Chapter 14
Maverick
I hated the club bullshit, but I was so caught up in my own head over Tavi and her safety that I couldn’t think straight.
Reaper headed toward me, sitting down on the chair next to me, watching the clubhouse operate per usual. It was peaceful, calm. Everything happening with Mannix and the club was working out.
Pulling a smoke from behind my ear, I put it in my mouth and lit the fucker. I’d given up for years, but the last few days since my goodbye with Tavi, I’d been chain smoking. It was the only thing I could do so I didn’t lose my ever loving shit.
“You good?” he asked me after a beat. We hadn’t been on the best of terms lately, and I knew that was because I wasn’t down with him and his ol’ lady. Well, I hadn’t been. Rowan had proven herself to everyone in this damn clubhouse.
“Yeah,” I replied, putting my smoke out on my boot and throwing the butt into the ashtray on the table between us.
“Apartment trouble, or the other kind of trouble I’m going to need to know about?”
I couldn’t help but smirk, but it was half-hearted at best. “Nothing you need to worry about, Reap. I got it covered.”
“You sure. I know I’ve been preoccupied, but I can help you.”
I shook my head. “Nah, it’s good. Maybe after tonight, but right now, your missus just rocked up.”
He turned his head to look over at Cherry’s car, where Rowan just got out with Cherry, both of them laughing.
I had no doubt that if I hadn’t been a complete fucking asshole, Tavi would probably be good friends with Rowan.
One day she could be someone getting out of a car with Rowan, laughing, and eager to see me.
“You got a good one there, Reap, don’t fuck it up.”
“Brother, I’m well aware.”
He smacked me on the back, and tossed the last of his drink down his throat before he headed over to his woman. My chest squeezed tightly.
Fuck I missed Tavi.
My brain wouldn’t stop going over the way she cried when she knew it was done. The way she tried to stay strong. That kiss had broken something deep inside of me.
I replayed it over and over in my head. How she melted against me like she fit in my arms perfectly, how her moans activated something in my brain to claim, to make mine.
She was too fucking good for me. She wanted to be a good mum to Van. I wanted the same. I wanted them to be safe. I wanted my kids to be safe.
But fuck I missed them all.
I pulled the burner phone out of my pocket and looked down at the messages from Mari. After she’d discovered what I had done to Tavi, she’d let me have it. So did Lani. Both the women in my life, had told me I’d fucked it all up. That I’d broken the one woman I had ever seen having a future with.
It had crushed me, but I’d been keeping watch. She was living properly. I’d been checking on her every night. I’d watched in the rain as she put on a movie for her and Van, and they would cuddle into the couch together under a blanket until they both fell asleep.
Everything in me wanted to go in there, cuddle in with them, and carry them to their beds once they fell asleep. To crawl in behind Tavi, pull her into my arms and hold her tight. I knew I was fucked for her. I knew she owned a part of me no one else would ever have claim to.
Hell, I didn’t even know if she would take me back, even now. Even when Mannix promised he had our backs. Even when we were at a stage where no one was attacking us.
Maybe I could have her, have my kids around, be a dad. The best damn dad I could be. I wanted it all, and I had no idea how to even try to get it.
Looking down at the texts from my girls, I felt a cold shift land over my chest, and my aching heart.
MARI
Are you kidding me, Dane? What are you doing?
MARI
Oh great, so suddenly you’re quiet now? What the fuck have you done to the girl? After everything she’s been through?
MARI
Don’t reply. Be a big baby about it. I like her, and I will protect her from your bullshit. If you won’t treat her well, I know plenty of men would be lining up to do the job.
That last one had hurt me, but not enough to respond, because I knew that she was goading me.
LANI
Dad. Why? She loves you.
And that one that broken me. Because I knew, without a doubt, that I loved her too. Even though our time had been limited. I loved her more than anything. I wanted her by my side, on the back of my bike, in my bed, at my table every damn day.
LANI
Van keeps asking about you. I think it breaks her heart all over again. Don’t be the guy I thought you were for years.
