38. Maverick
38
Maverick
I watched her. A vision of raw fucking desire. We were christening the club for the first goddamn time—her breath coming in sharp little gasps, her body arching, nipples tight, skin covered in goosebumps. Mine. Every inch of her. The gleam in her eyes was all fire, all euphoria—
Until it wasn’t.
The fire flickered. Dimmed. Then fucking snuffed out like a candle in the wind.
“Fuck.” My voice came out hoarse, wrong.
And then she went limp. Head lolling back. Eyes rolling. Gone. My heart stopped.
“Sophie?”
I didn’t fucking move. Couldn’t. My entire body locked up in pure, paralyzing horror. For the first time in my goddamn life, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. I was frozen, staring at her like some fucking statue carved out of fear. Until instinct slammed into me, and suddenly, I was ripping at the cuffs binding her wrists, my hands fumbling like they didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. The cuffs clattered to the floor, but I barely heard them. I caught her before she could slump forward, cradling her naked body against my chest. Dead weight. Too still. Too fucking still.
“Jesus Christ, baby, no…”
I sank to the ground, her body in my lap, my fingers shaking as I freed her ankles. My mind was racing, screaming, fucking spiraling into the kind of terror I didn’t know how to handle. Had I pushed her too far? Why the fuck didn’t she use her safe word?
That thought alone wrecked me.
I pressed my fingers to her throat, holding my breath like my entire world depended on it. And maybe it did. Maybe she was my whole fucking world, and I made I'd just lost her.
A pulse. Weak. But there.
“Thank fuck.” The relief was brief, fleeting—her eyes still weren’t opening. I yanked my discarded shirt off the floor and pulled it over her, covering her up, hoping that warming her up would fix whatever the fuck just happened. And what the hell had just happened?
“Paulie!” My voice was a fucking bark, already charging toward the door where my security was posted, Sophie tight in my arms. “Call Paulie! Tell him to get the doctor. Now! It’s Sophie!”
That was all I could manage.
They sprang into action, but I didn’t wait. I was already moving, already bolting through the corridors, past the confused stares, past the part of my brain that was still trying to convince me this wasn’t actually fucking happening.
I got her to the suite, barely registering my own hands as I laid her down on the bed. I had taken so many fucking hits in my life —from my father, my brothers, my enemies, from this fucked-up world I called my own. But none of it suffocated me like this.
“Come on, Soph. Wake up for me, baby .” My voice barely worked, but I tucked her in, brushing a strand of hair from her face.
She wasn’t supposed to look like this.
Too pale. Too fragile.
I forced a breath in, forced myself to think, to keep it together. But every fucking second that passed felt like an eternity. And that’s when I realized… I was lost without her. The only part of my life that felt fucking right. Her. Whether she was beside me or not, she was it.
The roles, the games, the world we played in? None of it meant a goddamn thing if she wasn’t by my side for real.
“Damn it, Sophie.” My voice cracked. “I love you. Don’t you dare fucking leave me.”
Maybe it was the first time I’d ever said those words in my life—not like my parents ever did.
But I meant them. Every fucking syllable.
And so I sat there, stripped bare of everything but hope, waiting for her eyes to open. Waiting for the chance to start again.