Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC #3)

by Susan Fanetti

  Maverick said nothing, either. He harbored some ill will toward his president, and he hadn’t had time yet to work out how to get over it. Or if he could.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Delaney finally said. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

  “I just want to get to my bike.”

  “After breakfast. Let’s go.” He put his back to Maverick and walked to the front door.

  His other choice was to walk all the way back to Jenny’s street, so Maverick followed Delaney. He guessed he was having breakfast.

  ~oOo~

  In Oklahoma, you couldn’t get by with just a bike. There was too much weather, and the winters could get harsh. Delaney drove a big, flashy red F-350 dually with the full feature package—it was new; Delaney swapped out his cage for a new one every couple of years. Maverick had had a ’69 Impala before he’d gone inside, but he’d had Gunner sell it rather than let it sit while he was away. He supposed that was another thing he’d have to attend to.

  Sitting high in Delaney’s luxury pickup, Maverick looked out the passenger window and kept his mouth shut. Delaney didn’t press him, and they rode in silence until he turned into The Roost, a mom-and-pop, greasy-spoon diner that was a local favorite.

  Jenny had been a waitress here when Maverick had been with her. He wondered if Delaney remembered that—or if he’d ever known it. If so, he was an asshole.

  “Come on. We’ll talk over biscuits and gravy.” Delaney got out and slammed his door.

  Maverick sat where he was for a few seconds and breathed. He had to get his head straight, and the first step was getting right with the club. The first step to that was getting right with its president.

  He got out and followed Delaney into the restaurant.

  ~oOo~

  The Roost had been remodeled while he was away, and it barely looked like the restaurant he remembered. The staff was all different as well, so Maverick was just another customer. He figured Toots Bingham, the owner, still manned the grill, but as long as he stayed in the kitchen, everything could be cool.

  The food was the same, though—good, rib-sticking country fare. Delaney ordered his biscuits and gravy, and Maverick ordered eggs over easy, crispy bacon, and a short stack.

  While they waited, Delaney pushed his coffee aside and leaned in. “I’m putting you on the bench, Mav. Just until you’ve got your wits about you.”

  He was half on the bench already. He wasn’t on the guns, and that was most of their work. The only club business he was active for was legit security work and any move on Dyson. What Maverick heard now was that Delaney wouldn’t include him on Dyson.

  “No fucking way, D. I’m owed.”

  Delaney stared down at his coffee cup, like he was reading the swirls of cream. When he looked up again, Maverick couldn’t get a bead on his expression.

  “I know what happened to you inside, Mav.”

  Maverick’s fists clenched, but he stayed outwardly calm and didn’t respond. Delaney waited, letting the silence draw out, like he was making sure Maverick had nothing to say. He hadn’t—there was no way he was speaking out loud about it. Ever.

  When Delaney got that, he gave a quick nod and sat back. “I understand that you feel owed—”

  “I am owed,” Maverick cut in. “You offered me up to your Russian queen and then left me to rot when I did what she wanted.”

  Delaney frowned, but he also nodded his head. “I’m sorry, Mav. I don’t know what I can do besides say that.”

  “You can not bench me. That’d be a start.”

  “It’s more than what you’re owed. It’s the whole club’s security on the line. Even with the little jobs, I can’t have a wild card in the deck. That’s absolutely true with any move on Dyson. I want you to get what you need out of them, but we’re on the brink of a Tulsa civil war here. That’s not good for anybody. The beef is the beef, and we need to answer their challenge, but we have to be careful. We can’t be blowing up our own house.”

  “Tell me how Gunner’s active, then. Talk about a wild card.”

  “Because his brand of crazy is known and useful. I bench him when I have to. And he’s not so crazy anymore. I don’t know what’s going on with you right now. Goin’ after your own woman? You?”

