Reign
"O, come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant..."
Summer's voice filtered through the house, dragging me out of bed after feeling the cool spot beside me. We had gone to bed together, but the space beside me said she had been away for a good, long while already.
I sat up, checking the alarm clock.
Five in the morning.
Now, I was an early riser.
Summer? Not so much.
Not at fuckin' all actually.
She once whacked me in the face with one of her fancy ass throw pillows she insisted we keep on the bed when I woke her up before seven.
My feet hit the cool floor as I rose up, the chill in the rest of the house suggesting she had the fireplace or oven on. Or, knowing her, both.
What could I say?
Summer dove headfirst into Christmas like a child with a Sharpie looking through a fuckin' Toys R Us catalog.
It was serious business.
I had stopped asking why she needed so many strands of lights sometime after the sixth trip back to the store to get more. I, apparently, just didn't get the concept of blind spots. And how some of the lights had to be solid, while a few others blinked. But only slowly. Only like tired eyes. Otherwise, it wasn't relaxing, it was agitating.
Summer had all kinds of theories on these things.
Me, well, I hadn't had a proper Christmas since my mother died when I was a kid.
What did I know?
So I just sat back and watched her spend three hours stringing lights on the tree she had made an appointment for us to go and chop down.
"Star or angel?" she had asked when she was done, turning back to me with one in each hand, both still in the package.
And, I dunno what the fuck came over me, because no one who had ever met me could ever accuse me of being sappy or sentimental or, hell, even sweet.
But standing there, twinkling lights behind her, setting her brilliant red hair even more on fire, cheeks flushed from the fire she insisted on starting, little bell earrings hanging from her ears, yeah, I guess it just brought it out of me.
"Already got an angel, babe."
Her eyes did that melting thing then, too, making me wonder if maybe the urge to be sappy should be one I shouldn't fight so much.
Melting Summer was second only to turned-on Summer.
"Oh, sing, choirs of angels. Sing in exaltation..."
"Babe, the fuck you doin'?" I asked, moving out into the edge of the hallway, seeing her in the kitchen.
Or, what used to be the kitchen.
Now, well, it looked like about five-dozen bakeries had exploded across the entire space.
I was pretty sure I didn't own a cookie sheet.
And yet there were at least ten of them around her, some stacked haphazardly on things like the top of the microwave and one precariously perched on the top of the coffee machine.
From across the room, I couldn't see what kind of cookies they were, and the entire house smelled like sugar, chocolate, peanut butter, and gingerbread.
"Oh! Did I wake you up?" she asked, turning with an apologetic look, a long stripe of flour across her cheek, and something red on the tip of her nose.
Fuckin' cutest thing I think I had ever seen.
Cute?
The fuck?
I was losing it.
But watching Summer there in my kitchen in candy cane pajamas and a shirt that said Naughty Is Not An Option, I was pretty sure that if this was losing it, I never wanted to find it.
"Did you sleep?" I asked, moving closer, seeing bits of flour, sugar, brown sugar, butter, and egg strewn all over the counters.
Summer was a lot of things. A 'clean as you go' cook was not one of them.
"I got a few hours," she told me, turning to open the oven, bending over to look in, giving me a too-good glimpse of her round, perfect ass.
Even in candy cane print, it was a sexy fucking thing to find in your kitchen at five a.m.
"And then you had a sudden, pressing need to bake eight-dozen cookies?"
She turned her head over her shoulder at me, smirk pulling up those perfect lips of hers. "Do you remember what happened when I made those turkey-shaped sugar cookies for Thanksgiving?"
She meant when she made two dozen of them, and the men leaped on them as though they hadn't eaten in weeks, leading two grown ass fucking men to get into a fistfight over the last one.
"See your point," I agreed as she reached for oven mitts, pulling two more trays of what looked to be mint chocolate chip cookies out of the oven, placing them on the top, then moving over to another set, carefully taking the Santa hat shaped sugar cookies off a drying rack, and sliding them into a giant Ziplock bag.
