Kristen Ashley - Own the Wind

She looked like a modern-day princess. Elegant. Sophisticated. High-class.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

She was looking around like she was lost, and he was about to put his tongue to his teeth to whistle when she found what she was looking for and Shy went rock solid.

A tall, good-looking, built blond guy in a suit moved to her, smiling. She tipped her head back, not smiling.

Fucking beaming.

Shy watched as the man slid an arm around her waist, she leaned into his body, and he bent to touch his mouth to hers. He stayed bent, kept his face close to hers, as any man would do, Tabby dressed like that, looking like that, smiling like that, and her mouth moved.

Then his head shot back as he burst out laughing.

Tabby watched for a beat before she dropped her chin and rested her forehead against his chest, her arms moving to curve around him and hold him while he shook with humor.

“Jesus,” Shy muttered, that burn back, in his gut, chest, heart, even up his fucking throat.

He wanted to but he couldn’t tear his eyes away when the man dipped his chin back down, cupped her jaw with a hand, lifted her face to his, and bent to touch his mouth to Tabby’s again.

But it wasn’t a touch.

He kept his mouth on hers a long fucking time. Like they weren’t on a sidewalk with hundreds of people streaming around them and waiting in cars to get through traffic. Like they were alone, just them.

Shy kept watching as the man broke the kiss. Tabby’s hand, now at the guy’s neck, moved so her thumb could stroke his jaw and she could gaze up at him like he was the only man on the planet.

It was then Shy tore his eyes away.

And it was then, ignoring the cars that honked and the shouts out the window, he maneuvered his bike through the cars, nearly jacking up his legs and his bike.

Two seconds later, when the light changed, he roared the fuck away.

* * *

Eight months later…

“Jesus, seriously, set me up,” Dog growled as he stalked into the Compound and headed toward where Shy, Arlo, and Brick were sitting, drinking beer, Bat across from them playing bartender.

“What’s up, brother?” Arlo asked, as Dog hoisted his ass on a stool.

“Our little Tabby’s engaged.”

Shy felt like he’d been sucker-punched.

“No shit?” Brick asked, sounding like he’d been sucker-punched too.

“Jesus, God, please don’t make it be that blond guy who’s built like a linebacker and looks like a cop,” Bat muttered.

Dog took a long pull from his beer but did it nodding. Then he dropped the beer to the bar and leveled his eyes on Brick.

“Good dude, I met him. Physical therapist. Played college ball, good at it but not good enough. Though that experience helped. He works for the Broncos.”

Shy looked at the beer he was holding on the bar.

Shit.

Fuck.

Shit.

“She’s over the fuckin’ moon,” Dog continued, and Shy’s gut twisted. “Cherry is too. Cherry thinks he’s the shit. Can’t say I don’t like him but he’s fuckin’ normal. Tack’s torn. The dude totally thinks our girl walks on water, what father wouldn’t like that? He’s cool too. Knows us, who we are, where she came from, does not give that first fuck. He’d take her legless and armless if she was still Tab, he don’t care where she comes from. That said, he’s not anywhere close to the life, he comes from the fuckin’ suburbs, and Tack’s strugglin’ with that.”

Shy lifted his beer and took a drag.

He swallowed and found it didn’t help the burn.

Dog, unfortunately, kept fucking talking. “They’re gonna wait until she graduates to get married. She’s bein’ funny about it. Dude wants her to move in, she says after the wedding. Don’t know why she just don’t shack up with the guy. Try before you buy, see if that shit’ll work. But she’s not down with that so… whatever.”

Tabby being theirs, his brothers could talk about this shit all night.

But Shy had had enough.

He pushed his stool back, slid off it, and muttered, “Gotta go.”

“Where you goin’?” Bat asked.

He didn’t know. He didn’t care. Anywhere just as long as he got there on his bike.

“Shit to do,” he muttered and moved around the bar, eyes to his feet, mind centered on keeping his jaw relaxed, his hands unclenched.

He walked out the door, swung on his bike, and rolled out.

He didn’t hit Chaos again for three weeks.

* * *

Six months later…

Shy was moving across the forecourt toward the Compound in order to grab a shower and head out. His hands were filthy from grease. The car he’d been working on for the last three months was finally done.

Time to celebrate.

He moved into the Compound and felt the heaviness in the air immediately. Boys were moving out, faces alert, even alarmed, the vibe bad.

“What’s goin’ on?” he asked Roscoe, who was shifting, like all the brothers, toward the door.

“Car accident,” Roscoe answered, stopping and catching his eye. “Tab’s fiancé.”

The force of that information knocked Shy so hard it was a wonder he didn’t fall to a knee.

The wedding was three weeks away.

Jesus. Tabby.

“What?” he whispered.

Roscoe shook his head. “Just got the news. She’s at Denver Health. He’s, brother, this shit is fuckin’ crazy, but the guy was DOA. Didn’t even make it to the hospital. Gone. Tack says Tab’s lost it. We’re movin’ out, takin her back, Tack’s back, seein’ if we can do anything.” His head tipped to the side. “Comin’?”

DOA.

Didn’t even make it to the hospital.

Gone.

Tab’s lost it.

Lost it.

“Anyone watchin’ the kids?” he forced out.

“Sheila’s headin’ up there.”

