She caught his hand and brought his fingers to her lips. “Good. I got home to bed quick enough. It only lasted like an hour. Thanks for handling all that. I almost came out to help you with the toys after, but there was swearing, and I thought you were probably better off on your own.”
“Yeah. The parts on some of those things weren’t machined too well. Muscle and cussing was required to make ‘em fit. I’m glad you’re okay.” He laid his head on her belly and slid his hand over her hip. “How okay are you?”
Her muscles shook with her laugh, and he felt her fingers dance over his neck, down his spine. “Very okay. Very very.”
“That is very good news.” He hooked an arm around her and dragged her down flat on the bed. “Very very.” He bent his head and tasted her sweet mouth, soft and willing under his. As he shifted a leg over hers and brought his hand up to cup a breast and tease a nipple, she pulled back—not far.
Her lips brushed his as she said, “Mav...you can tie me up if you want. We haven’t done that since...”
Since before he’d gone away. Since before she’d gotten big with Kelsey. He’d loved tying her up, binding her to the bed with scarves or silky ropes, wrapping her wrists up together or splaying them wide, making her subject to him, under his control, at his whim...
He stunned himself by going soft, and not gradually. His cock deflated. Jenny felt it, too, and shared his surprise—he saw it in her frown and the flare of her eyes. He pulled away.
“Mav?” She held his arm, not letting him go far.
Allowing her to hold him, he turned and sat up. “Sorry.”
“What’s wrong?” She sat up, too, drawing the sheet over her chest—in that move, he saw that he’d made her self-conscious.
So was he. But he had no idea why. He loved tying her up, seeing her sleek limbs pulled taut, her slender wrists and ankles wrapped with pretty silk, watching her hands twist and her toes curl as he found more and deeper places of pleasure in her body and kept at them until she begged and begged...
He shuddered. Jesus Christ, what the fuck?
“Mav—please tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
With a flash of image, he knew. He flinched against the memory and jumped out of bed.
“Mav!”
He had to tell her. He swore he’d never put it into words or sound, but now he knew, standing naked next to the bed she was in, their bed, in their room, in their house, on Christmas fucking Eve, that he was going to have to tell Jenny.
“I can’t do that anymore. Tie you up. It’s not...I can’t do that to you. Take control like that, where you can’t stop me.”
Her worry changed. She’d been afraid she’d done something wrong. Now she was worried for him. “Mav, it’s okay. You never forced me. I liked it. I trust you.”
That made a stabbing pain in his heart, and he flinched again. He had forced her. A little. He’d ignored her resistance, sure she’d like it—and she had. But first she’d been afraid, and he’d forged on, heedless in his arrogance. She’d liked everything he’d done. But what if she hadn’t? Would he have apologized?
No. He wouldn’t have. He would have tried harder, thinking she simply needed to relax and be more open to it. He hadn’t been worthy of her trust.
He’d been a fucking bully. A gentle bully, but a bully nonetheless.
“I can’t hold you down. I can’t.”
When she stood and blocked his path, Maverick realized that he’d been pacing. She cupped a hand over his cheek. “Maverick. What’s wrong?”
And here it was. He could make something up, deflect, lie, set it aside, leave it buried. Or he could tell her and hope—trust—that she would understand.
He turned his head and kissed her palm. “Something happened to me inside.”
~oOo~
“You gotta say something, Jen.”
He’d said it all, said more than he’d meant to, and now she just sat at his side. Tears streamed down her face, but she wasn’t crying openly, no warp of her features. Only those wet rills, dripping onto her bare chest. They sat on the side of the bed, both naked. Maverick felt far more exposed than merely his skin.
“Babe, please,” he pleaded when still she wouldn’t speak.
Without a word, she slid off the bed, to her knees. She pivoted until she faced him and maneuvered herself between his legs. He wasn’t ready for what it looked like she intended—he was soft and freaked the fuck out, and horrible memories slammed unimpeded back and forth in his head, let loose for the first time since they’d been made.
Carver had sure as hell been right about that: he would never forget any second.
