11. Mila
11
MILA
We didn’t talk on the drive home.
Luckily, there was no traffic at this time, so it wasn’t a long ride.
I mostly looked out the window, watching Chicago scenery pass me by in a blur, and Maverick mostly watched me.
My lips still tingled from the kiss.
My body practically vibrated from it.
I didn’t know it could be like that.
I didn’t know it could be so addictive, but now that it was over, I was embarrassed by my own reaction. Embarrassed, yet I wanted more.
How could I be like this? How could I crave him?
I wanted to kiss him again.
I jumped when the car suddenly pulled to a stop in front of the house.
I blinked at the formidable mansion. I didn’t even remember arriving at the property, but here we are.
Maverick got out of the car and came to my side. He opened the door and reached in, unbuckling my seat belt and helping me out.
There was a gentleness about him that confused the hell out of me.
It was times like this when I wished he would be mean, be terrible to me.
Wished he would have made it easier for me to hate him, but the vision of the man who protected me earlier kept flashing through my mind.
It was true I wouldn’t have been in that position if he hadn’t taken me along. It was his own twisted way of showing off his power over me, yet it didn’t seem to matter to my illogical mind.
I didn’t care.
I didn’t fight him when he brought us inside the warm house.
Technically it was summer, but I had felt cold since we left the company. For the first time, this house was a welcome sight.
Noises came from the kitchen, which told me Rachel was home and cooking up a storm.
My stomach grumbled, and Maverick paused and looked at me.
I shifted. “I had a small breakfast.”
Which, of course, he already knew, considering he was the one who’d gotten it for me in the first place.
He nodded. “Why don’t you change into something comfortable? I’ll see what Rachel’s making and bring it upstairs.”
I grabbed his hand when he was about to walk off. He looked back at me and I dropped it, as if his touch burned me.
I tried not to sound too eager when I asked, “You’re staying?”
He didn’t answer for one long second. Then he smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I’m done with work for the day. I’ll eat with you.”
I nodded and turned away from him.
I should not feel relief from that. I should be repulsed by the idea of spending any amount of time with him. Yet, with what had happened, I didn’t want to be left alone.
I felt off.
Vulnerable.
I quickly shook away the thoughts and ran up the stairs and into my room.
First thing I did was throw that dress off.
I found some black sweatpants in the drawers and quickly pulled them on, along with a baggy T-shirt I usually wore to sleep.
Then I sat on the bed.
In times like this I wished I had my phone.
For more reasons than one.
I was often bored.
There was nothing and no one around for me to entertain myself with, and a part of me was hesitant to try to get close to Rachel.
She was loyal to the brothers.
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been so blasé about the fact that they had taken me to their home against my will.
I blew raspberries with my lips and stretched my sore muscles on the bed.
It was early evening.
Not even nighttime yet. I still had hours before my actual bedtime, and I would be spending it with Maverick.
A small shiver wracked my body from the thought and, grunting in frustration, I lay down on the bed and gazed up at the ceiling. I studied the textured wall, trying to find a picture.
I could make out a picture of a lopsided bunny when the door opened, and Maverick walked in, a tray in his hand.
I braced my weight on my elbows and warily watched him enter the room.
He set the tray down on the bed and took a seat next to me.
I shifted away when he stilled me with one hand on my stomach.
“Just eat,” he said in a way of explaining.
I debated whether I wanted to argue with him, but I’d had such an emotionally draining day, I didn’t have the energy.
I sat up and took in the chicken alfredo pasta in one huge plate.
There was only one fork.
“You’re not going to eat?” I asked.
I could imagine about a million other things I’d much rather do than eat while Maverick watched me.
Manual labor came to mind.
“Of course I am.”
He picked up the fork and twirled the noodles around before bringing it to his lips—lips still slightly swollen from my kiss.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
Did he want me to watch him eat?
After I’d told him I was hungry?
How cruel.
But, to my surprise, he held the next forkful of pasta to my lips.
“Open,” he commanded.
I obeyed before I really thought about it, and before I could backpedal and tell him I could feed myself, he’d already pushed the food into my mouth.
I carefully wiped away some of the sauce stuck in the corner of my lips with my fingers, chewing. Flavors instantly burst in my mouth, and I had to keep from making any noises. He watched me intently, making me feel self-conscious.
“You seem to think I am just a little kid,” I muttered once I swallowed.
