The juke was still playing: Loretta Lynn admonishing her man not to come home a’drinkin’ with lovin’ on his mind. That had to be Jenny’s touch—she loved her good ol’ fashioned country music.
But Jesus, she hated this bar.
Nothing about the place had changed in four years—or, for that matter, in twenty. It was still the same old beer-soaked dive he’d remembered, with the mismatched barstools, the rickety tables and chairs, the bubble-tube Wurlitzer 45 and the row of pin-up pinball machines along the back. Behind the bar were three shelves full of booze and two taps: Budweiser and Busch. No swishy imports or light beers on tap here.
Sitting at the end of the bar, a different bar, but still almost exactly as in his fantasy of the night before, was Jenny Wagner. Love of his life and mother of his child. She was doing some kind of paperwork. As in his fantasy, she turned.
“Sorry, we’re cl—” the sentence died abruptly as she faced him and realized who he was.
Maverick stopped, ten feet away yet. In his fantasy, anger had given way to love on her face. In reality, irritation at somebody coming in after hours gave way to shock. They faced each other while Loretta finished her song and the juke went quiet.
God, look at her. So fucking beautiful. Her dark hair had gotten really long; it lay over her shoulders and covered her breasts. She was slim, maybe more than he remembered. She wore jeans and a snug top that bared her shoulders and the top half of her back, and showed deep cleavage in front. Maverick’s cock swelled and ached.
“Jenny?” He’d wanted to sound strong and firm, but her name came from his mouth as a plea.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she breathed, barely loud enough to travel the distance between them.
“Where else would I be? I love you.”
God, he loved her so fucking much. Even now, even after she’d turned her back in anger he hadn’t deserved, and left him to rot in prison without any hope, even after she’d refused him his daughter, he loved her.
She’d thought he hadn’t said those words often enough, and when he promised he’d say them more, at least once every day, she’d started a habit of keeping count. What he wanted most right now, more than anything else in the world, was to hear her say the words, That’s one.
March 1993
“That’s one.”
Maverick looked up from Jenny’s neck, where he’d been nibbling at the sensitive, fragrant skin below her ear. “One? Come on, I said it this morning.”
“It doesn’t count if you say it when you’re coming.” She grinned and lightly flicked his nose. “Especially not if I’m swallowing at the time.”
“But I mean it then, too. Sincerely.”
“You would sincerely love a glory hole while you were getting your rocks off. Doesn’t count.”
He rolled his eyes but didn’t protest that statement. He loved the fuck out of her, and she damn well knew it.
“Things’re more precious when they’re rare, you know. Ever think about that?” He sucked on her lobe, pushing his tongue through the little hoop of her earring.
She sighed and arched her naked body against his, and her voice took on a sultry tone, even as her gentle hectoring continued. “You’re just lazy. I’m cooking your whole kid in here. The least you could do is throw me a few words every now and then.”
He loved her, and the baby she was making for them. She needed the words, she said them to him all the time, so he would give them to her as often as she needed them. It was indeed the least he could do.
He skimmed his hand over her gently rounding belly. Four months along, she was just starting to look a little pregnant. His kid was in there. Next doctor visit, they’d get an ultrasound and maybe know what flavor she was cooking. Maverick just wanted a healthy kid, but he was pretty sure they were having a girl. He figured most guys wanted a son, and sure, he did, too, but the thought of a baby girl, looking at him the way Dane’s girls looked at their dad? Damn. Yeah, he wanted that.
Moving down from her neck, he sucked on her collarbone, then licked over the flaming heart tattoo at the notch between her collarbone and her shoulder. He’d marked her as soon as they’d found out about the baby—and then she’d read in one of her trove of baby books that she shouldn’t have gotten ink while she was pregnant, and she’d stressed out for weeks, until they’d heard a heartbeat and the doctor had told her to relax.
As he shifted farther downward, he murmured, “That all you want from me, babe? Just a few words?”
She moaned, arching her back to present her breasts as she spread her legs wide. “I love you. I’ll take anything you give me.”
“That’s...” he’d kind of lost count.
“Four. Mav, make me feel good.”
He took the invitation, pushing his hand down her belly and between her legs, over her trim, dark bush, and sucked her tit into his mouth as he slid two fingers inside her. At her writhing gasp, Maverick delved deep and sucked hard, and her nails raked up his back with such force that he broke from her breast with a hiss.
“Should’ve tied you up.”
With her brilliant eyes locked on his, Jenny reached both hands back and grabbed onto their slatted headboard. “Do what you want with me,” she purred, her face shining with trust and love.
“Oh, babe. There is so much I want. I love you so goddamn hard.”
“That’s two,” she whispered and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Where else would I be? I love you.”
Jenny’s heart raced and leapt, like it was trying to claw its way to freedom. Maverick stood right there, not ten feet away. She wasn’t ready.
She’d known he would be released today, and she’d spent most of the day in a jittery state of watchfulness, expecting him to do exactly what he was doing now: pop up right in front of her. But then the hours had waned, and the night had gone quiet. The bar had emptied, and she’d begun to believe that he was going to do what she’d asked. What she’d demanded—leave her and Kelsey alone.