I closed the app and put the phone away, brushing at the tears threatening to fall. I wanted to have it all.
Looking over at Reaper heading inside with Rowan, I thought about what it would be like to have Tavi here with me. Van running around the clubhouse causing mischief, me showing him all about bikes and how they work, taking him to work with me, teaching him about poker.
Fuck.
That sounded like bliss.
Like a dream come true.
I needed to see her.
Them.
Because it wasn’t just Tavi…they were a package deal.
A deal I wanted so fucking much it hurt to think of them never being in my world.
I couldn’t sit around here, smoking my life away. I needed…I don’t even fucking know, but I needed to see them.
Getting up, I headed to my bike, ignoring the calls for me to join the party inside, and I jumped on my beast. Roaring through the streets of Sydney, I had one thing on my mind.
Tavi.
She was the only woman for me, and I knew it. I had to prove it to her. I had to show her that I could be hers. There was no way I would survive losing her for good.
I didn’t care how dangerous it was, or who her fucking father was. I didn’t care what her name was. She was mine.
She always was.
The rain pelted down from above, as I watched her step out from the shelter and run to the letterbox to grab the parcel sitting inside, and run back to the shelter of the porch.
I shouldn’t be here.
I know this was dangerous.
Not just for her, but for me, too.
She had so much at stake, and so did I, but I was obsessed. I had been since she came waltzing into my shop. When I learned who she was, I should have just walked away, but I was already in too deep.
But how do you walk away from someone like her?
I wanted everything to be different.
I wanted her.
And everything that came along with her.
She looked up, scanning the street, like a good girl, checking for predators. Only I was the only predator out here, watching her like a lovesick fool. Prez got his girl, so why couldn’t I have mine?
Because…of who she was.
Danger personified, and yet, I couldn’t care less. I stepped away from the tree, into the light being cast from the street lamp above. She bristled, watching me, seeing it was me, her eyes flashing with concern followed by anger, then lust. She knew why I was here.
But she was scared.
She should be.
This could fuck everything up.
“Dane…”
I moved my arm out, wrapping it around her waist and pulling her to me. My lips were on hers, cold and wet from the rain, until she warmed them up with hers. Suddenly, she pulled back, before she got too lost in the kiss. “You said–”
“Fuck what I said,” I growled against her lips. “You’re mine.”
Tavi
I was lost in the sensation of Maverick, his arms, his mouth, his soft growls in my ear as he nipped at my earlobe. Overwhelming emotions hit me like a freight train.
I should hate him.
“Open the door, Tavi,” he growled into my ear, before he suckled on my neck. I wedged away from him, to open the door to my house, and walked in. Maverick stalked me like prey, wet from the rain outside, and predatory.
My breath caught in my throat.
I’d dreamed of this for weeks since he left me in this strange house that now felt like my home.
“Where’s Van?” he asked, his voice a low timbre that sent shockwaves down to my pussy.
“Mari took him for the night. He wanted to hang out with Bane.”
“Good,” Maverick said, closing the distance between us, and pulling me into his arms. I couldn’t help it.
I melted into him. His kisses were feral, almost as if he couldn’t wait to taste me.
I moaned into his mouth, as he pulled my jacket off me, running his hand up and down my bare arms, leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake.
Slowly, he manoeuvered me down the hall, his mouth on mine, his body wrapping around me, and guiding me down to my bedroom.
The last time we were in here, he broke my fucking heart, and walked out on me and Van.
As much as I wanted him here, I couldn’t just let him walk all over me and come back as if nothing had happened, as if I hadn’t cried myself to sleep for weeks, or held my son because he missed his funny breakfasts with Daddy.
Fuck.
I had to stop this.
I had to protect myself.
For Van.
Shoving at him, I was able to get him to step back, confusion replacing his once predatory gaze.
“No.”
“No?” he repeated, surprise lacing his tone.
“You can’t just come in here and pretend like you didn’t stomp all over my heart a few weeks ago, Dane.
You fucking chose to leave, and now because you decide it’s okay now, you come back?