He smirked. “Oh, I know you’re not a little kid, Mila. I’ve seen all your curves. And I do know how old you are.”
I frowned. “How?”
I hadn’t disclosed anything about myself to Maverick. Not before and certainly not after returning to Chicago. I didn’t want to give him any more ammunition to use against me.
“You really think it would be hard to have you investigated?”
I blinked at him. “Sounds creepy.”
The fork in his hand paused midair as he regarded me with that expressionless look on his face that I hated, right before it contorted to something else entirely.
Amusement.
He found me amusing, and not the cruel kind of amusing where he laughed at me—the way I’d thought it was between us up to this point—but rather, he found me amusing in a fond kind of way.
He pressed the fork against my bottom lip and I opened my mouth without further coaxing, taking the food.
I could feel however I wanted to feel about Rachel, but there was no denying the fact that she was one of the best cooks in the world.
I savored the bite and opened my mouth once more when he speared a piece of chicken and fed it to me.
We continued our meal like that, in comfortable silence.
For once, I didn’t feel like I needed to be on guard with him around, and that was stupid of me.
That was exactly what he wanted.
For me to relax enough before he attacked.
I got the last bite, and Maverick stood and took the plate out of the room. I watched him disappear, trying to get my bearings.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do now, and I wasn’t sure if he was coming back… or if I wanted him to come back.
This small dilemma I found myself in seemed silly, however, when moments later, Maverick came back into the room.
Gone was the black suit he’d worn earlier in the day. Instead, he now had on a simple black T-shirt that fit him well and showcased all the ink on his arms in the best possible way, along with dark gray sweatpants.
There should be nothing sexy about the way he dressed so casually, yet my mouth went dry at the very sight of him. After a long moment of neither of us speaking, I realized that I hadn’t been breathing.
I took a deep breath, bringing back that arrogant smirk of his.
There was no denying that Maverick was… appealing in a very sexual way, and the arrogant bastard knew it, too.
He sat down next to me on the bed—so close, our thighs touched.
I shifted slightly away, but Maverick was a big man, and what was more, he seemed to suck up all the energy around him.
I didn’t think there was a distance great enough that I could put between us that would be adequate.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
He shot me a mischievous look. “Whatever you want to do.”
I shot him a scathing one back. “Not that.”
“Don’t you want to?” he asked, his voice lowering seductively.
I shook my head, looking away from him and trying to hide just how much he could affect me with his words alone.
And I grudgingly admitted to myself that it wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but I didn’t think I could.
I was still too sensitive, a little sore, and a whole lot vulnerable.
I didn’t want to be naked in front of him right now, with all those things raging inside of me.
I shook my head.
He seemed to understand, because there was a sort of softness in his gaze that I had never seen on him before.
Whatever space I had put between us was quickly eaten up by him. I held still when he reached forward and tucked a strand of my hair away from my face.
He ran his hand down my cheek, stopping when his thumb came up to my lips. He pressed it against the bottom one, and I felt it all the way down to the pit of my stomach.
There wasn’t a fluttering of a butterfly, but a harsh tumble of hordes among hordes of wasps buzzing about, making themselves at home inside me.
“Tell me something,” he said.
I had to bite off the urge to say anything. To agree to anything he asked, as long as he kept on touching me.
He had a way about him that made me want to confess all my deepest, darkest secrets.
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I tilted my head to the side.
His hand fell away and I almost begged for it back. I missed his touch instantly.
“What was it like, growing up in the club?”
I frowned at him. “Don't you know? Drugs, sex, and violence.”
I was sure it wasn’t hard to miss the bitterness in my voice. Maverick looked at me thoughtfully.
“I know all that,” he finally answered. “Or, at least, I can guess. I want to know what it was like for you .”
It wasn’t a secret that things had been shit for me at home.
“Daniel Hayes only cared about one person in this world, and it was himself. What do you think?” I asked, my voice as low and emotionless as possible.
He didn’t say anything for a beat.
Then he reached over and grabbed my shirt by the collar. I looked at him questioningly when he pulled it down to bare my shoulders.
His finger gently skimmed over the raised skin on my back caused by the whip.
Only Silas had seen it in its entirety.
But I’d had a feeling Maverick was aware of it.
It was confirmed when I was met with unsurprised dark blue eyes.