It was what she’d demanded, but now, with him standing there, telling her he loved her, she admitted to herself the thing she’d refused to acknowledge all these years: it wasn’t what she wanted. She still loved him; she’d still harbored a tiny, frail, fluttering hope.
Things were so much more complicated than that. Kelsey didn’t know about him, not in any concrete sense. She knew her father was ‘not here,’ and she hadn’t yet asked any more incisive questions. As precocious as she was, as curious and insistent about answers, she’d so far been content to be told that not every family had a mommy and a daddy.
Now her daddy was here. Her father, at any rate. No—her daddy. Jenny couldn’t, wouldn’t pretend that Maverick didn’t want to be his daughter’s daddy. He’d wanted that since they’d been sitting on the side of the tub, staring at the test stick. He’d barely blinked before he’d asked her to keep the baby, before he’d committed to their family wholeheartedly—this big, bad biker, who’d spent great chunks of his free time punching people in the face, who rode and drank and fought and loved and fucked hard, had turned into a squishy marshmallow at the thought of having a child.
Things were so much more complicated than that now. It was more than Kelsey. It was her father, too. What Maverick had made of him. What he’d made of her life. He’d ruined it and left her in the rubble, alone but for their daughter and what was left of her father. He’d left her to raise their little girl on her own and to care for a man she’d been trying to escape.
She’d told him no. Again and again, throughout their relationship, she’d told him to stay out of the mess that was her relationship with her father. But he’d always believed he’d known better, that it had been on him to handle it his way, since she wouldn’t do what he’d thought she should. He’d thought her way was weak, that she was weak, and he’d done what he wanted and then left her on her own.
But he’d been wrong—she was strong. She was still standing, and she’d gotten
through these years on her own.
And now here he was. Saying the words she’d once had to cajole out of him.
He was changed. He’d always been fit and cut; he’d been a professional boxer and had continued to fight recreationally afterward, and he’d spent a lot of time working out. But now he was noticeably bigger, even more muscular. His plain black t-shirt strained under the swell of his body. But he seemed leaner, too. His jeans hung low and loose, almost as low as a lot of younger men wore their jeans now. His thick black leather belt—she’d bought him that belt, with its sterling silver buckle—cut across his hips.
More than anything else, his face had changed. There was a kiss of grey in his stubble, and his nose bulged oddly at its center, like it had been broken repeatedly and inexpertly reset each time. Scars bisected both eyebrows, and a thick scar hooked around his left eye, which didn’t open quite as much as his right. His left ear was misshapen—more than it had been before. Its top was thick and tipped out from his skull noticeably.
His dark hair was shorter—almost shorn, with just a skim of stubble wrapped over his skull. There was grey in that, too. He was only thirty-four; that seemed young to be going grey.
Prison had aged Maverick severely.
During the past four years, Jenny had thought about him often, but she’d been careful to wrap her anger around her like a suit of armor first, to protect herself from despair. She hadn’t allowed herself to think long about what his life was like. She’d done what he’d always said was the way to get through: ‘head down, shoulder to the day.’ She’d kept her mind on getting through each day of her own life, of her daughter’s. Of her father’s.
Now, seeing the ravages of prison life carved into his face, Jenny knew deep guilt. She had abandoned him, too.
An odd, choked noise came up her throat and out of her mouth, and she put her hand over her lips to prevent any more of them from following. When he moved, she realized that that sound had been the first she’d made since he’d said the words I love you.
He strode toward her, his hands—oh, his poor hands—came up and cupped her face, displacing her own from her mouth, and before she could take even one breath, his lips were on hers, fierce and desperate, and his tongue plunged deep.
She was overwhelmed, beyond resistance. He’d always overwhelmed her, pushed her toward new places, new sensations, bigger feelings than she could process, but this was different. This was four years of anger that had crystallized into hatred suddenly blowing apart, sending shards all through her. This was pain and despair and loss and fear slicing through every part of her. And love. God, so much love. Oh God.
Her hands hooked over his forearms—so warm and strong and familiar—and she kissed him back, rolling her tongue over his. He grunted and shoved his hands to the back of her head, grabbing fistfuls of her hair. His breathing was loud and frantic.
In four years, no one had touched her like this. Her life had been consumed by Kelsey and by her father and by this fucking hole of a bar, and she’d never spent a moment of these years in any other way. Her father’s nurses and the regulars at the bar were the closest things she had to friends.
Maverick had been the last man to touch her, and the only one who’d ever mattered.
The scruff of his almost-beard dragged at her skin, made it burn and tingle, and she pushed closer, wanting more. Letting go of his arms, she circled his body and caught her hands in his t-shirt, grasping for hold against the snug pull of the cotton across his back.
He grunted again and dropped his hands from her hair to grab her hips. He lifted her from the stool she still sat on, and, following his lead, she hooked her legs around his hips as he slammed their bodies together. The thick, granite-hard ridge of his cock pressed between her legs, digging the seam of her jeans into her clit, and she cried out into his mouth.
