“Cassidy and Deacon just the two?” I went on.
“Just the two girls. Like Knight and Anya, gonna stay that way, if you ask Deacon. Though Cassidy wants a boy. I had to guess, she’ll be knocked up soon. Deacon doesn’t say no to his woman very often.”
I knew how that went.
I watched the mayhem, feeling a little bit guilty (but only a little bit) because I’d caused that mayhem, forcing these families to get up early, buying the kids’ everlasting love through Nerf guns and unlimited access to a Labrador mutt puppy, all so I could marry Nick at dawn.
My eyes went back to Sylvie.
One day.
One day it’d be second nature to me too.
I sat in my simple (but elegant) strapless, chiffon wedding gown on Nick’s knee, wondering—even if I’d lived through every second—how I got there.
How I found my way to happy.
It hit me.
I’d gone to a sex club and essentially jumped Nick.
On that thought, it started slow, just with my body shaking, but I didn’t try to hold it back.
I didn’t hold anything back anymore.
I didn’t have to control it.
I was free to be me.
It built to chuckles, sitting on my husband’s lap in my wedding gown on our wedding morning, laughter bubbling inside me.
“Shade,” he called.
I didn’t answer.
“Shade,” he called again, this time on a squeeze.
I kept my gaze to the mayhem and again didn’t answer.
“Baby,” he called, lifting a hand to my chin and turning me to face him.
The instant my eyes hit blue, I corrected, “Sebring.”
That blue lit like the ocean on a cloudless day, bright and sparkling.
And his voice rumbled through me, echoing how I felt at that moment, a way I’d feel for eternity—proud and happy—when he replied.
“Sebring.”
This concludes The Unfinished Heroes series.
Thank you for reading.
Read an excerpt from Own the Wind,
the beginning of Kristen Ashley’s Chaos Series!
You Don’t Know Me
His cell rang and Parker “Shy” Cage opened his eyes.
He was on his back in his bed in his room at the Chaos Motorcycle Club’s compound. The lights were still on and he was buried under a small pile of women. One was tucked up against his side, her leg thrown over his thighs, her arm over his ribs. The other was upside down, tucked to his other side, her knee in his stomach, her arm over his calves.
Both were naked.
“Shit,” he muttered, as he lifted and twisted himself out from under his fence of limbs. He reached out to his phone.
He checked the display and touched his thumb to the screen to take the call.
“Yo, brother,” he muttered to Hop, one of his brethren in the Chaos MC.
“Where are you?” Hop asked.
“Compound,” Shy answered.
“You busy?”
Shy lifted up to an elbow and looked at the two women passed out in his bed.
“Not anymore,” he replied.
Knowing Shy and his reputation, there was humor in Hop’s tone when he stated, “Tabby Callout.”
At this news, fire hit his gut, as it always did when he got that particular callout. He didn’t know why, it made no sense, he barely knew the girl, but always when he heard it, it pissed him way the hell off.
“You are shittin’ me,” Shy bit out.
“No, brother. Got a call from Tug who got a call from Speck. She’s out on the prowl, as usual. She’s closer to you than me, so if you can disentangle yourself from the * you got passed out in your room, it’d be good you go get her.”
There it was. Hop knew Shy and his reputation.
“I’m on my bike. Text me the address,” Shy mumbled, shifting from under the bodies to put his feet on the floor at the side of the bed.
“Right. Under radar, yeah?” Hop returned, telling him something he knew, and Shy clenched his teeth.
Three years they’d been doing this shit with Tabby. Three fucking years. It was lasting so damned long, he knew, unless she got a serious fucking wakeup call, that girl would never learn.
But no one was willing to do it. The Club didn’t normally have any problems with laying it out no matter who it needed to be laid out for, but Tab was different. She was the nineteen-year-old daughter of the President of the Club, Kane “Tack” Allen.
That meant she was handled with care. That also meant when they got word she was out carousing and needed someone to nab her ass and get her home before she bought trouble, they did it under radar. In other words, they didn’t tell Tack. And they didn’t tell Tack because the first time it happened he lost his shit, but worse, his old lady took off to extricate Tabby from a bad situation and nearly got her head caved in with a baseball bat.
No one wanted a repeat of that kind of mess, so the brothers kept an eye on her and took care of business without getting Tack involved.
“Under radar,” Shy muttered then finished, “Later,” and touched the screen with his thumb.