“Good.”
The fact that she doesn’t scold me for hurting Teller reveals how pissed she is.
“Mmm… so bloodthirsty, baby doll.”
“When it comes to my man, damn right,” she grumbles, wrapping her arms around my middle and burying her face against my chest.
We stand like that for a few minutes. She never questions whether I took Teller up on his offer.
An almost feathery touch lifts the back of my T-shirt, and Hope’s fingers stroke over my back. My cock twitches, and I squeeze her a little tighter.
She tips up her head. “Rock?”
“Yes, baby doll.”
“Show me the basement.”
Rock’s face is priceless. I’m stunned that he kept working on our house. But so happy. Now that I see the actual foundation and it seems so much more real, I don’t know if I can wait another day to make it our home.
“How much longer do you think until it’s finished?”
Rock takes my hand as he leads me through the doorway. “I think fall is doable if they keep at it. The hardest part was the foundation.”
I’m bursting with happiness as we stroll through the empty space. There isn’t much to look at yet, but it’s ours.
As we walk back to the doorway, Rock turns and wraps his arms around me. “Won’t be long and you can start picking out the finish stuff you want.”
I tilt my head so he’ll explain.
“Doors, knobs, appliances, paint… that kind of stuff.”
“Oh. You don’t have any opinions on paint and knobs?”
He sort of half smirks at me. “No, baby doll. Paint it fucking orange. As long as you’re here with me, I don’t care.”
“You don’t want some sort of man cave?”
He rolls his eyes skyward. “Babe, I’ve been living in one giant man cave for years. Besides, I’ll have my sex dungeon.”
“I’m scared to ask what you plan on doing in your sex dungeon.”
“I plan to fuck you in it. A lot.”
“You might want to stop calling it a dungeon, then.”
I expected a laugh for that one—and he is smiling—but he’s also got a devious gleam in his eye as he yanks me tight against him. “We can call it whatever you want,” he says in a low voice that makes my insides quiver.
His hands roam down and squeeze my butt while he leans down and kisses my cheek. “We can break it in now,” he whispers against my ear.
“Um, no doors.” I point at the sky. “No roof.”
“So? No one has a reason to come out here.”
“Yeah, which is why you know the minute you get my pants off, one of the guys will decide to go on a nature walk.”
Mentioning “pants” and “off” was a bad idea. Rock’s all growly and fiddling with my jeans. “You need a hiking skirt,” he mutters.
“I don’t think—oh!” Talking isn’t possible with his fingers stroking me like that.
He walks me backward until I bump into a wall. Then it’s game on.
Or rather, pants off and cock out.
Big hands supporting my thighs, lifting me gently while keeping me pinned.
“Oh, oh, Rock!” I yelp as he pushes inside.
He tenses and cups my chin, turning me to meet his ardent stare. “Are you okay? Do you hurt from this morning?”
My hands clamp down harder on his shoulders for leverage so I can move, since he’s momentarily stopped.
“I’m feeling well loved,” I answer breathlessly. “But don’t you dare stop,” I add.
He nuzzles my cheek and finally starts moving again. Lazily sliding in and out. “Fuckin’ love you, baby doll. So damn happy you’re mine.”
His voice is low and husky, so sexy. I clench tight around him. My hips roll with him, and he thrusts faster.
The wet sounds of sex fill the open air, increasing my excitement.
“So good.” His warm breath puffs against my ear, and I whine in agreement.
Buzzing bounces through the woods, and it takes me a second to realize the noise is one of the club’s ATVs.
In an effort to distract me from the fact that we’re about to be caught by someone, Rock moves faster. His hand reaches between us to rub circles over my throbbing clit.
“Better come quick for me, baby doll,” he rumbles against my lips.
My mouth opens to say, “I can’t,” but my body blazes with excitement as he shifts his hips enough to hit the spot that sends me over the edge.
I’m not aware of anything for the next few seconds—except how good he feels. Rock’s slamming into me faster until he finds his own release. He sets me down slowly, and my legs can barely hold me up.