“I’ll go help her out,” Shy offered, turning, digging his greasy hand into his jeans for his keys.

“Help out Sheila with the kids?” Roscoe asked his back.

Shy didn’t answer. It was jacked, fucking lame, but it was doing something. Something away from Tabby.

She wouldn’t want to see him now.

She never wanted to see him.

But he had to do something.

He wasn’t her family.

But she was his.

* * *

Three days later…

Shy sat in his dark living room in his apartment, the first time he’d been there for months.

He was thinking and he was remembering.

Remembering for the first time in a long time that day when the news came.

Remembering that day when his life, at age fucking twelve, shifted and went from good, no great, to absolute shit.

Remembering the day years later when he found Chaos and he thought, finally, fucking finally, his life would no longer be shit and he was right.

And thinking that, six hours ago, probably wearing black, probably looking lifeless, just like she’d looked yesterday when he saw her walking out of the office with Cherry, Cherry’s arm around her holding her close, her head bobbing like she was agreeing to what Cherry was saying when he knew just by looking at her she didn’t hear a thing, Tabby stood in a cemetery and laid her man into the ground.

Her man was twenty-seven years old.

Shy’s age.

Shy lifted the bottle of vodka to his lips and took a deep pull.

He didn’t drop it before he took another one.

“I Dreamed a Dream”

Three and a half months later…

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 middle. 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, twisting with difficulty under his fence of limbs. He reached out to his phone.

He checked the display, his brows drew together at the “unknown caller” he saw on the screen as he touched his thumb to it to take the call.

“Yo,” he said into the phone.

“Shy?” a woman asked, she sounded weird, far away, quiet.

“You got me,” he answered.

“It’s Tabby.”

He shot to sitting in bed, limbs flying and they weren’t his.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” her voice caught like she was trying to stop crying or, maybe, hyperventilating, then she whispered, “So, so sorry but I’m in a jam. I think I might even be kinda… um, in trouble.”

“Where are you?” he barked into the phone, rolling over the woman at his side and finding his feet.

“I… I… well, I was with this old friend and we were. Damn, um…” she stammered as Shy balanced the phone between ear and shoulder and tugged on his jeans.

“Babe, where are you?” he repeated.

“In a bathroom,” she told him, as he tagged a tee off the floor and straightened, waiting for her to say more.

When she didn’t, gently, he prompted, “I kinda need to know where that bathroom is, sugar.”

“I, uh… this guy is… um, I didn’t know it, obviously, but I think he’s—” another hitch in her breath before she whispered so low he barely heard “—a bad dude.”

Fuck.

Shit.

Fuck.

He nabbed his boots off the floor and sat on the bed to yank them on with his socks, asking, “Do I need backup?”

“I don’t want anyone…” she paused. “Please, don’t tell anyone. Just… can you please just text me when you’re here? I’ll stay in the bathroom, put my phone on vibrate so no one will hear, and I’ll crawl out the window when you get here.”

“Tab, no one is gonna think shit. Just give me the lay of the land. Are you in danger?”

“I’ll crawl out the window.”

He gentled his voice further and stopped putting on his boots to give her his full attention.

“Tabby, baby, are you in danger?”

“I… well, I don’t know really. There’s a lot of drugs and I saw some, well, a lot of guns.”

Shit.

“Address, honey,” he urged, and she gave it to him.

Then she said, “Don’t tell anyone, please. Just text.”

“I’ll give you that if you keep me notified and often. Text me. Just an ‘I’m okay’ every minute or so. I don’t get one, I’ll know you’re not and I’m bringin’ in the boys.”

“I can do that,” she agreed.

“Right, hang tight, I’ll be there.”

“Uh… thanks, Shy.”

“Anytime, Tab. Yeah?”

He waited, and it felt like years before she whispered, “Yeah.”

He disconnected, pulled on his last boot, and stood, tugging on his tee as he turned to his bed. One of the women was up on an elbow and blinking at him. The other was still out.

As he found his knife in the nightstand and shoved the sheath into his belt, he ordered, “Get her ass up. Both of you need to get dressed and get gone.” He reached into the nightstand and grabbed his gun, shoving it into the back waistband of his jeans and pulling his tee over it. “You got fifteen minutes to get out. You’re not gone by the time I get back, I will not be happy.”

“Sure thing, babe,” the awake one muttered. She lifted a hand to shove at the hip of her friend.

Jesus.

Slicing a glance through them he knew he was done. Some of the brothers, a lot older than him, enjoyed as much as they could get, however that came, and they didn’t limit it to two pieces of ass.

He’d had that ride and often.

It hit him right then it went nowhere.

He’d never, not once, walked up to a woman who looked lost without him and became found the second she saw him. Who leaned into him the minute he touched her. Who made him laugh so hard, his head jerked back with it. Whose mouth he could take and the world melted away for him just as he made that same shit happen for her.

And he would not get that if he kept this shit up.

He jogged through the Compound to his bike and rode with his cell in his hand.

She texted, I’m okay, and Shy took in a calming breath and turned his eyes back to the road.

She texted again. This time, I’m still okay, and, getting closer to her, Shy felt his jaw begin to relax.

A few minutes later she texted again. This time it was I’m still okay but this bathroom is seriously gross.