No Rush

Handsome and Shiloh

 

 

 

SHILOH AND I SAT across from a whole team of doctors. That wasn’t unusual. We’d been here before. They rarely said a patient was cured of cancer. They lived with cancer.

What was unusual was the addition of Doctor Carlisle, Shy’s OB/fertility specialist.

And Doc Carlisle wasn’t the only new addition at this meeting.

Shy’d just come in for the routine twice-yearly appointment as part of her survivorship care plan.

Shy called it maintenance. Like when I tuned up the SUV and her Hellcat and my Harley. Her dry humor was her outlet to the fact this was just part of our everyday life.

“What’s going on?” I asked, reaching for Shy’s hand. “Because Shiloh’s still in remission, right? It’s been two years since you said so, and—”

Doctor Haines cut in. “This isn’t bad news, Max.” She smiled, looking at the grabby-handed baby on my lap. “This is your son?”

I held Crisanto, his leg bouncing, my leg bouncing, too.

Memories came flooding back, one after the other.

When I’d found out Shy had osteosarcoma and had her leg amputated.

The moment I found Shy terrorized by Diablo and his posse of dickheads . . . battling to stay upright without her prosthetic or crutches.

The very second I knew Doc Haines wouldn’t have to amputate farther, above her knee, and she’d be okay.

And when Shiloh had braved the beach for the first time since she’d lost her leg . . . the same day she’d agreed to marry me.

Our wedding.

A massive, fancy, over-the-top affair, because when a downtown Rush married a well-established Lockhart, things got totally out of control, and society descended. But that hadn’t mattered one single bit. My Retribution crew had been among the Charleston elite, the MC honor guard roaring past the old cathedral, and really, all that had mattered was Shy.

Her smile.

Her hand in mine.

Her vows said so surely I couldn’t imagine my life without her.

The rings exchanged, the kisses we shared . . . the promises made a strong foundation, which only grew every year.

We’d waited until she was in remission. Five years, no new signs of cancer in all that time. We’d sat across from Doc Haines and her team at this very same table, and I’d simply broken down and cried.

Shy, so brave, was the one who’d taken me into her arms, her tears joining mine.

That day, that day, I’d never forget, not in a million years.

We’d waited before trying to have a baby, because there was no way in hell I’d ever risk Shy’s treatment or chances at total-ish recovery.

Soon after, she’d gotten pregnant. Then miscarried at twelve weeks. And I wondered how much more hardship she could take.

How much more hardship she was expected to take, because enough was enough already.

We’d tried with the embryos she’d frozen. More than once.

The painful procedures—months of more shots when she’d already been through so goddamn much—made me want to hit back at something. Someone. Anyone. The unfairness of it all stripping her from feeling feminine.

And all I could do was support her, love her, making sure she saw herself as a woman, because I definitely did, every damn day, no matter what we went through.

One night, bruises all over her stomach from another failed round of in vitro, she’d asked, “Should we try again?”

I pulled her gently into my arms, kissing her with all the power and passion I’d never stop feeling for her. “Maybe we should just trust love.”

So that was what we’d done. And two months ago, our adoption came through. A baby boy who needed us as much as we wanted him.

Nearly a newborn, from a Filipino orphanage. We’d traveled there to make it all legal, and the first time I’d seen him—big brown eyes, a shock of black hair, chubby arms waving all over the place—I’d been punched in the gut with love.

Shiloh clapped a hand over her mouth, tears brimming her silvery eyes.

“You wanna hold him?” I had him—our son—in my arms.

“I’m afraid I’ll fall off my one good leg.” She winked, which set a tear free.

“I’m pretty sure you won’t.”

That moment. That moment she’d wrapped him in her embrace I’d remember all my life.

Doc Haines pulled me back to the present, asking again, “Your son?”

“Yeah, this is Crisanto.” The baby I bounced on my lap blew out a messy raspberry.

“Cris,” Shy added, leaning over to rub her cheek against his.

“Happy baby.” Coming as close to a grin as I’d ever seen, Doc Haines asked, “How do you think he’d like to be a big brother?”

I glanced at her in confusion. “Well, yeah, we’re definitely thinking about adopting again, but—”

“You misunderstood her.” Doctor Carlisle referred to Shy’s oncologist, interrupting me with a broad smile. “Shiloh, you’re pregnant.”

I swallowed my tongue while my heart pushed up to my throat, in complete and utter shock, sure I was hearing things.

I stared at Shy but she seemed speechless, shaking her head.

I shook my head, too. “But we didn’t think . . .”

We’d had nothing but bad luck when it came to conceiving, outcome always negative. They had to have it wrong. And it didn’t matter anymore because we had Cris, and I couldn’t bear for Shy to deal with any kind of heartache ever again.

