by A. J. Downey
Little Bird looked stricken and I simply felt defeated.
Even the universe wanted to keep things a secret, so it seemed.
I raised my eyes and met Maverick’s past leather-clad bodies across the great expanse of floor, and he met my look with a somber one of his own.
Just what had they decided in there?
“You ready to go home, baby?” he called out to me and I nodded, perhaps a little too rapidly as I caught their furtive looks of pity around me.
I felt as though I was falling, spiraling, and I’d completely lost control and I hated it. Hated every moment of it.
All I wanted was to get out from under their somber looks mixed with fury. All I wanted was for the shame burning my cheeks to go away.
Anger bubbled up to take its place and I took a deep breath, breathing carefully around it. I didn’t want to make a scene. I didn’t want to be seen at all… all I wanted was to become invisible and to sleep.
I got my boots on and picked up the sandwich, wrapping it up. It was too good not to finish later.
“Night, Marisol,” Major said as I walked by and I swallowed hard giving him a curt “Night,” back.
I swept past Maverick to the back door of the club and heard him sigh and say, “Night fellas,” as I took the steps off the little back porch to the cracked sidewalk below.
“Marisol,” Maverick called gently, and I looked up. “Slow down, baby. Ain’t going anywhere without me.”
I lashed out; I couldn’t help it. I was so helpless! I had no place to channel the absolute rage.
“I don’t really know if I’m going anywhere with you, either, to be honest…” I said and I walked briskly across the street to his waiting bike.
He stood silent, staring, and I couldn’t read his expression. He took his time stepping down and crossing the road. He stopped in front of me and cupped my cheek, but his expression was frosty at best. The chill radiated from him and I almost shivered despite the summer heat.
He stroked a thumb across my lips, and I jerked back. He smirked and there was nothing playful about it.
“I’m going to give you a pass right now. We’re going to go home and we’re going to sort this out,” he said evenly, his voice pleasant but for its menacing undertone. “Don’t ever make the mistake of disrespecting me in front of the boys,” he said, and his voice lost all pretense of pleasantry at all. “I mean it, babe. I’ll drop your ass like a bad habit.”
I stared up at him, mouth dry, and tears sprang to my eyes at the thought. His expression softened, though his jaw tightened at the glassy sheen that blurred my vision.
“I’m beginning to love you,” he said, and the confession was a stark one. I sniffed and didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m so angry,” I said, shaking with it. “I don’t know what to do or how to feel. I just want to punch something.” The confession felt both good and terrifying at the same time. I stared up at him, trembling, too afraid to say the rest… I don’t want to lose you. You’re the only thing holding me together. Which is exactly what it felt like.
I wasn’t sure what to do, how to feel, or how to act. Everything I had ever done had been judged and found wanting and all I knew was that whatever I did? It was always wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong; wrong!
“We’re going to go home,” he said succinctly. “Then we’re going to do whatever you need to do to feel better for the time being. If that means I end up scratched and bloody, then so be it.”
I felt my mouth drop open in surprise and he caressed my face gently, leaning down to put his lips to mine. I closed my eyes, twin scalding lines slipping down my cheeks, the sensation in perfect counterpoint to the softness of his lips.
I reached out and seized him, hauling myself close into the shelter of his body, tongue plunging past his lips and into his mouth, punishing, demanding, desperate.
I was so sorry, for everything – for pushing him away when I needed him the most, for being so desperately afraid of everything, for being so scared of more mental and emotional anguish I would do anything and everything to avoid it up to and including causing so much more I would drown us both in it.
I was so ungodly confused, and I needed help. I knew that now. I desperately needed help getting through this chaos and discord between my heart and my head, between my past and my present to have any chance at a future but damned if I was too proud to ask. I didn’t know how to ask!
For so long, this self-reliance, basic survival shit was all I had ever known and now I was this Gordian knot of pain and there just was no absolution to be found except… except when Maverick touched me. Except when he held me close and let me breathe and took the burden of all the decision-making from my shoulders and just let me be me, like right now.
He tore his mouth from mine and ordered me gruffly but gently, “Get on the bike, Zaychik. I want to finish this at home.”
We went home. The weather had cooled significantly with the setting of the sun as it was wanting to do on the western side of the mountains. The breeze coming in off the sound, and beyond that, the Pacific, made it so everything was cooler on this side of things. I was slightly shivering by the time we pulled up behind Mav’s house and I was honestly grateful to be back here.
“Leave it,” he said when I went to bring things in from the bike.
I scowled at him and argued, “I don’t want to leave it. It just means more work later.”
“Leave. It.” He would brook no argument, but I ignored him and hefted one of the packs strapped behind my seat anyway. He cursed, something in a language I didn’t know, and marched back in my direction.
“I’m going to rail that ass against my kitchen counter,” he declared, and I raised an eyebrow.
“Better use lube,” I said defiantly.
Still, I got my way. He helped me bring the rest of the shit in and dropped it in front of the closet that held the washer and dryer.
That was honestly all I’d wanted.
