that it could put itself in her hands. “Tomorrow it is.”

  One step at a time we moved toward each other and toward the next thing that waited for us. Tomorrow, I would wake up and make sure I took better care of her than I had the day before and she would do the same for me.

  That’s what love looked like.

  SALVAGED PLAYLIST

  “Wind Up Bird”: Heartless Bastards

  “You’re a Wolf”: Sea Wolf

  “My Favorite Part”: Mac Miller and Ariana Grande

  “Dog Days Are Over”: Florence + the Machine

  “Warrior”: Demi Lovato

  “Gentle on My Mind”: Billy Bragg and Joe Henry

  “You Are My Sunshine”: Morgane and Chris Stapleton

  “Girl on Fire”: Alicia Keys

  “Wonderwall”: Oasis

  “Best We’ve Ever Been”: Sean McConnell

  “Shine a Different Way”: Patty Griffin

  “Survivor”: Destiny’s Child

  “Wreck You”: Lori McKenna

  “Feel Like Making Love”: Bad Company

  “To Love Somebody”: Lydia Loveless

  “The Arrow Killed the Beast”: Heartless Bastards

  “I Will Survive”: Gloria Gaynor

  “Move Me”: Sara Watkins

  “Things That I Lean On”: Wynonna Judd and Jason Isbell

  “Nothing to Fix”: Jack Ingram

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I took some liberties with the real-life pit bull regulations in Denver to fit the context of this story. There is no way Dixie would actually be allowed to keep Dolly, and for Wheeler and Poppy to keep Happy in the city limits they would need a special license even if they owned their own property. If you are interested in the actual ban you can read about it here:

  https://www.animallaw.info/local/co-denver-breed-sec-8-–55-pit-bulls-prohibited

  I know I’m going to get questions about timeline and continuity because of the babies and both Kallie and Salem being pregnant, so I’m going to do my best to clear some of that up. Keeping in mind that all of the Saints of Denver books take pl
ace in the time frame between the end of Asa and up until … and beyond Rome and Cora’s wedding.

  In Asa, at Rome and Cora’s wedding, Salem had just announced she was pregnant to everyone, so for me that put her at right around four months or so in February, since Rome and Cora got married on Valentine’s Day. That would mean she told Sayer and Poppy about the baby in Built around late November or in early December. I was locked into that time frame because it was already written in stone since the books had long since been published. It might not be EXACT but it’s as close as I can figure it out without my mind exploding. I do words … not numbers.

  I knew I wanted Wheeler to face what his idea of family was, so I had planned all along on his ex having a baby … but I didn’t figure out how that would affect the timeline I’d already laid out. It forced me to get creative and do a lot of counting on my fingers.

  Kallie had to be further along in her pregnancy for things to fit all the events that happened in both Charged and Riveted and for her to be at the point where she was able to try to find out the baby’s sex during winter. So my best guess how all of this would work is Kallie got knocked up in early September or maybe even late August and was right around four months in December. In my mind, she was already pregnant when she was throwing a fit in Charged. I think she was scared out of her mind about what she was facing … that’s why she acted so crazy … on top of her being a drama queen to begin with.

  I hope that helps some … I know it might not be spot on, but for those who are sticklers for continuity and consistency it does offer a little bit of perspective as to my reasoning and rationale.

  The other thing I want to throw out there is that if you or someone you know is in a bad situation, I hope this book and these characters remind you that you are not alone. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. It never burns out. There is always hope and everyone deserves a shot at something better.