Ride Rough

by Laura Kaye

  “Fuck that,” Phoenix said, giving him a look. “Like I can’t do something nice for your woman?”

  The words made desire explode inside Mav’s chest. Desire for Alexa to be his, once and for all. “She’s not mine. And you’re giving her a goddamned house, Phoenix. I’d say that’s already above and beyond.”

  “Coulda fooled me.” He smirked and waved his hand. “Anyway, your money’s no good to me, and neither is hers.” A long moment of silence as Phoenix tugged back more of the ruined linoleum to reveal water stains and more spots of mold.

  “Can’t claim someone who’s not ready to be claimed,” Maverick finally said in a low voice. “Things are too up in the air.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But she looks at you like you hung the fucking moon for her, so maybe she’s more ready than you think.” He washed his hands.

  Mav couldn’t entertain that possibility, even with everything that’d happened the past few days. Not yet. So he ignored Phoenix’s observation even though it kinda made him want to cheer. “Well, how about I do those rival wheels you and I talked about for your bike. And maybe throw in some custom chrome accents?”

  The grin made the deep scar on the side of Phoenix’s eye seem less severe. The result of a knife fight back when he’d been a prospect. “Now you’re just turning me on.”

  Chuckling, Mav rolled his eyes. “Bring your ride around any time.”

  “Hey, there you are,” Alexa said, leaning against the doorjamb.

  “How’s she doing?” Maverick asked. He couldn’t help noticing how stressed Al looked. It was in her eyes and the way she hugged herself.

  “Honestly? Better than I would’ve expected given how things started out. She adores the big kitchen and den, so I think that won her over even more.” She smiled at Phoenix. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You already thanked me. We’re good,” he said, moving toward the door. “Actually, you can thank me.” He slipped behind her and whispered something in her ear.

  Alexa’s cheeks went pink even as she nodded.

  “What the hell was that?” Maverick asked. With Phoenix, you never knew what he might be up to. When she didn’t answer right away, he stepped right up to her, pinning her back to the molding. “Tell me.”

  She peered up at him from under her lashes. “He said . . . that me taking care of you was the only thanks he needed.”

  Irritation flashed through Mav. “Nosy fucker. Ignore him. You don’t need that kind of—”

  “No, he’s right,” Alexa said, grabbing the edges of his cut in her fists. “You’re doing so much for me. I want to be there for you, too. I just—”

  “What?” he asked, needing to hear what she had to say like he needed his next breath.

  “I just need more time.”

  He probably should’ve accepted it at that, but something made him push. “And then?”

  She swallowed thickly. “And then . . . we’ll see if . . . if you think you can forgive me and . . .” She gave a little, uncertain shrug. “. . . whether you maybe want to try again.”

  He cupped her face as triumph surged through him and then he leaned down so he could look at her eye to eye. “I want.”

  Her eyes went glassy as she whispered, “You do? After everything? Because I wouldn’t blame you—”

  “I. Fucking. Want.” He didn’t try to restrain a bit of the fierceness roughening up his voice. He wanted her to know it. To believe it. To feel it down deep. “You. Us. A future. Our history, even the fucked-up parts. All of it. Understand?”

  “Yes,” she said on a fast nod, her eyes suddenly brimming with unshed tears.

  He caught the wetness with his thumbs. “Don’t cry, baby. And don’t think you’re the only one who has things to apologize for. Because I told you I have regrets, too.”

  “God, Mav—”

  “Alexa?” her mother called from the living room. “Are you ready to go?”

  Looking into Alexa’s eyes, Maverick loved the hope and affection he saw there. “We’ll finish this another time.”

  “Okay,” she said. And then she pushed up on her tiptoes and threw her arms around him, holding him so tight he could barely breathe. So much unspoken emotion rolled off of her, and it fucking slayed him.

  And made him feel hopeful for the first time in a long damn time.

  Alexa was going to be his again. Sooner or fucking later. And nothing was going to keep them apart this time.