  Their breakfast came, but Maverick wasn’t hungry. He pushed his plates aside and rested his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I feel like the world is a merry-go-round, and I’m trying to jump on while it’s spinning.”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ about, son. When you get on the ride, I’ll put you to work. That includes Dyson. For now, focus on finding your chance.” He used his fork to slice off a piece of gravy-soaked biscuit. “Mo says you two have a date to do some house hunting today. That’s a start. Get yourself a place. Put things in it. Move back into your life.”

  Fuck. He’d forgotten about Mo. “I can’t move back into a life I lost.”

  Delaney sighed and set his fork down. “Then start a new one, brother. You got two choices—live or don’t.”

  ~oOo~

  “It’s fine.”

  Mo wheeled on him, her manicured hands on her hips. “You know I have a gun in my bag, right? If you shrug and say ‘It’s fine’ at one more place, might be I’ll use it and put an end to your misery and mine.”

  He laughed, feeling a twinge of real humor. “Sorry, Mo. But remember where I’ve been putting my head down the last four years. Every place you’ve shown me is a fucking palace after that.”

  She stared on, drumming her fingers on her hips. Then she grabbed him and pulled him over to the window seat in this empty living room. “Sit.”

  He sat, and so did she.

  “Tell me what you thought about while you were inside.”

  No. He knew what she was doing, but it wouldn’t work. With a shake of his head, he said, “That won’t help, Mo. I didn’t have pretty dreams about life outside. I lost what I wanted when I went in. I thought about that.”

  “Oh, love.” She reached out and grabbed his hand. “It’s over now, though. You’re back with us now, and you can start afresh.”

  He laughed again—but no humor powered it this time.

  Mo tried again. “Right. Tell me what you want right now. What would make you happy?”

  “Jenny and Kelsey.” That, he could answer without hesitation.

  “What kind of house would you want them to have?”

  Again, Maverick saw what she was doing, and he saw the danger in it. If he got a place thinking that his little girl might spend time in it, that was a big sack of hope. If he never got to see her again, he’d burn the place down before he’d live in it alone.

  He’d ruined his chance with Jenny. She’d said she’d seen her father in him, and, wrong as that was, he’d gone and given her a real good show to cement her thinking. So he couldn’t let himself imagine Jenny living with him. That was a deadly level of hope.

  But the Bulls would help him get to be Kelsey’s father. At least that, he’d get. Jenny might hate him forever, she might never trust him, but she couldn’t withstand the will of the club.

  “A good yard. Maybe a swing set.” She had a lot of toys in the yard at Jenny’s, and they all looked well loved. “A little playhouse, too.” He’d build it from scratch. It would be better than the plastic one she had at Jenny’s. “Maybe a puppy. Or a kitten.”

  Mo smiled and opened her handbag. Instead of her gun, she pulled out a little flowered book with a small pen attached. She pulled the pen from its loop, opened the book, and began taking notes.

  “So a nice big yard, with good grass and a strong fence. Keep going.”

  “A safe neighborhood. Not too much traffic, so I can teach her to ride a bike on the sidewalk.” As he spoke, the image of his descriptions rolled out in his head like unspooling film. “A sunny bedroom. I’ll paint it her favorite color. A good place to sit down to eat together. A fireplace.”

  “Fireplace?”

  Maverick refocused on Mo and saw that her head
was cocked. “To hang stockings at Christmas.”

  He’d only done that one time in his whole life: the single Christmas he’d spent living with Jenny. Right after she’d found out she was pregnant. The fireplace had been one of those electric things you could buy at Wal-Mart, but pretty enough, with a mantel and a ledge like a hearth. Jenny had brought home matching stockings with their names embroidered on the cuffs, and they’d hung them before their fake fireplace.

  Mo stared, her gold pen poised above her flowered notebook. Maverick didn’t realize he’d made her cry until she lifted the hand holding the pen and swiped a tear from her cheek with her knuckles.

  “You break my heart, love.”

  “Yeah. Mine, too.”

  ~oOo~

  Late that afternoon, they found a house with a lease-with-option offer. It had all the things Mo had jotted down, plus some things Maverick liked but hadn’t thought of—like big trees in the yard.

