Maverick (Hell's Handlers MC 2)

“All right. Guess I’ll leave you guys to it. Just don’t fuck too loud, okay? You can hear every damn moan from this room downstairs.”

Mav smiled for the first time in three days. “Not making any promises, Prez.” Then he grew serious. “Cop, you know what all this shit means, don’t you?”

Copper started twoard the door. “Means that piece of shit, Lefty, thinks his dick is about nine inches bigger than it really is.

Mav and Jig chuckled.

“Like I said, church in an hour. Looks like we gotta prepare for war.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

ONCE HE WAS alone with Stephanie, Maverick’s emotions went haywire. Anger, desire, sadness, relief, and happiness all warred for top dog, making his head spin and his heart flip over in his chest.

Little by little, the anger crept to the surface, passing all the other sensations. He pushed off the bed and stalked a path to one side of the room then back again.

Stephanie’s lower lip trembled, and she looked close to tears, which only made him feel like a shit. She’d been hurt, again, and the last thing she needed was a furious biker snarling at her. But, damn it, she’d lied. Over and over again.

Lied while he poured his heart out to a woman for the first time in his life. And that’s where this resentment really stemmed from. It was less about the fact she was an FBI agent and more about the fact that he’d allowed himself to be vulnerable around her. No one saw that side of him, especially not a woman. But he’d given it to her.

While she gave him lies in return.

“Was your old man really a cop? Is he really in prison? Is any of that bullshit story true?”

Stephanie reared back as though he’d slapped her, and he felt lower than dirt. But didn’t he deserve to be pissed off? She wronged him.

“The story is completely true,” she said. “The only thing I lied about was my job.”

Mav snorted. “Right. And who were you calling the day Carli caught you in the woods?”

She flinched at the mention of Carli’s name. So far, he was two for two with his questions hitting her like bullets. “Special Agent in Charge Baccarella. The man who led the raid a few days ago.”

“That piece of shit who left you here to be killed?” That was her contact? Christ.

“Yes.” She kept her gaze trained on the floor.

“Look at me, dammit.” He stopped directly in front of her.

Her head lifted, and her gaze met his. There were so many times her mouth had lied, but were her eyes capable of the same untruths? Because he’d seen deep into her soul through those eyes. Or at least he thought he had.

“It hurts too much,” she mumbled turning her head and averting her gaze once again.

“Sorry. Thought Jig said your chin would be numb for a few hours.”

Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear her. “It’s not my chin that hurts. It’s my heart.”

A sick part of him felt triumphant. That he could make her hurt as he did, but the feeling was fleeting and followed by regret. “When you freaked out back when I killed King, that was because you truly believed what I did was wrong, wasn’t it?”

Her head slowly shook back and forth. “It was because I was conflicted. Caught between right and wrong. It wasn’t a place I knew how to live in. It was a gray zone, and I’d fought against them my whole life.”

“Why didn’t you turn me in? Why did you lie to the bureau? Look what it cost you.”

“I couldn’t do that to you. It didn’t matter what my conscience said, what my training said, or what protocol said. I couldn’t do that to you. Not with how I feel for you.”

The urge to kiss her, to lie her back on the bed and fuck her until the past few days blurred was growing hard to ignore. But he resisted. “And you never told them anything about Lefty?”

“No. Never.”

“What did you expect to happen between us?” He needed to see her face so he could read the truth in whatever answer she gave.

She looked at him again, this time right in the eye and he breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought the bureau would pull me out eventually. I’d go back to DC. The club would fall off their radar. And I’d try to put the pieces of my broken heart back together alone.”

Trust wasn’t something he handed out like candy. Steph had damaged that trust. Normally, he’d be done. Their relationship would be dead in the water, but everything inside him screamed to give her some of that trust back.

She rose from the bed and walked toward him. On instinct, he backed up a step, but she kept coming. When she reached him, she circled both his wrists with her small hands and glided them up his forearms to his biceps. The crinkly bandages on her palms scraped over his skin. His gaze was drawn to the stark contrast between them where her arms rested against his.