“The natural method works too,” Carlisle said. “When Doctor Haines saw the bloodwork results, she called me in.”

A frown marring her forehead, Shy reached over to clutch my hand. “I was pregnant before and . . .”

“I understand.” Carlisle leaned in closer from across the table, her smile contagious, but I couldn’t let myself feel the joy yet. “Your hormone levels are excellent. And of course we’ll get an ultrasound and more bloodwork ASAP. Basically you’re going to get sick of how much we coddle you.”

“So we’re going to have a whole team watching over you,” Haines added.

“But I don’t have any mets?” Worry shined in Shy’s eyes. “There’s no recurrence of cancer? That’s not why we’re all here?”

“No. Nothing like that.” Doctor Haines rounded the table, laying a hand on Shy’s shoulder. “I just have a special interest in you. And Max. And now Crisanto. I can’t wait to meet the new one too.”

“I’m okay?”

“You’re so much better than okay.”

“You’re kind of a miracle.”

We sat through the rest of the meeting, listening to them talk and start to set up appointments, but I couldn’t fucking compute a single subsequent word said.

I only snapped out of it when Cris started smacking his lips, his usual sign he was hungry. Shiloh dug a bottle out of the diaper bag, passed it to me, and I fed him almost automatically, until he tugged on my thumb and sort of smiled around the nipple in his mouth.

And it hit me. Just like that. Right in the middle of my heart.

We were having another baby.

Cris would be a brother.

When I looked up again, the room was empty except for us. I hadn’t even noticed the docs leaving.

Shiloh sat there, still, with a river of tears streaming down her cheeks. I opened my arm to her and hugged her with Cris between us and . . . I just couldn’t fucking believe it.

When I pulled back, I swept the pretty curls from her face and wiped the teardrops from her cheeks. I kissed her sweet lips with the all-consuming relief and giddy joy pulsing through me.

****

I thought we were still in shock hours later. I knew I was.

At home that afternoon, the normal routine took over. No way was I going back to Retribrewtion after the incredible news we’d just gotten, and I convinced Shy to call and tell April she needed the rest of the day off.

I just wanted to be with my family, to absorb the goodness.

Throughout the rest of the day, I caught myself staring at Shiloh while she did all the typical things, a smile wreathing her face and her big gray eyes even brighter than usual. She’d look up from feeding Cris, patting him on the back to burp him, and the glowing feeling spread from my heart to my stomach and throughout my entire body.

I watched her chopping veggies for dinner while I seasoned the pork chops, and Crisanto sat in a bouncy seat between us on the wide kitchen island.

Shy’d kept her blonde hair short and wavy, saying if she relapsed at least she wouldn’t have too much to lose this time. Her gallows humor was a coping mechanism I’d gotten used to, even chuckled at now that it felt like we’d made it through the worst part of her disease.

Now, I rinsed my hands, dried them on the dishtowel, and pulled her toward me, fingers stroking through her beautiful blonde waves. She sighed when our lips touched and moaned when our tongues twined together.

“What was that for?” she asked breathily.

“What do you think?”

“I think, Handsome, you want some.” Her grin turned sensual, lusty, sultry.

“You always were the smart one.” My hand roamed down her back to her ass, and I gave it a good squeeze.

“You know you’re not gonna get as much with two kids.”

My head dropped back with a loud bark of a laugh. “Oh, I think I’ll manage just fine, babe.”

“Well, handsome is as handsome does.” Her fingers walked up the center of my chest, but she retreated before I could sneak another kiss.

“Yeah. We still don’t know what that means.” We: meaning my MC brothers and me.

“That’s because I’m the smart one,” she sassed.

“Smartass.”

“You won’t be able to swear as much either.”

“I think I can deal with that.”

Later we gave Cris a bath, Shy in a chair set up near the big bathtub and me kneeling beside her as she soaped his round squirmy little body and I rinsed him while he giggled. I glanced up, heart beating abnormally fast, a tightening of a different kind low in my groin.

I wanted Shy desperately, naked and beneath me, and the feeling had been growing since we’d sat in the doc’s office.

Shy gave Cris his nighttime bottle sitting on our bed, propped up on pillows, humming songs to him. Reclining beside them, I swept my hand up and down his back, his breathing getting gradually deeper. I picked up the rhythm of the new tune Shy hummed and glanced at her, a half smile on my lips.

“Is that Rush?”

“Mm hmm,” she murmured, smirking.

“‘Tom Sawyer’?”

“Yep.”

I chuckled, shaking my head.

“What?”

“You’re a funny woman.”