  He took it on the spot. While the agent filled out the paperwork and Mo fussed at her about details, he stood at the back door and looked out on the wide, green lawn. The slab patio had plenty of room for a grill and a table and chairs.

  He thought about the night before, the monster he’d been, throwing himself at Jenny’s door that way. Scaring her. Probably scaring Kelsey, too.

  She’d called him a bully. She’d thrown that at him and run, without giving him a chance to respond.

  That had been her point, he thought—that he always had to respond. That he always had to be right. That he had to be the hero. It wasn’t true. Or fair.

  Was it?

  If he was right, shouldn’t he press his point? Wasn’t that what a discussion was? When you had to make a decision, somebody had to be right. He saw reason. Fuck, he was all about reason. If not, he’d have punched Delaney at breakfast, when he’d told him he was benched. He’d sure as shit wanted to.

  It was true that he’d gotten his way in most things with Jenny. But that wasn’t all on him. She’d been deferential when they’d gotten together, giving way easily to him, with hardly any resistance at all. When she’d gotten more secure and started to push back, her counters had been all It makes me feel... or I don’t know, I just think... Why would he have given way to that? If his points were better formed, was that him being a bully?

  Please.

  He’d given way where he shouldn’t have. The one thing she’d fought hard on—really fought, not just disagreed—had been her fucking father. She’d fought with fire about something that shouldn’t have been a fight at all.

  He wouldn’t have had to play the hero if she hadn’t been so damn insistent on playing that bastard’s victim.

  February 1992

  Maverick stood behind Jenny and unfastened the little pearly buttons that ran down the back of her blouse, kissing the skin he bared as he did so.

  He was proud of himself—he’d done something nice for Valentine’s Day. No flowers or heart-shaped box of candy or anything like that; all that stuff seemed just silly and fake. But he’d taken her out for a nice meal, and now he was going to make her come as many different ways as he could imagine.

  He liked this girl a whole lot. She was sweet and beautiful, and damn, he loved to fuck her. It was getting to the point where he thought about her just about all the time. Sometimes those thoughts had downright embarrassing side effects.

  It had been a long time since he’d spent so much time with one girl, but he wasn’t feeling restless at all. Quite the contrary. Lately, he’d been happy to just stay at his place with her to watch TV and fuck. She cooked, too, and she was pretty good at it. When she was there, his apartment felt like a home.

  She moaned prettily and dropped her head as he pushed the blouse off her shoulders. It fell from her arms to the floor.

  He unhooked her bra and pushed that off as well, then slid his hands around her and cupped her tits. Her nipples tightened against his palms, and his cock surged in the confines of his jeans. “Do you trust me, babe?”

  A little nod was her only answer.

  God, that was so hot. She really did trust him—to keep her safe and to give her pleasure. She put herself in his hands. Someday soon—hell, maybe tonight—he wanted to play with that a little bit, take her places she hadn’t been before. He tweaked her nipples just sharply enough to make her gasp and pull her shoulders back, then released them and brushed his hands over her arms. He caught one to turn her to him, and a tiny, almost insignificant wince passed through her.

  Maverick moved his hand and looked at her arm. “What happened here?”

  She pulled away and laughed—but it was a weird, shaky little syllable. “I ran into the edge of a shelf in the kitchen at work.”

  Yeah, that was bullshit. If there was one thing Maverick knew, it was bruising. That wasn’t the mark of an impact. It was pressure. Suspicious now, already forming an infuriating deduction, he caught her hand to hold her, then reached over and flipped the switch to turn on the light on the ceiling fan over his bed. With enough light to really see now, he lifted her arm and examined the mark.

  “Mav, it’s fine.”

  “This is a hand, Jen.” He turned her arm. “These are fucking fingers.” He bent down and grabbed his t-shirt off the floor. “Put this on. We’re talking.” She did, and he sat her on the edge of the bed. “Your old man did that.”