“Jen—” He stopped when, rather than take hold of his cock, she bent forward, folding all the way down, and kissed the top of his foot. Her lips lingered on the highest point of his bridge. He could feel her tears wet his skin.
“Jen...” he said again, on a breath. He didn’t know what she intended, but her touch was gentle and calming.
She moved to the other foot and did the same thing. Next she moved to that foot’s ankle bone, and to the other. His shins. His calves. His knees—pressing a single, soft, unhurried kiss to each point, working her way up his thighs. As his brain finally began to push the memories back to their lockbox, he held her head, twisting his fingers into the fluid strands of her long hair.
His cock had begun to stir when she made it to the top of his thighs, but she moved away from it, scooting closer, pressing her lips from one side of his belly to the other, then up, over the center, finally to kiss each nipple. From her knees, she couldn’t reach any higher than that. Maverick lifted her face and bent his to hers until their foreheads touched.
She still hadn’t spoken, and tears still streamed, but he didn’t need her to say anything now. “I love you,” he whispered. “How many is that today?”
“Infinity,” she answered, and kissed him.
~oOo~
A few hours before dawn on the first Christmas morning he’d spend with his wife and child, Maverick sat alone on the sofa, a glass of whiskey in his hand, and stared at the glowing colored lights of their Christmas tree. Under the tree and for several feet around it sat the shiny packages that Jenny had so carefully wrapped, and the assorted toys that he had so intently built. They’d gone more than a little overboard with Kelsey’s presents—he had gone more than a little overboard.
Jenny was worried that she’d be overwhelmed, that there was far more here than Kelsey could focus on, but Maverick didn’t care. His girls hadn’t had much these past four years, and he was going to make up for it now. He couldn’t wait for her to wake up and see.
She didn’t believe in Santa. Jenny had never told her about the jolly old elf; she had a bad history of that fantasy herself, and she didn’t want her little girl to feel the hurt of finding out Santa was a lie.
It hurt his heart. Santa wasn’t a lie; he was a gift—wonder and mystery and joy on Christmas morning. He’d never believed in Santa, either, but he’d been brought up in an orphanage, with no family or traditions. He wanted his little girl to have perfect Christmas memories, the kind that kids with families got to have.
So they’d have to start now and make up some that were just their own.
That was why he was awake at four in the morning. Not because he was tormented by those memories that had vandalized his brain earlier in the night. Jenny had kicked that shit right to the curb, and she’d done it with hardly a word. She’d simply lavished love and desire on him, adored his body with her own, until he had control over his memories and was hard again. Then she’d brought him off with her mouth, and again when she’d straddled his lap and taken him in.
He’d never thought before of Jenny taking care of him, only of him taking care of her and Kelsey. Everything about his love and his drive to make his family whole had been focused on taking care of them, on being Jenny’s husband, Kelsey’s father. Making the family he needed. But tonight, he’d realized how much of his desperate need was for hi
mself. He needed somewhere he could be weak. He needed to be taken care of, too.
So no, he wasn’t awake with tormented thoughts. He was awake with anticipation. With happiness. He was fucking alive. He sat on his sofa and appreciated the view of his new, beautiful life. The quiet, glowing tree, its colored lights reflected in shimmers on the shiny paper Jenny had used to wrap gifts. The stone fireplace beside it, festooned with pine boughs and shiny red balls, three stockings hanging from the mantel.
Maverick had felt that tight twist in his chest when Jenny had pulled from a box a bundle of white tissue paper and shown him what was inside: the same stockings she’d brought home on their first Christmas together, matching, with their names embroidered on the cuffs. Now there was one for Kelsey—bigger, with a sparkly Christmas tree sewn on it. It bulged with candy and small gifts.
Jenny’s had a little something weighing down the toe of hers, as well.
Wrapped up in his Christmas reverie, Maverick didn’t hear Jenny come up behind him. He jumped when her hands slid over his chest and she kissed his cheek. “Hey. Are you okay?”
