February 1992

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Maverick stood behind Jenny and unfastened the little pearly buttons that ran down the back of her blouse, kissing the skin he bared as he did so.

He was proud of himself—he’d done something nice for Valentine’s Day. No flowers or heart-shaped box of candy or anything like that; all that stuff seemed just silly and fake. But he’d taken her out for a nice meal, and now he was going to make her come as many different ways as he could imagine.

He liked this girl a whole lot. She was sweet and beautiful, and damn, he loved to fuck her. It was getting to the point where he thought about her just about all the time. Sometimes those thoughts had downright embarrassing side effects.

It had been a long time since he’d spent so much time with one girl, but he wasn’t feeling restless at all. Quite the contrary. Lately, he’d been happy to just stay at his place with her to watch TV and fuck. She cooked, too, and she was pretty good at it. When she was there, his apartment felt like a home.

She moaned prettily and dropped her head as he pushed the blouse off her shoulders. It fell from her arms to the floor.

He unhooked her bra and pushed that off as well, then slid his hands around her and cupped her tits. Her nipples tightened against his palms, and his cock surged in the confines of his jeans. “Do you trust me, babe?”

A little nod was her only answer.

God, that was so hot. She really did trust him—to keep her safe and to give her pleasure. She put herself in his hands. Someday soon—hell, maybe tonight—he wanted to play with that a little bit, take her places she hadn’t been before. He tweaked her nipples just sharply enough to make her gasp and pull her shoulders back, then released them and brushed his hands over her arms. He caught one to turn her to him, and a tiny, almost insignificant wince passed through her.

Maverick moved his hand and looked at her arm. “What happened here?”

She pulled away and laughed—but it was a weird, shaky little syllable. “I ran into the edge of a shelf in the kitchen at work.”

Yeah, that was bullshit. If there was one thing Maverick knew, it was bruising. That wasn’t the mark of an impact. It was pressure. Suspicious now, already forming an infuriating deduction, he caught her hand to hold her, then reached over and flipped the switch to turn on the light on the ceiling fan over his bed. With enough light to really see now, he lifted her arm and examined the mark.

“Mav, it’s fine.”

“This is a hand, Jen.” He turned her arm. “These are fucking fingers.” He bent down and grabbed his t-shirt off the floor. “Put this on. We’re talking.” She did, and he sat her on the edge of the bed. “Your old man did that.”

She didn’t deny it.

“Tell me what happened.”

“It’s not your business, Maverick. I’ve told you a hundred times—things with my dad are complicated.”

A hundred times was an obvious exaggeration, but she wouldn’t have had to tell him even twice if her father weren’t such a prick. “Jennifer...”

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

The fire in her tone shocked him. She used his full name when he’d irritated her. He’d never used her full name before, but it had seemed appropriate now, a rebuttal to her use of his. But he had more pressing concerns, so he pushed the curiosity to the side. “You can’t sit here and think you can have a bruise like that and I’m not going to need to know about it. That’s a deep bruise, Jen.”

She turned her arm and studied the mark. “It’s not bad. Just red.”

“It’s ‘just red’ because it’s deep. Tomorrow, the next day, it’s going to look like Jaws took a bite—and feel like it, too. Why’d he grab you so hard he about tore your arm off?”

“It’s not important. Mav—you and me, we’ve been together two months. You can’t think you can fix a relationship that’s almost twenty-four years old. You can’t even understand it.”

“What do I need to understand? You’re his daughter. He’s your father. There is no situation where him hurting you is understandable.”

She grunted and stood up. “God, will you just listen?”

“Hey. I’m listening. If there’s a way to understand, then you need to explain it to me so I can.” He took her hand and pulled her back, tucking her between his legs. “I want you safe. I don’t like somebody hurting you. Is that a bad thing?”

“No...” She chewed on her bottom lip, and he reached up and pressed on her chin until she stopped.

A thought occurred to him, and he tested it out and decided he liked it. “Then let me protect you. Move in with me.”

Her eyes went wide. “What? No!”

“Yes—why not? You’re with me most of the time, anyway. I like having you here. You need to get away from him. It’s perfect.”

She studied him, and he got the sense that there was something she was looking for, but he didn’t know what else there was to say—not until she said something more, at least.

“We’ve only been together two months, Mav.” Again, she chewed on her lip. “I don’t know—I just think it’s a big step to take already.”

“I didn’t propose, Jen. I’m asking you to move in. If we don’t work out, then we’ll figure that out then.”

Her eyes continued to move all over his face, scanning back and forth between his eyes, down to his mouth, back up. She took a long, deep breath. “I love you, Mav.”

She’d never said that before. He grinned. “Is that a yes?” After a beat, she nodded, and he set her on his lap. “That’s my girl.”

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~oOo~

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“YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST SNEAK OUT ON ME LIKE A THIEF?”

At the shout and the crash that followed, Maverick put down the box he’d just picked up, the last box of Jenny’s old life. He left her room and ran down the hall, his fists already tight and ready.

The front door was open, and Jenny’s father had her up against the wall. Father and daughter were staring at each other. Earl wasn’t tall, but neither was Jenny, and he had her trapped. Jenny’s expression was full of fear and anger—and there was guilt in there, too. He despised the way this fuckhead had her so twisted up.

Maverick had kept her with him the night before, and he’d come with her today, while her father was supposed to be away, to move her shit out of his house. He’d have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t a little glad ol’ Earl had shown up, though he’d have wanted to be the one to meet him first.

“Back the fuck off, asshole.” Maverick didn’t yell; he growled the words and grabbed Wagner by the back of his canvas coat, throwing him across the hallway. He gave Jenny a quick once-over. No new hurt; just the bruise on her arm—after a day to ripen, it was just as vicious as he’d predicted it would be.

“You okay?”

She nodded. When he then turned to make sure Earl Wagner understood that his days of hurting his only child were well and truly done, she grabbed his arm.

“Mav, no! Please! Don’t hurt him!”

Goddammit. “Jen—”

“No! Shut up! You got what you wanted! So let’s go. Let’s just go.”

What he wanted? It wasn’t the time to challenge that, so he filed it away. He needed to get her out of this diseased house. Letting her keep hold of him, he turned to her father. “You touch her again, and I will kill you.”

Wagner didn’t even look at him. He kept his eyes on his daughter. “Jennifer, don’t you do it, too. Don’t you fucking leave me, too.”

His words were quiet now, but they were just as filled with anger, and with fear, as his shout had been. The relationship between these two was all about anger and fear. And guilt. A great big heap of guilt, at least on Jenny’s part, which was outrageous. If there was any real love in there, too, it was stunted and dying. Or already dead. Just its corpse lying there to remind them it had once existed.

Maverick didn’t remember having parents, he’d been raised with a staff of adults whose responsibility to him had begun and ended with food, bed, and shelter, but even he knew how deranged things were in this house.

“I’m not leaving you, Dad. I’m just moving a few miles away. I’ll see you tonight.”

Maverick turned back to her. “What? You’re still working the poker thing? No. You’re not.”

She helped out at her father’s bar when there was some kind of party or other. He hated that, too, and he’d sure as fuck thought she’d give that up when she moved in with him. How the fuck could he keep her safe if she wouldn’t stay away from this man?

“Yes. I am.” She looked him dead in the eye. “Let’s fucking go. Dad, I’ll see you tonight.”

She walked out of the house and straight to his Impala, which was loaded with her belongings. Maverick watched until she was sitting in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield.

Then he turned back to Earl Wagner. “I will kill you. Any mark on her. Ever. She even gets a new freckle, and I’ll string your guts across Tulsa.”

He left her father standing against the wall, silent and shaking in impotent rage.