Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC #3)

by Susan Fanetti

  The things Lester wanted him to think about were too big, too nebulous, too scary. He had no idea how to make it on his own, and he felt small and lost when he tried to think about it. Like life was about to grab him by the neck and fling him into space, with no air or gravity, no control of anything.

  But in the ring, he was in control. Life made sense inside the ropes, when everything boiled down to one simple imperative: Be better than the other guy. Strong, smarter, tougher. Just better. Be the one still standing.

  He knew what he wanted in life. He wanted to pull into his own driveway and see the lights on in his own house. He wanted to walk in the front door and smell supper in the oven. He wanted a beautiful woman to come to him and wrap herself around him while she asked about his day. He wanted kids playing in the back yard with their dog. He’d only ever seen a life like that on television, but he knew it was the way things were supposed to be.

  That life would not come from a job at a burger joint and a basement one-bedroom shared with five other people, which was the best thing he could hope for next, and he couldn’t understand how to get from one to the other.

  So he went to the ring, where being his best was enough, and when it wasn’t, the path to get better was clear: Work harder. Sweat more. Keep going.

  As he sat down beside Lester’s desk, what Rich wanted was simply to be allowed to stay right where he was, at least until he could understand what his next step should be.

  “So, son. You know what happens now.”

  Rich swallowed so his voice wouldn’t shake. “I was thinking...could I stay on if I worked here? Just, like, cleaning up or something like that? You wouldn’t have to pay me—just let me stay.”

  Lester shook his head. “Only counselors live on the premises, Rich. And you know we need the bed.” He pushed a manila envelope across his desk. “There’s an address in there for a shelter we work with. You’ve got a bed there for three nights. After that, if you need to stay longer, you’ll have to work that out with them yourself. There are a couple of names of people in the parish who’ll take in a boarder. There’s also five twenty-dollar bills in there, to get you fed while you’re looking for a job and a place. And a letter of reference.” He bent down and lifted a paper grocery sack, its top folded neatly over. “And our birthday gift to you: brand new set of good clothes for job interviews—khakis, Oxford shirt, shoes, belt, the works. Even a tie. Keep these nice.”

  “Lester...” his voice shook, and the name broke in two.

  “I know, Rich. I came up through the system, too, remember. Aged-out just like this. It’s hard. But I got through it, and you will, too. You’re strong, and you’re smart. If you apply yourself, you’ll do just fine. Only one way to move through this world, right?”

  Rich nodded, but only to acknowledge Lester’s favorite saying, not his faith in it.

  “Say it with me, son.”

  “Head down, shoulder to the day.” They said it together, but Lester’s voice far overpowered his own.

  Lester stood and held out his hand. “Go on up and pack your things, say your goodbyes. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it’s better if it’s quick. Like pulling off a Band-Aid.”

  Rich stood tall and shook the director’s hand. Lester Darville was the closest thing he had to a father, the closest thing he could remember ever having. “I just want a family,” he said as they dropped their hands.

  “Iggy’s never was that for you, Rich. We do what we can, but we can’t be that. You’re gonna have to make a family for yourself. And when you do, you hold it close and keep it safe like a precious gift. You hear?”

  He heard. “Yes, sir.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jenny’s heart slammed back and forth inside her chest. Her head spun and slued. Maverick sat facing her, clasping her hand to his chest, his expression naked with need.

  Was it that simple? Just say yes and have what she wanted? Just let him take care of her?

  Say the word, babe.

  That was what he offered: sell the house, sell the bar, move her father into a nursing home, move herself and her daughter into Maverick’s home. Be a full-time mom, have the life they’d been planning to have before.

  But she’d been completely dependent on him before. She’d had no job, no apartment with her name on the lease, and in mere weeks, she’d been left with nothing but a brand new baby and an invalid father. She’d been forced back to a life she’d escaped and had found it in ruins.

  Maverick had sat here and addressed all her reservations, calmly and without obvious manipulation. He’d made his case, and it was a good one. Airtight. Except for the crack that was her fear.

  “What if you go away again?”

  He hadn’t considered that; pained surprise broke across his face. But he wrapped his free hand around the knot that their joined hands had made, and he squeezed. “I won’t. I promise.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t promise something like that. You can’t know it’ll be true.”

  “Jen—”

  “No.” She owed him that interruption. “I know enough about what the Bulls do to know that you can’t promise you won’t go to prison again.”

  Now it was despair that shaped his features. “No. You’re right. If you need that promise, I can’t make it.”

  His manifest turmoil and fear, written all over that scarred, handsome face, calmed her. Tough as he was, he was afraid as well. She wasn’t alone in that.

  She put her hand over the bundle of their hands, so they were all clasped together. “I don’t need the promise, Mav. I need the answer. What do I do, if everything I have is bound up with you again and you go away?”

  He was quiet, his eyes averted, searching for something beyond her. Then he met her waiting gaze again. “The club, babe. They’ll be there. They were there before. I think I understand why you pushed them away, but they’re there. They’ll always be there, and you’ll never fall. They’re your family as much as mine, if you’ll let them be.”

