Chapter 9
nine
. . .
Arrow
The Riverton crew is handled. Permanently.
They won’t be looking for leverage again—won’t be looking for anything, ever—and the clubhouse breathes easier for it.
Brothers stop watching the gates. The tension that’s been humming through the walls for weeks settles into something quieter, something that feels almost like peace.
Life finds its rhythm. Kiera behind the bar, learning the pour, brothers careful around her in a way that makes my chest warm.
Me at the head of the table with her on my lap during church, her weight against my chest a constant, steady presence.
Nights in our room. Mornings with coffee exactly how she likes it.
The ordinary miracle of a woman choosing to love a man who doesn’t deserve it, day after day, without hesitation.
Three weeks after she climbed into my lap and changed everything, she finds me in the garage. I’m working on the Harley—tuning the engine, hands black with grease—and she stands in the doorway with her arms crossed, something in her expression I can’t quite read.
“We need to talk,” she says.
My heart stutters. Those words, from her mouth, have never preceded anything good. I set the wrench down. Wipe my hands on a rag that doesn’t help much. “What’s wrong?”
She steps into the garage. The afternoon light catches her hair, turns it almost bronze, and she’s wearing those cutoff shorts that make my dick hard on sight and a tank top that shows the soft curve of her waist. Nothing about her looks wrong.
She looks—Christ, she looks like everything I’ve ever wanted without knowing I wanted it.
She reaches into her pocket. Pulls out a small plastic stick. Holds it out to me, and my brain doesn’t process what I’m looking at for a solid three seconds.
Then it does.
The plus sign. Bright. Unmistakable. A positive pregnancy test in the palm of her hand, offered to me like it’s something fragile and precious, which it is. It is both of those things.
I stop breathing. The world narrows to that stick, to her hand, to the expression on her face—hopeful, nervous, a little scared—and something cracks open in my chest so violently I have to brace myself against the workbench.
“Kiera.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. Rough. Wrecked. “Is this?—”
“It’s positive.” Her smile is small. Shaky. “I’m pregnant, Arrow. We’re having a baby.”
The relief hits first. Fierce, blinding, a wave of something so powerful it knocks the air from my lungs.
Then joy—raw, unfiltered joy—crashes through me like a freight train, and I’m moving before I can think, crossing the garage in two strides, and my hands find her face and I’m kissing her—hard, desperate, grateful—and she laughs against my mouth, a sound of pure happiness that I feel in my bones.
I drop to my knees. Right there on the concrete garage floor, grease and all, and my hands find her waist, sliding up under her tank top to rest on her still-flat stomach.
There’s nothing to feel yet. No bump, no movement.
Just warm skin and the miracle happening beneath it, and I press my face to her belly and I worship.
“Thank you,” I whisper against her skin. My voice breaks. Actually breaks. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Her hands find my hair. Gentle. Tender. Stroking through the strands with a sweetness that wrecks me. “You’re welcome, Daddy.”
The word—Daddy, now meaning something real, something beyond fantasy—sends a bolt of heat through me so intense I groan against her stomach. My cock hardens instantly, thick and aching, and when I look up at her her eyes are dark, hungry, and she understands exactly what she’s doing to me.
“Inside,” I growl. “Now.”
I lift her. One arm under her knees, one behind her back, and carry her through the clubhouse—past curious brothers, past Tank’s raised eyebrow, past Reaper’s knowing smirk—and into our room.
I kick the door shut. Lock it. Lay her on the bed with a gentleness that contradicts the urgency thrumming through my veins.
I strip her. Slow. Her tank top over her head, her shorts down her legs, until she’s naked on my sheets, small tits rising with each breath, that flat, perfect belly that’s holding our child, and the sight of her—mine, pregnant, beautiful—makes my throat tight with something I still don’t have a name for.
I strip myself. Boots, cut, jeans, until I’m naked and hard and kneeling between her spread thighs, and when I push into her it’s with a slowness that borders on reverence.
One inch. Another. Deep, careful, my eyes locked on hers, and when I’m buried to the hilt inside her I pause.
My hand comes to rest on her stomach—flat, soft, warm—and the gesture is protective, possessive, reverent all at once.
“This is mine,” I whisper. My thumb strokes circles on her skin, right where our baby is growing. “You’re mine. This belly is mine. Everything. Forever.”
She whimpers. Her pussy clenches around my cock, hot and pulsing, and I start to move—slow, deep strokes that have us both gasping, my hand never leaving her stomach, my eyes never leaving hers.
“My old lady,” I growl against her mouth. Each thrust is measured, deliberate, fucking her with a care that feels foreign to my body but right in my soul. “My little dove. My whole fucking world. Carrying my baby. Taking my cock. Perfect. So fucking perfect.”
She comes with a cry that I swallow with my mouth, her pussy milking my cock in rhythmic pulses, and I follow her over—groaning her name against her throat as I empty myself inside her, deep, flooding her, claiming her in the most primal way a man can claim his woman.
Afterward, I don’t pull out. Can’t. My cock stays buried inside her, half-hard, and I gather her against my chest, my hand still resting on her stomach, and I hold her like she’s made of something more precious than gold.
“You’re having my baby,” I murmur against her hair. The wonder in my voice is undisguised. Raw. “Christ, Kiera. You’re having my baby.”
She nuzzles into my neck. Her lips brush my skin, warm and soft, and her hand finds mine on her stomach and laces our fingers together. “We’re having a baby,” she corrects gently. “Yours and mine. Together.”
Together. The word settles into my chest like something I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear.
Outside this room, I’m still the biker king.
Still ice. Still violence. Still the man who handles threats with his fists and doesn’t lose sleep over it.
The brothers see it. The world sees it. That part of me hasn’t changed, won’t change, because it’s the part that keeps her safe.
But with her—with her, I’m something else.
Something I didn’t know I could be until she climbed onto the back of my bike and looked at me with those wide, trusting eyes.
Soft hands. Gentle kisses. A lifetime promise whispered against her skin in the dark, over and over, until she falls asleep believing it.
I will keep her safe. I will keep her full.
I will keep her riding at my back, my patch warm against her spine, for as long as my heart is beating.
And now—Christ, now—there will be a third heartbeat between us, small and fierce and ours, and the thought of it makes me hold her tighter, my face buried in her hair, breathing her in like she’s oxygen and I’ve been drowning my whole life.
“Love you,” I whisper. The words are easier now. Natural. Like they’ve always been there, waiting. “So fucking much, little dove. You and this baby. My family.”
She believes me. And for the first time in thirty-eight years of hard living, the future doesn’t look like something to survive. It looks like something to build. Something to protect. Something worth every scar, every bruise, every drop of blood I’ve ever spilled.
Worth it. She’s worth it. They both are.