Sanctum: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (14 page)

Slowly, they both began to descend from
sexual bliss. The den echoed with the sounds of their heavy breathing, the
escaping trail of leftover moans falling from Maggie
’
s
lips. Jase looked at her face, pressed against his, eyes still closed. He
hadn’t seen her face look so calm and peaceful in years.

He lifted up a hand and put it to her
face, rubbing his thumb softly across her cheek as he moved in to kiss her.
Maggie opened her eyes and returned the kiss for only a split-second before she
pulled away.

Words failed him as he looked at her
apprehensive expression with confused eyes. Maggie started to say something,
but whatever it was got stuck behind her teeth. Jase felt her hands on his
chest, pushing him back from the table. He felt his half-hard manhood leave her
warmth as he watched her jump off the table, immediately pulling her jeans back
up. There wasn’t a part of Jase coherent enough in that moment to consider his
own naked vulnerability. He stared at her, waiting for an explanation.

Maggie could barely look at him as she
fastened up her jeans and adjusted her shirt.
“
This
can’t
…”
She said nothing else before she hurriedly left the
den and headed down towards the bedrooms. Jase heard a door open and shut in
the dark hallway, and then he felt his heart screaming as if someone had
dropped it down a mine shaft.

~ ELEVEN ~

Maggie couldn’t sleep. She finished off
one of the joints Tommy had given her, and which Jase had rescued from the
debris of the gun-riddled bedroom. She took a long, hot shower. She tried to
dive into a twenty-year-old John Grisham novel that someone had left in the
bedside drawer. None of it seemed to make her anything but more anxious.

She would have tried booze, but every time
she peeked out the bedroom door to see if Jase had finally gone to his own
room, she could see the lights still blazing in the den, and the tiny view of
the back of his cut, hunched over the bar. She didn’t have the guts to face
him. 

Maggie spent several of the night
’
s
hours crying, overwhelmed. Feeling Jase
’
s
body again, his want and ache for her, his warm kiss on her lips
…
she had spent so long evicting such thoughts from even
her most intimate daydreams. They always felt like false hope, like she was
setting herself up to be knocked down into unimaginable pain. She hadn’t let
herself dream about Jase. But now
…
hell,
ever since she had seen him that first day in the den
…
he was all she could think about.

Their coupling played over and over in her
mind like a movie without her consent or control. Every time she lay down and
tried to and sleep, she could feel Jase
’
s
touch on her skin; his hips bucking against hers; the sweet, aching pressure of
him buried inside of her. She could smell his scent in her hair. She could hear
herself begging him in a whispered word.

But along with the ecstasy of this came
shame, riding in like the inevitable tsunami after an earthquake. All she had
ever
done—
all
she was doing
—
was turn Jase
’
s
life upside-down as soon as she got back into town. She could see in his eyes,
and hear in his voice, all the work he had done since she left to pull himself
back together. He was twice the man he had been when she loved him before. In
just a few days, he had already done more to help her take care of herself than
any other man had. He wasn’t like Evan, who fed on her weakness; Jase wanted
her strong. And she realized this only made her own love return all the
stronger.

It was a love she had no right to claim,
not anymore. After everything she had done, how could she even think about
asking Jase to forgive her?

She missed him. She missed every inch of
him. She had hoped the passing of time would flood out the fire of young love
which had burned in both their hearts, but that flood had never come. Instead
it waited for her, this whirlwind of a woman, to return and reignite it with a
fury.

Already Maggie missed Julie, too. If ever
she needed a lady friend to help her make sense of her feelings, it was here
and now. Having her around had lifted Maggie
’
s
spirits, and she was horrified that it had ended with Julie running for safety
back to Eagleton.

The stark memories from earlier in the
evening returned. As she had said her goodbyes to Julie before she left, she
had wrapped her in a hug and cried in Julie
’
s
hair, despite her best efforts.
“
I
am so sorry, Julie. I
’
m
so sorry you had to be a part of this. I promise I will fix it.
”

Julie nodded, trying to be brave, but the
drive-by was unlike anything she had ever experienced in her relatively normal
life. Maggie could see the change in her eyes. Still, she wrapped her thin
hands on Maggie
’
s face and made
their
eyes
meet
. “I’ll
be fine. You
—
you take care of
yourself, Maggie. Please don’t make our next visit be at a funeral home.
”
She flicked eyes to something behind Maggie.
“
And
don’t
make the same mistake with Jase twice.
”

Maggie shook her head, in tears. She
couldn’t find any words to respond. She had fallen into a tight hug with Julie
which lasted several minutes.

Maggie had given indiscriminate threats to
Julie
’
s two escorts, Bones and
Martin, that she would murder them herself if Julie didn’t get home safely, and
both men had saluted her. The sight of the taillights fading down the driveway
was still burned into Maggie
’
s
mind.

Maggie itched to call and check on them,
but it was too soon for Julie to have gotten all the way back to Eagleton yet,
and she didn’t want to be a distraction. Instead, she pulled the big box of
stuff Julie had brought her and began to inspect it. When she moved to
Eagleton, Maggie had adopted a bit of a Spartan attitude towards her belongings
in some kind of overcompensation to her new adventure. She wanted to be lean
and mean and ready for anything, and so she didn’t buy more than she needed.
After the first year and a half, and a bit of comfort, Maggie changed her tune
on that and her apartment started to look like a real domestic space
—
the
kind she had daydreamed about when she was a little girl with no mother to
influence the household. No more yellowed posters of Johnny Cash on the dining
room wall; there was a cupboard full of actual matching plates and cups; and a
more thoughtful and varied décor
 
than
a few dusty models of motorcycles and armored tanks. Maggie had loved her
little space. For the first time in a long time, she enjoyed coming home. She
looked forward to it.

