“What?”
“A couple days before you were released. He and Gunner and another Bull I didn’t know, they came to the bar and threw a fat envelope full of cash at me, trying to pay me off to let you back in. When I wouldn’t take it, Rad told me I didn’t have a choice, that you were going to be in Kelsey’s life, and the club would do whatever it had to do to make it happen. They were trying with money, but if that didn’t work, they didn’t have to be so nice.”
His fists curled at his sides. He’d killed his fourth man the night before, the first kill that didn’t weigh on his conscience at all. He’d kill anybody who hurt Jenny. Stranger, brother, it didn’t matter. “I didn’t know.”
“I would have told you, if you’d told me your plan for the day.”
He took hold of her arm and tugged, only lightly, without force. She turned around and crossed her arms.
“You’re right. I fucked up. Jen—don’t back away from me. I need to learn how to do this right, and I’m still just figuring out how to be free again. But I want to be better. You say I do what I want, well I want that. I want to be right for you and Kelsey. Give me time to figure this out.”
She stared at him, and he let her read whatever she could in him. At last, she sighed and uncrossed her arms. “Last night—that was...that was intense, and I was shaken up. I wasn’t thinking clearly. We do need to go slow. I need to be sure that shit like this is over before we make any changes. If we make any at all.”
“What if you’re pregnant? I came inside you last night.”
Her eyes closed as she took in another deep breath. He could sense her search for calm. “Well, that was a mistake, wasn’t it?”
The bleakness of her voice chilled him. “Don’t tell me you’d—”
“I won’t. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be together.” Her head dropped for a second. When it came up, her expression had smoothed, though the turmoil between them still lurked in her eyes. “I need to get home. Is she in her room?”
The room he’d made for his daughter. Kelsey had squealed and clapped and danced when she’d first seen it. Now she was snuggled up with her Sinclair dinosaur, under the canopy like a princess.
He nodded, and she stepped away, toward the hall. Maverick grabbed her hand before she got too far. “Jenny, wait.” She stopped but didn’t turn back to him. “I need you. I love you.”
They stood like that, joined only by their hands, their arms spanning the distance between them. The silence of the home he’d found for his family seemed to roar.
“That’s one,” she whispered and pulled her hand free of his.
~oOo~
Later, Maverick stormed into the clubhouse, pushing past neighbors and friends of the Bulls, here partying with the club on a Saturday night. Rad stood near the pool table, leaning on a support beam, holding a bottle of Rolling Rock by the neck. He was talking to Curtis, a longtime club hangaround.
Ignoring everyone he passed, Maverick strode straight to Rad and grabbed him by the neck of his kutte. When the SAA turned awkwardly, pulled off balance, Maverick punched him in the face, catching his cheekbone and feeling the full force of the impact all through his ringless hand. Rad’s head rocked back, and his beer went flying. The people around them made way.
“What the fuck?”
“You threatened her?” He swung again, but Rad blocked the blow. When he followed the block with a cross, Maverick ducked and charged, slamming his shoulder into Rad’s chest. They landed on the floor together.
Maverick was a few inches taller than Rad, but he was leaner, lighter by maybe fifteen pounds. So he took his advantage while he had it, settling his left arm across Rad’s throat and slamming right jabs into his head as fast as he could, paying no regard to the protest of his knuckles, which were already sore from taking down Jenny’s attackers the night before.
Then Rad got his arms up, and he flipped them. He got three good, solid hits to Maverick’s face before Ox loomed over them and pulled Rad off.
Gunner grabbed Maverick’s arm, helping him to his feet. Still burning with fury and violence, he shoved his friend off. Gunner had been at the bar, too.
“Easy, brother. What the fuck?”
“He threatened Jenny. I want his goddamn head.”
“I wasn’t gonna hurt her, fuckwit. I was tryin’ to scare her.” Rad spat blood onto the floor. “For you. She was keepin’ your kid away from you.”
Maverick lunged, but Gunner held him back. “I was there, Mav. It’s like he said.”