  She didn’t deny it.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “It’s not your business, Maverick. I’ve told you a hundred times—things with my dad are complicated.”

  A hundred times was an obvious exaggeration, but she wouldn’t have had to tell him even twice if her father weren’t such a prick. “Jennifer...”

  “Don’t fucking call me that.”

  The fire in her tone shocked him. She used his full name when he’d irritated her. He’d never used her full name before, but it had seemed appropriate now, a rebuttal to her use of his. But he had more pressing concerns, so he pushed the curiosity to the side. “You can’t sit here and think you can have a bruise like that and I’m not going to need to know about it. That’s a deep bruise, Jen.”

  She turned her arm and studied the mark. “It’s not bad. Just red.”

  “It’s ‘just red’ because it’s deep. Tomorrow, the next day, it’s going to look like Jaws took a bite—and feel like it, too. Why’d he grab you so hard he about tore your arm off?”

  “It’s not important. Mav—you and me, we’ve been together two months. You can’t think you can fix a relationship that’s almost twenty-four years old. You can’t even understand it.”

  “What do I need to understand? You’re his daughter. He’s your father. There is no situation where him hurting you is understandable.”

  She grunted and stood up. “God, will you just listen?”

  “Hey. I’m listening. If there’s a way to understand, then you need to explain it to me so I can.” He took her hand and pulled her back, tucking her between his legs. “I want you safe. I don’t like somebody hurting you. Is that a bad thing?”

  “No...” She chewed on her bottom lip, and he reached up and pressed on her chin until she stopped.

  A thought occurred to him, and he tested it out and decided he liked it. “Then let me protect you. Move in with me.”

  Her eyes went wide. “What? No!”

  “Yes—why not? You’re with me most of the time, anyway. I like having you here. You need to get away from him. It’s perfect.”

  She studied him, and he got the sense that there was something she was looking for, but he didn’t know what else there was to say—not until she said something more, at least.

  “We’ve only been together two months, Mav.” Again, she chewed on her lip. “I don’t know—I just think it’s a big step to take already.”

  “I didn’t propose, Jen. I’m asking you to move in. If we don’t work out, then we’ll figure that out then.”

  Her eyes continued to move all over his face, scanning back and forth
between his eyes, down to his mouth, back up. She took a long, deep breath. “I love you, Mav.”

  She’d never said that before. He grinned. “Is that a yes?” After a beat, she nodded, and he set her on his lap. “That’s my girl.”

  ~oOo~

  “YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST SNEAK OUT ON ME LIKE A THIEF?”

  At the shout and the crash that followed, Maverick put down the box he’d just picked up, the last box of Jenny’s old life. He left her room and ran down the hall, his fists already tight and ready.

  The front door was open, and Jenny’s father had her up against the wall. Father and daughter were staring at each other. Earl wasn’t tall, but neither was Jenny, and he had her trapped. Jenny’s expression was full of fear and anger—and there was guilt in there, too. He despised the way this fuckhead had her so twisted up.

  Maverick had kept her with him the night before, and he’d come with her today, while her father was supposed to be away, to move her shit out of his house. He’d have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t a little glad ol’ Earl had shown up, though he’d have wanted to be the one to meet him first.

  “Back the fuck off, asshole.” Maverick didn’t yell; he growled the words and grabbed Wagner by the back of his canvas coat, throwing him across the hallway. He gave Jenny a quick once-over. No new hurt; just the bruise on her arm—after a day to ripen, it was just as vicious as he’d predicted it would be.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded. When he then turned to make sure Earl Wagner understood that his days of hurting his only child were well and truly done, she grabbed his arm.

  “Mav, no! Please! Don’t hurt him!”

  Goddammit. “Jen—”

  “No! Shut up! You got what you wanted! So let’s go. Let’s just go.”

  What he wanted? It wasn’t the time to challenge that, so he filed it away. He needed to get her out of this diseased house. Letting her keep hold of him, he turned to her father. “You touch her again, and I will kill you.”