CHAPTER THREE
DUCHESS
TUESDAY MORNING
Why do I feel like I’m riding a rollercoaster upside down? Shit, this isn’t good.
I’m not sure how I manage to untangle myself from Whiskey’s arms without waking him, or not fall flat on my face because the room starts to spin when my feet touch the floor, but I manage to stay vertical long enough to run out of our room and shut myself in the hallway bathroom.
I also miraculously don’t make too much noise as I fall to my knees and lose everything I ate and drank over the last unknown how many hours.
By the time my stomach settles, and the dry heaving stops, I don’t think I have anything left in my stomach.
Before the smells kick up another round, I flush the toilet and shuffle over to the sink while still on my knees.
I reach up and turn the cold water on, then grabbing hold of the edge of the sink, pull myself up to my feet.
Cupping my hands together, I scoop up a few small handfuls of water and slowly take a few sips.
I swish my mouth out with some mouthwash, then brush my teeth with a spare toothbrush I find in the vanity drawer.
What in the world was that? I had a few months of morning sickness when I was pregnant with Krew, and even more months of energy draining exhaustion, but none of that added up to how I’m feeling right now.
Oh yea, did I forget to mention that my sister was right?
My doctor sent me a text through the patient portal yesterday and told me that I am in fact pregnant.
Very pregnant from what she said my numbers are showing, but I won’t have an idea on how far along I am until I get back to the clinic for an ultrasound and exam.
The text popped up on my phone not five minutes after I got home, so to say I was distracted for the rest of the day was an understatement.
I know Whiskey could read through my attempt at vague answers to his questions last night, but I just couldn’t tell him the truth yet.
Once I saw the positive result, I immediately sent my sister a string of texts begging her to help me figure out how to go to the doctor’s appointment without my husband finding out about it.
He is not an easy man to keep a secret from, but just like last time, I need to keep him from finding out until Valentine’s Day.
That is Whiskey’s birthday and I have to wait to surprise him with the news that our family is growing again.
My appointment is on Friday, so tomorrow Angel is going to ask me to go shopping with her in front of Whiskey. That way he will know she and I will be going somewhere together that day, but be unaware of our true destination.
My energy meter is still on empty, so I lean against the wall and slide down until my butt hits the floor.
I rest my right elbow on the edge of the tub and look down at my left hand that’s in my lap.
I wiggle my fingers and watch the vintage, pear-shaped diamond ring that Whiskey proposed to me with sparkle under the vanity lights.
Just looking at it makes me smile and I can’t help but remember all the things that have happened since the first day I saw Whiskey.
The more memories that flash by, the more settled my stomach feels.
We really have gone through some crazy things in the last two-and-a-half years since I drove up to the clubhouse gate back on that September day. I jumped out of my truck like my ass was on fire and yelled at Whiskey, insisting he find my sister because I hadn’t seen or heard from her in weeks.
At that point in time, Angel was still a club girl and went by the name Wings.
Back then, Hammer was being a very stubborn man, with a giant stick up is backside, and had played with her emotions so much that she essentially ran away from him.
Unbeknownst to the MC, she had been kidnapped by a rival club, if you even want to call those idiots that, and no one knew she was missing until I showed up angrier than I had ever been in my life.
Once Whiskey realized that I was serious about her being gone, the MC unsuccessfully searched for her for months.
It was really by a stroke of good luck and timing that she managed to escape her captors on her own, but she was back and safe and that was all that mattered.
In the meantime before she was home, I had fallen head over heels in love with the unsufferable man who practically tried to shoo me away the first time we met, after flirting with me of course, but he won in the end.
When it was discovered that the men who took Angel were still out there, Whiskey insisted that living my normal everyday life was no longer safe, so he moved me into his room at the clubhouse.
I was already a goner for him by then. I tried to stay strong, but I crumbled to the handsome fool in mere days.
Even amongst the pain of missing my sister, I did have a lot of good days with Whiskey.
The first time I made cupcakes in the clubhouse and gave all the Brothers a crazy sugar high.
That one time he dragged me into the pantry and ate my pussy like he was a starving man lost in the desert, followed by me dropping to my knees and showing him my appreciation by sucking his pierced dick.
The first time we had sex.
Our first Halloween together was amazing, although the next day didn’t start so well.
The party ended on a high note, but when I woke up the next morning, I was then kidnapped from the clubhouse backyard by the same idiots who took my sister .
. . I wouldn’t recommend that experience to anyone I love.
Whiskey found me a day later, and other than a bump to the head, a sore ankle, and a little shock, I was fine.
It was shortly after New Years that Angel was back and safe, but her and Hammer’s issues weren’t gone just because she was in the clubhouse again. In fact, it took Hammer almost six more months to get back in her good graces, but I’m glad he put in the work to make things right.
The next milestone for Whiskey and I was our first Valentine’s Day together.
When he had first told me that February fourteenth was also his birthday, I had no idea how important that day would become to both of us.
