Beautifully Broken (Reckless Bastards MC 1)

I lathered mounds of body butter all over my skin, spritzed perfume in my hair and all over before I headed downstairs. “How long until dinner,” I called out from the middle of the staircase.

“Half hour or so,” he called back sounding more relaxed than he had twenty minutes ago.

Perfect. I crept down the stairs and stood in the doorway, watching him move around the kitchen, so graceful and athletic. And for the moment, he was all mine. “Max.”

He turned and instantly his gaze was lit with fire. “Fuck, Jana.” He stalked to me, food all but forgotten.

“I hope you set the timer because I want you in me. Right now.”

“Where,” he growled a moment before he reached me, hands gripping my waist and pulling me close.

“Wherever you want me.”

He growled and picked me up, set me on the edge of the counter and buried his head between my legs. Licking and lapping until my thighs trembled with the pleasure trying to break free of my body. “I can’t get enough of you,” he growled, making my nipples harden to painful points.

“Good, because as much as I love the way you eat my pussy, I need your big cock pounding into me and I need it now.”

He reared back, shooting me a dark look as he quickly removed his pants and boxer briefs. In one quick move he had a condom on and he was lowering me onto his thick, hard length. “Fuck!”

He froze as I pulsed around him. “Max, move. Fuck me.”

He gripped my ass and turned, smacking my back against the wall but I didn’t care because he began to move hard and fast, short, hard strokes that plunged the depths of me until I couldn’t see or breathe anything that wasn’t Max. Over and over his cock slid in deep, punishing strokes that gave me more pleasure than I’d ever felt. His teeth sank into a breast and his hips took over with a mind of their own, moving as though powered by an engine and moments later I was shouting my pleasure into the quiet house, pulsing around him as he continued fucking me hard and fast.

“Yes, Max! More. Just like…that!” The final wave of orgasm pulled me under and took Max with it, my name a thunderous growl on this lips. “I feel like I should be cooking you dinner,” I told him breathlessly.

“Believe me, that was worth a week of dinners.”

I grinned, my heart feeling so full and my body so satisfied that I ignored the warning bells that were a distant clang in my mind. “Well, let’s see if I can bump that up to a month of dinners.”

He grinned and leaned forward just as the oven timer sounded. “Let’s pick this up for dessert.”

“I guess now I know why I made the fresh whipped cream.” His gaze darkened and I knew I was in trouble, but it was the best trouble of my life.

***

Over the next few weeks, Max and I settled into a comfortable routine. He spent his nights with me. Mostly. Every night, after we fell into an exhausted sleep after making love, he slipped out before the sun rose. I hated it mostly because I loved waking up with his big arms wrapped around me, but it’d been so long since that happened that I could barely remember it. It fell into the category of another thing I wouldn’t get to experience, and that just fucking sucked.

I understood Max’s desire to keep me safe, and his very genuine fears that he had about his nightmares and post-traumatic stress, but I still hated it. I hated feeling like my first relationship was a half relationship, or worse, a dirty little secret. Especially when I knew this wasn’t some illicit affair, he was my man. That was already something I didn’t think I’d ever have, yet here I was already wanting more. Being greedy.

And maybe I was being greedy, but the thing was that if I had to settle for less, I’d rather be alone.

But the biggest problem, I admitted to myself as I stared at the sushi menu I was using to avoid having a conversation with Teddy, was that after a month straight of seeing each other, dating and fucking, it made me feel cheap that he would just sneak out of my

bed in the middle of the night. It felt like we were doing something wrong, or worse, like he thought we were doing something wrong. It felt even worse when combined with his surprise date last week. In a public place.

I hated it and it only made me angry since we’d talked about this before—more than once—and I made my feelings clear. But I bit my tongue, not wanting to rock the boat. Okay, and not wanting to give up the amazing physical benefits of my relationship with Max. But it really was becoming problematic, so I agreed to lunch at the new German themed Sushi Haus because I needed expert advice. “So tell me, oh wise one, what should I do?”

Teddy tapped her long, French manicured nails on the table, her eagle eyed gaze burning a hole through me. “Talk to Max. Tell him how you feel.”

Yeah, that was easy for Teddy to say. The woman never met a confrontation she didn’t face head on. “And if how I feel doesn’t matter?” Which, let’s be honest, was my biggest fear.

She shrugged delicate shoulders with a casual grace I envied. “Then you have to decide how important it is to you, and maybe how important he is.” Teddy sighed and I could feel her sympathy radiating off her. “I can’t tell you what to do Jana, but you deserve it all, the same as the rest of us. If he can’t give you what you need, maybe it’s time to move on.”

Move on. I couldn’t do that. Not only because I had no idea where to start a thing like that, but also because I was pretty sure that I was—or already had—fallen in love with the idiot. But, Teddy was right. I needed to figure out if I could accept everything. “What if I can’t accept it, can I try to change it?” That was the great thing about accounting, the numbers didn’t lie, but loopholes meant you could change things around until they looked how you wanted them to look.

Teddy arched a sculpted red brow, her beautiful face a study in skepticism. “Honey, we always think we can change them. We can’t.”

I nodded, waiting for the young waiter to drop off our food, as I thought about her words. I’d read tons of books and magazines on relationships, I overheard girls talk about changing men, but it was different with Max. He had PTSD, a real, diagnosed problem. PTSD could be treated with therapy and meds. And time. Avoidance wouldn’t do anything to fix it, and that’s what Max was doing. “Can I encourage him to attend more therapy?”