Wild Like the Wind Read online

  He just wished it wasn’t so soon.

  “Keely,” he whispered.

  Her head, bent so she could stare at her hand, came up.

  “The ‘Red?’” she asked.

  That was the first time she’d seen the tat.

  Shit.

  “Tyra, Tack’s old lady,” he answered.

  “When she was kidnapped years back and got stuck . . . repeatedly,” she guessed.

  Hound nodded.

  “You got that for her?”

  She didn’t include Black.

  “All the brothers got it.”

  She studied him a beat before she looked back down, slid her hand off the scales and Hound tensed again, trying to even his breath as she headed to the other side.

  There was shit there that was meaningful. A waving American flag. One of his brother, Joker’s bike designs, an American bobber Hound wished he’d bought before the customer picked it up because now it was gone forever to some rich fuck who probably had no clue the meaning of something that cool, he just had the money to buy it.

  And coming up from his pubic hair, starting close to the root of his dick, a Native American lance with an eagle feather tied to it crossed with a bow, an arrow running parallel to it crossed with a long-handled club that had a rough stone attached at the top with sinew. These ran up his abdomen, through his navel, into his ribs, through the American flag that waved there, and farther up.

  Apache weapons.

  They weren’t the only tribe that used them, but she’d embraced her culture. She was definitely not immune to where Hound had been at when it came to her, she might put it together that he’d inked her in him from dick to where the lance point hit, his heart.

  “Keely,” he called to take her attention right when she started to trace the arrow through its bow, straight up the middle of his chest.

  “I’ve got no tats,” she muttered.

  That had not escaped him. It was the only un-old lady thing about her.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Thankfully, her gaze came to him. “I’d settle on one then change my mind. Settle on another, and change my mind.”

  “They’re not things you can change your mind about,” he said.

  A ghost of a smile drifted across her lips.

  “Your artist is the shit,” she said.

  “Yup,” he agreed.

  “You design these or did he?”

  “She designed them all, except the Chaos tats. Those are inherited or Tack’s man did them.”

  She nodded, her eyes floating down to his chest, already knowing about the ones that were inherited, Black had been buried with his.

  “Keely.”

  “You let a girl ink you?” she asked, and there was something in her face he didn’t get.

  “She doesn’t have to wrestle a tiger before she does it, babe. Then again, a tiger’d probably best me, so it’s good she doesn’t.”

  “I mean, she touches you, like . . .” she slid her hand down, into his pubic hair right to the root of his dick, “here.”

  “Not gonna let a dude touch me there,” he grunted.

  “Did you shave?”

  “Had to.”

  “Did you do it, shave I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All of it?”

  His brows drew together. “No. Just where she needed to go.”

  “Did she see all of it?”

  “You mean my dick?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She didn’t need all my junk exposed to her to get where I wanted her to go. Now can I ask where this is heading?”

  “Have you slept with her?”

  It was then his brows snapped together.

  “Keely.”

  “You have,” she whispered.

  He had. His tattoo artist was a cute pixie badass princess with pink hair, serious as shit piercings that rocked and a magic mouth.

  He felt it would be a mistake at this juncture to share that.

  “I’ll repeat, where you headin’ with this?” he pushed.

  “I’m bad about sharing.”

  Ah.

  “Took the test today, babe. Not gonna do that, get the results, and if we get the go ahead, come ungloved inside you and put you at risk.”

  “Okay,” she said softly.

  But he stared at her because he’d just agreed to be exclusive with, essentially, a fuck buddy.

  He slid his hands up her back and into her hair to hold her head with both of them.

  “No worries about sharin’, Keely. You got my word. But don’t lose sight of where this is at and what you’re gettin’ from me,” he warned.

  She nodded.

  “You gotta get home?” he asked.

  “Soon-ish,” she answered.

  “We gonna fuck again?”

  She arched one perfect brow. “You have that in you?”

  “You do the work, I could rally.”

  She smiled.

  “I blew you, you haven’t eaten me,” she told him something he very well remembered.

  “Happy to oblige, but just sayin’, if you’re keepin’ track, I think you owe me about four.”

  “I hear that, baby, but mama’s mouth is tired.”

  And he heard that. She gave it her all, did it with gusto and kept going even after he’d blown.

  “Guess it’s time for me to go down,” he muttered.

  “It is.”

  “You wanna swing off?” he asked.

  He couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t. He still had some hard but he was losing it fast.

  She still hesitated.

  Then she swung off and he lost her.

  The thing that caught at him about that was it was Keely acting like she didn’t want to lose him.

  He wasn’t going to get into that with her.

  Instead, he rolled off the bed and headed to the bathroom to flush the condom.

  At this rate, the super would be up in his shit for clogging the pipes.

  Whatever.

  He went back to Keely and took her there with his mouth.

  He pushed her there again with his cock and fingers.

  Then they dressed and he walked her out to her car where they necked before he stood on the sidewalk and watched her drive away.

  You’re So Chaos

  Hound lifted a leg and put his boot to the door.

  It popped open and he strolled in, seeing bodies scatter.