"I mean, I don't know how many of the men are going to be around on Christmas," she went on, shrugging her small shoulders. "But I figure the older guys who never settled down, and the young guys with no families might be around. I want them to have some cookies too."
Cookies.
And the entire extra spread of dinner she planned to make there after we had ours at our place.
A big heart, this woman had.
She took in my men as her own as well.
And not just Cash and Wolf and Repo. Or even just Vin and Shredder.
No.
Even the ones who rubbed her the wrong way with their misogynist bullshit.
She cared about them all.
She wanted them to have a ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and biscuits.
I had to admit, having had her Thanksgiving spread - mine, Cash's, Wolf's, and Repo's first real once since all of us had been kids, if even then - it was maybe the best gesture she could have extended to them.
They were all still adjusting to the idea of my old lady being around the club all the time. I could tell she was seeking their approval through their stomachs.
And, well, she would fuckin' get it that way.
That was important to her.
The guys would respect her because they had no fuckin' choice in the matter, but Summer wasn't stupid. She could feel that it was obligation, that it had nothing to do with her.
And she wanted to change that.
I couldn't fault her that.
We spent a lot of time at the clubhouse. And aside from the clubwhores or the occasional drop in from someone else's old lady, she was the only chick around. She wanted to fit in.
"I don't want anyone getting a bloody nose over a gingerbread man," she told me, holding one up, his hands curled in, holding a red and white striped mint between them.
"Yeah, babe, but you have six plastic bags full of cookies in the garage for them already."
Her shoulders shrugged as she turned away. "I've never had so many people to bake for before. Growing up, there were people to do that. The most I ever got to do was cover the cookies in sprinkles. This is fun. Even if my feet are screaming," she said, drawing my attention down to the bright red fluffy slippers with little gold and silver Christmas lights stitched on them.
I was pretty sure every goddamn thing she wore since December first started had something Christmas-related on it. She was going to need an entire closet to store it all after the season was over.
I suddenly wondered, as she bent to look into the oven again, if she had slipped into some Christmas panties too.
I mean, I owed it to her to see them if she went through the trouble, right?
--
Summer
Reign had been a trooper about my holiday craziness. I knew I was going overboard. I guess it was equal parts wanting to have something nice after a rough year. And maybe wanting to make his first Christmas with me something to remember.
They were important things, weren't they? The first of every holiday? They would be the ones most remembered.
I wanted all of them to be perfect.
Christmas especially.
Because Reign hadn't had a real, genuine Christmas since he was a boy.
He told me that he and Cash had actually spent last Christmas eating Chinese takeout, drinking, and watching Die Hard.
Sure, that sounded like an ideal night to most guys. I knew it must have felt lacking, that they must have been thinking - at least in passing - about cookies and home cooked meals and presents.
No matter how hardened these men might be, not a single one was immune to the appeal of the comforts that they had known growing up, that their mothers had given to them.
Heaven knew that Reign was a happy man after a good home cooked meal. So happy, in fact, that it usually led to multiple selfish orgasms for me. Sometimes right there in the kitchen, hiked up on the counter as he showed me his gratitude.
And even if it wasn't for naked gratitude, I just wanted to do it. These men, in such a short period of time, had come to mean so much to me. Not just Reign, though it went without saying that he was my main motivation. But even Cash, Wolf, and Repo, blood and club brothers, they were Reign's family. They were there at the drop of a dime if Reign needed them. It was not, as one might think, just because he was the president, because he was in charge of them. They were just good men. Reign had needed to wrestle the washing machine out of the basement because it stopped working suddenly. The next thing you knew, Cash was showing up with a brand new one, and Wolf was there with an appliance dolly to drag the old one up the stairs.
These were his people.
They meant the world to him.
And, even in just a short period of time, they had come to mean the world to me as well.
I wanted them all to have a real Christmas at our - it still felt so surreal to say 'our' - house with a full dinner spread, presents, and enough dessert to make you need to undo your top button.
No Die Hard or Chinese food in sight.