“Yo, prez?” Someone—Z, I think—calls out.
“Shit!” I squeak, bending over to grab my jeans so fast I get dizzy.
Rock—jerk that he is—laughs at my embarrassment.
“I told you this would happen,” I hiss at him.
“Go away. We’re busy,” he yells back.
My pants are almost in place. “Jeez, that’s as good as inviting him in,” I grumble.
Of course, I’m right. Barely a second later, Z’s in the doorway, laughing at us. “Hey, nymphos.”
Rock keeps his back to Z. “Does ‘go away’ mean ‘come join us’ where you were raised?”
Z winks at me, and my cheeks heat up even more. I mean, we’re dressed now, but it’s pretty obvious what we’ve been up to.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t hear that,” he answers with a smirk, not looking one bit sorry.
Very slowly, I scratch the side of my nose with my middle finger, and Z cracks up. Rock catches me, and his mouth twists into a grin. “Don’t give him any ideas.”
We join Z outside. “Guys are ready for church,” he tells Rock.
“Yeah, okay. We were on our way back. Didn’t need to come track me down.”
Z ignores him. “You want a ride back, Hope?”
Linking my arm through Rock’s, I answer, “No, I’m okay. Thanks.”
Rock smiles down at me. “Fun’s over, baby doll.”
Fuckin’ Z. As if I’ve ever missed church. And I’m not late. I’m the president. Not like they can start without me.
Next to me, Hope’s somewhere between flustered and amused. “Thanks for bringing me out here,” she says.
I reach down and squeeze her ass. “My pleasure.”
She giggles and skips ahead out of my reach. “That too. But I mean thanks for the house… for everything.”
Her fluttering hands catch my attention, and I grab them. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, baby doll.”
“I know,” she whispers.
“Good. Want to give you everything.”
“As long as I have you, nothing else matters, Rock.”
A feeling of peace settles over me hearing those words from her mouth. I wrap my arms around her. “Knew you were special the moment I saw you in that courtroom.”
Mentioning that time in our lives when she was married and I couldn’t have her usually brings sadness to her eyes, and I wish I’d kept the thought to myself. But today, the corners of her mouth tilt up and her eyes sparkle with amusement.
“And I knew you were trouble,” she teases.
“Damn right.”
Her grin gets bigger. “The best kind of trouble.”
As we step out of the woods, I see the parking lot is full. The ATV Z used to come find us is parked next to the clubhouse, so I assume he’s inside giving the guys all sorts of lurid details.
I shake my head. “Sorry our time got cut short.”
“It’s okay. I knew you had church. Trinity and I have a project we’re working on anyway.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yup.”
“Do I want to know?”
“Probably,” she says with a smirk.
Fuck, I love her.
I stop her before she takes the first step up to the door. “Love you, baby doll.”
She turns
and throws her arms around my neck. “Love you too.”
“For fuck’s sake, you two,” Wrath grumbles from the doorway. “We’re all waitin’ on you, prez.”
Hope giggles and pulls away. “Sorry, sorry. He’s all yours.”
Wrath grins and holds the door open for her. “You can have him back in about an hour. Then we’ll have a big bonfire later tonight.”
Hope claps her hands. “Can we do s’mores?”
Wrath chuckles. “Whatever you want, sugar.”
She flits around the room, saying hello to Bricks, Dex, and the others.
My brother ignores my death glare and instead quirks an eyebrow at me.
“Simmer down.” I give him a more serious assessment. “You ready?”
He swings his arms and cracks his knuckles as if he’s getting ready for a fight instead of a club meeting. “Yeah, I’m good,” he answers.
Hope returns to my side and stretches up on tiptoes to press a kiss to my cheek. All the guys waiting outside the war room whistle and generally hassle us. Her cheeks turn red and she draws back. “Have a good meeting,” she calls out as she heads down the hall toward Trinity’s room.