  He didn’t have a mind to any of them, but the one he knew belonged to the man who lived in that apartment, an apartment in his building.

  The guy tried to take off, attempting to go wide to avoid Hound, but even though Hound was a big man, he could move fast and definitely faster than a junkie.

  So he caught the guy at the throat, lifted him off his feet, then slammed him down on his back on his soiled carpet, going down with him to press a knee hard to his chest even as he didn’t take his hold off his throat.

  He got in his face.

  “You gotta do this shit,” he lifted his eyes, indicating the dope paraphernalia that was scattered everywhere, “you do it somewhere else. Find a friend who don’t have a biker that gives a shit his building is clean. And you need to get supplied, you do that somewhere else too, motherfucker. I see or even hear that kinda scum has walked through the front door again, it won’t be the dealer I’m lookin’ for. It’ll be you. Have I been clear?”

  “Yeah, uh . . . yeah. Yeah, man. Totally, yeah,” the guy pushed out.

  “I am not a man who likes his time wasted. If I find my message has not been delivered, I won’t deliver it again. I’ll snap your neck,” Hound told him.

  This last wasn’t true but the guy didn’t need to know that.

  His eyes were glassy but big and filled with fear, his face was red, and he nodded his head even in Hound’s hold, because he believed him.

  “M-m-message delivered,” he stammered. “P-promise.”

  Hound shoved at his throat as he pushed up, not enoug
h to cause damage, but enough to make the guy splutter and cough, turning to his side.

  Hound looked down at him, feeling his lip curl.

  Then he saw the carpet he was lying on was the same as his carpet, Hound’s not as rank, but it wasn’t far from it.

  Him and Keely had been at each other now for a week. She had more than a rare occasion to walk on his carpet in her bare feet, especially now that his test came back clean so he went at her ungloved, she liked to clean up in between and he didn’t eat his own cum.

  She hadn’t said dick.

  He didn’t think about it.

  Until then.

  Hound walked out of the apartment, out to his truck, swung in and went to Target.

  He nabbed a vacuum cleaner, and while he was there, grabbed some Windex, cleaning cloths, paper towels, a mop and some stuff to clean bathrooms.

  On his way back to his apartment he called Chill, the recruit they’d taken on with Dutch. A good kid, couple of years older than Dutch. Not tall. Lean and wiry, smart and seemingly dedicated (so far). He didn’t know dick about cars and bikes except he liked them, and rode the last, so he didn’t work in the garage. Like all recruits, he worked in the auto supply store that was also a part of Ride, but unlike all recruits, he’d stay there after he was patched in.

  And Chill was always moving. If he was sitting, his leg was bobbing. If he was talking, his hands talked with him. If he was hanging, his eyes were always darting around the room.

  Being totally fucking hyper, of course, they called him Chill.

  “Yo, Hound,” Chill answered.

  “Just downed a junkie at my apartment building because I wasn’t a big fan of the element he was attracting to my space.”

  “Righteous,” Chill replied.

  Another requirement to be a recruit for Chaos, that being not down with that kind of shit at the same time willing to do something about it.

  Chill’s mom was a recovering junkie, his dad, out of the picture for years, a non-recovered one.

  So Chill was down with that.

  “You probably won’t think that when I tell you I realized in not cleaning my crib for nine years, it’s not a man cave, it’s a dump like where a junkie would hang, so you’re comin’ over and givin’ it a scrub down.”

  “Fuck,” Chill muttered.

  It wasn’t easy being a Chaos recruit, and it wasn’t just because you got the shit jobs like stocking shelves, keeping track of inventory and waiting on pain-in-the-ass customers at the store.

  It was because you were a grunt, you did what any brother told you to do, you went where they told you they wanted you to be, you didn’t question it, you didn’t bitch about it and you were on call 24/7 for all that shit.

  “Find Dutch, bring his ass with you,” Hound ordered.

  “Like . . . now?” Chill asked.

  “You doin’ something for another brother?” Hound asked back.

  “No, just workin’ the store.”

  “Someone there that’s not Dutch to cover that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then yes, like now.”

  “Right, be there in thirty.”

  “Good,” Hound grunted, hung up, drove back to his pad and hauled the shit up to his apartment.

  Then he went next door to hang with Jean awhile before he made her lunch.

  “So, tell me how flattered I should be that you walked me in tonight and the place is spic and span,” Keely ordered.

  She was naked, astride Hound’s lap. He was naked too with his back up against his headboard.

  She wasn’t holding distant. Her chest was to his, resting on it, but she had her head back so she could look at him.

  From their second time until then, Hound got the message loud and clear that they might be fuck buddies, but Keely was not going to let that stop her from being lovey and affectionate.

  This meant any time they weren’t fucking, she stayed close and touched.

  Hound wanted to find some way to warn her off that shit, set that boundary, keep them focused.

  But it wasn’t just that he wanted it, and where it came to Keely he was weak.

  It was that he knew she’d been starved of shit like that for years, and where it came to Keely he wanted her to have everything she needed.