Maverick twisted his arm free and punched his friend in the stomach. Then he went for Rad again, but this time it was Simon diving in his way, slamming him to the floor.
“GODDAMMIT!” Delaney’s voice roared over the commotion. “MAVERICK. RAD. CHAPEL. RIGHT THE HELL NOW!”
~oOo~
Delaney, Dane, Maverick, and Rad all sat in their usual seats at the table. With no one else in the room, the configuration made Maverick feel like he was sitting in court: Delaney, Dane, and Rad, the top of the food chain, clustered at the top of the table. Maverick a fair distance away on the side.
“Somebody explain to me what the fuck just went down,” the president snarled.
Rad crossed his arms and glared down the table. “You’d have to ask Mav.”
Focused with glowering satisfaction on Rad’s swelling face, Mav said, “He threatened to hurt Jenny. I will kill anyone who does.”
“You’re talking about the visit to Jenny before you got out.”
Delaney hadn’t phrased it like a question, but Maverick nodded his answer anyway.
“That was me, Mav. Rad was on assignment. With Gun and Apollo. I wanted you to have your little girl. We all did. The whole club went in on that payoff. What Jenny did—that wasn’t right.”
Maverick slammed his throbbing fist on the table. “You think you made it better for me? You think the Bulls trying to intimidate her made things easier between us?”
“You got your little girl, don’t you?” Rad asked. “I heard you had her here today.”
“Not because you threatened to hurt her, asshole.”
Rad’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond.
Delaney leaned forward. “Maverick. This isn’t on Rad. He did what I sent him to do. Nobody here was ever gonna hurt the mother of your child, and deep down, you know it.”
Yes, he knew no Bull would hurt a woman, certainly not a member’s woman. “Jenny didn’t know it. I can’t get my family back together if she’s afraid of the club.”
“Then it was a mistake, going to talk to her, and I’m sorry.”
Maverick stared at the table and didn’t answer. As he cooled down, he understood that all this he’d just caused, his anger at the club, it was all misplaced. He’d done far more damage to his relationship than any of his brothers would do, and he’d never laid an angry finger on her.
“Maverick,” Delaney pressed. “We good here?”
“Yeah.” He looked up and met the president’s gaze. “Yeah.”
Delaney turned to Rad. “You need to balance anything out?”
Rad had taken quite a bit of damage in Maverick’s storm. He stared long and hard down the table. Then he shook his head. “Nah. We’re good.”
~oOo~
“Jesus Christ, Maverick. No.”
Jenny began to push the door closed. Maverick wanted to shove himself against it, prevent her from shutting him out, but he held back, locking his arms at his sides, and only said, “Jenny, please.”
She stopped. For three seconds—Maverick counted them off in his head—the door was ajar by a couple of inches. Then the porch light flipped on, the door opened again, and she stepped onto the threshold. It was late, and though the lights glowed through the windows, indicating that she hadn’t turned in for the night, she was dressed for bed, in pajama bottoms and a little thin-strapped top. He used to know what she called those things. She’d pulled a zip-up hoodie on as she’d answered the door, and she had it wrapped around her
self, crossing her arms over it.
“You’ve been fighting.”
“I kicked Rad’s ass. I’ll never let anybody hurt you, Jen. Not even threaten to. Whoever it is. Whatever happens with us, that’s always gonna be true.”
He saw her soften, let her guard down a little. “Why are you here?”
“I don’t know. Because...because I feel...rootless...anywhere else?” It was a mistake, though. He was pushing again, trying to make her give him something she wasn’t ready to give. “It was a mistake. I’ll go. I love you.”
He turned and slumped down the sidewalk toward his bike.
“Mav, wait.” Her voice was closer than he’d expected; he turned, and she was coming toward him. She’d left the door open. He stood still and let her come. When she got there, she looked up at him silently, her arms still crossed over her belly. They were beyond the glow of the porch light, but the streetlights and moon made enough illumination that he could see her face clearly, tinted with the blue gleam of night.