He smiled up at her. “Yeah. I’m good. Come sit.” He set aside his glass as she came around the sofa. She sat beside him and tucked herself under his arm. She’d pulled his t-shirt on; he loved it when she walked around in his shirts. “You remember our first Christmas? The real first?”
“You mean when I was pregnant?”
He nodded. They’d been dating the Christmas before that, but they hadn’t spent it together.
“Of course.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “I’d known I was pregnant for like two weeks, and you bought that ridiculous present for a baby girl.”
“It wasn’t ridiculous.”
“It was when we didn’t know what the baby would be. But you were sure she was a girl.”
“And I was right.”
She answered with a playful slap of his bare belly. Then her mood quieted. “I remember it all. I was still so scared about the baby, and you were so confident, like always.”
He winced. “I’m sorry about that. I should have listened.”
“It’s okay. You listen now. And I think...if I’m honest with myself...I think I needed it sometimes back then. When I get trapped in my head, I need help getting back out. That’s not nearly as true as it was, but back then, I didn’t know how to think for myself.”
“You sure do now.”
She laughed. “Yeah. Now I’m a mouthy bitch.” When he only chuckled, she poked his side. “You’re supposed to say, ‘No, dear, you’re not a mouthy bitch.’”
His silent grin earned him another poke, and then a nipple twist. Laughing, he grabbed her and flung her down on the sofa, lying on top of her, but he didn’t pin her. “You’re not a mouthy bitch, dear.”
Her arms looped around his neck, and they stopped talking or laughing or wrestling, or marking time.
When they came up for air, Jenny brushed her fingers through his beard. “You saved Christmas for me that day. You showed me what it could be, to have our baby together. Like you could see it. I wish we could have had that.”
He looked down into her eyes, which glimmered with festive lights, and possibly some new tears. “We do have it, babe. Now. This is what I saw. This is exactly what I saw.”
December 1992
“Hold up, hold up.” Maverick crouched before the fireplace and pushed the button, and fake flames rose up into the fake logs with a gentle cough. He stood up and surveyed their work. “There. Now it’s perfect.”
Jenny crossed her arms. “It’s not bad, I guess.”
“What do you mean?” He uncrossed her arms and pulled her close. “It’s perfect. The tree, the stockings, the fire. Like a Christmas card. And next year, it’ll be even better, because there’ll be another stocking next to yours.” He rubbed her belly. It was still flat, she’d only been pregnant for a few weeks, but he’d become fascinated with her belly and could hardly wait for her to get big.
They hadn’t planned for this baby, and he hadn’t been thinking about being a dad yet, but now that she was coming—she was a she, he could feel it—Maverick was all but marking the days off on the calendar.
Jenny, on the other hand, had spent the past couple of weeks, since she’d taken the test, in a daze. It scared him, and he hated that feeling above all others. He kept trying to find ways to get her excited. Sure, she was scared, a lot of changes were going to happen to her body, and the biology of the whole thing freaked him out a little bit, so he could hardly imagine what it felt like to actually grow a human being inside your own body, but if he could get her focused on all the good stuff, she wouldn’t be so scared. Jenny was like this about all the big things—she needed to be distracted from her worries and focused on the goal.
Meanwhile, Maverick was having the best fucking Christmas of his life: in love with a beautiful woman, baby on the way, Christmas tree, fireplace, stockings hung with care. He was making a family of his own, just like Lester had said, all those years ago, when he’d aged out of the system and gone out into an unforgiving world alone.
“Jenny.” He pulled her to the sofa and sat her down. “What’s wrong, babe?”
Staring at their cheap fake fireplace and its bright orange flame, she sighed. “I don’t know...I guess...I’m scared. What if I suck as a mom? What if I turn out to be like my dad? What if...I don’t know. Just what if. I don’t feel like I’m ready for this, Mav.” She was going to cry. Dammit.