  She wondered if he really did understand why she’d turned away from the Bulls. She’d felt betrayed by Maverick, she’d felt manipulated and abandoned—she’d been all those things—and she’d wanted a full amputation of him from her life. That included his club, which she’d never fully trusted anyway.

  To see them as her family, to let them really be that, she’d have to find a way to trust them.

  Willa. Maybe it was silly, just some lingering hero worship for a woman who’d saved her, but she trusted Willa completely. Willa obviously trusted the Bulls and was a full member of that family—and of the circle of old ladies. Willa was her touchstone. Even more than Maverick, on this matter, Willa, her mere presence, could guide her in.

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “It comes down to trust. I trust you again. And I’ll try to see the club like you do and trust them, too. Okay.”

  “Babe, I’m sorry. I need you to say what you’re saying.”

  She laughed lightly at his confusion. “I want us to raise Kelsey together. I want her to have that life. So you’re right. It’s time. I love you, Maverick.”

  “That’s three,” he murmured. “Holy shit.” He broke their hands apart and grabbed her head, slamming his mouth over hers before she could take a breath.

  His tongue plunged into her mouth and he pushed forward, lying over her, overwhelming her completely, but in the way she craved. She locked her arms around his neck and gave back all the passion he filled her with, and for a minute she was sure they were going to fuck right there on the sofa.

  Then she heard Carlena bringing her father back into the house, into the kitchen.

  Maverick heard the same thing and pulled back. “Dammit,” he muttered.

  Jenny giggled and kissed his nose. “We have to pick Kelsey up soon anyway.” When he began to sit back, away from her, she held him close for one more second. “Stay here tonight. All night. We’ll talk to her together after the movie,
and we can pick this up where we left off after she goes to bed.”

  They’d only been intimate a few times since he’d been back, and she’d never let him stay the night, not while things were still up in the air between them. But this big talk they’d had, that had been everything landing into place. It was time.

  His brow furrowed. “Jen?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Fuck yes. Absolutely. I’d rather be in our house, but I will be with you wherever I can.”

  “I can’t spend the night at...our house”—his grin at her pronoun was like sunlight in her face—“until we find a good place for my dad. But you can stay here as much as you want.”

  He swept his arms around her as he sat back, and buried his face in the crook of her neck, and he held her so tightly that she could feel his heart beating.

  “I love you, I love you, I love you,” said the man who’d once been so indifferent about those three words that Jenny had taken to keeping count of the times he’d bothered to say them.

  “Infinity,” she answered now.

  ~oOo~

  Kelsey’s teachers were surprised to see Jenny standing on the playground with Maverick at her side. Betsy in particular—she’d been the one to confront him at the fence, back in the summer, and she remembered him. He hadn’t been back to Alphabet Acres since that day.

  Now, as Kelsey trotted up with her Hello Kitty backpack dangling from one arm, and her jacket sliding down the other, Betsy followed behind her. Jenny could see the woman’s narrow-eyed suspicion from ten yards away.

  But then Kelsey squealed, “Daddy! You came to my school again!” and Betsy’s suspicion turned to shock.

  Maverick crouched and caught their daughter in his arms. “Hey, pixie! How was your day?”

  “My day was good. I colored a goats that says BOO. That’s B-O-O. You said pixie. That’s what Mommy says.”

  Holding Kelsey close, Maverick looked up at Jenny. “Is it okay if I say it, too?”

  Knowing he was asking them both, Jenny nodded while Kelsey said, “Uh-huh. I like it. Pixies are like little fairies.”

  It had once been their name for the baby inside her. Now they would share it for the daughter that baby had become.

  “Everything’s okay?” Betsy asked, confused.

  “Everything is great,” Maverick answered.

  When Betsy looked to her for confirmation, Jenny smiled. “It is.”

  ~oOo~

  “Does she sleep with a different animal every night?” Maverick came into the bedroom and closed the door.

  In the middle of her nighttime routine, Jenny rubbed her hands together and smoothed lotion over her leg. “Sometimes she has a favorite for a few days, but she says she doesn’t want any of her animals to feel lonely, so they all get their turn for slumber parties.”

  As she stood straight and put her foot back on the floor, Maverick stood behind her. “She’s a special little girl.”

  “I think all parents think their kids are special. But yeah. Ours really is.” She reached for the lotion again, but Maverick reached past her and picked up the bottle.

  His head was at her ear. “I get hard every time you say ‘ours.’”

  All day, since she’d agreed with his plan and he’d kissed the shit out of her, Jenny had felt different. She no longer watched Maverick constantly, furtively, trying to know what was right, trying to see if she could trust him. She just knew—this was right, she could trust. Picking up Kelsey, taking her for burgers and to see a movie, coming home together, hanging up her ‘goats’ (which was actually a ghost) on the refrigerator, sharing her bedtime routine—all of it had been normal and good and right. The way things were supposed to be.

  They’d talked to Kelsey right before bedtime, telling her that they were going to live together at the house daddy had gotten for them, and that Granddaddy was going to live in a nice place where people could take good care of him. She’d been full of questions, but not of worry. She, too, was getting what she wanted. She had a mommy and a daddy now, and they were all supposed to live together.

