Maverick: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Series Book 6) Read online

  Maverick

  A Dark And Dirty Sinners’ MC: SIX

  Serena Akeroyd

  Copyright © 2020 by SERENA AKEROYD

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Dedication

  PLAYLIST

  Alert! Alert!

  Prologue

  1. Ghost

  2. Ghost

  3. Ghost

  4. Maverick

  5. Ghost

  6. Alessa

  7. Maverick

  8. Ghost

  9. Lodestar

  10. Nyx

  11. Cyan

  12. Maverick

  13. Alessa

  14. Maverick

  15. Alessa

  16. Hawk

  17. Alessa

  18. Maverick

  19. Quin

  20. Amara

  21. Maverick

  22. Lodestar

  23. Rex

  24. Maverick

  25. Rex

  26. Alessa

  27. Rex

  28. Maverick

  29. Alessa

  30. Maverick

  31. Alessa

  32. Maverick

  33. Alessa

  34. Maverick

  35. Alessa

  36. Maverick

  37. Alessa

  38. Maverick

  39. Alessa

  40. Maverick

  41. Alessa

  42. Maverick

  43. Quin

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Free Book!

  Connect with Serena

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To Anne.

  Better than Henry Cavill.

  Who needs Superman when you’ve got the BA-EA?

  Thank you for putting up with me, darling x

  PLAYLIST

  If you’d like to hear a curated soundtrack, with songs that are featured in the book, as well as songs that inspired it, then here’s the link:

  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7howLKC9Qa2pgeNl7YSUWO

  This might not be what you’re used to from the Sinners.

  That’s my fault. ;)

  Alert! Alert!

  I can’t be held responsible for damaged Kindles hurled during the reading of this novel.

  ;)

  Please be mindful here. You’re on book six of a series loaded with triggers, and this book is no exception.

  That being said, buckle up, Divas, you’re in for a ride.

  Love

  Serena

  xoxo

  Prologue

  Maverick

  The tight space of my bunk was no place for two guys to lie together, at least not in this fucking heat.

  I thought I’d known the likes of this smothering inferno before, but nothing beat this summer in Kembesh. While we were up high in the mountains, sheltered somewhat from the outright blast of bone melting hell, the monsoons had been particularly bad this year. My insides felt like they were being stewed, and I was used to worse circumstances than this one. Used to the worst combat situations imaginable.

  I blew out a breath, which made the hairs on Nic’s chest shift under the breeze and, trust me, in these conditions, that was about as much of a hurricane as it got around here. I studied his pecs, abs, and the delicious divots where his muscles created a whole different plane of their own, and I was beyond tempted to rest my hand there, to let my fingers slide down to cup his dick.

  But I couldn’t.

  We were bunking with our ODA, an unusually small one of ten members because we’d just lost Harrison and Wamba. They’d been blown up, and the rest of us bunch of Snake Eaters—Special Forces—were still coming to terms with their deaths. Wamba was the last fucker I thought we’d lose. He was neurotic all the way, following regulations left and right to his usual point of madness. If anyone should have died in that IED explosion, it was me.

  I’d never been good at following orders, which technically made me a shit soldier, but I tried to follow rules as much as I was able to. Being raised with MC brats had me questioning shit I shouldn’t really question, but along the way, I’d pulled some crazy stunts, saved some important people, and I’d managed to earn my place in the Green Berets.

  Nic was older than me and I was his subordinate, and we definitely weren’t supposed to be fucking, but the other guys turned a blind eye to all that when he had his hallucinations.

  The whole team knew Nic should be back home, we all knew he should be retired, but he was too good at what he did, and our SOB of a colonel kept pulling shit, doctoring his reports, and making moves that saw Nic in the sandbox time and time again.

  We were tight, brothers in arms who would die for each other, but for Nic, we wouldn’t just die—we’d outright fucking kill.

  That was the level of devotion he stirred in us.

  We’d go into hell for him, would cross the Judecca to bring him back. Only trouble was, the river of wailing in Hades was where Nic’s mind was half the time anyway. How could we retrieve someone from their thoughts? Rescue them mentally if not physically?

  But our love for him was why our bunk was at the back. The others had adjusted theirs, made makeshift curtains to give us some privacy that was more for their benefit than ours. I’d go so far to say that Rodger and Ruby were homophobes, but they never said shit.

  Never would.

  Because I kept Nic going. I kept him lucid.

  I had no idea why, but I did. Lying in this tight bunk with him, just breathing the same air, just relaxing as much as we could in this fucking shithole, it calmed him down.