“Tell me about this,” he said softly. Maverick was not a soft man.
I laughed, the sound cold and empty.
“This? I got it for trying to run away.”
He froze, his eyes widening slightly.
“I’ve shocked you. I didn’t think that could be possible.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
“That young?”
I averted my gaze. His thumb moved in circles on my skin. I didn’t think he was even aware he was doing it.
“It feels like a long time ago.”
Sometimes, it felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. The optimistic girl I had been at fifteen, the one who didn’t know how the world worked, was killed that night when Daniel Hayes’s men dragged me in front of their club president.
Yet, sometimes, it was as if no time had really passed at all.
Like I had simply blinked and suddenly nine years had gone by—disappeared, really—and I didn’t know what happened to that fifteen-year-old girl.
I wondered if things would have been different had I not changed so much. Would I have been less careful and attempted to run a second time, years before the club was attacked? Or would I simply not have existed in this world anymore? Finally provoked my dear old dad enough to kill me, like he had threatened to do so many times.
“Not so long ago,” Maverick said, and I didn't know what that tone in his voice meant. “You were a kid.”
I shrugged, my gaze unfocused. “He whipped me in front of his club.”
Maverick stiffened beside me, but I didn’t bother meeting his eyes. It was easier to tell him when I didn’t have to.
I’d never told anyone. There wasn’t anyone to tell, and the people who knew were the ones who had been present for the whipping—that first time—and had gotten some sort of sadistic pleasure out of it.
Maverick didn’t respond. Not vocally, but he moved his hands down my body, settling them on my waist and pulling me a little closer to him.
I took in his scent, letting that and his warmth surround me. I should not feel safe with this man. Obviously, my instincts were out of whack.
“It was an example. And a reminder that I meant nothing to him. He treated me like he would his club members.” I shook my head. “Sometimes worse, because at least those members chose the club life. I was born into it. And the moment I took my very first breath on this Earth, I ceased to belong to myself. Daniel had believed that first breath and every other breath that followed were his.”
Much the same way the Tiernan brothers were treating me, I supposed.
I knew whatever this was with them was messed up. And I felt all kinds of stupid that I wasn’t fighting them more than I should.
The outcome wouldn’t change. They would still covet me for their own, all the same. Left with no choice, and no future.
“And the other times?” he asked softly.
He cupped the back of my head and brought it to his chest. I closed my eyes and focused on the beating heart that lay beneath such warm skin.
It was very hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that he was a human man with a beating heart. He should be a monster with a black hole. Consuming anything and everything in his path.
“What weren’t the punishments for? He was always a hair trigger away from exploding. I learned quickly enough to stay out of his way. And when he was drunk or high, and horny, he tended to leave me alone. Sometimes, it was because of the clothes I wore that distracted his men.”
A rumbling came from his chest, and when I pulled back, Maverick’s lips were curled in a sneer.
“I should have prolonged his death,” he finally said. “He got off too easily.”
I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t the first time I was told they were the ones to kill my dad, but this was the first time he’d admitted to any torture.
I hadn’t really thought about what had happened that night at the club. It was better that I didn’t, and not because I had felt any remorse or sadness over the destruction of the one place that had been my literal hell my entire life.
I just didn’t want to think about the violence.
I wondered what that said about me, not caring about how many lives were lost that night.
“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” I said.
“It would make me feel a hell of a lot better now than I do.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why do you care?”
Why did he care that my dad had abused me growing up? Why was he holding me like this? Like I was?—
Like I could be someone he cherished?
“Would it be better if I didn’t care?” he answered gruffly.
I shrugged. Perhaps so.
It would have made it easier for me to hate him.
I didn’t answer him.
I kissed his jawline, reveling in the feel of his rough stubble against my sensitive lips.
He pulled away, surprise evident in his eyes.
I blushed and looked down at the bedsheets.
I didn’t even know why I did that.
“Mila,” he said softly, my name sounded so much like a prayer coming from his lips I wanted to weep. I closed my eyes and shook my head.
He wanted me to look at him, I was sure.
I didn’t think I could handle it.
“Mila,” he said again.
Again, I shook my head. I flinched when he cupped my cheek with his big hands and tilted my head up. My eyes remained closed.
Why did I kiss him?
Why?
Why did I kiss him this afternoon?
I realized, with some embarrassment, that both of our kisses were initiated by me.
