"The way she throws her little fits. Pokin' out her lip and biting mine when we kiss. There ain't a fight that she can't win. That's my baby, and she's my kinda crazy."

TWENTY FOUR

I felt the bed dip beside me and sighed in happiness without even bothering to open my eyes.

Happy had come back on a Friday, which meant that I had no work and didn't have to leave the warmth of our doona, but he'd had to go to the clubhouse early for a rundown of the run's events the next morning.

"I'm so glad you're back." I mumbled sleepily. "The bed was getting cold without you."

"Well that's some sappy bullshit."

I snapped my eyes open and jumped, almost screamed. "Ma? What the fuck are you doing here? How did you get into my house?"

Gemma's face lit up with a humorous smirk. "Got a key cut. You know, in case of emergencies and all that."

The older woman was laying beside me in Happy's rightful spot, on top of the covers with her high heels still on her feet. She was laying on her side to face me, our noses almost pressed together. "How'd everything go last night? Did you tell him?"

I was still in shock at finding someone apart from my Old Man in our bed, but I could see the excitement burning through her eyes and I forced myself to calm down. Of course she'd stolen a key, gotten it cut, and had broken into our house to get the information that she wanted from me.

There was no doubt in my mind that if I turned my phone on, I would have had a multitude of missed calls from the woman who was sick of being kept in the dark and had turned up without knocking.

When Happy had left in the morning we had agreed to keep our pregnancy and engagement quiet until we returned to work, things from the run had settled down, and we could tell our family together. But Gemma had been at the hospital with me when Tara had shared the news since I'd been too nauseous to drive, and had been the one to glare at the lab tech to rush my bloods. She knew I was pregnant, there was no point in denying her the answers she wanted. "It went really well, better than I expected it to."

Subtly so she didn't notice, I put my hand under the sheets to hide the large diamond band on my wedding finger. Even if she knew about the pregnancy, she didn't know about our engagement, and I was going to keep that hidden until Happy and I got to the garage.

I wanted to tell her that Happy had asked me to marry him, but I couldn't break Happy's trust when I'd forced him to keep it a secret from his brothers at church. It wouldn't have been fair.

"Good, I knew it would." She reached out a manicured finger and ran it down the side of my face while she studied me. It was such a tender movement that I almost asked her if she'd smoked a blunt before she came inside. "That man loves you so much, baby. You got a good one."

I hummed in agreement. "The nausea pills have finally kicked in, do you want to go and get some breakfast with me?"

"Can't, I've got planning to do." She tapped my nose twice and pulled back slightly. "Clay and my anniversary is in two weeks and I've decided that we're going to have a party to celebrate."

I'd gotten a sudden craving for waffles with ice cream and too much chocolate syrup to be healthy, and I would have started begging her to go with me to get them if she didn't sound so firm that she couldn't. "Oh, joy. A party at the clubhouse that I won't be able to drink at because my Old Man knocked me up."

She pursed her lips. "I'm going all out for this one. We're going to do it in the fields out the back, formal attire, the whole shebang. Opie's going to do fireworks for us, not that I've told him yet. Gives us all a chance to dress up and have a good night."

I chuckled lightly. "And how do the Sons feel about your formal dress code?"

"Who fucking cares?" Gemma shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. "Formal to them probably means jeans with no holes. I'm putting my foot down, the assholes have to wear button-downs, but they can wear their Kuttes over the top."

There was no way they would go to a party without their colours, and there was no way that Gemma would have wanted them to. It's what made us a club, made us a family.

"How formal are we talking?" I glanced at the walk in closet off to the side of the bed. "I don't know if I have anything that's going to be up to your standards."

She followed my line of sight and shrugged again. "We'll go through it later, figure something out. For now you've got to get up and have a shower, and I've got to get going and find fairy lights."

"Fairy lights?" I laughed in surprise. "Where the hell are you going to put fairy lights in the field behind the clubhouse?"

Gemma smirked. "You'd be surprised what I can come up with, baby."

