Epilogue #2
A growl escaped Kylo as he moved forward, hands massaging my ass, then landed a little slap that had a moan escaping me.
I leaned forward, elbows on the counter, pressing my ass out toward him, silently begging for more.
He was happy to oblige, slapping me a little harder, then harder.
I heard the zip, the crinkle of a condom foil, then felt him move in behind me.
We both gasped as he slammed deep inside me.
It was all sensation then, all clawing, desperate need, until we were both crying out as we came.
Kylo pulled me back against him after, his lips on my neck, my ear.
“I know you’re going back to work the day after tomorrow. So I have a bucket list plan for tomorrow night.”
“Oooh. What do I need to do?”
“Wear a nice dress. Maybe get some sea-sickness pills.”
Kylo’s dedication to working through my list never failed to make my heart flip.
He had no idea that there was a whole new list going on in my head now. All with new items involving him.
But we had a lifetime to work on that.
Kylo - 3 Months
“Hey, Doug,” I said, passing by the old man who was parked on the couch in the living room watching last night’s football game with a TV dinner tray in front of him fucking heaped with food there was no way his wife (or his doctor) would approve of.
“Where’s that girl of yours? That plant she gave me got my wife off my back for almost two weeks.”
“She’ll be by later,” I told him as I moved through to the kitchen.
Doug had become a fixture in the clubhouse lately. He either knew nothing about our profession, or simply didn’t care because looking the other way allowed him access to great food and half-naked women.
He occasionally brought friends along.
But most of the time, he came by himself, ate, talked to and watched the girls, then headed home.
I’d been right when he’d first shown up; Huck thought it was smartest to keep friendly with the neighbors.
With Doug, Charles, and their friend Frank on our side from the fifty-plus community and Claudia, Barbie, Loretta, and Katherine in the assisted living place to sing out praises, we’d cemented our presence in the neighborhood.
Sure, we were loud neighbors sometimes. But we also fed them.
And Dixon helped the gardening group. Sometimes without a shirt on.
“Fuck you, Benny,” Mackie greeted me, then refocused his attention back on the men sitting around the table eating.
“Haven’t seen your ass around here in a while,” Caymen said as he went to the island to get seconds.
“Please, Huck’s already looking for someone to take over my room.”
I wasn’t wrong, and they all knew it.
That was the nature of the club; it was always expanding.
With our deal with Zayn, the demand was higher than ever.
And it sounded like Huck was going to be striking up some kind of deal with the new Texas chapter, which might involve some of our guys taking trips out that way.
If that happened, we were going to need as many hands on deck as possible.
“We’re having a bit of an open house with the possible new prospects,” Caymen agreed.
This was the first I was hearing of it.
But that wasn’t exactly surprising.
I’d been spending damn near every waking moment with Rue. Or planning some new bucket list outings for her days off. Yes, plural. Rue decided that days off were no longer scary or panic-inducing. So now she had two of them every week.
And while she would likely always have some anxiety and the occasional panic attack, she had really leveled out a lot since Marco was killed and the rest of his crew switched their focus to a garden center whose owner was happy to import whatever they wanted, so long as he got a cut.
After a little conversation with the OG members of the club, Marco’s old crew went ahead and switched to importing heroin instead of guns.
We were, for the moment, smooth sailing.
I glanced around the men gathered in the kitchen, though, wondering which one of them might be next to find a woman who would bring in some new trouble for the club to deal with.
“So what do you have planned for your woman tonight?” Velle asked.
“In what might turn out to be a terrible idea, we are going on Zayn’s yacht. I made him swear there would be no contraband on board.”
“Where are you guys going?” Velle asked.
“Bahamas for a few days then back.”
“We’re here!” Claudia called, moving through the clubhouse.
Velle’s brows scrunched.
“Didn’t I mention? We’re bringing Claudia and her friends,” I said, wincing a little. “If you get a call from an Archipelago prison, make sure you answer. I have a feeling that Zayn and these ladies are going to be a dangerous combination.”
“If it makes you feel better, Zayn is rich enough to buy you guys out of any trouble you might get into,” Velle said.
“Yeah, not comforting.”
“And wherever Zayn goes, so does Daniyal,” York added.
That, on the other hand, was comforting.