“Well, I’m not having them grow up listening to pop music.” She made a big show of shuddering.

“Them.” My hand fell to her fingers cradling Cris’s butt.

She turned her hand, linked our fingers together. “Them.”

Pulling in a shaky breath, she nodded.

After Cris had drained the entire bottle and was on the verge of passing out, Shiloh kissed him on his forehead then both his cheeks. “’Night, sweet boy.”

I took him from her, doing the walking, rocking, burping thing on the way to his room, which was all decked out in boyish colors and probably more toys and books than any one child needed. We’d bought a bigger house as soon as we found out about Cris. Plenty of room and a big backyard for a growing family.

A growing family.

We’d also bought an SUV, a good thing, too. Two babies. Two diaper bags. Two car seats.

Two babies. Unreal.

Laying the sleepy baby boy on the changing table, I remembered how I’d fallen in love with him the moment I’d seen his photograph. And I knew I was already in love with the new one, too.

With Cris’s jammies on, I zipped him into the fleecy sleepsack. I smooched him on his forehead then both cheeks, rocking him for a few more minutes before I dragged in one more breath of his baby scent. When I set him in the crib with the bunny rabbit he clucked to in his funny baby language, his sucking finger was already plugged into his mouth.

I brushed my teeth and washed up a little in our bathroom, cutting the light off when I went back out.

“I’m scared.” Shy sat back on the bed, handing her prosthetic to me.

I placed it on a chair then moved her crutches next to her side of the bed.

“I’m scared too.” I whipped off my shirt, toed off my jeans and everything underneath.

“Are you?” She stared at me with wide eyes a shining silvery-gray.

“Petrified.”

No lie.

“We already have Cris. It’s too much to expect more, right?”

“God, Shy.” I leaped in bed beside her, my heart about to burst. “You’re pregnant.”

“I’m pregnant.” We rolled together, kissing and laughing, fucking delirious. “I’m really pregnant!”

Supported on an elbow, I dipped my head, dragging the next kiss out slower, tongue lingering, fully tasting the sleek warmth of her mouth. My hand roamed lower, and I cupped one firm globe of flesh.

She batted my hand away. “Whoa there, mister. What do you think you’re doing?”

“You know exactly what I’m doing.” I plied her full bottom lip with my teeth and then my tongue, listening to her gasp. “Gettin’ ready to fuck my gorgeous sexy pregnant wife.”

“Not so fast, Handsome.” She pushed me away again. “You said it. We’re already pregnant so there’s no reason—”

“The hell there’s not. ’Sides you want it.”

“How do you know?”

“’Cause you called me Handsome.” I smirked.

“Hmph.”

“All right, then why are your nipples already hard and your pussy already wet?”

“How do you know that?” She batted her eyelashes at me.

“I’ll prove it.” With a hungry growl, I yanked her top down over her tits and arms until it circled at her waist.

Yup. Nipples tight and pink and beckoning. I pressed the two mounds together, quickly descending to suck and nibble the pretty peaks. I tugged them with my teeth, imagined her tits engorged with milk. Fuck.

And there were no more coy dismissals from her.

Certainly not when I ripped off her panties, spread her thighs wide, and slid my palm over her hot swollen wet pussy.

Her hips tipped up. My fingers thrust inside. I lapped from one nipple to the other, another growl rumbling from my chest.

“You made me wait long enough, babe.” Lunging up over her, I speared her with a thrust that knocked a scream from her arched throat.

A thrust so deep my balls almost readied to unload inside her.

“Look at me when I fuck you.” My voice dragged from low in my chest.

She raised gray eyes, glazed and heavy-lidded. “Handsome.” Her hands clutched at my back then my ass. “Uuhhhh. God. Like that!”

My hard cock filled her to capacity, and I loved watching her struggle to keep her eyes open, her head lifted. When I withdrew to the tip, I waited until she begged me silently with her eyes pleading, hips circling, greedy cunt sucking.

Then I rocked back inside, slamming against her. Sensation so rough and raw and hot. Bolts of pleasure zipped down my spine, up my cock.

She screamed as I sped up, every time I sheathed myself completely inside her. Her tits wobbled against my chest, and I grinded against her, balls wet with her juice.

The intensity built until Shy dragged her nails across my shoulders and her shout bled with my immense roar, seed catapulting from my cock as her pussy seized me in tight convulsions.

Sweat shined on our skin. Her nipples were swollen, the flesh around them reddened.

I flexed inside her several more times, seeking her mouth, sliding in along her tongue, taking the sweet taste of her lasting orgasm into me.

With a whoosh of breath, my head knocked back. Then I flipped us, hauling her onto my chest, hand low to caress her thigh all the way down to where her knee ended.