  I respected the others too much to try anything, even though I wanted to. Losing Wamba and Harrison was hitting us all hard, and knowing we were about to get two new team members wasn’t helping. With what we did, we needed to trust our brothers, and that was tough when we had to bring two new soldiers in. More than that, we had to survive long enough to get those new team members—

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place, Mav.”

  Those were the first words he’d said since he’d woken up from a fitful sleep.

  “That’s because you’re paranoid,” I replied lightly, even though he really wasn’t. Nic had an inbuilt monitor for trouble that was usually spot on. But as unease filtered through me because I knew he was right, I tried to shift the tone. “You just know that the only MREs we have left are the goulash.”

  He pulled a face, but his smile peeped through. He was filthy—we all were. This combat outpost was in the middle of Bumfuck, Afghanistan, and it was barely functioning as we’d just recouped it from the Taliban two nights ago. Running water was a luxury right now, and we stank like dead pigs. Not that I cared. Didn’t even care that my chest was sticking to Nic’s thanks to the perspiration coating us that had dried where we touched.

  I sometimes felt like I couldn’t get close enough to him, so being glued in place was my idea of heaven.

  “I don’t think it’s the goulash I’m scared of,” he muttered dryly, but he turned his head and pressed a kiss to the crown of mine.

  Closing my eyes at the touch, I rasped, “I know.”

  We all did.

  We’d been outnumbered, but we’d won back the outpost. Somehow.

  The odds hadn’t been in ou
r favor. Losing two of our team was lucky in the grand scheme of things, but lucky and loss didn’t go hand in hand.

  And luck this deep in the sandbox, this far out from communications with other COPs? Unlikely.

  They were waiting.

  Just like we were.

  They were coming for us again.

  We just had to maintain our position, just had to stay alive until the 10th Mountain Division, my old unit, finally got their asses here.

  I rubbed my stubbled cheek against his chest, taking advantage of these moments of intimacy while my other brothers were out there, keeping an eye on things. We’d take over for Ken and Eagle Eyes in a half hour, because after sixty-four hours of active duty, they needed some fucking shut-eye.

  He squeezed me, kissed my head again, and rasped, “Maverick?”

  “Yeah, Nic.”

  “You know I love you, don’t you?”

  I clenched my eyes closed because that was the first time he told me that, the first fucking time, and I knew where his mind was at.

  The PTSD was so entrenched in his brain it was like he had a ghoul in there.

  Maybe he did.

  I knew he was waiting.

  Waiting to fucking die.

  I could have railed at him, gotten angry. Told him not to tell me those words because he wasn’t sharing them to make me feel better, to cement what we had together. No, he was using them as a goodbye.

  “We’re going to get out of this,” I snarled. “We’ve been in worse situat—”

  He shook his head. “Maverick.”

  His tone was the one I’d been listening to for years, the calm, steady melody of a man who somehow fooled the rest of the world into believing he had no demons. He was the best master sergeant I’d come across, but he shouldn’t be here.

  He should be home. And from his voice, I knew he felt like he’d never get back there again.

  “I need you to make it, Maverick. I need to know you’ll get home, that you’ll get back to the real world. I love you too much to think of you—”

  The tears that pricked my eyes shamed me, but the serene tone, the way in which he said my name… how his plea wasn’t plaintive, just hopeful, I had no choice but to reach up and cover his mouth to stem the tide of his words. I couldn’t hear any more.

  “I love you too, Nic.”

  And the second those words fell from my lips, I wished them back.

  I wished them to hell, because the moment they drifted from my vocal chords, formed intelligible sounds that could be understood, that was when things went FUBAR, and death embraced our team once more…

  One

  Ghost

  Ten years later

  Katina: Is he awake?

  Me: Not yet. He will be soon though. Get some sleep, zayushka.

  Katina: I’m not a rabbit.

  Me: You are. My rabbit.

  Katina: I’m going.

  Me: Good. SLEEP!

  *Two hours later*

  Katina: Is he awake?

  Me: Katina! Why are you awake?

  Katina: I’m worried.

  Me: I know, kotyk. I’m worried too.

  Katina: Will he be okay?

  Me: We won’t let him be anything else.

  Katina: Mommy wasn’t okay.

  Me: Maverick isn’t Mama.

  Katina: I want him to be okay. I like his smile and how he makes you smile. You don’t smile enough, Alessa.

  Me: He makes me happy. He’ll wake up soon. I promise.

  Katina: You can’t promise that.

  Me: Tak, I can.

  Katina: I hate it when you speak Ukrainian.

  Me: Tough. You’re going to learn it. It’s what Mama would have wanted.