Well, that, and what he did next. He grabbed me by my belt loops, my back to his front and steered me around, fetching me up against his kitchen counter as promised, pinning me with his body as he swept my wind-tangled hair over my shoulder so he could lay his lips against the side of my neck, just behind my ear.
“You want it this way?” he asked, his voice low, rough, and filled with need. “You want me to pull down these pants and fucking shove my cock in your waiting cunt balls deep?”
I lost my breath completely, my pussy giving a dull, aching, throb of yes please!
“Answer me,” he demanded, and I sighed out.
“Yes, that’s what I want.”
“You know what to say to make it stop,” he reminded me and then, with a savagery he’d never displayed before, his hands fell to undressing me in a flurry.
I went to aide him in disrobing and he gripped my wrists, planting my hands flat against the cool countertop, pressing them there for a heartbeat until I got the picture. That’s where he wanted them. That’s where they should stay.
“You know how hot it makes me when you defy me?” he demanded.
“No.” I answered him honestly as he ran his hands over my jeans-clad ass, leaning back to check me out.
“Oh, baby. It makes me so hot. It makes me want to do all sorts of bad things with you.”
I pressed my ass back into his crotch and rubbed it back and forth over the hot bulge in his jeans.
“You’re trying to distract me,” I said softly, and his hand came down on my ass with a sharp crack. I yelped and pushed back further into him.
“Is it working?” he asked as I rubbed myself against him with a sensual twist of my hips.
“Maybe,” I said, breathy, not wanting to give him an inch, but he knew he had me taking that liquid slide into arousal. Into that place I went where it didn’t matter what he pulled, what he did to me, as long as he kept the orgasms coming.
Never had I been with anyone where the sex was so dir
ty, but it made my soul feel so clean, but that was exactly as it was with Maverick.
I couldn’t exactly explain how that worked. All I knew was that I couldn’t get enough of the sensation and I wanted him inside of me so fucking bad right now.
I wanted him to drive into me so hard my hip bones cracked against the counter. I wanted bruises of his fingerprints in my hips as a lasting reminder of our passion and I couldn’t tell you if it was right or wrong, couldn’t tell you if it was healthy or not, all I could say was that I wanted it. I wanted it badly and it was probably a lot healthier to engage in rough and passionate sex that I wanted rather than to burn my whole fucking world down around me and to push the only person who was trying to help me away.
Of course, I’d started down that road back at the club, but Maverick had called me on my shit. Course corrected us here, where he was sliding my pants and chaps over my ass. Where he was kneeling on the floor behind me, where he was simultaneously pressing me against the counter – trapping me like a butterfly in a killing jar even as he ripped my panties away and thrust his tongue inside me.
God, yes; that felt good. I swear by all things that are holy that my soul left my fucking body with the first orgasm he dragged out of me at a record pace.
He left me sprawled over the countertop, chest heaving, his hand sliding up my back as he hummed satisfied.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. “Beautiful and mine.” He smacked his lips and smacked my ass, causing me to jump and writhe but I couldn’t stand up. He had his hand tangled in the back of my hair, now; his arm braced against my back, flattening me to the countertop as he thrust two fingers inside me, pressing on that spot, jerking his arm in that way that sent me from zero to sixty and had me writhing against his hold but unable to stop what was coming.
I don’t know why I resisted, other than resisting was fun and this was a game I actually wanted to lose, but I tried like hell to push up, to squirm out of his grasp, but it wasn’t happening. That feeling of being full, of impending release, that vague sensation of oh, shit! I’m going to piss myself, built and I bit my bottom lip, my cries ragged and uneven as I rose onto my toes and finally with a gush and wet splatter down my legs, I came.
Holy shit, that was intense. Like nothing I had ever felt before – and God, did I want more.
I lay limp and gasping against the countertop, unable to move, basking in the erotic glow, legs too weak, shaking like a newborn foal as Maverick braced me with a light touch at my back as he worked his pants open to fuck me.
He pressed against my opening and groaned as he sank inside of me, filling me up and out, pressing against my walls that still tingled faintly from the intensity with which he’d made me come.
I was a happy girl, melting across the countertop as he slid in and out of me at a lazy, almost sedate pace, taking his time, enjoying my body and the pleasure it gave him like a fine wine.
The only thing better than the feel of him inside of me, gliding along my wetness, pressing out against my walls all hot velvet and steel length, were the sounds he made. The appreciative moans, the sighing little groans, the whispered compliments. I lived for them, and felt so special, so cherished in this moment, I was desperate for it to never fucking end.
Chapter Nineteen
Maverick…
“Mm, yeah baby. So good…” I praised. After the second orgasm had left her devastated, had drained the fight and the anger right out of her, I’d flipped the script. I quit fucking her, which was nice – don’t get me wrong, but I wanted in. I wanted past those shifting concrete maze-like walls and I wanted to touch her soul deep. Feed her, nourish her spirit. So, I both took what I wanted and gave her my all making love to her for the first time, I think, ever for her.