I looked down at my stomach and wondered if my bump would finally be showing by than.

She noticed my gaze. "Besides, it'll be nice to have a nice family photo before the baby makes you fat, gives you stretch marks and you decide you want to live the rest of your life in sweats."

I knew that she was teasing, but I still glared at her. Admittedly, the family photo sounded like a good idea. A great idea. It would be nice to hang it on the wall before the baby came.

She'd left as suddenly as she'd appeared, and I settled onto my back to stare up at the ceiling. In two weeks I would be two months pregnant, I wouldn't even be showing, but I would have a baby the size of a kidney-bean going off the growth chart that Tara had shoved in my hands after I'd refused the ultrasound.

I dragged my feet out of bed and got in the shower, brushed my teeth and then glanced at the clock. It was still early enough that I could go back to bed without feeling guilty about it, but I found myself on the couch with the renovation channel on, instead.

Happy came through the front door an hour later when I was in the middle of watching a bathroom get demolished and sighed a long sigh. "I thought you'd grown out of watching this shit."

"I just do it when you're not around." I smiled up at him happily.

He looked utterly delectable in his baggy jeans and the same hoodie he'd been wearing when he arrived home and I saw him in the flesh for the first time.

"Little girl." He shook his head when he dropped on the plush leather beside me and ran his hand up my naked thigh. "I'm going to come home to a smashed up bathroom if you keep watching this shit."

I didn't mention that I was already imagining new colour schemes in my head, just laid my cheek on his shoulder. "Gemma came by today."

"Hmm?"

"It's their anniversary in two weeks, they're having a party." I informed him.

Happy didn't stop tracing designs on my skin. "So a normal Friday night, than?"

"No." I disagreed without taking my eyes off the demolition. "She's going all out. In the fields behind the clubhouse, formal attire and all. She's gone to get a car load of fairy lights from the way that she was talking."

Happy grunted when I'd said 'formal attire', but didn't comment on it. "Where the fuck is she going to put fairy lights in the field behind the clubhouse?"

That's what I said.

I moved and pressed my legs on either side of his own so that I was straddling him and ran my hand over his bald head that he hadn't shaved yet in his rush to get to the clubhouse. It was slightly prickly still, and I almost asked him why he didn't just grow his hair out. "You'd be surprised with what she can up with, baby."

He traced his hands higher on my thigh to toy with my underwear. "Little girl?"

I tilted my head to the side to motion that I was listening and for him to keep going.

Happy leant forward so that our chests were pressed together and I could feel his hard length pressing up against my panties through his jeans.

He lowered his lips to my ear. "I don't want to talk about Gemma anymore."

I rocked against him slightly. "Then what do you want to talk about?"

"Nothing."

He grabbed the back of my neck and forced his lips to my own in a kiss that was demanding and claiming at the same time, reiterating that I was his. I was his property. I was his woman.

I ground down against him when he rocked up and let out a small whimper. "Please, Hap-"

"I've got you, little girl." He said softly against my lips.

He pulled me up just long enough to undo and push down his jeans slightly so that they pooled around his knees, then pulled my panties to the side and pushed me down on top of him.

I bit my lip as I sunk on to every inch of his hard, thick length, but couldn't stop the moan when he was fully inside of me.

After giving myself a moment to get used to the full feeling, I lifted up and dropped myself back down, my movements slow and purposeful.

I knew that the lack of pace was driving him to the brink of insanity, slow enough that neither of us would reach our peaks, but I loved to mess with him.

He gripped the hair at the back of my neck tightly. "Faster, little girl."

"Make me." I teased against his lips.

He didn't make me.

Instead, he flipped me over so that he was on top of me. "Make you? Only thing I'm gonna make you do is cum."

Then he fucked me until I screamed his name my world shattered around me in a million tiny pieces.

But, I noticed, he was softer than he would have been usually. And when we were laying together afterwards and he started tracing designs on my stomach, I realised why.