The thought was bittersweet. I loved the club, loved the idea of my son wearing a patch and having brothers. But not the way the club was now. Not with the idea that my baby boy could either end up behind bars or in an early grave if the club continued on the way it was going.
It would kill me if something happened to my son because of the club. It would kill all the love and loyalty I had for the club. I shouldn’t have been thinking of such morbid things when my son was still decades away from such a choice, but I couldn’t help it. My mind forced me to think of every single danger to my boy so I could protect him from it.
Including the club.
Yet I couldn’t protect him from that.
“He sleeping?” Ranger asked, handing me a glass of wine.
I took it, thankful for the fact that my husband was cooking me dinner and had wine ready for me after putting our son to bed.
“Yeah,” I said taking the first sip. It was cold, sweet and cheap. The only wine I really drank. I wasn’t cultured in my drinking habits and was happy with a beer most of the time. But dealing with a baby required wine. Ideally some mood stabilizers too.
Ranger lowered the burner on the stove, put down his beer—he was not a wine guy—and moved to kiss me. Long. Slow. Enough to make my stomach dip beautifully.
“Good,” he murmured. “As much as I love our son, and I do, more than anything in the world, I do need some alone time with his mother.” His hands trailed along my hips—much wider than they had been before Jack. Fortunately, Ranger hadn’t made me feel self-conscious about that one bit.
“You’re not allowed to do that,” I murmured. “We still have two more weeks before the doctor said we’re allowed to do anything that involves what you’re insinuating.”
Now, physically, there was no way I was ready for sex down there. Things were tender, healing but tender. Having a child was exactly as painful as everyone said, and anyone who said different was on a serious amount of drugs or was a huge fucking liar.
But inside of me, my hormones, my soul… yeah, it wanted my husband. Really fucking bad.
He kissed me again before pulling back, his eyes running over my body with hunger. “Yes, my love. I am all too painfully aware of the stretch of time that’s passed since I was inside my wife,” he smirked, his eyes lingering, almost tempting me to forget about my ruined vagina in order to let him make good on all his promises.
Ranger stepped back farther and picked up his beer. “I’m not exactly a patient man, but it does stand to reason that I should wait for you to be completely healed for what I have in store for you.”
Another stomach dip as Ranger turned back to the stove. My eyes moved across his back, memorizing the vision of my husband in our kitchen while our son slept.
“I need you to make me a promise,” I said.
Ranger obviously heard something in my voice because he turned off the stove again and came back to stand in front of me, giving me all of his attention.
“Anything.”
I took a sip of wine. A big one. “I need you to live to be an old man,” I said. “I want your hair to turn gray, I want you to complain about your knees, refuse to get hearing aids even though you need me to repeat myself a thousand times. Although that might not have to do with medical hearing impairment, just male hearing in general.” I smiled weakly.
“I want you to hold our first grandchild in your arms. Then the second. I want you to be the old biker who reminisces about the ol’ days over whisky. I want to grow old beside you. But to do that, you have to live through these days. I’m not asking you to give up your patch, though, sometimes I wish I could ask, wishing you’d say yes. But that’s not how it works. So you keep that patch on. Keep it on now and keep it on as the Old Man I need you to be.” I stepped forward to clutch his neck. “Please, Cody,” I whispered. “Please live to be an old man.”
He didn’t answer straight away. His eyes searched mine, running over my body as if he was imprinting every part of me into his mind. I knew the look because I had the same one on my face every time he left the house lately.
“I’d never leave you in this world without me. I’ll do everything in my power to keep me here, right here,” he murmured, his lips close to mine.