I had a feeling the only reason Zayn was a single man (and, you know, alive) was because of his right-hand man with the burnt-off fingertips and the all-seeing eyes.
“That’s true,” I agreed, relaxing a little as the group of women came charging into the kitchen, each pulling a rolling bag, sporting giant purses, and holding their current book club book to their chests.
Each of them was wearing a loud bathing suit under just as colorful cover-ups, hats, and sunglasses.
“Where’s my granddaughter?” Claudia asked.
“Dropping Ernest off with Traeger,” I told her. “She should be here any—”
“Did someone order a party bus?” Doug called from the front room.
The women broke into loud conversation before rushing out to check out the bus.
“You’re going to have your hands full with that crew,” Caymen said, shaking his head.
“Tell me about it.”
It was really just supposed to be about me and Rue.
But then Claudia heard of it, invited herself, then told us that her friends would also be coming.
It was going to be a riot.
So long as the women refrained from killing anyone.
Rue - 1 Year
“You okay?” Kylo asked, coming into the bedroom at his townhouse that we’d been calling home for the better part of a year.
I loved my grandmother’s house.
But once Caymen started working on fixing it up, he’d found so many issues with it that he recommended I not step foot in it until it was practically stripped and rebuilt.
That was when Kylo and I officially moved in together.
And once we did, I don’t know, I just fell in love with the townhouse with all its great windows, winding neighborhood for long walks, and someone else to do the lawn care.
After the repairs were finished, we both decided that it made the most sense to rent out the house and keep living where we were.
“Yeah,” I said, sucking in a slow breath. “Anxiety is a little high tonight,” I admitted.
Kylo moved in, sitting off the side of the bed with me, his hand sliding up and down my spine in a familiar, comforting way.
“Do you want to take a walk?” he asked, knowing it was one of the best ways for me to calm down.
“Too nauseated,” I said, leaning over to press my head to his shoulder.
“How about a dip in the neighborhood pool?”
“It’s closed,” I reminded him, looking out the darkened window.
“Pretty sure no one would arrest us for taking a dip in the pool at night.”
“I’m too tired.”
I was always tired these days.
It was like adjusting to new meds.
Except I was off all my meds.
I’d weaned off the day after the second line developed on the pregnancy test stick.
Sure, some women could take antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds during pregnancy, but my team and I decided that I was in a stable enough place to wean down and off to reduce any chances of complications.
I had been, as a whole, okay. Probably because I was either too busy throwing up or sleeping to be anxious about anything.
There’d been breakthrough anxiety and panic, but it had been pretty easy to calm with a long walk or a talk with Kylo.
This was the worst I’d felt since going med-free.
“Want to talk about it?”
“It was my own fault. I was reading the comments on a video about childbirth. It was like everyone had a horror story.”
“Aw, darlin’, never scroll the comment section,” he said, pulling me closer for a little side hug.
“If you want some good stories, the club is full of women who have been through childbirth over and over with hardly an issue. Hell, you even have her grandmother and their friends, who went through this back before there were advancements to make the process easier and safer.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, sucking in a deep breath, then releasing it with a big huff. “I don’t want the baby to feel all this anxiety.”
“I get that. But the baby is like a kidney bean right now,” Kylo reminded me. “I don’t think he or she is feeling anything. You’re anxious because you’ve been so sick. Once you can eat again and stop getting sick all the time, your anxiety is going to get a lot better.”
“You’re right.”
When I didn’t feel well, everything spiraled for me.
And while I was bone-deep tired, my sleep was clipped and short thanks to the rolling in my stomach that kept waking me up.
“How about we try to get a nap now?” he asked, fingers rubbing at the tension in the back of my neck.
“I’m supposed to be giving Ernest a bath.”
“Ernest will appreciate having another day without being traumatized like that.”
“True. And him getting a bath means I get a bath, and then I need a shower. It’s a whole thing. Okay.”
I slid up the bed and under the blankets, trying not to think of the dozens of things I needed to catch up on since I started feeling so crummy and couldn’t do any of my usual chores.
Kylo, bless him, had been picking up the slack. But I felt guilty spending most of my day on the bathroom floor or moaning in misery on the couch.
“Come here,” Kylo said, sliding an arm under me and curling me up onto his chest. “I can practically hear those gears turning. Try to shut those thoughts down.”
“I haven’t done anything in four days.”