I don’t know about good, but our situation is more optimistic than it was a few weeks ago.
“Plants are healing, boss. Yield’s lookin’ plentiful,” Sparky informs me once everyone gets their ass in a chair. He’s grinning from ear to ear. “I think having your woman down there helped turn things around early enough.”
I’m not seeing the connection, which seems to annoy Sparky. “You should send her down again. Plants liked her.”
No one even blinks because Sparky says weird shit like this all the time.
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll let her know.” I can picture that conversation now. Hope will think it’s adorable and probably run right downstairs.
Shaking my head, I turn to Teller.
“Things are good. CB’s strong.”
I nod at Z. “Yeah, we replaced the ones we had to let go. No shortage of college girls coming in looking to make tuition,” he jokes and gets a fist-bump from Dex.
My gaze lands on Wrath next. His hands are clasped in front of him on the table, and he’s coiled tight with tension. I raise an eyebrow at him, and he nods once before speaking. “Gym’s good. Thinking of keeping the kid on.” He pauses, and the corner of his mouth lifts into a smirk. “Supposedly, Ulfric’s all freaked thinkin’ you’re pissed with him. Might wanna give him a call.”
“Jesus Christ, what the fuck is going on with him lately?”
Wrath shakes his head. “No clue. But that little discovery was a major fuck-up. He keeps that up, you know they’re gonna vote him out.”
“Whatever, not our problem,” I say, turning to the rest of the guys.
Murphy’s got details on a run he’s trying to organize over the Fourth of July. It will include the whole club, and I’m looking forward to having Hope join us for that trip.
Now that Wrath’s cast is off, he’s eager to jump back into club business and agrees to join Z on the next Demon drop.
I finally take the vote on introducing Loco to Sway. Surprisingly, everyone—even Wrath—agrees, with the understanding we’ll make the introduction but won’t have any further involvement.
Once club business concludes, I glance at Wrath. I catch his eye, and he gives me a slight nod.
“Hang tight, everyone. Wrath has an announcement.”
Once that fuckery’s over with and I’m confident Wrath won’t dismember anyone, I run upstairs and grab Hope’s property patch. Can’t get the image of the cute way she patted me down looking for it yesterday out of my head. With the heavy conversation we had last night and then getting… distracted this morning, I never got to give it back to her.
I need to see it on her. Now.
She said she was working on a project with Trinity. Hell only knows what that meant.
Trinity’s door is open, which is unusual. Giggling reaches me before I raise my hand to knock. Pushing the door open, I find the two of them sitting in front of Trinity’s computer.
“Hey,” I call out. They both jump. Trinity flicks the monitor off while Hope spins around. Her mouth turns up, and my mind blanks.
“Done so soon?” Hope asks.
Church had never seemed so long. “Yup. Come here. Got something for you.”
Trinity snickers and mutters something to Hope, who turns pink. “Wrath’s been a terrible influence on you,” she teasingly scolds Trinity.
“Trin, you need help setting up the bonfire tonight, have the prospects do it, okay?” I tell her.
“Sure, prez.”
I’m getting impatient and raise an eyebrow at Hope.
She turns to Trinity. “Later?”
“Yup.”
When she gets close enough, I reach out and pull her to my side. She latches onto the door and closes it as I drag her with me.
“What’s gotten into you, caveman?”
“Just missed my woman. We have some time to make up for.” I didn’t mean for that to come out so serious, but Hope doesn’t seem bothered.
“Yes, we do. What’s with the bonfire?”
My shoulders lift. “Got lots to celebrate.”
She quirks an eyebrow at me. “Oh yeah?”
“Yup.” I pull her vest out from behind my back. “Also, I need to see you in this tonight.”
“With or without additional clothes?” she sasses.
“Now that you mention—”
She snatches it out of my hands. “Give me that.”
I end up helping her into it. She humors me by turning and modeling it for me, then plants a kiss on my cheek.
