Repo (The Henchmen MC Book 4) (30 page)

And Maze, the girl with no past who was a hardass and cold and distant and secretive and wholly incapable of trusting anyone, who questioned every minute little God damn thing. Yeah, she was easy too.

But this person left in the wake of it all?

I had no idea who the hell she even was, but I was pretty sure there was nothing easy about her.

If the night and morning in the hotel room with Repo/Rye was anything to go by, it wasn't going to be easy to reconcile both sides of me. Because that was the case now. I wasn't Maisy and I wasn't Maze; I was a hybrid of both those women. I was someone who could be soft and sweet and emotional like I had been in my life before. But I was also someone who knew she could make a full grown man unconscious in seconds if she needed to. I had thicker skin and sharper edges.

My immediate instinct when I threw my arms around K and then Repo when I first saw them was to cry. Legit, that was the knee-jerk reaction. I wanted to let all the stress and worry and fear burst out of me in one big, ugly show of emotion. That was the soft side of me. But I had pulled it together and tried to joke around, pulling out my thick skin and keeping it together.

Then after being lulled to sleep with some seriously amazing sex that was deeply akin to actual lovemaking and waking up in Repo's arms to find that he too had fallen asleep, well, the thick skin thinned out and Repo woke up suddenly to the loud hitch in my breath as the tears streamed down hot and relentless.

"Honey, hey, what's the matter?" he'd asked, reaching out and wiping the wet from my cheeks as his eyes slowly cleared of sleep.

But I just face planted into his chest and let it all out.

Then, later in the shower, wishy-washy emotions all exorcised, Repo and I had went at each other like animals, like a battle, like survival of the fittest. There was nothing even remotely like lovemaking about the way we fucked, hair-pulling, skin-biting, ass-slapping, airway-constricting.

The Maisy I used to be would have been horrified by the violence of it.

But Maze thrived on it.

So, yeah, to say the least... my little personal identity crisis was an issue.

Especially because I had decided to keep trying to get my patch. I knew it was a long shot if it was even possible at all. But I wasn't a quitter. I wanted to prove it to them that I could take whatever they threw at me and handle it.

I also
wanted
needed to prove that to myself as well.

But was the new hybrid me going to be badass enough to pull it off? And was it going to change things that Repo and I were now openly... um... dating? Fucking? I wasn't entirely sure what we were. He'd claimed me. So I guess that meant more than fucking. Repo didn't exactly suffer from communication issues, so the fact that things were slightly hazy were either because I was over-thinking them or because he was waiting to clarify them when he saw how I was going to handle the whole situation.

That made sense.

And...

"Maisy," K's voice cut in, brow raised like he noticed I had totally spaced-out. "You alright?"

"My head is spinning," I admitted.

"Okay, here's the plan," he said, tone serious and no-nonsense. I immediately felt some of my anxiety slipping away. "You are going to buck up and you're going to fight for your patch. You've put in the work. Don't you dare give in now. They won't give you one, give them a giant 'fuck you' and move on. You and me, we aren't done just because your trouble is all but a memory. If you're my girl, you're my girl for life. So if this blows up in your face, I'm there. You need to come back to the city and be Maisy, but slightly improved, I'm there. You need to be Maze and start over again somewhere else, I'm there to help you navigate that. You end up falling head-over for that blue-eyed biker of yours and you need someone to walk you down the aisle or be a godfather for your first child,
I'm fucking there.
Got it?"

I felt my lips curve up as tears stung my eyes. "K..."

"Blink those tears away, love. It's not the time or place. Now, I gotta get going. Stay safe and kick ass, Maisy."

With that, he chucked me under the chin, slapped Repo on the back while whispering something near his ear, shook Reign's hand, and was out the door.

Despite knowing he would always be there for me, I felt a little stabbing in my belly at watching him leave.

Repo walked back toward me then, face a little guarded. "What?" I demanded before he was even within five feet of me. He reached up, scratching his cheek, and gave me a smirk. "So yeah, the men are complaining that all their sheets need cleaning."

"You're serious?" I asked, feeling my mouth hanging open slightly as I looked over at the bar to find a particular group of said men watching me.

"Afraid so, probie."

I felt myself snort, shaking my head, then declaring to the room as a whole, "Wow, it's a good thing I'm back seeing as Duke and Renny seemed to have had all four of their hands amputated while I was busy being hunted and kidnapped and found themselves suddenly incapable of doing your laundry. Can't have you guys rolling around in dirty sheets like a bunch of
pigs,
now can we?" I asked, giving Reign the saccharine smile he had come to expect whenever I mouthed off. Then jerking my chin up at him when he saluted me with his beer, I made my way toward the hall to go collect the fucking sheets.

And as much as I was annoyed at the current of sexism under the request, it felt good to know that things hadn't changed. I was still just a probate. And I was the first female one to boot. I got ragged on. I got the shitty jobs. I got shit kicked at me then got told to sweep it up because it was stinking up the joint.

There was a certain sort of comfort in that I realized as I shoved the first batch of sheets into the dryer and turned it on before putting another batch in the washer, adding detergent, and flicking that on as well.

"You didn't get the sheets off my bed," Repo's voice said from behind my shoulder as his hand slid around my belly.

"Whatever I am to you, Rye, I'm not your fucking maid."

"It's only fair," he said, nipping into my earlobe and sending a rush of wet between my thighs.

"How is it fair?"

"We're both going to be participating in dirtying them up."

"Gee, I dunno what you think, Mr. Boss Man Biker. But I'm just a lowly probate. I sleep in a bunk bed in a cold basement like a hated third cousin showing up for Christmas uninvited."