  CHAPTER 23

  Want to help me give the cat a bath?” Alexa asked, her face playfully hopeful. Wearing a long black shirt of his, her hair still mussed from sleep, she looked beautiful standing barefoot in the sunlight spilling into his kitchen the next morning.

  Leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee in hand, Maverick smirked. “If that’s code for getting between your legs, sign me up.”

  Throwing her head back, Alexa laughed out loud. “Like we need special code for that.”

  He grinned around another sip. “Good to know.”

  She rolled her eyes, but it was clear she was enjoying the conversation every bit as much as him. And he was glad after the day she’d had yesterday. After seemingly doing so well at her new place, her mother had fallen into another round of tears when they took her home. They’d ended up being there until nearly nine o’clock, and Alexa had been exhausted by the time they got back here.

  “I mean, the actual cat,” Alexa said, her eyebrow arched. “Not the pussy. Maybe later, though . . .”

  Maverick had to adjust himself. “You say shit like that you give me ideas of what to do with that mouth.”

  Laughing, she disappeared down the hall. The water came on in the bathroom. And then he heard the low murmur of her talking to Lucy. And it occurred to him how much he liked not being here alone. He loved the sounds of Alexa moving around his house. He loved seeing her things sitting with his on the counter. He loved her weird sweater-wearing cat greeting them at the door or jumping up in the bed when they woke up. And it made him realize how much he’d changed in the past five years. How much he valued things now that he’d never thought all that important before—big things like commitment and small things like the sounds of companionship.

  Curious, he wandered down the hallway to find Alexa kneeling next to the tub, the cat in her arms, the skull sweater discarded on the counter. Lucy wasn’t bolting but she also wasn’t looking thrilled with the plan. “She likes baths?”

  Alexa chuckled. “She likes it once she’s in, but she always gets tense before.”

  “And why exactly are you torturing—I mean, bathing Lucy?”

  Smiling up at him, Alexa shook her head. “Being hairless means her body has no way to absorb the oil from her skin or from when she grooms herself, so she has to be washed pretty regularly. It’s worth it for how awesome she is, though. Plus, she’s so cute when she plays in the water that I can barely stand it.” She pressed her face to the cat’s. “You ready, baby?” She leaned over the tub and slowly lowered Lucy in, her arms still cradling the thin, little body as it submerged.

  The cat scrambled for a moment, and Maverick prepared to try to block her if she made a break for it, but Alexa just held her there until the animal visibly relaxed.

  As he watched, Lucy pushed out of Al’s hold and walked a circle through the tub’s water. “I thought cats weren’t supposed to like water?”

  Alexa chuckled. “Just wait.”

  “For what?” he asked, just as Lucy plopped down on her butt, sat up, and pawed at the top of the water like she was playing the drums. Ten seconds, twenty, thirty, she pawed and pawed, sending up little splashes and shaking her head when they hit her in the face. Grinning, he crouched beside the tub. Alexa met his gaze for a moment, and the happiness in her eyes as she looked at him reached all the way inside him. And grasped hold.

  Lucy paced the tub again, stopping to bat at the faucet, the wall-mounted soap dish, and the shower curtain. Alexa grabbed a bag at her side that Mav hadn’t noticed a
nd handed it to him. “Line these up on the edge.”

  He reached inside and found a rubber ducky, a plastic dog, a squeaky mouse that made Lucy turn and look, and a couple of other small toys. “You have bath toys for your cat?” he asked with an arched brow.

  “She’s my baby,” she said, laughing.

  One by one, he lined them up as Lucy watched. For a moment, the cat just looked at them. And then she attacked, batting them into the water one at a time like a slugger aiming for the back wall, until they were all floating in the water. And then she pounced on them there again and again.

  Maverick couldn’t help but chuckle. Because Attack Cat was pretty awesome.

  Alexa fished them out once more and together they lined them up. Lucy took them all down a second time until they were both laughing at her antics.

  “This is fucking hilarious,” Maverick said, gathering the toys and lining them up again.

  Lucy didn’t wait. She swung for the rubber ducky, knocking it out of the tub and into Maverick’s lap.