“That’s two,” she said.
His heart stopped. “Jenny?”
“You have to figure out what you need to figure out to stop pulling bullshit like today. You have to stop stalking and lurking, too. Use the fucking phone.”
“Yeah. Okay. Understood.” He’d agree to just about anything at this point, and she was only asking him to stop being an asshole.
She squinted at him. “Honestly? You hear me?”
He reached out, and she didn’t flinch away. Grasping her arms, he said, “I hear you. How I’ve been fucking up—I see it, Jen. I do. You’re different, and I see that, too. It was happening even before I went away. I loved it then, seeing you get strong, and I love it now. I don’t need you to give in to me. I just need to break the habit of expecting you to. And I will.”
“That’s...that’s a good answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
When she hooked her fingers into the waistband of his jeans, his breath caught. “You can’t stay all night. But you can come to bed with me for a while, if you want.”
“Jenny. Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything between us but one thing: I love you.”
“That’s one.” He pulled her hand from his jeans and drew her into his arms.
~oOo~
Except for the television, playing at a volume low as a whisper, and the muffled hum and beep of her father’s medical machinery, the house was quiet. Jenny led him down the hall, past the closed door of her father’s room, the closed door of their daughter’s room, into her own, where a small lamp on her dresser offered a soft, incandescent glow. After she closed the door, he heard the snick of the knob lock being turned.
Without a word or a pause, she pulled off her hoodie, then her top, tossing them to the floor. She shimmied out of her bottoms and stood there perfectly naked, and he stood there like an idiot, fully clothed and...well, fuck. He was afraid. Afraid to do something to break the spell. Afraid of fucking up yet again, blowing yet another chance she was giving him.
He wanted to fuck her properly, to make love with her. She stood before him naked and ready, and he was afraid to move.
“Mav?”
“You’re beautiful.”
She truly was. There was no sign on her body that he could see of her pregnancy. He remembered the thick, rich-smelling cream she’d rubbed on her belly and tits, and that he’d rubbed on her as well, every day throughout most of those months. It must have worked, because she was smooth and firm and perfect.
Her dark hair had gotten so long, too. She’d always kept it just past shoulder length, but now it grazed the middle of her back and covered her tits.
Finally, whatever had held him paralyzed gave way, and he reached out to lift a curl from her chest and push it back over her shoulder, so he could see his ink. A heart on fire, his name on a banner across it. He’d seen it last night, too, but he’d been too overcome to speak about it.
He brushed his thumb over the piece, tucked in the angle between her collarbone and her shoulder. “You didn’t cover this up or get it removed.”
She shook her head.
She’d been his all this time. “Thank you.”
“Mav.” She grabbed the placket of his kutte and gave it a tug, and he began to undress himself. Jenny watched him, a mysterious hint of a smile dancing on her lips, but she didn’t help. She simply waited until he was as bare as she was.
He felt barer, in fact. The balance of power had shifted between them, and Maverick was more than a little disoriented.
Jenny seemed to feel the change, too. Still wearing that odd little smile, she pushed on his chest. He walked backward until his legs hit her bed, and he sat.
Standing over him, she combed her fingers through his hair. There wasn’t much growth yet, just enough that he could feel the strands move against her fingers. He set his hands on her hips and closed his eyes, letting himself feel her touch. Giving himself over to her, letting her lead. Not letting her. Simply following.
“You’re beautiful, too.” Her hands smoothed over his shoulders, down his arms, until they were on his hands at her hips. She lifted them and stepped inward, straddling his legs. “You can’t come inside me. Last night, we shouldn’t have done that. I need to trust that you won’t. Unless you have a condom.”
He shook his head. “I’ll pull out. I promise. But go slow, babe. I’m still out of practice, and I want to make you come this time. I want to be inside you when you do.”
She sat on him, drawing her legs up so they were around his waist. Remembering this position, he clasped her hips and lifted her, and she took hold of his cock and positioned it so that he could set her down on it. Her slick heat enveloped him, and his cock surged.