"Like fuck. You'll do what you need to do when someone needs you to do it, but when you're sleeping, you're doing that shit in my bed next to me," he declared, his hand moving under the waistband of my jeans and stroking me over the material of my panties, finding my clit easily and pulsing his fingertip against it. "Got it?" he asked, his finger sliding under my panties and plunging inside me.

I held back a groan, my head falling onto his shoulder as I took a deep breath. "Fine, bring down your sheets."

"But first this," he said, finger raking over my G-spot.

Then we added the laundry room to our long list of places we had amazing, wild, inventive, amazing, perfect sex.

Epilogue

Maze

3 Months-

"This is complete and utter
bullshit
," I shrieked to the whole group of them at large as I watched Duke and Renny stand with them, patches in hands.

Three months. Three extra fucking months of waiting on them hand and foot, cooking for them, cleaning their sheets, fetching drinks, washing bikes... all for nothing.

Nothing.

Because they had stuck to their guns.

I wasn't getting a patch.

I wasn't being allowed into The Henchmen MC.

I swear they picked this particular day to let me in on that fact because Janie was still off on her Honeymoon with Wolf, Lo was out of town on a job, Summer was down with morning sickness until well into the evening, and the rest of the girls club only happened over to the compound if they were called to. So there was no Alex or Amelia around either to pitch a fit with me.

I was, quite literally, completely and utterly alone.

Repo stood with his brothers.

I hadn't exactly thought it would be any other way when it came down to it. It wasn't that he was standing against me, he was just standing with the decision his boss had made. I understood it. But that didn't mean there wasn't a tiny little pit of resentment in my stomach over it, no matter how sad his eyes looked when my gaze slid to him.

He knew what it meant to me. He knew every little bit of torture I went through, how above and beyond I worked and trained to make myself an important member of the MC.

"Babe..."

"Don't," I snapped, loudly and without restraint. I wasn't a member and I wasn't a probate anymore. So talking back to Reign wasn't disloyal. It might have been a bit risky and stupid, but it wasn't against some code of conduct. "Don't you dare fucking 'babe' me," I yelled, crossing over toward him, watching Vin and Cash shrink away from his sides because, I imagined, they knew women well enough to know that when we got on a tear, we didn't give a good flying fuck in space about collateral damage.

"Maze this is for the..."

"Best?" I cut him off. "You know what... fuck that. And fuck you and your sexist bullshit. One day, Reign, Ferryn is going to be all grown up. And on that day, I'll be around and I won't hesitate to tell her what a chauvinistic pig her fucking father..." I started to punctuate each word with a shove to his massive chest, barely managing to make his body move at all.

"Maze..." he broke in, tone calm, not even mildly phased by my outburst. Possibly due to the fact that he was pretty much only ever surrounded by women who were in no way shy about sharing their thoughts and feelings.

"Take your half-assed explanations and go to hell," I spat, turning on my heel and moving across the field toward the front yard.

"Hey Maze, maybe you should shut the fuck up for a second and listen," Reign called. If I hadn't been seeing, hearing, and feeling red... I might have heard the humor in his tone. As it was, all I heard was 'shut the fuck up and listen' and, well, I had just about enough of him. I moved to spin around, almost crashing into Reign himself, not realizing he had followed me. "Stop," he said when I opened my mouth to spit more fire. "Listen," he said, ducking his head a little to look me in the eye. "Things are changing around here a little."

"Really? And how long before you come out of the seventeenth century gender-role wise?"

He ignored that completely. "Most prominently, Maze, the law is changing around here a little. There's a lot of new blood. There's no telling who might want to cut their teeth by trying to gnaw away at Henchmen business."

"And this matters to me, why? Remember? I'm not part of The Henchmen."

"It's a strategic move, babe. You are but you aren't, okay?"

My brows drew together and I sighed, feeling some of the anger fall away under a sea of questions. "Alright, explain."

"We have to start going part legit. Repo is going to open a garage, stop fucking around in the field when he feels like it and do some real business. Cash, Janie, and Lo are going to be opening a gym that focuses on martial arts and kickboxing..."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Well, see, Maze... you have a particular set of skills the men and I decided might come in handy."

I felt myself straighten, knowing where he was going and not sure how I felt about it. "Go on."

"Well, see, babe. Took you years to sort out what was going on with the Kozlov books it was so well hidden. I was thinking maybe you could... point us in the right direction with that kind of thing."

"You want me to help launder your money?" I asked, feeling my smile spread a little. Oh, what would Detective Conroy Asher think if he saw me now?

"No. Of course not," he said, grinning a little devilishly. "I want to hire you as an accountant to handle the books for the mechanic shop and the studio. If Repo just so happens to find out how exactly to hide money so well that not even the finest IRS agent could find it, well, that would just be a crazy coincidence."

I paused, biting into my cheek, wanting to choose my words carefully. "This wasn't always the plan, Reign. I'm not stupid."

"No, you're not. And, no, it wasn't. But it was the plan by the time you walked back in after that shit with the Russians. This has been something heavy on all our minds since they started fucking with the NBPD a couple years back. Everyone is sweating it. The Mallicks, they have a shitton of businesses to protect them. The Grassis have their restaurant. Breaker and Shooter are big time, but are still small fish. These guys will be itching to take down an organization, not individuals. We need to branch out. You couldn't be a member, babe. Not because you're a woman. You've proved to pretty much all of us that you have what it takes. But we need you on something else and to be on something else, you can't be associated to the illegal side of business. Make sense?"