“Right back at you, handsome,” I tell him breathlessly.
He wraps one lock of my hair around his finger and murmurs, “You have the best hair. Every time I touch it, it tries to coil itself around my finger.”
I can’t help but laugh. “It’s just naturally curly.”
He lets go of the lock and smiles down at me. “Do you think our next kid will look like you or are we gonna get another that has dominant Jackson family physical features, like Katie does?”
My head tilts up to stare at him in surprise. “What do you mean by next kid? We haven’t discussed having another baby.”
“Yeah, but we’re not using birth control either.”
My eyes pop open because he’s not wrong about that. “Oh hell, I should have thought about that.”
His grin turns mischievous, “It didn’t take me a hot minute to get you pregnant the last time. Maybe you already are?”
I think it over, kind of liking the idea. “Maybe this one will be a boy, all rough and tumble, like his father.”
“There’s no need to seduce me. I’m always down for another round or two.”
“You’re a demon in the sack,” I tease.
Smiling, he lifts me right onto his still hard cock. I sink down, still sensitive from the orgasm we just shared. When I’m flush with his body, I begin to move. He brings his hands up, we lockour palms together and stare into each other’s eyes as I ride his glorious cock to our second orgasm of the night.
Epilogue
Christina
It’s been over three months since the whole debacle at Hydro Relief. Long story short, REACH is being stripped apart piece by piece. The investigators are still digging through the evidence from my flash drive, and what they found when the feds got a search warrant for REACH’s corporate office on the East Coast. There is no telling how deep the corruption goes because the feds don’t talk about open cases.
Arrests have already been made. Neal Summers is locked up in a federal holding site and has been denied bail as he’s deemed a flight risk. Hanley and the REACH suits were arrested and transferred to federal facilities as well. Everything that ever posed a danger to me is getting taken apart by the feds.
Morgan is building his own case against Hydro Relief locally. He visits the clubhouse once a week to update Jasper and Rock and talk about theories on how a situation like this got so out of control without anyone realizing it. Slate’s family enjoys solving crimes almost as much as the cops do.
Meanwhile, Katie is blossoming into a confident preschooler. She’s even gone back to her own bed and has been sleeping through the night again. She seems happier, laughs louder, and follows her dad everywhere. The puppy is glued to her heels. Slate has convinced her that he’s going to become her guard dog. She struggled to come up with a fierce name and ended up choosing Growlbert, Bertie, for short. So, that happened.
Queenie has been living her best life, with Rock now retired from the club president’s position and Tessa helping out with the day-to-day running of the clubhouse it means she gets to spend more time with her grandkids. Katie is downstairs with Queenie right now, elbow deep in cookie dough.
It’s great because it frees me up to work on an autobiographical book that may or may not ever get published about everything I’ve been through. Queenie thinks it’ll be therapeutic to write it all out. And to think about the one last secret that I’m keeping from Slate. My hand goes to my jeans’ pocket, and I find evidence of the secret still resting safely there.
When Slate walks into the family suite on a quiet Sunday morning and says, “Come on, I want to show you something,” I don’t hesitate to jump up and follow him outside.
We get on his bike and instead of getting onto the interstate, we ride deeper into the club’s property than I’ve ever gone. We pass the training range, the old barn with flaking red paint, and the line of pines that marks the edge of the outer compound.
I ride with my arms around Slate’s waist and my cheek resting against the back of his cut. I’ve come to love being on the back of his bike. I can even pick out the sound of his engine in a crowd. The wind cuts through my clothing. The sun is warm on my back.
He takes a narrow dirt trail that curves around the back of the mountain ridge. It’s unfamiliar, one I haven’t seen any of the prospects or brothers use. Slate rides slowly, taking his time as he navigates around rocks and roots. I’m excited as we bump along to see this mysterious thing he wants to show me.
A few minutes later he stops at the edge of a clearing I didn’t know existed. When he kills the engine, the area feels quiet. Slate pulls off his helmet, hangs it on his handlebars, and waits while I take mine off. When our helmets are hanging side by side, he helps me off his bike.
“This is a really beautiful area,” I tell him. “It looks pristine and untouched.”
There’s a patch of wild grass and a bunch of trees in the background swaying gently in the breeze. Slate pulls something out of the back compartment on his bike before leading me forward to a ridgeline that dips into a shallow curve, creating a natural cradle of stone and earth. It has a magnificent view for miles in every direction. It’s not a typical scenic overlook, but it’s close.
He spreads out a small quilt and pulls me down to sit along the edge with him. Something about this moment feels important, like he’s trying to create a special moment and doing a bang-up job of it.
He drapes one arm around me as we take in the view.
“You won’t find this place on any map,” he tells me quietly.
