Really, there was no choice. She’d made the decision the moment she asked her first question. “I realize,” she whispered.
With that admission, he pinched her nipple through her T-shirt and thin bra, ripping a sharp gasp from her before releasing her.
He began, “My mother died of a heroin overdose exactly six months after I was born, leaving me in the care of a father who really didn’t give a shit about anything but himself, his booze, and his pit-bull. That damn dog was treated better than I was, any and every day of my goddamned life. When I was nine, the old man got into a fight with some jackass who lived in the same trailer park as we did. He was gunned down right there outside our double-wide at two in the afternoon while I watched through the window with the cops on the line.”
The breath that left her felt like it was torn from the depths of her soul. All she could see was a devasted, lonely, screwed-up little boy with no one to love him. “What happened to you?”
He laughed, but there wasn’t a speck of humor to it. “What happens to any orphaned kid whose extended family wants nothing to do with him?”
“The system?”
“That’s right. The goddamned foster system. My first house already had four foster kids, all boys, and the meanest sonsabitches you could imagine. I wasn’t the youngest, but I was the smallest, the scrawniest by far. And man did they use that to their fucking advantage, not wasting a single moment to torment me. Burning my homework, eating the food allotted to me, beating the shit out of me each time the previous set of bruises healed. There I was, some little kid with no mother, who’d just seen his old man killed in front of his face. To say I was fucked in the head would be an understatement.”
As he spoke, Stephanie ran the palms of her hands up and down his thighs. The movement was meant to soothe—both of them, if she was honest—but instead, it had his cock rising to full attention once again. Her mouth watered for a taste, but she wanted him to get the poison out of his system before she brought him to climax and made him forget it all.
“Keep going,” she whispered as she stared straight into his haunted eyes. Agent Little didn’t exist in that room any longer. Nor was there an outlaw biker. Only Stephanie and Maverick in their own world—one that felt so right despite being so wrong.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THIS WAS ONLY the third time in his life Maverick had ever told the entire story from start to finish, and both times the old feelings of hopelessness, despair, and futility came crashing back. This time, though, a tiny blond angel did her best to soothe him and chase away the demons.
And it was working.
He could get the words out without feeling shame or self-loathing. This was part of his past, something he’d never imagined coming to grips with, but needed to if he wanted a normal interaction with a woman. In the past, that had never mattered. Fucking someone without letting them get a glimpse of his cock was easy, especially in the MC world where the women were willing to accept it however it was given.
For the first time, that wasn’t enough, and he had a feeling Stephanie was the only woman he’d be able to tell this story to. While he couldn’t offer her anything beyond this, it was more than he’d ever given a woman, and it was enough.
For today at least.
God, she was beautiful. Maybe not in the typical va-va-voom sense most of his brothers seemed to lose their shit over, but she was perfect in his eyes. The care and compassion on her face nearly slayed him. He didn’t want her to be sad for him. He’d survived and now had a great fucking life.
He rubbed his thumb across her hard little nipple again, unable to keep his hands off her. A small whimper vibrated through her throat.
“I lived there until I was fifteen. By that time, I’d shot up and was nearly six feet tall. I’ve never been bulky, but I learned to fight dirty, and when combined with my height, I stopped getting shit on every day. Then my foster mother got sick, and the family decided they couldn’t continue taking in kids. So we were all shuttled elsewhere. And that’s when the real hell began. The parents were all right, but they had a nineteen-year-old biological son who was a sadistic piece of shit. He made life fucking hell. So, at sixteen, I ran away.”
Stephanie remained quiet, her gaze full of so much emotion it was difficult to maintain eye contact. Small gasps and puffs of air left her lips as he continued to strum her nipples. Fuck, she was so responsive, and as soon as he was done with the fucked-up story of his young life, he was going to feast on her body until she screamed his name. Never had he given a shit what a woman said or did when she came, but the need to hear his name from her lips while she succumbed to the pleasure was overwhelming.