“Tickles.” Her breath whispered across my neck, and she wriggled.

“Does it?”

“Not right on my stump but a little higher.”

“I’ll have to remember that for next time.” I was charmed when she blushed and buried her face from my gaze.

I took a deep breath, holding it inside my lungs for a moment before releasing it.

Shy kissed my shoulder then my throat, and whispered, “Two of them.”

“Two of them.” I smiled, drowsy, drowning in this most-right feeling.

“I love you, Max.”

“I love you, Shy.”

****

Months passed, much faster than I’d expected. Doctors Haines and Carlisle hadn’t been kidding about being all up in Shy’s business . . . until she griped and sniped and snapped and . . . really didn’t believe it was happening until the day she felt our baby move.

“Max!” she’d called out from Cris’s room where she’d been putting away laundry.

I rushed upstairs, immediately worried sick. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Come here!” She stomped her foot, and I wondered what I’d done to deserve her angry mama-bear-’tude, which usually amused me.

I approached cautiously. “Okay?”

“Give me your hand,” she ordered.

Is she gonna slap my hands?

Then she broke out into a broad smile, cupping my palm beneath hers on her baby bump. “There!” Her voice rose. “Did you feel it?”

There. A nudge against my hand. Then a harder shove. “Yeah.” I grinned. “Oh my God. Wow. Does it hurt?”

“No. It’s . . . amazing.” Shy brought me down for a lush kiss just as the baby kicked again.

And now . . . finally . . . she was here.

When I saw the wiggling red-faced baby emerge completely from Shy’s body I almost fell right off my boots.

“Do you want to cut the umbilical cord, Daddy?”

I nodded, but I was crying so damn hard I had to wipe my cheeks against my shirt.

“How is she? Is she okay?” Shiloh—propped up on mounds of pillows—panted to catch a deep breath.

I had to clear my throat several times. “She’s beautiful, Shy. Just like her momma.”

“Ohhh!” More tears fell. Shy held out her hands. “I want her.”

Chuckling a wet laugh, I finally managed to clip the umbilical cord. “Greedy.”

Shy just nodded, beaming, glowing, a little tired-looking but thoroughly, completely, crazy happy.

That about summed up the emotions zipping through me, too.

I carried the cleaned-up baby bundle to her, and shifted to sit behind her.

“Hey there, Kate. Momma and Daddy are here,” Shy crooned.

I bit down on my lip, swallowing, trying to stem the rush of tears.

“She is, isn’t she?” Shy looked back at me, and I couldn’t resist kissing her.

“Beautiful?” I asked releasing her lips. “Damn right she is.” With my hand on the back of Kate’s tiny head, I marveled at her small size.

She’d quieted as soon as I’d placed her in Shy’s arms.

“Do you want to try latching her on now?” The OB nurse asked. “Or are you up for visitors?”

“I can try breastfeeding.” Shy grasped my hand. “Do you want to just go get Cris?”

I slipped out to spread the news to the waiting room full of folks. At full capacity like it’d been for every birth in the extended friends and family network. My parents and Shy’s were taking turns watching Cris for a couple days, and Maddy had made sure all the last minute things were ready at our house.

My announcement was met with boisterous shouts and whistles, but there’d be more time to celebrate later. I wanted to get back to Shy and Kate.

I walked into the room, Cris in my arms. He wasn’t quite a year old, and had no comprehension of what was going on. But he knew his momma when he saw her and started waving his chubby arms around.

I couldn’t stop grinning, and settled down next to Shy. Cris smushed Shy’s cheeks between his hands—something he loved to do—and kissed her in his sloppy way. “MaMa!”

Shiloh’s eyes sparkled again.

She pointed down to Kate who suckled at her breast. “This is Sissy Kate.”

He pouted. Then waved at his baby sister. “Ka-ka.”

“Did he just say caca?” I snorted.

“I think he means Kay-Kay.”

“Hope so.”

“Looks like the MC is getting overrun by girls.” Shy sighed happily when I curled an arm over her shoulder, all four of us snuggled up on the little hospital bed.

“I don’t see how that’s a bad thing at all.” I kissed the top of her head. “’Sides, Cris and JJ and Danny represent the next generation of dudes. I’m sure they’ll be able to stand up for themselves.”

“Really?”

“No. You women rule.”

And Shy’s laugh was the best sound I’d ever heard in the world, made better when Cris joined her—just because—and Kate popped off Shy’s nipple to give a little mewl.

Nothing better than this.

 

I used to think I was the most unsuitable dude for pretty girl-next-door Shiloh Lockhart. Turned out I couldn’t have been more wrong.