Of course, that peace had been shattered
by her downward spiral with Evan. Any of her bigger, pricier possessions were
heartlessly pawned while she was at work. Piles of laundry and dirty dishes
became common features of the kitchen. Beer, blood, and heroin stained the
carpets. Evan broke a great deal of her smaller treasures as punishments, or in
one of his untargeted fits of rage. By the time her escape approached, Maggie
didn’t actually have much left that hadn’t been sold, broken, or defiled in
some way. It made her feel sick and violated when she thought about just how
much she had lost. Suddenly everything in the box Julie had brought felt worth
its weight in gold.

Inside Maggie found a few pieces of
clothing that hadn’t gotten ruined or sold, including an ugly flowered scarf
that Maggie remembered Julie pressuring her to buy one Saturday out. Maggie
laughed at the irony that it had survived, and lovingly wrapped it around the
lampshade by her bed. There were a few scattered book titles, and a small black
photo album from her first years in Eagleton. Some random paperwork covered the
bottom of the box, and squished in the corner, a stuffed penguin Maggie used to
keep on a shelf in her bedroom.

Digging deeper, she found two small black
squares hiding in the shadows. One was a plain black cell phone she only sort
of recognized. The battery had died long ago, so she couldn’t investigate the
texts or contacts. But Maggie felt the hairs stand on the back of her neck as
she realized this phone had probably belonged to Evan, or one of his friends.
It looked like the burners they frequently used.

Even though the point of the burner was to
be untraceable, Maggie figured it was worth handing over to the investigation
efforts. She put the phone on her bedside table, reminding herself to take it
to Henry in the morning.

The other black square felt soft under her
fingertips: a velvet jewelry box. She opened it up and gasped to find her
mother
’
s rosary safely tucked
within. Carved from rosewood and interspersed with actual tiny clay rose
blooms, it had been a gift from Henry to Sara during their honeymoon in Rome.
Henry almost buried his wife with the beads, but at the last moment had decided
against it. He gave it to Maggie on her 8
^th
birthday, telling her
how her mother had carried it with her everywhere after that trip. It was the
first time Maggie could remember seeing tears in her father
’
s
eyes, even if only just for a moment.

As a kid, Maggie had been torn between
wanting to carry the rosary everywhere as Sara had, or wanting to protect it,
locked up in her room. The latter urge had won; she simply peeked in on the
beads in the jewelry box every so often when she was alone in her room. And
apparently, it had survived Evan, too. Maggie felt tears in her own eyes as she
lifted it out and enjoyed the smooth feel of the rosewood beads on her
fingertips. She didn’t know any of the prayers, had never been to church, but
it comforted her just the same. She replaced all the other items to the box and
lay in bed, rubbing the rosary beads by lamplight, until she finally dozed off.

Maggie slept fitfully. The sounds of the
MC gathering for their morning briefing in the den began in earnest around 8am,
and she knew that was the end of her sleep for the time being. As she took
another shower to wake herself up, she tried to steel herself to face Jase
after last night. Her stomach clenched at the thought. She had no idea where to
even begin with him.

She waited until she knew at least several
of the men were out there to act as a buffer zone, so she wouldn’t find herself
alone with Jase. She knew that time would come soon enough. Then Maggie got
dressed and stuffed her phone in one pocket, and her mother
’
s
rosary into the other. She frowned for a minute at the other strange phone on
the nightstand, then remembered it from the box, and decided she would bring it
to Henry now.

A couple of rookies were serving coffee to
the gathered men in the den. More than a few were pouring their own
“
creamer
”
from flasks secreted into inner jacket pockets.
Forgetting that most of them hadn’t seen her since the drive-by, Maggie froze
in the doorway when they gave her more cheerful greetings and pats on the back
than usual, asking if they could get her anything. Their attention destroyed
any attempts at flying under the radar.

She tried not to look around for Jase, but
found him anyway, standing next to the jukebox talking to Will. He was already
looking at her with a stony expression that she couldn’t read. Everything about
him was aching sadness. She couldn’t look at him long; now wasn’t the time to
deal with it.

Maggie pushed through the group until she
stood next to her father. When he saw her, he put down his coffee cup and gave
her a strong hug. It surprised her.
“
How
are you feeling?
”
He
asked.
“
Get
enough sleep?
”

Like an idiot with no instincts, Maggie
’
s
eyes immediately flicked over to look at Jase. He was listening to Will, quite
obviously trying to keep his eyes off her, too. The tension between them, even
in a room full of people, was suffocating.
“
I
slept some.
”

“
Good. We’ll
get you set up in a new house when this is all finished, a better one,
”
said Henry.

“
Any word from Julie?
”
asked
Maggie.

Henry nodded.
“
Bones
and Martin didn’t run into any trouble, and they decided to tail her all the
way to Eagleton. They got her home to her fiancé
without
a problem. They
’
re on the way
back. She
’
s safe.”

Maggie took a deep breath and let that
worry slip off the very full plate in her mind.
“
Thank
you, Henry. Can we talk in private for a minute?
”

Henry put out an arm to lead Maggie
through the group and upstairs to the conference room. Maggie could feel eyes
on her as she walked up the stairs, but she didn’t
dare look down.

Doors closed, Maggie handed Henry the
black burner phone.
“
I found this in
that box of things Julie brought down. I don’t know exactly who it belongs to,
but it has to be one of them. They must have left it in my apartment.
”
He took it from her and she shrugged.
“
Might
be useless, but
…”