Groaning, he clamped his arms around her and held her in place. “Fuck, don’t move. Don’t move.” Burying his head against her neck, in her hair, he held on and breathed deeply until he could master his body.
He felt her hands at his face; she lifted his head and smiled that smile at him. Leaning close, she kissed him lightly, nipping at his lips, nuzzling his stubbly cheek, pressing her mouth to the damaged ear she didn’t yet know was mostly deaf. It was deaf, but it wasn’t numb. As she sucked on his lobe, her hips began to flex, picking up a steady and leisurely rhythm.
Maverick took deep, measured breaths, allowing himself to feel her but not to be so consumed by it that he lost control. Since his release, he’d had to learn to control a body that had been entirely subject to outside control for years. Sleeping, eating, moving—all on somebody else’s time. At somebody else’s whim.
He shoved that thought away and slammed the door on it. No. Not here, not now. Absolutely not.
“Hey,” she murmured, coming back to his mouth and running the tip of her tongue over his bottom lip. “You okay?”
Feeling the sudden tension that had shot through his body, he loosened up and cupped her face in his hands so he could deepen their kiss.
When he pulled back, he said, “I’m perfect. I need to suck your tits, though.”
Her smile grew broad and bright, and she arched backward, using his shoulders to keep herself steady. He wrapped his arms around her waist and bent forward. As soon as he drew a nipple into his mouth, she moaned and picked up the tempo of her hips.
He sucked, and she flexed, moving with increasing gusto as he worshipped her tits, shifting back and forth between them, favoring neither over the other. Her taste was perfect, like her scent—clean and fresh and just as it had always been. Need pooled and swelled at the base of his cock, waiting, tautening his body, but he held on, devoting his attention to her.
He heard his own grunts, muffled against her skin, mingling with her moans and gasps and whimpers. Her hair swung back and forth, caressing his arms with its cool silk. He groaned and reared back, sliding his hands up to take hold of her head and draw her mouth to his.
He couldn’t let her control their movements any longer, or he would blow, and he w
asn’t sure he’d be able to disentangle himself from her in time to pull out. Before it was too late, he stood up and turned, dropping her to the bed. He meant to keep their connection and lie on her, but she surprised him, pulling back so that he fell out of her. She rolled and came up on her hands and knees, canting her ass up high.
Maybe she was offering her ass, but he wouldn’t take it. Instead, he grabbed her hips and sank back where he belonged. She cried out as he hit home, and her hips began to go again, drawing him deep, controlling their pace. But now he had some control as well, and the slow, sensual love they’d been making shifted gears and became something wilder.
He wanted her to come. He needed to feel it, to have that again. Fighting his own need, his body’s riotous demand to finish, Maverick gritted his teeth and fucked his woman until she was grunting and moaning and gasping out lusty pleas and prayers. She dropped her chest to the bed and let him have his way, and he slammed into her again and again.
Come, come, come, come! The word was a strained chant in his head. Shit, he wasn’t going to be able to hold off, especially since he had to pull out. Just as he thought he was out of time, her hands clenched fistfuls of her bedspread, and she let loose a feral, muffled scream into the mattress. Her body clamped around his, pulsing, and he could not hold back even one more second. But he didn’t have to.
“Thank fuck!” he grunted, trying not to be too loud and wake Kelsey, and pulled free. One pump of his fist, and he let loose all over her ass and back, still grunting, this time just an unformed burst of sound rasping up his throat.
Jenny sank limply to the bed, and Maverick fell forward, barely managing to catch himself on his arms. Pulling himself together as quickly as he could, he pushed back to his shaky legs and found his t-shirt in a wad on the floor. He used it to wipe her clean.
Then he stood there, his jizz-soaked shirt dangling from his fist. She didn’t want him to stay. Should he just leave? Now? Is that what she wanted? Nothing but a fuck? Still sweaty and panting, Maverick felt his heart sink at the thought.
Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC #3) Page 22