All at once, he turned to stone, still clutching her, keeping them pressed as tightly together as their clothes would allow. Even his tongue went still and receded from her mouth. He groaned, his hands clenched, driving his fingers into the meat of her hips, and Jenny felt a throbbing between her legs that was more than her own body’s need.
He’d come. She realized that even before his body sagged and he set her back on the stool.
“Fuck,” he muttered shakily and let her go. “Son of a bitch. Goddammit.” In a burst of temper, he shoved at the papers she’d been working on, and they scattered over the bar and fluttered to the floor behind it.
She was on the verge of saying it was okay, which was nonsense considering she had no clue if any part of anything that was happening was okay, when he stalked away without another word, toward the bathroom.
Quivering and breathless, Jenny slid woozily off the stool and collected the strewn papers—vendor receipts, inventory tallies, and the beginnings of a restocking list. She shoved them in the drawer under the register and went to lock up and turn out the sign. She still had to close out the register and do her usual closing work, but that was obviously going to have to wait a few minutes.
Maverick was back.
Jenny tried to think, but her mind and body were full of noise. And need. And...
Maverick was back.
She poured herself a finger of Jack, and poured a couple for him as well. She had just finished hers when he came back from the bathroom. When she nudged the glass toward him, he picked it up and swallowed it down at once.
He set the empty glass on the bar, and they stared at each other.
Jenny couldn’t stand it. Though she didn’t know how to make sense, she needed something to fill the silence. “Mav—”
“I need back in, Jen. I’m so pissed at you, and you’ve made it fucking clear you don’t want me. Believe me, I got the fucking memo. I feel like a goddamn pussy for saying it, but I don’t know what this is out here, or who I am. I can’t do this on my own. The club’s not enough. I need you. I need...” His voice caught, and Jenny’s heart broke. “I need Kelsey.”
She wanted to say yes. For all her efforts to keep her anger stoked to the heat of hatred, she wanted him back. But it wasn’t that easy. “It’s not that easy.”
“You’ve got somebody.” He said the words as if he were handing out a death sentence, but she didn’t know whose.
“No. There’s nobody. There hasn’t been anybody.”
Something in his face changed, softened. “Then why?”
“She...” Jenny stopped, afraid to say it. Swallowing hard, she made the words happen. “She doesn’t know about you.”
His head dropped. There was a jagged scar across his crown. He’d worn his hair longer when they were together, so she’d never seen his scalp, but she could tell that this scar was one he’d gotten in the past four years. She wondered how it had happened.
When he looked up again, the blue of his eyes seemed deeper. “Nothing?”
“No. She hasn’t asked much yet, and I haven’t told her.”
“What did I do to make you hate me so goddamn much?”
She didn’t hate him; that had been a lie she’d told herself because it had given her energy to get through her life. She understood that now. “You know what.”
“I protected you. Jesus Christ, Jen. You think he ever would have stopped? Why would he—you let him go at you and apologize, over and over in a cycle for your whole life.”
That day came roaring back to the foreground of her consciousness, and with it the anger she’d gotten so comfortable with reclaimed its central place in her heart. “He did it because I was breaking away from him. I was done with him. And now I never will be. You didn’t listen to what I wanted, what I needed, you didn’t even let me get the words out, and then you left me, and I was alone with that man and a new baby. You told me we’d make a great family, and then you tore it all apart before she was even here. That’s what you did.”
She was shaking again. When she poured more Jack into her glass, the neck of the bottle rattled on the rim. She poured some for Maverick, too.
“I was protecting you,” he said again before he drank his whiskey.
“You were doing what you wanted, without listening to me. What you always do.”
“I remember that day, too, Jen. It’s burned into my fucking brain. I remember you saying that you provoked him. That’s bullshit victim talk. Why should I have listened to that?”
“Because you said you loved me, and I was telling you what I wanted to do with my own father. What I needed. If you loved me, that should have mattered.”
His hands clenched the edge of the bar, and he spoke in careful, measured syllables. “I let him threaten you. I let him grab you and leave a damn bruise on your arm. I didn’t do shit about that because you said you had to handle it yourself. I fucking hated it, but I didn’t go for him. I brought you to me instead. But then he hit you while you had our kid inside you. My kid, while you were huge with her. It wasn’t just you he hurt. I’ll never sit back when somebody goes at my kid. And I’ll never sit back when somebody goes at my woman. Not ever again.”
“If you’d listened to me, if you’d waited even one minute to hear what I had to say, I would have told you that I was done with him. It was over. If you’d heard that and let it be, we could have been together all this time. Raising our little girl together. The family you promised me.”
Maverick shook his head. “I hate that I missed all this time. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t been torn up inside with missing you and her. I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t here with you. But I don’t for a second regret what I did to that piece of shit old man of yours. Only thing I regret is he’s still breathing at all.”
Jenny regretted that, too. It made her feel guilty to wish her father dead, especially in his helpless state now, but she did. The pendulum of ambivalence she’d felt for him for most of her life—love and fear, guilt and hate, swinging ceaselessly back and forth—had settled into resignation. She felt nothing for him but the weight of his burden—and that vestige of guilt, the knowledge that a truly good person would have more compassion and forgiveness for such a compromised soul.
Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC #3) Page 5