"Well, baby, if your feet are screamin', maybe it is time to get off of 'em for a bit," Reign said as he advanced on me, a wicked look in his eye I would recognize anywhere.
Before I could even object, say I had six more batches to get in before I could finally clean up and start food prep for dinner, he was right in front of me, hands going under my knees and yanking up, making me screech and grab frantically for his arms to hold on as he settled me up by his waist, letting my legs fold around his lower back before walking me a few feet across the kitchen to slam me back against the wall.
"Reign, I have so much to do," I half-heartedly objected as his head dipped, his lips finding the soft column of my neck, raking over it with his stubble, something that never failed to make a shiver course through me.
"Mhm," he agreed, the sound reverberating through him and into me. "And you can do it after I fuck you."
Well, with logic like that on his side... I guess I just had to go along with it, right?
One of his hands released my knee, moving up my inner thigh. "Bet you got fuckin' Santa panties on," he said as his teeth nipped my earlobe and pulled.
"Candy canes," I corrected, smiling when his laugh rumbled through his chest. There was no better sound in the world. Especially when I was the one that brought it out of him.
"Too fuckin' sweet," he declared right before sealing his lips over mine, kissing me as he most often did - like a branding, like he was staking his claim, doing so with enough demand and pressure that I was sure to feel him there even long after. I swear I perpetually walked around with swollen lips from his kisses.
His tongue traced the seam of my lips, demanding entry, as his hand finally pressed down on my cleft through my pants and panties, his whole palm pressing down against me, making me shamelessly shift my hips, grinding down into his touch.
"Greedy pussy," he declared against my lips, sounding pleased.
He wasn't wrong.
I always wanted him.
I woke up wanting him.
Even if I had just had him before bed.
There was no satiating the need my body had with regard to him. I could be completely turned on just watching him walk around collecting his laundry or taking the garbage pails out to the curb or washing dishes after I cooked him dinner. Reign just living his daily life was the sexiest damn thing I had ever seen.
Add in his bike or him being all commanding around his men and, ah, yeah... let's just say we couldn't walk into that clubhouse without me wanting to jump him.
He would barely stop addressing his men before I would lean in and ask him to take me to bed.
Luckily for me, Reign was as into me as I was into him.
I only got one more stroke before he suddenly yanked away from my hold, making my legs drop, feet hitting the ground just barely a second before he was there, dragging down my pants, leaving my panties, which he looked at for a second, then leveled his eyes up to me, giving me an appreciative smile before moving inward and sucking my clit into his mouth through the thin layer of fabric, making me have to slam my hand down on the top of his head to keep upright as the contact immediately made my legs feel shaky, unsteady.
He worked me that way for a long minute before seeming to sense my need for more or, knowing Reign, simply wanting to taste me, having claimed on countless occasions that he'd never had anything sweeter.
His hand yanked the swatch of fabric covering me to the side, running his tongue up my slick cleft before circling my clit with excruciatingly gentle strokes, making it clear he was just torturing me. He wasn't going to let me come until he was inside me.
"Reign, please," I begged, fingers sinking into his hair, pulling, trying to drag him back onto his feet.
"Please, what?" he rumbled against me.
"Please fuck me," I clarified, making him angle his head up, letting me watch his tongue move out to stroke over me as his fingers moved between us, two shoving deep inside me, fucking me hard and fast, and proving Reign wanted me to be much more specific.
But for a long moment, his eyes on me as he ate me, as his fingers fucked me, I wasn't able to think clearly enough to remember what it was that I wanted.
"I need you inside me."
His tongue moved back in for a moment so he could speak. "I am inside you," he said, fingers turning inside me, tapping hard against my G-spot. "Feel?" he asked, clearly eating up the ragged, pained moan at the sensation.
Ah, oh, I felt alright.
But I needed more.
"I need your cock in me," I demanded, reaching down, sinking my hands into his forearms, dragging him up until he finally, finally moved to stand again, reaching between us to roughly rip my panties out of his way as my hands clumsily worked to free his cock, taking him in my hand for a moment as he grabbed me again, yanking my legs around him.