Not only was it a special day because he was another year older, another year wiser, that first birthday I spent with him was also the day I told him he was going to be a dad.
We laughed and cried together, celebrating the new life we were going to be bringing into this world.
The following months flew by like an out of control freight train.
First, Whiskey learned that he had a half-sister the day a beautiful blonde bombshell showed up at the clubhouse gate looking for her long lost father . . . Yes, women just showing up seems to be a popular trend.
Mountain had met a woman a few years after Whiskey’s mom left, but she too disappeared not long after.
Twenty-some years later, after her mother had passed away, Penelope received a note from her aunt, written by her mother, relaying the information on where to find the dad she has been told nothing about all her life.
Penelope then became Sunshine when she was claimed by two Brothers, Ring and Steel. Along with Steel’s daughter Opal, the four became a pretty much instant family when Steel got an early release from prison.
Their relationship also wasn’t without a bumpy road though.
Sunshine was abducted from her house by the same men who took Angel and myself, but it took our guys a few more days to find her than it did me.
It took the club finding out that another club girl was a traitor, but once they tortured the information they needed out of her, Sunshine was found unharmed and was able to come home.
Unfortunately the same could not be said for Mountain’s younger brother Brick.
In an effort to chase and catch one of the idiot kidnappers, he was shot in the back by another one of them.
I wasn’t there when it happened, but from what Whiskey told me, it was really, really bad.
I have been to more than a fair share of funerals in my life, including both of my parents, but burying Brick was right up there on my list of worst days ever.
He will not admit it to anyone, but Whiskey cried for hours that night.
We sat in our bed, with his head in my lap and arms wrapped around my almost seven month pregnant belly, and wept.
He talked to our son and told him all about the great-uncle he would never get to meet.
He told us story after story about all the fun things that he and Brick would do when he was growing up.
I learned so much about my Old Man that day, about how soft his heart really is under all his bravado and brute, it made me fall even more in love with him.
And this all happened in less than a year since we’d met.
If you think that year was crazy, the next year-and-a-half will make you fall off your rocker.
Angel and Hammer finally figured out their issues, then shortly thereafter found out that Hammer had a three year old son.
His mother died shortly after giving birth to a second son, who was not Hammer’s, but both boys came to live with them anyway.
The club used their mafia connection to put Hammer and Angel’s names on their birth certificates so Taren and Ace are one hundred percent theirs according to the law.
Newly patched Brothers, Smoke and Haze realized they had feelings for each other, then both fell in love with Abby, the manager at the club owned bar, The Lodge.
She had moved to Tellison to escape her abusive ex-husband, so she was a bit skittish at first, but the guys chiseled through her defenses and stole her heart.
It was also around this time that Haze was discovered to be Brick’s son.
Unbeknownst to anyone but Brick, a woman had his son but didn’t want anything to do with him.
With no knowledge of where she went, Brick never knew that his son had been right under his nose for almost ten years.
It wasn’t until Haze had been patched in, and Sunshine found the note that his mother had written Brick, that the pieces all fell together.
While he was always considered family by the club, Haze now had blood family too.
Mountain got a nephew, and Whiskey and Sunshine had a cousin for the first time.
Then came the weddings, and boy did we do it up big!
Mountain and Blue renewed their vows.
Whiskey and I got married.
So did Steel, Sunshine, and Ring. Since she couldn’t legally marry both of her men, she and Ring made it officially official, but her vows to Steel were just as meaningful too.
While we all knew Sunshine was pregnant with twins already, it was at the altar, in front of all our family and friends, that she told her husbands that the babies were identical twin boys.
Hammer and Angel also got married. It was also that day when she announced she was pregnant and they were soon going to be a family of five. That baby in her belly was Hayes.
Buzz and Star tied the knot that day too. She was also carrying a bundle of joy in her belly, so it was a day full of love, happiness, and tons of hormonal tears for all four of us pregnant women.
Oh, and I forgot . . . Tiny found out he had a six-month-old son right before Christmas, so he quickly claimed his son’s aunt, slapped his Property patch on her naming her Vixen, and had an instant family.
The following year was a baby explosion in the Rebel Vipers MC clubhouse.
Sunshine’s twins, Joey and Ryder, started the avalanche of screaming kiddos, endless dirty diapers, and tired Papas in April.
Star had Zachary Junior in May right before Memorial Day.
General, a Brother who had recently been a club Nomad, settled back in town and welcomed a daughter. Cherry, his Old Lady, gave birth to Lane in the beginning of June.
And lastly, Angel had Hayes the end of June.
Add Opal, along with Jamie, Ray and Sara’s son who is now nine, and the kids from other Brothers who are even older, and there will never be another quiet day in this clubhouse.
And I’m about to add to the numbers!
To think that this year will be the third Valentine’s Day slash Whiskey’s birthday we get to spend together, the more excited I get to share the news of our next bundle with him.