My fingers trace along her jaw. “Gotta celebrate you being back home. Well, back at the clubhouse. Our home won’t—”
“Rock?” she interrupts.
“Yeah, baby doll?”
She settles her hand over my heart. “My home is wherever you are.”
I need to admit something to you—I’ve had a twinge of guilt every time a reader wrote to tell me they wanted to see Hope and Rock have a baby. I’ve known from the beginning that was not going to happen (there are hints in Slow Burn and Corrupting Cinderella). I also knew I planned to have a wedding novella for them at a later point. Although, as Cara Connelly recently pointed out to me when I sketched out the story arc for her, it’s a wedding book. I think her words were something like “Uh, Autumn, that’s not a novella, that’s a book, and a long one at that.” All I can say is it will be different, complex, and told from three points of view. I hope I can pull it off.
Something unexpected happened during the early reading process for this book. My early readers had an intense emotional reaction to Hope’s ectopic pregnancy. I originally wrote it more from Rock’s perspective and his reaction to it (guilt, because Rock takes on responsibility for everything). Diving into Hope’s feelings was a much more difficult and painful process than I expected for many reasons.
Over and over, my early readers messaged me and told me how much the scenes when Hope is in the hospital made them cry. Now normally when a reader tells me my work made them cry, I say thank you, as I think it’s a compliment that I’ve managed to put words together that evoke such a strong emotional reaction (as a reader I feel the same way, if a book makes me cry it’s an auto 5 star for me). But this time, readers were telling me the scenes made them cry because it brought back memories of their own experiences of losing a baby. This time my words were bringing people to a deeply personal and painful place and I felt horrible about it.
I almost considered scrapping that entire storyline, except it had been Rock and Hope’s story all along and it felt wrong to change it. I also knew Hope had a previous experience that she had suppressed and this was what would be part of what triggered those memories. I was encouraged to stick with that storyline because it was actually cathartic. Unfortunately losing a baby isn’t an uncommon experience, but very often the painful feelings go unacknowledged. Having
Hope acknowledge and talk about it gave her an opportunity to pull everything up from her past that she’d stuffed down out of shame, so she could grieve and process it all.
I struggled to finish Strength from Loyalty. I think I really didn’t want to say goodbye to Hope and Rock. Each book has started and ended in a similar place (Slow Burn starts and ends near a courthouse, Cinderella started and ended with a birthday party) and they have always started and ended in Rock’s point of view. The original beta version of Strength from Loyalty ended with Hope, which if this was their very last book, would have been nice. For some reason it just didn’t feel right. I kept coming back to the beginning church scene where Rock is all tense and jazzed up about the guys voting on Hope. I wanted to end it in church, but didn’t want to give anything from the next book away. The second beta version ended with Wrath’s announcement. But I knew if I left it that way the screams of “cliffhanger” would haunt me in my sleep. And this book was about Hope and Rock, so it should end with them. Thank you Cassie, Kari, and Virginia for nudging me in that direction.
I hope you liked my version of the property patch. The research on this, I found is limited and almost seems fictional in nature. So, I took great liberties with it, and added the details about each officer adding his patch, because it seemed like something the Lost Kings MC family would do. Having Hope accept something so foreign was a delicate process. By the way, I’ve been mildly amused with people who complained about Hope not turning into some badass, brawling biker-chick. That was never going to happen. It just isn’t in her nature. Never mind the fact that Rock has said repeatedly that’s not what he wants. Every time I’ve read that complaint, I’ve chuckled and said “well, you’re not gonna like Book 3 then either!”
It’s not as if I’ve hidden the fact that my series is a romanticized version of an MC. If you need the grit, gore, guts, violence, abusive treatment, and catfights, then there are hundreds of other MC books for you to choose from. I’m not your author. I am in no way dismissing those books. I read and love plenty of them myself. I just don’t have it in me to write one at this point. Besides, to me there is nothing more “alpha” than a man who protects and respects the ones he cares about.