"Eyes," he demanded when I tried to bury my head in his neck. "I need your eyes when I fuck you," he added as I lifted my head.
As soon as my eyes found his, he slammed in hard and deep, making my head knock back into the wall as I let out an almost embarrassing moan at the full sensation he gave me.
"Fucking love this pussy," he ground out as my heels dug into his lower back, giving me a little leverage to raise my hips slightly, get the friction I so badly needed.
But I didn't need to keep it up.
Reign wasn't in a screwing around mood.
His need was as strong as my own as he yanked up my knees, holding me suspended in the air and pounding into me - hard, fast, unrelenting, taking every inch of me, never letting there be even a mere second for the need to ebb, driving me up fast.
It felt like I just got him inside me, but my walls were tightening, threatening complete oblivion.
"Fuck yeah, babe, squeeze my cock," he growled as he - though I didn't see how it was possible - fucked me harder, faster, my body getting tight as it got pushed to the brink.
His cock slammed deep once more, his breath hissing out as the waves crashed through me at the same time.
Simultaneous orgasms.
I wasn't sure there was anything more satisfying than coming at the same time, each with the others name on our lips.
He guided my legs around his back, his weight leaning into me, pressing me into the wall as he tried to get his breath back.
And me, well, I clung to him, comfortable enough with what we were, where we were, where we were going to allow myself to show that much vulnerability, that much neediness.
Because, well, I did need him.
That sounded weak and against everything I had been raised to think, everything I had made my life into. I had always taken care of myself, stood on my own two feet, wanting men, but never needing one.
But I needed Reign.
I needed him like I needed to keep breathing, like I needed food and water and shelter.
And, what's more, I didn't even care how that sounded.
He was my world.
I didn't even want to consider a life without him in it.
Anyone who didn't understand that simply didn't know how deeply love could go, how it got into your marrow, into your very DNA, until there was no way to separate you from them.
A while later, Reign's body shifted, his hands sliding up my sides then neck, finally resting to frame my face, tilting it back up.
"Fuckin' love you, Summer. Know that, right?" he asked, voice more serious than I had heard it in a long while.
"I love you right back," I told him, words heavy with the depth of feeling.
"You gonna get back in bed for a bit? You're gonna be dead on your feet all day."
He wasn't wrong.
While I was in the groove, I was too distracted to feel tired. Now, after a break - and let's not forget a mind-numbing orgasm - yeah, I was feeling it. The kind of fatigue that would make me only half-alert the rest of the day, phoning in things I really wanted to be amazing.
"I have so much to do," I thought out loud.
"I'll clean up the mess. The batter can go in the freezer. You can do another few batches after we go over to the compound later." His chin ducked, light eyes serious. "Babe, you need to get back into bed. Your eyes are all heavy."
"Come back with me," I said, not really caring about anything other than the fact that falling asleep with him really, truly trumped a clean kitchen. "Just till I fall asleep. I know you're up now."
He was an early riser.
The freak.
By the time I usually got up in the morning, he had already worked out, showered, been to the club, and come back home to bring me coffee or bagels or anything else he passed along the way.
I would pass out for a few hours and likely wake up to not only a clean kitchen but to find the cookies already baked for me. Because that was just the kind of guy he was. He picked up the slack. Without having to be asked, let alone nagged. It was perhaps one of his best qualities.
And I really would be a whole lot more useful after a few hours of sleep.
"Yeah, babe. I'll curl up with you for a few."
With that, he carried me into the bathroom where he left me to clean up. When I came back out, he was in bed, tapping his chest for me to cuddle up.
Which I did.
Joyously.
And, dare I say it, triumphantly.
Because all the awful I had been through, all the pain and neglect, the embarrassment, the fear, the desperation... it had all led me right here, right where I was meant to be. In the arms of a man I could never have imagined. On Christmas morning. In a home we shared. Where we both wanted to build a family.
It was nothing I had ever dreamed of.
But everything I had always needed.
That, well, it was the best gift of all.
Though I really hoped Reign had something special picked out for me too.
I guess I would see after my nap.