  It was the night after Dutch and Chill spent three hours scrubbing down his pad, and not just because she was a woman, but because she had eyes and a nose, she didn’t miss it.

  “Had to deliver a message to a junkie downstairs this morning, babe,” he told her. “Saw his carpet was half a level up from the foul of mine. Men don’t mind livin’ in a sty, but when it comes clear that junkies don’t mind that shit either, he calls the recruits, arms them with Windex and scrubbing bubbles and then goes to have some lunch.”

  She laughed and it was soft, the sound and the movement of her body against his.

  She slid a hand up his chest to his neck, her thumb rubbing down his throat to come rest in the dent in his collarbone.

  “What was the message you delivered?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t do dope in a place where I share a roof with him and he doesn’t invite dealers to that place either.”

  Her head tipped to the side. “He hear your message?”

  “He gave indication that he did.”

  “I bet he did,” she murmured, then, louder, “Why do you live here, baby? This place sucks. And you get the same Chaos cut I do so I know you can afford way better.”

  “Not here enough to bother with movin’, Keely,” he lied.

  “A man like you shouldn’t live in a place like this,” she returned.

  A man like him?

  What was the kind of man she thought he was?

  He shouldn’t let curiosity win.

  He shouldn’t.

  But he did.

  “Where would a man like me live?”

  “I’d say a kickass loft downtown or something like that, but back in the day before you told the boys it was part of earning their allowance to mow my lawn, I had the best lawn on the block. And the best shrubs. When I added the flowers, it was the awesomest yard for three blocks square.”

  This was true. He’d put in her sprinkler system. He also did the weed preventer and lawn fertilizer every year so it grew lush and green.

  She lived in a graceful, old place in Governor’s Park, with big, established trees and thick shrubs. A two-story Victorian that all the brothers would have given Black shit for buying, except for the fact he bought it for Keely about a month after they found out she was carrying Dutch.

  She had a decent-sized front yard, for a home in a city. The backyard was bigger.

  And before he taught the boys how to take over that shit, he kept it up nice and lush and green so Keely could roll up the drive at the side to her garage and just think it was that. Nice and healthy. Not think anything else, like she had to do dick with it to keep it that way.

  “Boys kept that up,” he told her something she knew. “They still on that?”

  “Dutch has been on his own for a while, but Jag still has to earn his allowance and mama don’t take out no trash or mow no fucking lawn.”

  He grinned at her.

  “So, a house,” she decreed, sliding her hand back down, curving it over his pec, absently stroking his nipple in a way that was absent for her, but was not at all for him. “A little one. Brick. With a big backyard with a built-in fire pit and grill and the best lawn on the block. Maybe in Englewood.”

  Hound liked that was the kind of man she thought he was, even though he knew different, and deep down, so did she.

  But he’d never thought of getting anything like that for himself. He had his brothers. He had his bike. He had his obsession with Keely. He ate. He drank. He kicked ass. He did his bit for his Club in all the ways he could. He got laid. He partied. He had his apartment, his room at the Compound he rarely hung in unless he got a hankering for a biker groupie and needed a close place to have a hot bang. And he had Jean.


  A little brick house with a big backyard and built-in fire pit and grill where his brothers and their women could come and hang, he could slap some brats on the grill and they could get loose around the pit throwing them back, did not sound like it would suck.

  Keely walking out back with a bowl full of potato salad she’d made (and hers was the best, he remembered even if he hadn’t tasted it in seventeen years) would suck even less.

  This thought did not make him do what he should do.

  Remind her she should probably think of getting home.

  It made him smooth his hands from where they were resting on her hips to the small of her back and then up her spine.

  She pressed her chest closer.

  “I’ll hit Zillow,” she said.

  “Say what?” he asked.

  “I’ll hit Zillow. Keep an eye out. Get you a new place.”

  He blinked at her and it was how he always did it when she surprised him.

  Slow.

  “Babe—”

  “With pot being legal, real estate is insane but I think a badass biker can put the lean on someone tryin’ to outbid him. Also thinking you probably got so much dough saved up, you could best even weed-shop owners who got buckets of cash.”

  “First, baby,” he said softly, “I dig that some women don’t think men feel shit when they bite, tug and roll a man’s nipple, but just to say, that man is me, they’d be wrong.”

  “Oh,” she whispered, stopping her thumb at his nipple and getting such a cute look on her beautiful face, he grinned at her.

  “Second, you feel like spending time checking out Denver real estate on the computer, have at it. But I’m not movin’.”

  “Hound—”

  “Babe, I don’t like where I’m at but I’m here and I’m not goin’ anywhere. Maybe one day I’ll settle in. But now my life is outside this place. I got years in me but I’m still wild like the wind. It’s not time to tie myself down. I know that time’ll come. I’ll embrace it when it does and I’ll be glad for it. It’s just that now is not that time.”

  “Wild like the wind,” she whispered, and now the look on her face made Hound slide one hand farther up so he was cupping her neck and scalp from under her ear.

  “Baby?”

  “I was once that,” she told him.

  Yeah she was.