Maverick didn’t think he’d fully relax until she was too far along to do anything about the pregnancy. He didn’t really think she’d do anything like that, certainly not without telling him first, but still...maybe once all the options were truly gone, she’d stop finding dumb reasons not to be glad about this. “Who cares if we’re ready?” She laughed soggily and tried to pull away, but he held her hands in his firm grasp. “No, I mean it. Who cares? Who’s ever ready for this? To hear Joanna talk about it, their girls were planned, and she still had no clue what she was in for.”
“That’s not helping.”
“It’s Fate, babe. It’s right because it happened. All my life I’ve wanted exactly this: a family just like this. At Iggy’s, we had those little cheap felt stockings, you know the ones they sell at the drugstore? They’re like five inches long?” She indicated that she knew what he was talking about. “We had those, and we’d write our names in Elmer’s and dump gold glitter on them, and then we’d use thumbtacks and stick them on this paper fireplace that the staff taped to the wall. We had a tree in the dining room, but the presents under it were empty, like the stockings. Just for show. We got presents, the church would come by and drop off shit the parishioners donated, and we each got something from the staff, but it wasn’t any kind of Christmas you saw on television. Even the Cratchits had more Christmas than we did.”
“Cratchits?”
“Yeah—from A Christmas Carol.”
“Oh, right. Duh.” She smiled a little, and Maverick had some hope.
“We didn’t have much Christmas because we weren’t a family. We were just a bunch of boys who didn’t have anybody. No donation dump of cheap toys and six-packs of socks makes up for that.”
Before she could start feeling sorry for him, Maverick changed direction. “When I went to bed on Christmas night, this is what I thought about. When I was grown up, I was going to have a family, and I was going to have a real tree with real presents under it and a real fireplace, and real stockings full of gifts. This is the first time I ever had it. Even at Mo and D’s, I’ve been just borrowing theirs. This is ours. Yours and mine. And next year, when the baby comes...”
He kissed her hands and got up.
“Mav?”
“Hold on a sec.” Crossing the room to the front door, he went to his kutte, hanging on the rickety coat rack, and rummaged in an interior pocket. “I was gonna wrap this, but the box is pretty enough. I got the baby something.”
She smiled. “The baby that’s the size of
a pumpkin seed? That baby?”
“The one and only.” He resumed his seat and handed her the sparkly silver box.
With a curious twist of her brow, she lifted the lid, and then she gasped. “Mav, what?”
He took it from her and lifted out the dainty sterling chain. A small, heart-shaped pendant dangled from it. “You see what it says?”
She lifted the pendant on her fingertips. “Mav, what if it’s a boy?”
“She’s a girl. Trust me.”
“But what if it’s not? I don’t know if the baby knows what it is yet. Are you going to be disappointed?”
“To have a son? Fuck no.” He grinned. “I won’t give him this, of course. Might confuse him. I’ll give him something else and love him just as much. But she’s a girl, Jen. I know it. A little girl, and I’m gonna treasure her and carry her around on a puffy pillow so she never gets hurt, and I’m gonna love you and take care of you both so good. Next year, we’ll have another stocking on the fireplace, and there will be a fuck ton of presents under the tree, and she will be perfect and sweet and not spoiled at all even though she’ll have everything she could ever want. All my life, I’ve been working for this one thing. I’m not gonna screw it up. I promise. I swear to you—we are going to have a perfect life and a perfect family, and there is nothing you will ever need to worry about. I will take care of you forever.”
He took the pendant from her and set it back in its box, with the heart front-side up. Sterling silver, engraved in elegant script, with tiny diamond chips dotting the ‘i’s.
Daddy’s Little Girl
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lying on the sofa under Maverick, illuminated only by the multihued glow of the Christmas tree, Jenny looked up into that handsome, scarred, beloved face, into those searching blue eyes, and saw a bottomless reservoir of love for her and their children, and of hope for their future. His hope was better than his reckless confidence of before. That confidence had been heedless of her or anything but what he’d wanted, and he’d dragged her along in his wake. She’d gone willingly, for the most part, but not on her own power. His hope, on the other hand—his hope saw her, heard her, needed her. She was a partner in that hope.
Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC #3) Page 33