  Jenny was happy. Until she’d truly felt it, she hadn’t considered how long it had been since she last had known happiness.

  Four years.

  As he smoothed lotion up her arms, Jenny moaned and leaned back against his chiseled chest. “That’s all that’s making you hard? A little word?”

  He moved his head to the other side and kissed her ear. His tongue traced along the edge and back down to swirl a circle on her neck. “Hmmm?”

  Okay. What had seemed an odd quirk, some habit she’d thought he’d picked up in prison, of keeping people on his strong side, was clearly more than that. Jenny stood straight again and turned around in his arms. “Mav? Are you deaf in that ear?”

  His smile surprised her. When he turned her around and pulled her back into the cradle of his arms and chest, she didn’t resist. “Mostly, yeah. Not a big deal, babe. Just whisper your sweet words in my other ear, and it’s all good.”

  “How’d it happen?” She tilted her head toward his strong side. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  With his hands freshly coated with lotion, he began to massage her shoulders, letting his fingers slip down, along her spine, under her camisole. Jenny closed her eyes and let his touch flicker all through her body.

  “Happened the way you think it did. Got hit too hard too often. I’m about half blind in that eye, too. I fought a lot inside, Jen. A lot of bad shit happened. I didn’t tell you because I want to leave that shit inside. In the past. I don’t want to relive any of it, and I’d have to, to talk about it. Okay?”

  All the time he’d been away, Jenny had clung to her anger. She’d thought about her life, and Kelsey’s, and all the things that were wrong, all the ways things weren’t as they were supposed to be. She’d felt imprisoned in this life, in this house, full of pain and loss and fear. She’d spared hardly a thought for Maverick’s pain, or his loss, or his fear. She’d made him her enemy, and she’d survived on the energy of her anger.

  Now, with him again, loving him unreservedly again, forgiving him, she had an ocean of thoughts to spare for him. These four years had been hell for him. That was obvious just to look at him: his body was a map of new scars, each marking a point of pain in his life. His hands were like cragged boulders. His left ear—the one that was deaf—was misshapen. Scars marred his eyes, his nose, his chin. He had scars across his chest and belly and arms, too, scars that couldn’t have been made with fists.

  He’d been a fighter since he was a kid, and his skin had been marked up well before she’d met him. Yet now he looked like a man who’d been fighting not by choice but for survival.

  She’d known. Since he’d been back, she’d known. She simply hadn’t wanted to see it.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered now. “God, Mav. I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head against her neck. “Doesn’t matter. This is all that matters.” His hands moved around her waist and up, under her top. Her nipples, already tight and seeking, felt the touch of his hard fingertips like a shock, and she arched her back.

  “This is everything I need.” His fingers plucked and swirled over her tender, needy flesh.

  Jenny raised her arms, hooking her hands behind his head, stretching her body out so that he could have it all. She wanted his touch everywhere. She wanted to be consumed by him.

  One of his hands dropped, skimming over her belly and pushing into her panties. When they brushed past her clit and sank into her, she cried out, clutching his head to her as tightly as she could.

  “Fuck me.” The words would barely come out, so lost was her breath already. “Fuck me so hard.”

  “Jenny,” he groaned. “Jesus.” His fingers left her, and he pushed her forward until she let go of him and put her hands on the dresser before her. Her panties ripped and fluttered to the floor at her ankles when he yanked so hard one side tore free.

  Behind her, she heard his belt and his jeans op
ening; he was still fully dressed, except for his boots and kutte. Next, she heard a faint plastic crinkle, and she reached back and grabbed his hand. “No.”

  With the half-open condom packet between his fingers, he stopped. “Babe?”

  She took a deep breath so she could speak. “Don’t use that. I want another baby with you. It’s time.”

  “Jen, are you sure?”

  She was. This wasn’t like the night at the bar, when she’d been half-stoned on adrenaline. Besides, she wouldn’t have been disappointed if she’d gotten pregnant then. But tonight, this was a choice. They’d made some decisions. They’d told Kelsey. They were together and moving forward. She was almost thirty years old, and Kelsey was four. It was time.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, turning his question around.

  “Fuck yeah.” He dropped the condom. “I want to marry you. Soon.”

  She pulled her camisole off and tossed it away. “When we get everything sorted out. When we have everything right. Then yeah.”

  He gently kicked her legs wide. Jenny bent forward again, offering herself. She felt his cock—so hard and hot, its tip already wet—brush between her thighs, and he pushed in, letting out a long, strained groan.

  There was nothing better in the world than this. Their bodies joined, moving together. The sounds of his need, his pleasure, his love, mingling with her own. The touch of his skin, the heat of his body, all around her, driving her forward, up and up and up, coiling her nerves and muscles until she was nothing but a snarl of sensation, of pulsing desire.

  He bent over her, resting his cheek on her head, heaving greedy gasps into her ear. His hands left her hips, one capturing a breast and the other pushing between her legs to play at her clit as he drove into her, each thrust so deep and fierce that the dresser shook with the force of it, and Jenny could feel her orgasm stampeding toward her, rumbling from the point of their union outward, charging up her spine and through her limbs until she could only grunt and slam her body backward, crashing into him again and again.