She lay limp and languid across the kitchen island in front of me and I took my time, stroking in and out of her, holding her firmly, but gently, kneading her with my hands through the leather of her jacket. I stroked deep and sure, listening to her lilting moans, her panting breath, and I don’t think I’d ever felt so virile. I don’t think I’d ever felt like more of a man than when I made her like this where she forgot her past, lost herself in the sensation of me, and let her burdens go.
When we were like this, she let me handle things and that made everything alright in my book, at least for the time being. I had big shoulders. I could be her Atlas. I wanted to be her Atlas. It was time someone else carried the world on their shoulders for her. I would be happy to be that man, she just had to trust me; had to let me in.
I took my time with her, let myself relax and enjoy this, but all good things must come to an end and what a spectacular end it was. I came in this weird dichotomy of gentle, but also so hard I saw stars. Grunting, barely pulling out in time – which was bullshit, and I knew it. I needed to take much more care than I was – but fuck she felt so damn good skin on skin.
I don’t care what anybody said. The feel of her body wrapped tight around mine just wasn’t the same through the barrier, however thin, that was a condom.
I slipped out of her, coming in a hot wash all over her ass, and fuck that was hot. I didn’t care about the mess. She’d already squirted all over me, herself, and the floor and fuck if that hadn’t been hotter than hell, too.
I curved my arms beneath her and bowed over her back, pressing myself against her, sandwiching her between me and the cool stone of the countertop. I lay atop her body and closed my eyes, willing my breath to still, feeling my heartbeat sync up with hers.
It was an intimacy I wasn’t prone to allow myself with anyone but her.
“You okay?” I asked gently when we’d been there a time, breaths returned, quiet and still.
“Mm-hmm,” she murmured in a satisfied purr.
I smiled, smugly satisfied and stood, bringing her with me saying softly, “Up you go. Let’s get cleaned up and make our way to the bedroom.”
I wanted us nude, cleaned up, and comfortably reclined in my bed. I made short work of getting us both undressed right there in the kitchen. Sliding open the slatted doors concealing the washer and dryer and leaving things in a pile in front of the machines to sort and get washed in the morning.
Fuck the bags. More than half the shit in them needed sorted and washed too, and they could wait.
I guided her from behind, arms around her waist, my chest pressed to her back in an awkward gait through the house to the bathroom and drew us a bath. Shower would have been faster, sure, but I wanted to soak some of the aches from the long trip spent too long in the same position.
When we were settled, her in front of me, music playing lightly, her body lax against mine, I felt a contentment I didn’t even know could exist.
It was magical. The world fallen away until she and I were the only two people to exist. Too fuckin’ good to be true, so of course I had to scrape some of the shine off the moment with some reality.
“You know how I can find your uncle?”
She stiffened in the water before me and asked, a thread of alarm in her voice, “Why would you want to do that?”
“You know why,” I said calmly.
She hugged my arms around her a little tighter and was silent for a time.
“If you do anything to him, you’ll alienate the only family I have left,” she said finally, almost so quietly, I didn’t hear her. I did hear the deep melancholy in her voice, the utter despair and I shook my head slowly.
“Those people may be blood, but they’re not your family, baby.” We’re your family now… I thought to myself, but I didn’t want to overburden her, tax her poor heart and mind any more than they already were.
“What if I don’t want you to do anything?” she asked, but there was a note in her voice, a quality that said she was just asking that. In all reality, she didn’t know what she wanted, and that was okay.
“I think we’re past that now, darlin.’ There comes a point a man has to answer for what he’s done.”
“Isn’t that the job for the system?”
she asked.
“System had its chance and failed you,” I reminded her. “I won’t.”
She sighed and shifted uncomfortably saying, “Can we please just not talk about it now?” and the pleading in her voice made me wish to give her anything, anything she asked for… so I could curb it tonight but this wasn’t going to go away – not any time soon.
This discussion would be over when her perv of a kiddie-diddling uncle was in the ground.
I wish I could say I let it go completely then, but I couldn’t. I got us out of the bath and Marisol wrapped in a large towel from the warmer. I got us both tucked into bed, my woman lying draped artfully over my body, a warm and comforting weight against my chest, her leg draped over mine, my arm around her and my free hand caressing up and down the silky skin of her outer thigh as I stared into the dark in thought until I was too exhausted to think.
I wanted my retribution to be swift, but this was delicate. I didn’t want to cause a rift with my woman, and she was mine. I just needed to wait until she caught up to that fact. She was behind on the curve and was it any wonder?
I slept, and it was a deep sleep, waking up the next morning to muffled sounds coming from the kitchen, the hiss and spray of the washer running, and the click and clack of various things being moved around.
I got up and went out to her, leaning a shoulder against the archway, watching her move for a second as she pulled things from bags and sorted clothes into piles. Whites, darks, coloreds… the darks pile quite a bit larger than the rest.
“Oh! Dios mío! You scared the shit out of me!” She’d jumped, snapping her knees together beneath my one white button-down shirt I kept for court appearances, the sleeves rolled back over her slender wrists, the tails dragging tantalizingly across her long golden legs just above mid-thigh, perky tits pressing out against the thin material, her nipples a slightly darker shade against the fabric, hinting at the possibilities of my mouth suckling them through the cloth.