” I got out before my voice started to waver with emotion.
“How about all the nights I spent crying over your ass? Thinking I wasn’t good enough for you? ”
Maverick straightened, his anger was gone, replaced by something else. Something I couldn’t name. My fire had nowhere to go but at him, and it looked like he was bracing for the worst of it.
My heart was screaming for me to go to him, to tell him I wanted him, that I would be perfect for him, but the other part of me, the logical brain side of me, was telling me not to let him close. Don’t be overwhelmed with his proximity.
He didn’t speak.
Instead, he peeled off his leather jacket, throwing it over the chair by the vanity.
Next, he removed his kutte, and slid it over the back of the chair, the Shackled Sons logo dark and ominous in my bedroom.
A reminder of the reasons why I couldn’t be with me in the first place.
Next, he peeled his t-shirt off to reveal those incredible abs that I dreamed about.
I loved how they felt under my touch. When he turned around, I saw it.
How I hadn’t seen it before was beyond me.
“Maverick…”
“Dane,” he corrected, stalking toward me, undoing his belt. “You call me Dane.”
The breath left my body, my entire system shutting down at his proximity, at his scent permeating the air around me.
“You have…”
“What?”
I turned him so his back was facing me, and saw it. The slender photo of a pin up girl on his back, over his hip. She wore the same clothes I was wearing that night, and her hair was styled as mine was. Her face looked strikingly like mine.
“How long have you had this tattoo?” I asked him, tracing my fingertips over the aged ink.
“Five years,” he grunted, his skin pimpling with goosebumps.
“Dane…”
He turned to face me, his hand cupping the side of my face. “It’s always been fucking you. I’ve been in love with you since those few nights we’d spend talking all night, when you snuck into the clubhouse to rebel against your father. I loved you since the fucking moment I saw you, Tavi.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“You broke me…”
He dropped to his knees, his hands on my hips, looking up at me. “I know…I’m fucked up, babe. I don’t know what to do, but all I know is you make everything in my fucked up life better. You make me want to try. For you. For Van.”
“But…my name…”
I was just coming up with every excuse under the sun because I didn’t want to believe he would choose me. I couldn’t…not after everything.
“Fuck your name,” he said, his fingers digging into the flesh of my hips, almost like he were holding me in the one spot so I couldn’t flee again. “I don’t care about that shit anymore. Change it, better yet, take mine.”
That’s it.
That’s what stole my breath for a final time, before I felt the tears fall down my cheeks as my vision of Maverick became blurry.
Maverick slowly lifted my shirt, placing soft kisses on my stomach, over my stretchmarks and then over my hips.
The zipper of my skirt was pulled down, and then my skirt was liberated from my body.
I stepped out of it, allowing him to position me against the wall, his hand moving my thigh over his shoulder, before I felt his hot breath over my panties.
I was already wet from his kisses, but now…
knowing what I knew…after everything he’d just proclaimed, I was so ready for him.
Should I make him grovel more? Sure…but a girl has needs. I could spend the rest of our lives making him grovel. Oh yes…I liked the sound of that. Maverick on his hands and knees for me, making me come every night of our life together.
Maverick’s mouth moved over my panties-clad pussy, pushing the material in to wrap over my clit, making me writhe even more against his face. His stubble scruffing against the soft skin of my inner thighs, sending sparks throughout my entire body.
My fingers moved to his hair, unleashing his hair tie and running through his strands, pulling his head in more, so his tongue could poke into me. God he was skilled with his mouth. I could spend eternity against this wall, him taking his time as he brought me to endless orgasms.
Maverick’s fingers slid my panties to the side and his mouth was on me, his tongue diving between my folds and finding my clit with efficiency.
I was screaming out his name as he made me come all over his fingers and mouth.
He lapped at me until my orgasm died down, before he replaced my panties where they were and sat back, looking up at me.
“Okay,” I said, breathless. “You can go now.”
Maverick stood up, towering over me, his hand on the wall beside me, his lips that smelt of me just inches away. “No fucking chance, princess.”