  “This is the coolest cat that ever lived,” he said, grinning like an idiot as he replaced the duck on the tub’s edge.

  “See? I told you.” Alexa grinned as Lucy knocked the toy into the water and pounced on it, sending up a big spray of water that got both of them. Alexa let out a little shriek, a belly laugh spilling out of her.

  Finally, Al actually got down to the business of washing Lucy, and then she was scooping the cat out and wrapping her in a big towel. “Will you hold her while I do her ears and nails?”

  Mav took the bundle into his arms and peered down at the little wet head. This was not an attractive creature by any stretch of the imagination, but now he found that to be part of her appeal. Lucy was kinda like the Ravens—rough-looking on the outside but full of awesome. He grinned at the thought.

  “What is that smile for?” Alexa asked as she swiped Q-tips through Lucy’s giant ears and, one by one, clipped the cat’s nails.

  “Was just thinking that Lucy could totally be the club’s mascot. You need a biker name, though,” he said, hugging Lucy a little tighter to his chest as she tensed at the clipping. “‘Lucy’ is cute and all but it doesn’t really fit our vibe. Or the sweater I bought you. Maybe Lucky or Bones or . . . Slugger. Right?” The cat purred and stared at him. “You like that idea, don’t you? Yes, you do, kittykitty.”

  “You are totally cooing at my cat right now.”

  “Am not.”

  “It’s turning me on.”

  “I’m totally cooing at your cat.”

  Alexa laughed, peering up at him with so much affection. “When you take care of something I care about, you take care of me. It means a lot, Mav.”

  He handed the cat back and watched as Alexa gave her a rub with the towel and finally set her free. Lucy curled against his leg before wandering out of the bathroom.

  He hiked Alexa up to sit on the counter. “It’s easy when I care about you so fucking much,” he said in a low voice.

  “Then I’m the lucky one.”

  Her words heated his blood and set off a warm, expansive pressure in his chest. His hand cupped her neck as he fit himself in tighter between her thighs. His phone buzzed in his back pocket, but Maverick ignored the fuck out of it as he leaned in and claimed her mouth. Once, twice. “Enjoyed washing your kitty.”

  She grinned into the kiss, her arms coming around him. “I enjoyed having my kitty washed.”

  He couldn’t help smiling, too. His tongue traced her lips and slipped inside. Guiding her head, he took more, went deeper.

  His phone buzzed again.

  “Should you check that?” she asked, pulling back, her face so alive with happiness that he just wanted to hide from the world and hold them in this moment. And smash the phone into a million pieces.

  “Probably.” On a sigh, he pulled the cell from his back pocket to find two missed calls from Caine. Which meant something was up, because the guy never called anyone to shoot the shit. “It was Caine. Better see what—”

  The phone rang in his hand, Caine’s name on the screen.

  “Caine, man. What’s—”

  “Cops are here. Arresting Dare and Jagger. Come now.”

  “On my way,” Maverick said, anger and outrage welling up inside him. What the actual fuck?

  “What’s the matter?” Alexa said, all that happiness bleeding out of her expression.

  “Dare and Jagger are being arrested,” he said, already moving from the bathroom toward the kitchen table, where his cut hung over the back of a chair. “Don’t know why. But I’m sure as hell going to find out because this is fucking bullshit.”

  “I’ll be thirty seconds,” Alexa said, running to her room.

  Mav jammed his feet into his boots, his thoughts racing. What the hell could they be accused of? For being a Raven, Jagger tended to go out of the way to keep his nose clean because so much of the business at the track rode on his shoulders. And Dare was just a little over a week out of the hospital and had hardly left the clubhouse except for the ride to Baltimore . . .

  Ice crawled through Mav’s blood. Could that be it? But, if so, something didn’t add up, because if the attack on the Iron Cross was at the bottom of this, Dare and Jagger wouldn’t be the only ones getting hauled in. Maverick couldn’t begin to figure it out, except his gut screamed that something wasn’t right.

  Alexa was good to her word, rushing back in a little navy blue cotton dress and a pair of sandals, no makeup, her hair in a messy knot. Beautiful, especially for the concern she wore on her face. For his brothers.