  Katina: o.O

  Me: O.o

  Me: Get some sleep. Please? You’ll be the first person I’ll call when he’s awake.

  Katina: Spasybi.

  Me: You’re welcome <3

  Two

  Ghost

  Two hours later

  “Who are you?”

  Have you ever lived a nightmare?

  My life was a nightmare for years.

  I’d had things done to me that no one could begin to imagine, endured the evilness of mankind like few had, and yet one biker brought me to my knees.

  “Who are you?”

  One biker hurt me more than any of my rapists—or as they called themselves, owners—ever could.

  He didn’t mean to.

  He didn’t torment me physically or torture me sexually.

  He simply looked at me like he didn’t know me.

  Like he didn’t remember me.

  And that hurt more than anything else that had ever happened to me, because, God help me, I loved him.

  I loved this biker. This scarred, war-hardened man who had eyes like sparkling dimes, the most kissable lips imaginable, and hair that, thanks to the short spikes from the buzz cut he was growing out, gleamed like precious metal in the sun. This biker, whose real name I’d only come to learn when we married. Even knowing it, however, I just called him Maverick.

  Either that or husband.

  A husband who didn’t remember me.

  But this wasn’t some stupid soap opera, wasn’t a sitcom for people’s entertainment.

  This was my life.

  I’d say my husband glared at me like he hated me, but it wasn’t hatred. What he felt for me wasn’t even that much. I was a nonentity to him. A nobody.

  Which was what hurt most of all—to Maverick, I’d never been that.

  I’d been somebody.

  Always, somebody.

  But now, I was back to being a nobody.

  My throat felt tight and thick, itchy as the desire to cry hit me hard, but no tears fell. I knew it was some strange thing that had happened to me with my last owner. Crying was difficult. I’d taken to faking tears because they wouldn’t fall for me anymore, not after what I’d been through.

  So instead of getting some relief from crying, I just felt clogged up a little like our old toilet in my home in Mezyn, back in Ukraine.

  “Where’s Nic?”

  He kept on asking that, kept on demanding for this Nic who I didn’t know, had never even heard of, but his desperate tone hit my heart hard. If his desperation for a stranger didn’t take me aback, then my disabled husband, a man who lived in a wheelchair, stunned me further by getting to his feet, standing on them, just as Link and Steel, two of his MC brothers, as well as a nurse, made an appearance in the room.

  They tried to restrain him after they got him back into bed, yet the more they tried to keep him there, the more anguished he was. The more desolate.

  I had never heard him mention Nic before, but he was desperate to get to him—whoever he was. His brothers didn’t appear to know who this Nic was either.

  “We’ll find out who Nic is,” Link vowed, his face sweaty with exertion as both he and Steel worked hard to keep him contained on the bed.

  His words were the passcode that triggered a cessation of Maverick’s struggling. As if they’d flicked a light switch, he stopped. Turned still.

  “Until then,” Steel told him, “Ghost is here.”

  Mav stared up at him. “Who’s Ghost?”

  I saw Link pass me a guilty look, but I didn’t stick around to find out how else he could break my heart.

  I loved him.

  What a time to realize it.

  Swallowing down the need to scream, I stared at the walls, at the floor, at the little skid marks on the linoleum. I stared at the set of two uncomfortable chairs where I knew Link and Steel had been sitting, leaving me inside with Mav so he’d wake up with me at his side, and wondered how everything had gone so wrong.

  People passed me by, rushing in and out. Link and Steel were tossed into the corridor with me, and as they talked around me, time passed, but it was almost as if I was dead to its endless whirl.

  Brain a blur, heart racing, out of nowhere, my lungs just wouldn’t work.

 
I started to gulp down air, started to swallow it, but it wasn’t the same as breathing. My skin prickled with the makings of a panic attack, and sweat beaded at the base of my back and dotted my temples. None of it compared to the sensation of claustrophobia that had me seeking fresh air.

  “Leave her,” I heard Link mutter behind me. “She needs some space. Christ, poor Ghost. Can you believe Mav—”

  I didn’t hear any more, was too busy dashing forward, heading down the corridor toward the doorway that would take me to the outer hall.

  It was a maze here, and knowing I was trapped inside made me feel worse, but just as I reached the doors, someone cleared their throat, and through the fog of panic, someone called out, “Mrs. Ravenwood?”

  They’d started using my full title here, and it was strange to my ears. Strange because I half expected to hear ‘Mrs. Maverick’ instead, but Maverick wasn’t his real name.

  Jameson was.

  Jameson Ravenwood.

  I’d heard it once on our wedding day. A hurried and harried affair that began out of necessity and, to me at least, had turned into more.