It wasn’t like he had coerced me into it, and now that I was remembering the kiss from this afternoon, I remembered he had also been the one to pull away first. That I hadn’t fought him. I’d clung to him and did not want to let go.
I just?—
I froze when his lips drifted over mine in the slightest, most gentlest kiss I had ever received.
It wasn’t like I had spent my twenty-four years of life kissing a lot of people.
The one date I had agreed to go on that wasn’t with Silas had been a complete disaster, and it was one of the many reasons why I avoided people like the plague, but this kiss, coming from this man…
It was everything.
It was full of sweetness I didn’t think a man like him could display, especially with someone like me.
I slowly opened my eyes to look at him when he broke the kiss, and I realized I had his shirt bunched up in my hands.
I let it go and smoothed down the fabric with my fingers, not that he seemed to care.
With a groan, he kissed me fully once more.
This kiss wasn’t as gentle as the first, but just as addictive.
I moved my hands up to his chest, and opened my mouth to let him in when he bit my bottom lip.
He took his time in exploration, his tongue moving over mine in slow but precise movements, driving me crazy.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and clung to him, shifting closer to his body until I was on his lap.
His kiss grew bolder, rougher, harsher… more passionate than I had ever dared imagine.
He wrapped his arms around my waist. I wrapped my legs around his middle, pressing my pussy directly against his hard abs and trying to find that delicious friction.
Spasms worked their way through inside me, and it felt so good to use his body like this that I did it again and again and again.
His hands found my butt, and he kneaded both cheeks roughly, almost to the point of pain.
I couldn’t find my voice to ask him to stop, and what was more, I didn’t want him to.
I liked the little bit of pain that came with being with such a rough man. A savage of a man whom I was quickly becoming addicted to.
When had it happened?
I should hate him.
I should be repulsed by his touch.
Nothing was further from the truth, and I ground my hips once more, the spasm growing into tremors.
I could come like this, I realized.
I mewled in protest when he pulled away from me. I had been so close.
“Not tonight,” he whispered against my wet lips. “If we keep going, I don’t think I have the willpower to hold back.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him not to. I didn’t want him to hold back. I just wanted to come.
But to have sex with Maverick tonight…
I didn’t think I was ready for that.
Not yet , a small voice echoed in my mind.
Being with him, with any of them, was a foregone conclusion at this point.
Perhaps my father had fucked me up way worse than I’d thought. How else would it explain my attraction to these terrible men who had held me captive?
Gently, he unwrapped my legs from him and laid me back down on the bed.
He stood up from the bed and took me in with those devastating blue eyes of his. For once, they weren’t emotionless, but bright with emotions I didn’t think I was ready to explore.
He wrapped his hand around my neck but didn’t squeeze. He left it there as I looked up at him. I didn’t feel any hint of fear.
I should.
I didn’t.
“Sleep, little monster,” he said softly.
He moved as if to leave, and I did something daring.
I grabbed his wrist and stopped him.
“Stay,” I said. He seemed surprised, and I was, too. “Just… just stay tonight. You always leave afterward, and it makes me feel like a discarded toy—cheap and used.”
Feeling like a discarded toy was the last thing I wanted tonight.
Not after this kiss.
Not after this gentle side of him.
He didn’t say anything for a moment.
Something animated and dangerous shadowed over his expression.
I opened my mouth to take back the words when he leaned down and lifted me out of bed.
I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck, afraid I would fall if I didn’t hold on tightly enough.
“Let’s go get ready. Then we’ll sleep.”
It was still early, but with the day I’d had, turning in for bed at this hour didn’t sound like such a bad idea, especially since he was spending the night with me.
“I am tired,” I confessed softly. I was talking about more than physical exhaustion.
Maverick paused in his steps.
Then the smallest hint of a smile graced his lips. “I know.”
I shyly buried my face in his neck as he walked to the bathroom.
We got ready for bed quickly.
Then we were back in my bed, Maverick getting in on the side closest to the door.
He turned off the lamp, bathing the room in darkness, and I looked up at the ceiling, even if I couldn’t see anything. We lay there for a few moments in silence.
“Goodnight,” I said softly.
That seemed to knock him out of his reverie. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into the middle of the bed and to the warm cocoon of his large body. I buried my face in his neck.
“Goodnight, little monster,” he uttered.
And I closed my eyes and fell into a dreamless sleep.