  They jogged out to his bike, and she slipped her hand into his. “I’m sorry.”

  He gave a tight nod, glad to have her at his side. He drove more aggressively than he otherwise might’ve, but made it in time to see that goddamned motherfucker Davis shoving a cuffed Jagger into the back of his squad car. Sheriff Martin was there, too, clearly trying to keep Phoenix, Caine, and a few others from losing their shit and earning some one-way tickets to a holding cell.

  “I’ll be right behind you, D,” Caine called out just as Davis grabbed his cousin’s injured shoulder and shoved him toward the car. Dare grimaced, and Maverick saw red.

  Mav charged, Martin catching him about the shoulders. “He’s injured, you fucking asshole,” Mav yelled. Davis smirked and pushed Dare into the backseat.

  “Don’t give him the satisfaction, Maverick. I need you to take care of shit here.” Dare nailed him with a hard stare just before the door shut between them.

  “What the hell happened?” Mav looked to Caine and the others, stepping back from the car as Davis started it up.

  Caine’s expression was set in a lethal scowl that was all rage and hard angles. “Someone dumped a shit-ton of tires and oil out by the drag strip. And then Davis supposedly got an anonymous tip reporting it. Now Dare and Jagger have been charged with multiple counts of illegal dumping.”

  Head spinning, Mav watched as Davis drove away. The Raven Riders hadn’t used the quarter-mile strip where they did occasional car and bike drag races since last summer. This made no goddamned sense. He looked from Caine to Sheriff Martin and back again. “You know Jagger Locke. You know this is bullshit. We’ve got a fucking licensing inspection tomorrow, and the drag strip is part of that. If we’d dumped the shit, why would we leave it where the inspector might find it? And Dare’s been laid up for over a week. Jesus Christ, Martin, you were the one who responded to his shooting. You know he hasn’t been hauling anything around.”

  Martin held up his hands, already nodding. Mav and Dare went way back with Henry Martin, all the way back to high school. Though he’d been a hotshot football player and they were pretty much the same miscreants they were now. “I hear you, Maverick. But it’s out of my hands. I’ll help where I can but what Dare and Jagger need most now is a lawyer.”

  “And a private detective,” Caine said, his voice like ice.

  “Yeah,” Maverick said. “Because someone knows who was behind t
his trumped-up bullshit.”

  “I’m sorry,” Haven said. “But why would illegal dumping cause . . . all this anyway?”

  Martin gave her a sympathetic look. “It carries big penalties in Maryland. Fines and jail time.” Haven paled.

  Maverick looked back to Martin. “Can you find anything out about this supposed anonymous tipper?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Martin said, covering his short, wavy brown hair with a sheriff’s office baseball cap. “It’s odd that Davis didn’t call for backup in investigating the tip until after he’d found the dump site. He wouldn’t normally risk coming on to your property by himself.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess he was feeling confident of what he’d find. Which in and of itself is fucking fishy,” Caine said.

  “Like maybe he already knew,” Phoenix said. Nods all around. “And the drag strip is far enough from the clubhouse and close enough to the highway for someone to get in and out quick without any of us noticing. Especially if they did it in the middle of the night.”

  Maverick nodded, Phoenix’s words sounding more and more like the truth of it. Someone planted this shit to cause trouble for them, maybe even keep them from getting their license renewed . . .

  Sonofafuckingbitch.

  “The timing of this . . . someone knew about the inspection,” Maverick said, his mind racing through the possibilities. And landing on one that made his blood boil.

  “Oh, God,” Alexa said from behind him.

  Mav turned to find her holding a shaken-up Haven’s hand, Cora on Haven’s other side with an arm around her.

  Alexa’s face was sheet-white. “Grant,” she whispered, giving voice to the same conclusion Maverick had just made. “Grant would be able to find that out. He would . . .” She shook her head, her eyes wide and panicked.

  “Christ,” Maverick said, his gaze swinging back to Martin. “She’s right and you know it.”